Larissa Pham is an artist and writer in Brooklyn, New York. Her essays and criticism have appeared in The Paris Review Daily, Guernica, The Nation, Village Voice, and elsewhere. She is the author of Fantasian, an erotic thriller novella. In this episode, Larissa talks about her career evolution and about what it’s like for her to be a working artist. She shares what a typical week looks like for her, how she differentiates between passion projects and paid projects, the advice she’d go back and give herself at the start of this uncertain and unconventional career path, and more. We also dig into a discussion about memoir, and the art and craft of writing well about your own life. She shares tips and advice, as well as personal experiences and mistakes made in her own writing, and it was really refreshing for me to hear a writer reflect on their work like this. We also talk about sex, desire, and intimacy, which are reoccurring themes in Larissa’s writing and are one of the aspects of her work that I connect with the most. I really enjoyed talking with and getting to know Larissa, and I hope you do too! (more…)