Writer and musician Mikel Jollett‘s memoir, Hollywood Park, sings the song of a remarkable arc of a life that started with poverty, addiction, and emotional abuse, and yet, improbably, led to Stanford University and the former on-air columnist for NPR’s “All Things Considered” finding his voice. Joining him is Hamilton Cain, author of the memoir This Boy’s Faith: Notes from a Southern Baptist Upbringing.
In Conversation: Cold Open
In Conversation: Cold Open
Author:
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Hamilton Cain
Hamilton Cain is a former finalist for a National Magazine Award and the author of a memoir, This Boy’s Faith: Notes from a Southern Baptist Childhood, praised as “thoughtful, leisurely” by the Boston Globe and lauded by the New York Times Book Review: “Cain excels at portraying the confusing miasma of childhood . . . his prose complements this delicate inquiry, simultaneously exhibiting grace and exactitude.” He has reviewed fiction and nonfiction for O, the Oprah Magazine; the Minneapolis Star-Tribune; Barnes & Noble Review; and San Francisco Chronicle, with forthcoming pieces in the New York Times Book Review and Boston Globe. A member of the National Book Critics Circle, he lives with his wife and three sons in Brooklyn, New York.
Mikel Jollett
Mikel Jollett, the frontman of the indie band The Airborne Toxic Event, was an on-air columnist for NPR’s All Things Considered, an editor-at-large for Men’s Health and an editor at Filter magazine. His fiction has been published in McSweeney’s. Jollett was born into the Church of Synanon, a rehab place for drug addicts that became one of the country’s most infamous cults. In his memoir Hollywood Park (Celadon Books) Jollet recalls a childhood filled with poverty, addiction, and emotional abuse. He and his older brother were separated from their parents when they were six months old and raised in the cult’s “School.” After years in what was essentially an orphanage, Mikel escaped the cult with his mother and older brother. But life outside Synanon was not easier. Dealing with a clinically depressed mother, tormented by his angry older brother, and longing for contact with his father, a former heroin addict and ex-con, Jollett slowly, often painfully, builds a life that leads him to Stanford University and, eventually, to finding his voice as a writer and musician. Adrienne Brodeur, author of Wild Game, THE MILLIONS noted that “Jollett’s story serves as a potent reminder that while we cannot change the hand we’re dealt, our freedom lies in what we choose to do with those cards.”
