Episode 108: Saeed Jones

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This month Rachel and the team visited Seattle for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference—commonly known as AWP. We recorded a special live episode at Open Books: A Poem Emporium, Seattle’s poetry-only bookstore and one of only a handful in the country, with poet and nonfiction writer Saeed Jones. In front of a live audience of lucky patrons, Rachel and Saeed discuss grief and anxiety, letting our loved ones be whole people, playing tricks on readers with form, the differences between writing poetry and nonfiction, and how to have a career and make a living as a writer, as well as Saeed’s books Prelude to Bruise, How We Fight For Our Lives, and Alive at the End of the World. 

Rachel and Saeed in conversation at Open Books: A Poem Emporium in Seattle.

Books and Selected Other Work by Saeed Jones

• Alive at the End of the World (Coffee House Press, 2022)

• How We Fight For Our Lives (Simon & Schuster, 2019)

• Prelude to Bruise (Coffee House Press, 2014)

Also Referenced

• Open Books: A Poem Emporium

• V Conaty

• Christine Larusso

• Commonplace Goes to Taiwan, Episodes 1 and 2

• Pema Chödrön

• Jorge Luis Borges

• Roger Reeves

• Roxane Gay

• Claudia Rankine

• Morgan Parker

• Alexander Chee

• Frank B. Wilderson III

• Katelyn Hale Wood

• Adrienne Rich

• Prince, "I Wanna Be Your Lover"

• Yanyi

• Torrey Peters

• Matthew Shepard

• Kenneth Goldsmith

• Saidiya Hartman

• Rigoberto Gonzalez

Commonplace has no institutional or corporate affiliation and is made possible by you, our listeners! Support Commonplace by joining the Commonplace Book Club: https://www.patreon.com/commonplacepodcast