The Lives of Writers

Katharine Coldiron [Host: Michael Wheaton]

Episode Summary

Michael Wheaton interviews Katharine Coldiron. Topics include: editing at Barrelhouse and X-R-A-Y, dishing out but not taking edits, cross-stitching, getting the writing bug and the movie bug, Star Wars, hybrid writing, her book JUNK FILM, not defining the words good and bad, Plan 9, bad film as ecosystem, delusion, taste, and more.

Episode Notes

On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Michael Wheaton interviews Katharine Coldiron.

Katharine Coldiron is the author of Ceremonials, an SPD bestseller; Plan 9 from Outer Space, a monograph; and Junk Film, a collection of critical essays. Her work as a critic has appeared in the Washington Post, the Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian, the Houston Chronicle, Brevity, the Believer, and many other places; as a hybrid essayist, she has placed work in Conjunctions, the Rupture, the Offing, and elsewhere. She is the reviews editor at Barrelhouse and the managing editor of X-R-A-Y.

Michael Wheaton is the publisher of Autofocus Books and producer of this podcast.

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PART ONE, topics include:

-- living in the unfashionable part of LA

-- being able to stop full time work

-- writing and watching movies

-- editing reviews at Barrelhouse 

-- being able to dish out editing but not being able to take it

-- managing editing at X-R-A-Y

-- cross-stitching

-- Autofocus's How to Write a Novel anthology

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PART TWO, topics include:

-- parapsychology and Ghostbusters

-- an anthology of millennial writing on Poltergeist

-- getting the writing bug and the movie bug

-- Star Wars

-- old Hollywood

-- quitting and coming back to writing

-- the move into hybrid writing

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PART THREE , topics include:

--  the critical essay collection JUNK FILM

-- the problem of (not) defining good and bad

-- the word 'junk'

-- Plan 9 from Outerspace

-- bad film as an ecosystem

-- straight to VHS vs straight DVD movies

-- the role of delusion in artmaking

-- (not) distinguishing good and bad taste

-- trying to resist looking on with pity

-- cinematic grammar (not) translating to writing

-- a novel in progress about Ilsa

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Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.

The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.