Welcome to SAD ME OF THE PAST, the podcast where we are actively trying to make the words "touch" and "brill" the new slang for cool. Today we have poet Srikanth Reddy in the studio to share some of his earliest writing and his literary journey! We discuss his formative 3rd grade acrostic poem ABRAHAM LINCOLN, skipping school to review movies for the Chicago Tribune, deliberately losing a Spelling Bee, and the inevitable Workshop curse of writing in everyone else's style except your own.

Srikanth Reddy grew up in Chicago. He earned a BA from Harvard College, an MFA in creative writing from the University of Iowa, and a PhD in English literature from Harvard University. He is the author of the poetry collections Underworld Lit (Wave Books, 2020), Voyager (University of California Press, 2011), and Facts for Visitors (University of California Press, 2004) and a book of literary criticism, Changing Subjects: Digressions in Modern American Poetry (Oxford University Press, 2012).