The Host Dispatch: A Literary Podcast

In this episode, we chat with C. Rees about their haunting debut collection, NOCTUARY. Beginning with a tarot pull, we entered this episode with an eye toward the divinatory poetics woven through C.'s work, discussing the mercurial ways that our beloved dead can emerge when we are, as C. models so beautifully in this book, keeping the channel open for those encounters.   

C. Rees (they/them) is a nonbinary poet, educator, and bookseller. They were raised in Pennsylvania (Lënapehòkink) and currently live on Coahuiltecan, Comanche, Jumanos, Lipan Apache, Sana, and Tonkawa land, what is now Austin, Texas. C. holds an MFA in Poetry from the New Writers Project. They are ideologically and materially committed to a free Palestine. NOCTUARY is their first book.

In this episode, we had the immense honor to chat with Chiagoziem Jideofor, author of local remedies, 

In local remedies, Chiagoziem Jideofor speaks through memory, myth and strangeness to interpret lived and inherited experiences, and in this conversation we talk about everything from the Igbo Uri art form that is featured on the cover, to the way poems are like very different fruits that grow on the same tree—a tree that doesn't belong to anyone, but is ours collectively to tend and to share.
 
Chiagoziem is so fun to talk to, and brings such an engaging and meditative presence to the conversation on this feral podcast. We loved getting to learn more about her and about local remedies, and we're so honored to share this humorous and wise poet's work with you. As always, thanks for listening!

In this episode, we dive deep into the creative practices and philosophies of the brilliant gamer, poet, professor, scholar, and the most charismatic introvert we know, dezireé a. brown! 

Dez's debut poetry collection, they/she/he: ritual to forget your (un)becoming, won the 2025 Joe W. Bratcher Prize, for its immense tenderness, singular experimentation, and refusal to conform to what we think we know about poetry.

Influenced by video game worlds, choose-your-own adventures, and a multifaceted collective of Mesopotamian goddesses, speaking with Dez about this collection led to the most engaging conversation about gender, transformation, and healing, as well as video games and the space they can create for us to imagine ourselves into a better future. 

We know you'll love this conversation with this inimitable poet. As always, thanks for listening!

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