Craftwork Episode 20: Girlhood, Defamiliarization, & Poetic Excavation w/ Emily Banks

Listen to Craftwork Episode 20: Girlhood, Defamiliarization, & Poetic Excavation w/ Emily Banks.

In this interview, we chat with Emily Banks about posthumous publications, linguistic allergies, the atomic nuts and bolts of imagery, and so much more. 

Emily Banks is the author of Mother Water (Lynx House Press, 2020). Her poems have appeared in PlumeCopper Nickel32 PoemsThe RumpusCutBankMid-American Review, and other journals. She publishes scholarship on American gothic literature, runs The Shirley Jackson Society, and is currently editing The Oxford Handbook of Shirley Jackson. She holds an MFA from the University of Maryland and a Ph.D. from Emory University. She lives in Indianapolis and teaches at Franklin College. 

Books, poems, and stories mentioned in this episode:

  • “Filling Station”; “In the Waiting Room” – Elizabeth Bishop
  • Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
  • Turn Up the Ocean – Tony Hoagland
  • “Dorothy and My Grandmother and the Sailors”; Hangsaman; The Haunting of Hill House; We Have Always Lived in the Castle – Shirley Jackson
  • Bliss Montage; Severance – Ling Ma
  • How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy – Jenny Odell
  • Middle Distance – Stanley Plumly
  • Pamela – Samuel Richardson
  • Modern Poetry – Diane Seuss

Craftwork Episode 19: Ghost Stories, Market Pressures, & Tapping into the Subconscious w/ Naben Ruthnum

Listen to Craftwork Episode 19: Ghost Stories, Market Pressures, & Tapping into the Subconscious w/ Naben Ruthnum.

In this interview, we chat with Naben Ruthnum about character development, avoiding TV-brained writing, making sense of first-reader notes, and so much more.

Naben Ruthnum is a Toronto-based writer of fiction, cultural criticism, film and TV. His novel A Hero of Our Time was released by Penguin Random House and was optioned for development by The Littlefield Company. His books include the YA novel The Grimmer, the World Fantasy Award-nominated horror novella Helpmeet and two thrillers penned as Nathan Ripley, both of which have been optioned for development and were published internationally. He has written for Canadian television series including Murdoch Mysteries and Cardinal. As a feature screenwriter, he’s collaborated with Kris Bertin for feature and TV projects in development at Oddfellows, BoulderLight Pictures, Automatik, Skybound, and Blink49. Kris and Naben’s script Road Test made the 2024 Black List.

Books mentioned in this episode:

  • A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
  • The Sorceress in Stained Glass & Other Ghost Stories – Richard Dalby, ed.
  • The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco
  • The Black Dahlia; Killer on the Road; L.A. Confidential; My Dark Places – James Ellroy 
  • Black Flame – Gretchen Felker-Martin
  • The James Bond series – Ian Fleming
  • The Collector; The Magus – John Fowles
  • The Green Carnation – Robert Hichens
  • The Americans; The Tragic Muse; The Turn of the Screw – Henry James
  • Supernatural Horror in Literature – H. P. Lovecraft
  • The Beckoning Fair One – Oliver Onions
  • A Fatal Inversion; Master of the Moor – Ruth Rendell
  • Flicker – Theodore Roszak
  • The Tempest – William Shakespeare
  • Ghost Story; If You Could See Me Now; In the Night Room; Koko; The Throat – Peter Straub
  • The Secret History – Donna Tartt
  • A Dark-Adapted Eye; The House of Stairs – Barbara Vine
  • The October Film Haunt – Michael Wehunt

Craftwork Episode 18: Ekphrasis, Sinuous Sentences, & the Logic of Sound w/ Sarah Bernstein

Listen to Craftwork Episode 18: Ekphrasis, Sinuous Sentences, & the Logic of Sound w/ Sarah Bernstein.

In this interview, we chat with Sarah Bernstein about contemplation, finding time for writing, capturing the rush of language, and so much more.

Sarah Bernstein is the author of two novels, The Coming Bad Days and Study for Obedience, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She is from Montreal and lives in the Scottish Highlands.

Books and stories mentioned in this episode:

  • Hysteric; Whore – Nelly Arcan
  • Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin
  • The Moonstone; The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
  • “A Mown Lawn” – Lydia Davis
  • Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life – Ruth Franklin
  • The Book of Questions – Edmond Jabès
  • The Haunting of Hill House; “The Lottery”; The Sundial; We Have Always Lived in the Castle – Shirley Jackson
  • The Melancholy of Resistance – László Krasznahorkai
  • The Place of Shells – Mai Ishizawa
  • In the Wake: On Blackness and Being – Christina Sharpe
  • The House Next Door – Anne Rivers Siddons
  • The Door – Magda Szabó
  • Clean – Alia Trabucco Zerán

Craftwork Episode 14: Debauchery, Plotless Fiction, & the Paranoiac-Critical Method w/ Nour Abi-Nakhoul

Listen to Craftwork Episode 14: Debauchery, Plotless Fiction, & the Paranoiac-Critical Method w/ Nour Abi-Nakhoul.

In this interview, we chat with Nour Abi-Nakhoul about copy editing, creative nonfiction, feverish creations, and so much more.

Nour Abi-Nakhoul is a writer and editor based in Montreal. She is the editor-in-chief of the award-winning quarterly Maisonneuve Magazine. Her short fiction has appeared in Hazlitt and The Walrus. Her debut novel, Supplication, was released by Penguin Random House in 2024.

Books mentioned in this episode:

  • Kilworthy Tanner – Jean Marc Ah-Sen
  • We Are Here to Hurt Each Other – Paula D. Ashe
  • Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin
  • The Guest – Emma Cline
  • The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky
  • Autobiography of X; Pew – Catherine Lacey
  • The Apple in the Dark – Clarice Lispector
  • Fever Dream – Samanta Schweblin
  • The Adventures of Ratman – Ellen Weiss

Craftwork S1E1: Persona Poems, Metacognition, & Vancouver Island Marmots w/ Meghan Kemp-Gee

On the first episode of Craftwork, guest Meghan Kemp-Gee talks about poetry, screenwriting, comics, and so much more.

Meghan is the author of The Animal in the Room (Coach House Books, 2023), as well as three poetry chapbooks, What I Meant to Ask, Things to Buy in New Brunswick, and More. She also co-created the webcomic Contested Strip, recently adapted as a graphic novel, One More Year. She is a PhD candidate at UNB and currently lives in North Vancouver BC.

Listen here.

Books mentioned in this episode:

  • The Writing Moment: A Practical Guide to Creating Poems – Daniel Scott Tysdal
  • Walden – Henry David Thoreau
  • The Artist’s Way – Julia Cameron
  • Bird by Bird – Anne Lamott
  • 20th Century Men – Deniz Camp, Stipan Morian, & Aditya Bidikar
  • The Adversary – Michael Crummey

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