Gary Phillips, author of One-Shot Harry, is my guest. Gary has been a community activist, labor organizer and has published various novels, comics, short stories as well as editing several anthologies including Orange County Noir (which is how we met; I have a story in the Akashic anthology) and the award-winning The Obama Inheritance: Fifteen Stories of Conspiracy Noir. Violent Spring, first published in 1994 was named in 2020 one of the essential crime novels of Los Angeles. He was a senior story editor on FX’s Snowfall, about crack and the CIA in 1980s South Central where he grew up. His newest novel is One-Shot Harry, which has been receiving quite a bit of love from the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere. On the show we discuss why he set his novel in the early 60s, loglines, creating a photographer protagonist, and so much more. 

Kim Dower, West Hollywood poet laureate, instructor at UCLA Extension and Antioch LA, and book publicist, and I discuss her latest volume, I Wore This Dress for You, Mom (Red Hen Press). They talk about inspiration, on not getting an MFA, what to do when you hit a wall, and more.

T. Jefferson Parker, author of the new novel, A Thousand Steps (Forge) and I talk about the book he’s wanted to write for years, finding his voice, rituals, and more.

This show was especially fun for me because I got to talk with Mark Wish, editor of Coolest American Stories 2022, an anthology that includes my story, “Blue Martini,” along with stories I loved by two other writers in the book, Mary Taugher and David Ebenbach.

This is a show I recorded in 2001 with the late poet Diane DiPrima when her memoir, Recollections of My Life as a Woman, was published. City Lights just released Spring and Autumn Annals, which made me remember this interview with Diane. Perhaps you heard it when it was broadcast (and podcast) 20 years ago, not long after Writers on Writing began.

Megan Abbott, author of the new novel, The Turnout, and I talk about plot, structure, and writing dark fiction.