Time to Connect Episode #76 - Jonathan Evison - November 4, 2024

Many thanks to the brilliant novelist Jonathan Evison. What an honor to speak with Johnny about his life and his writing. He has published eight novels, with a ninth to be published in January (The Heart of Winter). As he has said before (and as he mentions in this interview), Johnny credits his third-grade teacher for making a writer out of him: "A lot of stuff, including my sister's death, and my parents' crumbling marriage, made for a rough patch around then. Also, my mania was practically off the charts. I ran my teachers ragged. My third-grade teacher, Mrs. Hanford, god love her, recognized that I liked to write, so she finally started sitting me in a corner and just letting me write, and in doing so, accomplished two things: She negated a huge distraction for the rest of the class, and she made a writer out of me.” I highly recommend all of Johnny’s novels. A few of my personal favorites are Lawn Boy, Again and Again, and Small World.
In this conversation, we talk about Johnny’s youth, his time singing in a punk band (March of Crimes), the Seattle Seahawks, Stone Gossard, books he is reading now, the job of writing blurbs for fellow writers, book tours, unpublished novels, artificial intelligence, the ban of his novel Lawn Boy, mutual friends, and many more things. Johnny was kind enough to read a long and very entertaining passage from his novel Again and Again.
Check out Jonathan Evison here: www.jonathanev...
Time to Connect theme music (“So Long”) by Krajicek & Shafer, from the album Blue Midwestern Dream (Borderline Social Club).