A book interview I did + a reading I'm doing

if you're free this Sunday 3/22 🙂

An interview I did for Public Seminar

Late in 2025 I sat down with Eva Szilardi-Tierney at The New School to talk about my book The Tears of Other People, its reception in Portsmouth, and the batshit insane political context it was published in. You can find the full conversation here, and a selected chapter from the book posted here. This is an excerpt from our talk:

Eva Szilardi-Tierney: After your book came out in August [2025], you went on a book tour that included a few stops in your hometown. A lot of your analysis takes the powers that be in Portsmouth to task, so I’m curious: What did people in Portsmouth think about your book? 

E. M. Ippolito: The simple answer is: I’m really flattered at the enthusiasm for the book in Portsmouth. I think the more nuanced answer is that Portsmouth is nothing if not polite, and I somewhat mistrust the way that the general public in Portsmouth tends to engage with revolutionary ideas and difficult, inconvenient political realities. I think time will tell whether this book has an effect politically, but people seem to be radicalizing really quickly in Portsmouth right now. Portsmouth is unfortunately a site of a lot of ICE deportations. Pease Airport in Portsmouth has been seeing a lot of deportation flights facilitated by the federal government, which is really pissing people off. During my book tour, I physically witnessed deportations at Pease. This is just a crazy time to be talking about this kind of history, and [on my tour] I met my audiences with a lot of anger, not towards them but towards the city. I found that anger reciprocated in kind of an unexpected and special way from a lot of folks. Things are changing.

Of course, in the months since our talk (and even in the month since it was published!) history has moved extremely fast. The world's different now than even this past August.

Last month, after sustained pressure from organizers and community members, Portsmouth's county officials cancelled a contract with ICE to detain adult men in its jail. The same month, thousands showed up in opposition to the construction of an ICE concentration camp in neighboring Merrimack. The feds were soon forced to cancel that project. None of these can be attributed to Portsmouth alone, but they represent serious wins for southern New Hampshire.

Does that mean Portsmouth is developing a conscience around the violent displacement of Black and Brown folks in its borders? As a whole, no, though some people definitely are. Portsmouth's airport--where I physically watched people forced onto deportation flights--still operates as an essential part of the federal deportation machine. Lately, the facility is also sending planes off to war in Iran. Local officials, including progressives, have the power to apply pressure to stop this, but fail to. They leave that burden of care and humanity to working-class residents to attempt themselves, as they always have. It remains to be seen whether the masses of people mobilized in light of the crisis in Minneapolis will join their neighbors in sustained organizing to counter  state terror in a coordinated, ongoing capacity. Effective resistance is going to take not only massive commitment but massive consistency.

It was a joy talking to Eva about the work and the current moment. It's been rewarding to see other people engage with the questions I explore in the book, both in and out of Portsmouth. At its lowest points, the project felt solitary, even alienating to work on alone. Now, six months out, with the audiobook production wrapped & forthcoming, I'm hopeful this book can be meaningful to local struggle, even if only in the lives of individual readers. That's all I wanted for it, and I'm grateful to everyone who has taken an interest.

A reading I'm doing this Sunday at Topos Too

If you're wondering what I've been up to since the book last summer, the answer is, writing fiction. Almost exclusively fiction that wants you to feel a little gross and uncomfortable. I'm still pretty new to it but I'm getting better, I hope, and God willing you can see it soon and judge me yourself.

This weekend I'll be reading a chapter from a novella I wrote called Jagged Entrance, where some New England teenagers talk about the lost videotape of a mysterious suicide. Horrid's a really special series and I'm psyched to be part of it. If you're in New York come by and check it out. 

til then,

evergreen<3