The One Long Conversation: Laura Lee Bahr, John Skipp, and the Story That Had to Be Told
- Emily Trask
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
“Art isn’t manufactured. It’s channeled.”
In Episode #1 of The One Long Conversation, new podcast series hosted by writer, editor, and publisher John Skipp, Skipp and Laura Lee Bahr explore creativity as craft, devotion, and spiritual practice, and how Who Is the Liar? demanded to be written exactly as it is.
It’s also a shared remembering: of how artists find each other, how stories arrive when they’re ready, and why some books refuse to be written any other way.
A Meeting That Changed Everything
Skipp and Bahr first met in 2011 during a music video audition. It was one of those “why not?” moments that quietly alters the course of a life. What began as a creative collaboration quickly revealed something deeper: a shared understanding of art as risk, devotion, and play.
Over the years, Skipp watched Bahr create across mediums, film, theater, short fiction, always working from a place of emotional truth rather than market logic. When she handed him her novel Haunt, his response wasn’t just admiration. It was action.
He created Fungasm Press specifically to publish work like hers, books that traditional publishers wouldn’t know how to market without sanding off the edges that made them essential.
From a Short Story to a Voice That Wouldn’t Let Go
The roots of Who Is the Liar? go back to a short story Bahr wrote for an anthology. At the time, she knew only the beginning. The rest of the story stayed silent…for years.
Then, in 2020, while walking in the woods, it arrived all at once.
Laura describes it as coming “like a fever.” She suddenly knew the entire story. And she knew it had to be told in the voice of a ten-year-old girl named Topaz.
That voice didn’t ask politely. It insisted.
A Child’s Voice, a Dark Truth
One of the most striking parts of the conversation is Skipp’s insistence on what makes Who Is the Liar? so rare: the voice. This is not an adult imagining childhood from a distance. It is a child’s consciousness rendered with precision, vulnerability, and unsettling clarity.
The novel centers on Topaz and her sisters, growing up in a tight-knit religious community in the 1980s. When a man (the monster) is locked in their basement, accused of killing children, the girls are forced into an impossible moral reckoning:
Who is the monster?
Who is telling the truth?
Who is really protecting them?
While the book reads as a gripping psychological horror novel, Bahr sees it as something broader: an American story about trust, authority, faith, and the terrifying moment when innocence collides with reality.
“How do we know who’s protecting us? How do we know who to believe?” she asks. “In that way, we’re all still ten years old.”
Art as Channel, Not Commodity
Throughout the episode, both Skipp and Bahr return to the same idea: real art is not manufactured. It’s channeled.
Yes, craft matters. Discipline matters. Mastery matters. But the source, the spark, is something larger than strategy or trend. Bahr speaks passionately about creativity as a birthright, a spiritual practice, and a form of care in a world that is often hostile to artists.
“You have to move your soul,” she says, “the way you move your body—so it can be there for you.”
This first episode of The One Long Conversation explores what happens when artists refuse to compromise the truth of their work, when collaborators protect each other’s voices, and when stories arrive because they must.
If you care about writing, creativity, psychological horror, or the quiet bravery it takes to tell the truth, this conversation is worth your time.
🎧 Watch the full episode here:
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