Listen to Craftwork Episode 24: Building Communities, Finding Guardrails, & Reading the Comments Section w/ Jean Marc Ah-Sen.

In this interview, we chat with Jean Marc Ah-Sen about comic books, literary scenes, flipping the script on what a book can be, and so much more.

Jean Marc Ah-Sen is the author of Grand Menteur, In the Beggarly Style of Imitation, and Kilworthy Tanner. His writing has appeared in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Literary Hub, Catapult, The Comics Journal, Maclean’s, The Walrus, and elsewhere.

Books mentioned in this episode:

The Fall – Albert Camus
I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp – Richard Hell
The Talented Mr. Ripley – Patricia Highsmith
Intimacy – Hanif Kureishi
Biography of X – Catherine Lacey
Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle – Vladimir Nabokov
Anti-Woo: The Lifeman’s Improved Primer for Non-Lovers; The Theory and Practice of Gamesmanship: Or the Art of Winning Games Without Actually Cheating – Stephen Potter
Lobotomy: Surviving the Ramones – Dee Dee Ramone
Endling – Maria Reva
The Dying Animal – Philip Roth
Striptease – Georges Simenon
The Handyman Method – Andrew Sullivan
Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
The Island of Doctor Moreau; The Time Machine – H. G. Wells