Exacting something of a tribute to John GIORNO’s “Dial-a-Poem” project (as 2018 marked its fiftieth anniversary), Tyrant Hotel sees NY Tyrant and Hotel collaborate and collate unexpurgated readings and writings by authors and poets recorded straight to smartphone. Tyrant Hotel was edited by Jordan CASTRO and Dominic JAECKLE, and the first and third installments in the series were first broadcast on Resonance 104.4 FM.
Notes on Contributors
Nicole Kidman vs. Apollo
a. Kristen ISKANDRIAN, ‘I feel like garbage...’ – An Introduction [0.00];
b. Nicolette POLEK, ‘The Rope Barrier’ [0.46];
c. Tao LIN, from the forthcoming Leave Society [4.30];
d. Kristen ISKANDRIAN, ‘As I Lay (Imagining I’m) Dying’ [9.25];
e. Luc SANTE, ‘(Notes to be engraved at the foot of the tomb of) The Unknown Soldier’ [15.20];
f. Chelsea HODSON, ‘To a Duck in the Garden of Ninfa’ [22.10];
g. Wayne KOESTENBAUM, ‘thick book on mother-shelf pinnacled me o’er Tums’ [30.00];
h. Eley WILLIAMS, ‘Collect’ [41.46];
i. Kathryn SCANLAN, ‘The Candidate’ [47.00];
k. Jon AUMAN, humming a verse from Jonny Black’s ‘Paper Doll’ (1943) [54.02]
°
Thirty Aught Six
a. Christalla FANNON, ‘Paper Thin Hotel’ (L .Cohen, 1977) [0.00];
b. Scott McCLANAHAN, ‘Nicky’ [2.47];
c. Juliet ESCORIA, ‘Roadkill’ [16.15]
°
Mother Pig (Opposing Disneyland)
a. Iain SINCLAIR, ‘Animal Drums’ (Prompt Note) [0.00];
b. Lily HACKETT, ‘Seabird’ [4.12];
c. Brad PHILLIPS, ‘Mom & Dad’ (Deleted Scenes) [7.38];
d. Frederic TUTEN, ‘Rimbaud in the Kitchen’ [12.13];
e. Ashton POLITANOFF, ‘She had Wanted to be Closer to the Ocean’[23.19];
f. Isabel WAIDNER, ‘War Crybabies’ [28.19];
g. David KEENAN, ‘Bible Time’ [41.50];
h. Vi KHI NAO, ‘Human Camouflage’ [45.26];
i. SJ FOWLER, ‘Animal Drums’ (Reprise) [55.10]
Kristen ISKANDRIAN is the author of the novel MOTHEREST. Her short stories have been published or are forthcoming in Tin House, Ploughshares, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Zyzzyva, O. Henry Prize Stories, Best American Short Stories, and other places. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.
Nicolette POLEK is a writer living in Maryland. You can read her stories at New York Tyrant, Hobart, Chicago Quarterly Review, Muumuu House, and elsewhere. ‘The Rope Barrier’ appears in Tyrant Hotel ahead of its inclusion in Hotel #5.
Tao LIN is the author of Trip (2018), Taipei (2013) and other books.
Luc SANTE’s books include Low Life (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003), The Factory of Facts (Granta, 1998), Kill All Your Darlings (Verse Chorus Press, 2007), and most recently The Other Paris (Faber & Faber, 2015). ‘The Unknown Soldier’ was written for an academic conference on urbanism where participants were invited to look at the city through the eyes of a persona; suggestions were an architect, a preservationist, a budget planner, et cetera – Sante decided to be a corpse. SANTE appears in Hotel #4.
Chelsea HODSON is the author of the book of essays Tonight I’m Someone Else. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. ‘To a Duck in the Garden of Ninfa’ was originally published in Off Assignment.
Wayne KOESTENBAUM—poet, critic, artist, performer—has published nineteen books, including Camp Marmalade, My 1980s & Other Essays, The Anatomy of Harpo Marx, Humiliation, Hotel Theory, Andy Warhol, and Jackie Under My Skin. He is a Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center. KOESTENBAUM’s ‘thick book on mother-shelf pinnacled me o’er Tums’ is an excerpt from the recently published Camp Marmalade (Nighboat Books, 2018).
Eley WILLIAMS is a writer and lecturer based in Ealing. Her collection of short stories Attrib., and Other Stories (Influx Press) was chosen by Ali Smith as one of the best debut works of fiction published in 2017. Twice short-listed for the White Review Short Story Prize, her works has appeared in The London Review of Books, The White Review, Ambit and the Cambridge Literary Review. She has a pamphlet of poetry titled Frit (Sad Press) and is currently co-editor of fiction for the online journal 3:AM Magazine.
Kathryn SCANLAN’s work has appeared in NOON, Fence, American Short Fiction, and in the inaugural issue of Egress. She’s received fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center and the Tin House Summer Workshop, and her story ‘The Old Mill’ was selected by Michael Cunningham for the 2010 Iowa Review Fiction Prize. Her debut book of stories, The Dominant Animal, will be published by Little Island Press in the UK and FSG in the US in 2019.
Jon AUMAN is an amateur vocalist—a contributing editor to Hotel—and a writer renting in New York.
Christalla FANNON is a Bristol-based artist and writer.
Scott McCLANAHAN is the writer of The Sarah Book (Tyrant Books, 2017), Crapalachia (Two Dollar Radio, 2013) and Hill William (Tyrant Books, 2013). He hasn’t won any awards or grants.
Juliet ESCORIA has written the forthcoming Juliet the Maniac (Melville House, 2019) and the already-existing Witch Hunt (Lazy Fascist, 2016) and Black Cloud (CCM; Emily Books, 2014).
Iain SINCLAIR is a British writer, documentarist, filmmaker, poet, flaneur, metropolitan prophet and urban shaman, keeper of lost cultures and futurologist.
Lily HACKETT lives in Shepherd’s Bush, London. Her writing has been featured in Hotel, NY Tyrant Magazine, Egress #1, Egress #2 and X-R-A-Y Magazine.
Brad PHILLIPS is 45 years old.
Frederic TUTEN grew up in the Bronx. At fifteen, he dropped out of High School to become a painter and live in Paris. He took odd jobs and studied briefly at the Art Students League, and eventually went back to school, continuing to earn a PhD in early 19th century American Literature from New York University. He travelled through Latin and South America, studied pre-Columbian and Mexican mural painting at the University of Mexico, wrote about Brazilian Cinema Novo, and joined that circle of film makers (which included Glauber Rocha and Nelson Pereira dos Santos). Tuten finally did live in Paris, where he taught film and literature at the University of Paris. He acted in a short film by Alain Resnais, co-wrote the cult film Possession (with the film’s director, Andrzej Zulawski), and conducted summer writing workshops with Paul Bowles in Tangiers. TUTEN’s short stories, art and film criticism have appeared in such places as ArtForum, The New York Times, Vogue, Conjunctions, Granta and Harpers. In addition, he has written essays and fictions for artists’ catalogues including John Baldessari, Eric Fischl, Pierre Huyghe, Jeff Koons, David Salle and Roy Lichtenstein. He has published five novels: The Adventures of Mao on the Long March; Tallien: A Brief Romance; Tintin in the New World; Van Gogh’s Bad Café; The Green Hour; and most recently, Self Portraits, a collection of short stories. TUTEN has received a Guggenheim Fellowship for Fiction and was given the Award for Distinguished Writing from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. My Young Life—a memoir detailing Tuten’s early years (his most recent release)—was published by Simon and Schuster in 2018.
Ashton POLITANOFF lives in Redondo Beach, California. His fiction has appeared in NOON, Egress, New York Tyrant and elsewhere.
Isabel WAIDNER is a writer and critical theorist. Their books include We Are Made of Diamond Stuff (2019), Gaudy Bauble (2017) and Liberating the Canon: An Anthology of Innovative Literature (ed., 2018), published by Dostoyevsky Wannabe. Waidner is the co-curator of the event series “Queers Read This” at London’s Institute of Contemporary Art (with Richard Porter), and lectures at University of Roehampton, London.
David KEENAN is a novelist based in Glasgow, Scotland. His debut novel, 2017’s This Is Memorial Device (Faber & Faber), was the story of a fictional band in a fictional post-punk scene in Airdrie, a small town in central Scotland. It won the Colyer-Bristow/London Magazine prize for debut fiction and was shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize. It has been translated into Spanish, French, German and Italian. His second novel, the critically-acclaimed For the Good Times, was published by Faber & Faber in January 2019. The novel takes place in Belfast, Northern Ireland, during the Troubles in the 1970s, and tracks the fate of four young men who join the IRA. He is currently at work on a non-fiction book about South America entitled I Am the Body of All the Conquistadors.
Vi KHI NAO is the author of Sheep Machine (Black Sun Lit, 2018) and Umbilical Hospital (Press 1913, 2017), and of the short stories collection, A Brief Alphabet of Torture (which won FC2’sRonald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize in 2016) the novel, Fish in Exile (Coffee House Press, 2016) and the poetry collection, The Old Philosopher (which won the Nightboat Books Prize for Poetry in 2014). Her work includes poetry, fiction, film and cross-genre collaboration. Her stories, poems, and drawings have appeared in NOON, Ploughshares, Black Warrior Review and BOMB, among others. She holds an MFA in fiction from Brown University, where she received the John Hawkes and Feldman Prizes in fiction and the Kim Ann Arstark Memorial Award in poetry.
SJ FOWLER is a writer and artist. He has published multiple books of poetry, art, essays and collaborations. He has been commissioned by Tate Modern, BBC Radio 3, Tate Britain, The Wellcome Collection and Liverpool Biennial. He’s been translated into 27 languages. He is the director of Writers’ Centre Kingston and European Poetry Festival. The Animal Drums is his debut feature film.
Nicolette POLEK is a writer living in Maryland. You can read her stories at New York Tyrant, Hobart, Chicago Quarterly Review, Muumuu House, and elsewhere. ‘The Rope Barrier’ appears in Tyrant Hotel ahead of its inclusion in Hotel #5.
Tao LIN is the author of Trip (2018), Taipei (2013) and other books.
Luc SANTE’s books include Low Life (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003), The Factory of Facts (Granta, 1998), Kill All Your Darlings (Verse Chorus Press, 2007), and most recently The Other Paris (Faber & Faber, 2015). ‘The Unknown Soldier’ was written for an academic conference on urbanism where participants were invited to look at the city through the eyes of a persona; suggestions were an architect, a preservationist, a budget planner, et cetera – Sante decided to be a corpse. SANTE appears in Hotel #4.
Chelsea HODSON is the author of the book of essays Tonight I’m Someone Else. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. ‘To a Duck in the Garden of Ninfa’ was originally published in Off Assignment.
Wayne KOESTENBAUM—poet, critic, artist, performer—has published nineteen books, including Camp Marmalade, My 1980s & Other Essays, The Anatomy of Harpo Marx, Humiliation, Hotel Theory, Andy Warhol, and Jackie Under My Skin. He is a Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center. KOESTENBAUM’s ‘thick book on mother-shelf pinnacled me o’er Tums’ is an excerpt from the recently published Camp Marmalade (Nighboat Books, 2018).
Eley WILLIAMS is a writer and lecturer based in Ealing. Her collection of short stories Attrib., and Other Stories (Influx Press) was chosen by Ali Smith as one of the best debut works of fiction published in 2017. Twice short-listed for the White Review Short Story Prize, her works has appeared in The London Review of Books, The White Review, Ambit and the Cambridge Literary Review. She has a pamphlet of poetry titled Frit (Sad Press) and is currently co-editor of fiction for the online journal 3:AM Magazine.
Kathryn SCANLAN’s work has appeared in NOON, Fence, American Short Fiction, and in the inaugural issue of Egress. She’s received fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center and the Tin House Summer Workshop, and her story ‘The Old Mill’ was selected by Michael Cunningham for the 2010 Iowa Review Fiction Prize. Her debut book of stories, The Dominant Animal, will be published by Little Island Press in the UK and FSG in the US in 2019.
Jon AUMAN is an amateur vocalist—a contributing editor to Hotel—and a writer renting in New York.
Christalla FANNON is a Bristol-based artist and writer.
Scott McCLANAHAN is the writer of The Sarah Book (Tyrant Books, 2017), Crapalachia (Two Dollar Radio, 2013) and Hill William (Tyrant Books, 2013). He hasn’t won any awards or grants.
Juliet ESCORIA has written the forthcoming Juliet the Maniac (Melville House, 2019) and the already-existing Witch Hunt (Lazy Fascist, 2016) and Black Cloud (CCM; Emily Books, 2014).
Iain SINCLAIR is a British writer, documentarist, filmmaker, poet, flaneur, metropolitan prophet and urban shaman, keeper of lost cultures and futurologist.
Lily HACKETT lives in Shepherd’s Bush, London. Her writing has been featured in Hotel, NY Tyrant Magazine, Egress #1, Egress #2 and X-R-A-Y Magazine.
Brad PHILLIPS is 45 years old.
Frederic TUTEN grew up in the Bronx. At fifteen, he dropped out of High School to become a painter and live in Paris. He took odd jobs and studied briefly at the Art Students League, and eventually went back to school, continuing to earn a PhD in early 19th century American Literature from New York University. He travelled through Latin and South America, studied pre-Columbian and Mexican mural painting at the University of Mexico, wrote about Brazilian Cinema Novo, and joined that circle of film makers (which included Glauber Rocha and Nelson Pereira dos Santos). Tuten finally did live in Paris, where he taught film and literature at the University of Paris. He acted in a short film by Alain Resnais, co-wrote the cult film Possession (with the film’s director, Andrzej Zulawski), and conducted summer writing workshops with Paul Bowles in Tangiers. TUTEN’s short stories, art and film criticism have appeared in such places as ArtForum, The New York Times, Vogue, Conjunctions, Granta and Harpers. In addition, he has written essays and fictions for artists’ catalogues including John Baldessari, Eric Fischl, Pierre Huyghe, Jeff Koons, David Salle and Roy Lichtenstein. He has published five novels: The Adventures of Mao on the Long March; Tallien: A Brief Romance; Tintin in the New World; Van Gogh’s Bad Café; The Green Hour; and most recently, Self Portraits, a collection of short stories. TUTEN has received a Guggenheim Fellowship for Fiction and was given the Award for Distinguished Writing from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. My Young Life—a memoir detailing Tuten’s early years (his most recent release)—was published by Simon and Schuster in 2018.
Ashton POLITANOFF lives in Redondo Beach, California. His fiction has appeared in NOON, Egress, New York Tyrant and elsewhere.
Isabel WAIDNER is a writer and critical theorist. Their books include We Are Made of Diamond Stuff (2019), Gaudy Bauble (2017) and Liberating the Canon: An Anthology of Innovative Literature (ed., 2018), published by Dostoyevsky Wannabe. Waidner is the co-curator of the event series “Queers Read This” at London’s Institute of Contemporary Art (with Richard Porter), and lectures at University of Roehampton, London.
David KEENAN is a novelist based in Glasgow, Scotland. His debut novel, 2017’s This Is Memorial Device (Faber & Faber), was the story of a fictional band in a fictional post-punk scene in Airdrie, a small town in central Scotland. It won the Colyer-Bristow/London Magazine prize for debut fiction and was shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize. It has been translated into Spanish, French, German and Italian. His second novel, the critically-acclaimed For the Good Times, was published by Faber & Faber in January 2019. The novel takes place in Belfast, Northern Ireland, during the Troubles in the 1970s, and tracks the fate of four young men who join the IRA. He is currently at work on a non-fiction book about South America entitled I Am the Body of All the Conquistadors.
Vi KHI NAO is the author of Sheep Machine (Black Sun Lit, 2018) and Umbilical Hospital (Press 1913, 2017), and of the short stories collection, A Brief Alphabet of Torture (which won FC2’sRonald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize in 2016) the novel, Fish in Exile (Coffee House Press, 2016) and the poetry collection, The Old Philosopher (which won the Nightboat Books Prize for Poetry in 2014). Her work includes poetry, fiction, film and cross-genre collaboration. Her stories, poems, and drawings have appeared in NOON, Ploughshares, Black Warrior Review and BOMB, among others. She holds an MFA in fiction from Brown University, where she received the John Hawkes and Feldman Prizes in fiction and the Kim Ann Arstark Memorial Award in poetry.
SJ FOWLER is a writer and artist. He has published multiple books of poetry, art, essays and collaborations. He has been commissioned by Tate Modern, BBC Radio 3, Tate Britain, The Wellcome Collection and Liverpool Biennial. He’s been translated into 27 languages. He is the director of Writers’ Centre Kingston and European Poetry Festival. The Animal Drums is his debut feature film.