Hey and

welcome back to the 824 podcast.

If you're a reader of contemporary fiction,

you're no doubt familiar with the names Brian Washington

and Ocean Vuong.

Brian just published his debut novel Memorial this fall,

and Ocean made his own debut last year with On Earth were Briefly Gorgeous.

We're thrilled to be adapting Memorial as a limited TV series, and now seems like as good a time as any to announce that we're also busy working on the film adaptation of On Earth, we're briefly gorgeous.

Both novels are essential winter reading, and this conversation between Brian and Ocean is a perfect primer.

My name is Ocean Wong. I'm a writer and poet.

My name is Brian Washington. I'm the author of Memorial and lot and I get to talk with

Ocean for the A24 podcast. How are you doing? Despite.

I feel like that's the... despite the world?

How is it like releasing a book in a book in a pandemic? I feel like this is something that's like an anthropological

interest, you know, for any writer and in the literary culture as a whole, perhaps decades from now,

perhaps forever.

We'll look at this collection of writers who,

you know, doing perhaps the most vulnerable thing

a writer can do, which is to step out into the world.

And for you, a debut novel you know something that is

no small feat in itself into a pandemic where the rules change you know obviously

wasn't what you expected but how has it been so far?

...