Little Atoms

Richard Byrne is a dramatist and journalist. He was the editor of The Wilson Quarterly from 2019 to 2021. His work has appeared in The New Republic, The Nation, The Guardian, Time, BookForum and Zona Motel. His music criticism includes liner notes for releases by R.E.M. and Uncle Tupelo. His work as a dramatist includes two musicals: Nero/Pseudo (written with Jon Langford and Jim Elkington) and Congressman Davy (with Dean Schlabowske). His play, Hotel Mayflower, was published in a bilingual edition (English/German) by Moloko Print. He also wrote the screenplay for the 2024 Pandora Machine film, The Drowned Girl. Byrne gained notoriety recently with author Jarett Kobek for his role in recovering the plaintext for the long-unsolved K4 strand of the celebrated Kryptos cipher. On this episode of Little Atoms he talks to Neil Denny about his new book Beauty Doesn’t Reach Me. Content note: Discussion of suicide.