Derek McCormack is a small town pervert and the author of The Well-Dressed Wound and Castle F*ggot, both published by Semiotext(e). His most recent book is Judy Blame's Obituary. This collection brings together for the first time McCormack's fashion journalism. He writes about and interviews fashion figures that fascinate him, tracing the ways they inspire and inhabit his novels. The result is a sort of memoir in essays: as he writes, "My tribute to [Judy] Blame is about him and about meāthere a...
Dec 25, 2024ā¢2 hr
In this season-ending episode of Wake Island, guest co-host BR Yeagerāauthor of Negative Space and Burn You the Fuck Aliveājoins us for a hall of mirrors conversation. Together, we get into David Leo Riceās latest book, The Berlin Wall, using it as a lens to examine violent cusp figures like Anders Behring Breivik, Timothy McVeigh, and the Columbine shooters. We take a gut check for 2024, exploring the height of disenchantment that drives us to embrace disharmony in a world where consensus feels...
Sep 17, 2024ā¢1 hr 36 minā¢Season 2Ep. 11
Daddyās back. ROOM TEMPERATURE, haunted houses, video games, childhood memories, publishing with an indie press, supportive teachers, Flunker, and more Dennis Cooper's Blog. FLUNKER, six fictions, 124 pp., c/o Amphetamine Sulphate: orders open . UK/Europe: orders open . SOCIAL: Twitter: @ WakeIslandPod Instagram: @ wakeislandpod David's Twitter: @ raviddice David's site: raviddice.com...
Aug 14, 2024ā¢1 hrā¢Season 2Ep. 10
In this episode with Steve Finbow, we tease out the point at which a body ceases to be considered a person and chart the development of trauma over time, tracing the fine line between disgust and desire. We get into the motivations behind necrophilia and corpse desecration, examining the boundaries of how taboos can become normalized. We discuss the role of the soul or consciousness in elevating necrophilia to a mythic realm and the pursuit of the death drive in objects of beauty. We also consid...
Jul 31, 2024ā¢59 minā¢Season 2Ep. 9
From the critically acclaimed author dubbed āone of todayās finest practitioners of nonfictionā ( The New York Times Book Review ), a breathless true crime tale of sex, religion, and murder in the deep South. Mike and Denise Williams had a tight knit, seemingly unbreakable bond with childhood friends, Brian and Kathy Winchester. The two couples were devout, hardworking Baptists who lived perfect, quintessentially Southern lives. Their friendship seemed ironclad. That is, until December 16, 2000,...
Jul 15, 2024ā¢1 hr 17 minā¢Season 2Ep. 8
Fear. Disgust. Pity. The cripple evokes our basest human emotionsāas does the monster. Told in lyric fragments, The Backwards Hand traces Matt Leeās experience living in the United States for more than thirty years with a rare congenital defect. Weaving in historical research and pop culture references, Lee dissects how the disabled body has been conflated with impurity, worthlessness, and evil. His voice swirls amid those of artists, criminals, activists, and philosophers. With a particular foc...
Jul 02, 2024ā¢1 hr 29 minā¢Season 2Ep. 7
Christopher Zeischegg is a writer and filmmaker who spent eight years working in the adult industry as performer, Danny Wylde. He is the author of The Magician , Body to Job , The Wolves that Live in Skin and Space , and Come to My Brother . His latest book CREATION spans a decadeās worth of writing on art, violence, sex work, and friendship. Acclaimed author, Christopher Zeischegg, confronts his past narratives, cruelty in auto-fiction, pornographic ambivalence, and transformative relationship ...
Mar 20, 2024ā¢1 hr 3 min
Last year, David Peak released "The World Below," a midwestern gothic tale intertwining two rival families whose animosity sparks amidst a ritualistic occult murder mystery, amplified by heroic doses of LSD. Published by Apocalypse Party, a rapidly acclaimed purveyor of top-tier horror, "The World Below" is a testament to their commitment to darkness. This book seamlessly blends atmosphere and narrative, achieving the rare feat of being both immersive and a page-turner. David Peak's work aligns ...
Nov 15, 2023ā¢1 hr 10 min
Every city has that motel. The motel on the edge of town, the mythical place you dare not go. Logan Berry goes there. In this episode, we calibrate a magical framework for understanding the world through a seance Logan conducted at the Skylark Motel. We get into cutting off spectral appendages, invoking chaos, exploring hoarder homes, practicing automatic writing, and Ultratheater. Additionally, we discuss if relentless exposure to depravity makes us evil, and why occult commerce lacks the coura...
Oct 25, 2023ā¢1 hr 15 minā¢Season 2Ep. 4
āThe omnicidal will to constitute an infinite decision implies one of two things: either to kill the unfinished, or to let the unfinished kill.ā In the second part of our conversation with Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh, we delve deep into the realm of unreality. We explore topics such as the labor associated with maintaining the criminal enterprise of the dream, the suffering and expenditure associated with visionary figures like Joyce Monsuer, the allure of totalitarian seduction during times marked b...
Oct 11, 2023ā¢1 hr 20 minā¢Season 2Ep. 3
"Every storyteller harbours a secret desire to be the one who tells the last story, just as every maniac wishes to inscribe the last fateful madness on earth." In this episode with Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh we walk with vertigo to summon the authors who play at the borders of insanity and intoxication. We get into the territories of the night and mania, both of which are the premise of Jason's most recent books: Night: A Philosophy of the After-Dark & Night: A Philosophy of the Last World and O...
Oct 04, 2023ā¢58 minā¢Season 2Ep. 2
Enter the Amity-verse with Wake Island. In this episode we get into channeling dark energy from the media vortex surrounding Americaās most infamous haunted house in Amityville, Long Island. In addition we also talk about: Hauntings as a manifestation of trauma, the mythology-making behind the nearly 50-year Amityville horror house phenomenon, demonic media spectacles, the allure and menace of the suburbs, and the reality and fantasy of demonic possession. Jack Riccobonoās new series, Amityville...
Jun 22, 2023ā¢2 hr 23 minā¢Season 3Ep. 1
Jarett Kobek is a Turkish-American writer living in California. His novel I HATE THE INTERNET was an international bestseller, translated into nine languages, and published in twelve countries. His other books include: ATTA, Do Every Thing Wrong!: XXXTentacion Against the World, Only Americans Burn in Hell and The Future Won't Be Long. Motor Spirit: The Long Hunt for the Zodiac Itās 1969. Evil lurks in California. From a Napa County hippie child murder to Haight Street gang bangs to methamphetam...
Jun 09, 2022ā¢2 hr 33 minā¢Season 2Ep. 18
James Pogue is a journalist and essayist. His first book is called Chosen Country: A Rebellion in the West . James recently wrote an article for Vanity Fair called Inside the New Right and itās not only a great piece of journalism but it struck a cultural nerve. Not only did it go viral but it even got a shout out on Twitter from the likes of Jeff Bezos and Glenn Greenwald. In this conversation we discuss everything from MMAās connection to the right, to diagnosing what is happening at the margi...
May 26, 2022ā¢1 hr 25 minā¢Season 2Ep. 17
Lindsay Lerman is a writer and translator. Her new novel, WHAT ARE YOU (CLASH Books) is out now. Her first book I'm From Nowhere was published in 2019. Her essays, short stories, and poetry have been published in The Los Angeles Review of Books, Entropy, Hobart, Southwest Review, and elsewhere. She is currently adapting her short story Real Loveāwhich first appeared in NY Tyrant Magazineāfor the screen. She is represented by Abby Walters at CAA. In the intro David and I talk about Pascal Laugier...
Apr 28, 2022ā¢1 hr 21 minā¢Season 2Ep. 15
Adam Lehrer is a writer and an artist living in New York. He is the founder and co-host of the System of Systems podcast, and the founder and curator of the Safety Propaganda collaborative media platform. Communions is Adam's debut book - out now from Hyperidean Press . Communions : Channeling hallucinated versions of dead artists and junkies, these fragments access the uncanny allure of shared experience. Elements of speculative fiction, criticism and encrypted auto-biography merge to form a di...
Apr 14, 2022ā¢1 hr 30 minā¢Season 2Ep. 14
Will American fantasies of purifying violence dissolve upon contact with reality or will the illusion break into civil war? Find out on this eps w/ ā¦ Stephen Marche ā¬ā© author of The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future We also get into: American wildness, bloodlust, foment, genius, and the apocalyptic longing for an endless frontier. The United States is coming to an end. The only question is how. No matter your political leaning, most of us can sense that America is barreling tow...
Mar 18, 2022ā¢1 hr 5 minā¢Season 2Ep. 12
We speak to Dr Dylan Mulvin , Assistant Professor in LSE Department of Media and Communications, about his book Proxies: The Cultural Work of Standing In , which examines the ways in which proxies shape our lives, the histories of their production and how we delegate power to represent our world. You can download a free copy of Proxies: The Cultural Work of Standing In at https://dylanmulvin.com/ In the intro David and I talk about Strange Days (1995) The interview with Dylan starts at 26:58 Vis...
Mar 03, 2022ā¢1 hr 24 minā¢Season 2Ep. 11
JUSTIN KEENAN is a writer and narrative designer on Disco Elysium which is a groundbreaking open world role playing game. In it, youāre a detective with a unique skill system at your disposal and a whole city block to carve your path across. Interrogate unforgettable characters, crack murders or take bribes. Become a hero or an absolute disaster of a human being. In this episode we excavate the inner world at the heart of Disco Elysium and get into: Dark City (1998), RPGs, paranoia vs dread, wor...
Feb 17, 2022ā¢1 hr 19 minā¢Season 2Ep. 10
In this episode with Jonathan Greenaway (Theology, Horror and Fiction: A Reading of the Gothic Nineteenth Century & The Horror Vanguard podcast) we arrive at the New Flesh while peeling back the layers of a nightmarish society in stasis. We get into: necro-neoliberalism, depressive hedonia, unspent energy mutating into gothic maw, our struggle to be and remain human, nostalgia neutralizing hope/fear instead of bringing us closer to history, the internet as a profoundly haunted and haunting d...
Feb 03, 2022ā¢1 hr 14 minā¢Season 2Ep. 6
In this episode we try to articulate the fog of our time, away from fear, toward the pervertās embrace of absurdity, uncertainty, spiritual warfare, gallows humor, the distinction between happiness and joy, and the strange, redemptive sanctum of the heroic pervert... Erik Davis, PhD, is an author, award-winning journalist, sometimes podcaster, and popular speaker based in San Francisco. He is the author of five books: High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the 70s; Nomad C...
Jan 20, 2022ā¢1 hr 32 minā¢Season 2Ep. 5
James Grauerholz is a writer and editor. He is most famous as the bibliographer and literary executor of the estate of William S. Burroughs. He worked as Burroughsā assistant, and became his friend, business manager and editor until the author's death in 1997. Grauerholz wrote biographical sketches to a Burroughs reader Word Virus , and edited a posthumous release of Burroughs diaries Last Words: The Final Journals of William S. Burroughs . Theme music by Joseph E. Martinez of Junius Follow us o...
Jan 06, 2022ā¢1 hr 20 minā¢Season 2Ep. 6
Blake Butler is the author of seven book-length works, including Alice Knott (Riverhead), 300,000,000 (Harper Perennial), Sky Saw (Tyrant Books), There is No Year (Harper Perennial), Scorch Atlas (Featherproof Books), and Ever (Calamari Press), as well as the nonfictional Nothing: A Portrait of Insomnia (Harper Perennial). He is a founding editor of HTMLGIANT We talk about: The Consume r by Michael Gira, insomnia, Pennyās notebook from Inspector Gadget, horror, internet gods and demons, forbidde...
Dec 03, 2021ā¢1 hr 42 minā¢Season 2Ep. 3
Rosecrans Baldwin is the bestselling author of Everything Now: Lessons From the City-State of Los Angeles. Other books include The Last Kid Left and Paris, I Love You but Youāre Bringing Me Down. His debut novel, You Lost Me There, was a New York Times Book Review Editorsā Choice. Everything Now: Lessons from the City-State of Los Angeles is a provocative, exhilaratingly new understanding of the United Statesā most confounding metropolisānot just a great city, but a full-blown modern city-state....
Nov 19, 2021ā¢1 hr 32 minā¢Season 2Ep. 2
Catherine Liu is the author of Virtue Hoarders: The Case Against the Professional Managerial Class. We get into the: dynamics of noir, the pseudo superiority and inchoate narcissism of neoliberalism, social dominance, corporate embodiment, the monetization of victimhood, our collective need for catharsis and the Met Gala. Professional Managerial Class (PMC) elite workers labor in a world of performative identity and virtue signaling, publicizing an ability to do ordinary things in fundamentally ...
Nov 05, 2021ā¢1 hr 35 minā¢Season 2Ep. 1
Patrick McGrath is the author of three collections of short fiction, including Ghost Town: Tales of Manhattan Then and Now, and ten novels, including Asylum, Dr. Haggards Disease, Port Mungo, and most recently Last Days in Cleaver Square. His work has been widely published in translation, and in Italy Asylum, titled Follia, has sold over half a million copies. His screenplay of his novel Spider was filmed by David Cronenberg and premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. Patrick was born in London a...
Sep 08, 2021ā¢1 hr 41 minā¢Season 1Ep. 57
Matthew Specktor is the author of the novels American Dream Machine and That Summertime Sound; a nonfiction book, The Sting; and the forthcoming memoir The Golden Hour (Ecco/HarperCollins). He is a founding editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books. In the intro David and I discuss Michelangelo Antonioni's haunting film The Passenger starring Jack Nicholson and Maria Schneider. In the interview with Matthew we get into the essence of noir, the dream beyond impact, and the vampiric Lost Highway-e...
Aug 05, 2021ā¢2 hr 3 minā¢Season 1Ep. 53
Kate Durbin is a visual artist, filmmaker, and writer from Los Angeles, California (USA), whose artworks are nervous, unnerving, and playful explorations of the human condition in a time of constant screens, globalism, and late capitalism. Her work draws on a wide-range of popular culture references: Disneyland, reality TV shows, fast food, horror movie characters, and Hello Kitty are just some of the recurring figures and references that populate her work. In Hoarders, her third book of poetry,...
Jul 29, 2021ā¢1 hr 7 minā¢Season 1Ep. 52
Mikita Brottman is an author and psychoanalyst with particular interests in true crime, forensics, psychoanalysis, animals, abjection, and the unexplained. Her work blends memoir, history, psychoanalysis, and creative speculation. Currently, she is especially interested in reconsidering and interrogating the true crime genre. This interest is at the heart of her two most recent books, An Unexplained Death (Henry Holt, 2018), and Couple Found Slain (Henry Holt, 2021). COUPLE FOUND SLAIN: āIn 1992...
Jul 07, 2021ā¢1 hr 27 minā¢Season 1Ep. 49
Dennis Cooper is on Wake Island! We talk about: Hoarders, escorts & slaves, dark rides, haunted houses, his forthcoming book I Wished , creating a literary monument to George Myles through the medium of devotion, the home as a universe, emotional history, Russian twink porn, Bjorkās meltdown, John Wayne Gacy, disliking objectification, the dying breed of emo escorts, the enduring sadness of Epcot centerā¦ Dennis Cooper is best known for The George Miles Cycle, an interconnected sequence of fi...
May 27, 2021ā¢1 hr 27 minā¢Season 1Ep. 46
