Morgan Talty's debut, Night of the Living Rez, is a short story collection set in Maine within the community of the Panawahpskek (Penobscot) Nation. The stories focus on David as a young boy adjusting to living on the reservation to him as an adult figuring out life in a community reeling with the aftermath of drug addiction. Talty flawlessly uses time and death to tell a story about family, relationships, and what is lost and found while aging. We talked to Talty about how he had no interest in...
Dec 30, 2022•57 min
JP Perez & Jeremy Ocampo bring excitement and magic to children and adults that visit the wonderful world of Walt Disney every day with their beautiful artwork. They helped to design the newest nighttime show, Enchantment, to commemorate Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom's 50th anniversary. In the stage show Finding Nemo: The Big Blue and Beyond, spectators can also view Ocampo's magnificent illustrations. In this episode, we talk about the power of Filipino representation in powerful places...
Dec 29, 2022•1 hr 15 min
Journalist, and author, Albert Samaha talks to us about his book Concepcion: Conquest, Colonialism, and an Immigrant Family's Fate. Samaha takes his family's immigration stories and intertwines them with the fraught history of colonization in the Phillippines. His conversations with family members reveal the oppressive and violent chokehold on a nation that began with Spain and continued to flourish in the hands of the United States. Samaha spoke to us in September prior to the paperback release...
Dec 28, 2022•59 min
In 1995 OutKast won the Source Award for Best New Group. This win prompted boos from the crowd, but it also signaled to the world that Big Boi and André3000 had just ushered in a wave of music that would change the musical landscape for years to come. Dr. Regina N. Bradley's Chronicling Stankonia: The Rise of the Hip-Hop South details how music, literature, and film takes a critical eye to the post-civil-rights movement rule book and the expectations for those raised in the 80s and 90s. Dr. Brad...
Dec 27, 2022•1 hr 16 min
Marriage of a Thousand Lies author SJ Sindu returns to the Vulgar Geniuses Podcast with their sophomore novel, Blue-Skinned Gods . In India, people make pilgrimages to an ashram to visit Kalki, a Tamil child born with blue skin believed to be the incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu. His parents make money from the blessings and miracles Kalki grants to the believers, but he soon doubts his divinity as he watches his relationships fall apart. Sindu shares with us the dynamics of intertwining reli...
Dec 26, 2022•1 hr
We are celebrating a monumental milestone with a special episode of the Vulgar Geniuses Podcast. For our 100th show, we sit down with New York Times bestselling novelist Celeste Ng as we talk about her recent book, Our Missing Hearts . Bird Gardner is a 12-year-old boy who lives alone with his father after having their lives suddenly interrupted years prior when his mother, Margaret, a Chinese-American poet, is snatched away from their home. Book banning and kidnapping children from the homes of...
Dec 23, 2022•1 hr•Season 3Ep. 36
LARK & KASIM START A REVOLUTION is the recent release from bestselling author Kacen Callender. Lark is a Black, queer, nonbinary, and neurodivergent teen who hopes to snag thousands of Twitter followers and a book deal for an unfinished novel. Kasim accidentally uses Lark's phone to send tweets from their account confessing unrequited love. When they go viral, Lark takes credit for the tweets and uses them to their advantage to get a date with their crush. However, the tweets Kasim made were...
Dec 21, 2022•41 min•Season 3Ep. 35
Belinda Huijuan Tang's A Map for the Missing is a story that centers around the possibilities of what could have been as it converges with the limitations of a family and country in turmoil during the Cultural Revolution in China. Family secrets, unrequited love, and a father's sudden disappearance are ingredients that make this debut novel an unforgettable tale. We speak with Belinda about what is lost when discussing the immigration story and the gaps formed when children are not raised in the...
Dec 19, 2022•48 min•Season 3Ep. 34
My Monticello is an ingenious and vividly written novella from debut author Jocelyn Nicole Johnson. She brings all our fears and anxieties to the reading table and asks that we hold them and look at them from all angles. Such as in her story "Buying A House Ahead of the Apocalypse," where a mother makes a list of things she will need when she considers what will be lost during the end of the world. Jocelyn joins us on the show to discuss how the violent Unite the Right white supremacist rally in...
Dec 14, 2022•56 min•Season 3Ep. 33
Elisa A. Bonnin masterfully builds worlds where fantasy and Filipino culture coexist in her debut novel Dauntless. We follow Seri as she vows to help protect her people from the Beasts that hide in the trees that Seri calls home. Seri soon discovers that her people are not the only ones to exist in the world, as she meets Tsana. They team up to help keep their nations from entering into a deadly war. We speak with Elisa about the importance of pulling away from the European perspective and cente...
Dec 13, 2022•54 min•Season 3Ep. 32
Tomas Q. Morin's LET ME COUNT THE WAYS is a memoir that will sit with readers long after they close the book. Morin dives deep down into his childhood to bring to the surface key moments of retrospection into the life he lived as he watched his family wrestle with his father's drug addiction and the beginnings of Morin's obsessive-compulsive disorder. We talk with Morin about stepping into a space of vulnerability and sharing family memories with the public, a glimpse into fatherhood, and he get...
Dec 12, 2022•1 hr 16 min•Season 3Ep. 31
There is no denying that Julie Tieu loves writing about love, and it definitely shows in her sophomore novel CIRCLING BACK TO YOU. Julie joins us on the podcast to talk about how she found her way in the world of all things rom-com. Julie introduces us to Candice and Matt, the ultimate "will they/won't they" couple working in the real estate business. Their friendship blooms into an office romance, but when climbing the professional ladder proves to be a roadblock from love, they must figure out...
Sep 27, 2022•1 hr 3 min
Carlos Allende's newest novel, Coffee, Shopping, Murder, Love, is a comedic thriller from Red Hen Press full of scams and shenanigans. Jignesh is an overweight gay Indian man involved in embezzling money from his job. Everything seems to be going as planned until he accidentally murders a coworker. He hides the body in a deep freezer purchased from Charlie, a man he met on a dating site. But things go haywire when Charlie finds out his secret, and more bodies begin to drop. Carlos talks to us ab...
Sep 26, 2022•53 min
We jump off National Hispanic Heritage Month with debut author Sonora Reyes. They join us to chat about their bestselling young adult novel, The Lesbiana's Guide To Catholic School, which has recently found its way on the 2022 National Book Award Longlist for Young Readers. Sonora Reyes' novel brings readers into the life of 17-year-old Yamilet Flores. After being outed by her crush and ex-best friend, Yami transfers to a private Catholic school where she vows never to fall in love and keep her ...
Sep 20, 2022•54 min
Elaine Hsieh Chou joins us to talk about her debut novel DISORIENTATION an interwoven satire that grapples with the ever-present danger Asian Americans face when racism rears its ugly head in the world of academia. Ph.D. hopeful Ingrid Yang is beginning to unravel as she struggles with writing her dissertation on the late Chinese poet Xiao-Wen Chou. A clue from the library's archive helps her to uncover that Xiao-Wen Chou is not dead, nor is he Asian, but rather a white man living his days in re...
Aug 29, 2022•1 hr 18 min
If you have a shared love for murder mystery podcasts and word games, then this episode is just the one you've been waiting for. We travel across the world for our conversation with author Hanna Alkaf to discuss her novel QUEEN OF TILES. Hanna drops us into the city of Kuala Lumpur a year after the mysterious death of Najwa's best friend and Scrabble Champ, Trina Lowe. Najwa is ready to resume her life, but as secrets are revealed and lies are told, she must solve the mystery of her friend's dea...
Aug 22, 2022•1 hr 20 min•Season 3Ep. 26
Unable to make waves in his acting career, David Crownson took his mother's advice, boarded a plane, and headed to Ghana to press the reset button. Three months later, after binging on Crouching Tiger, Hidden, Dragon, and Buffy, HARRIET TUBMAN DEMON SLAYER was born. This series from Kingwood Comics fuses history and fantasy as Harriet Tubman frees enslaved black men and women from the clutches of demons, vampires, and slavery. David talks to us about teaming up with Insecure producer Prentice Pe...
Aug 01, 2022•1 hr 20 min•Season 3Ep. 25
In Bethany C. Morrow's newest novel CHERISH FARRAH the calls are coming from inside the house, and so are the screams. Our fiction pick for July will keep you cool for the rest of summer as it sends chills down your spine days after you've read the last sentence. Farrah Turner is a 17-year-old Black girl who plays a game of dominance as she manipulates her way into the home of Cherrish Whitman, best friend and adopted daughter of a wealthy, white family. But soon, everything she knew begins to u...
Jul 28, 2022•1 hr 31 min•Season 3Ep. 24
We're channeling our inner Minnie Ripperton as we take a walk down memory lane in Alejandro Varela’s debut novel, The Town of Babylon. We talk to him about centering his story around Andrés, a Queer Latinx college professor who returns home to care for his sick father in the small suburban town of Babylon. On the heels of dealing with his husband’s infidelity, he attends his 20-year class reunion, where he reunites with his high school sweetheart Jeremy and reckons with his past.
Jul 14, 2022•1 hr 10 min•Season 3Ep. 23
Sex, desire, and autonomy drip from the pages of our guest author, Alyssa Songsiridej's debut novel, LITTLE RABBIT. We explore this body of work as she reveals to us how she longed to bring forth a novel where female characters allowed themselves to be pulled under by their desire without being damaged by their male love interest. A 30 year-old queer and burgeoning writer begins to unearth the many aspects of her sexuality when she becomes involved in a sexual relationship with a choreographer i...
Jun 29, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Season 3Ep. 22
Candice Iloh’s sophomore novel BREAK THIS HOUSE gifts, readers, with Yaminah, a teenager attempting to balance the life she has been rebuilding since she and her father moved from their hometown of Obsidian, MI., to Brooklyn, NY. In an attempt to maintain her close relationships, Yaminah is suddenly struck with news that leaves her blindsided and reeling from grief. Join us on this next episode as we talk with Candice about their craft of writing young adult fiction to embody the true essence an...
Jun 22, 2022•55 min•Season 3Ep. 21
In 2020, The Vulgar Geniuses raised money to give Eccleston Elementary’s 5th-grade students a personal copy of Jason Reynolds’ Ghost, this was made possible by Orlando’s only Black-owned online bookstore, Kizzy’s Books & More. Trenessa Williams talks with us about how her parents pushed her to follow her dreams and fill a 20-year-old void by bringing Black books to the literary scene. She also shares with us the pushback she received when a local indie book store owner told her that there wa...
Jun 20, 2022•59 min
From West Virginia University Press comes middle school teacher turned debut author Neema Avashia to talk about her memoir Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer & Indian in a Mountain Place. Neema takes readers on a journey to discover the family and community that raised her, as she discovered who she was as a Queer girl in the south. Join us for this laugh-out-loud conversation where we learn what actually goes inside of a pickle sandwich, the spice she cannot go without, and how Country Roa...
Jun 15, 2022•1 hr 9 min•Season 3Ep. 20
WHEN WE FALL APART is the debut novel from author Soon Wiley. At first appearance, this story begins as a mystery when ex-pat Korean American Min-jin Ford launches an investigation to seek out the truth behind the death of his girlfriend. Was it a suicide, or was she murdered? This novel unfolds to be more as it brings its readers to the intersection of race, nationality, and duality of identity. Soon speaks with us about how his novel came to be and how his time spent teaching in Korea found it...
May 31, 2022•1 hr 5 min•Season 3Ep. 19
The culinary scene is thriving in the City Beautiful, with Orlando destined to be the next stop on your foodie adventures. Co-owners Chef Lordfer Lalicon and Jamilyn Bailey chat about their restaurant KAYA. This new fine dining experience will bring Filipino cuisine to the center stage and will surely leave you wanting for more! Our conversation with Lordfer and Jamilyn focuses on the importance of bringing Filipino food within the epicurean landscape; and how their family was instrumental in he...
May 13, 2022•1 hr 21 min•Season 3Ep. 18
We’re pulling out the heavy hitters for this exclusive episode of The Vulgar Geniuses Podcast. Co-authored by Jeff Yang, Philip Wang, & Phill Yu comes the New York Times best-selling book RISE: A Pop History of Asian America from the Nineties to Now. Jeff & Phil join us in conversation to talk about their groundbreaking book that covers significant moments in Asian American History that are the cornerstone of the foundation of America and announces to the world that Asia is Rising! Let's...
May 05, 2022•1 hr 28 min•Season 3Ep. 17
Live from Orlando, Florida, it is the 2nd Annual Vulgar Geniuses Awards! Join us as we honor this past year’s spectacular literary masters, emerging filmmakers, groundbreaking artists and musicians for their extraordinary works.
May 02, 2022•24 min•Season 3Ep. 16
We're joined by writer Minda Honey, founder, and creator of the digital alt-indie magazine TAUNT. We talk with her about her forthcoming memoir, AN ANTHOLOGY OF ASSHOLES, from Little A. Minda talks to us about what life was like navigating through her twenties, exploring the wonderfully messy world of dating and heartbreak, and how coming back to Kentucky allowed her to reconcile the restlessness of wanting to return home. Grab your charcuterie board and your favorite cocktail, and get ready to ...
Apr 21, 2022•1 hr 17 min•Season 3Ep. 15
In the New York Times bestselling novel Olga Dies Dreaming, we are brought into the world of champagne wishes and caviar dreams. Olga Acevedo is a wedding planner whose keen eye for detail and savviness fuels her superpower to curate the most beautiful weddings for New York's elite. While she spends her time helping others take a new step into love, Olga struggles to find footing. On this episode of The Vulgar Geniuses Podcast, we talk to the hilarious debut author Xochitl Gonzalez about her the...
Apr 14, 2022•1 hr 6 min•Season 3Ep. 13
The PBS animated short, Jelly, Ben & Pogo, premiered in Oct. 2021. It made waves in television as the first cartoon to feature Filipinos as lead characters on a major children's network. The show centers around a sister and brother, who embark on spectacular adventures with their sea monster friend, Pogo. Creator & writer Jalysa Leva sits down with us to talk about answering the call to be daring and creative in her work, the inspiration behind her vibrant and hilarious characters, and w...
Apr 06, 2022•1 hr•Season 3Ep. 13
