Drinks with Tony
Books & Literature
About
Tony DuShane chats with authors every week.
Episodes
- Rachel Walther #353
Rachel Walther, author of Born To Lose: The Misfits Who Made Dog Day Afternoon, joins Drinks with Tony to discuss the 1975 film "Dog Day Afternoon," a true story of a Brooklyn bank robbery.
- Jaydi Samuels Kuba #352
Jaydi Samuels Kuba, author of "Your Last First Date," joins Drinks with Tony to discuss dating, matchmaking, and her television writing career, including work on Family Guy and the Good Times reboot. Information on LJ Matchmaking is also p…
- Ed Lin #351
Ed Lin, author of "The Dead Can’t Make A Living: A Taipei Market Novel," appeared on Drinks with Tony with host Tony DuShane. They discussed Taiwan, writing novels, and bands such as New Order, The Sugarcubes, and Public Image Ltd.
- Frances Crawford #350
Frances Crawford, author of "A Bad Bad Place," discusses her late-in-life transition to novel writing, including the process of securing an agent and publisher. She shares insights on shifting one's life path to achieve writing goals.
- Darls Centola #349
Darls Centola, author of Finding Druth with Michale: A Memoir of Friendship, Faith, and First Love, shares her experiences growing up as a Jehovah's Witness and her eventual exit from the religion. She discusses her shared bible study in h…
- Jared Chiang-Zeizel #348
Jared Chiang-Zeizel is the co-author of A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming. We chat all things dreams, sex dreams, seeing dead people in dreams, and how to become a lucid dreamer. March 4th @ 6pm: Tony’s Free Creative Writing Workshop at Los…
- Kirk Ellis #347
Kirk Ellis is the author of They Kill People: Bonnie and Clyde, a Hollywood Revolution, and America’s Obsession with Guns and Outlaws. We chat film, mythology, intimate relationships with our characters, and his series biopics of Benjamin…
- Grant Faulkner #346
Grant Faulkner is the co-author of Something Out There In the Distance. We chat the open road of Nevada and Arizona, the religion of storytelling, how much money we make writing books, and so much more. Feb 4th @ 6pm: Tony’s Free Creative…
- Joe Clifford and Barry Bunin #345
Joe Clifford and Barry Bunin join me to discuss their book Inside CDD Vault. We chat drugs, Silicon Valley, advances with psychedelics, and so much more. Subscribe to DuShane.substack.com and listen to Drinks with Tony on iTunes , Spotify…
- Jaime Parker Stickle #344
Jaime Parker Stickle is the author of Vicious Cycle, her debut novel. We chat the fun of colon cancer screenings, how I shouldn’t be a misogynist anymore, life of marriage and kids, how every date needs proof of no STDs even before the fir…
- Gail Butensky #342
Gail Butensky is the co-author of Something out There in the Distance where she contributes her photography. Known for her years documenting the music scenes in the 1980s and 1990s in NYC, San Francisco, Chicago and beyond, we chat how she…
- Cara Black #341
Cara Black is the author of Huguette. She’s also the author of 21 novels in her Aimée Leduc series, all set in Paris. We talk Paris, and what else is there to talk about after the subject of Paris? We talk writing and such, but seriously,…
- Andrew Rubin #340
Andrew Rubin is the author of Hell or High Winter: A Novel. We chat his debut novel, the scaries of dating in Los Angeles, sharing a one bedroom in NYC with a bunch of roommates, why writing novels and screenplays gives us more tools for e…
- Tod Goldberg #339
Tod Goldberg is the author of Only Way Out: A Novel. We chat the span of his literary career, our admiration for authors like Joe Loya, and how to celebrate Christmas and Hanukkah and get away with it. Register for my December Screenwritin…
- Chip Jacobs #338
Chip Jacobs is the author of Later Days: A Novel. We chat about NDEs, the afterlife, God, when we made fools of ourselves in front of celebrities, and so much more. Only SIX spots in my December Screenwriting Workshop , the first annual ho…
- Carol Tyler #337
Carol Tyler is an American painter, educator, comedian, and eleven-time Eisner Award-nominated cartoonist known for her autobiographical comics. Her latest book is The Ephemerata: Shaping the Exquisite Nature of Grief. Registration for my…
- Darrin Doyle #336
Darrin Doyle is the author of The Dark Will End The Dark: Short Stories. We chat great cities of the mid-west, classic novels and short stories, working with small presses versus the large publishers, and so much more. Register for my inte…
- Joe McGinniss Jr. #335
Joe McGinniss Jr. is the author of Damaged People: A Memoir of Fathers and Sons. We chat the complexity of father and son relationships, how writing is a process more than an outcome, why writing memoirs is not therapeutic, family members…
- Rob Grant #334 Writer/Director of This Too Shall Pass
Rob Grant is the writer and director of This Too Shall Pass coming out October 24, 2025. It’s a superb coming-of-age film set in the 1980s featuring a Mormon protagonist trying to figure out love and life as a teenager. Register for my int…
- H. Lee Barnes #333
H. Lee Barnes is the author of Emerald City Blues: A Novel. 10-Day Screenwriting Outline Workshop is open for registration for Dec 22 – Jan 2, Click here to register . Lee and I discuss why people lie, combat in Vietnam, dating advice for…
- Stefanie Leder #332
Stefanie Leder is the author of Love, Coffee & Revolution: A Novel. We discuss how she became a TV writer and showrunner, how she wrote this debut novel 20 years ago and it finally came out, how her politics have shifted over time, and so…
- Caitlin Myer – Caitlin Walks At Night – Ep. #331
Caitlin Myer is my writer friend from San Francisco. She has lived in Portugal for the last 7 years. Before that she traveled the world going wherever life would open to her. She posted photos for many years under the title Caitlin Walks A…
- Carlo Rotella #330
Carlo Rotella is the author of What Can I Get Out Of This? – Teaching and Learning in a Classroom Full of Skeptics. We discuss his optimism for college students engaged in reading novels, why many of his students hate reading House Of Mirt…
- Todd Solondz and Larry Clark #329
I caught up with Todd Solondz in San Francisco in 2004 when he was promoting Palindromes. I caught up with Larry Clark when he was promoting Wassup Rockers in 2005. These are two of my favorite interviews from the Drinks with Tony archives…
- Terry Zwigoff Ep. #328
Terry Zwigoff is a great American filmmaker. Many of you know him for Bad Santa, but in 2006 he released a film called Art School Confidential and I had him on Drinks with Tony, yes, 19 years ago. Come with me down memory lane as I recall…
- Kerfuffling Genitals by Tony DuShane Ep. 327
Tony DuShane is the author of Confessions of a Teenage Jesus Jerk . This episode is called Kerfuffling Genitals. I talk about a botched one-night stand, words you can’t use on YouTube, inspiration from Anne Lamott and Charles Bukowski, lif…
- Nikki Nash #326
Nikki Nash is the author of Collateral Stardust: Chasing Warren Beatty and Other Foolish Things. We chat Don Cornelias and Soul Train, working with Conan O’Brien, how Jeff Goldbloom is present, like really present, like almost too in the m…
- Fadi Zaghmout #325
Fadi Zaghmout is the author of The Man of Middling Height. Originally published in Arabic it’s now available in English from Syracuse University Press. We chat speculative fiction vs. sci-fi and we still can’t figure out how publishers def…
- Alecia McKenzie #324
Alecia McKenzie is the author of A Million Aunties: A Novel out now on Akashic Books. We chat walking amongst the dead literary spirits of Paris, her start writing as a four year old in Kingston, Jamaica, why every neighborhood needs aunti…
- Tad Crawford #323
Tad Crawford is the author of A Woman in the Wild. We also chat his other book, The Secret Life of Monday, and we talk about IQ84 and other Murakami, Proust, long novels, the writing process, creating characters, and the word ‘esoteric’ wh…
- James Elkins #322
James Elkins is the author of A Short Introduction to Anneliese out now on Unnamed Press. Novel 1 registration is open for August workshops, limited to six students: Register here for AFTERNOON classes and Register here for EVENING classes…
- Ralph Steadman #321
Ralph Steadman illustrated Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Also a writer, I interviewed Ralph in 2007 for his memoir The Joke’s Over. A deep cut from the Drinks with Tony archives. We chat Hunter S. Thompson, Oscar Zet…
- Kurt Baumeister #320
Kurt Baumeister is the author of Twilight of the Gods on Stalking Horse Press. He’s also an acquisitions editor for 7.13. We discuss how we lose friends and family when writing auto-fiction, Martin Amis’ Inside Story, Ian Maloney’s South B…
- Jeffrey Konvitz #319
Jeffrey Konvitz is the author of The Circus of Satan: A Novel exploring the Irish mob in New York City of the early 1900s. Based on true events, yet fictionalized for emotional truth. We chat about his first novel The Sentinel and his expe…
- Tom Lutz #318
Tom Lutz is the author of 1925 A Literary Encyclopedia out now on Rare Bird Lit. We discuss everything from Fitzgerald to the Harlem Renaissance and more from 1925 A Literary Encyclopedia, his move to France and adjusting to French life an…
- Ted Kessler on Billy Childish #317
Ted Kessler is the author of The Authorized Unauthorized History of Billy Childish: To Ease My Troubled Mind. As a veteran music journalist and friend to Childish since the 1990s, Ted has created an intimate portrait of the living legend.…
- Jon Ronson #316
Jon Ronson is the author of So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed. I interviewed him in 2015 when the book came out and it’s pretty mind blowing where cancel culture has ‘matured’ ten years since. Check out Writing Is Hard and Why You Should Writ…
- Lucinda Berry #315
Lucinda Berry is the author of One In Four: A Thriller. We chat child psychology, running marathons, how the brain works, and her transition to full time author. New creative writing workshops and book groups coming in May and June on DuSh…
- Rachel Paris #314
Rachel Paris is the author of See How They Fall: A Novel. We discuss the humiliating vulnerability of writing and why everyone should do it, why we should never write for the market, or as she says, ‘Write what’s eating us inside’ … becaus…
- Chuck Klosterman #313
Chuck Klosterman is the author of tons of books. This is a tape from my interview with him around 2012 when he was promoting The Visible Man. We met at Zam Zam in San Francisco. I’m having fun just going through a bunch of old interviews t…
- Matthieu Ricard #312
Matthieu Ricard is the author of Happiness. I interviewed him around 2003 and he introduced the idea of mindfulness to me. He is also assistant and translator for the Dalai Lama. I was lucky his publicist got in touch with me for the book…
- Marlon James #311
Marlon James won the Man Booker Prize for his novel A Brief History of Seven Killings. I caught up with him in 2005 when he was touring his first book John Crow’s Devil. So, another tape from the archives we have fun exploring this week on…
- Colum McCain #310
Colum McCain is the author of Twist: A Novel. We had a great time talking NYC, Ireland, the obsessive structure of writing environments for novels, and his really cool organization Narrative 4 that taps the storytelling in our hearts to yo…
- Richard Hell #309
Richard Hell is the author of Godlike. And this interview is old, like 2003 or 2004 taping. We met at a bar called The Argus in San Francisco, he was mad at me that it wasn’t a radio studio, but we chatted and he became lovely. He was mad…
- Miranda July #308
Miranda July, two interviews from the archives. The first one is from 2015 regarding her novel The First Bad Man. The second one is from 2005 regarding her film Me and You and Everyone We Know. I thought the 2005 interview was lost, I can’…
- Alex Higley #307
Alex Higley is the author of True Failure: A Novel. We do a deep dive into the novel writing process and how we’re always being manipulated by stories. On March 1st at 9am Pacific we discuss Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger. Our online…
- Angela Brown #306
Angela Brown is the author of Some Other Time. We discuss how her and her husband met at 14 in high school, writing speculative fiction, do magic moments happen in life, and so much more. On March 1st at 9am Pacific we discuss Catcher in t…
- William Boyle #305
William Boyle is the author of Saint of the Narrows Street. We chat Brooklyn Dodgers, Oxford Mississippi, James Joyce, the fun of NOT organizing personal libraries to indulge in the hunt, and so much more. February Book Smash is Catcher in…
- Paul Ollinger #304
Paul Ollinger is the author of Reasonably Happy: The Skeptic’s Guide to Achievable Contentment. He’s also a podcaster and standup comic. We discuss specific details of when I lost my virginity on my wedding night, his audition for Chelsea…
- Francesca Lia Block #303
Francesca Lia Block is the author of House of Hearts and many other books. We discuss love and heartbreak, her moment with David Byrne. LA punk rock and how The Go-Go’s inspired her to become a writer, Weetzie Bat, and so much more. Februa…