The Host Dispatch: A Literary Podcast

What a maximalist joy it was to speak with Summer Farah, Palestinian American editor, zine-maker and author of THE HUNGERING YEARS! In this conversation, we geek out about our poetic obsessions, and pick Summer's brain about her relationship to digital collage, Etel Adnan, and Supernatural, just to name a few. Listen to this wild conversation for a boost of creative energy, and enjoy the sneak preview into Summer Farah's magnetic collection, THE HUNGERING YEARS, available at hostpublications.com 

Please join us in making a donation to The Sameer Project  by supporting one of their campaigns or purchasing books (including Summer's chapbook I Could Die Today and Live Again) through Open Books' Workshops for Gaza Bookstore

After a long hiatus (while we converted to nonprofit and published 4 new books!) we're back with Season 6 of The Host Dispatch!

We're thrilled to be kicking off this season with a very special episode, a conversation with one of our all-time favorite creatures, heidi andrea restrepo rhodes! heidi is the author of Wayward Creatures, which we had the privilege to publish in August of 2025. After a delightful set of readings and an incredible author panel to celebrate Wayward Creatures, we hopped on the mics to talk with heidi about the poet's right to opacity, cultivating a perpetual curiosity, queer joy in the ocean, and much more! We're so happy to be back, and we hope you enjoy the episode! 

This is a monster of a book, an ecology of being in which all bodies are poems and all poems are bodies. rhodes asks the reader: How does the poem of us begin? Then, proceeds to dismantle the notion of beginning and ending. In Wayward Creatures, time is a branch from which we fruit, die, and bud again. It is the dark unknowable depth of space. It is the constellatory nature of queer love. Tucked into these pages is the book of crip dreams, which is a kind of scripture, and is also the book you are touching now—with your hot and human hands. — Gala Mukomolova, author of Without Protection

In this episode, it was a thrill to speak with Katherine Packert Burke about her captivating debut novel, Still Life (Norton, 2024).

"Katherine Packert Burke’s Still Life is everything you want from a Künstlerroman: smart, sexy, funny, sly, and exceptionally queer. With biting insights and heartbreaking attention, this debut captures the daunting thrill of becoming an artist while becoming yourself." — Isle McElroy, author of People Collide

 

This was such a fun, tender and insightful conversation with an exceptionally talented writer. We are honored to share this episode with you! Here are some titles Katherine recommends that are in conversation with or inspired the writing of Still Life:

The Friend by Sigrid Nunez
The Idiot by Elif Batuman
Little Rabbit by Alyssa Songsiridej
Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters
Imogen by Nevada Bonnie

And Katherine was so generous to give us an additional list of the trans authors she recommends as well! ::

LOTE by Shola von Reinhold
Gossip Girl Fanfic Novella by Charlie Markbreiter 
My Volcano and Bad Houses by John Elizabeth Stintzi 
and the writings of: Alison Rumfitt, Jackie Ess, Gretchen Felker-Martin, torrin a. greathouse, and Isle McElroy

We're thrilled to announce that we are currently open for submissions!

In this episode, we discuss what's new about this year's open reading period, our tips and tricks for submitting your work, and what our vision for Host's 2025 publishing program holds!

We're looking for poetry and fiction (short stories or novellas) full-length manuscripts submissions between September 13th, 2024 through October 15th, 2024. Please review the finer details of our general guidelines on our submissions page.

Submissions are open to any US-based poet or fiction writer. Though we love and have historically published works in translation, all submissions for this period must be original work written in English.

Our reading fee is $15, however a limited number of free entries will be available for writers for whom the reading fee presents a financial hardship. Please contact us at [email protected].

We encourage to all who submit that familiarize themselves with our most recent publications. You may purchase our titles on our website or through our distributor. 

Submissions will be reviewed and participants will be notified by February 1st, 2024.

We can't wait to read your poetry and short fiction manuscripts! As always, thanks for listening <3

In this episode, we discuss the works by women in translation that have been blowing our socks off this month. We talk about literary celebrities in the small press world, how their books have opened our minds, and taught us something new about literature.

The books we discussed in this episode are:

Tentacle by Rita Indiana

Autobiography of Death by Kim Hyesoon