Recent interviews

Wednesday, September 20, 2023

I had a nice long chat with Jaime Rodríguez de Santiago about creativity, parenting and Don Quixote. The full video is on YouTube and here’s a little excerpt.

I had a shorter but still sweet interview with Jane Ratcliff on being (not) too weird to be popular:

I assumed everything I cared about was too weird to be popular and that I’d always have a day job. The fact that I have readers and make a living from the stuff I make is a blessing beyond belief and every week I try not to squander my luck.

Filed under: interviews

Montaigne’s birthday with Sam Anderson

Tuesday, February 28, 2023

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For the third year in a row, Sam Anderson and I hung out on Instagram to celebrate Michel de Montaigne’s birthday.

I was talking too much and didn’t draw, but Sam drew this page that I love:

And this morning before we talked, I made a map of the things we talked about in our previous conversations:

Interview with Peter Turchi

Monday, February 13, 2023

The folks at City Lights recorded my recent interview with Peter Turchi and posted it to YouTube. I enjoyed it very much. (The last time we spoke was 2015!)

Interview in Austin Monthly

Thursday, January 12, 2023

A last-minute souvenir: On her way out of town, my mom sent me this photo of my interview in Austin Monthly from the Bookpeople newsstand at the Austin Airport.

The gift of obscurity

Friday, July 8, 2022

Brad Listi had me back on his Otherppl podcast, and one thing we talked about was the gift of obscurity:

People worry so much about people being angry at them or doing the wrong thing, but obscurity can be this great gift. You can experiment. It’s a kind of freedom. Now, unlimited freedom can be very paralyzing, too. Freedom is not necessarily the best thing ever for art; there’s a tension between freedom and constraint out of which great art arises. Obscurity can be a real gift if you use it correctly.

You can listen to the whole thing here:

Interview with Oliver Burkeman

Monday, March 21, 2022

~~Next Monday, March 28th at 2PM central, I’ll be interviewing Oliver Burkeman about his work and his book, Four Thousand Weeks. You can set a reminder to tune in via YouTube~~:

This was really fun. Watch my chat with Oliver on Youtube:

Another chat with Sam Anderson about writing and drawing

Thursday, March 3, 2022

For the second year in a row, Sam Anderson and I celebrated Montaigne’s birthday (Feb. 28) by jumping on Instagram Live and chatting about writing and drawing. Tune in to see Sam’s therapy drawings and learn his interviewing tricks and tips. Watch below or on Instagram.

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Interview with Sarah Ruhl

Monday, February 21, 2022

I am was delighted to be interview~~ing~~ writer Sarah Ruhl about her work and her memoir Smile: The Story of a Face ~~this~~ on Wednesday. You can ~~set a reminder to~~ watch on YouTube:

Cartoonist Lucy Bellwood drew and wrote about talk here.

Are you really helping here? My interview with Tim Kreider

Thursday, January 27, 2022

This afternoon I had the pleasure of interviewing Tim Kreider, author of We Learn Nothing, about his life and work. You can watch our conversation on on YouTube.

We talked about so many things, but I loved what Tim said about Kim Stanley Robinson and Rebecca Solnit being the angels on his shoulder when he’s writing and starts feeling too cynical or grim:

Are you really helping here? That’s what you ought to be doing if you’re a writer. Or any kind of artist. Helping. Some. And it doesn’t mean cheerful or Pollyanna-ish. Francis Bacon, the painter, was helping. William S. Burroughs helps. We all help in different ways.

Here are my prep notes: