Episode 72: Kristen McGuiness

Kristen McGuiness is a successful author of books such as her memoir 51/50: The Magical Adventures of the Single Life and her debut novel, Live Through This. She has also founded her own publishing company called Rise Books where her mission is to publish what she describes as “radical works of inspiration.” Kristen is also the daughter of Dan McGuiness – one of the largest and most consequential marijuana smugglers of the 1970s and 1980s. She describes him as “one of the architects of the modern drug trade,” in Rolling Stone article Learjet’s Mistresses and Bales of Weed: My Dad’s Life as a Drug Kingpin. There exists a hard truth that comes through in our conversation and in her writings of what it was like to love her dad so much, even as he loved equally, if not more, the rush he got from being addicted to crime - "the juice" as she describe it. Her views of her life and who Dan McGuniess was are both heartbreaking and provocative; there is not the neat and easy good guy/bad guy trope that we usually expect from this type of story. Mostly, we find ourselves at the tip of the needle, dancing on a point that pricks our feet while we stay as upright as we can, clinging to dear life.