Novelist Susan DeFreitas joins us after her Spillers № 7 short story reading to tell us why Southwestern writers are literary outlaws, how being misunderstood requires you to understand yourself, and why circus arts beats the Suzuki method any day. [Note: This episode is for mature audiences, only.]

[Originally released on December 10, 2015 as ep. 3.] Kelsey Pinckney is a lot of things–author, publisher, lachrymose birthday gal–and she’s our first guest to have ever run into a person outside a tattoo parlor on Friday the 13th while riding a new bicycle. Kelsey’s story “Crying on My Birthday” was a hit at Spillers № 2, and here she tells us what it takes to slap an issue of her literary journal Four Chambers together and why all her narrators are alternate-reality Kelseys.