SAY MORE

Meli & Olivia talk about their shriveled up eggs at the historic age of 32, and imagine what it look like to be mothers. 

a few listener emails including: an update on brian's bedbug saga and a story about The One That Got Away. then, m&o chat about trauma as a vehicle for storytelling: when it's overdone, when it's helpful, when it's actually Too Vulnerable To Be Shared. the prison journalism project is mentioned on this episode! check them out here: https://prisonjournalismproject.org/prison-newspaper-project/?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjw9vqyBhCKARIsAIIcLMFhCS3v5c9XV4NMqdjzc86iVS8dqy5RC-FeP5gfX4pCB5ItRKr3vBYaAlW1EALw_wcB

To listen to the rest of the episode, subscribe to patreon.com/saymorepodcast. the gals gab about whatever is on their mind including: lucy letby, RFK Jr. (one of these people is honest and it isn't RFK), and listener emails about a sweet karmic loop and finding love amidst the prison system.

M & O read an update from The Brian Bedbug Saga and an email from a listener about breeding kinks and chosen single parenthood. Then, they talk about the existential crises they experience each month around their careers, relevancy, creativity, productivity, and other shit that seems very Not Possible to Deal With when you're about to get your period. 

We were overjoyed to talk with Amy Lin, author of the new memoir, HERE AFTER, which details her relationship with her late husband and his sudden passing, the singular experience of young windowhood, and how grief is a language in which we we all eventually become fluent. 

Listen to the full episode on Patreon. It's here! Well, mostly. Here is a partial recording of our conversation at Skylight Books in Los Angeles, where we celebrated Melissa's novel Candelaria and talked about the caucasity of spin classes, abuelas surviving the apocalypse, and how archaeologists are similar to writers, among other things. The weird part is that the conversation cuts off once we start talking about an earthquake. SO. We spend the second half of the episode unpacking how internalized misogyny makes us label women as pick me's!

We chat with author Lucas Mann about his most recent collection of essays, ATTACHMENTS, which unpacks the tender, scary, and hilarious experience of contemporary fatherhood. We talk about the impossible image of the Perfect Leftist Father, and the Lack of Personal Space when raising a child. 

TEASER. we help a listener through a tough friendship/roommate breakup and talk about how we go about writing about SEX. are u trying to turn your readers on or just show them something about the characters? are sex scenes meant to move the plot forward or are they just a fun break? we also discover we might be prudes.

the gals talk to trad-wife expert, gaby del valle, who has done extensive reporting on the women bringing old school homesteading onto the main feed. 

Melissa & Olivia keep getting asked: what is it like to go from poetry to fiction. They talk about it! Also, listeners share a story about their end-of-times pastor grandpa and also ask: is it possible to escape writing commercial and institutional poetry? Only on patreon :) 

We talk through a few listener emails about surviving your mid-twenties, surviving with a UTI on Survivor, and surviving a boss who keeps showing up to work with hickeys. After that, we talk about being hungry. Writing about food, eating while writing, forgetting to eat because we are writing, soylent (????), and why food is such an important detail when it comes to storytelling.

head over to patreon.com/saymorepodcast to listen to the full episode! we got to sit down in real life with one of our closest friends & favorite writers, hieu minh nguyen. together, we got nostalgic about our wild (we were so corny) days of competing in poetry slam and how the artform influenced our professional lives as writers today (we are just really good at self-promotion).

back with another HOME RUN. this week, the gal pals chat about their favorite high-brow television show, love is blind, as well as the infinite ways Point of View can change a story. if this were a dissertation, they would make clearer how these two themes are related, but you get it. right?

In honor of Melissa's favorite holiday, we are talking about love. We spoke with Puloma Ghosh, author of Mouth, about tropes in the romance genre, fan-fiction, and why women turn to romance in times of need. Order Puloma's short story collection wherever books are sold!

it's the new season of SAY MORE! thank you for waiting literally two years. this week, we are discussing the genre of autofiction — where it started, who's doing it, and our personal journey to adulthood aka choosing not to share every single thing about our private life in a nonfictional space. for next week's bonus episode, subscribe to our patreon at patreon.com/saymorepodcast, where you can also gain access our montly newsletter. we're so glad to be back xx

pop culture is truly losing it

The gals welcome former guest Paige Green—nurse, doula, star—to talk about the dismal state of reproductive rights in America and how to generally deal.

M&O, together at last, talk about how they met the most important people in their lives.

As Melissa and Olivia depart the tragic & exhilarating decade of their twenties, they reminisce on the years they spent being whores in punk houses, sexless in relationships, and a sudden burst of hyper-visibility.

Olivia & Melissa go from complete chaos to total enlightenment in a conversation with renowned poet Andrea Gibson about mortality, the industry of death, the afterlife, and their new book YOU BETTER BE LIGHTING.

Olivia & Melissa briefly revisit the theory that Rooney mined their lives, wonder if voyeurism is always sexual, & if they've reached the end of the era of sensitive men. 

O & M talk about the possibility that their lives have been used as fodder for a bestselling novel. Are they self-involved? Or are they right?

M&O talk about how trauma can make relationships a nightmare but also how you can get better. 

Melissa & Olivia question whether or not they are smart. Which maybe means they aren't?

Melissa and Olivia talk about what it means when celebrities make money off their wounds and the intentions behind oversharing on the internet. They also go into the nuances of being an abolitionist and what it means to publish former abusers. 

Melissa & Olivia try to justify their love of melodramatic television & also are in complete denial about their traumatic childhoods.

Melissa & Olivia talk about what could have been. 

Olivia & Melissa ponder Instagram script font, barnhouse lifestyle bloggers, women who dream of pumpkin patches, and embroidered towels. 

As in, media. Not food. Media is our food. We feed on the faux-intimate lives of people we do not know. 

M & O are back, chatting about whether or not they have personalities & what it means to exist inside of a society fueled by consumerism & class warfare :) 

Meli & Oli chat about Twitter, accountability, & what it means to be cancelled while working towards restorative justice. 

Melissa & Olivia talk extensively about the lives & work of Angela Davis, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and Mariame Kaba.

Melissa & Olivia answer the five most common questions when talking about abolishing the police & prison. 

We talk to Melissa's mom about falling in love with running after her divorce & how, committing to something for three months & then moving onto the next challenge, makes it your boyfriend. 

O & M talk Normal People and performative sex. 

Melissa & Olivia talk about The Self and what becomes of it. 

Melissa & Olivia have a little chat about whether they have hope themselves, the world, and the people inside it. 

Melissa & Olivia recount what it is they do every single fucking day. 

so we just talked shit. 

Olivia & Melissa interview Jill Gatwood AKA Olivia's mom who, yes, she still calls mommy. Old habits die hard. She's an epidemiologist so she knows a lot of stuff that's valuable right now.

Melissa and Olivia answer the questions that started this podcast in the first place: the questions they never want to answer but keep getting asked. But this time, they answer them beautifully and realize that maybe they weren't so bad after all. Does this sound like the summary of a YA novel?

Melissa & Olivia chat about inheriting a green thumb & letting it bloom in the quarantine, as well as why romantic comedies are, perhaps, the most reliable genre of art throughout history.

Melissa interviews Olivia about the fact that she was already social distancing & Olivia asks Melissa about her tumultuous relationship with Lizzy.

Olivia asks Melissa about her hometown (her mother's kitchen) and Melissa asks Olivia about her's (a desert filled with rusty refrigerators).

Melissa & Olivia interview an Australian they met at Sundance, who is on a journey across America for the first time. 

SEASON 2 STARTS NOW. Melissa & Olivia see each other for the first time in sixteen years - Olivia asks Melissa about the critically not-acclaimed novel American Dirt & the whiteness of the publishing industry, Melissa asks Olivia about the secret world of Tech Bros and that time she partied with Mark Zuckerberg. 

Melissa & Olivia chat with Shamir, a musician/icon based out of Philly, who had a taste of arenas and the world of mass produced pop music & chose his mental health instead. 

Sadie Dupuis, poet, multi-instrumentalist, and lead vocalist of Speedy Ortiz, stops by the pod to talk to Olivia & Melissa about starting NO MUSIC FOR ICE, an initiative to keep music out of the hands of corporate monsters and ultimately, bully Jeff Bezos for the rest of his stupid life. 

Olivia & Melissa talk to Frankie Hutchinson of Discwoman, one of the co-founders of a talent agency for electronic music. They also talk about how much they loved Carmen Maria Machado's new book, Melissa's obsession with a Greek Myth, & how Olivia got slammed by a surfboard.