[Part Two] Lucia Berlin: Laundromats and Missing Puzzle Pieces (with Elizabeth Geoghegan)

In this two-part episode, I have the privilege of chatting about Lucia Berlin’s short fiction with writer (and Lucia Berlin’s personal friend) Elizabeth Geoghegan. In the first part, Elizabeth tells me how she met Lucia Berlin and what kind of teacher she was; we also discuss the story “Angel’s Laundromat”. In the second part of the episode, I ask Elizabeth about the stories “A Manual for Cleaning Women,” “So Long,” and “Carmen”. A very special thank you to David Berlin and the Lucia Berlin Estate for allowing me to include two clips of Lucia Berlin reading “Angel’s Laundromat”. You can listen to the whole reading on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/readlucia/lucia-berlin-angels-laundromat

Works mentioned (in order of appearance):
Elizabeth Geoghegan, eightball (SFWP, 2019)
Elizabeth Geoghegan, Natural Disasters (She Writes Press, 2014)
Elizabeth Geoghegan, The Marco Chronicles (SFWP, 2023)
Lucia Berlin, Welcome Home: A Memoir with Selected Photographs and Letters (Picador, 2018)

Stories from Lucia Berlin’s A Manual for Cleaning Women (Picador, 2015)
- “Here It Is Saturday”
- “Angel’s Laundromat”
- “A Manual for Cleaning Women”
- “So Long”
- “Grief”
- “Mama”
- “Carmen”
- “Unmanageable”

Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.