Craftwork S1E13: Ecstasy, Ruin, & the Talent of the Room w/ Kathe Koja

Listen to Craftwork S1E13: Ecstasy, Ruin, & the Talent of the Room w/ Kathe Koja.

In this interview, we chat with Kathe Koja about balancing simultaneous projects, resisting online distractions, raising the literary dead, and so much more.

Kathe Koja writes novels and short fiction, and creates and produces live and virtual events. Her award-winning books include The Cipher, Skin, Buddha Boy, Under The Poppy and Velocities, and she is currently at work on the Dark Factory immersive fiction project including Dark Factory, Dark Park and Dark Matter. Catherine the Ghost is her newest novel.

You can find her at kathekoja.com and on InstagramFacebook and Threads.

Books mentioned in this episode:

  • Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
  • Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life – Ruth Franklin
  • Faust – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
  • The Mouse and His Child; Riddley Walker – Russell Hoban
  • The Default World – Naomi Kanakia
  • Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett – James Knowlson
  • A Place of Greater Safety; Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel
  • Doctor Faustus – Christopher Marlowe
  • Rimbaud: A Biography – Graham Robb
  • Frankenstein; The Last Man – Mary Shelley
  • Lost Boy Lost Girl – Peter Straub
  • The Secret Power of Music: The Transformation of Self and Society through Musical Energy – David Tame

Mike Thorn’s Favorite First Reads of 2021

Bleedthrough and Other Small Horrors, by Scarlett R. Algee (2020)

The Flowers of Evil, by Charles Baudelaire [edited by Marthiel and Jackson Mathews, multiple editors] (1857)

The Unnamable, by Samuel Beckett (1953)

Selling the Splat Pack: The DVD Revolution and the American Horror Film, by Mark Bernard (2014)

The Brigadier and the Golf Widow, by John Cheever (1964)

On the Heights of Despair, by E. M. Cioran [translated by Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston] (1933)

The Trouble with Being Born, by E. M. Cioran [translated by Richard Howard] (1973)

Porno Valley, by Philip Elliott (2021)

Less Than Zero, by Bret Easton Ellis (1985)

The Rules of Attraction, by Bret Easton Ellis (1987)

American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis (1991)

The Informers, by Bret Easton Ellis (1994)

Glamorama, by Bret Easton Ellis (1998)

Lunar Park, by Bret Easton Ellis (2005)

Imperial Bedrooms, by Bret Easton Ellis (2010)

The Shards, by Bret Easton Ellis (2021)

Carmilla, by J. Sheridan Le Fanu (1872)

The Queer Art of Failure, by J. Jack Halberstam (2011)

In the Presence of Schopenhauer, by Michel Houellebecq [translated by Andrew Brown] (2017)

Humanimus, by David Huebert (2020)

The Damned, by J. K. Huysmans [translated by Terry Hale] (1891)

The Europeans, by Henry James (1878)

Washington Square, by Henry James (1880)

The Bostonians, by Henry James (1886)

Ghost Stories, by Henry James (1898)

Billy Summers, by Stephen King (2021)

The Wingspan of Severed Hands, by Joe Koch (2020)

Straydog, by Kathe Koja (2002)

The Blue Mirror, by Kathe Koja (2004)

Dark Factory, by Kathe Koja (2022; forthcoming)

I’m from Nowhere, by Lindsay Lerman (2019)

Shock!, by Richard Matheson (1961)

The Birds and Other Stories, by Daphne du Maurier (1952)

The Running Trees, by Amber McMillan (2021)

The Seventh Mansion, by Maryse Meijer (2020)

Circles, by Josiah Morgan (2020)

The Barrens, by Joyce Carol Oates (2001)

1984, by George Orwell (1949)

White is for Witching, by Helen Oyeyemi (2009)

The World as Will and Representation, Volume I, by Arthur Schopenhauer [translated by Judith

Norman and Alistair Welchman] (1818)

Wes Craven: Interviews, edited by Shannon Blake Skelton (2019)

Of One Pure Will, by Farah Rose Smith (2019)

The Secret History, by Donna Tartt (1992)

A History of Touch, by Erin Emily Ann Vance (2022; forthcoming)

Miss Lonelyhearts, by Nathanael West (1933)

The Ax, by Donald E. Westlake (1997)

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