{"id":28333,"date":"2021-12-24T09:07:54","date_gmt":"2021-12-24T14:07:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=28333"},"modified":"2021-12-24T09:08:23","modified_gmt":"2021-12-24T14:08:23","slug":"jose-pablo-iriarte","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2021\/12\/24\/jose-pablo-iriarte\/","title":{"rendered":"Nibble Neapolitan pizza with Jos\u00e9 Pablo Iriarte in Episode 161 of Eating the Fantastic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to the first of five Eating the Fantastic episodes recorded during DisCon III, the 79th World Science Fiction Convention<\/a>, which ended just a few days ago as this episode goes live. That recent event was quite a nostalgia fest for me, because the first time I attended a Worldcon was in 1974, the last time one was in held in D.C. I was only a teenager in that long ago year, but even then, I already knew — getting together with good friends over good food to yammer with them about science fiction was as much fun as anything offered by the official convention programming.<\/p>\n

My dinner companion the first night of the D.C. Worldcon was Jos\u00e9 Pablo Iriarte<\/a>, a Cuban American author of science fiction, fantasy, and children’s fiction. Their novelette, \u201cThe Substance of My Lives, the Accidents of Our Births,\u201d was a finalist for the Nebula Award and was long-listed for the James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award. Their short fiction has appeared in Lightspeed<\/em>, Strange Horizons<\/em>, Fireside Fiction<\/em>, Daily Science Fiction<\/em>, Escape Pod<\/em>, and many other venues, stories which have then been spotlighted on best-of lists assembled by Tangent Online<\/em>, iO9<\/em>, and others.<\/p>\n

When Jose told me one of his favorite foods was pizza, I knew I had to feed them D.C.\u2019s best, leading me to 2Amys<\/a>, which Thrillist<\/a> says prepares \u201cnear-perfect, delicate pies with bubbly crusts, fresh mozzarella, and fragrant basil. The Margherita is the baseline against which all Neapolitan pies in DC are judged.\u201d<\/p>\n

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We discussed their go-to karaoke song, why being a math teacher makes it even harder to write about math, what they learned from Speaker for the Dead<\/em>, how their feelings about Orson Scott Card help them empathize with those struggling over J.K. Rowling today, why they trunked their favorite story until a friend convinced them to send it out, their method for writing successful flash fiction, why they had no problem keeping their Nebula nomination a secret, how to create a good elevator pitch, and much more.<\/p>\n

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Here\u2019s how you can take a seat at the table with us — <\/p>\n

1) Subscribe at Apple Podcasts<\/a> — where I hope you’ll be tempted to sample a few of the 160 previous episodes.<\/p>\n

2) Use the RSS feed of http:\/\/eatingthefantastic.libsyn.com\/rss<\/a> on the device of your choice.<\/p>\n

3) Or simply listen via the embed below.<\/p>\n