Zack Rogow is the author, editor, or translator of more than twenty books or plays. His tenth book of poems is The Kama Sutra for Senior Citizens: and Other Poems on Aging. Zack’s play, Colette Uncensored (coauthored with Lorri Holt), had its first public reading at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, and has been staged in London, Catalonia, San Francisco, Indonesia, and Portland. His newest book is Hugging My Father’s Ghost: A Memoir of a Shortened Life.

Zack discusses his memoir, Hugging My Father’s Ghost, in which he creates imagined dialogues with his father, Lee Rogow, a promising writer and drama critic killed in a 1955 plane crash when Zack was only three. By reading his father’s published and unpublished works, wartime journals, and family papers, Zack uncovers secrets, reconstructs his father’s witty personality, and experiences a cathartic form of literary after-death communication. Rogow explores how this process of “literary cloning” brought a deeper sense of connection across generations and mirrored therapeutic approaches to grieving.

00:00:00 Introduction

00:04:19 Literary after-death communication

00:08:50 Inspiring dialogues with the deceased

00:11:51 First conversation with father’s ghost

00:16:57 Family tragedy of the plane crash

00:20:56 Imagined exchange with Herman Wouk

00:25:57 Discovering father’s words at Yale

00:29:24 Family secrets involving Sugar

00:34:28 Sparse memories of a lost father

00:37:09 Conclusion

(Recorded on October 13, 2026)

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Published on October 30, 2026