Book Fight
A podcast where writers talk honestly about books, writing, and the literary world. Hosted by Mike Ingram and Tom McAllister, authors and long-time editors for Barrelhouse, a nonprofit literary magazine and book publisher. New episodes every other week, with bonus episodes for Patreon subscribers.
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A season of endings, but also beginnings: our first Barbara Pym! The celebrated British novelist had a bit of a career slump; after publishing six novels between 1950 and 1961, she couldn't find a home for her seventh, and didn't publish anything for more than a decade. Then, in 1977, Quartet in Autumn appeared, and wa
The problem with writing very short stories is that it forces you to write more endings, which are the hardest part! At least that's our opinion. But we bring on writer and Barrelhouse fiction editor Christopher Gonzalez (I'm Not Hungry But I Could Eat, 2021) to school us in how to stick the landing on flash fiction.
We kick off the final season of Book Fight with a guest-free episode--like the old days! Our reading this week is Geoff Dyer's 2022 book The Last Days of Roger Federer, and Other Endings. Which seemed thematically appropriate as we come to our own ending (of the podcast; we're not dying or anything).
It's that time of year again: our annual holiday episode, where we invite several members of the Barrelhouse editorial team to read and discuss a very sexy holiday-themed novel. This year's book is SKRUJ: Holidate with an Alien, by bestselling author Honey Phillips. The book is a retelling, of a sort, of the Dickens Ch
We wrap up our noir season with one final episode, this one discussing the 1963 Peter Sellers movie The Pink Panther, and the series more generally, which spoofed many of the tropes of the noir/detective genres. We also look back at the season--what we learned from diving into the noir genre, and our favorite books. If
We welcome Nadira Goffe (culture writer for Slate) to talk about a Black, Southern noir from S.A. Cosby. We learn about Nadira's love of the Fast and the Furious franchise, her fear of actual driving, and her mixed feelings about an over-the-top metaphor. Plus: Mike gets pedantic about dialogue tags, and Tom realizes t