Jamming Their Transmission: Episode 14, Life During the Contagion, Pt. 1

This episode features Big Other‘s editor John Madera in conversation with superb writers Carol Guess, Davis Schneiderman, and Tony Trigilio about life during the contagion.

Among the many things talked about are social distancing, lockdown, shelter in place, quarantine, and stay at home; about how their workplaces and modes of working have been affected; about remote instruction and distance learning; about self-care; about ways to stay creative, to stay active, to stay connected; about walking and looking at trees; about rejecting normative modes of productivity; about other writers, including Marcus Boon, William S. Burroughs, Carmen Maria Machado, and Theodore Roethke; and much more besides.

About the writers:

Carol Guess is the author of nineteen books of poetry and prose, including Darling Endangered, Doll Studies: Forensics, Tinderbox Lawn, With Animal (co-written with Kelly Magee), and Girl Zoo (co-written with Aimee Parkison). In 2014 she was awarded the Philolexian Award for Distinguished Literary Achievement by Columbia University. She teaches in the MFA program at Western Washington University and lives in Seattle.

Davis Schneiderman is a multimedia artist and writer and the author or editor of eight print and audio works, including the novels Drain, Abecedarium, and Blank; the co-edited collections Retaking the Universe: William S. Burroughs in the Age of Globalization and The Exquisite Corpse: Chance and Collaboration in Surrealism’s Parlor Game; as well as the audio-collage Memorials to Future Catastrophes. His first short story collection, there is no appropriate #emoji—with collaborations from Lance Olsen, Cris Mazza, Kelly Haramis, Stacy Levine, Tim Guthrie, Andi Olsen, and Megan Milks—will be released in 2020.

Tony Trigilio‘s collections of poetry include Inside the Walls of My Own House, the second installment of his multi-volume poem, The Complete Dark Shadows (of My Childhood); The Complete Dark Shadows (of My Childhood), Book 1); White Noise; Historic Diary; and The Lama’s English Lessons, as well as many chapbooks. Trigilio is also the author of Allen Ginsberg’s Buddhist Poetics and “Strange Prophecies Anew”: Rereading Apocalypse in Blake, H.D., and Ginsberg. Trigilio is editor of Elise Cowen: Poems and Fragments and co-editor of Visions and Divisions: American Immigration Literature, 1870–1930. A musician as well as a poet and scholar, Trigilio has taught since 1999 at Columbia College Chicago, where he’s a Professor of Creative Writing/Poetry.

John Madera is the author of Nervosities (Anti-Oedipus Press, 2024). His other fiction is published in Conjunctions, Salt Hill, The &Now Awards 2: The Best Innovative Writing, and many other journals. His nonfiction 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, Rhizomatic and manages and edits Big Other.

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