Chas Smith in conversation with Kristin Casey

Chas Smith the author of Cocaine + Surfing and Welcome to Paradise, Now Go to Hell (It Books, November 2013), which was optioned for television by Fox 21 (Homeland and Sons of Anarchy) with producers at Television 360 (Game of Thrones) and a finalist for the PEN Center USA Award for Nonfiction. Chas began his writing career as a foreign correspondent, penning pieces for Vice, Paper, and Blackbook, amongst others, from Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Somalia, Azerbaijan and Colombia which led to a brief career as a war correspondent for Current TV. After being kidnapped by Hezbollah during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war he transitioned to surf journalism where he was a featured writer at the brash Stab before becoming Editor at Large at Surfing Magazine. There he developed a reputation as the most controversial voices in the space. Matt Warshaw, author of the Encyclopedia of Surfing, calls him, “Bright and hyper-ironic.” William Finnegan, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Barbarian Days, says that Chas, “…calls it like he sees it and in surfing that’s not usually the case.” Chas Smith is the co-owner of a surf website, BeachGrit. Kristin Casey is a writer and recovered alcoholic and addict. Her memoir Rock Monster, My Life with Joe Walsh documents their tumultuous six-year relationship and drug-fueled, train wreck breakup. She’s survived numerous addictions, clinical depression, a suicide attempt, the panhandle of Texas, and seventeen years of Catholicism. Her writing has appeared in the Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, The Fix, The Nervous Breakdown, From the Asylum, $pread, and elsewhere. She writes about addiction, dependency, sexuality, and relationships. She resides in Austin, Texas, and works in the field of sex therapy as an intimacy coach and IPSA trained surrogate partner.