Jamming Their Transmission, Episode 2: Debra Di Blasi

This episode features Debra Di Blasi reading from and talking about Today Is the Day That Will Matter: An Oral History of the New America: #AlternativeFictions.

Among the topics discussed: writing, social media, politics, language, truths, lies, fiction, death, sentences, syntax, semantics, nuance, memory, meaning, dogs, Trump, “anti-conclusions,” YouTube comment threads, Portugal, artistic appropriation, and…cicadas!

The podcast also features nods to Leslie McGrath, Joe Milazzo, Janice Lee, Pedram Navab, Aimee Parkison, Carol Guess, The Brooklyn Rail, W. Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge, Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano, Kathy Acker, and Adam Greenfield’s Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life.

Debra Di Blasi is an award-winning multi-genre, multimedia writer and visual artist. She is author of seven books and hundreds of short works, with fiction published in leading anthologies of innovative writing, and in prominent journals and reviews, including Boulevard, Chelsea, The Collagist, The Iowa Review, Kestrel, New Letters, New Delta Review, New South Fiction, Notre Dame Review, Sou’Wester, Triquarterly, Virga Magazine, Wayne Review, Wigleaf. Her writing has been adapted to film, radio, theater, and audio CD in the US and abroad. As a former art critic and founding publisher of Jaded Ibis Productions and Jaded Ibis Press, she became a noted speaker on the intersection of literature, publishing and technology and continues to write as an independent scholar on topics related to the aesthetics of narrative as it intersects with technology.

John Madera is the author of Nervosities (Anti-Oedipus Press, 2024) and Nomad Science (Spuyten Duyvil Press, forthcoming in 2026). His fiction is also published in Conjunctions, Salt Hill, Hobart, The &Now Awards 2: The Best Innovative Writing, and many other journals. His poetry is also published in elimae, Sixth Finch, Contrapuntos, and elsewhere. His criticism is published in American Book Review, Bookforum, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Rain Taxi: Review of Books, The Believer, The Brooklyn Rail, and many other venues. Recipient of an M.F.A. in Literary Arts from Brown University, two-time New York State Council on the Arts awardee John Madera lives in New York City, where he runs Rhizomatic and manages and edits Big Other.

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