Welcome back to In Conversation…! This month I had the distinct pleasure of sitting down with the founder and EIC of Sledgehammer Lit, J. Archer Avary. If there is one thing I can say about J. Archer, it is that there’s far more to him than meets the eye. I’m not giving anything away. You simply need to push click, and then click again, for Parts I and II of our interview and all will be revealed.
As any regular viewer can probably tell, I do not edit my interviews. They are quite lean and generally don’t have any reason to be edited. During my interview with J. Archer, we suffered some of those same cross-Atlantic blips that I did last month with Karen Jones. There are some time delays and the audio sometimes gets out of sync with the visual. (No way to edit those if I tried. At least not that my non-tech savvy self is aware of.) We also had a moment of perma-freeze, and instead of pushing pause, I pushed stop. Hence, Part I and Part II. It’s all a bit bloopery and fun (Like when I can’t seem to pronounce Burning Hearth during my welcome.), which somehow seems fitting when interviewing a man who has been both a lionfish hunter and the founder and editor of a lit mag that hit the ground running.
Sit back, enjoy, and definitely have some laughs along with J. Archer and myself.
J. Archer Avary is a former TV journalist, ocean conservationist, and champion lionfish hunter. He was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico and came of age in Omaha, Nebraska. He played drums in punk rock bands and worked a series of underwhelming jobs until he BS’ed his way into a television career that would span decades and make him a household name in the Cayman Islands. He moved to Guernsey in 2019 where he finally had time to pursue creative writing. He released his debut chapbook Meat Draw and debut novella The Dog Sitter this year, and recently relocated to the Northeast of England with his wife.
I hope you enjoyed my interview with J. Archer, and I hope you will stop back again to In Conversation…next month. Until then, travel lightly
Constance Malloy 