Arts
This week we talk with Vanessa Veselka about the 'quest narrative' and gendered experiences of freedom. "Jack Kerouac never went anywhere. He had cash and he crossed the country—like, he wants a prize??" We talk to her about her popular GQ essay, her novel, and her ideas on class warfare in America. Venessa Veselka has been at various times a teenage runaway, a sex worker, a union organizer, and a student of paleontology. Her work appears in Salon, GQ, Bitch Magazine, The Atlantic, Tin House, Zyzzyva, and Best American Essays. Her novel Zazen won the 2012 PEN/Bingham Prize for fiction, and in 2013 she was chosen as a MacDowell Fellow. BITCHCONOCLAST is a mother-daughter podcast about sex, feminism, & power. In season one, we interview Pacific-Northwest authors Nicole Hardy, Claire Dederer, Elissa Washuta, Vanessa Veselka, Karen Karbo, and Suzanne Morrison about their work and the state of the patriarchy. Producers: Sonya Lea & Dylan Bandy Content editor: Dylan Bandy Sound editor: Nora Knight Illustration & Logo: Amy Mizrahi Graphics: Nicole Geslani & Bex Karnofski Music: Dylan Bandy, Adam Cohen-Leadholm, & Frankie Mars Gunner