Writer, performer, director and producer Kathe Koja rejoins the show to talk about her new story collection, VELOCITIES (Meerkat Press). We talk how she's coping with the pandemic, the importance of having a good working relationship with chaos, and why Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker is more apropos than ever. She gets into her work in immersive theater and how it needs to be reimagined in this era of social distancing, while teasing out details of her new project, Dark Factory. We also get into the upcoming reissue of her cult novel The Cipher this September, why she's bingeing on Babylon Berlin, the one thing she hoarded when things went sideways, why it's important to be open to the messages the world sends us, and what to do when you find a pill lying on the floor in a hospital cafeteria. • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Documentary photographer Jonathan Hyman checks in from Bethel, NY. We talk about his travels from Maine to Maryland to photograph towns and "open the economy" rallies during the pandemic, the near-emptiness of New York City on St. Patrick's Day, the parallels and divergences with post-9/11 America and his photography projects from that era, people coming at him during rallies because of their hostility toward media, how pointing a camera at someone is different than pointing a phone at them, and more. Follow Jonathan on Facebook and Instagram • Listen to our full-length podcast • More info at our site • Find all our COVID Check-In episodes • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Author and professor Peter Trachtenberg checks in from the Catskills. We talk about his surprise at how well he's dealing with This Whole Situation, the essay he's working on about Katherine Anne Porter's Pale Horse, Pale Rider, the realization that Americans are more afraid of going broke than contracting COVID-19, and how this pandemic echoes and differs from the 1918 flu and the AIDS crisis. We get into the book he's working on about living and dying in New York's Westbeth artists' apartments, the value of art in society, his meditative practice of reading Levi's Periodic Table in Italian, what it was like to preside over graduation-by-video at Pitt, and more. Follow Peter on Twitter and Instagram • Listen to our full-length podcast • More info at our site • Find all our COVID Check-In episodes • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Author, archivist and curator David Leopold checks in from Bucks County, PA. We talk about curating art in a quarantine and organizing the Socially Distant Theater virtual exhibition of Al Hirschfeld's drawings of solo shows, how museum audiences are changing over the years and his concerns that we'll continue to drive away from in-person experience, missing JazzFest in New Orleans, making a social-distancing garden, bingeing on The Leftovers and Saki's short stories, researching minstrel shows for an exhibition on race & identity in George Herriman's work, and contextualizing them as commedia dell'arte (while being sensitive about the potential for offense inherent in the subject matter), working on a Frontera music virtual exhibition for Arhoolie, going 6 weeks without leaving the farm he lives on, and more. Follow David on Twitter and check out the Ben Solowey Studio and the Al Hirschfeld Foundation • Listen to our full-length podcast • More info at our site • Find all our COVID Check-In episodes • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Cartoonist, illustrator, archeologist, and teacher Glynnis Fawkes checks in from Burlington, VT. We get into how her knowledge with Ancient Greece & archeology informs her perspective on the current pandemic, and talk about how how she's making a diary comic about her family, but setting it in 1347 during the Black Death semisorta so she can avoid drawing her kids using their iPads all the time. We get into how making Charlotte Bronte Before Jane Eyre led her to realize how much we think we're excused from a lot of hazards, the Angouleme residency she's missing out on, the inspiration of Natalia Ginzburg's Family Lexicon, how she's staying in touch with her comics-festival table-mates, Jennifer Hayden, Summer Pierre, and Ellen Lindner (who I really need to record with), how in-person contact has become a luxury, the joys of online yoga, and more. Follow Glynnis on Twitter and Instagram • Listen to our full-length podcast • More info at our site • Find all our COVID Check-In episodes • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Musician, producer, and just-about-Broadway songwriter Gary Clark checks in from Scotland to talk about the musical of Sing Street (he wrote the songs, based on the movie) and how its Broadway debut has been postponed by the pandemic. We get into the recent charity livestream of Sing Street, what he's learned from the process of working on a musical and how that's feeding into his next project, the Emma Thompson-led staging of Nanny McPhee, the dire prospects for clubs and theaters hurt by the quarantine, the importance of having routines and rhythms for work and life, the pros and cons of streaming music, practicing Transcendental Meditation, having to rewrite the Nanny McPhee song "Plague, Rickets, Scurvy & Spleen" in light of This Whole Situation, and (of course I had to ask) the (non-)prospects of a virtual Danny Wilson reunion. Follow Gary on Twitter and Instagram and keep up with news about the musical of Sing Street • Listen to our full-length podcast • More info at our site • Find all our COVID Check-In episodes • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Architecture writer Witold Rybczynski checks in from Philadelphia. We talk about how his present circumstances — retired from teaching, helping his wife recover from a broken arm, and editing his next book — have enabled him to transition into shelter-in-place mode pretty smoothly. We also get into that upcoming book, The Story of Architecture, how working on it enables him to transport himself into the Renaissance and elsewhere/when, how it's modeled after Gombrich's The Story of Art, why he doesn't want to theorize about the impact of the pandemic on architecture, the Mantel & Greene books he's immersed in and the French TV series he's bingeing on via Netflix, and his acceptance that there are wonderful historic buildings he'll never visit. Follow Witold on Twitter • Listen to our two our full-length podcasts: 2015 and 2019 • More info at our site • Find all our COVID Check-In episodes • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Author & activist Nathaniel Popkin checks in from Philadelphia. We talk about the potential for creative moments in the midst of self-isolation, the inspiration of Elsa Morante's novel History on his recent LitHub essay on the abuse of war imagery during the pandemic, the unique social aspects of Philadelphia, the dilation of time during self-isolation and how glad he was to take a social-distance walk with friends, the eternal search for justice and the battle against corporatization, the history of how the Lenape natives were defrauded of their land in the 1700s and how the language of destroying indigenous people hasn't changed over the centuries, how literature helps him travel in time and space, and more. Follow Nathaniel on Twitter and Instagram • Listen to our full-length podcast • More info at our site • Find all our COVID Check-In episodes • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Cartoonist and educator Tom Hart joins the show to talk about how the Sequential Artists Workshop (SAW) is adapting to the pandemic era. We get into Tom's comics upbringing and his formative years in the Seattle scene, how he managed to avoid superhero comics during his formative years, my discovery of his debut, Hutch Owen's Working Hard, in 1994, the value of pretension and his drive to bring literary notions to his comics, the experience that led him to create SAW, the challenges of teaching students half his age (& younger), how teaching his helped him as a cartoonist, the new form he's seeking for his next book, and why he's hoping to get out of Florida. • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Author, teacher & activist Kate Maruyama checks in from LA. We talk about whether writers have a responsibility to write a positive future and how she helped organize the Writing Better Futures in Times of Crisis virtual event (happening 5/14/20!). We also get into how she self-shamed into finishing a novella but is averse to the myth of WFH productivity, teaching writing online, whether her F&SF & horror background prepared her for this scenario, the fragmentation of LA and the challenges that creates for keeping community, reading for the Shirley Jackson Awards, the theory that panicked brains focus on details rather than broad & deep thinking, and more. Follow Kate on Twitter and Instagram • Listen to our full-length podcast • More info at our site • Find all our COVID Check-In episodes • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal