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Keep the Channel Open

Making connections through conversation with the art, literature, and creative work that matters to us, and the people who make it. Hosted by writer and photographer Mike Sakasegawa, Keep the Channel Open is a series of in-depth and intimate conversations with artists, writers, and curators from across the creative spectrum.
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Now displaying: Page 1
Mar 27, 2024

Sarah Rose Etter is a writer based in Los Angeles, CA. In Sarah’s latest novel, Ripe, a young woman is trapped in a dream-job-turned-corporate-nightmare at a cutthroat Silicon Valley tech startup. Her bosses are capricious and cruel, the city she lives in is crumbling under late capitalism, and everywhere she goes she is followed by her own personal black hole. In our conversation, Sarah and I talked about the relationship between her surrealist fiction and poetry, why visual art is important to her, and what it means for a character to have agency. Then for the second segment we discussed dead authors, reading in translation, and creative insecurity.

(Recorded March 2, 2024.)

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  • Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
  • Music: Podington Bear
  • Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo
Feb 28, 2024

For this KTCO “Book” Club conversation, writer Maggie Tokuda-Hall returns to the show to talk about the game Baldur’s Gate 3. In our conversation, Maggie and I talked about what it’s like to experience a story with so many branching paths, how player choices reflect the player’s personality, as well as some standout storytelling moments from the game.

(Recorded February 9, 2024.)

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  • Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
  • Music: Podington Bear
  • Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo
Jan 31, 2024

Olatunde Osinaike is a poet based in Atlanta, GA. In his debut full-length poetry collection, Tender Headed, Olatunde explores Black masculinity, both celebrating and interrogating it in his sonically virtuosic poems. We talked about his approach to poetry, what poetic lineage means to him, and the silences inherent in patriarchy. Then for the second segment, we talked about departure albums and André 3000’s New Blue Sun.

(Recorded January 20, 2024.)

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  • Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
  • Music: Podington Bear
  • Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo
Nov 29, 2023

For this KTCO Book Club conversation, poet and podcaster Rachel Zucker returns to the show to discuss Eugenia Leigh’s poetry collection Bianca. In our conversation, we talked about our approaches to talking about books with their authors, how form shapes how we take in intense subject matter in a poem, and how a book can be a means of connection.

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  • Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
  • Music: Podington Bear
  • Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo
Aug 30, 2023

Gerardo Sámano Córdova is a writer and artist from Mexico City. In his debut novel, Monstrilio, Gerardo draws from both horror and literary fiction traditions to tell a story about grief, family, and self-acceptance. In our conversation, Gerardo and I talked about genre expectations, genre fiction as a site of art, and what it means to be monstrous. For the second segment, we talked about the tension between fulfilling your own artistic vision and creating work that will sell.

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  • Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
  • Music: Podington Bear
  • Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo
Aug 2, 2023

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah is a writer based in the Bronx, NY. In his debut novel, Chain-Gang All-Stars, Nana presents us with a dystopian future America where convicted prisoners fight each other to the death in a televised bloodsport. The book is both a blistering critique of the US carceral system and an insistence on the inalienable humanity of every person. In our conversation, Nana and I talked about what satire and dystopia open up for him as a writer, why it’s important to him to implicate both the reader and himself in his work, and how he thinks about prison abolition. Then in the second segment, we talked about the seductive nature of success as an artist in a capitalist society.

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  • Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
  • Music: Podington Bear
  • Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo
Jun 28, 2023

Rachel Zucker is a writer, podcast, and teacher based in New York and Maine. Her latest book, The Poetics of Wrongness, is a collection of essays (originally written and performed for the Bagley Wright Lecture Series) delving into her own poetics, motherhood, the history of confessional poetry, and the ethics of “say everything” poetry. In our conversation, Rachel and I talked about wrongness as a stance against moral purity, about addiction to doubt, and about poetry as an opportunity to create outside of capitalism. Then in the second segment, we talked about her new project, the Commonplace School for Embodied Poetics.

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  • Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
  • Music: Podington Bear
  • Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo
May 24, 2023

For our latest KTCO Book Club episode, writer Sarah Gailey joins us for a discussion of H. A. Clarke’s YA novels The Scapegracers and The Scratch Daughters. In our conversation, Sarah and I talked about the ways Clarke’s novels subvert genre expectations, about the quality of teen girls’ rage, and about why these books are “capital-I Important.”

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  • Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
  • Music: Podington Bear
  • Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo
Apr 28, 2023

Dayna Patterson is a poet, photographer, and textile artist based in the Pacific Northwest. The poems in her latest collection, O Lady, Speak Again, use the voices of the women characters from Shakespeare’s plays to talk about patriarchy, motherhood, sexuality, religion, heritage. In our conversation, Dayna and I discussed her creative process and how she finds her way into a poem, her use of persona in O Lady, Speak Again, and how and why she interrogates that same device within the collection. The in the second segment, we talked about play, and how it interacts with the creative process.

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  • Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
  • Music: Podington Bear
  • Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo
Mar 29, 2023

Joshua Burton is a poet and educator based in Houston, TX. The poems in Joshua’s debut collection, Grace Engine, ask what grace means in a hostile world of lynchings, mental illness, self-hate, and suicide. These poems offer no solace, yet nevertheless reach toward beauty and peace. In our conversation, Joshua and I talked about what a grace engine is, processing shame through poetry, and what can be unlocked by returning to the same subject in multiple poems. Then for the second segment, we talked about creating mythology as a way of honoring those whom history may have overlooked.

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  • Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
  • Music: Podington Bear
  • Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo
Feb 22, 2023

For our latest KTCO Book Club episode, media critic Mel Thomas joins us for a conversation about Holly Black’s YA fantasy novel The Cruel Prince. In our conversation, we discuss the ways that craft in YA fiction is often dismissed or overlooked by both critics and readers, the dynamics of abuse and trauma in the novel, and being able to enjoy art on multiple levels.

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  • Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
  • Music: Podington Bear
  • Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo
Jan 25, 2023

Gabrielle Bates is a poet based in Seattle, WA. Throughout Gabrielle’s debut collection, Judas Goat, there is a feeling of quiet, that the poems are almost being whispered to you. And yet it is not a soft or comforting quiet that these poems bring, but rather one that often contains a sense of menace. In our conversation, Gabrielle and I talked about that disquieting feeling, the slipperiness of memory, the poetics of attention, and how important narrative to her poetics. Then for the second segment, we discussed what literature and poetry can do.

[Recorded Jan 2, 2023]

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  • Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
  • Music: Podington Bear
  • Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo
Dec 14, 2022

Abby Minor is a writer based in central Pennsylvania. In her debut book of poems, As I Said: A Dissent, Abby combines the historical narrative of Ann Lohman—a 19th-century abortion provider in New York City—with personal and family history, creating a collection of poems that challenge the typical notion of an abortion story. In our conversation, Abby and I talked about her approach to documentary poetry, why it was important to her to push back against conventional abortion discourse, and how art and activism intersect. Then in the second segment, we talked about American work culture and the necessity of rest.

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  • Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
  • Music: Podington Bear
  • Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo
Nov 16, 2022

Molly Spencer is a poet based in Michigan. The poems in her collections In the House and Hinge engage with chronic illness, divorce, domesticity, motherhood, and the ways that our lives don’t always work out the way we expected them to. In our conversation, we talked about dissolution, the uses of poetry, ways of knowing, and speaking unlovely truths. Then for the second section, we talked about attention—both the kind of attention we’d like to cultivate in our own lives, and what kind of attention we ask of our readers.

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  • Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
  • Music: Podington Bear
  • Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo
Oct 26, 2022

Luther Hughes is a poet based in Seattle, WA. The poems in Luther’s debut collection, A Shiver in the Leaves, are tender, erotic, vulnerable, erudite, at times dark, and at times ecstatic. In our conversation, we talked about power dynamics in sexual encounters, different forms of love, and writing as a way of understanding oneself. Then in the second section, we talked about why so many sex scenes in popular media are so strange.

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  • Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
  • Music: Podington Bear
  • Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo
Oct 5, 2022

André Ramos-Woodard is a photographic artist originally from Texas and Tennessee. In their series BLACK SNAFU, André combines photographs celebrating Blackness with appropriated illustrations from racist cartoons as a way of confronting the history and present reality of American racism. In our conversation we discussed appropriation, questions of audience and community, and mental health. Then in the second segment, we talked about what inspires us outside of the visual arts.

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  • Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
  • Music: Podington Bear
  • Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo
Aug 31, 2022

Amanda Marchand is a Canadian, New York-based photographer. Amanda’s Lumen Notebook series is a body of elegant and strikingly beautiful images that nevertheless layer deep meaning within their seemingly simple compositions. In our conversation, Amanda and I talked about her process in creating these photograms and how working within strict constraints allows her to explore the technique more fully. We also discussed how she uses photography to facilitate connection and presence, and the duality of delight and mortality in her work. Then for the second segment we had a meandering conversation about autism, communication, attention, and using art to process and understand our emotional experiences.

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  • Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
  • Music: Podington Bear
  • Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo
Jun 22, 2022

Fatemeh Baigmoradi is a photographic artist originally from Iran. In her series It’s Hard to Kill, Fatemeh works with archival family photos from Iran, using fire to obscure or destroy portions of the image—connecting to the way that her own family and many others burned their photos after the Iranian Revolution to protect themselves or others in the photos. In our conversation we talked about the relationship between photography and memory, censorship, and how violence, healing, and cleansing are all intertwined in Fatemeh’s work. Then in the second segment, Fatemeh and I talked about immigration.

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  • Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
  • Music: Podington Bear
  • Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo
May 25, 2022

Sarah Hollowell is a writer based in Indiana. Sarah’s debut novel, A Dark and Starless Forest, is a YA contemporary fantasy story centered on a family of foster sisters learning about their magic, until suddenly they start disappearing. In our conversation we talked about the difference in process between short stories and novels, how her novel portrays abuse dynamics, and the importance of fan fiction. Then in the second segment, Sarah and I talked about the Alpha Workshop.

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  • Music: Podington Bear
  • Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo
May 11, 2022
Ayesha Raees is a poet and hybrid artist based in New York, Miami, and Lahore. In her debut book of poetry, Coining a Wishing Tower, she explores death, grief, culture, religion, separation, and return in a hybrid form that is part poetry, part narrative, part fable, and entirely remarkable. In our conversation, we talked about her book, her writing process, and sustaining a relationship with her work over time. Then in the second segment, we discussed community.

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  • Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
  • Music: Podington Bear
  • Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo
Apr 27, 2022
Anahid Nersessian is a professor and critic based in Los Angeles, CA. In her latest book, Keats’s Odes: A Lover’s Discourse, Anahid takes the reader through close readings of John Keats’s six Great Odes, providing cultural context and explicating their themes of sexual violence, melancholy, and the seductiveness of beauty. More than that, though, the book is, itself, a love story. In our conversation, Anahid and I talked about how and why Keats’s Odes still resonate with readers today, how personal narrative entered these essays, and how it functions in them. Then in the second segment, we talked about experimental critical writing.

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  • Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
  • Music: Podington Bear
  • Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo
Apr 13, 2022
For this installment of the KTCO Book Club, writer and podcaster Maggie Tokuda-Hall joins us to discuss Susanna Clark’s 2020 novel Piranesi. A relatively slim volume, Piranesi is surprisingly difficult to summarize but, like its labyrinthine setting, with patience and attention the book will reveal its profound beauty and kindness. (Conversation recorded February 24, 2022.)

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  • Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
  • Music: Podington Bear
  • Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo
Mar 30, 2022

There’s a way in which the end of a serious relationship can shake your entire concept of yourself, and through your grief you have to find yourself again. Yanyi’s latest book of poems, Dream of the Divided Field, braids poems about heartbreak and implied emotional violence with poems about transition and immigration. Each has a similar but distinct sense of a loss of self, a search for self, a yearning for connection and belonging, a sometimes violent disconnection—to a partner, to a place or culture, to oneself and one’s own body. In our conversation, Yanyi and I discussed his book, deconstruction and reconstruction, attachment to nuance, and the relationship between beauty and violence. Then for the second segment, we talked about grief.

(Conversation recorded February 28, 2022.)

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  • Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
  • Music: Podington Bear
  • Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo
Apr 21, 2021

Rowan Hisayo Buchanan is a writer based in London, UK. Rowan’s second novel, Starling Days, is a beautiful story about the complex love between the book’s two protagonists, Mina and Oscar, and their respective challenges in the wake of Mina’s suicide attempt. Starling Days explores family and love in many forms, and how people both connect and separate. In our conversation, Rowan and I discussed the depiction of mental illness in her book, how she approached writing the multifaceted relationships between the book’s characters, and why it was important to her to include multiracial characters. Then in the second segment, we talked about faith and how we make and find meaning.

(Conversation recorded March 30, 2021.)

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  • Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
  • Music: Podington Bear
  • Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo
Apr 7, 2021

Farrah Karapetian is an artist based in California. Known for her large-scale photograms, Farrah’s wide-ranging practice incorporates sculpture, performance, and different forms of mark-making to stretch the photographic medium as she is driven by her intense and rigorous curiosity. In our conversation, Farrah and I talked about the appeal of the photographic medium, the tension between constructing an image and the happy accident, and the ethics of artistic beauty. Then in the second segment, we discussed the Nardal sisters and how we develop a language around issues like exoticization.

(Conversation recorded March 24, 2021.)

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  • Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
  • Music: Podington Bear
  • Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo
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