OXFORD, MS / NYC — Nico Walker is the author of the novel Cherry (Knopf, 2018). He was born in Georgia and grew up in Las Vegas and Cleveland. He served as a medic in the Iraq war. And worked with the late Gian DiTrapano on Cherry while in prison in the mid 2010s. Here is a recent piece he wrote on Gian: https://www.bookforum.com/culture/giancarlo-ditrapano-1974-2021-24463Recent collection on Gian in Muumuu House I contributed to: http://muumuuhouse.com/gian.11may2021.htmlLit hub article I mentioned on Cherry’s covers: https://lithub.com/the-trouble-with-designing-a-book-when-its-author-is-in-jail/POD CONTENTS7 min - pod start10 min - Gian’s biggest grievance w the game17 min - expert talk / literary pedantry21 min - stuff people read in prison to entertain themselves 24 min - the elitism of Literature and linguistic classism27 min - books were initially about the democratization of thought29 min - Lazarillo de Tormez 30 min - Canterbury tales33 min - Don Quixote / Battle of Lepanto (1571)38 min - parallel between Cervantes and Nico 41 min - McClanahan / we just do what we see on TV41.5 min - the solution to the big house / indie divide42 min - Nico’s experience w Gian v. Knopf50 min - are you gonna put the work in51 min - no one does anything alone54 min - Marie Calloway59 min - if no backlash is an artwork doing anything1 hr 1 min - what is to be done1 hr 3 min - the difficulty / importance of dialogue 1 hr 7 min - we say who we are through our speech1 hr 10 min - flannery O’Connor / *James Joyce quote correction - "I am a creature driven and derided by vanity"1 hr 13 min - Hill William1 hr 20 min - infallible narrators 1 hr 23 min - how to keep going when shit gets more fucked than you ever coulda imagined 1 hr 24 min - tear the bandaid off .. just say it1 hr 28 min - on war1 hr 35 min - the contradictions of war1 hr 40 min - Nico’s day to day now / Rachael Rabbit Whitehttp://1storyhaus.com/index.html