E10: John Waters

Season 01's finale is made in partnership with The Hopkins Review (THR), the award-winning journal of literature and culture from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. Follow along with a selection of images from the conversation, and pre-order Volume 18 now, at hopkinsreview.com/john-waters. Listener discretion is advised.

John Waters is a filmmaker, actor, artist, and writer. Crowned the “Pope of Trash” by William S. Burroughs in 1986, his cult films include Pink Flamingos (1972), Desperate Living (1977), Polyester (1981), and Hairspray (1988). John is the author of eight books, including the autobiography Shock Value (1981), the memoir Role Models (2010), Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America (2014), and his recent debut novel Liarmouth: A Feel-Bad Romance, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2022. For over 30 years, John’s visual art — his photography, sculpture, prints, and installations, have re-contextualized art, pop culture, and life as we generally know it. His works are in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the New Museum in New York, among others.

Dora Malech is the editor in chief of The Hopkins Review and a professor in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Her poems appear in publications that include The New Yorker, Poetry, and the Best American Poetry. Her fifth book of poetry, Trying × Trying, is forthcoming from the Carnegie Mellon University Press in Fall 2025.

To celebrate John as THR’s next featured cover artist, he joins Sevy and Dora for a freewheeling conversation through the people and themes that have defined the American iconoclast’s career. From playing “car accident” in junkyards as a child to re-trying LSD in Provincetown at 70, hear John’s stories as told through a selection of his own creations.

User Journey w/ Sevy is presented by the Society of Typographic Arts, Chicago’s oldest professional association for design. Learn more at userjourney.show.