In this episode we will be talking to Jim Haynes. 

Jim was born in northern Louisiana and when he was young he spent several years in the oil company town of San Tomé in Venezuela. 

In 1956 he served in the US military and stationed with a unit in Scotland. After his service he decided to stay in Edinburgh where he started the first paperback bookshop in Britain called The Paperback Bookshop. 

In the 60’s Haynes relocated to London and he became deeply involved in the underground cultural scene, co-funding the alternative paper “International Times”, and launching “Suck” in Amsterdam, a newspaper to promote sexual freedom. 

In 1969 he moved to Paris where he taught Media Studies and Sexual Politics for 30 years, and in 1970 he organized the Wet Dreams Festival held in Amsterdam. This festival explored the boundaries between art and porn, voyeurism and participation, exploitation and liberation. 

In 2017 Haynes was awarded an honorary PhD from Edinburgh Napier University. 

Today we bring you an exclusive interview with Maggie McKinley, president of the Norman Mailer Society in Chicago. 

The Norman Mailer Society is a non-profit literary society dedicated to American author Norman Mailer. The Society promotes his legacy holding an annual meeting of scholars and enthusiasts, publishing The Mailer Review, Project Mailer, and The NMS Podcast, awarding the Robert F. Lucid Award for the year's best scholarship, and encouraging continued interest in his work through all forms of media.

Maggie McKinley is an Associate Professor of English at Harper College in Illinois, where she teaches courses in composition and American literature and also serves as department co-chair. She is the author of Masculinity and the Paradox of Violence in American Fiction (Bloomsbury, 2015) and Understanding Norman Mailer (U of SC Press, 2017), and her work has appeared in Philip Roth Studies, Studies in American Jewish Literature, and The Mailer Review, among other places. She is currently editing two collections for Cambridge University Press: Norman Mailer in Context and Philip Roth in Context.

Today we bring you an exclusive interview with Britt Carpenter. Britt is the founder of Philly Unknown, a Philadelphia-based non-profit organization that assists homeless people in the city, many of them living with opioid addiction. Britt has been doing this for more than 10 years but today his job has become very difficult because of the pandemic. During our interview we talked about Kensington, a forgotten and impoverished neighbourhood in Philadelphia that Britt helps out in a daily basis, the opioid crisis in America, his appearance in 2018 in a documentary film from Voice of America, the challenge that faces his community with gentrification, Black Lives Matter, and the future of his organization. I’m really proud of this interview, Britt is very charismatic and I felt really good during our conversation. I guess this is also one of the reasons why I started this podcast: to meet interesting people all around the world and to make some friends, in the end it is all about creating some connections.

Today we bring you an interview we did back in may 2019 with Jim Carroll. 

In this opportunity we get to know everything about the history of his amazing bookstore, we talk about politics, literature, the art of translating a book and his experience as an independent bookseller for more than thirty years. 

Jim Carroll is the owner of San Francisco Book Co. One of the most beautiful bookshops in the French capital. 

In this opportunity we talked about the book business during the pandemic, about politics, literature, censorship and everything that is going on in America during the demonstrations for Black Lives Matter. 

Very soon we will be publishing the first interview we did with Jim on May 2019. During that interview, we get to know everything about the history of his amazing shop. 

Ají Dulce es un conocido restaurante de comida venezolana situado en el 19 rue de Notre Dame de Lorette en la ciudad de París. 

En esta ocasión su fundadora nos habla de esta aventura que comenzó con un food truck en el area de la Défense y que se ha convertido hoy en día en el mejor restaurante de comida venezolana de la capital francesa. Durante la entrevista también hablamos de como se ha adaptado el negocio de la comida en estos tiempos de Covid-19. 

Today we had the opportunity to interview Australian writer, journalist and filmmaker, John Baxter. The interview took place in his beautiful Paris apartment located in rue de l'Odéon, in the same building where the Marquis de Sade was born and where Sylvia Beach, founder of the legendary bookshop Shakespeare and company, used to live. 

During our conversation we talked about the old bookstore, the one that opened in 1921 becoming a cultural center for expat writers and artists. James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein and Scott Fitzgerald, among others, met there. We talked about the life of the Beat generation in Paris during the 1950s and the publication of Tropic of Cancer under Obelisk Press. 

Baxter explained how he came up with the idea for his book A Pound of Paper and how he became a book collector from an early age fascinated by Graham Greene's literature. A big part of the interview was dedicated to the legendary Martin Stone, that mythical book dealer, cocaine addict and fugitive from justice who became John's mentor. 

La Amenaza cuenta la historia de una existencia marcada por el miedo. Una existencia que comienza en Rusia y sigue con Hitler en Berlín hasta terminar en Argentina con la dictadura. Se trata de la historia de Travin contada en dos tiempos, cuando es periodista de gran prestigio perseguido por la dictadura argentina y el de su adolescencia, narrado por el mismo Travin en un manuscrito que nunca llegará a publicar. Travin es un chico judio, culto, interesado por la política, filosovietico, arrogante y fabulador. Al mismo tiempo mira con deseo y curiosidad un mundo al que no pertenece, habitado por militares, alemanes y gente muy cercana al poder. Abrasha Rotenberg nació en Teofipol, Ucrania en 1926, en aquella época la Unión Soviética y en Argentina participó en la creación del semanario Nueva Sión y años más tarde, en la fundación de las revistas Primera Plana, Confirmado y el famoso periódico La Opinión. Durante la dictadura de Videla, Abrasha se exilia en Madrid, en donde crea la editorial Altalena. En el año 2000 publica La Opinión Amordazada que cuenta la lucha del diario argentino La Opinión bajo la dictadura militar y en el 2004 Última Carta a Moscu. Su nueva novela La Amenaza es considerada por el diario El Cultural como “Una excelente novela autobiográfica de formación, de aprendizaje, de iniciación.” Rotenberg vive hoy en Buenos Aires, está casado con la cantante y compositora Dina Rot y es padre de la reconocida actriz Cecilia Rot, protagonista de Todo Sobre Mi Madre y del músico, fundador de Los Rodriguez, Ariel Rot.

In this episode we talk to Miguel Angel Petrecca, owner of Cienfuegos bookstore. Cienfuegos is the only spanish language bookstore in Paris and is located in the Village Suisse in the XV district just beside the Eiffel tower. If you are around don't hesitate to stop by. See you in the Interzone! 

In this episode we bring you an exclusive interview with Maggie McKinley. Maggie is the president of the Norman Mailer Society and author of Masculinity and the Paradox of Violence in American Fiction 1950-75 (2015) and Understanding Norman Mailer (2017).

The Norman Mailer Society is a non-profit organization founded in 2003 to celebrate Norman Mailer, author and chronicler of the American Century. It has approximately 300 members and meets annually for three days for panels, papers, films and informal discussion about the life, work and reputation of the late author. 

For more information check out their website: https://normanmailersociety.org