The Whirligig Interviews

For anyone following this feed, please note that change is on the horizon! This feed will remain “up” for a while, but I won’t be posting anything new here.

I WILL be doing Podcast Fiction at a new site with a new feed. It is located at http://frankmarcopolos.com. Right now, there’s just one story up, a “re-broadcast” of “Fear and Loathing at Podcamp Philly.” I’ll be re-posting “Easy Freed” over there, too, and then after that it’ll be all new stuff. Some written by me, and some written by others. The first story I’ll be doing that is not written by me is written by The Great Kelly Link, and I’m really looking forward to that. So, stay tuned, great content is on the way. I’m excited about this new venture. It should be super-fun and entertaining. “Easy” will go up by next week, and then the plan is to post a new episode bi-weekly.

-Frank

Podcast Fiction by Frank Marcopolos at frankmarcopolos.com

I met cait collins once in person, at the bar of the Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City. I approached her, stuck out my hand, and said, “How you doin’?”

She laughed, grabbed my crotch, and said, “I’m havin’ a ball, how YOU doin’!?”

And that’s the way the woman was. Fun, raunchy, creative, unpredictable, all over the place, and just plain loveable. After I interviewed her in my hotel room, she gave me a picture of Charles Bukowski in a graveyard and a bag of dirt from his grave.

Listen to the very great, too-soon late cait collins tell the Deptford Township Arrest story and others filled with the light-hearted glee and devilish irreverence that made her so well-loved in underground lit circles by clicking play on the player below.

Music by tenda and rambling librarian of ccMixter. NSFW because of language.

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Way back in the days of The Whirligig, I published some great poets: Richard Kostelanetz, Lyn Lifshin, cait collins, Catfish McDaris, and many others. One of my favorites, though, was Christina Sng just because she worked in a genre that you don’t see all that much — horror poetry. She wrote poems that could put a good SCARE into you. I found that, and her, fascinating, as you’ll hear if you listen to my interview of her by clicking PLAY on the blue/grey player below.

Music by tendra and rambling librarian of ccMixter.

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This one time, when I was looking for stories for The Whirligig, I stumbled across “a prodigiously talented twenty-year-old underground princess who founded her own publishing company at the age of sixteen…” (her words.) I immediately sent away for one of Jennifer Callahan’s self-published books, and after reading it, I asked her to submit a story to my lit-zine. It appeared in Issue #3, the first of what I consider to be the “real” issues of The Whirligig. Following that, I interviewed Ms. Callahan, and you can lay your ears all over it by clicking PLAY on the blue/grey player below.

Music by tenda and radiotimes of ccMixter.

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I first encountered Ann Sterzinger on the pages of Zine World. She was doing a zine called Bottle-Fed, abd referring to herself as “Crazy Ann.” I sent a way for one issue, and after reading it, I wrote to Ann asking for every single issue ever produced. I think there were 5. And from then on, I was absolutely infatuated with the craziness that is Ms. Ann Sterzinger.

I interviewed her soon thereafter and recorded it. It was the first time I had ever spoken to her, and I think you can hear that we had pretty good chemistry right off the bat.

Since the interview, Ann has been published in various places, two of which are listed below. I think you should buy at least 72 copies of each, because Ann is just that good a writer. Period.

Girl Detectives: Amateurs in Hate by Ann Sterzinger

Click here to purchase this fine item:

Girl Detectives

Also, The Urban Bizarre, the anthology edited by Nick Mamatas, featuring one of Ann’s stories, two of Jeff Somers’s, and one by my own bad self (among many other very fine writers) here:

The Urban Bizarre

Music by radiotimes and tenda of the awesome ccMixter

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I used to publish a literary mag called The Whirligig. I got Tower Records to sell it in their stores all across the planet. People said nice things about it sometimes, things like this:

“For all its modest, zeeny presentation, The Whirligig is one of the most important lit journals being produced in this country.” — King Wenclas, Founding Member of the Underground Literary Alliance

One of the people I published back then was Jeff Somers. He’s now in the process of becoming Big-Assed Famous. Listen to him speak by clicking play below.

Music by tenda of ccMixter.

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