The Virtual Memories Show

Comedy writer, journalist and screenwriter Ben Schwartz joins the show to talk serious laughs. We discuss his work on American humor between the wars, writing for Billy Crystal on the Oscars and his …

"I'm not interested in doing something if it isn't groundbreaking." Joyce Farmer joins the show to talk about her transition from housewife to underground cartoonist legend, the adventure of disposin…

Comics legend Howard Chaykin joins the show to talk about his career, the early assignment he'll never live down, getting clean and being boringly sober, how Gil Kane taught him how to behave as a ca…

Master tattooist and comics artist Graham Chaffee joins the show to talk about his new graphic noir, To Have & To Hold (Fantagraphics)! We get into the culture(s) of LA and why it's the quintessentia…

Award-winning illustrator Joe Ciardiello reflects on 43 years as a freelancer, the jazz portraits that turned his career around, his drumming and how it influences his artwork, having more illustrato…

Cartooning, illustration and animation legend Arnie Levin joins the show to recount his epic career and life. We talk about Beatnik-era New York, his mother's decades-long plot to turn him into a New…

Photojournalist (or "artist who sometimes uses a camera") Kyle Cassidy returns to talk about his new book, This Is What A Librarian Looks Like! Along the way, we also talk photography, the difference…

Cartoonist Keiler Roberts joins the show to talk about her new book, Sunburning (Koyama Press). Oh, and parenthood, bipolar disorder, the avoidance of style, learning art while teaching art, making s…

Legendary cartoonist, illustrator, animator, ad-man, artist RO Blechman joins the show to talk about his work and life. We get into the importance of play, the development of his trademark squiggly l…

"Scholem teaches us that the Jewish tradition is so capacious it could embrace its own subversion." George Prochnik returns to The Virtual Memories Show to talk about his new book, Stranger in a Stra…

Charif Majdalani has been called the Lebanese Proust, thanks to his series of novels chronicling the modern history of his home country. He joins the show this week to celebrate the first American pu…

Poet, novelist and essayist Wallis Wilde-Menozzi returns to the show to talk about her novel, Toscanelli's Ray, the ways Italy has changed in her four decades there, her recent work in narrative medi…

Why are our buildings crushing our quality of life? Sarah Williams Goldhagen joins the show to talk about her new book, Welcome To Your World (Harper), and how we can live in a better built environme…

Legendary author (and longtime pal) Samuel R. Delany joins the show to talk about the sex lives of older gay men, how he's taken to Facebook, how losing his library is akin to lobotomization, the wri…

Award-winning illustrator John Cuneo joins the show to talk about his new work, Not Waving But Drawing (Fantagraphics Underground), the arc of 40 years of work and art and artwork, the process of mov…

I get over my insecurity about younger authors and talk with Tony Tulathmiutte about his debut novel, Private Citizens! We discuss his critique of the idea of voice-of-a-generation novels, the heavy …

For more than a decade, Princeton literature professor Jeff Nunokawa has posted beautiful daily essays using Facebook Notes. We talk about how he discovered that form, the audience that grew around h…

New Directions publisher Barbara Epler joins the show to talk about her accidental career, the pros and cons of New Directions' size, the Moneyball aspect of publishing works in translation, survivin…