Tin House is proud to present Junk: The Podcast with Tommy “Teebs” Pico. No one’s better at talking about Junk than Teebs himself—so without further ado, we’re handing over the mic.
Junk: The Podcast takes its cue from a line in my book Junk: “It’s important to value yr Junk bc Junk has the best stories.” In each episode, I interview three literary and cultural luminaries about a keepsake, souvenir, or rando bauble with them in their apartment, sussing out the story of their junk. To close out each show, I read a fizzy, short excerpt from the book.
Our first episode features Victoria Ruiz, lead singer of Downtown Boys; Jenny Zhang of Sour Heart fame, winner of the 2018 PEN America award for debut fiction; and co-host of BuzzFeed‘s Thirst-Aid Kit, Nichole Perkins. Future Junkers include Still Processing co-host Jenna Wortham, comedian Bowen Yang, essayist Chelsea Hodson, poet sam sax, writer and editor Matt Ortile, my Food 4 Thot co-hosts Fran Tirado, Joseph Osmundson, and Dennis Norris II, journalist Harron Walker, literary badass Alexander Chee, and a smattering of other tender morsels.
Episode 1 is out now. Listen here! Subscribe! Rate! Review!
Teebs
Tommy “Teebs” Pico is the Whiting Award-winning author of three books of poetry: Junk, Nature Poem, and IRL, winner of the Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize. He was a Queer/Art/Mentors inaugural Fellow, Lambda Literary Fellow in Poetry, and NYSCA/NYFA Fellow in Poetry from the New York Foundation for the Arts. Originally from the Viejas Indian reservation of the Kumeyaay nation, he now lives in Brooklyn where he co-curates the reading series Poets With Attitude (PWA) with Morgan Parker, is a contributing editor at Literary Hub, and co-hosts the podcast Food 4 Thot. Food 4 Thot has been featured in Entertainment Weekly, Vulture, HuffPost, OUT, and more.