Animal Riot Podcast
by AnimalRiot
The Animal Riot Podcast is a "literary" podcast that invites artists, entrepreneurs, and diverse thinkers to express their belletristic opinions on everything from Borges to bureaucracy. Though literary at its locus, the Animal Riot Podcast isn’t afraid to take on the world at large, including prison reform, Deafness, and the commercial merits of, yes, the Insane Clown Posse. So join us as we rise to self-imposed drinking challenges and say things as we see them – subscribe, review & forever prosper.
Episodes
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Episode 53: Guerrilla Lit
In this 53rd episode of the Animal Riot Podcast, we invite Marco Rafala, author of How Fires End, and Lee Matthew Goldberg, author of The Ancestor, The Desire Card, and more, to discuss their longstanding Manhattan reading series, Guerrilla Lit, and how they've adapted during the pandemic. We…
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Episode 52: Indoor Sunglasses
Welcome to the 52nd Episode of the Animal Riot podcast, brought to you by Animal Riot Press. Today, we invite two of our OG crew, Jared Marcel Pollen and Seth Katz--along with David Holllander, the Author of our second title, Anthropica, due to hit the proverbial stands on September 1st. Listen…
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Episode 51: The Way I Used to Write
Welcome back Animals. It's been a while, but we've got the podcast back up and running, beginning with episode 51, featuring the old pack, Devin Kelly, Seth Katz, Jared Marcel Pollen, and George Sawaya. In today's episode, we reflect upon what drives us to write, not just during the ongoing...
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Episode 50: Making the Space for Writing
Animals! It's our 50th episode! And this week our producer Katie and previous guest & producer Annie Krabbenschmidt have taken over the show... (who knows what they did with Brian!) and are thrilled to welcome Sarah Paolantonio to the show! Sarah is a 'recovering' music programmer who always…
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Episode 49: Who gets to write what?
We're back, animals! Here with the 49th episode of the Animal Riot Podcast brought to you by Animal Riot Press, a literary press for books that matter. We're here today with the wonderful Mathea Morais, Director of the Noepe Center for Literary Arts on Martha’s Vineyard. Her debut novel There You...
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Episode 48: Adult Poets
We're back animals! And this week we've got special guest poet & radical educator Abigail Kirby Conklin. Abby is the author of the debut chapbook, Triage, out now from Duck Lake Books. She's been published in Duck Lake Journal, Garfield Lake, K’in Literary Journal, Storyscape Journal, The…
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Episode 47: What’s in the box?
Hey Animals! We're back this week with an episode on writing groups and more, featuring two of our favorite writing group pals: Jennifer Werbitsky and Melissa Shaw! Jen and Mel couldn't have more different backgrounds in their day jobs - Jen works in the corporate world, while Mel is a teacher at...
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Episode 46: The Escapist
Hey Animals! We're back with Episode 46, featuring writer and teacher David Puretz. David is the Editorial Director at Global City, an independent press that publishes the literary and cultural journal Global City Review, and a growing list of other books and anthologies, including his own: The...
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Episode 45: Twenty Acres of Taylor Swift
Hoppy New Year Animals! We hope your 2020 is kicking off to a good start. Here's our first episode of the year, featuring writer, editor, and reading series curator Andrew Lloyd-Jones. Andrew is an award-winning short story writer, and won the Fish International Short Story Prize with his story...
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Episode 44: Everything You Do Is Completely Meaningless But It Is Very Important That You Do It
We're back animals! And we've got a very special last episode of 2019 for you! Featuring the one and only David Hollander, author of L.I.E. and the forthcoming Anthropica from Animal Riot! Join David and host, Katie Rainey, as they talk about experimental fiction, publishing, the overwhelming...
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Episode 43: Worst Behavior
What’s good Animals? Glad you’re joining us for our 43rd episode. Today we’re discussing Zadie Smith’s semi-recent essay, "Fascinated to Presume: In Defense of Fiction". Joined by Animal Riot OGs Jared Marcel Pollen and Seth Katz, listen in for our take on whether we still live in an age where…
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Episode 42: Breadcrumbs
Hoppy Thanksgiving, Animals! We'e thrilled to bring you this holiday special featuring writer, podcaster & literary magazine publisher, Bob Raymonda! Bob Raymonda is a writer based out of New Rochelle, NY. In early 2015 he founded Breadcrumbs Magazine, an online literary and arts journal that...
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Episode 41: Love, Peace & Taco Grease
We were off for a week because life got in the way, but we're back with a sparkly new episode for you, featuring the one and only Rax King alongside your faithful host Brian Birnbaum and our Priest Vallon, Devin Kelly. Rax King is a dog-loving, hedgehog-mothering, beer-swilling, gay and disabled...
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Episode 40: Slushie Pile
Whaddup Animal Riot fam. Welcome to the 40th episode of the Animal Riot Podcast—us bunnies are officially over the molehill. Today we’ve got the lovely ladies of the Ditmas Lit reading series, Rachel Lyon and Sarah Bridgins, here to discuss the origin story of their friendship and thenceforth...
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Episode 39: Reframing Trauma
We're so excited about this week's episode! We recorded this episode live at this year's Fall for the Book Festival in Fairfax, Virgina! Featuring YA Author Atia Abawi, we discussed how she and host Brian Birnbaum redefine the definitions of home and trauma. In Abawi’s book, A Land of Permanent...
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Episode 38: Under the Shroud
Welcome to the 38th episode of the Animal Riot Podcast, brought to you by fill in future sponsor (we’re keeping it cool like Facebook did back when it was cool). Today we’ve got Ian Humphrey in the box, discussing his podcast noir-drama, Under the Shroud, which follows Corin—the half-demon junkie...
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Episode 37: Read It Forward
We're back this week with this awesome episode featuring our special guest, Abbe Wright, Senior Editor of Read It Forward from Penguin Random House! RiF is where you go for reading lists, literary lifestyles, new books, and all things wordy. Abbe has a resume that's got us awestruck. Abbe has...
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Episode 36: Lost In Translation
This week's episode of the Animal Riot Podcast invites Tobias "Toby" Carroll (author of the Transitory from Civil Coping Mechanisms, Reel from Rare Bird Books, and the forthcoming Political Sign, a work of nonfiction for the Object Lessons series of books). Tobias is a writer to be jealous of,...
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Episode 35: Fiction/Non/Fiction
This week's episode of the Animal Riot Podcast invites V.V. 'Sugi' Ganeshananthan (author of the 2008 novel, Love Marriage) and Whitney Terrell (author of three novels, The Huntsman, The King of Kings County, and The Good Lieutenant). Both Sugi and Whit studied at the Iowa Writers' Workshop under...
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Episode 34: Debut Books: On Feeling Nothing
Welcome to the 34th episode of the Animal Riot Podcast brought to you by your favorite rioting creatures. We're happy to welcome back our friend and wonderful writer, Meher Manda, to the podcast. We're talking all things debut books with Meher, as she released her first chapbook of poems on...
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Episode 33: Vulnerable
Welcome to the 33rd episode of the Animal Riot Podcast. This is a very special episode of the podcast because our beloved host, Brian Birnbaum, is back, this time in the hot seat as the interviewee. He and podcast producer, Katie Rainey, sit down for an honest and open conversation about…
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Episode 32: Independent Book Review
Welcome to the 32nd installment of the Animal Riot Podcast. Today we've got Joe Walters of Independent Book Review on the podcast. Joe traveled from Philly to be with us today & we're so excited to talk about IBR and all things book marketing, editing, and publishing. IBR wants to help you…
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Episode 31: Fugitives & Animals Part 2
We're back Animals! After a week off, we're back with our 31st episode. This episode is the second in our two-part series about our North Carolina trip we're calling "Fugitives & Animals: A Collaborative Literary Tour". In this episode, producer & stand-in host, Katie Rainey, sat down with the...
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Episode 30: Fugitives & Animals Part 1
We're back Animals! After a week off, we're back with our 30th episode coming to you from the back of a hostel in sunny Asheville, North Carolina. This past week, we've been traveling all across NC with our pals from Southern Fried Karma Press (SFK) on an endeavor we call "Fugitives & Animals: A...
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Episode 29: It’s my party, I’ll do what I want
Animal! We're so excited because our old pal, Aaron Poochigian, is our special guest on this 29th episode of the Animal Riot Podcast. We consider Aaron one of our O.A.s - original animals - because he's been a long time supporter of the Animal Riot Mafia. You may remember him from his cameo...
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Episode 28: The Iceberg Theory
We're back with the 28th episode of the Animal Riot Podcast brought to you by Animal Riot Press. We're so excited to welcome Chelsea Fonden and Janelle Greco of Eclipsed Reading Series on the podcast today! This dynamic duo is all up in the literary community - from their dope reading series to...
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Episode 27: Kicking the Ghost
Welcome welcome welcome—welcome I say! To the 27th episode of the Animal Riot Podcast brought to you by who tfe but us at Animal Riot Press. Today we’ve got Moses Utomi, fellow Sarah Lawrence Fiction MFA’er—-and proud of it. Today we’re going to talk all things genre, from its place (or lack...
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Episode 26: Autofiction: Universal Virtue or Literary Selfie?
Welcome to the twenty-sixth installment of the Animal Riot Podcast brought to you by who else but us of the warren deceased. Too soon? Too bad. Because today we're talking all things autofiction--that modern neologism for autobiographical fiction. Is it good for the technology, or is it the...
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Episode 25: Dear Ocean
Welcome back, bunny-people, for the 25th episode of the Animal Riot Podcast brought to you by--who else?--Animal Riot Press. Today we sit down with Kwame Opoku-Duku, a poet and prose writer whose book, Unbnd Verses, out with Glass Poetry Press, is a collection of poems that confront the…
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Episode 24: Y’all Means All
Welcome to the twenty-fourth episode of the Animal Riot Podcast brought to you by Animal Riot Press, a literary press for books that matter. Today we've got the one and only Steve McCondichie of Southern Fried Karma Press on the podcast. Steve is a writer & entrepreneur & subversive southerner &…
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Episode 23: Bad Habits
Welcome to the twenty-third episode of the Animal Riot Podcast brought to you by Animal Riot, a literary press for books that matter. Today we're talking all things rejection with three diligent, talented, and thoughtful writers in our community: Meher Manda, Crystal Yeung, and Sharmaine Ong....
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Episode 22: Paragraph: Workspace for Writers
What's good, animals? This is a special episode because it is actually a mulligan! That's right, it's a do over! Due to our name change & legal woes, we had to scrap the former episode and re-record with our pals over at Paragraph: Workspace for Writers. We're joined today by one of Paragraph's...
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Episode 21: I’m Trying To Tell You I’m Sorry
In this twenty-first episode of the Animal Riot Podcast we welcome Nina Boutsikaris, a writer of prose with ambitions to start an arts residency near her home in the Hudson Valley. Nina is the author of the recently released I'm Trying to Tell You I'm Sorry from Black Lawrence Press, from whose...
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Episode 20: What’s in a name?
Welcome to the 20th episode of the Animal Riot podcast. We'd like to thank you for leasing twenty hours of your time over to the wisdom and fuckery of our burgeoning warren. Today we'd like to invite Elae [Lynne DeSilva-Johnson] who, as an agent of change across arts and progressivism and the...
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Episode 19: I love my job
On the cusp of our twentieth episode, we invite Devin Kelly, poet extraordinaire, who dragged along our good friend and peer Bud Smith, a fiction and nonfiction writer whose positive outlook and benefit-of-the-doubt disposition should be profiled and duly archived as a reliable manual to Save Us...
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Episode 18: On Shame & Writing
Welcome to the eighteenth episode of the Animal Riot Podcast, brought to you by persons eponymous (corporations are people too, people-bunnies), for which we've invited David Olimpio, Editor in Chief of Atticus Review and author of the stunning, memoiristic collection of linked nonfictions, THIS…
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Episode 17: Minorities in Publishing
Welcome to the seventeenth episode of the Animal Riot Podcast brought to you by -- you guessed it -- Animal Riot Press. We welcome arts and social activist virtuoso Jenn Baker, host of the podcast Minorities in Publishing, contributing editor at Electric Literature, and many more things that…
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Episode 16: Cease & Desist
The Animal Riot Podcast is bursting with ebullience over our latest episode featuring the co-creators and -hosts of Amazon Book Club, perhaps the funniest literary podcast out there right now. Tune in to hear an impromptu sample of the ABC podcast -- i.e. us picking a ripely self-published book…
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Episode 15: Voices on Addiction
The Animal Riot podcast is turning fifteen episodes old. To celebrate, we've invited Britt Canty, co-founder of the Brooklyn-based reading series HIP Lit, board member for Epiphany Lit Mag, and a fine writer of prose. Today we talk all of these things and more, ending with a reading from 'One…
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Episode 14: My father was right to leave
For the fourteenth episode of the Animal Riot Podcast we invite Dave Wiswell, comedian extraordinaire and victim of the true artist's necessarily depraved upbringing (kidding but not kidding). After giving and overview of his spectacular new YouTube show, Pop-up Interviews, Dave delves into his...
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Episode 13: Please don’t tell me about your dreams
Welcome to the thirteenth installment of the Animal Riot Podcast. We'd like to reintroduce Jared Pollen, whose first collection of stories is debuting with Crowsnest, an imprint of Political Animal, a journal dedicated to high-level political discourse. In the vein of writers such as Don DeLillo...
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Episode 12: 90% of the population is not lesbians
For the twelfth episode of the Animal Riot Podcast we invite Annie Krabbenschmidt, a writer of creative nonfiction and comedy, whether performative or simply written. Annie read her essay, "Apple Cider Donuts," at a recent reading - we were blown away, so much that we invited her on to talk about...
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Episode 11: The Mighty Oat
For this eleventh episode of the Animal Riot Podcast, your fearless leader and arbitrarily-selected host, Brian Birnbaum, teams up with his producer(s), Katie Rainey, to welcome Christopher Gonzalez, a writer of fiction and nonfiction, editor at Barrelhouse Magazine, and digital production...
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Episode 10: Total Recall 2
In this tenth episode of the Animal Riot podcast we bring back the OG Animals, Devin Kelly, George Sawaya, and Jared Marcel Pollen, to discuss technological disruption's impact on the future of writing and art. Beginning with House of Cards' origins in big data, your faithful host, Brian…
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Episode 9: Dear Baby
Episode 9 of the Animal Riot Podcast features two of our favorite writers and reading series co-hosts: Meher Manda is a poet and journalist from Mumbai with an MFA from The College of New Rochelle; Chelsea Asher is a writer of fiction with an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, and the…
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Episode 8: Prison Writing Part 2
In this eighth episode of the Animal Riot Podcast, we invite Caits Meissner, Director of PEN America's Prison Writing Program, and Sergio De La Pava, author of three novels, including his latest, Lost Empress, for the second part of our two-part Prison Writing series. Today we'll discuss…
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Episode 7: Prison Writing Part 1
In the seventh episode of the Animal Riot Podcast, we welcome Caits Meissner, Director of the PEN America Prison Writing Program, and Devin Kelly, co-founder of the Animal Riot Reading Series (OR: Original Animal). While sipping on our earthy Kratom teas, we discuss all things prison writing, the...
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Episode 6: Insane Literary Posse
In this fourth episode of our Animals Hit the Road series, the Animal Riot Podcast hosts Ian Anderson, co-founder of Mason Jar Press, a literary imprint headquartered in Baltimore. After discussing Mason Jar's origins, we dive headlong into pro wrestling as the modern iteration of Shakespeare and...
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Episode 5: The South Tumpts Brian Over
It’s our third installment of "Animals Hit the Road" and we’re still down here in Little Rock, Arkansas, talking to local artists about uplifting the arts community. In this episode, Brian hosts three conversations with: Myriah Harrison and Drew Wilkerson; Sam Cooper and Marcus Fisher; and the…
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Episode 4: The Natural State
With this second installment of Animals Hit the Road, we bring our animal-talents to the house of Sean and Lizzie Casteel, who live in one of Little Rock's sublation of suburbs. Through the hazy lens of Arkansas' own Rocktown Apple Pie Bourbon, the Casteel power couple takes us on a tour of Via,...
About this show
The Animal Riot Podcast is a "literary" podcast that invites artists, entrepreneurs, and diverse thinkers to express their belletristic opinions on everything from Borges to bureaucracy. Though literary at its locus, the Animal Riot Podcast isn’t afraid to take on the world at large, including prison reform, Deafness, and the commercial merits of, yes, the Insane Clown Posse. So join us as we rise to self-imposed drinking challenges and say things as we see them – subscribe, review & forever prosper.
Hosted by
AnimalRiot