A weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading authors. Hosted by Brad Listi.
Pink Cocaine (Taylor's Version)
Volume 20 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...Abercrombie Sex Events...Woody Allen at the Merkin sex app party....Swifties of the Caribbean...One Direction (Down)....and more...
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
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10/24/2024 • 1 hour, 30 minutes, 47 seconds
943. Mark Haddon
Mark Haddon is the author of the story collection Dogs and Monsters, available from Doubleday. It is the official October pick of the Otherppl Book Club.
Haddon is the author of the novels The Porpoise, The Red House and A Spot of Bother, as well as the short story collection, The Pier Falls. His novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction and is the basis for the Tony Award-winning play. He is the author of a collection of poetry, The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea, has written and illustrated numerous children's books, and has won awards for both his radio dramas and his television screenplays. He teaches creative writing for the Arvon Foundation and lives in Oxford, England.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
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Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
10/22/2024 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 53 seconds
The Hills Are Alive with the Sound of Chewing
Volume 19 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...Brad's insane, Alec Baldwin-esque voice memos about food....Trump's senior moment town hall DJ set...Kid Rock in exile...Kanye clones...supermodels in lingerie with their offspring...and more...
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
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Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
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10/17/2024 • 1 hour, 35 minutes, 48 seconds
942. Betsy Lerner
Betsy Lerner is a longtime literary agent and the author of the debut novel Shred Sisters, available from Grove Press.
Lerner's other books include The Bridge Ladies, The Forest for the Trees: An Editor’s Advice to Writers, and Food and Loathing. She received an MFA from Columbia University in Poetry where she was selected as one of PEN’s Emerging Writers. She also received the Tony Godwin Publishing Prize for Editors. After working as an editor for 15 years, she became an agent and is currently a partner with Dunow, Carlson and Lerner Literary Agency.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
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Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com.
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
10/15/2024 • 1 hour, 45 minutes, 5 seconds
The Midlife Crisis Episode
Volume 18 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...Mira jumps on the Mets bandwagon...Taylor's football social life...Leo wines and dines the parents of his child bride...Brad learns about Lana Del Rey's normie bayou husband...and Kanye's whole weird scene...and more...
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
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Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
10/10/2024 • 2 hours, 1 minute, 35 seconds
941. Emily Witt
Emily Witt is a New Yorker staff writer and the author of the memoir Health and Safety: A Breakdown, available from Pantheon.
Witt has covered breaking news and politics from around the country, and has written about culture, sexuality, drugs, and night life. She is the author of the books Future Sex and Nollywood. Her journalism, essays, and criticism have appeared in n+1, the Times, GQ, Harper's, and the London Review of Books.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
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10/8/2024 • 1 hour, 30 minutes, 3 seconds
Lawyers, Nudes, and Money
Volume 17 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...Lizza leaks, Nuzzi lawyers up...the Diddy storm gathers...Britney almost burns her face off...Brad learns about nepo babies...and more...
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
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Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
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10/3/2024 • 1 hour, 51 minutes, 18 seconds
How to Write Literary Collage
A new 'Craftwork' episode about the art of literary collage. My guest is David Shields, author of How We Got Here: Melville Plus Nietzsche Divided by the Square Root of (Allan) Bloom Times Zizek (Squared) Equals Bannon and A Christian Existentialist and a Psychoanalytic Atheist Walk Into a Trump Rally, both of which are available from Sublation Media. Shields also wrote and directed a documentary film called How We Got Here, based on his book and available now on Prime and other platforms.
***Note: Here is a list of some of David's favorite works of literary collage.
Shields is the internationally bestselling author of twenty-five books, including Reality Hunger (which, in 2020, Lit Hub named one of the most important books of the past decade), The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead (New York Timesbestseller), Black Planet: Facing Race During an NBA Season (finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and PEN USA Award), Remote: Reflections on Life in the Shadow of Celebrity (PEN/Revson Award), and Other People: Takes & Mistakes (NYTBR Editors' Choice). The Very Last Interview was published by New York Review Books in 2022.
The recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, two NEA fellowships, and a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, Shields--a senior contributing editor of Conjunctions--has published essays and stories in New York Times Magazine, Harper's, Esquire, Yale Review, Salon, Slate, Tin House, A Public Space, McSweeney's, Believer, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Best American Essays. His work has been translated into two dozen languages.
The film adaptation of I Think You're Totally Wrong: A Quarrel, which Shields co-wrote and co-stars in, was released in 2017 and is now available as a DVD on Prime Video.
Shields wrote, produced, and directed Lynch: A History, a 2019 documentary about Marshawn Lynch's use of silence, echo, and mimicry as key tools of resistance (streaming on Prime, Peacock, AMC, Sundance, Apple, and many other platforms).
I'll Show You Mine, a feature film that Shields co-wrote and was produced by Mark and Jay Duplass, was released in 2023 and is now available on Prime and several other platforms.
A new film, How We Got Here, which Shields wrote and directed and which argues that Melville plus Nietzsche divided by the square root of (Allan) Bloom times Zizek (squared) equals Bannon, is streaming now on Prime and several other platforms; the companion volume is forthcoming in September 2024.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
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Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
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10/1/2024 • 1 hour, 38 minutes, 6 seconds
Sexting with a 70-Year-Old Man on Steroids
Volume 16 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...RFK Jr and Olivia Nuzzi's sexting scandal...Bennifer in mediation...Jeff Bezos's top secret campfire retreat...Janet Jackson gets nasty with Kamala...trying to decode the Diddy ripple effect...and more...
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
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Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
9/26/2024 • 2 hours, 3 minutes, 22 seconds
What Sells a Book?
A new 'Craftwork' episode about the business of selling books. My guest is Kathleen Schmidt, publishing industry veteran, founder of Kathleen Schmidt Public Relations, and author of the Publishing Confidential newsletter.
As the Founder and CEO of Kathleen Schmidt Public Relations, Kathleen is a well-respected voice in book publishing with in-depth experience in all aspects of the industry, including as a publicist, literary agent, acquisitions editor, and ghostwriter.
Her career encompasses 30 years of creating and directing impactful and strategic global media, marketing, and branding campaigns for politicians, A-List celebrities, athletes, and high-profile personalities.
To date, she has worked on 50 New York Times bestsellers, and her clients have continuously appeared in top-tier national print, broadcast, and radio outlets such as The Today Show, Good Morning America, Vogue, Elle, Financial Times, Vanity Fair, GQ, and Sirius XM.
Schmidt, who learned to read when she was four, comes from a family of voracious readers. Inspired by the legendary book editor Jackie Kennedy Onassis, she purposely focused on obtaining a position in book publishing.
Her fast-growing Substack newsletter, Publishing Confidential, shares her wealth of inside knowledge that she hopes will help demystify the book industry. Married with two children, she resides in New Jersey.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
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Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
9/24/2024 • 1 hour, 43 minutes, 43 seconds
'Reservoir Bitches' and the Art of Literary Translation
A new 'Craftwork' episode about the art of literary translation. My guests are Julia Sanches and Heather Cleary, co-translators of Reservoir Bitches, the debut story collection by Dahlia de la Cerda, available now from the Feminist Press. Reservoir Bitches is the official September pick of the Otherppl Book Club.
Dahlia de la Cerda is a writer and activist based in Aguascalientes, Mexico. She is the author of Perras de Reserva, which won the 2019 Premio Nacional de Cuento Joven Comala, and Desde los Zulos. She is also the cofounder of the feminist organization Morras Help Morras. Reservoir Bitches is her English-language debut.
Julia Sanches translates literature from Spanish, Portuguese, and Catalan into English. Born in Brazil, she now lives in Providence, Rhode Island.
Heather Cleary is an award-winning translator of poetry and prose whose work has been recognized by English PEN, the National Book Foundation, and the Mellon Foundation, among others. She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and is the author of The Translator's Visibility: Scenes from Contemporary Latin American Fiction.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
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Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
9/22/2024 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 27 seconds
Martin Short [Bleeped] at the Beverly Hills Hotel
Volume 15 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...Taylor Swift endorses Kamala (Bras was right)...the downfall of Diddy...Dave Grohl's surprise love child and PR crisis management skills...Bennifer brunch intrigue...Meryl and Martin soft-launching their coupledom?......& more....
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
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Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
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9/19/2024 • 2 hours, 2 minutes, 48 seconds
940. Regina Porter
Regina Porter is the author of the novel The Rich People Have Gone Away, available from Hogarth Books.
Porter is an award-winning playwright and author of The Travelers, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel and longlisted for the Orwell Prize for political fiction. A graduate of the MFA fiction program at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, her writing has been published in the Harvard Review, Tin House, and the Oxford American.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
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Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
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9/17/2024 • 1 hour, 4 minutes, 19 seconds
Mira Took a Very Strong Edible
Volume 14 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...the return of the Royals...deciphering the Damon/J-Lo heart-to-heart...Anna Wintour shushes famous people...Harvey Weinstein's heart...J.D. Vance wet t-shirt contest...& more....
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
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Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
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9/12/2024 • 2 hours, 16 minutes, 16 seconds
939. Elizabeth Strout
Elizabeth Strout is the author of the novel Tell Me Everything, available from Random House.
Strout is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Lucy by the Sea; Oh William!, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Olive, Again; Anything Is Possible, winner of the Story Prize; My Name Is Lucy Barton; The Burgess Boys; Olive Kitteridge, winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Abide with Me; and Amy and Isabelle, winner of the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize. She has also been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize in London. She lives in Maine.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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9/10/2024 • 1 hour, 4 minutes, 34 seconds
Don't Eat While Listening
Volume 13 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...Mira's heat stroke journey...the silly glory of Pitt and Clooney...Anna Wintour vs. Naomi Campbell...the history of beefing...the Louisville porch pooper...& more....
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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9/5/2024 • 1 hour, 47 minutes, 22 seconds
938. Kerry Howley
Kerry Howley is the author of Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs, now available in trade paperback from Vintage.
Howley is a feature writer at New York magazine and the author of Thrown, a New York Times Editors' Choice and pick for best-of-the-year lists in Time, Salon, Slate, and many other venues. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, Granta, Best American Sportswriting, The New York Times Magazine, and Harper's. A Lannan Foundation Fellow, she holds an MFA from the University of Iowa, where she was a professor at the celebrated Nonfiction Writing Program until joining New York. She lives in Los Angeles.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
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9/3/2024 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 45 seconds
Whale Juice
Volume 12 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...the great Beyonce hoax...RFK Jr., a chainsaw, and a whale...Taylor Swift and cults of personality....astronauts stuck in space, probably having trauma sex...O.J. Simpson cremation jewelry....& more....
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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8/29/2024 • 1 hour, 50 minutes, 9 seconds
937. Lena Valencia
Lena Valencia is the author of the debut story collection Mystery Lights, available from Tin House. It is the official August pick of the Otherppl Book Club.
Valencia's fiction has appeared in Ninth Letter, Epiphany, Joyland, the anthology Tiny Nightmares, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a 2019 Elizabeth George Foundation grant and holds an MFA in fiction from The New School. Originally from Los Angeles, she lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she is the managing editor and director of educational programming at One Story and the co-host of the reading series Ditmas Lit.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
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8/27/2024 • 1 hour, 9 minutes, 28 seconds
A Hundred Pounds of Weed
Volume 11 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...healthy garbage foods...artificial Trump endorsements...the Taylor Swift debate...cults of personality....Alicia Silverstone's street berry fetish....Jeremey Madix asinine weed arrest...Sexyy Red's disgusting beauty products...Brad learns about Anna Delvey...& more...
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
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Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
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8/22/2024 • 1 hour, 35 minutes, 21 seconds
936. Keziah Weir
Keziah Weir is the author of the debut novel The Mythmakers, available in trade paperback from Marysue Rucci Books.
Weir is a senior editor at Vanity Fair. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Elle, Esquire, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She grew up in California and British Columbia, and currently lives in Maine with her husband and dog.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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8/20/2024 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 58 seconds
935. Francine Prose
Francine Prose is the author of the memoir 1974: A Personal History, available from Harper.
Prose is the author of twenty-two works of fiction including the highly acclaimed The Vixen; Mister Monkey; the New York Times bestseller Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932; A Changed Man, which won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize; and Blue Angel, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her works of nonfiction include the highly praised Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife, and the New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer, which has become a classic. The recipient of numerous grants and honors, including a Guggenheim and a Fulbright, a Director's Fellow at the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, Prose is a former president of PEN American Center, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard College.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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8/13/2024 • 1 hour, 17 minutes
Bear With Us
Volume 10 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...listener mail...sad about David Lynch...Tom Cruise's stuntman death wish....Vanna White vs. Ryan Seacrest...RFK Jr.'s dead bear cub controversy... and more...
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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8/8/2024 • 1 hour, 27 minutes, 36 seconds
934. Kevin Barry
Kevin Barry is the author of the novel The Heart in Winter, available from Doubleday.
Barry is the author of the novels Night Boat to Tangier, Beatlebone, and City of Bohane as well as three story collections including That Old Country Music. His stories and essays have appeared in the New Yorker, Granta and elsewhere. He also works as a playwright and screenwriter lives in County Sligo, Ireland.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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8/6/2024 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 49 seconds
Cannibals, Constipation, and the Trad Wife Blues
Volume 9 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...developments in the Timberlake DWI narrative...analyzing the subtext of a Mormon trad wife's social media feeds...giving motorcycles to elderly men...Ozempic and digestion...Kardashian kid birthday parties and K-hole therapy...& more...
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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8/1/2024 • 1 hour, 34 minutes, 55 seconds
933. Elisa Gabbert
Elisa Gabbert is the author of the essay collection Any Person is the Only Self, available from FSG Originals.
Gabbert is the author of Normal Distance, The Unreality of Memory, and several other collections of poetry, essays, and criticism. She writes the On Poetry column for The New York Times, and her work has appeared in Harper's Magazine, The Atlantic, The Believer, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, and other publications.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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7/30/2024 • 1 hour, 25 minutes, 51 seconds
Mira Lived
Volume 8 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...Mira recounts her battle with Covid...celebrities weigh in on Biden's exit from the presidential race...Hawk Tuah, philanthropist...David Banda scavenges in Manhattan...Mira learns who Bob Newhart was (RIP)...Travis Kelce's cop mustache...the case against Alec Baldwin is dismissed...Brad learns about Love Island...& more...
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
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7/25/2024 • 1 hour, 55 minutes, 50 seconds
932. Nina Sharma
Nina Sharma is the author of the debut memoir-in-essays The Way You Make Me Feel: Love in Black and Brown, available from Penguin Press. It is the official July pick of the Otherppl Book Club.
Sharma's work has appeared in The New Yorker, Electric Literature, Longreads, and The Margins. A graduate of the MFA program at Columbia University, she served as the programs director at the Asian American Writers' Workshop and currently teaches at Columbia and Barnard College. She is a proud cofounder of the all-South Asian women's improv group Not Your Biwi.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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7/23/2024 • 1 hour, 35 minutes, 46 seconds
931. Juliet Escoria
Juliet Escoria is the author of the story collection You Are the Snake, available from Soft Skull Press.
Escoria is the author of the novel Juliet the Maniac (Melville House, May 2019), which was named a "best of" book by Nylon, Elle, Buzzfeed, and others, and was shortlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Prize. She also wrote the poetry collection Witch Hunt (Lazy Fascist Press, 2016) and the story collection Black Cloud (CCM/Emily Books, 2014), which were both listed in various best of the year roundups. Her writing can be found in places like Prelude, VICE, The Fader, BOMB, and the New York Times, and has been translated into many languages. She was born in Australia, raised in San Diego, and currently lives in West Virginia, where she teaches English at a community college.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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7/16/2024 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 34 seconds
930. Aleksandr Skorobogatov
Aleksandr Skorobogatov is the author of Russian Gothic, available from Rare Bird. Translated by Ilona Yazhbin Chavasse.
Skorobogatov was born in Grodno in what is now Belorussia. He is one of the most original Russian writers of the post-communist era. An heir to Dostoevsky, Gogol, Bulgakov, Nabokov, Pelevin, and Sorokin--the surreal line of the Russian literary canon--his novels have been published to great acclaim in Russian, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, French, Italian, Greek, Serbian, and Spanish. He won the prestigious International Literary Award Città di Penne for the Italian edition of Russian Gothic, which also received the Best Novel of the Year Award from Yunost. Cocaine (2017) won Belgium's Cutting Edge Award for 'Best Book International'. His most recent novel, Raccoon, was published by De Geus in 2020. De Tijd has called Skorobogatov "the best Russian writer of the moment." He lives and works in Belgium.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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7/11/2024 • 1 hour, 10 minutes, 36 seconds
Can Fasting Feed Creativity?
A new 'Craftwork' episode—all about the practice of fasting and its many implications. My guest is John Oakes, author of The Fast: The History, Science, Philosophy, and Promise of Doing Without, available from Avid Reader Press.
Oakes is publisher of The Evergreen Review. He is editor-at-large for OR Books, which he cofounded in 2009. Oakes has written for a variety of publications, among them The Oxford Handbook of Publishing, Publishers Weekly, the Review of Contemporary Fiction, Associated Press, and The Journal of Electronic Publishing. Oakes is a cum laude graduate of Princeton University, where he earned the English Department undergraduate thesis prize for an essay on Samuel Beckett. He was born and raised in New York City, where he lives, and is the father of three adult children. While working on The Fast, he was awarded residencies at Yaddo (New York) and Jentel (Wyoming). The Fast is his first book.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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7/9/2024 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 20 seconds
It's Hard to Talk About
In this week's monologue, I talk about the presidential election and how I've been finding it unusually difficult to talk about.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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7/8/2024 • 29 minutes, 8 seconds
929. Porochista Khakpour
Porochista Khakpour is the author of the novel Tehrangeles, available from Pantheon.
Khakpour was born in Tehran and raised in the Greater Los Angeles area. She is the critically acclaimed author of two previous novels, Sons and Other Flammable Objects and The Last Illusion; a memoir, Sick; and a collection of essays, Brown Album. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bookforum, Elle, and many other publications. She lives in New York City.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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7/3/2024 • 1 hour, 21 minutes, 35 seconds
Tori Spelling's Placentas
Volume 7 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...the fall of the house of Jennifer...Swifties v Julia...Andy Cohen's Oprah regrets...the Hawk Tuah concert experience...the Beckham's' lusty youth...the Bon Jovi honeymoon...and more...
Brad & Mira For the Culture is a series about popular culture and generational divides. Brad is inept when it comes to pretty much anything mainstream, while Mira is a a voracious consumer. Brad's Gen X. Mira's a Millennial. Together, they try to make sense of a senseless world.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
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7/2/2024 • 1 hour, 33 minutes, 56 seconds
The Errors Tuah
Volume 6 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...deep fakes...edibles in Las Vegas...Liam Gallagher's neighbors...Kourtney Kardashian inducing labor...the rise of Hawk Tuah....Dave Grohl vs. T-Swift....monster smut....Katy Perry's latest sin....OnlyFans 101....and more...
Brad & Mira For the Culture is a series about popular culture and generational divides. Brad is inept when it comes to pretty much anything mainstream, while Mira is a a voracious consumer. Brad's Gen X. Mira's a Millennial. Together, they try to make sense of a senseless world.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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6/27/2024 • 1 hour, 37 minutes, 43 seconds
How to Write from the Inside Out
A new 'Craftwork' episode about writing deeply personal narratives. My guest is Rachel Krantz, author of the debut memoir Open: An Uncensored Memoir of Love, Liberation, and Non-Monogamy, now available in trade paperback from Harmony Books.
Krantz is a journalist and one of the founding editors of Bustle, where she served as senior features editor for three years. Her work has been featured on NPR, The Guardian, Vox, Vice, and many other outlets. She's the recipient of the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, the Investigative Reporters and Editors Radio Award, the Edward R. Murrow Award, and the Peabody Award for her work as an investigative reporter with YR Media. Open is her first book.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
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6/26/2024 • 1 hour, 38 minutes, 9 seconds
Big Asses, Plane Crashes, & Donald Sutherland's Ashes
Volume 5 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...juice cleansing....RIP Donald Sutherland...J-Lo's Photogenic Ass....Bill Belichick's Geriatric Gen Z Romance...J-Law's New Movie...Kanye Insanity...Rap Beefs...Boeing Nosedives...and more...
Brad & Mira For the Culture is a series about popular culture and generational divides. Brad is inept when it comes to pretty much anything mainstream, while Mira is a a voracious consumer. Brad's Gen X. Mira's a Millennial. Together, they try to make sense of a senseless world.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
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6/25/2024 • 1 hour, 26 minutes, 7 seconds
Kathryn Miles on the 90s, the Shenandoah Murders, LGBTQ Rights, Finding Refuge in Nature, and Wilderness Crime
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 774, my conversation with Kathryn Miles. It first aired on May 25, 2022.
Miles is an award-winning journalist and science writer. She received a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Saint Louis University and took both her Master of Arts and Doctorate in English from the University of Delaware. The long-time editor of Hawk & Handsaw, Miles served as professor of environmental studies and writing at Unity College from 2001-2015 and has since taught in several graduate schools and low residency-MFA programs. Miles is the author of five books: Adventures with Ari, All Standing, Superstorm, Quakeland, and Trailed: One Woman’s Quest to Solve the Shenandoah Murders. Her essays and articles have appeared in publications including Audubon, Best American Essays, The Boston Globe, Down East, Ecotone, History, National Geographic, The New York Times, Outside, Pacific Standard, Politico, Popular Mechanics, and Time. She currently serves as a scholar-in-residence for the Maine Humanities Council, a visiting professor at Colby College, and a member of the Eastern Oregon University MFA faculty. She is also a private consultant available for emerging and established writers. Kathryn lives in Portland, Maine.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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6/21/2024 • 26 minutes, 17 seconds
Down Bad Cruising at the Gym
The fourth episode of 'Brad & Mira For the Culture'...O'Reilly Auto Parts...Ozempic...John Travolta at the gym...Justin Timberlake's DUI...and more...
'Brad & Mira For the Culture' is a series about popular culture and generational divides. Brad is inept when it comes to pretty much anything mainstream, while Mira is a a voracious consumer. Brad's Gen X. Mira's a Millennial. Together, they try to make sense of a senseless world.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
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6/20/2024 • 55 minutes, 30 seconds
928. Ayana Mathis
Ayana Mathis is the author of the novel The Unsettled, now available in trade paperback from Vintage.
Mathis's first novel, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie was a New York Times best seller, an NPR Best Book of 2013, the second selection for Oprah's Book Club 2.0. and has been translated into sixteen languages. Her nonfiction has been published in the The New York Times, The Atlantic, Guernica, and RollingStone. Mathis is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop. She was born in Philadelphia, and currently lives in New York City where she teaches writing in Hunter College's MFA Program.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
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6/19/2024 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 37 seconds
We Need to Talk About Kevin
The third episode of 'Brad & Mira For the Culture,' in which we cover Grimace— McDonald's character, gay icon, and talisman of the New York Mets...the return of Kate Middleton...and the weird and twisted downfall of Oscar winner Kevin Spacey.
'Brad & Mira For the Culture' is a series about popular culture and generational divides. Brad is inept when it comes to pretty much anything mainstream, while Mira is a a voracious consumer. Brad's Gen X. Mira's a Millennial. Together, they try to make sense of a senseless world.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
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The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
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6/18/2024 • 1 hour, 11 minutes, 54 seconds
Fear of Dogs, Earthing, and My Terrible Dream
In this week's monologue, I talk about a terrible dream I had, in which I killed Matt Damon in cold blood. I also contemplate male rage, fear of dogs, and the pros and cons of barefoot hiking.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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6/17/2024 • 26 minutes, 26 seconds
927. Teddy Wayne
Teddy Wayne is the author of the novel The Winner, available from Harper.
Wayne is the winner of a 2011 Whiting Writers' Award and a finalist for the Young Lions Fiction Award, PEN/Bingham Prize, and Dayton Literary Peace Prize. He writes regularly for the New Yorker, New York Times, Vanity Fair, McSweeney's, and other publications.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
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6/16/2024 • 1 hour, 31 minutes, 22 seconds
Richard Chiem on Joy Williams, Tonal Struggles, Kristin Iversen, Hippo Attacks, Mountain Lions, Depression, Pot, Childhood, and the Joy of Being a Sad Person
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 574, my conversation with Richard Chiem. It first aired on April 3, 2019.
Chiem is the author of You Private Person (Sorry House Classics) and the novel King of Joy (Soft Skull Press, 2019). His work has appeared in City Arts Magazine, NY Tyrant, and Gramma Poetry, among other places. His book, You Private Person, was named one of Publisher Weekly's 10 Essential Books of the American West. He lives in Seattle, WA.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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6/14/2024 • 24 minutes, 41 seconds
926. Kimberly King Parsons
Kimberly King Parsons is the author of the debut novel We Were the Universe, available from Knopf. The official June pick of the Otherppl Book Club.
Parsons is the author of Black Light, a collection of stories that was long-listed for the National Book Award and the Story Prize. In 2020, she received the National Magazine Award for fiction. Born in Lubbock, Texas, she lives in Portland, Oregon, with her partner and children. We Were the Universe is her first novel.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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6/12/2024 • 1 hour, 42 minutes, 51 seconds
Schrödinger's Kate Middleton
The second episode of 'Brad & Mira For the Culture,' in which we cover a wide range of subject matter, including the impending Baldwin reality show, porn in the Amazon, the mystery of Kate Middleton, 'hot rodent' men, Tortured Poets Department, and more.
'Brad & Mira For the Culture' is a series about popular culture and generational divides. Brad Listi is inept when it comes to pretty much anything mainstream, while Mira Gonzalez is a a voracious consumer. Brad's Gen X. Mira's a Millennial. Together, they try to make sense of a senseless world.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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6/11/2024 • 1 hour, 48 minutes, 3 seconds
It Could All Be Over
In this week's monologue, I offer my thoughts on Duolingo and tell a story about the fragility of existence.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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6/10/2024 • 29 minutes, 33 seconds
925. Morgan Talty
Morgan Talty is the author of the debut novel Fire Exit, available from Tin House.
Talty is a citizen of the Penobscot Indian Nation. His debut short story collection, Night of the Living Rez, won the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Sue Kaufman Prize, the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, the New England Book Award, the National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35 Honor, and was a finalist for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, and The Story Prize. His writing has appeared in The Georgia Review, Granta, Shenandoah, TriQuarterly, Narrative, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. Talty is an assistant professor of English in Creative Writing and Native American and Contemporary Literature at the University of Maine, Orono, and he is on the faculty at the Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing as well as the Institute of American Indian Arts. He lives in Levant, Maine.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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6/9/2024 • 1 hour, 38 minutes, 36 seconds
Tony Tulathimutte on Book Reviews, Literary Omertà, Writing for Oneself, Attention Problems, Page Layout, and Permanence
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 409, my conversation with author Tony Tulathimutte. It first aired on April 13, 2016.
Tulathimutte is the author of the debut novel Private Citizens and the forthcoming novel-in-stories Rejection (September 2024). His work has appeared in The Paris Review, n +1, The Nation, The New Republic, and The New York Times. The recipient of an O. Henry Award and a Whiting Award, he runs the writing class CRIT in Brooklyn.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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6/7/2024 • 23 minutes, 16 seconds
924. Max Porter
Max Porter is the author of the novel Shy, available in trade paperback from Graywolf Press.
Porter is the author of Lanny, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize, Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, winner of the International Dylan Thomas Prize, and The Death of Francis Bacon. He lives in Bath with his family.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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6/5/2024 • 1 hour, 24 minutes, 47 seconds
The Real Podcasters of Los Angeles
Another new experimental content offering! This one is called 'Brad & Mira For the Culture,' and for the next few weeks, it'll be happening on Tuesdays. (We'll see what the audience response is before we decide whether or not to proceed any further. If you want to send us feedback, email us at letters [at] otherppl [dot] com.)
'Brad & Mira For the Culture' will be all about popular culture and generational divides. I'm inept when it comes to pretty much anything mainstream, while Mira is a a voracious consumer. I'm Gen X. She's a Millennial. We're going to discuss and see what happens.
Stay tuned.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
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Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
6/4/2024 • 1 hour, 6 minutes, 37 seconds
There Was Something in the Sky
The return of the monologue. By popular demand, I'm going to experiment with doing stand-alone monologue episodes on Mondays, aka Monologue Mondays. We'll see how it goes.
Today, I reflect on a recent long weekend in the desert and the appearance of something...otherworldly...in the sky.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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6/3/2024 • 19 minutes, 32 seconds
923. Rita Bullwinkel
Rita Bullwinkel is the author of the debut novel Headshot, available from Viking.
Bullwinkel is the author of Belly Up, a story collection that won the Believer Book Award. The recipient of a 2022 Whiting Award, she has had her work published in Tin House, Conjunctions, BOMB Magazine, NOON, and Guernica. She is editor at large for McSweeney's, the deputy editor of The Believer, and a contributing editor at NOON. She lives in San Francisco and teaches at the California College of the Arts and the University of San Francisco.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
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Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
6/2/2024 • 1 hour, 33 minutes, 33 seconds
Bill Clegg on Literary Agents, Humility, Excellence, Fame, Sales, and the Mysteries of Publishing
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 381, my conversation with author and literary agent Bill Clegg. It first aired on September 23, 2015.
Clegg is a literary agent in New York and the author of the bestselling memoirs Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man and Ninety Days. The author of the novels Did You Ever Have a Family and The End of the Day, he has written for the New York Times, Lapham's Quarterly, New York magazine, The Guardian, and Harper's Bazaar.
***
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5/31/2024 • 23 minutes, 23 seconds
922. R.O. Kwon
R.O. Kwon is the author of the novel Exhibit, available from Riverhead Books.
Kwon is the author of the nationally bestselling novel The Incendiaries, which was named a best book of the year by more than forty publications and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award. With Garth Greenwell, Kwon coedited the bestselling Kink, a New York Times Notable Book. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Yaddo, and MacDowell. Born in Seoul, Kwon has lived most of her life in the United States.
***
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5/29/2024 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 2 seconds
921. Colombe Schneck
Colombe Schneck is the author of Swimming in Paris: A Life in Three Stories, available from Penguin Press. Translated by Lauren Elkin and Natasha Lehrer.
Schneck is documentary film director, a journalist, and the author of twelve books of fiction and nonfiction. She has received prizes from the Académie française, Madame Figaro, and the Société des gens de lettres. The recipient of a scholarship from the Villa Medici in Rome as well as a Stendhal grant from the Institut français, she was born and educated in Paris, where she still lives.
Lauren Elkin is the author of several books, including Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art and Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London, a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week, a New York Times Notable Book of 2017, and a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. Her essays on art, literature, and culture have appeared in the London Review of Books, The New York Times, Granta, Harper's, Le Monde, Les Inrockuptibles, and Frieze, among other publications. She is also an award-winning translator, most recently of Simone de Beauvoir's previously unpublished novel The Inseparables. After twenty years in Paris, she now lives in London.
Natasha Lehrer is a writer, translator, editor, and teacher. Her essays and reviews have appeared in The Guardian, The Observer (London), The Times Literary Supplement, The Nation, Frieze, and other journals. As literary editor of the Jewish Quarterly she has worked with writers including Deborah Levy, George Prochnik, and Joanna Rakoff. She has contributed to several books, most recently Looking for an Enemy: 8 Essays on Antisemitism. She has translated over two dozen books, including works by Georges Bataille, Robert Desnos, Amin Maalouf, Vanessa Springora, and Chantal Thomas. In 2016, she won the Scott Moncrieff Prize for Suite for Barbara Loden by Nathalie Léger. She lives in Paris.
***
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5/26/2024 • 1 hour, 11 minutes, 52 seconds
Mark Leidner on Aphorisms, Writing, Risk, Memory, Parables, Myth, Poetry, Religion, Miracles, Nature, Childhood, and Church
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 545, my conversation with author and poet Mark Leidner. It first aired on October 3, 2018.
Leidner is a writer from south Georgia who currently lives in California with his family. His books include a poetry collection called Returning the Sword to the Stone, a story collection entitled Under the Sea, and a collection of aphorisms called The Angel in the Dream of Our Hangover. He posts shorter writing on twitter, videos and photos on instagram, and longer writing can be found on substack.
***
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5/24/2024 • 27 minutes, 2 seconds
920. Hari Kunzru
Hari Kunzru is the author of the novel Blue Ruin, available from Knopf.
Kunzru is the author of six other novels, Red Pill, White Tears, Gods Without Men, My Revolutions, Transmission, and The Impressionist. The recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy in Berlin, and the Cullman Center at the New York Public Library, he is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books and writes the "Easy Chair" column for Harper's Magazine. He lives in Brooklyn and teaches in the Creative Writing Program at New York University.
***
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5/22/2024 • 1 hour, 23 minutes, 55 seconds
919. Myriam Lacroix
Myriam Lacroix is the author of the debut novel How It Works Out, available from The Overlook Press. It is the official May pick of the Otherppl Book Club.
Lacroix was born in Montreal to a Québécois mother and a Moroccan father, and currently lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. She has a BFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia and an MFA from Syracuse University, where she was editor in chief of Salt Hill Journal and received the New York Public Humanities Fellowship for creating Out-Front, an LGBTQ+ writing group whose goal was to expand the possibilities of queer writing.
***
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5/19/2024 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 51 seconds
Sam Tallent on Publishing, Comedy, Community, Doug Stanhope, Vegas, Reading, Self-Education, Writing, Weed, and Panic Attacks
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 708, my conversation with author and comedian Sam Tallent. It first aired on May 26, 2021.
Tallent is a comedian, novelist and host of the Chubby Behemoth Podcast. For the last decade, he has performed more than 45 weekends per year in North America, Asia, Australia and Europe. His writing has appeared in Birdy Magazine and on VICE.com and he’s told jokes on Comedy Central, TruTV and VICELAND.
His acclaimed debut novel, Running the Light, heralded as the definitive book on standup comedy, is soon to be a major motion picture (Doug Stanhope: “the best fictional representation of comedy in any medium ever,” Marc Maron: “a beautiful rendering of a dark reality”). His novella, ATTABOY, was published as an Audible Original. "Waiting for Death to Claim Us," his comedy special, is available on Amazon Prime. He lives in Colorado.
***
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5/17/2024 • 28 minutes, 1 second
918. Carvell Wallace
Carvell Wallace is the author of the debut memoir Another Word for Love, available from MCD Books.
Wallace grew up between Southwestern PA, Washington DC, and Los Angeles. He attended Tisch School for the Arts and worked as a stage actor before spending fifteen years in direct service youth non-profits. He has covered arts, entertainment, music, culture, race, sports, and parenting for The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Slate, GQ, Pitchfork, MTV News and others. As a podcast host, he has been nominated for a Peabody and won a Kaleidoscope Award and was the Slate parenting advice columnist. He is the co-author of the New York Times best-selling basketball memoir The Sixth Man with Andre Iguodala. He lives in Oakland and has two adult children, a comfortable couch, and a lot of plants.
***
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5/15/2024 • 1 hour, 32 minutes, 15 seconds
The Life of a Bookseller
A new 'Craftwork' episode entitled 'The Life of a Bookseller.' My guest is Paul Yamazaki, principal book buyer for City Lights Bookstore. His new book is called Reading the Room: A Bookseller's Tale, available from Ode Books.
Yamazaki has been the principal buyer at City Lights Booksellers, the legendary San Francisco bookstore and publisher founded by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter Martin, for more than fifty years. A champion for national and global literature, writers, publishers, and independent bookstores, Yamazaki was the recipient of the National Book Foundation's 2023 Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community. He has mentored generations of booksellers across America. Rick Simonsonhas worked at Seattle's Elliott Bay Book Company, one of the US's leading independent bookstores, since 1976. He is Elliott Bay's senior buyer and founded their internationally renowned author reading program forty years ago. He presently serves on the governing boards of Copper Canyon Press, the University of Washington Press, and UNESCO Seattle City of Literature.
***
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5/12/2024 • 1 hour, 24 minutes, 25 seconds
Garth Greenwell on Style, Opera, Kentucky, Mentors, Poetry, Bulgaria, Prose, Good Art, and Magnetism in Language
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 626, my conversation with author Garth Greenwell. The episode first aired on February 26, 2020.
Greenwell is the author of What Belongs to You, which won the British Book Award for Debut of the Year, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was a finalist for six other awards, including the PEN/Faulkner Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, it was named a Best Book of 2016 by over fifty publications in nine countries, and is being translated into fourteen languages. His second book of fiction, Cleanness, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and was longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize, the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, the L.D. and LaVerne Harrell Clark Fiction Prize, and France’s Prix Sade (Deuxième sélection). Cleanness was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2020, a New York Times Critics Top 10 book of the year, and a Best Book of the year by the New Yorker, TIME, NPR, the BBC, and over thirty other publications. It is being translated into eight languages. A new novel, Small Rain, is forthcoming from FSG in 2024. Greenwell is also the co-editor, with R.O. Kwon, of the anthology KINK, which appeared in February 2021, was named a New York Times Notable Book, won the inaugural Joy Award from the #MarginsBookstore Collective, and became a national bestseller. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, A Public Space, and VICE, and he has written nonfiction for The New Yorker, the London Review of Books, and Harper’s, among others. He writes regularly about literature, film, art and music for his Substack, To a Green Thought. He is the recipient of many honors for his work, including a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship and the 2021 Vursell Award for prose style from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has taught at the Iowa Writers Workshop, Grinnell College, the University of Mississippi, and Princeton. Greenwell currently lives in New York, where he is a Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at NYU.
***
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5/10/2024 • 21 minutes, 23 seconds
917. Hanif Abdurraqib
Hanif Abdurraqib is the bestselling author of the memoir There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension, available from Random House.
Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio, and the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation "Genius" grant. His most recent book, A Little Devil in America, was the winner of the Carnegie Medal and the Gordon Burns Prize and a finalist for the National Book Award. His first collection of essays, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, was named one of the books of the year by NPR, Esquire, BuzzFeed, O: The Oprah Magazine, Pitchfork, and Chicago Tribune, among others. Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest was a New York Times bestseller and a National Book Critics Circle Award and Kirkus Prize finalist and was longlisted for the National Book Award. He is a graduate of Beechcroft High School.
***
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5/8/2024 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 15 seconds
916. Helen Tworkov
Helen Tworkov is the author of the debut memoir Lotus Girl, available from St. Martin's Essentials.
Tworkov is founding editor of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, the first and only independent Buddhist magazine, and author of Zen in America: Profiles of Five Teachers (North Point Press; 1989). She first encountered Buddhism in Asia in the 1960s and has studied in both the Zen and Tibetan traditions. Since 2006 she has been a student of the Kagyu and Nyingma Tibetan master Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, and has assisted him in the writing of In Love With The World: A Monk's Journey Through the Bardos of Living and Dying (Spiegel and Grau; 2019) and Turning Confusion into Clarity: A Guide to the Foundation Practices of Tibetan Buddhism (Shambhala Publications; 2014).
***
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5/5/2024 • 1 hour, 29 minutes, 13 seconds
Alexandra Kleeman on Los Angeles, Filmmaking, Boredom, Adaptation, Todd Haynes, Writing, Idealism, Cynicism, Hamlet, Climate Change, and Public Breakdowns
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 732, my conversation with author Alexandra Kleeman. The episode first aired on October 13, 2021.
Kleeman is the author of the novel Something New Under the Sun (Hogarth Press). Her other books include the story collection Intimations and the debutnovel You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine, which was a New York Times Editor's Choice. Her fiction has been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Zoetrope, Conjunctions, and Guernica, among other publications, and her other writing has appeared in Harper's, The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, Tin House, n+1, and The Guardian. Her work has received fellowships and support from Bread Loaf, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Headlands Center for the Arts. She is the winner of the Berlin Prize and the Bard Fiction Prize, and was a Rome Prize Literature Fellow at the American Academy in Rome. She lives in Staten Island and teaches at the New School.
***
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5/3/2024 • 28 minutes, 43 seconds
The Power of Names in Writing and Real Life
A new 'Craftwork' episode, about the power of names in writing and real life. My guest is Ethel Rohan, author of the novel Sing, I, available from Triquarterly Books.
Rohan is an award-winning essayist, novelist, and short story writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Irish Times, PEN America, and Tin House. Her previous books include The Weight of Him and In the Event of Contact.
***
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5/1/2024 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 28 seconds
915. Alejandro Zambra and Megan McDowell
Alejandro Zambra is the author of the story collection My Documents, available from Penguin Books. Official April pick of the Otherppl Book Club.
Megan McDowell is the book's translator.
Zambra is the author of ten books, most recently Chilean Poet and Multiple Choice. The recipient of numerous literary prizes, as well as a New York Public Library Cullman Center fellowship, he has published fiction and essays in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, and Harper's Magazine, among other publications. He lives in Mexico City.
McDowell is the winner of the 2022 National Book Award for Translation and the recipient of a 2020 Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, among other awards. She has been nominated four times for the International Booker Prize.
***
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4/28/2024 • 1 hour, 24 minutes, 11 seconds
Bud Smith on Jersey, Childhood, Cop Cars, Libraries, Heavy Construction, Suburbs, Bands, Vonnegut, Rage, Seinfeld, Boredom, Blogs, and Universality
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 373, my conversation with author Bud Smith. The episode first aired on July 29, 2015.
Bud Smith works heavy construction and lives in Jersey City, NJ. He is the author of Teenager (Vintage), Double Bird (Maudlin House, 2018), Dust Bunny City (Disorder Press, 2017), among others. His fiction has been published in The Paris Review, The Believer, The Baffler, and The Nervous Breakdown, and many others (collected below). He is also a creative writing teacher and editor.
***
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4/26/2024 • 26 minutes, 19 seconds
How to Structure a Novel
A new 'Craftwork' episode, about how to structure a novel. My guest is Mark Cecil, author of the debut novel Bunyan and Henry, available from Pantheon Books.
Cecil is the host of The Thoughtful Bro podcast, for which he conducts interviews with an eclectic roster of award-winning and breakout storytellers. Formerly a journalist for Reuters, he is Head of Strategy for literary social media startup A Mighty Blaze and has taught writing at Grub Street in Boston. This is his first book.
***
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4/24/2024 • 1 hour, 37 minutes, 25 seconds
914. Annell López
Annell López is the author of the debut story collection I'll Give You a Reason, available from The Feminist Press. Winner of the Louise Meriwether First Book Prize.
López is a Dominican immigrant. A 2022 Peter Taylor fellow, her work has received support from Tin House and the Kenyon Review Workshops and has appeared in American Short Fiction, Michigan Quarterly Review, Brooklyn Rail, and elsewhere. López is an Assistant Fiction Editor for New Orleans Review and just finished her MFA at the University of New Orleans. She is working on a novel.
***
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4/21/2024 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 32 seconds
Karolina Waclawiak on Beverly Hills, Headhunters, Money, Helping, The Believer, Being a Creative Person, Tangerine, Hollywood, Walk of Fame, and Do It Yourself
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 377, my conversation with author Karolina Waclawiak. The episode first aired on August 26, 2015.
Waclawiak is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Life Events, The Invaders, and How to Get Into the Twin Palms. She was most recently the Editor in Chief of Pulitzer Prize-winning BuzzFeed News. Previously, she was the Executive Editor of Culture for BuzzFeed News and Deputy Editor of The Believer magazine. Work she has edited has been nominated for two National Magazine Awards, received a number of prestigious awards, and been selected for the Best American Essays anthology series.
Karolina received her BFA in Screenwriting from USC and her MFA in Fiction from Columbia University. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, VQR, the Believer, Hazlitt, and other publications.
***
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4/19/2024 • 26 minutes, 29 seconds
How to Build a Rewarding Creative Life
A new 'Craftwork' episode, about how to build a rewarding creative life. My guest is Ben Tanzer, author of the novel The Missing, available from 7.13 Books.
Tanzer is an Emmy winner. His work includes the short story collection Upstate, the science fiction novel Orphans and the essay collections Lost in Space and Be Cool. Ben is a storySouth and Pushcart nominee, a finalist for the Annual National Indie Excellence and Eric Hoffer Book Awards, a winner of the Devil's Kitchen Literary Festival Nonfiction Prose Award and a Midwest Book Award. He also received an Honorable Mention at the Chicago Writers Association Book Awards for Traditional Non-Fiction and a Bronze Medal from the Independent Publisher Book Awards. He's written for Hemispheres, Punk Planet, Men’s Health, and The Arrow, AARP’s GenX newsletter. He lives in Chicago with his family.
***
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4/17/2024 • 1 hour, 30 minutes, 55 seconds
913. José Vadi
José Vadi is the author of a memoir-in-essays called Chipped: Writing from a Skateboarder's Lens, available from Soft Skull Press.
Vadi is also the author of an essay collection called Inter State. An award-winning essayist, poet, playwright and film producer, his work has been featured by the Paris Review, The Atlantic, the PBS NewsHour, Free Skate Magazine, Alta Journal of California, and the Yale Review. He lives and writes in Sacramento, California.
***
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4/14/2024 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 4 seconds
Min Jin Lee on Writing Slowly, Confidence, Rejections, 19th Century Social Novels, Outlining, Big Frank, Despondency, Neurotic Lawyering, Cirrhosis, and Mortality
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 455, my conversation with author Min Jin Lee. The episode first aired on January 9, 2019.
Min Jin Lee is the author of the novels Free Food for Millionaires and Pachinko, a finalist for the National Book Award, and runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. In 2022, Lee received the Manhae Grand Prize for Literature, the Bucheon Diaspora Literary Award, and the Samsung Happiness for Tomorrow Award for Creativity from South Korea. She is the recipient of fellowships in Fiction from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Lee is an inductee of the New York Foundation for the Arts Hall of Fame and the New York State Writers Hall of Fame. In 2023, Lee served as the Editor of Best American Short Stories. She is a Writer-in-Residence at Amherst College. She is at work on her third novel, American Hagwon and a nonfiction work, Name Recognition.
***
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4/12/2024 • 27 minutes, 24 seconds
How to Write Good Stories
A new 'Craftwork' episode, about how to write good stories. My guest is Steve Almond, author of a new book on writing called Truth is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow, available from Zando.
Almond is the author of a dozen books of fiction and nonfiction, including All The Secrets of The World and the New York Times bestsellers Candyfreak and Against Football. His essays and reviews have been published in venues ranging from the New York Times Magazine to Ploughshares to Poets & Writers, and his short fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, Best American Mysteries, and Best American Erotica. Almond is the recipient of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and co-hosted the Dear Sugars podcast with Cheryl Strayed for four years. He teaches at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism, and lives outside Boston with his family, his debt, and his anxiety.
***
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4/10/2024 • 1 hour, 37 minutes, 10 seconds
912. Lydia Millet
Lydia Millet is the author of We Loved It All: A Memory of Life, available from W.W. Norton & Co.
Millet is the author of A Children's Bible, shortlisted for the National Book Award and a New York Times Top 10 book of 2020. Her many other works of fiction have won awards from PEN Center USA and the American Academy of Arts and Letters; the story collection Love in Infant Monkeys was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. She holds a master's degree in environmental economics and works at the Center for Biological Diversity.
***
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4/7/2024 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 58 seconds
Tommy Pico on Touring, Performing, Alter Egos, Tricking Yourself, Poetry, Voice, Longform, Improv, Daily Writing Practice, Beyonce, Bird Songs, Purpose, and Building Community
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 559, my conversation with poet, artist, and television writer Tommy Pico. The episode first aired on January 9, 2019.
Pico is a poet, artist, and tv writer. He is author of the books IRL, Nature Poem, Junk, and Feed, and he has written on the television shows Reservation Dogs, Resident Alien and Crystal Lake. Originally from the Viejas Indian reservation of the Kumeyaay nation, he now lives in Los Angeles where he makes abstract portraits with various kinds of wax, acrylics, watercolors, food coloring and India ink.
***
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4/5/2024 • 26 minutes, 25 seconds
How to Get Somewhat Better at Art
A new 'Craftwork' episode, about how to get (somewhat) better at art. My guest is Nicholson Baker, author of Finding a Likeness: How I Got Somewhat Better at Art, available from Penguin Press.
Nicholson Baker has written seventeen books, including The Mezzanine, Vox, Human Smoke, The Anthologist, and Baseless--also an art book, The World on Sunday, in collaboration with his wife, Margaret Brentano. Several of his books have been New York Times bestsellers, and he has won a National Book Critics Circle Award, a James Madison Freedom of Information Award, a Guggenheim fellowship, and the Hermann Hesse Prize. Baker has two grown children; he and his wife live on the Penobscot River in Maine.
***
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4/3/2024 • 1 hour, 32 minutes, 40 seconds
911. Alexandra Tanner
Alexandra Tanner is the author of the debut novel Worry, available from Scribner.
Tanner is a Brooklyn-based writer and editor. She is a graduate of the MFA program at The New School and the recipient of fellowships from MacDowell and The Center for Fiction. Her writing appears in The New York Times Book Review, Gawker, and Jewish Currents, among other outlets. Worry is her first novel.
***
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3/31/2024 • 1 hour, 36 minutes, 34 seconds
John Keene on Ghost Books, Song Cave, Publishing, Reading Poetry, Delayed Gratification, Language, Meaning, Youth, Freedom, Identity, Memories, Stories, History, and Punks
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 762, my conversation with author John Keene about his poetry collection Punks, which won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2022. The episode first aired on March 9, 2022.
Keene is a writer, translator, professor, and artist who was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2018. In 1989, Keene joined the Dark Room Writers Collective, and is a Graduate Fellow of the Cave Canem Writers Workshops. He is the author of Annotations, and Counternarratives, both published by New Directions, as well as several other works, including the poetry collection Seismosis, with artist Christopher Stackhouse, and a translation of Brazilian author Hilda Hilst's novel Letters from a Seducer. Keene is the recipient of many awards and fellowships--including the Windham-Campbell Prize, the Whiting Foundation Prize, the Republic of Consciousness Prize, and the American Book Award. He teaches at Rutgers University-Newark.
***
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3/29/2024 • 27 minutes, 13 seconds
910. Catherine Lacey
Catherine Lacey is the author of the novel Biography of X, available in trade paperback from Picador.
Lacey is the author of the novels Nobody Is Ever Missing, The Answers, and Pew, and of the short-story collection Certain American States. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. She has been a finalist for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and was named one of Granta's Best of Young American Novelists. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, The New York Times, The Believer, and elsewhere. Born in Mississippi, she is based in Chicago, Illinois.
***
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3/27/2024 • 1 hour, 28 minutes, 40 seconds
909. Rowan Beaird
Rowan Beaird is the author of the debut novel The Divorcées, available from Flatiron Books.
Beaird is a writer whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, and The Common, among others. She is the recipient of the Ploughshares Emerging Writer Award, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart. She has received scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and StoryStudio. She currently works at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The Divorcees is her first novel.
***
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3/24/2024 • 1 hour, 26 minutes, 33 seconds
Stephen Graham Jones on Stephen King, Slasher Movies, Fear, Writing Fast, Being Physical, the Mechanics of a Joke, Dilating the Moment, Imaginary Safe Places, Screenwriting, Caffeine, and the Perfect Horror Novel
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 666, my conversation with author Stephen Graham Jones. It first aired on August 16, 2020.
Stephen Graham Jones is the bestselling author of The Only Good Indians and My Heart Is a Chainsaw, among others. He has been the recipient of several awards including the Ray Bradbury Award from the Los Angeles Times, the Bram Stoker Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, just to name a few. He is a Professor of English at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
***
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3/22/2024 • 26 minutes, 52 seconds
908. Téa Obreht
Téa Obreht is the author of the novel The Morningside, available from Random House.
Obreht is the internationally bestselling author of The Tiger's Wife, which won the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her second novel, Inland, was an instant bestseller, won the Southwest Book Award, and was a finalist for the Dylan Thomas Prize. Her work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper's, and Zoetrope: All-Story, among many other publications. Originally from the former Yugoslavia, Obreht now resides in Wyoming.
***
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3/20/2024 • 1 hour, 20 minutes, 30 seconds
907. Adelle Waldman
Adelle Waldman is the author of the novel Help Wanted, available from W.W. Norton & Co.
Waldman is the best-selling author of The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., which was named a best book of the year by The New Yorker, Economist, NPR, Elle, and many others. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal, among other publications. She lives in New York State.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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3/17/2024 • 1 hour, 26 minutes, 30 seconds
Tao Lin on Iced Coffee, Cannabis, Eating Tobacco, Beta-Carbolines, Kathleen Harrison, Terence McKenna, Tripping, Taking Notes, Autobiographical Writing, MDMA Films, Memory, and Leave Society
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 521, my conversation with author Tao Lin. It first aired on May 20, 2018.
Lin is the author of the memoir Trip, the novels Leave Society, Taipei and Richard Yates, Eeeee Eee Eeee. He is also the author of the novella Shoplifting from American Apparel, the story collection Bed, and the poetry collections Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy and you are a little bit happier than i am. He was born in Virginia and is the founder and editor of Muumuu House.
***
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3/15/2024 • 27 minutes, 59 seconds
906. Katya Apekina
Katya Apekina is the author of the novel Mother Doll, available from The Overlook Press.
Apekina is a novelist, screenwriter, and translator. Her debut novel, The Deeper the Water, the Uglier the Fish, was named a Best Book of 2018 by Kirkus, Buzzfeed, Lithub, and others, was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize, and has been translated into Spanish, Catalan, French, German, and Italian. She is the recipient of an Elizabeth George grant, an Olin Fellowship, the Alena Wilson prize, and a Third Year Fiction Fellowship from Washignton University in St. Louis, where she did her MFA. She has done residences at VCCA, Playa, Ucross, Art Omi: Writing, and Fondation Jan Michalski in Switzerland. Born in Moscow, she moved to the US when she was three years old and currently lives in Los Angeles. Mother Doll is her second novel.
***
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3/13/2024 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 13 seconds
905. Tana French
Tana French is the author of the novel The Hunter, available from Viking Books. It is the official March pick of the Otherppl Book Club.
Tana French is the New York Times bestselling author of eight previous books, including In the Woods, The Likeness, and The Searcher. Her novels have sold over four million copies and won numerous awards, including the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, and Barry awards, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Best Mystery/Thriller, and the Irish Book Award for Crime Fiction. She lives in Dublin with her family.
***
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3/10/2024 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 38 seconds
Sebastian Castillo on Teaching, Creative Constraints, Oulipo Writing, Edouard Leve, Hybrid Forms, Warhol, GIF Novels, Dennis Cooper, Boredom, Emotion, Imitation, and Philip Roth
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 679, my conversation with author Sebastian Castillo. It first aired on November 4, 2020.
Castillo is a writer and teacher based in Philadelphia. He was born in Caracas, Venezuela and grew up in New York. He is the author of a novella entitled Salmon (Shabby Doll House), 49 Venezuelan Novels (Bottlecap Press), a collection of surreal micro-fiction, and another book called Not I (Word West).
***
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3/8/2024 • 26 minutes, 29 seconds
904. Tommy Orange
Tommy Orange is the author of the novel Wandering Stars, available from Knopf.
Orange is a graduate of the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. An enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, he was born and raised in Oakland, California. His debut novel, There There, was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize and it received the 2019 American Book Award. He currently lives in Oakland, California.
***
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3/6/2024 • 1 hour, 6 minutes, 17 seconds
How to Write Flash Fiction
A new 'Craftwork' episode, about how to write flash fiction. My guest is author and editor Tommy Dean.
Dean is the author of two flash fiction chapbooks and a full flash collection, Hollows (Alternating Current Press 2022). He is the Editor of Fractured Lit and Uncharted Magazine. His writing can be found in Best Microfiction 2019, 2020, 2023, Best Small Fictions 2019 and 2022, Harpur Palate, and elsewhere.
***
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3/3/2024 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 42 seconds
Leland Cheuk on Success, Rejection, Persistence, Bad Luck, Denial, Near-Death Experiences, Rebirth, Freedom Swimmers, and Good Luck
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 613, my conversation with author Leland Cheuk. It first aired on November 20, 2019.
Cheuk is an award-winning author of three books of fiction, most recently the novel No Good Very Bad Asian (2019). His work has appeared in a variety of publications including The Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Salon, and others. He is the founder of the indie press 7.13 Books.
***
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3/1/2024 • 27 minutes, 51 seconds
903. Sloane Crosley
Sloane Crosley is the author of the memoir Grief Is for People, available from MCD Books.
Crosley is the author of the novels Cult Classic and The Clasp and of three essay collections: Look Alive Out There and the New York Times bestsellers I Was Told There'd Be Cake and How Did You Get This Number. She lives in New York City.
***
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2/28/2024 • 1 hour, 26 minutes, 10 seconds
902. Lauren Markham
Lauren Markham is the author of A Map of Future Ruins, available from Riverhead Books.
Markham is the author of the award-winning The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life. She has been working with migrants for two decades and has written about migration and other social issues in The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, The New York Review of Books, and other publications. She lives in Berkeley, CA.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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2/25/2024 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 31 seconds
Ben Loory on Needles, Doctors, Nighttime, The Sun, Endings, Dennis Etchison, Screenwriting, Growing Up Without a TV, Writing Mathematically, and The Twilight Zone
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 29, my conversation with author Ben Loory. It first aired on December 25, 2011.
Loory is the author of the story collections Tales of Falling and Flying and Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day, and a picture book for children, The Baseball Player and the Walrus. His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, READ Magazine, and Fairy Tale Review; been heard on This American Life and Selected Shorts; performed live at WordTheatre in Los Angeles and London; and translated into many languages, including Japanese, Farsi, Arabic, and Indonesian. A graduate of Harvard and the American Film Institute, Loory lives in Los Angeles, where he is an Instructor for the UCLA Extension Writers' Program.
***
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2/23/2024 • 27 minutes, 37 seconds
901. Vanessa Chan
Vanessa Chan is the author of the bestselling debut novel The Storm We Made, available from Marysue Rucci Books. It is the official February pick of the Otherppl Book Club.
The Storm We Made is a national bestseller, Good Morning America Book Club Pick and BBC Radio 2 Book Club pick. Acquired by international publishers in a flurry of auctions, the novel will be published in more than twenty languages worldwide. Her other work has been published in Vogue, Esquire, and more. Vanessa grew up in Malaysia and is now based mostly in Brooklyn.
***
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2/21/2024 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 52 seconds
900. Leslie Jamison
Leslie Jamison is the author of the memoir Splinters, available from Little, Brown & Co.
Jamison is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Recovering and The Empathy Exams; the collection of essays Make It Scream, Make It Burn, a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award; and the novel The Gin Closet, a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize. She is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, and her work has appeared in publications including The Atlantic, Harper's, the New York Times Book Review, the Oxford American, and the Virginia Quarterly Review, among many others. She teaches at Columbia University and lives in Brooklyn.
***
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2/18/2024 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 14 seconds
Jacinda Townsend on Music, Kentucky, Childhood, Greyhound Buses, Getting Taken Seriously, Siblings, Skipping Grades, Leaving Home, and Harvard
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 264, my conversation with author Jacinda Townsend. It first aired on March 30, 2014.
Jacinda Townsend is the author of the novels Mother Country (Graywolf Press) and Saint Monkey (W.W. Norton), which won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and the James Fenimore Cooper Prize. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and teaches in the MFA program at Brown University.
***
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2/16/2024 • 29 minutes, 3 seconds
899. Sarah Tomlinson
Sarah Tomlinson is the author of the novel The Last Days of the Midnight Ramblers, available from Flatiron Books.
Tomlinson, a former music journalist, has been a ghostwriter since 2008, penning more than twenty books, including five New York Times bestsellers. In 2015, she published the father-daughter memoir, Good Girl (Gallery Books). She wrote The Last Days of the Midnight Ramblers, her first novel, in-between assignments for a who's who of celebrity clients.
***
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2/14/2024 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 45 seconds
898. Paul Theroux
Paul Theroux is the author of the novel Burma Sahib, available from Mariner Books.
Theroux is the author of many highly acclaimed books. His novels include The Bad Angel Brothers, The Lower River, Jungle Lovers, and The Mosquito Coast, and his renowned travel books include Ghost Train to the Eastern Star and Dark Star Safari. He lives in Hawaii and on Cape Cod.
***
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2/11/2024 • 1 hour, 23 minutes, 37 seconds
Bethany C. Morrow on Air Travel, Basic Human Manners, Throat Chops, Self-Soothing, Pretzels, Mindful Eating, California Produce, The Obscenity of Vegetarians, and Her Sister’s Potato Salad
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 531, my conversation with author Bethany C. Morrow. It first aired on July 4, 2018.
Morrow is a national bestselling author writing for adult and young adult audiences. She is the author of the novels Mem, A Song Below Water, A Chorus Rises, and So Many Beginnings: A Little Women Remix. She is the editor/contributor to the young adult anthology Take the Mic, which won the 2020 ILA Social Justice Literature Award. Her work has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, Forbes, Bustle, BuzzFeed, and more. She is included on USA Today's list of "100 Black Novelists and Fiction Writers You Should Read."
***
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2/9/2024 • 27 minutes, 32 seconds
897. Margot Livesey
Margot Livesey is the author of the novel The Road from Belhaven, available from Knopf.
Livesey was born and grew up on the edge of the Scottish Highlands. She is the author of a collection of stories and nine other novels, including Eva Moves the Furniture, The Flight of Gemma Hardy, and The Boy in the Field. She has received awards from the NEA, the Guggenheim Foundation and the Radcliffe Institute. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts and is on the faculty of the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
***
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2/7/2024 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 39 seconds
896. Brandi Wells
Brandi Wells is the author of the debut novel The Cleaner, available from Hanover Square Press.
Wells' other books include the novella This Boring Apocalypse, published by Civil Coping Mechanisms (2015) and a full length chapbook of stories, Please Don't Be Upset, published by Tiny Hardcore Press (2011). Their fiction appears in Puerto Del Sol, Mid-American Review, Tri-Quarterly and many other journals.
Wells earned an MFA in creative writing from the University of Alabama, as well as a PhD in literature and creative writing from the University of Southern California. They're currently an Assistant Professor of creative writing at CSU Fullerton.
***
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2/4/2024 • 1 hour, 23 minutes, 31 seconds
Megan Boyle on Tao Lin, Marriage, Media Coverage, Blogging, Me Fatigue, Isolation, Hippie Siblings, Moving, Shyness, and Alien Abductors
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 13, my conversation with author Megan Boyle. It first aired on October 30, 2011.
Boyle (b. 1985) lives in Baltimore. She is the author of the novel Live Blog (Tyrant Books) and the poetry collection selected unpublished blog posts of a mexican panda express employee (muumuu house). her work has been published by Vice,Thought Catalog, 3: AM, Pop Serial, and other venues.
***
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2/2/2024 • 28 minutes, 24 seconds
895. Christina Cooke
Christina Cooke is the author of the debut novel Broughtupsy, available from Catapult.
Cooke's writing has previously appeared in The Caribbean Writer, Prairie Schooner, PRISM international, Epiphany: A Literary Journal, and elsewhere. A MacDowell Fellow, Journey Prize winner, and Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award winner, she holds a Master of Arts degree from the University of New Brunswick and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Born in Jamaica, Christina is now a Canadian citizen who lives and writes in New York City.
***
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1/31/2024 • 1 hour, 29 minutes, 35 seconds
894. Annie Liontas
Annie Liontas is the author of the memoir-in-essays Sex with a Brain Injury, available from Scribner.
Liontas is also the author of the novel Let Me Explain You, and they co-edited the anthology A Manner of Being: Writers on their Mentors. Their work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Gay Magazine, NPR, Electric Literature, BOMB, Lithub, The Believer, Guernica, McSweeney’s, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. A graduate of Syracuse University’s MFA program, they are a professor of writing at George Washington University.
Liontas has served as a mentor for Pen City’s incarcerated writers and helped secure a Mellon Foundation grant on Disability Justice to bring storytelling to communities in the criminal justice system.
They co-host the literary podcast LitFriends and live in Philadelphia with their wife, dog, and Email the rabbit.
***
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1/28/2024 • 1 hour, 27 minutes, 17 seconds
Lidia Yuknavitch on Artistic Responsibility, Life and Death Moments, The Savior Complex, Understanding Others, Ideology, Direct Action, Rage, and Change
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 370, my conversation with author Lidia Yuknavitch. It first aired on July 15, 2015.
Yuknavitch is the bestselling author of the novels Thrust, The Book of Joan, The Small Backs of Children, and Dora: A Headcase, the story collection Verge, and the memoir The Chronology of Water. She is the recipient of two Oregon Book Awards and has been a finalist for the Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize and the PEN Center USA Creative Nonfiction Award. She lives in Portland, Oregon.
***
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1/26/2024 • 21 minutes, 42 seconds
893. Venita Blackburn
Venita Blackburn is the author of the debut novel Dead in Long Beach, CA, available from MCD Books.
Blackburn's other books include the story collection Black Jesus and Other Superheroes, which won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize and was a finalist for the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award and the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction; and another collection called How to Wrestle a Girl, which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction and the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker online, The Paris Review, Pleiades, Bat City Review, and American Short Fiction. She is a faculty member in the creative writing program at Fresno State University and is the founder and president of Live, Write, an organization devoted to offering free creative writing workshops for communities of color. She lives in Fresno, California.
***
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1/24/2024 • 1 hour, 30 minutes, 34 seconds
892. Ishmael Reed
Ishmael Reed is the author of the play The Slave Who Loved Caviar, now available in print from Archway Editions.
Ishmael Reed is the author of over twenty-five books including Mumbo Jumbo, Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down, Conjugating Hindi, Why No Confederate Statues in Mexico and most recently Malcolm and Me and Why the Black Hole Sings the Blues. He is also a publisher, television producer, songwriter, radio and television commentator, lecturer, and has long been devoted to exploring an alternative black aesthetic: the trickster tradition, or Neo-Hoodooism. A regular contributor to CounterPunch and founder of the Before Columbus Foundation, he taught at the University of California, Berkeley for over thirty years, retiring in 2005. Reed is the only person to be nominated for the National Book Award in two categories in the same year.
***
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1/21/2024 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 30 seconds
Atticus Lish on Book Reviews, Expectations, Isolation, Chinese, New York, Family, Drawing, Phillips Exeter, and Don DeLillo
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 331, my conversation with Atticus Lish. It first aired on November 19, 2014.
Lish is the author of the novel The War for Gloria, published in 2022 by Vintage, and the debut novel Preparation for the Next Life, which won the 2015 Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the 2016 Grand Prix de Littérature Américaine.
***
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1/19/2024 • 29 minutes, 35 seconds
891. Marie-Helene Bertino
Marie-Helene Bertino is the author of the novel Beautyland, available from Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.
Bertino's other books include the novels Parakeet and 2 A.M. at The Cat's Pajamas, and the story collection Safe as Houses. She was the 2017 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Fellow in Cork, Ireland. She has received the O. Henry Prize, the Pushcart Prize, the Iowa Short Fiction Award, the Mississippi Review Prize, and fellowships from MacDowell, Sewanee, and New York City's Center for Fiction, and her work has twice been featured on NPR's Selected Shorts. She teaches creative writing at New York University and Yale University and lives in Brooklyn.
***
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1/17/2024 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 12 seconds
890. De'Shawn Charles Winslow
De'Shawn Charles Winslow is the author of the novel Decent People, now available in trade paperback from Bloomsbury.
Winslow's debut novel, In West Mills, won the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize winner, an American Book Award, and a Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction, and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book, Lambda Literary, and Publishing Triangle awards. He was born and raised in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, and graduated from the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
***
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1/14/2024 • 1 hour, 24 minutes, 38 seconds
Jean Kyoung Frazier on New York City, Bartending, Crushtomers, Not Caring, Dead Flies, First Lines, Reconnecting, and Ambivalence About Ambition
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 659, my conversation with Jean Kyoung Frazier. This episode first aired on July 22, 2020.
Jean's debut novel, Pizza Girl, is available in trade paperback from Anchor Books. She lives in Los Angeles.
***
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1/12/2024 • 26 minutes, 46 seconds
Publishing Industry Predictions: 2024
A new 'Craftwork' episode. A conversation with Kathleen Schmidt, an expert on the book business and the author of a Substack called Publishing Confidential. In this episode, Kathleen shares her publishing industry predictions for 2024.
Kathleen Schmidt is a well-respected voice in book publishing with in-depth experience in all aspects of the industry, including as a publicist, literary agent, acquisitions editor, and ghostwriter. Her career encompasses 30 years of creating and directing impactful and strategic global media, marketing, and branding campaigns for politicians, A-List celebrities, athletes, and high-profile personalities. To date, she has worked on 50 New York Times bestsellers, and her clients have continuously appeared in top-tier national print, broadcast, and radio outlets such as The Today Show, Good Morning America, Vogue, Elle, Financial Times, Vanity Fair, GQ, and Sirius XM. Schmidt is the founder of Kathleen Schmidt Public Relations. She lives in New Jersey.
***
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1/10/2024 • 1 hour, 38 minutes, 50 seconds
889. Julie Myerson
Julie Myerson is the author of the novel Nonfiction, available from Tin House. It is the official January pick of the Otherppl Book Club.
Myerson is the author of ten novels, including the bestselling Something Might Happen and The Stopped Heart, and three works of nonfiction, including Home: The Story of Everyone Who Ever Lived in Our House and The Lost Child. As a critic and columnist, she has written for many newspapers including The Guardian, the FT, Harper's Bazaar and the New York Times, and she was a regular guest on BBC TV's Newsnight Review. She lives in London with her family.
***
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1/7/2024 • 1 hour, 26 minutes, 29 seconds
Azareen Van Der Vliet Oloomi on Moving, Revolution, Sai Baba, Transnational Personhood, Sea Captains, and the Upper Midwest
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 507, my conversation with author Azareen Van Der Vliet Oloomi. This episode first aired on March 7, 2018.
Azareen Van Der Vliet Oloomi is an American novelist and non-fiction writer. She is the author of Call Me Zebra, named a Best Book of the Year by over twenty publications and the winner of the 2019 PEN/Faulkner Award, the John Gardner Award, and long listed for the PEN/Open Book Award. Her other novels include Savage Tongues and Fra Keeler, for which she received a Whiting Writers' Award and a National Book Foundation "5 Under 35" award. She is the 2023-2024 Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Fiction Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University. A recipient of fellowships from Fulbright, the Aspen Institute, MacDowell, and Art Omi, her work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories (Ed. by Min Jin Lee and Heidi Pitlor), The Sewanee Review, The Yale Review, The New York Times, and The Paris Review among other places. In 2020, she founded Literatures of Annihilation, Exile & Resistance, a conversation series focused on the intersection of the arts and transformational migrations. Born in Los Angeles, she spent her childhood in Iran, the United Arab Emirates, and Spain, and speaks Farsi, Italian, and Spanish. She is the Dorothy G. Griffin College Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame.
***
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1/5/2024 • 26 minutes, 17 seconds
888. Susannah Breslin
Susannah Breslin is the author of the memoir Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment, available from Legacy Lit.
Breslin is a freelance journalist and a Forbes.com senior contributor. From 2018 to 2019, she was the Lawrence Grauman Jr. Post-graduate Fellow at U.C. Berkeley's Investigative Reporting Program. Her reporting and essays have appeared in The Atlantic, Slate, Harper's Bazaar, The Daily Beast, Salon, Newsweek, The Guardian, and Variety, among other media outlets. She holds a B.A. in English from U.C. Berkeley and an M.A. from the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She lives in Los Angeles, California.
***
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1/3/2024 • 1 hour, 20 minutes, 45 seconds
My Favorite Books of 2023
In this, the final episode of 2023, I'm sharing my ten favorite books of the year.
Incredibly difficult to choose—and really, there are dozens of books that could've made the list. So please consider this, more than anything else, a celebration of all the great conversations and talented authors who shared their time and insight and talent on this program over the course of the past twelve months. I'm grateful to all of my guests.
My thanks as well to everyone who listens to this show (this means you!). Wishing you all the very best in the new year, and looking forward to more big things in 2024!
Stay tuned...
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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12/31/2023 • 58 minutes, 29 seconds
Best of 2023 - Part 3
The third in a series of episodes, looking back on 2023 and breaking down the most popular conversations of the year.
Today, a look at the top-five most-downloaded author interviews of 2023.
Also: On New Year's Eve, I'll be closing out the year by sharing my personal favorite books of the year.
Stay tuned...
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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12/27/2023 • 31 minutes, 44 seconds
Best of 2023 - Part 2
The second in a series of episodes, looking back on 2023 and breaking down the most popular conversations of the year.
Today, a look at five of the most-downloaded author interviews (10 through 6).
And tomorrow, I'll be sharing the top-five author interviews of 2023.
Also: On New Year's Eve, I'll be closing out the year by sharing my personal favorite books of the year.
Stay tuned...
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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12/26/2023 • 27 minutes, 10 seconds
Best of 2023 - Part 1
The first in a series of episodes, looking back on 2023 and breaking down the most popular conversations of the year.
Today, a look at the five most-downloaded 'Craftwork' episodes, as well as five of the most-downloaded author interviews (15 through 11).
In the days to come, I'll be sharing additional 'Best of' episodes where I finish the countdown and share the full list of Top 15 author interviews of 2023.
And on New Year's Eve, I'll be closing out the year by sharing my personal favorite books of the year.
Stay tuned...
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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12/24/2023 • 38 minutes, 52 seconds
Alexander Chee on Titles, Endings, Writer Types, Anger, Patience, Deadlines, and the Messiness of the Creative Process
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 400, my conversation with author Alexander Chee. This episode first aired on February 16, 2016.
Chee is the author of the bestselling novels The Queen of the Night and Edinburgh, and the essay collection How to Write an Autobiographical Novel. He is an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College. He is a contributing editor at The New Republic, an editor at large at The Virginia Quarterly Review, and a critic at large at The Los Angeles Times.
***
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12/22/2023 • 27 minutes, 20 seconds
887. Lauren Elkin
Lauren Elkin is the author of Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art, available from Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.
Elkin's essays have appeared in many publications, including The New York Times, The Guardian, Frieze, and The Times Literary Supplement. Her book Flâneuse was named a notable book of 2017 by The New York Times Book Review and was a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. A native New Yorker, she lived in Paris for twenty years and now resides in London.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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12/20/2023 • 1 hour, 26 minutes, 52 seconds
How Meditation Can Inform Creative Writing
A new 'Craftwork' episode, about how meditation can inform creative writing. My guest is Melissa Broder, author of the novel Death Valley (Scribner).
Broder's other books include the novels Milk Fed andThe Pisces, the essay collection So Sad Today, and five poetry collections, including Superdoom and Last Sext. She has written for The New York Times, Elle, and New York magazine's The Cut. She lives in Los Angeles.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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12/17/2023 • 1 hour, 40 minutes, 44 seconds
Michael Earl Craig on Shoeing Horses, Poetry, Grad School, Feedback, Raymond Carver, Family, and Creative Inheritance
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 308, my conversation with poet Michael Earl Craig. This episode first aired on August 31, 2014.
Craig is originally from Dayton, Ohio. He is the author of several poetry collections, most recently Iggy Horse, which was published by Wave Books this past spring. His other collections include Woods and Clouds Interchangeable (Wave Books, 2019), Talkativeness (Wave Books, 2014), Thin Kimono (Wave Books, 2010), Yes, Master (Fence Books, 2006), Can You Relax in My House, (Fence Books, 2002), and the chapbook Jombang Jet (Factory Hollow Press, 2012). He lives in the Shields Valley, near Livingston, Montana, where he runs a full-time farrier practice. He was the 2015-2017 Poet Laureate of Montana.
***
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12/15/2023 • 28 minutes, 51 seconds
886. E.J. Koh
E.J. Koh is the author of the debut novel The Liberators, available from Tin House. It is the official December pick of the Otherppl Book Club.
Koh's other books include the memoirThe Magical Language of Others, which won a Washington State Book Award, Pacific Northwest Book Award, and Association for Asian American Studies Book Award, and was longlisted for the PEN Open Book Award. She is also the author of the poetry collection A Lesser Love, a Pleiades Press Editors Prize for Poetry winner. Her work has appeared in AGNI, the Atlantic, Boston Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Poetry, Slate, World Literature Today, and elsewhere. Koh earned her MFA at Columbia University and her PhD at the University of Washington, and has received National Endowment for the Arts and MacDowell fellowships. She lives in Seattle, Washington.
***
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12/13/2023 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 36 seconds
885. Rumaan Alam
Rumaan Alam is the bestselling author of the novel Leave the World Behind, available in trade paperback from Ecco Books. In 2020, it was a finalist for the National Book Award, and it is now a major motion picture, directed by Sam Esmail and starring Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke, and Mahershala Ali.
Alam's other books include Rich and Pretty and That Kind of Mother. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Bookforum, and the New Republic, where he is a contributing editor. He studied writing at Oberlin College and lives in New York with his family.
***
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12/10/2023 • 1 hour, 33 minutes, 24 seconds
Chuck Klosterman on Brooklyn, Book Tour, Time, Predictions, Identity Politics, Farming, High School, Dreams, and Heavy Metal
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 423, my conversation with bestselling author Chuck Klosterman. This episode first aired on July 20, 2016.
Klosterman is the bestselling author of eight nonfiction books (including Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs; I Wear the Black Hat; But What If We’re Wrong?; and Killing Yourself to Live). he has also published two novels (Downtown Owl and The Visible Man). He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, GQ, Esquire, Spin, The Guardian, The Believer, Billboard, The A.V. Club, and ESPN. Klosterman served as the Ethicist for The New York Times Magazine for three years, appeared as himself in the LCD Soundsystem documentary Shut Up and Play the Hits, and was an original founder of the website Grantland with Bill Simmons.
***
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12/8/2023 • 27 minutes, 59 seconds
884. Blake Butler
Blake Butler is the author of the memoir Molly, available from Archway Editions.
Butler is the author of five books of fiction, including There Is No Year and Scorch Atlas; a work of hybrid nonfiction, Nothing: A Portrait of Insomnia; and two collaborative works, Anatomy Courses with Sean Kilpatrick and One with Vanessa Place and Christopher Higgs. He is the founding editor of HTMLGIANT, "the Internet literature magazine blog of the future," and maintains a weekly column covering literary art and fast food for Vicemagazine. His other work has appeared widely, including in The Believer, the New York Times, Fence, Dazed and Confused, and The Best Bizarro Fiction of the Decade. He lives in Baltimore.
***
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12/6/2023 • 1 hour, 56 minutes, 49 seconds
883. Wendy Chin-Tanner
Wendy Chin-Tanner is the author of the debut novel King of the Armadillos, available from Flatiron Books.
Chin-Tanner is the author of the poetry collections Turn and Anyone Will Tell You, editor of Embodied: An Intersectional Feminist Comics Poetry Anthology, and copublisher at A Wave Blue World, an independent publishing company for graphic novels. Born and raised in New York City, she lives in the Hudson Valley with her family. King of the Armadillos is her first novel.
***
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12/3/2023 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 48 seconds
Elizabeth Ellen on Whiskey, Childhood, Shyness, Florida, House Parties, Panic Attacks, and The Hills
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 99, my conversation with author and publisher Elizabeth Ellen. This episode first aired on August 26, 2012.
Elizabeth Ellen’s stories have been published in American Short Fiction, HARPER'S Magazine, Muumuu House, Joyland, and numerous other magzines and journals. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize for her story "Teen Culture," and is the author of several books including Fast Machine and Person/a. In 2024, Clash Books will publish her novel, American Thighs.
***
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12/1/2023 • 27 minutes, 18 seconds
How to Think Like a Publicist
A new 'Craftwork' episode, all about the art of book publicity. My guest is longtime literary publicist Lauren Cerand.
Lauren has more than twenty years of experience running her own thriving global communications consultancy, driven by an intensive personal focus on each client’s needs and desires, a vast network of relationships, and a well-honed gift for making creative, strategic decisions. She is known for working with authors early on, or at pivotal moments in their careers, including Atticus Lish, Min Jin Lee, and Tayari Jones, and this year, launched and led the inaugural cohort of Get the Word Out for Poets & Writers, a new publicity incubator for debut authors.
***
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11/29/2023 • 1 hour, 54 minutes, 18 seconds
How to Be a Ghostwriter
A new 'Craftwork' episode, all about ghostwriting. My guest is Stuart Horwitz, founder and principal of Book Architecture.
Horwitz has spent over twenty years helping writers become authors. His clients have reached the New York Times best-seller list in both fiction and nonfiction, and have appeared on Oprah, The Today Show, The Tonight Show, and in the most prestigious journals in their respective fields.
He has written three highly acclaimed books which together comprise the Book Architecture trilogy: first is Blueprint Your Bestseller: Organize and Revise any Manuscript with the Book Architecture Method; second is Book Architecture: How to Plot and Outline Without Using a Formula, and third: Finish Your Book in Three Drafts: How to Write a Book, Revise a Book, and Complete a Book While You Still Love It.
Horwitz is also an award-winning essayist and poet, and has taught writing at Grub Street of Boston and at Brown University. He holds two masters degrees—one in Literary Aesthetics from NYU, and one in East Asian Studies from Harvard with a concentration in Medieval Japanese Buddhism.
***
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11/26/2023 • 1 hour, 41 minutes, 33 seconds
Susan Choi on Adolescence, Motherhood, Teaching, Me Too, Power, Abuse, and High School
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 647, my conversation with author Susan Choi. She won the National Book Award in 2019 for her novel Trust Exercise. This episode first aired on June 10, 2020.
Susan's first novel, The Foreign Student, won the Asian-American Literary Award for fiction, and her second novel, American Woman, was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize. Her third novel, A Person of Interest, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. Ander fourth novel, My Education, received a 2014 Lammy Award. ” She serves as a trustee of PEN America and teaches in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. ‘
***
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11/24/2023 • 19 minutes, 19 seconds
882. Lindsay Hunter
Lindsay Hunter is the author of the novel Hot Springs Drive, available from Roxane Gay Books.
Hunter received her MFA in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is the author of two story collections and three novels. Her story collection Don't Kiss Me was named one of Amazon's 10 Best Books of the Year: Short Stories. Her novel Eat Only When You're Hungry was a Book of the Month Club selection, a finalist for the Chicago Review of Books Fiction Award, and an NPR Great Read. She lives in Chicago with her family.
***
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11/22/2023 • 1 hour, 23 minutes, 54 seconds
881. Lexi Freiman
Lexi Freiman is the author of the novel The Book of Ayn, available from Catapult.
Freiman is an Australian writer and editor who graduated from Columbia's MFA program in 2012. Her first novel, Inappropriation, was longlisted for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize and the Miles Franklin Award. She also writes for television.
***
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11/19/2023 • 1 hour, 31 minutes, 11 seconds
Jonathan Ames on Insecurity, Writing, Youth, Time, Choices, Failure, Letting Go, Luck, David Letterman, and Hollywood Meetings
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 520, my conversation with author Jonathan Ames.
Ames is the author of several books, including I Pass Like Night; The Extra Man; What's Not to Love?; My Less Than Secret Life; Wake Up, Sir!; I Love You More Than You Know; The Alcoholic; The Double Life Is Twice as Good, and most recently, a string of noir novels, including You Were Never Really Here (which was dapted into the acclaimed film starring Joaquin Phoenix), A Man Named Doll, and The Wheel of Doll. He is also the creator of two television series, Blunt Talk and Bored to Death, and has had two amateur boxing matches, fighting as "The Herring Wonder."
***
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11/17/2023 • 27 minutes, 9 seconds
880. Michael Cunningham
Michael Cunningham is a Pulitzer Prize winner and the author of the novel Day, available from Random House.
Cunningham is a novelist, screenwriter, and educator. His novel The Hours received the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1999. He has taught at Columbia University and Brooklyn College. He is currently a professor at Yale University.
***
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11/15/2023 • 1 hour, 20 minutes, 21 seconds
879. Jami Nakamura Lin
Jami Nakamura Lin is the author of the memoir The Night Parade, available from Mariner Books. It is the official November pick of the Otherppl Book Club.
Lin is a Japanese Taiwanese Okinawan American writer, whose work has been featured in the New York Times, Catapult, and Electric Literature, among other publications. She has received fellowships and support from the National Endowment for the Arts/Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission, Yaddo, Sustainable Arts Foundation, Sewanee Writers' Conference, We Need Diverse Books, and the Illinois Arts Council Agency. She received her MFA in nonfiction from Pennsylvania State University and lives in the Chicago area.
***
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11/12/2023 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 20 seconds
Megan Fernandes on Edmonton, Poetry, Immigration, Patriotism, Language, Bernie, and Covid
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 627, my conversation with author and poet Megan Fernandes. Her books include The Kingdom and After, Good Boys, and I Do Everything I'm Told. It first aired on March 1, 2020.
Megan’s work has appeared in a variety of publications, including The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, Tin House, Ploughshares, Guernica, McSweeney’s. She is an Associate Professor of English and the Writer-in-Residence at Lafayette College.
***
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11/10/2023 • 27 minutes, 30 seconds
878. Thurston Moore
Thurston Moore is a founding member of the band Sonic Youth and the author of a new memoir entitled Sonic Life, available from Doubleday Books.
Moore helped found Sonic Youth in New York in 1981 and spent the ensuing thirty years at the vanguard of alternative rock, influencing and inspiring such acts as Nirvana, Pavement, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, My Bloody Valentine, and Beck. The band's album Daydream Nation was chosen by the Library of Congress for historical preservation in the National Recording Registry in 2006. Moore is involved in publishing and poetry and teaches at the Summer Writing Workshop at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. He divides his time between the USA and England.
***
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11/8/2023 • 1 hour, 29 minutes, 12 seconds
877. Justin Torres
Justin Torres is the author of the novel Blackouts, a finalist for the 2023 National Book Award for Fiction. Available from Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
Torres is also the author of the debut novel We the Animals, which won the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, was translated into fifteen languages, and was adapted into a feature film. He was named one of the National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35, a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and a fellow at the New York Public Library's Cullman Center. His short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, Granta, Tin House, and The Washington Post. He lives in Los Angeles and is an associate professor of English at UCLA.
***
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11/5/2023 • 1 hour, 22 minutes, 50 seconds
Wendy C. Ortiz on Dreams, Ghosts, Tori Amos, Belief, Machine Elves, and Jungian Analysis
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 436, my conversation with Wendy C. Ortiz. Her books include Excavation: A Memoir, Hollywood Notebook, and the "dreamoir" Bruja.
Wendy was born and raised in Los Angeles. Her work has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, The Rumpus, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and the National Book Critics Circle Small Press Spotlight blog. Her writing has appeared in such venues as The New York Times, Joyland, StoryQuarterly, and a year-long series appeared at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. Her “Urban Liminal” series of texts appear alongside signature graphic representations of the projects of Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects in the book Amplified Urbanism (2017). Wendy is a psychotherapist in private practice in Los Angeles.
***
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11/3/2023 • 26 minutes, 14 seconds
How Conglomeration Changed the Publishing Industry and American Literature
A conversation with Dan Sinykin, author of Big Fiction: How Conglomeration Changed the Publishing Industry and American Literature, available from Columbia University Press.
Sinykin is an assistant professor of English at Emory University with a courtesy appointment in quantitative theory and methods. He is the author of a book called American Literature and the Long Downturn: Neoliberal Apocalypse (2020), and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Rumpus, Dissent, and other publications.
***
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11/1/2023 • 1 hour, 28 minutes, 21 seconds
876. Athena Dixon
Athena Dixon is the author of the memoir-in-essays entitled The Loneliness Files, available from Tin House.
Dixon's other books include the essay collection The Incredible Shrinking Woman (Split/Lip Press 2020) and No God In This Room (Winner of the Intersectional Midwest Chapbook Contest, Argus House Press 2018). Her work has appeared in publications such as Harper’s Bazaar, Narratively, GAYMagazine, Shenandoah, Grub Street, Lit Hub, and The Washington Square Review, among others. She has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes for both poetry and creative nonfiction as well as a Best of the Net nomination for poetry. She lives in Philadelphia.
***
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10/29/2023 • 1 hour, 22 minutes, 36 seconds
Brad Phillips on The Name Brad, Heroin, Divorce, Suicide, Friendship, the Art World, and Instagram
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 564, my conversation with author and visual artist Brad Phillips. His debut story collection, Essays and Fictions, is available from Tyrant Books. This episode first aired on February 13, 2019.
Phillips is a native of Canada. His visual art has been exhibited all over the world. He is noted for his photorealist style of panting and for dark imagery and dark humor, and for his engagement with subjects like mental illness, addiction, shame, sexuality, and pop culture.
***
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10/27/2023 • 26 minutes, 54 seconds
How to Fight for Truth in an Age of Disinformation
A conversation with Lee McIntyre, author of On Disinformation: How to Fight for Truth and Protect Democracy, available from MIT Press.
McIntyre is Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University. Formerly Executive Director of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University, he has taught philosophy at Colgate University, Boston University, Simmons University, Tufts Experimental College, and Harvard Extension School.
***
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10/25/2023 • 1 hour, 20 minutes, 28 seconds
875. Eliza Clark
Eliza Clark is the author of the novel Penance, available from Harper Books. It is the official October pick of the Otherppl Book Club.
A native of Newcastle, Clark lives in London, where she previously attended Chelsea College of Art. Her other books include the debut novel Boy Parts and the forthccoming story collection She's Always Hungry.
***
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10/22/2023 • 1 hour, 23 minutes, 42 seconds
Hilton Als on Writing on the Floor, Time Between Projects, Andre Leon Talley, and Creative Evolution
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 244, my conversation with Pulitzer Prize winner Hilton Als. This episode first aired on January 19, 2014.
Als's most recent book is a memoir called Pin-Up. He became a staff writer at The New Yorker in 1994, a theater critic in 2002, and chief theater critic in 2013. His other books include The Women and White Girls, which was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism.
***
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10/20/2023 • 27 minutes, 20 seconds
874. Elle Nash
Elle Nash is the author of the novel Deliver Me, available from The Unnamed Press.
Nash is the author of the novels Gag Reflex (Clash Books, 2022) and Animals Eat Each Other (Dzanc Books), which was featured in the 2018 June Reading Room of O - The Oprah Magazine and hailed by Publishers Weekly as a ‘complex, impressive exploration of obsession and desire.’
Nudes (SF/LD Books and 404 Ink), her debut short story collection, is out now.
Her work appears in Guernica, BOMB, The Nervous Breakdown, Literary Hub, The Fanzine, Volume 1 Brooklyn, New York Tyrant and elsewhere. She is a founding editor of Witch Craft Magazine and has edited fiction at both Hobart Pulp and Expat Literary Journal.
***
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10/18/2023 • 1 hour, 30 minutes, 31 seconds
873. Claudia Dey
Claudia Dey is the author of the novel Daughter, available from Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
Dey's previous novel, Heartbreaker, was a Northern Lit and Trillium Book Award finalist. It was named a best book of the year by multiple publications and is being adapted for television. Her plays have been produced internationally and nominated for the Governor General's, Dora Mavor Moore, and Trillium Book Awards. Dey has worked as a film actress, a guest artist at the National Theatre School, and an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto. Her fiction, interviews, and essays have appeared in The Paris Review ("Mothers as Makers of Death"), McSweeney's, Literary Hub, Hazlitt, and The Believer.
***
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10/15/2023 • 1 hour, 27 minutes, 12 seconds
Douglas Coupland on Insomnia, Thursdays, Work Habits, News, Visual Thinking, and Early Writing
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 268, my conversation with Douglas Coupland. This episode first aired on April 13, 2014.
Since 1991 Coupland has written thirteen novels. Including Generation X, Microserfs, Player One, and Worst. Person. Ever. He has written and performed for England’s Royal Shakespeare Company and is a columnist for The Financial Times of London. He is a frequent contributor to The New York Times, e-flux, and Vice.
***
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10/13/2023 • 24 minutes, 58 seconds
872. Roxane Gay
Roxane Gay is the author of the essay collection Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People's Business, available from Harper.
Roxane's other books include the essay collection Bad Feminist, which was a New York Times bestseller; the novel An Untamed State, a finalist for the Dayton Peace Prize; the memoir Hunger, which was a New York Times bestseller and received a National Book Critics Circle citation; and the short story collections Difficult Women and Ayiti. A contributing opinion writer to the New York Times, she has also written for Time, McSweeney's, the Virginia Quarterly Review, the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, The Rumpus, Bookforum, and Salon. Her fiction has also been selected for The Best American Short Stories 2012, The Best American Mystery Stories 2014, and other anthologies.
***
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10/11/2023 • 1 hour, 28 minutes, 24 seconds
871. David L. Ulin
David L. Ulin is the author of the novel Thirteen Question Method, available from Outpost 19.
Ulin is the author or editor of nearly twenty books, including Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles, shortlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, and the novel Ear to the Ground. His fiction has appeared in Black Clock, The Santa Monica Review, Scoundrel Time, and Zyzzyva, among other publications. The recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and Ucross Foundation, he is the books editor of Alta Journal, and a Professor of English at the University of Southern California, where he edits the literary magazine Air/Light.
***
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10/8/2023 • 1 hour, 23 minutes, 18 seconds
Frederick Barthelme on Family, Architecture, Red Krayola, Writing, and Getting Kicked Out of School
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 327, my conversation with Frederick Barthelme. This episode first aired on November 5, 2014.
Barthelme studied fiction with John Barth at The Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars in the mid-seventies, and from 1977-2010 he taught fiction writing and directed the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi. He is the author of sixteen books of fiction and nonfiction including Moon Deluxe, Second Marriage, Tracer, Two Against One, Natural Selection, The Brothers, Painted Desert, Bob the Gambler, Elroy Nights, and Waveland. His collected stories will be published in January 2024, by Arcade Publishing.
***
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10/6/2023 • 23 minutes
870. James Frankie Thomas
James Frankie Thomas is the author of the debut novel Idlewild, available from The Overlook Press. It was the official September pick of the Otherppl Book Club.
Thomas is a lifelong New Yorker. He attended the City College of New York and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He has worked as a video store clerk, a Shakespeare tutor, and the "YA of Yore" columnist for the Paris Review; he was most recently a theater critic at Vulture. Idlewild is his first novel.
***
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10/4/2023 • 1 hour, 27 minutes, 19 seconds
869. C Pam Zhang
C Pam Zhang is the author of the novel Land of Milk and Honey, available from Riverhead Books.
Zhang's other book is the debut novel How Much of These Hills Is Gold, winner of the Academy of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Award and the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, long-listed for the Booker Prize, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award and the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, and one of Barack Obama's favorite books of the year. She is a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree and a New York Public Library Cullman Fellow.
***
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10/1/2023 • 1 hour, 1 minute, 49 seconds
Susan Straight on Riverside, Family, Ross Macdonald, and Writing in Your Car
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 117, conversation with Susan Straight, author of the novel Mecca (FSG). This episode first aired on March 5, 2014.
Straight's other novels include the national bestseller Highwire Moon, a finalist for the National Book Award, and A Million Nightingales, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, as well as the memoir In the Country of Women, named a best book of 2019 by NPR and Real Simple. She is the recipient of the Edgar Award for Best Short Story, the O. Henry Prize, the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and her stories and essays have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Guardian, Granta, Harper's Magazine, and elsewhere. She was born and continues to live in Riverside, California, with her family, where she serves as a distinguished professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside.
***
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9/29/2023 • 24 minutes, 18 seconds
868. Vauhini Vara
Vauhini Vara is the author of the story collection This is Salvaged, available from W.W. Norton & Co.
Vara has been a reporter and editor for the Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, and the New York Times Magazine, and is the prize-winning author of the novel The Immortal King Rao, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer. She lives in Fort Collins, Colorado.
***
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9/27/2023 • 1 hour, 27 minutes
867. Mona Awad
Mona Awad is the bestselling author of the novel Rouge, available from Marysue Rucci Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.
Awad's other books include the novels All's Well, Bunny, and the story collection 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl. Bunny was a finalist for a Goodreads Choice Award and the New England Book Award. It was named a Best Book of 2019 by Time, Vogue and the New York Public Library. It is currently being developed for film by Jenni Konner and New Regency Productions. All's Well was a finalist for a Goodreads Choice Award. 13 Ways won the Amazon Best First Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Giller Prize. Awad currently teaches fiction in the creative writing program at Syracuse University. She is based in Boston.
***
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9/24/2023 • 1 hour, 7 minutes, 21 seconds
Natalie Baszile on Time, Writing, Big Decisions, Creative Community, and Motherhood
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 257, my conversation with Natalie Baszile, author of the novel Queen Sugar (Penguin Books). This episode first aired on March 5, 2014.
Baszile is the author of the novel Queen Sugar, which was a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of 2014, longlisted for the Crooks Corner Southern Book Prize, nominated for an NAACP Image Award, and adapted for television by writer/director Ava DuVernay and co-produced by Oprah Winfrey for OWN. Baszile holds a M.A. in Afro-American Studies from UCLA and is a graduate of Warren Wilson College's MFA Program for Writers. She lives in San Francisco.
***
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9/22/2023 • 24 minutes, 15 seconds
866. Anne Enright
Anne Enright is the author of the novel The Wren, The Wren, available from W.W. Norton & Co.
Enright is author of seven novels, most recently Actress. She has been awarded the Man Booker Prize, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Irish Book Awards. She lives in Dublin.
***
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9/20/2023 • 1 hour, 25 minutes, 39 seconds
865. Karl Ove Knausgaard
Karl Ove Knausgaard is the author of the novel The Wolves of Eternity, available from Penguin Press. Translated by Martin Aitken.
Knausgaard's My Struggle cycle of novels is one of this century’s most celebrated works of literature and it has been heralded as a masterpiece all over the world. Over the course of his career, Karl Ove has been awarded the Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature, the Brage Prize and the Jerusalem Prize. His work, which also includes the novels The Morning Star, Out of the World, A Time for Everything and the Seasons Quartet, has been published in thirty-five languages.
***
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9/17/2023 • 1 hour, 21 minutes, 52 seconds
Joyce Johnson on Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, the Beat Generation, Ecstatic Writing, and Québécois Culture
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 147, my conversation with Joyce Johnson, author of the biography The Voice is All: The Lonely Victory of Jack Kerouac (Viking). This episode first aired on February 10, 2013.
Johnson is the author of eight books, including the award-winning memoir Minor Characters, Missing Men, and Door Wide Open: A Beat Love Affair in Letters, 1957-1958 (with Jack Kerouac). She lives in New York City.
***
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9/15/2023 • 26 minutes, 46 seconds
How to Write an Anti-Hero
A new 'Craftwork' episode, all about anti-heroes. My guest is Tod Goldberg, author of the novel Gangsters Don't Die, available from Counterpoint Press.
Goldberg is the author of more than a dozen books, including Gangsterland, a finalist for the Hammett Prize; Gangster Nation; and The Low Desert: Gangster Stories, named a Southwest Book of the Year and a finalist for several literary prizes. He lives in Indio, California, where he directs the low-residency MFA in creative writing and writing for the performing arts at the University of California, Riverside.
***
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9/13/2023 • 1 hour, 39 minutes, 5 seconds
864. Lauren Groff
Lauren Groff is the bestselling author of the novel The Vaster Wilds, available from Riverhead Books.
Groff is a three-time National Book Award finalist and the New York Times bestselling author of the novels The Monsters of Templeton, Arcadia, Fates and Furies, and Matrix, and the short story collections Delicate Edible Birds and Florida. She has won the Story Prize and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Groff 's work regularly appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and elsewhere.
***
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9/10/2023 • 1 hour, 3 minutes, 41 seconds
Matt Sumell on Writing, Self-Editing, Billy Joel, Long Island, Family, Drinking, and Anxiety
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 374, my conversation with Matt Sumell, author of the novel-in-stories Making Nice (Picador). It first aired on August 5, 2015.
Sumell is a graduate of UC Irvine's MFA program, and his fiction has since appeared in Esquire, the Paris Review, Electric Literature, One Story, Noon, and elsewhere. He lives in Los Angeles, California.
***
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9/8/2023 • 27 minutes, 14 seconds
863. Yiyun Li
Yiyun Li is the author of the story collection Wednesday's Child, available from Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
Li is the author of several works of fiction--The Book of Goose, Must I Go, Where Reasons End, Kinder Than Solitude, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, The Vagrants, and Gold Boy, Emerald Girl--and the memoir Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life. She is the recipient of many awards, including a PEN/Malamud Award, a PEN/Hemingway Award, a PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, a MacArthur Fellowship, and a Windham-Campbell Prize. Her work has also appeared in The New Yorker, A Public Space, The Best American Short Stories, and The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, among other publications. She teaches at Princeton University and lives in Princeton, New Jersey.
***
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9/6/2023 • 1 hour, 22 minutes, 20 seconds
862. Myriam Gurba
Myriam Gurba is the author of the essay collection Creep: Accusations and Confessions, available from Avid Reader Press.
Gurba is a writer and artist. She is the author of the true-crime memoir Mean, a New York Times Editors' Choice. O, the Oprah Magazine, ranked Mean as one of the best LGBTQ books of all time. Publishers Weekly describes Gurba as having a voice like no other. Her essays and criticism have appeared in The Paris Review, TIME.com, and 4Columns. She has shown art in galleries, museums, and community centers. She lives in California.
***
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9/3/2023 • 1 hour, 33 minutes, 9 seconds
Laura van den Berg on Boxing, Anxiety, Attention, Astrology, Vanity, and Writing in a Notebook
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 546, my conversation with Laura van den Berg, author of five works of fiction. It first aired on October 10, 2018.
Laura van den Berg was born and raised in Florida. Her books include The Third Hotel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018), a finalist for the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, and I Hold a Wolf by the Ears (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020), which was one of Time Magazine’s 10 Best Fiction Books of 2020. She is the recent recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Strauss Livings Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, and a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her next two novels, Florida Diary and Ring of Night, are forthcoming from FSG.
***
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9/1/2023 • 24 minutes, 40 seconds
How to Be a Travel Writer
Maggie Downs is an award-winning journalist, travel writer, and the author of the memoir Braver Than You Think:Around the World on the Trip of My (Mother’s) Lifetime (Counterpoint Press). Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Palm Springs Life, and McSweeney's and has been anthologized in The Lonely Planet Travel Anthology: True Stories from the World's Best Writers and Best Women's Travel Writing. She lives in Yucca Valley, California.
***
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8/30/2023 • 1 hour, 20 minutes, 40 seconds
861. Rebekah Bergman
Rebekah Bergman is the author of the debut novel The Museum of Human History, available from Tin House. It is the official August pick of the Otherppl Book Club.
Bergman's fiction has been published in Joyland, Tin House, The Masters Review anthology, and other journals. She lives in Rhode Island with her family.
***
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8/27/2023 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 31 seconds
Remembering Tom Hansen, 1961-2023
Today, a special episode remembering the life and work of Tom Hansen, who died this week of esophageal cancer. Hansen was born in Seattle and raised by adoptive parents in nearby Edmonds, Washington. A failed skateboarder, dishwasher, and punk rock guitarist, he turned to shooting and dealing smack. He later kicked his habit, returned to school, and eventually earned an MFA in writing from the University of British Columbia. His books include the memoir American Junkie (Soft Skull Press) and the retro noir thriller This Is What We Do.
***
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8/26/2023 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 34 seconds
Charles Shields on Kurt Vonnegut, WWII, Dresden, Suicide, and The Great Depression
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 24, my conversation with biographer Charles Shields, author of And So It Goes— Kurt Vonnegut: A Life, available now in trade paperback from St. Martin's Press. It first aired on December 7, 2011.
Shields's other books include Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee, and I Am Scout: The Biography of Harper Lee (Henry Holt Books for Young Readers). He grew up in the Midwest and taught in a rural school in central Illinois for several years. He has been a reporter for public radio, a journalist, and the author of nonfiction books for young people. He and his wife live near Charlottesville, Virginia.
***
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8/25/2023 • 24 minutes, 44 seconds
860. Maya Binyam
Maya Binyam is the author of the debut novel Hangman, available from Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
Binyam is a fiction writer and critic whose work has appeared in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, New York, Bookforum, Columbia Journalism Review, The New York Times Book Review, and elsewhere. She is a contributing editor at The Paris Review and has previously worked as an editor at Triple Canopy and The New Inquiry. She lives in Los Angeles.
***
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8/23/2023 • 1 hour, 24 minutes, 5 seconds
How to Approach "Truth" in Creative Nonfiction
In today's 'Craftwork' episode, a conversation with Emily Rapp Black about "truth" in creative nonfiction.
Emily is the author of five books of creative nonfiction: Poster Child, The Still Point of the Turning World, which was a New York Times bestseller, Sanctuary, Frida Kahlo and My Left Leg, and I Would Die if I Were You (forthcoming). She is Professor of Creative Writing at UC-Riverside and a co-founder, with Gina Frangello, of Circe Consulting, which offers coaching and developmental editing to writers.
***
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8/20/2023 • 1 hour, 26 minutes, 5 seconds
Mat Johnson on Failure, Despair, Persistence, Reviews, and Stealing Time to Write
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 364, my conversation with Mat Johnson, author of the novel Invisible Things and other books.
Johnson is a Philip H. Knight Chair of the Humanities at the University of Oregon. His publications include the novels Loving Day and Pym, the nonfiction novella The Great Negro Plot, and the graphic novel Incognegro. Johnson is the recipient of the American Book Award, the United States Artists James Baldwin Fellowship, The Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature. His most recent novel, Invisible Things, was published in 2022 and was long-listed for the PEN/Faulkner Award.
***
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8/18/2023 • 25 minutes, 15 seconds
859. Brando Skyhorse
Brando Skyhorse is the author of the novel My Name is Iris, available from Avid Reader Press.
Skyhorse's debut novel, The Madonnas of Echo Park, won the 2011 PEN/Hemingway Award and the Sue Kaufman Award for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His memoir, Take This Man, was named one of Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Books of 2014 and one of NBC News's 10 Best Latino Books of 2014. He also coedited the anthology, We Wear the Mask: 15 True Stories of Passing in America. A recipient of a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center fellowship, Skyhorse teaches English and creative writing at Indiana University Bloomington.
***
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8/16/2023 • 1 hour, 25 minutes, 20 seconds
Why Publishing is Broken
In today's 'Craftwork' episode, a conversation with Kathleen Schmidt. She is a longtime publishing industry veteran with in-depth experience in a variety of roles, including as a publicist, literary agent, acquisitions editor, and ghostwriter. She has worked over the years on 50 New York Times bestsellers.
Kathleen is the founder and CEO of Kathleen Schmidt Public Relations, and her Substack newsletter, Publishing Confidential, is an excellent resource where she shares her wealth of inside knowledge and makes efforts to demystify the book business.
***
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8/13/2023 • 1 hour, 44 minutes, 59 seconds
Melissa Febos on Hollywood, Bullshit, Extroversion, Celibacy, Loneliness, and Relationships
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 460, my conversation with Melissa Febos, author of Body Work, Girlhood, and other books.
Girlhood was a national bestseller, a Lambda Literary Award finalist, and the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism. Body Work was also a national bestseller, an LA Times Bestseller, and an Indie Next Pick. Her fifth book, The Dry Season, is forthcoming from Alfred. A. Knopf.
***
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8/11/2023 • 28 minutes, 41 seconds
858. Lydia Kiesling
Lydia Kiesling is the author of the novel Mobility, available from Crooked Media Reads.
Kiesling is the author of The Golden State, a 2018 National Book Foundation 5 under 35 honoree, a finalist for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, and longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker online, and The Cut, among other outlets. She lives in Portland, Oregon.
***
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8/9/2023 • 1 hour, 21 minutes, 32 seconds
857. Khashayar J. Khabushani
Khashayar J. Khabushani is the author of the debut novel I Will Greet the Sun Again, available from Hogarth Books.
Khabushani was born in Van Nuys, California, in 1992. During his childhood he spent time in Iran before returning to Los Angeles. He studied philosophy at California State University, Northridge, and prior to completing his MFA at Columbia University he worked as a middle school teacher.
***
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8/6/2023 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 20 seconds
Michael Schumacher on Allen Ginsberg, New York City, Poetry, Kindness, Controversy, and Writing a Biography
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 684, my conversation with Michael Schumacher, author of Dharma Lion: A Biography of Allen Ginsberg (University of Minnesota Press).
Schumacher has written extensively about Allen Ginsberg and the Beat Generation. His articles, reviews, and essays have appeared in newspapers and magazines across the country. He is editor of Family Business, a collection of letters between Allen and Louis Ginsberg, and The Essential Ginsberg, a volume of the best of Ginsberg’s poems, essays, songs, letters, journal entries, interviews, and photographs. He lives in Wisconsin.
Air date: December 9, 2020.
***
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8/4/2023 • 27 minutes, 8 seconds
856. Jamel Brinkley
Jamel Brinkley is the author of the story collection Witness, available from Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.
Brinkley is the author of A Lucky Man: Stories, which won the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence and was a finalist for the National Book Award, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction, the Story Prize, the John Leonard Prize, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. He has also been awarded an O. Henry Prize, the Rome Prize, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, and a Lannan Foundation Fellowship. His work has appeared in The Paris Review, A Public Space, Ploughshares, and The Best American Short Stories. He was raised in the Bronx and in Brooklyn, New York, and currently teaches at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
***
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***
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8/2/2023 • 1 hour, 23 minutes, 34 seconds
855. Edan Lepucki
Edan Lepucki is the bestselling author of the novel Time's Mouth, available from Counterpoint Press.
Lepucki's other books include the novels California and Woman No. 17. She is also the editor of Mothers Before: Stories and Portraits of Our Mothers as We Never Saw Them. Her nonfiction has been published in The New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, Esquire Magazine, and The Cut, among other publications. She lives in Los Angeles with her family.
***
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7/30/2023 • 1 hour, 30 minutes, 46 seconds
Viet Thanh Nguyen on History, War Movies, Race, Refugees, Vietnam, and the Need for Political Literature
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 419, my conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winner Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of the bestselling novel The Sympathizer.
His other books are Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War (a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award in General Nonfiction) and Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America. He is a University Professor, the Aerol Arnold Chair of English, and a Professor of English, American Studies and Ethnicity, and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California.
Viet’s next book is A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial, forthcoming in October 2023 from Grove Press.
Air date: June 22, 2016.
***
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***
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7/28/2023 • 24 minutes, 11 seconds
854. Geoff Rickly
Geoff Rickly is the author of the debut novel Someone Who Isn't Me, available from Rose Books. It is the official July pick of the Otherppl Book Club.
Rickly is the lead singer and songwriter of Thursday and No Devotion. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, and this is his first book.
***
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7/26/2023 • 1 hour, 41 minutes, 18 seconds
853. Ruth Madievsky
Ruth Madievsky is the author of the debut novel All-Night Pharmacy, available from Catapult.
Madievsky is the author of a bestselling poetry collection, Emergency Brake (Tavern Books, 2016). Her work appears in Harper's Bazaar, Guernica, Literary Hub, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. She is a founding member of the Cheburashka Collective, a community of women and nonbinary writers from the former Soviet Union. Originally from Moldova, she lives in Los Angeles, where she works as an HIV and primary care pharmacist.
***
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7/23/2023 • 1 hour, 28 minutes, 24 seconds
Carmen Maria Machado on Anxiety, Death, Childhood, Sick Lit, Writing Letters, and Religion
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 491, my conversation with Carmen Maria Machado, author of the bestselling memoir In the Dream House.
Machado's other books include the graphic novel The Low, Low Woods, and an award-winning short story collection called Her Body and Other Parties.
She has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the winner of the Bard Fiction Prize, the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction, the Brooklyn Public Library Literature Prize, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize.
Air date: November 8, 2017.
***
A SPECIAL OFFER for Otherppl listeners! Use the offer code SUMMERSCHOOL and get 10% off of all summer writing workshops at https://www.chillsubs.com/writeordie/education
***
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7/21/2023 • 23 minutes, 13 seconds
852. Jenny Xie
Jenny Xie is the author of the debut novel Holding Pattern, available from Riverhead Books.
Xie is a writer and editor living in Brooklyn. Originally from Shanghai, she graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, and earned her MFA at Johns Hopkins University. Her work has appeared in AGNI, Ninth Letter, Joyland, Narrative, and the Best of the Net Anthology. Jenny is the recipient of a Bread Loaf scholarship and fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Loghaven. She is a contributing writer for Architectural Digest, Apartment Therapy, and Dwell, where she was the executive editor.
***
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7/19/2023 • 1 hour, 21 minutes, 46 seconds
851. Andrew Lipstein
Andrew Lipstein is the author of the novel The Vegan, available from Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
Lipstein is also the author of Last Resort (FSG, 2022), a novel "you'll think about . . . for weeks after you read the last pages" (Los Angeles Times). He lives in Brooklyn.
***
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7/16/2023 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 56 seconds
D.T. Max on David Foster Wallace, Different Kinds of Intelligence, Bret Easton Ellis, Irony vs. Sincerity, and 12-Step Philosophy
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 107, my conversation with D.T. Max, New Yorker staff writer and author of Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace, which was published by Viking in 2012.
Max's other books include The Family That Couldn’t Sleep: A Medical Mystery and Finale: Late Conversations with Stephen Sondheim.
Air date: September 22, 2012
***
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7/14/2023 • 25 minutes, 54 seconds
850. Nicole Flattery
Nicole Flattery is the author of the novel Nothing Special, available from Bloomsbury.
Flattery is also the author of the story collection Show Them A Good Time. She is the winner of A Post Irish Book Award, the Kate O'Brien Prize, the London Magazine Prize for Debut Fiction, and the White Review Short Story Prize. Her work has appeared in theStinging Fly, the Guardian, the White Review, and the London Review of Books. A graduate of the master's program in creative writing at Trinity College, she lives in Dublin, Ireland.
***
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7/12/2023 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 34 seconds
849. Sarah Rose Etter
Sarah Rose Etter is the author of the novel Ripe, available from Scribner.
Etter's other books include The Book of X and Tongue Party. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Cut, Electric Literature, Vice, Guernica, Philadelphia Weekly, and more. She is the recipient of writing residencies in Portugal and the Gullkistan Creative Program in Iceland. She earned her MFA degree from Rosemont College.
***
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7/9/2023 • 1 hour, 27 minutes, 25 seconds
Elif Batuman on Epistolary Relationships, Childhood, the Foolishness of Youth, Creative Humiliation, Perseverance, and Finding the Beauty in Yourself
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 506, my conversation with Elif Batuman.
Elif Batuman's first novel, The Idiot, was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize, and was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction in the UK. She is also the author of a novel called Either/Or, published in 2022, as well as The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them, which was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism. She has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2010.
***
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7/7/2023 • 24 minutes
848. Patrick deWitt
Patrick deWitt is the author of the novel The Librarianist, available from Ecco.
His other books include the novels French Exit, a national bestseller; The Sisters Brothers, a New York Times bestseller short-listed for the Booker Prize; and the critically acclaimed Undermajordomo Minor and Ablutions. Born in British Columbia, he now resides in Portland, Oregon.
***
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7/5/2023 • 1 hour, 28 minutes, 44 seconds
How to Start an Indie Press
Chelsea Hodson is the author of the essay collection Tonight I'm Someone Else, which came out in 2018. She is the founder of the new indie press Rose Books as well as the Morning Writing Club, and is currently booking one-on-one writing coaching sessions on her website. The first Rose Books title, Someone Who Isn't Me, the debut novel by Geoff Rickly, will be published on July 25, and it is the July selection for the Otherppl Book Club. It is available for preorder now via rosebooks.co.
***
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7/2/2023 • 1 hour, 52 minutes, 46 seconds
Hanya Yanagihara on Big Books, Writing Quickly, Creative Immersion, Great Readers, Complex Interiors, and the Removal of Context
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 401, my conversation with Hanya Yanagihara from February 2016.
Hanya Yanagihara is a prize-winning author and the Editor-in-Chief of T: The New York Times Style Magazine. Her novel entitled To Paradise, published in 2022, was a #1 NY Times bestseller. Her novel A Little Life, won the 2015 Kirkus Prize, was a finalist for the National Book Award and the 2016 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. The People in the Trees was shortlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize in 2014. She joined the PEN America Board in 2016.
I spoke with Hanya as she was on tour in support of her award-winning novel, A Little Life.
Air date: February 24, 2016.
***
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6/30/2023 • 22 minutes
847. Tess Gunty
Tess Gunty is the author of the debut novel The Rabbit Hutch, now available in trade paperback from Vintage. It received the National Book Award for Fiction in 2022.
Gunty earned an MFA in creative writing from NYU, where she was a Lillian Vernon Fellow. Her work has appeared in The Iowa Review, Joyland, Los Angeles Review of Books, No Tokens, Flash, and elsewhere. She was raised in South Bend, Indiana, and lives in Los Angeles.
***
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6/28/2023 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 39 seconds
846. Lorrie Moore
Lorrie Moore is the bestselling author of the novel I Am Homeless if This Is Not My Home, available from Knopf.
Moore is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. She is the recipient of a Lannan Foundation Fellowship, as well as the PEN/Malamud Award and the Rea Award for her achievement in the short story. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
***
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6/25/2023 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 39 seconds
Flashback: Tim O'Brien on Death, Fatherhood, Child Wisdom, Pacifism, War, Memory, and the Illusion of Self
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 616, my conversation with Tim O'Brien from December 2019.
O'Brien received the 1979 National Book Award for Going After Cacciato. Among his other books are The Things They Carried, Pulitzer Finalist and a New York TimesBook of the Century, and In the Lake of the Woods, winner of the James Fenimore Cooper Prize. He was awarded the Pritzker Literature Award for lifetime achievement in military writing in 2013.
His new novel, America Fantastica, is due out in October 2023 from Mariner Books.
I spoke with Tim O'Brien as he was on tour in support of his memoir, Dad's Maybe Book.
Air date: December 11, 2019.
***
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6/23/2023 • 20 minutes, 28 seconds
845. Leila Slimani
Leila Slimani is the author of the novel Watch Us Dance, available from Viking. Translated by Sam Taylor.
Slimani is the bestselling author of The Perfect Nanny, one of The New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of 2018, for which she became the first Moroccan woman to win France's most prestigious literary prize, the Goncourt. Her other books include Adèle, Sex and Lies, and the #1 international bestseller In the Country of Others the first part of a trilogy of novels based on her family's roots in revolutionary Morocco. Slimani is French president Emmanuel Macron's personal representative for the promotion of the French language and culture, and is the chair of the jury for the 2023 International Booker Prize. She was ranked #2 on Vanity Fair France's annual list of the Fifty Most Influential French People in the World. Born in Rabat, Morocco, in 1981, she divides her time between France and Portugal.
Sam Taylor is the award-winning translator of more than sixty books from French, including all of Leila Slimani's fiction.
***
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6/21/2023 • 1 hour, 2 minutes, 42 seconds
844. Alejandra Oliva
Alejandra Oliva is the author of Rivermouth: A Chronicle of Language, Faith, and Migration, available from Astra House.
Oliva is an essayist, translator, immigrant justice advocate, and embroiderer. She is a recipient of the 2022 Creative Nonfiction Whiting Grant. Her writing has been included in Best American Travel Writing 2020, was nominated for a Pushcart prize, and was honored with an Aspen Summer Words Emerging Writers Fellowship. She was the Frankie Fellow at the Yale Whitney Hummanities Center in 2022.
***
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6/18/2023 • 1 hour, 43 minutes, 24 seconds
Pulitzer Special: Hernan Diaz and Ingrid Rojas Contreras
Today on the program, a special Pulitzer Prize episode featuring authors Hernan Diaz and Ingrid Rojas Contreras. Diaz won a 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for his bestselling novel Trust, and Contreras was a National Book Award finalist and a 2023 Pulitzer Prize finalist for her memoir The Man Who Could Move Clouds.
In the episode, you'll hear outtakes from Episode 775, my conversation with Hernan (air date: June 1, 2022); and my conversation with Ingrid in Episode 785 (air date: August 10, 2022). You'll also hear my recent conversations with each of them, as we discuss the success of their respective books and the impact it has had on their lives.
Hernan Diaz is the author of two novels translated into more than twenty languages. His first novel, In the Distance, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award. He has also written a book of essays, and his work has appeared in The Paris Review, Granta, Playboy, The Yale Review, McSweeney's, and elsewhere. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, and a fellowship from the New York Public Library's Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.
Ingrid Rojas Contreras was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia. Her debut novel Fruit of the Drunken Tree was the silver medal winner in First Fiction from the California Book Awards, and a New York Times editor's choice. Her essays and short stories have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The Believer, and Zyzzyva, among others. She lives in California.
***
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6/16/2023 • 1 hour, 31 seconds
843. Molly Lynch
Molly Lynch is the author of the debut novel The Forbidden Territory of a Terrifying Woman, available from Catapult.
Lynch grew up on the west coast of Canada and lived in Ireland as a teenager. She worked in Dublin, Cork, Manchester and Malaga before moving to Montreal to study literature. She's spent time in Syria, Lebanon and Turkey and moved to Baltimore where she earned an MFA from the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars. She now teaches creative writing at the University of Michigan.
***
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6/14/2023 • 1 hour, 7 minutes, 55 seconds
842. Tania James
Tania James is the author of the novel Loot, available from Knopf.
James is the author of the novels The Tusk That Did the Damage and Atlas of Unknowns and the short story collection Aerogrammes. Her fiction has appeared in Boston Review, Granta, Guernica, One Story, A Public Space, and The Kenyon Review. She lives in Washington, D.C.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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6/11/2023 • 1 hour, 18 minutes
Flashback: Andre Dubus III on Family, Divorce, Fear, Poverty, Vigilante Justice, Writing as Salvation, and the Divine
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 549, my conversation with Andre Dubus III from October 2018.
Dubus is the author of several books, including Dirty Love, The Garden of Last Days, House of Sand and Fog (a New York Times bestseller, Oprah's Book Club pick, and finalist for the National Book Award), and a memoir called Townie. Earlier this month, he published his latest novel, entitled Such Kindness, available now from W.W. Norton & Co.
I spoke with Andre Dubus III as he was on tour for his novel Gone So Long.
Air date: October 31, 2018.
***
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6/9/2023 • 21 minutes, 26 seconds
841. Jasmin Iolani Hakes
Jasmin 'Iolani Hakes is the author of the debut novel Hula, available from HarperVia.
Hakes was born and raised in Hilo, Hawai'i. Her essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Times and the Sacramento Bee. She is the recipient of the Best Fiction award from the Southern California Writers Conference, a Squaw Valley LoJo Foundation Scholarship, a Writing by Writers Emerging Voices fellowship, and a Hedgebrook residency. Dance has always been central to Jasmin's life and creativity. She took her first hula class when she was four years old and danced for the esteemed Halau o Kekuhi and the Tahitian troupe Hei Tiare. She worked throughout college as a professional luau dancer. She lives in California.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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6/7/2023 • 1 hour, 24 minutes, 58 seconds
840. Jim Ruland
Jim Ruland is the author of the novel Make It Stop, available from Rare Bird Books.
Ruland is the co-author of Do What You Want with Bad Religion, and My Damage with Keith Morris, the founding vocalist of Black Flag, Circle Jerks, and OFF! Ruland has been writing for punk zines such as Flipside and Razorcake for more than twenty-five years and his work has received awards from Reader's Digest and the National Endowment for the Arts.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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6/4/2023 • 1 hour, 8 minutes, 39 seconds
Flashback: Roxane Gay on Hateful Men, Twitter, Breaking Barriers, Selling Books, Channing Tatum, and Hunger
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 448, my conversation with Roxane Gay from January 2017.
Roxane Gay is the bestselling author of the books Bad Feminist, Hunger, An Untamed State, Difficult Women, and Ayiti. She is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. She wrote The World of Wakanda, the Marvel Comics Series. She has a Substack called The Audacity, which has its own very popular book club. And this month, her publishing imprint, Roxane Gay Books, which she launched in association with Grove Atlantic, is celebrating the publication of its inaugural title, a debut novel called And Then He Sang a Lullaby, by Nigerian writer Ani Kayode Somtochukwu.
I spoke with Roxane Gay as Difficult Women was being published and her memoir, Hunger, was imminent.
Air date: January 11, 2017.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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6/2/2023 • 21 minutes, 37 seconds
839. Bea Setton
Bea Setton is the author of the debut novel Berlin, available from Penguin Books.
Setton was born in Paris to Franco-British parents and has lived in the US, Colombia, Belgium, Germany, and the UK. Currently residing in London, Setton holds an MPhil in Philosophy and Theology from Cambridge University and gives her time mentoring for Black Girls Writers. Her critical and creative writing has started popping up in popular outlets such as The Irish Times and Female First.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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5/31/2023 • 1 hour, 39 minutes, 35 seconds
How to Start a Literary Magazine
Declan Meade is the guest. He is the founding editor and publisher of The Stinging Fly, one of the world’s premiere literary magazines, based in Dublin, Ireland. You may have read about Declan and The Stinging Fly in the New York Times back in April 2023, in a feature story by Max Ufberg.
The Stinging Fly Magazine was founded in 1997 by Declan Meade and Aoife Kavanaugh. The first issue appeared in March 1998 and the magazine now publishes twice annually, working to give new and emerging writers an opportunity to be read, with a special emphasis on the short story form.
Since its founding, The Stinging Fly has expanded its operations to include an independent press, writing courses, and an online platform.
The magazine is celebrating 25 years of existence. Over the decades it has featured some of the best new writing from Ireland and around the world, offering readers an eclectic mix of fiction, nonfiction and poetry.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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5/28/2023 • 1 hour, 32 minutes, 14 seconds
Flashback: Jonathan Franzen on Ambition, Plot, Childhood, Birdwatching, and Life-Changing Advice
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 426, my conversation with Jonathan Franzen from August 2016.
He is the author of six novels, most recently Crossroads. He has also published five works of nonfiction, including The Discomfort Zone, Farther Away, and The End of the End of the Earth.
Over the course of his career, Franzen has received the National Book Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Award, the Heartland Prize, Die Welt Literature Prize, the Budapest Grand Prize, and the first Carlos Fuentes Medal awarded at the Guadalajara International Book Fair. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the German Akademie der Künste, and the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
I spoke with Jonathan Franzen as the paperback edition of his bestselling novel Purity was being published.
Air date: August 10, 2016.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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5/26/2023 • 23 minutes, 5 seconds
How the Horror Genre Works
In the latest "Craftwork" episode, a deep-dive conversation about the horror genre with author and story expert John Truby. His latest book, The Anatomy of Genres: How Story Forms Explain the Way the World Works, is available from Picador.
Truby is the founder and director of Truby's Writers Studio. Over the past thirty years, he has taught more than fifty thousand students worldwide, including novelists, screenwriters, and TV writers. Together, these writers have generated more than fifteen billion dollars at the box office.
Truby has an ongoing program where he works with students who are actively creating shows, movies, and novel series. He regularly applies his genre techniques in story consulting work with major studios including Disney, Sony Pictures, Fox, HBO, the BBC, Canal Plus, Globo, and AMC. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Leslie, and their two cats, Tink and Peanut.
For story software and courses, please visit Truby.com.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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5/24/2023 • 1 hour, 33 minutes, 18 seconds
838. Ivy Pochoda
Ivy Pochoda is the author of the novel Sing Her Down, available from MCD Books.
Pochoda's other books include the acclaimed novels Wonder Valley, Visitation Street, and These Women. She won the 2018 Strand Critics Award for Best Novel and the Prix Page/America in France, and has been a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Edgar Award, the Macavity Award, and the International Thriller Writers Award. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the Los Angeles Times, among other publications.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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5/21/2023 • 1 hour, 8 minutes, 43 seconds
Flashback: Ottessa Moshfegh on Creative Inspiration, Mental Anguish, Substance Abuse, Sobriety, and Writing Into the Dark Places
Today I'm launching a new feature on the Otherppl podcast: flashback episodes from the Otherppl archives.
These flashbacks will be short-form, and they will happen on Fridays.
They will feature highlights from past conversations: bits of insight and instruction and commiseration and revelation.
Today, in this inaugural flashback episode, an outtake from Episode 532, my conversation with bestselling author Ottessa Moshfegh. Eileen, her debut novel, was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Man Booker Prize, and it won the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction. Her other novels include My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Death in Her Hands, and Lapvona. She is also the author of the short story collection Homesick for Another World and a novella entitled McGlue.
This episode first aired on July 11, 2018.
***
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5/19/2023 • 15 minutes, 53 seconds
837. Anne Elizabeth Moore
Anne Elizabeth Moore is the author of the essay collection Body Horror: Capitalism, Fear, Misogyny, Jokes, available from The Feminist Press. It is the official May pick of the Otherppl Book Club.
Moore was born in Winner, SD. She is the author of Unmarketable (2007), the Eisner Award-winning Sweet Little Cunt (2018), Gentrifier: A Memoir (2021), which was an NPR Best Book of the Year, and others. She is the founding editor of Houghton Mifflin's Best American Comics and the former editor of Punk Planet, The Comics Journal, and the Chicago Reader. She has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Ragdale Foundation. She is a Fulbright Senior Scholar, has taught in the Visual Critical Studies department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and was the 2019 Mackey Chair of Creative Writing at Beloit College. She lives in the Catskills with her ineffective feline personal assistants, Taku and Captain America.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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5/17/2023 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 8 seconds
836. Samantha Irby
Samantha Irby is the bestselling author of the essay collection Quietly Hostile, available from Vintage.
Irby's other books include Meaty, Wow, No Thank You, and We Are Never Meeting in Real Life. She also writes for television, having worked on shows like Shrill, And Just Like That, and the forthcoming Tuca & Bertie. She blogs at Bitches Gotta Eat and lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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5/14/2023 • 1 hour, 40 minutes, 21 seconds
835. Isabella Hammad
Isabella Hammad is the author of the novel Enter Ghost, available from Grove Press.
Hammad was born in London. Her writing has appeared in Conjunctions, The Paris Review, The New York Times and elsewhere. She was awarded the 2018 Plimpton Prize for Fiction and a 2019 O. Henry Prize. Her first novel The Parisian (2019) won a Palestine Book Award, the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Betty Trask Award from the Society of Authors in the UK. She was a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree, and has received literary fellowships from MacDowell and the Lannan Foundation. She is currently a fellow at the Columbia University Institute for Ideas and Imagination in Paris.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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5/10/2023 • 1 hour, 3 minutes, 31 seconds
834. Dave Eggers
Dave Eggers is the author of the all-ages novel The Eyes and the Impossible, available in a deluxe, limited edition, wood-bound hardcover from McSweeney's, and in a traditional hardcover from Knopf Books for Young Readers. Illustrations by Shawn Harris.
Eggers is the author of many books, including bestsellers The Every, The Monk of Mokha, The Circle, A Hologram for the King, and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. His work has been nominated for the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is the founder of McSweeney's, an independent publishing company based in San Francisco, and cofounder of 826 National, a network of educational centers around the country offering free tutoring to kids of all backgrounds. He lives in Northern California with his family.
Shawn Harris is the author/illustrator of Have You Ever Seen a Flower?, which won a Caldecott Honor Award. He is the illustrator of Her Right Foot by Dave Eggers, which received seven starred reviews, was an Orbis Pictus Award Honor Book, an ALA Notable, and a PW Best Book of the Year. His other picture books include Eggers's What Can a Citizen Do (a Time Magazine Best Children's Book), Everyone's Awake by Colin Meloy, and A Polar Bear in the Snow by Mac Barnett.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
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5/7/2023 • 1 hour, 26 minutes, 31 seconds
How the Bestseller Lists Work
In the latest "Craftwork" episode, a deep-dive conversation about the bestseller lists with Carly Watters, herself a longtime literary agent and the co-host of the popular writing podcast The Shit No One Tells You About Writing. Carly is "very online"—follow her on Instagram and Twitter—with a keen understanding of the digital landscape and the challenges faced by contemporary authors. In this episode, we discuss how the bestseller lists actually work, who the decision-makers are, and what making a list can mean to a writer's career in practical terms.
Carly Watters is a SVP and Senior Literary Agent at P.S. Literary. She began her publishing career in London as an assistant at the Darley Anderson Literary, TV and Film Agency. Carly joined Toronto-based P.S. Literary Agency in 2010 and has sold over 100 books during her career. She represents award-winning and bestselling authors in the adult fiction and non-fiction categories, and select children’s books.
She is known for her long-term vision for her authors and being an excellent collaborator with a nose for commercial success. She has close ties to publishers in the major markets, is a member of the AALA, and works directly with film agents to option film and TV rights to leading networks and production companies. Her clients’ books have been translated into 40 languages, optioned for TV and film, adapted into podcasts, and have been on every bestseller list from coast to coast, including the New York Times, USA Today, the LA Times, the Washington Post, the Toronto Star, and theGlobe and Mail. Carly is also an annual judge for the Women’s Fiction Writing Association Rising Star Award.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
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5/3/2023 • 1 hour, 5 minutes, 30 seconds
833. Hannah Pittard
Hannah Pittard is the author of the memoir We Are Too Many, available from Henry Holt & Co.
Pittard is the author of four novels. She is a winner of the Amanda Davis Highwire Fiction Award, a MacDowell Colony fellow, and a graduate of Deerfield Academy, the University of Chicago, and the University of Virginia. She also spent some time at St. John's College in Annapolis. She is a professor of English at the University of Kentucky and lives in Lexington with her boyfriend and stepdaughter.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
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4/30/2023 • 1 hour, 33 minutes, 23 seconds
832. Emily St. John Mandel
Emily St. John Mandel is the bestselling author of the novel Sea of Tranquility, now available in trade paperback from Vintage.
Mandel's five previous novels include The Glass Hotel, which has been translated into twenty-five languages, and Station Eleven, which was a finalist for a National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, was the basis of a limited series on HBO Max, and has been translated into thirty-seven languages. She lives in New York City and Los Angeles.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
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4/26/2023 • 1 hour, 20 minutes, 9 seconds
831. Claire Dederer
Claire Dederer is the author of Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma, available from Knopf.
Dederer is the author of Love and Trouble, and the New York Times best-selling memoir Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses, which has been translated into twelve languages. A book critic, essayist, and reporter, Dederer is a longtime contributor to The New York Times and has also written for The Atlantic, Vogue, Slate, The Nation, and New York magazine. She lives near Seattle with her family.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
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4/23/2023 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 43 seconds
830. Matthew Zapruder
Matthew Zapruder is the author of the memoir Story of a Poem, available from Unnamed Press.
Zapruder is the author of five collections of poetry, including Come On All You Ghosts, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and Father's Day (Copper Canyon, 2019), as well as Why Poetry, a book of prose. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he teaches in the MFA in Creative Writing at Saint Mary's College of California.
Zapruder has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a William Carlos Williams Award, a May Sarton Award from the Academy of American Arts and Sciences, and a Lannan Foundation Residency Fellowship in Marfa, TX. His poetry has been adapted and performed at Carnegie Hall by Composer Gabriel Kahane and Brooklyn Rider, and was the libretto for "Vespers for a New Dark Age", a piece by composer Missy Mazzoli commissioned by Carnegie Hall for the 2014 Ecstatic Music Festival. In 2000, he co-founded Verse Press, and is now editor at large at Wave Books, where he edits contemporary poetry, prose, and translations. He was the founding Director of the Bagley Wright Lecture Series. From 2016-17 he held the annually rotating position of Editor of the Poetry Column for the New York Times Magazine and Guest Editor of Best American Poetry 2022.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
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4/19/2023 • 1 hour, 24 minutes, 2 seconds
829. J. Ryan Stradal
J. Ryan Stradal is the bestselling author of the novel Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club, available from Viking / Pamela Dorman Books.
Stradal is the author of New York Times bestseller Kitchens of the Great Midwest and national bestseller The Lager Queen of Minnesota. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Granta, The Rumpus, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. His debut, Kitchens of the Great Midwest, won the American Booksellers Association Indies Choice Award for Adult Debut Book of the Year. Born and raised in Minnesota, he now lives in California with his family.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
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4/16/2023 • 1 hour, 31 minutes, 52 seconds
828. Jinwoo Chong
Jinwoo Chong is the author of the debut novel Flux, available from Melville House. It is the official April pick of the book club.
Chong received an MFA from Columbia University. His short stories have appeared in The Southern Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, and Salamander. Flux is his first novel. He lives in New York.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
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4/12/2023 • 1 hour, 10 minutes, 35 seconds
827. Tara Conklin
Tara Conklin is the author of the novel Community Board. It was the official March pick of the book club.
Conklin was born on St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands and raised in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. She is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Last Romantics and The House Girl.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
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4/9/2023 • 1 hour, 9 minutes, 37 seconds
826. Tiffany Clarke Harrison
Tiffany Clarke Harrison is the author of the debut novel Blue Hour, available from Soft Skull Press.
Harrison graduated from Salisbury University with a BA in English, Creative Writing concentration, and holds an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) from Queens University of Charlotte. Writing is a whole-body experience, and her intuitive writing process has helped shape the raw honesty of her stories, and the stories of other authors she's coached. Tiffany lives with her husband and two children in North Carolina.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
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4/5/2023 • 1 hour, 20 minutes, 51 seconds
Literary Agents 101
In the latest "Craftwork" episode, a deep-dive conversation about literary agents with Carly Watters, herself a longtime literary agent and the co-host of the popular writing podcast The Shit No One Tells You About Writing. Carly is "very online"—follow her on Instagram and Twitter—with a keen understanding of the digital landscape and the challenges faced by contemporary authors. In this episode, we discuss what you need to know about pitching a literary agent, what agents are looking for in writers—and more.
Carly Watters is a SVP and Senior Literary Agent at P.S. Literary. She began her publishing career in London as an assistant at the Darley Anderson Literary, TV and Film Agency. Carly joined Toronto-based P.S. Literary Agency in 2010 and has sold over 100 books during her career. She represents award-winning and bestselling authors in the adult fiction and non-fiction categories, and select children’s books.
She is known for her long-term vision for her authors and being an excellent collaborator with a nose for commercial success. She has close ties to publishers in the major markets, is a member of the AALA, and works directly with film agents to option film and TV rights to leading networks and production companies. Her clients’ books have been translated into 40 languages, optioned for TV and film, adapted into podcasts, and have been on every bestseller list from coast to coast, including the New York Times, USA Today, the LA Times, the Washington Post, the Toronto Star, and theGlobe and Mail. Carly is also an annual judge for the Women’s Fiction Writing Association Rising Star Award.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
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4/2/2023 • 1 hour, 39 minutes, 30 seconds
825. Clancy Martin
Clancy Martin is the author of How Not to Kill Yourself: A Portrait of the Suicidal Mind, available from Pantheon.
Martin is the acclaimed author of the novel How to Sell (FSG) as well as numerous books on philosophy, and has translated works by Friedrich Nietzsche, Søren Kierkegaard, and other philosophers. A Guggenheim Fellow, his writing has appeared in The New Yorker, New York, The Atlantic, Harper's, Esquire, The New Republic, Lapham's Quarterly, The Believer, and The Paris Review. He is a professor of philosophy at the University of Missouri in Kansas City and Ashoka University in New Delhi. He is the survivor of more than ten suicide attempts and a recovering alcoholic.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
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3/29/2023 • 1 hour, 47 minutes, 58 seconds
824. Alex Mar
Alex Mar is the author of Seventy Times Seven: A True Story of Murder and Mercy, available from Penguin Press.
Mar is the author of Witches of America, which was a New York Times Notable Book and Editors' Pick. Her work has appeared in New York Magazine, Wired, The New York Times Book Review, and The Guardian, among many other outlets, as well as The Best American Magazine Writing. She has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award in Feature Writing, and she is the director of the feature-length documentary American Mystic. She lives in the Hudson Valley and New York City.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
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3/26/2023 • 1 hour, 28 minutes, 43 seconds
823. Shannon McLeod
Shannon McLeod is the author of the Nature Trail Stories, available from Thirty West Publishing.
McLeod is the author of the novella, Whimsy (Long Day Press, 2021). Her writing has appeared in Tin House, Prairie Schooner, Hobart, and SmokeLong Quarterly, among other publications, and has been nominated for Best Small Fictions, Best of the Net, and featured in Wigleaf Top 50. Born in Detroit, she now lives in central Virginia.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
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3/22/2023 • 1 hour, 25 minutes, 49 seconds
822. Madelaine Lucas
Madelaine Lucas is the author of the debut novel Thirst for Salt, available from Tin House.
Lucas is a senior editor of NOON. Born in 1990, she was raised in Melbourne and Sydney as the daughter of a visual artist and a rock ‘n’ roll musician. In 2015, she moved to New York to complete her MFA in fiction at Columbia University, where she now teaches in the undergraduate and graduate writing programs.
Her essays and interviews have appeared in publications such as Paris Review Daily, The Believer, Literary Hub, Catapult, The Lifted Brow and Meanjin, and her fiction has been awarded the Elizabeth Jolley Prize and the Overland/Victoria University Emerging Writer’s Prize. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and her dog, Pancho.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
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3/19/2023 • 1 hour, 40 minutes, 57 seconds
How to Use the Editorial Omniscient POV
Gina Frangello is the guest in the latest 'Craftwork' episode. We talk about the editorial omniscient point of view—what it is, what it can do, and how to use it in your writing.
Gina is the author of the acclaimed memoir Blow Your House Down: A Story of Family, Feminism, and Treason (Counterpoint, 2021). Her other books include Every Kind of Wanting, A Life in Men, Slut Lullabies, and My Sister's Continent. Her short fiction, essays, book reviews, and journalism have been published in Ploughshares, The Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, HuffPost, Fence, Five Chapters, Prairie Schooner, Chicago Reader, and many other publications. She is also the co-founder, with Emily Rapp Black, of Circe Consulting, which provides a variety of services to writers.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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3/15/2023 • 1 hour, 21 minutes, 55 seconds
821. Jennifer Michael Hecht
Jennifer Michael Hecht is the author of The Wonder Paradox: Embracing the Weirdness of Existence and the Poetry of Our Lives, available from Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.
Hecht, a historian and poet, is the award-winning and bestselling author of the histories Doubt, Stay, The Happiness Myth, and The End of the Soul. Her poetry books include Who Said, The Next Ancient World, and Funny. She earned her PhD in history from Columbia University and teaches in New York City.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
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3/12/2023 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 54 seconds
820. Camonghne Felix
Camonghne Felix is the author of the memoir Dyscalculia: A Love Story of Epic Miscalculation, available from One World Press.
Felix, poet and essayist, is the author of Build Yourself a Boat, which was longlisted for the National Book Award in Poetry, shortlisted for the PEN/Open Book Award, and shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Awards. Her poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming from Academy of American Poets, Freeman's, Harvard Review, LitHub, The New Yorker, PEN America, Poetry Magazine, and elsewhere. Her essays have been featured in Vanity Fair, New York, Teen Vogue, and other places. She is a contributing writer at The Cut.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
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3/8/2023 • 1 hour, 21 minutes, 15 seconds
819. Tracey Rose Peyton
Tracey Rose Peyton is the author of the debut novel Night Wherever We Go, available from Ecco Books.
Peyton received her MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin. Her short fiction has appeared in Guernica, American Short Fiction, Prairie Schooner, The Best American Short Stories 2021, and other outlets.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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3/1/2023 • 1 hour, 30 minutes, 46 seconds
818. V. V. Ganeshananthan
V. V. Ganeshananthan is the author of the novel Brotherless Night, available from Random House.
Ganeshananthan is the author of Love Marriage, which was longlisted for the Women's Prize and named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post. Her work has appeared in Granta, The New York Times, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading, among other publications. A former vice president of the South Asian Journalists Association, she has also served on the board of the Asian American Writers' Workshop, and is presently a member of the board of directors of the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies and the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of Minnesota and co-hosts the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast on Literary Hub, which is about the intersection of literature and the news.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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2/26/2023 • 1 hour, 31 minutes, 32 seconds
817. Delia Cai
Delia Cai is the author of the debut novel Central Places, available from Ballantine Books.
Cai was born in Madison, Wisconsin, and grew up in central Illinois. She is a graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism and her writing has appeared in BuzzFeed, GQ, The Cut, and Catapult. Her media newsletter, Deez Links, has been highlighted in The New York Times, New York magazine, and Fortune. She is currently a senior correspondent at Vanity Fair and lives in Brooklyn.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
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2/22/2023 • 1 hour, 39 minutes, 48 seconds
816. Rebecca Makkai
Rebecca Makkai is the author of the novel I Have Some Questions for You, available from Viking Books.
Makkai's last novel, The Great Believers, was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award; it was the winner of the ALA Carnegie Medal, the Stonewall Book Award, the Clark Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and it was chosen as one of the Ten Best Books of 2018 by The New York Times. Her other books are the novels The Borrower and The Hundred-Year House, and the collection Music for Wartime--four stories from which appeared in The Best American Short Stories. A 2022 Guggenheim Fellow, Rebecca is on the MFA faculties of the University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe and Northwestern University, and is Artistic Director of StoryStudio Chicago.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
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2/19/2023 • 1 hour, 29 minutes, 28 seconds
815. Chetna Maroo
Chetna Maroo is the author of the debut novel Western Lane, available from Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.
Maroo lives in London. Her stories have been published in the Paris Review, the Stinging Fly and the Dublin Review, and she was the recipient of the 2022 Plimpton Prize for Fiction.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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2/15/2023 • 1 hour, 30 minutes, 59 seconds
How to Write a Book Proposal
In today's "Craftwork" episode, a conversation with Courtney Maum about how to write a good book proposal.
Courtney is the author of five books, including the groundbreaking publishing guide that Vanity Fair recently named one of the ten best books for writers, Before and After the Book Deal and the memoir The Year of the Horses, chosen by The Today Show as the best read for mental health awareness. The paperback edition publishes this week!
A writing coach, executive director of the nonprofit learning collaborative “The Cabins,” and educator, Courtney's mission is to help people hold on to the joy of art-making in a culture obsessed with turning artists into brands. You can sign up for her publishing tips newsletter and online masterclasses at her website.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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2/12/2023 • 1 hour, 42 minutes, 39 seconds
814. Ayobami Adebayo
Ayobami Adebayo is the author of the novel A Spell of Good Things, available from Knopf.
Adebayo was born in Lagos, Nigeria. Her debut novel, Stay with Me, won the 9mobile Prize for Literature, was shortlisted for the Baileys Prize for Women's Fiction, the Wellcome Book Prize, and the Kwani? Manuscript Prize. It has been translated into twenty languages and the French translation was awarded the Prix Les Afriques. Longlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize and the International Dublin Literary Award, Stay with Me was a New York Times, Guardian, Chicago Tribune, and NPR Best Book of the Year.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
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2/8/2023 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 55 seconds
813. Charmaine Craig
Charmaine Craig is the author of the novel My Nemesis, available from Grove Press.
Craig is the author of the novels Miss Burma, longlisted for the National Book Award and the Women's Prize for Fiction, and The Good Men. Formerly an actor, she teaches in the program in fiction at UC Riverside and lives in Los Angeles.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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Merch
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2/5/2023 • 1 hour, 32 minutes, 42 seconds
812. Wendell Steavenson
Wendell Steavenson is the author of the novel Margot, available from W.W. Norton & Co. It is the official February pick of the TNB Book Club.
Steavenson, whose writing has appeared in The New Yorker, the Financial Times, and Granta, is the author of the novel Paris Metro and three books of reporting. Born in New York and raised in London, she now lives in France.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
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2/1/2023 • 1 hour, 30 minutes, 24 seconds
How to Write More Dynamic Scenes
In this episode of "Craftwork," author Peter Turchi teaches a lesson on how to use shifting power dynamics to write more dynamic scenes in fiction.
Turchi is the author of seven books and the co-editor of three anthologies. His books include (Don't) Stop Me if You've Heard This Before; A Muse and A Maze: Writing as Puzzle, Mystery, and Magic; Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer; Suburban Journals: The Sketchbooks, Drawings, and Prints of Charles Ritchie, in collaboration with the artist; a novel, The Girls Next Door; a collection of stories, Magician; and The Pirate Prince, co-written with Cape Cod treasure hunter Barry Clifford, about Clifford’s discovery of the pirate ship Whydah. His short story “Night, Truck, Two Lights Burning” has been published, with images by Charles Ritchie, in a limited edition artist’s book. He has also co-edited, with Andrea Barrett, A Kite in the Wind: Fiction Writers on Their Craft, The Story Behind the Story: 26 Stories by Contemporary Writers and How They Work and, with Charles Baxter, Bringing the Devil to His Knees: The Craft of Fiction and the Writing Life.
Turchi’s work has appeared in Tin House, Fiction Writers Review, Ploughshares, Story, The Alaska Quarterly Review, Puerto del Sol, and The Colorado Review, among other journals. His honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Washington College’s Sophie Kerr Prize, an Illinois Arts Council Literary Award, North Carolina’s Sir Walter Raleigh Award, and having a quotation from A Muse and a Maze serve as the answer to the New York Times Magazine Sunday acrostic.
Born in Baltimore, he earned his BA at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland, and his MFA at the University of Arizona. He has taught at Northwestern University and Appalachian State University, and has been on the faculty of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. For 15 years he directed The MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina; at Arizona State University he taught fiction and served as Director of Creative Writing and Director of the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing. He currently teaches at the University of Houston, and in Warren Wilson’s MFA Program for Writers. Laura, his wife, is a Clinical Professor in English at Arizona State University, where she is curriculum director for “RaceB4Race: Sustaining, Building, Innovating” at the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies; she also co-directs the Shakespeare and Social Justice Project at the Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles. Reed, their son, is a musician (www.reedturchi.com).
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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Merch
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1/29/2023 • 36 minutes, 48 seconds
811. David S. Wills
David S. Wills is the author of High White Notes: The Rise and Fall of Gonzo Journalism, available from Beatdom Books.
Wills is the founder and editor of Beatdom literary journal. His other books include Scientologist! William S. Burroughs and the Weird Cult, and World Citizen: Allen Ginsberg as Traveller. He lives in Kampot, Cambodia.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
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1/25/2023 • 2 hours, 14 minutes, 52 seconds
810. Kevin Maloney
Kevin Maloney is the author of the novel The Red-Headed Pilgrim, available from Two Dollar Radio.
Maloney is the author of Cult of Loretta and the forthcoming story collection Horse Girl Fever. At times a TJ Maxx associate, grocery clerk, outdoor school instructor, organic farmer, electrician, high school English teacher, and teddy bear salesman, he currently works as a web developer and writer. His short stories have appeared in Hobart, Barrelhouse, Green Mountains Review, and a number of other journals and anthologies. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife Aubrey.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
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1/22/2023 • 1 hour, 23 minutes, 51 seconds
How to Write Action
In the inaugural episode of Craftwork, a new series from the Otherppl podcast, author Matt Bell teaches a lesson on how to write action in fiction.
Bell is the author most recently of the novel Appleseed (a New York Times Notable Book) and the craft book Refuse to Be Done, a guide to novel writing, rewriting, and revision.
He is also the author of the novels Scrapper and In the House upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods, as well as the short story collection A Tree or a Person or a Wall, a non-fiction book about the classic video game Baldur's Gate II, and several other titles. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Esquire, Tin House, Fairy Tale Review, American Short Fiction, Orion, and many other publications. A native of Michigan, he teaches creative writing at Arizona State University.
His novel In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods was a finalist for the Young Lions Fiction Award and an Indies Choice Adult Book of the Year Honor Recipient, and was selected as the winner of the Paula Anderson Book Award, among other honors. Both In the House and Scrapper were selected by the Library of Michigan as Michigan Notable Books.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
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1/20/2023 • 39 minutes, 5 seconds
809. Matthew Salesses
Matthew Salesses is the author of the novel The Sense of Wonder (Little, Brown & Co.).
Salesses' other books include the national bestseller Craft in the Real World, the 2021 finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction Disappear Doppelgänger Disappear, and two other novels. Adopted from Korea, he has written about adoption, race, and Asian American masculinity in The Best American Essays 2020, NPR's Code Switch, the New York Times blog Motherlode, and The Guardian, among other media outlets. BuzzFeed has named him one of 32 Essential Asian American Writers. He lives in New York City, where he is an Assistant Professor of Writing at Columbia University.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
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1/18/2023 • 1 hour, 27 minutes, 58 seconds
808. Bruce Wagner
Bruce Wagner is the author of Roar: American Master, available from Arcade Publishing.
Wagner has written twelve novels and bestsellers, including the famous "Cellphone Trilogy," I'm Losing You (PEN USA finalist), I'll Let You Go and Still Holding), Dead Stars, The Empty Chair, and the PEN/Faulkner-finalist Chrysanthemum Palace. He wrote the screenplay for David Cronenberg's film Maps to the Stars, for which Julianne Moore won Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014. In 1993, Wagner wrote and created the visionary mini-series Wild Palms for producer Oliver Stone and co-wrote (with Ullman) three seasons the acclaimed Tracey Ullman'sState of the Union. He has written essays and articles for the New York Times, Artforum and the New Yorker.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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1/15/2023 • 1 hour, 26 minutes, 18 seconds
807. Kashana Cauley
Kashana Cauley is the author of the debut novel The Survivalists, available from Soft Skull Press.
Cauley is a former Midtown antitrust lawyer and Brooklyn resident. She is a writer for the Fox comedy The Great North, a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, and a GQ contributor. She's written for The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and Pod Save America on HBO as well as The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Pitchfork, and Rolling Stone, and has published fiction in Esquire, Slate, Tin House, and The Chronicles of Now. Kashana now lives in Los Angeles.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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Merch
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1/11/2023 • 1 hour, 40 minutes, 16 seconds
806. Sean Adams
Sean Adams is the author of the novel The Thing in the Snow, available from William Morrow. It is the official January pick of the TNB Book Club.
Adams is a graduate of Bennington College and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. The Heap is his first novel.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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1/8/2023 • 1 hour, 26 minutes, 1 second
805. Dorthe Nors
Dorthe Nors is the author of the acclaimed essay collection A Line in the World: A Year on the North Sea Coast (Graywolf Press), translated by Caroline Waight.
Nors is the author of the story collections Wild Swims and Karate Chop; four novels, including Mirror, Shoulder, Signal, a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize; and two novellas, collected in So Much for That Winter.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
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1/4/2023 • 1 hour, 26 minutes, 58 seconds
Holiday Spectacular 2022
Here we are again. Another year in the books. Another Holiday Spectacular episode of the Otherppl podcast.
This year, the Spectacular was recorded at 8 a.m. rather than the traditional evening hour. The reason? I was disorganized and scrambling to assemble a team of people willing to participate in this questionable annual rite.
Thankfully, my friends Joseph Grantham, Gene Morgan, and Timothy Willis Sanders bailed me out. They were kind enough to join me for a year-end gathering and some good cheer. Mira Gonzalez was supposed to be there too, but she ate too many edibles the night before and didn't wake up in time to participate.
Big thanks to everyone out there who listens to this show and supports this show. It's a labor of love for me, and the show wouldn't exist with you.
Here's to another great year, and more great conversations with great writers in 2023....
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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12/21/2022 • 1 hour, 8 minutes, 52 seconds
804. Sam Lipsyte
Sam Lipsyte is the author of the novel No One Left to Come Looking for You (Simon & Schuster).
Lipsyte is the author of the story collections Venus Drive and The Fun Parts and four novels: Hark, The Ask (a New York Times Notable Book), The Subject Steve, and Home Land, which was a New York Times Notable Book and received the Believer Book Award. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Best American Short Stories, among other places. The recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, he lives in New York City and teaches at Columbia University.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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12/14/2022 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 47 seconds
803. Allegra Hyde
Allegra Hyde is the author of the novel Eleutheria, available from Vintage. It is the official December pick of the TNB Book Club.
Hyde's debut story collection, Of This New World, won the John Simmons Short Fiction Award through the Iowa Short Fiction Award Series. Her stories and essays have appeared in The Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, The Best Small Fictions, and The Best American Travel Writing. Originally from New Hampshire, she currently lives in Ohio and teaches at Oberlin College.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
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12/7/2022 • 1 hour, 21 minutes, 28 seconds
802. Emily Pifer
Emily Pifer is the author of the award-winning debut memoir The Running Body, available from Autumn House Press.
Pifer received her MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Wyoming and is now a PhD candidate in composition and cultural rhetoric at Syracuse University, where she holds a research fellowship and has taught courses in creative nonfiction and critical research and writing. Her work has appeared in The Fiddlehead, Brevity’s Nonfiction Blog, Women’s Health, Esquire, and elsewhere. The Running Body was chosen by Steve Almond as the winner of the 2021 Autumn House Press Nonfiction Prize. Emily is from West Virginia and Ohio, and she currently lives in Laramie, Wyoming.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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11/30/2022 • 1 hour, 29 minutes, 59 seconds
801. Kyle Spencer
Kyle Spencer is an investigative journalist and the author of Raising Them Right: The Untold Story of America's Ultraconservative Youth Movement and Its Plot for Power (Ecco Books).
Spencer is is an award-winning journalist and frequent New York Times contributor. She has written for New York magazine, Slate, the Daily Beast, the Washington Post, Politico, and many other publications.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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11/23/2022 • 1 hour, 24 minutes, 22 seconds
800. Pete Hsu
Pete Hsu is the author of the story collection If I Were the Ocean, I'd Carry You Home, available from Red Hen Press. It is the official November pick of the Otherppl/TNB Book Club.
Hsu is also the author of the experimental chapbook There Is A Man (Tolsun Books). His writing has been featured in The Los Angeles Review, The Bare Life Review, F(r)iction Magazine, Faultline Journal of Arts and Letters, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and others. He was a 2017 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow and the 2017 PEN in the Community Writer in Residence. He was born in Taipei, Taiwan and currently resides in Southern California’s San Gabriel Valley.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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11/16/2022 • 1 hour, 35 minutes, 11 seconds
799. Rich Ferguson, Mary Kerr, S.A. Griffin
Rich Ferguson, Mary Kerr, and S.A. Griffin are the guests for a roundtable discussion of Beat literature and the new anthology Beat Not Beat: An Anthology of California Poets Screwing on the Beat and Post-Beat Tradition (Moon Tide Press).
Pushcart Prize-nominated poet Rich Ferguson has shared the stage with Patti Smith, Wanda Coleman, Moby, and other esteemed poets and musicians. Ferguson was selected by the National Beat Poetry Foundation, Inc. (NBPF), to serve as the State of California Beat Poet Laureate (Sept. 2020 to Sept. 2022). He is a featured performer in the film, What About Me? featuring Michael Stipe, Michael Franti, k.d. lang, and others. His poetry and award-winning spoken-word music videos have appeared in numerous anthologies and festivals, and he was a winner in Opium Magazine’s Literary Death Match, L.A. Ferguson is the editor of an anthology of CA poets entitled Beat Not Beat (Moon Tide Press).
Mary Kerr is an Independent Producer of documentaries on the California Beat Era. Her films include The Beach (1996), Venice West and the LA Scene (2011), and San Francisco's Wild History Groove (2011).
S.A. Griffin, co-editor of Beat Not Beat and The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry (Firecracker Award) and Carma Bum progenitor lives, loves and works in Los Angeles. In 2010 he created The Poetry Bomb, a former Vietnam era practice bomb converted into an art object filled with over 900 poems from around the world in an effort to inspire civil disagreements culminating in The Poetry Bomb Couch Surfing Across America Tour of Words. Named Best Performance Poet by the LA Weekly, in 2011 he was the first recipient of Beyond Baroque's Distinguished Service Award. His most recent book, Pandemic Soul Music (Punk Hostage Press), will be on bookshelves December 2022. Husband, father and USAF Vietnam era veteran.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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11/13/2022 • 1 hour, 28 minutes, 12 seconds
798. Lynn Steger Strong
Lynn Steger Strong is the author of the novel Flight, available from Mariner Books.
Strong's other books include the novels Want and Hold Still. Her nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, Time, Harper's Bazaar, Los Angeles Times, The Paris Review, The Cut, New York Magazine, and elsewhere. She teaches writing at Catapult and Columbia University, and in 2022-23, she will be the Visiting Fiction Writer at Bates College.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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11/9/2022 • 1 hour, 29 minutes, 35 seconds
797. Andrew Sean Greer
Andrew Sean Greer is a Pulitzer Prize winner and the author of the novel Less is Lost (Little, Brown), a New York Times bestseller.
Greer is the author of six works of fiction, including the bestsellers The Confessions of Max Tivoli and Less. Greer has taught at a number of universities, including the Iowa Writers Workshop, been a Today show pick, a New York Public Library Cullman Center Fellow, a judge for the National Book Award, and a winner of the California Book Award and the New York Public Library Young Lions Award. He is the recipient of a NEA grant, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. He lives in San Francisco.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
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11/2/2022 • 1 hour, 26 minutes, 51 seconds
796. Jonathan Escoffery
Jonathan Escoffery is the author of the debut story collection If I Survive You, available from MCD/FSG.
If I Survive You is a National Book Award Nominee, an Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence Nominee, a New York Times Editor’s Choice, and an Indie National Bestseller.
Escoffery is the winner of The Paris Review’s 2020 Plimpton Prize for Fiction and is the recipient of a 2020 National Endowment for the Arts (Prose) Literature Fellowship. His story “Under the Ackee Tree” was among the trio that won the Paris Review the 2020 ASME Award for Fiction from the American Society of Magazine Editors, and was subsequently included in The Best American Magazine Writing 2020. His stories have appeared in The Paris Review, Oprah Daily, Electric Literature, Zyzzyva, AGNI, Pleiades, American Short Fiction, Prairie Schooner, Passages North, and elsewhere.
Jonathan has taught creative writing and seminars on the writer’s life at Stanford University, the University of Minnesota, the Center for Fiction, Tin House, Writers in Progress, and at GrubStreet in Boston, where, as former staff, he founded the Boston Writers of Color Group, which currently has more than 2,000 members. He has received support and honors from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico, Aspen Words, Kimbilio Fiction, the Anderson Center, and elsewhere. He is a graduate of the University of Minnesota’s Creative Writing MFA Program (Fiction) and attends the University of Southern California’s Ph.D. in Creative Writing and Literature Program as a Provost Fellow. He is a 2021-2023 Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
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10/26/2022 • 1 hour, 24 minutes, 32 seconds
795. George Saunders
George Saunders is the author of the story collection Liberation Day, available from Random House.
Saunders is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of eleven books, including A Swim in a Pond in the Rain; Lincoln in the Bardo, which won the Booker Prize; Congratulations, by the Way; Tenth of December, a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the inaugural Folio Award; The Braindead Megaphone; and the critically acclaimed collections CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, Pastoralia, and In Persuasion Nation. He teaches in the creative writing program at Syracuse University.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
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Merch
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10/19/2022 • 1 hour, 31 minutes, 2 seconds
794. Morgan Talty
Morgan Talty is the author of the debut story collection Night of the Living Rez, available from Tin House. It is the official October pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
Talty is a citizen of the Penobscot Indian Nation where he grew up. Named one of Narrative's "30 Below 30," Talty's work has appeared in The Georgia Review, Shenandoah, TriQuarterly, Narrative Magazine, LitHub, and elsewhere. He lives in Levant, Maine.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
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10/12/2022 • 1 hour, 7 minutes, 38 seconds
793. A.M. Homes
A.M. Homes is the author of the novel The Unfolding, available from Viking.
Homes is the author of thirteen books, among them the best-selling memoir The Mistress' Daughter; the novels This Book Will Save Your Life, The End of Alice, and Jack; and the short story collections Days of Awe, The Safety of Objects and Things You Should Know. She also writes for film and television and teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Princeton University.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
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10/5/2022 • 1 hour, 21 minutes, 43 seconds
792. Chelsea Martin
Chelsea Martin is the author of the novel Tell Me I'm an Artist, available from Soft Skull Press.
Martin is the author of the essay collection Caca Dolce and the novella Mickey, among other books. She lives in Spokane, WA with her husband and child.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
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9/28/2022 • 1 hour, 20 minutes, 16 seconds
791. Elizabeth Strout
Elizabeth Strout is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the novel Lucy by the Sea, available from Random House.
Strout is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Oh William!; Olive, Again; Anything Is Possible, winner of the Story Prize; My Name Is Lucy Barton; The Burgess Boys; Olive Kitteridge, winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Abide with Me; and Amy and Isabelle, winner of the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize. She has also been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize in London. She lives in Maine.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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Merch
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9/21/2022 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 41 seconds
790. Jerry Stahl
Jerry Stahl is the author of the memoir Nein, Nein, Nein!: One Man's Tale of Depression, Psychic Torment, and a Bus Tour of the Holocaust, available from Akashic Books.
Stahl has written ten books, including the best-selling memoir Permanent Midnight, made into a movie with Ben Stiller; the essay collection OG Dad; and the novels Pain Killers; I, Fatty; Perv; Plainclothes Naked; Happy Mutant Baby Pills; and Bad Sex on Speed. A Pushcart Prize–winning author, Stahl’s work has appeared in Esquire, Vice, the Believer, Tin House, Los Angeles Review of Books, and the New York Times, among other places. He has written extensively for film and television, including HBO’s Hemingway & Gellhorn, which earned a Writers Guild Award nomination; Bad Boys II; and the cult classic Dr. Caligari; series credits include Maron, CSI, and Escape at Dannemora, for which he received an Emmy nomination. Stahl’s writing has been widely translated, and he has taught with the InsideOUT Writers program for incarcerated youth, edited The Heroin Chronicles for Akashic Books, and participated in the documentary series, San Quentin Film School. He has two daughters, and lives with artist Zoe Hansen.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
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The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
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9/14/2022 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 14 seconds
789. Luke Dani Blue
Luke Dani Blue is the author of the debut story collection Pretend It's My Body, available from The Feminist Press. It is the official September pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
Blue’s stories have appeared in the Colorado Review, Crab Orchard Review, and have been included on the list of the year's most distinguished stories in Best American Short Stories 2016. Originally from Michigan, Luke (they/them) is a two-time college dropout and time-traveling Victorian invalid who resides most reliably on the internet. They are also an astrologer.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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Merch
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9/7/2022 • 1 hour, 37 minutes, 54 seconds
788. Timothy Willis Sanders
Timothy Willis Sanders is the author of the story collection Modern Massacres (Publishing Genius).
Modern Massacres is Timothy Willis Sanders’s third book and second collection of short stories. In the vein of Orange Juice (his first collection with PGP, from 2010), stories like “John Lennon,” “Officer Walter,” and “Glasses” examine contemporary life in a familiar, canny way. Humorous and full of keen observations, Sanders writes with care and respect for his characters, from the innocent kids to the flawed adults, all of whom are looking for connection and approval—or at least some kindness in a world that isn’t always easy to live in.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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Merch
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8/31/2022 • 1 hour, 23 minutes, 30 seconds
787. Melissa Chadburn
Melissa Chadburn is the author of the debut novel A Tiny Upward Shove, available from Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.
Chadburn's writing has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times Book Review, The New York Review of Books, The Paris Review Daily, The Best American Food Writing, and many other publications. Her extensive reporting on the child welfare system appears in the Netflix docuseries The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez. Melissa is a worker lover and through her own labor and literary citizenship strives to upend economic violence. Her mother taught her how to sharpen a pencil with a knife and she's basically been doing that ever since. She is a Ph.D. candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Southern California and lives in greater Los Angeles.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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8/24/2022 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 48 seconds
786. Nada Alic
Nada Alic is the author of the debut story collection Bad Thoughts, available from Vintage. It is the official August pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
Alic's story "The Intruder" was shortlisted for the CBC Short Fiction Prize 2019. "My New Life" was published in No Tokens Journal. She lives in Los Angeles.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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8/17/2022 • 1 hour, 7 minutes, 17 seconds
785. Ingrid Rojas Contreras
Ingrid Rojas Contreras is the author of the memoir The Man Who Could Move Clouds, available from Doubleday.
Contreras was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia. Her debut novel Fruit of the Drunken Tree was the silver medal winner in First Fiction from the California Book Awards, and a New York Times editor's choice. Her essays and short stories have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The Believer, and Zyzzyva, among others. She lives in California.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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Merch
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8/10/2022 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 31 seconds
784. Lynne Tillman
Lynne Tillman is the author of Mothercare: On Obligation, Love, Death, and Ambivalence, available from Soft Skull.
Tillman is a novelist, short story writer, and cultural critic. Her novels are Haunted Houses; Motion Sickness; Cast in Doubt; No Lease on Life, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; American Genius, A Comedy, and Men and Apparitions. Her nonfiction books include The Velvet Years: Warhol's Factory 1965-1967, with photographs by Stephen Shore; Bookstore: The Life and Times of Jeannette Watson and Books & Co.; and What Would Lynne Tillman Do?, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and The Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. Tillman is Professor/Writer-in-Residence in the Department of English at The University of Albany, and lives in New York with bass player David Hofstra.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
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8/3/2022 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 20 seconds
783. Isaac Fitzgerald
Isaac Fitzgerald is the author of the memoir-in-essays Dirtbag, Massachusetts: A Confessional, available from Bloomsbury.
Fitzgerald appears frequently on The Today Show and is the author of the bestselling children's book How to Be a Pirate as well as the co-author of Pen & Ink and Knives & Ink (winner of an IACP Award). His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, the Best American Nonrequired Reading, and numerous other publications. He lives in Brooklyn.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
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7/27/2022 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 25 seconds
782. David Koepp
David Koepp is the author of the novel Aurora, available from Harper. It is the official July pick of the TNB Book Club.
Koepp has written or co-written the screenplays for more than thirty films, including Carlito's Way (1993), Jurassic Park (1993), Mission: Impossible (1996), Panic Room (2002), Spider-Man (2002), War of the Worlds (2005), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), Angels & Demons (2009), and Kimi (2022).
As a director, his work includes the films The Trigger Effect (1996), Stir of Echoes (1999), Secret Window (2004), Ghost Town (2007), Premium Rush (2012), and You Should Have Left (2020). Ghost Town and Premium Rush were co-written with John Kamps.
Koepp’s first novel, Cold Storage, was published in 2019. His story "Yard Work," narrated by Kevin Bacon, was released by Audible Originals in July 2020.
He was born in Pewaukee, Wisconsin and graduated from UCLA’s film school in 1986. He lives in New York City with his wife and children.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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7/20/2022 • 1 hour, 8 minutes, 58 seconds
781. Teddy Wayne
Teddy Wayne is the author of the novel The Great Man Theory, available from Bloomsbury.
Wayne's other novels include Apartment, Loner, The Love Song of Jonny Valentine, and Kapitoil. He is the winner of a Whiting Writers’ Award and an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship as well as a finalist for the Young Lions Fiction Award, PEN/Bingham Prize, and Dayton Literary Peace Prize. A former columnist for the New York Times and McSweeney’s and a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, he has taught at Columbia University and Washington University in St. Louis. He has developed films and series from his novels with HBO, MGM Television, and Mad Dog Films. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, the writer Kate Greathead, and their children.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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Merch
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7/13/2022 • 1 hour, 35 minutes, 7 seconds
780. Chantal V. Johnson
Chantal V. Johnson is the author of the debut novel Post-Traumatic, available from Little, Brown.
Post-Traumatic was named a Best Debut Novel of 2022 by Debutiful and hailed as a "sharp psychological novel" by The New Yorker. Chantal graduated from Stanford Law School and worked as a tenant lawyer for over seven years. A 2018 Center for Fiction Emerging Writers Fellow, she lives in New York.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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Merch
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7/6/2022 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 56 seconds
779. Austin Kleon
Austin Kleon is the New York Times bestselling author of a trilogy of books on creativity in the digital age, including Steal Like an Artist—now celebrating its 10th year in print—Show Your Work!, and Keep Going.
Kleon is also the author of Newspaper Blackout, a collection of poems made by redacting the newspaper with a permanent marker. His books have been translated into dozens of languages and have sold over a million copies worldwide. He’s been featured on NPR’s Morning Edition, PBS Newshour, and in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. New York Magazine called his work “brilliant,” The Atlantic called him “positively one of the most interesting people on the Internet,” and The New Yorker said his poems “resurrect the newspaper when everybody else is declaring it dead.” He speaks for organizations such as Pixar, Google, SXSW, TEDx, and The Economist. In previous lives, he worked as a librarian, a web designer, and an advertising copywriter. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and sons. Visit him online at www.austinkleon.com.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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Merch
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6/29/2022 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 19 seconds
778. Marcy Dermansky
Marcy Dermansky is the author of the novel Hurricane Girl, available from Knopf.
Dermansky is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Very Nice, The Red Car, Bad Marie, and Twins. She has received fellowships from The MacDowell Colony and The Edward F. Albee Foundation. She lives with her daughter in Montclair, New Jersey.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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6/22/2022 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 42 seconds
777. Sloane Crosley
Sloane Crosley is the author of the novel Cult Classic, available from MCD/FSG.
Crosley is the author of The New York Times bestselling essay collections, I Was Told There’d Be Cake (a 2009 finalist for The Thurber Prize for American Humor) and How Did You Get This Number, as well as Look Alive Out There (a 2019 finalist for The Thurber Prize for American Humor) and the bestselling novel, The Clasp. She served as editor of The Best American Travel Writing series and is featured in The Library of America's 50 Funniest American Writers, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, Phillip Lopate’s The Contemporary American Essay and others. She was the inaugural columnist for The New York Times Op-Ed "Townies" series, a contributing editor at Interview Magazine, and a columnist for The Village Voice, Vanity Fair, The Independent, Black Book, Departures and The New York Observer. She is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. Her next nonfiction book, Grief Is for People, will be published in 2023. She lives in New York City.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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6/15/2022 • 1 hour, 34 minutes, 54 seconds
776. Abbigail Nguyen Rosewood
Abbigail Nguyen Rosewood is the author of the novel Constellations of Eve, available from DVAN/UTTP. It is the official June pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
Rosewood was born in Vietnam, where she lived until the age of twelve. Her debut novel, If I Had Two Lives, has been hailed as "a tale of staggering artistry" by the Los Angeles Review of Books and "a lyrical, exquisitely written novel" by the New York Journal of Books. The New Yorker called it "a dangerous fantasy world" that "double haunts the novel." Her short fiction and essays can be found at Electric Lit, LitHub, Catapult, The Southampton Review, The Brooklyn Review, Columbia Journal, and The Adroit Journal, among others. In 2019, her hybrid writing was featured in a multimedia art and poetry exhibit at Eccles Gallery. Her fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best American Short Story 2020. She is the founder of Neon Door, a forthcoming immersive literary exhibit.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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6/8/2022 • 1 hour, 24 minutes, 49 seconds
775. Hernan Diaz
Hernan Diaz is the author of the novel Trust, available from Riverhead.
A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award, Diaz's work has been translated into more than twenty languages. He has published stories and essays in The Paris Review, Granta, Playboy, The Yale Review, McSweeney’s, and elsewhere.
His first novel, In the Distance, was the winner of the Saroyan International Prize, the Cabell Award, the Prix Page America, and the New American Voices Award, among other distinctions. It was also a Publishers Weekly Top 10 Book of the Year and one of Lit Hub’s 20 Best Novels of the Decade.
He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, and fellowships from the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, the The Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, MacDowell, Yaddo, and the Ingmar Bergman Estate.
He holds a PhD from NYU, edits an academic journal at Columbia University, and is also the author of Borges, between History and Eternity.
* * *
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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Merch
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6/1/2022 • 1 hour, 11 minutes, 53 seconds
774. Kathryn Miles
Kathryn Miles is the author of Trailed: One Woman's Quest to Solve the Shenandoah Murders (Algonquin Books).
Miles is the author of five books. Her essays and articles have appeared in publications such as Audubon, Best American Essays, Best American Sports Writing, the Boston Globe, the New York Times, Outside, Politico, and Time. A contributing editor at Down East magazine, Miles also serves as a scholar-in-residence for the Maine Humanities Council and as a faculty member in several MFA programs. Her website is www.kathrynmiles.net.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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5/25/2022 • 1 hour, 25 minutes, 28 seconds
773. Mary Laura Philpott
Mary Laura Philpott is the author of the memoir-in-essays Bomb Shelter: Love, Time, and Other Explosives (Atria Books). It was the official April pick of the TNB Book Club.
Philpott, nationally bestselling author of I Miss You When I Blink, writes about the overlap of the absurd and the profound in everyday life. Her writing has been featured by The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic, among many other publications. A former bookseller, she also hosted an interview program on Nashville Public Television for several years. Mary Laura lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with her family.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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5/18/2022 • 1 hour, 30 minutes, 53 seconds
772. Brad Listi
Brad Listi is the author of the novel Be Brief and Tell Them Everything, available from Ig.
Listi was born in Milwaukee. His other books include the novel Attention. Deficit. Disorder., an LA Times bestseller, and Board, a work of nonfiction collage, co-authored with Justin Benton. He is the founding editor of The Nervous Breakdown, an online literary magazine, and in 2011 he launched the Otherppl podcast, which features in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. He lives in Los Angeles.
Today's interview is conducted by guest host Steve Almond.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
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5/11/2022 • 1 hour, 25 minutes, 50 seconds
771. Darrel Alejandro Holnes
Darrel Alejandro Holnes is the author of the poetry collection Stepmotherland (University of Notre Dame Press). It is the winner of the Andres Montoya Poetry Prize.
Holnes is an Afro-Panamanian American writer and is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship in Creative Writing (Poetry). His poems have previously appeared in the American Poetry Review, Poetry, Callaloo, Best American Experimental Writing, and elsewhere. Holnes is a Cave Canem and CantoMundo fellow who has earned scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Postgraduate Writers Conference at Vermont College of Fine Arts, and residencies nationwide, including a residency at MacDowell. His poem "Praise Song for My Mutilated World" won the C. P. Cavafy Poetry Prize from Poetry International. He is an assistant professor of English at Medgar Evers College, a senior college of the City University of New York (CUNY), where he teaches creative writing and playwriting, and a faculty member of the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
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5/8/2022 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 50 seconds
770. Steve Almond
Steve Almond is the author of the debut novel All the Secrets of the World, available from Zando.
Almond is the author of ten books of fiction and nonfiction, including the New York Times bestsellers Candyfreak and Against Football. He teaches Creative Writing at the Neiman Fellowship at Harvard and Wesleyan, as well as Hugo House, Grub Street, and numerous literary conferences. His essays and reviews have been widely published in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, GQ, The Wall Street Journal, Poets & Writers, Tin House, and Ploughshares. His journalism has received numerous awards including the top national prize for feature writing from the Society of Professional Journalists. His short stories have been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories, Best American Mysteries, Best American Erotica, and The Pushcart Prize. He serves as a literary correspondent for WBUR and appears on numerous podcasts. He lives in Arlington, Massachusetts.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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5/4/2022 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 48 seconds
769. Caren Beilin
Caren Beilin is the author of the novel Revenge of the Scapegoat, available from Dorothy.
Beilin's other books are Blackfishing the IUD (Wolfman Books, 2019), Spain (Rescue Press, 2018), The University of Pennsylvania (Noemi Press, 2014), and the chapbook Americans, Guests, or Us (Diagram/New Michigan Press, 2012). Shorter prose appears in Fence, Territory, Dreginald, and The Offing. She is an assistant professor of creative writing at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts and lives close by, in Vermont.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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4/27/2022 • 1 hour, 24 minutes, 33 seconds
Be Brief and Tell Them Everything - Sneak Preview
Today on the program, a special sneak preview of my new novel, Be Brief and Tell Them Everything, available now for preorder and wherever books are sold on May 10, 2022 in trade paperback and audiobook formats.
This is an excerpt from the audiobook edition, read by yours truly. It is the first time any part of the novel has been made available to the public. An exclusive offering for listeners of the Otherppl podcast. Thanks for tuning in.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
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4/24/2022 • 19 minutes, 35 seconds
768. Zac Smith
Zac Smith is the author of the debut story collection Everything is Totally Fine, available from Muumuu House.
Smith's other books includeTwo Million Shirts (2021), of which he is co-author, and a poetry collection entitled 50 Barn Poems (2019). He lives in Massachusetts.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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4/20/2022 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 59 seconds
767. Julia May Jonas
Julia May Jonas is the author of the debut novel Vladimir, available from Avid Reader Press.
Jonas is a playwright and teaches theater at Skidmore College. She holds an MFA in playwriting from Columbia University and lives in Brooklyn with her family. Vladimir is her debut novel.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
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4/13/2022 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 1 second
766. Anakana Schofield
Anakana Schofield is the author of Bina: A Novel in Warnings, a New York Review Book.
Schofield is an award-winning Irish-Canadian writer of fiction, essays, and literary criticism. Her previous novels are Malarky (2012) and Martin John (2015). The UK edition of Bina was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2020. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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4/6/2022 • 1 hour, 22 minutes, 41 seconds
765. Kate Folk
Kate Folk is the author of the debut story collection Out There, available from Random House.
Folk has written for publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Granta, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, and Zyzzyva. She's received support from the Headlands Center for the Arts, MacDowell, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Recently, she was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in fiction at Stanford University. She lives in San Francisco.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
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3/30/2022 • 1 hour, 28 minutes, 6 seconds
764. Mike Meginnis
Mike Meginnis is the author of the novel Drowning Practice (Ecco Books). It is the official March pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
Meginnis is also the author of the novel Fat Man and Little Boy. His fiction has appeared in The Best American Short Stories 2012, Unstuck, The Collagist, PANK, Hayden's Ferry Review, and many other outlets. He lives and works in Iowa City.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
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3/23/2022 • 1 hour, 26 minutes, 9 seconds
763. Remembering Eve Babitz, with Lili Anolik
Lili Anolik is the author of Hollywood's Eve: Eve Babitz and the Secret History of L.A., available from Scribner.
Anolik is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and a writer at large for Air Mail. Her work has also appeared in Harper's, Esquire, and The Paris Review, among other publications. Her latest podcast, Once Upon a Time… at Bennington College, dropped September 29th, 2021.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
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3/16/2022 • 1 hour, 56 minutes, 52 seconds
762. John Keene
John Keene is the author of Punks: New & Selected Poems, available from The Song Cave.
Keene is a writer, translator, professor, and artist who was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2018. In 1989, Keene joined the Dark Room Writers Collective, and is a Graduate Fellow of the Cave Canem Writers Workshops.
He is the author of Annotations, and Counternarratives, both published by New Directions, as well as several other works, including the poetry collection Seismosis, with artist Christopher Stackhouse, and a translation of Brazilian author Hilda Hilst's novel Letters from a Seducer.
Keene is the recipient of many awards and fellowships--including the Windham-Campbell Prize, the Whiting Foundation Prize, the Republic of Consciousness Prize, and the American Book Award. He teaches at Rutgers University-Newark.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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3/9/2022 • 1 hour, 21 minutes, 54 seconds
761. Cara Blue Adams
Cara Blue Adams is the author of the debut story collection You Never Get It Back, winner of the John Simmons Short Fiction Award, available from the University of Iowa Press.
Adams has published over twenty stories in leading magazines, including Granta, The Kenyon Review, American Short Fiction, Alaska Quarterly Review, Epoch, The Sun, The Missouri Review, The Mississippi Review, Story, and Narrative, which named her one of their “15 Below 30.” Stories in You Never Get It Back have been awarded the Kenyon Review Short Fiction Prize, judged by Alice Hoffman, the Missouri Review Peden Prize, judged by Jessica Francis Kane, and the Meringoff Prize in Fiction, awarded by the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers.
A 2018 Center for Fiction Emerging Writers Fellow, Cara has been awarded support by the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Lighthouse Works, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and the New York State Foundation on the Arts.
Cara earned a B.A. in English Language and Literature from Smith College and an MFA from the University of Arizona. Originally from Vermont, she has lived in Boston, Tucson, Montreal, Maine, South Carolina, and Baton Rouge, where she co-edited The Southern Review. She is an associate professor at Seton Hall University and lives in Brooklyn and the Hudson Valley.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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3/2/2022 • 1 hour, 42 minutes, 4 seconds
760. Lan Samantha Chang
Lan Samantha Chang is the author of the novel The Family Chao, available from W.W. Norton & Co. It is the official February pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
Chang's other books include the story collection Hunger and the novels Inheritance and All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost. A recent Berlin Prize Fellow, she also has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. Chang is the first Asian American and the first female director of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She lives in Iowa City.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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2/23/2022 • 1 hour, 10 minutes, 46 seconds
759. Sheila Heti
Sheila Heti is the author of the novel Pure Colour, available from Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.
Heti is the author of several books of fiction and nonfiction, including Motherhood and How Should a Person Be?, which New York magazine deemed one of the "New Classics of the 21st century." She was named one of "the New Vanguard" by the New York Times book critics, who, along with a dozen other magazines and newspapers, chose Motherhood as a Best Book of 2018. Her novels have been translated into twenty-four languages. She is the former Interviews Editor of The Believer magazine and lives in Toronto.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
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2/16/2022 • 1 hour, 11 minutes, 7 seconds
758. Antoine Wilson
Antoine Wilson is the author of the novel Mouth to Mouth, available from Avid Reader.
Wilson is also the author of the novels The Interloper and Panorama City. His writing has appeared in The Paris Review, Quarterly West, and Best New American Voices, among other publications. He is a contributing editor at A Public Space.
He has received the Carol Houck Smith Fiction Fellowship at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and the San Fernando Valley Award for Fiction, and has been a finalist for The National Magazine Award, the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association Book of the Year Award, and the Foreword Magazine Book of the Year Award.
He has taught writing at the University of Iowa, the University of California San Diego, the University of California Los Angeles Extension Writers’ Program, Stanford Continuing Studies, and the Otis School of Art and Design.
Born in Montreal and raised in California and Saudi Arabia, he now lives with his family in Los Angeles. He can be found on twitter at @antoinewilson and Instagram at @theantoinewilson.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
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2/9/2022 • 1 hour, 28 minutes, 27 seconds
From Well-Read Black Girl: Anita Hill on Advocacy and Writing
I'm sharing a special preview of the new podcast, Well-Read Black Girl from Pushkin Industries. Well-Read Black Girl is the literary kickback you never knew you needed. Glory Edim, author and founder of the Well-Read Black Girl community, sits in deep, honest and close conversation with authors like Tarana Burke, Gabrielle Union, Elizabeth Acevedo and more. You’ll also meet book club members, literacy advocates, and Black booksellers to hear what they’re reading and what it means to be well-read. In this preview, Glory talks with lawyer and educator Anita Hill about her work to help gender-based violence victims and the process behind writing her new book. You can listen to Well-Read Black Girl at https://link.chtbl.com/otherpplwrbg.
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2/8/2022 • 7 minutes, 15 seconds
757. Debbie Millman
Debbie Millman is the author of Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World's Most Creative People, available from Harper Design.
Debbie’s podcast, Design Matters is one of the first and longest running podcasts, and as host and founder, Millman has interviewed nearly 500 of the most creative people in the world over the past 17 years. Design Matters won a 2011 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award, in 2015 Apple designated it one of the best overall podcasts on iTunes, and in 2021 designated it one of their “All Time Favorite Podcasts.” In addition, the show has been nominated for six Webby Awards, and has been listed on over 100 “Best Podcasts” lists, including one of the best podcasts in the world by Business Insider and Vanity Fair.
Debbie is the author of seven books, including two collections of interviews that have extended the ethos and editorial vision of Design Matters to the printed page: How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer and Brand Thinking and Other Noble Pursuits. Both books have been published in over 10 languages. She is also the co-owner and Editorial Director of PrintMag.com.
Debbie co-founded the world’s first graduate program in branding at the School of Visual Arts in New York City in 2010.
For 20 years, Debbie was the President of Sterling Brands, one of the world’s leading branding consultancies. She arrived in 1995 when the company was two years old and had 15 employees in one office. Under her leadership, Sterling grew to 150 employees in five offices and she was instrumental in the firm’s acquisition by Omnicom in 2008. Omnicom is one of the world’s largest holding companies. While there she worked on the logo and brand identity for Burger King, Hershey’s, Haagen Dazs, Tropicana, Star Wars, Gillette, and the No More movement.
Debbie’s writing and illustrations have appeared in publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, New York Magazine, Print Magazine, Baffler and Fast Company. She lives in New York and Los Angeles.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
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2/2/2022 • 1 hour, 28 minutes, 26 seconds
756. Rachel Krantz
Rachel Krantz is the author of Open: An Uncensored Memoir of Love, Liberation, and Non-Monogamy, available from Harmony Books.
Krantz is one of the three founding editors of Bustle, where she served as Senior Features Editor for three years, and Senior News Editor before that. She also worked at The Daily Beast as Homepage Editor, and at the nonprofit Mercy For Animals as Lead Writer.
She’s the recipient of the Peabody Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights International Radio Award, the Investigative Reporters and Editors Radio Award, and the Edward R. Murrow Award for her work as an investigative reporter with YR Media.
She was the host of the Bustle podcast Honestly Though, a show about taboo topics recommended by The Guardian. Her work has been featured on Vox, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, NPR, The Daily Beast, Newsweek, High Times, AFAR, Vice, USA Today, Buzzfeed Books, Publishers Weekly, Salon, Marie Claire, VegNews Magazine, and many other outlets.
She is on the advisory board for Sentient Media and the board of directors of Our Hen House.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
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1/26/2022 • 1 hour, 52 minutes, 2 seconds
755. Emmelie Prophète
Emmelie Prophete is the author of the novel Blue, available from Amazon Crossing. Translated by Tina Kover. It is the official January pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
Born in Port-au-Prince, where she still resides, Prophète is a poet, novelist, journalist, and director of the National Library of Haiti. Blue (Le testament des solitudes), earned her the Grand Prix littéraire de l'Association des écrivains de langue française (ADELF) in 2009. Her other publications include Le reste du temps (2010), which tells the story of her special relationship with journalist Jean Dominique, who was murdered in 2000; Impasse Dignité (2012); and Le bout du monde est une fenêtre (2015).
Tina Kover translations include Antoine Compagnon's A Summer with Montaigne and Négar Djavadi's Disoriental, which won both the Albertine Prize and the Lambda Literary Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature and the PEN Translation Prize.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
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1/23/2022 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 24 seconds
754. Jami Attenberg
Jami Attenberg is the author of the memoir I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home, available from Ecco.
Attenberg is the New York Times bestselling author of seven books of fiction, including The Middlesteins and All This Could Be Yours. She has contributed essays to the New York Times Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, the Sunday Times, and the Guardian, among other publications. She lives in New Orleans.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
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The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
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1/19/2022 • 1 hour, 26 minutes, 30 seconds
753. Claire Messud
Claire Messud is the author of A Dream Life, available from Tablo Tales.
Messud is the author of seven works of fiction, including the New York Times bestsellers The Emperor’s Children and The Burning Girl, and a new book of essays, Kant’s Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write. She is a recipient of Guggenheim and Radcliffe Fellowships and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
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1/12/2022 • 1 hour, 36 minutes, 43 seconds
752. Lejla Kalamujic
Lejla Kalamujic is the author of the novel-in-stories Call Me Esteban, available from Sandorf Passage. Translated by Jennifer Zoble.
Kalamujic is an award-winning queer writer from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Call Me Esteban received the Edo Budisa literary award in 2016 and it was the Bosnian-Herzegovinian nominee for the European Union Prize for Literature in the same year.
Jennifer Zoble translates Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian- and Spanish-language literature. Her translation of Mars by Asja Bakic (Feminist Press, 2019) was selected by Publishers Weekly for the fiction list in its "Best Books 2019" issue. She contributed to the Belgrade Noir anthology (Akashic Books, 2020), and her work has been published in McSweeney's, Lit Hub, Words Without Borders, Washington Square, The Iowa Review, and The Baffler, among others. She's a clinical associate professor in the interdisciplinary Liberal Studies program at NYU.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
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1/9/2022 • 1 hour, 27 minutes, 21 seconds
751. Lou Mathews
Lou Mathews is the author of the novel Shaky Town, available from Tiger Van Books.
Mathews has written seven books and published two of them, Just Like James and L.A. Breakdown, an LA Times Best Book. He has taught in UCLA Extension’s acclaimed creative writing program since 1989. His stories have been published in ZYZZYVA, New England Review, Short Story, Black Clock , Paperback L.A. , and many fiction anthologies. Mathews is also a journalist, playwright, and passionate cook, as well as a former mechanic, street racer, and restaurant critic. He has received a Pushcart Prize and a Katherine Anne Porter Prize, as well as California Arts Commission and NEA Fiction fellowships, and is a recipient of the UCLA Extension Teacher of the Year and Outstanding Instructor awards.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
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1/5/2022 • 1 hour, 58 minutes, 36 seconds
2021 Holiday Spectacular!!
As another year comes to a close, Brad is joined by authors Megan Boyle and Joseph Grantham to celebrate the season and reflect on what's ahead.
Happy holidays and happy new year to Otherppl listeners all over the world! Thanks so much for tuning in and supporting the show.
Back in 2022....
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
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12/24/2021 • 44 minutes, 59 seconds
750. Stacy D. Flood
Stacy D. Flood is the author of the novella The Salt Fields, available from Lanternfish Press.
Originally from Buffalo, and currently living in Seattle, Stacy’s work has been published and performed nationally as well as in the Puget Sound Area. Having received his MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University, he has also been an artist-in-residence at DISQUIET in Lisbon, as well as The Millay Colony of the Arts. In addition, he is the recipient of the Gregory Capasso Award in Fiction from the University at Buffalo, along with a Getty Fellowship to the Squaw Valley Community of Writers.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
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12/22/2021 • 1 hour, 6 minutes, 39 seconds
749. Megan Milks
Megan Milks is the author of the novel Margaret and the Mystery of the Missing Body (The Feminist Press).
Milks is the author of Kill Marguerite and Other Stories (2014), available from Feminist Press in revised and expanded form as Slug and Other Stories, and Remember the Internet: Tori Amos Bootleg Webring. With Marisa Crawford, they are coeditor of We Are the Baby-Sitters Club: Essays and Artwork from Grown-Up Readers; with KJ Cerankowski, they are coeditor of Asexualities: Feminist and Queer Perspectives. Born in Virginia, they currently live in Brooklyn.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
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12/19/2021 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 31 seconds
748. Robin McLean
Robin McLean is the author of the debut novel Pity the Beast, available from And Other Stories.
McLean worked as lawyer and then a potter in the woods of Alaska before turning to writing. Her story collection Reptile House won the 2013 BOA Editions Fiction Prize and was twice a finalist for the Flannery O'Connor Short Story Prize. She now lives and teaches in the high plains desert of central Nevada at Ike's Canyon Ranch Writer's Retreat which she co-founded.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
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12/15/2021 • 2 hours, 6 minutes, 43 seconds
747. Duncan Birmingham
Duncan Birmingham is the author of the debut story collection The Cult in My Garage, available from Maudlin House.
Birmingham is a writer and filmmaker in Los Angeles. His fiction has appeared in Mystery Tribune, Brooklyn vol 1, Juked, 7x7, Joyland, nerve, Word Riot, Opium, Story Chord, Oxford Review and Mr. Beller's Neighborhood, among other places.
He was a writer/executive producer on IFC's Maron (with Marc Maron) as well as a writer/producer on Starz's Blunt Talk (with Jonathan Ames) and David Fincher's never-aired HBO show, Videosyncrazy. Short films he has written and directed have premiered at Sundance, AFI, GenArt and Miami Film Festival.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc.
Support the show on Patreon
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12/12/2021 • 1 hour, 41 minutes, 55 seconds
746. Roisin Kiberd
Roisin Kiberd is the author of The Disconnect: A Personal Journey Through the Internet, available from Serpent's Tail.
Kiberd's essays have been published in the Dublin Review, the White Review, the Stinging Fly and Winter Papers. She has written features on technology and culture for publications including the Guardian, Vice and Motherboard, where she wrote a column about internet subcultures. Having spent some time in London as the online voice of a cheese brand, she now lives in Dublin.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon
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12/8/2021 • 1 hour, 45 minutes, 26 seconds
745. Janice Lee
Janice Lee is the author of the novel Imagine a Death, available from Texas Review Press.
Lee is a Korean-American writer, editor, publisher, and shamanic healer. Author of seven books of fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry, she is the founder & executive editor of Entropy, Co-Publisher at Civil Coping Mechanisms, Contributing Editor at Fanzine, and Co-Founder of The Accomplices LLC. She currently lives in Portland, OR where she is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Portland State University.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon
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12/5/2021 • 1 hour, 32 minutes, 25 seconds
744. Jocelyn Nicole Johnson
Jocelyn Nicole Johnson is the author of the debut story collection My Monticello, available from Henry Holt & Co.
Johnson's writing has appeared in Guernica, The Guardian, Phoebe, Prime Number Magazine, and elsewhere. Her short story "Control Negro" was anthologized in Best American Short Stories 2018, guest edited by Roxane Gay, and read live by LeVar Burton as part of PRI's Selected Shorts series. Johnson has been a fellow at Hedgebrook, Tin House Summer Workshops, and VCCA. A veteran public school art teacher, she lives and writes in Charlottesville, Virginia.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon
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12/1/2021 • 1 hour, 26 minutes, 8 seconds
743. Sarah Hall
Sarah Hall is the author of the novel Burntcoat, available from Custom House. It is the official November pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
Hall was born in Cumbria. She is the prizewinning author of six novels and three short story collections. She is a recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters E. M. Forster Award, the Edge Hill Short Story Prize, among others, and the only person ever to win the BBC National Short Story Award twice.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon
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11/24/2021 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 4 seconds
742. Dennis Cooper
Dennis Cooper is the author of the novel I Wished, available from Soho Press.
Cooper is the author of the George Miles Cycle, an interconnected sequence of five novels: Closer, Frisk, Try, Guide, and Period. His other works include My Loose Thread; The Sluts, winner of France's Prix Sade and the Lambda Literary Award; God Jr.; Wrong; The Dream Police; Ugly Man; and The Marbled Swarm. He divides his time between Los Angeles and Paris. He is the director (with Zac Farley) of Permanent Green Light and Like Cattle Towards Glow.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon
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11/21/2021 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 52 seconds
741. Larissa Pham
Larissa Pham is the author of the memoir-in-essays Pop Song, available from Catapult.
Pham is an artist and writer in Brooklyn. Born in Portland, Oregon, she studied painting and art history at Yale University. She has written essays and criticism for the Paris Review Daily, The Nation, Art in America, Guernica, and elsewhere. She was an inaugural Yi Dae Up fellowship recipient from the Jack Jones Literary Arts Retreat. She is also the author of Fantasian, a novella.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon
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11/17/2021 • 1 hour, 34 minutes, 11 seconds
740. Mike DeCapite
Mike DeCapite is the author of the novel Jacket Weather, available from Soft Skull Press.
DeCapite's other books include the novel Through the Windshield, the chapbook Creamsicle Blue, and the short-prose collection Radiant Fog, published under the banner of Sparkle Street Books. Cuz Editions published his story “Sitting Pretty,” later anthologized in The Italian American Reader.
DeCapite grew up in Cleveland and has lived in London and San Francisco, but has spent most of his time in New York City, where he now resides.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon
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11/14/2021 • 1 hour, 32 minutes, 44 seconds
739. Louise Erdrich
Louise Erdrich is the author of the novel The Sentence, available from Harper.
One of America's most celebrated authors, Erdrich was awarded the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Night Watchman. In 2012, she won the National Book Award for her novel The Round House, and twice she has been awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award, first for her debut novel Love Medicine in 1984, and again for her novel LaRose in 2016.
Erdrich is a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. She is the author of many novels as well as volumes of poetry, children's books, and a memoir of early motherhood. She lives in Minnesota with her daughters and is the owner of Birchbark Books, a small independent bookstore. A ghost lives in her creaky old house.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon
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11/10/2021 • 1 hour, 28 minutes, 52 seconds
738. Marlowe Granados
Marlowe Granados is the author of the debut novel Happy Hour, available from Verso Books.
Granados is a writer and filmmaker living in Toronto. She co-hosts The Mean Reds, a podcast dedicated to women-led films. And her advice column, "Designs for Living," appears in The Baffler.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
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11/7/2021 • 1 hour, 40 minutes, 30 seconds
737. Matthew Clark Davison
Matthew Clark Davison is the author of the debut novel Doubting Thomas, available from Amble Press.
Davison is a writer and educator living in San Francisco. He earned a BA and MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University, where he now teaches full-time. His prose has been recently anthologized in Empty The Pews and 580-Split, and published in Guernica, The Atlantic Monthly, Foglifter, Lumina Magazine, Fourteen Hills, Per Contra, Educe, and others; and has been recognized with a Creative Work Grant, (Inaugural Awardee/San Francisco State University), Cultural Equities Grant (San Francisco Arts Commission), the Clark Gross Award for a Novel-in-Progress, and a Stonewall Alumni Award.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon
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11/3/2021 • 1 hour, 38 minutes, 31 seconds
736. Emily Ladau
Emily Ladau is the author of Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, and How to Be an Ally, available from Ten Speed Press.
Ladau is an internationally known disability rights activist, writer, and speaker. She is the editor in chief of the Rooted in Rights blog, a platform dedicated to amplifying authentic narratives of the intersectional disability experience. She also co-hosts The Accessible Stall, a podcast about disability issues.
Ladau's writing has been published in outlets including the New York Times, HuffPost, CNN, Self, Salon, Vice, The Daily Beast, Variety, and Marie Claire Australia. Her work is also included in the Criptiques Anthology and About Us: Essays from the Disability Series of the New York Times. She has served as an expert source on disability issues for outlets including NPR, Vox, Washington Post, and Teen Vogue, and has been featured in a range of press outlets including Newsday, BuzzFeed, CBS News, and U.S. News & World Report.
A complete transcript of this interview is available at otherppl.com.
***
Show notes:
The Microsoft videos that Emily references during the interview can be found here.
Other useful resources:
Ableist words and terms to avoid.
2021 working definition of ableism.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon
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10/31/2021 • 1 hour, 35 minutes, 7 seconds
735. Lucy Corin
Lucy Corin is the author of The Swank Hotel, available from Graywolf Press. It is the official October pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
Corin's other books include the story collections One Hundred Apocalypses and Other Apocalypses and The Entire Predicament, and the novel Everyday Psychokillers: A History for Girls. Her work has appeared in American Short Fiction, Conjunctions, Harper’s Magazine, Ploughshares, Bomb, Tin House Magazine, and the New American Stories anthology from Vintage Contemporaries. She is the recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Rome Prize and a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She teaches at the University of California at Davis and lives in Berkeley.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon
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10/27/2021 • 1 hour, 11 minutes, 43 seconds
734. Kate Durbin
Kate Durbin is the author of the poetry collection Hoarders, available now from Wave Books.
Durbin is a Los Angeles-based artist and author of four books of poetry. Her art and writing have been featured in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Art Forum, Art in America, The Believer, BOMB, and elsewhere. She is the winner of the international 2017 Turn on Literature Prize for Electronic Literature for her poetry app, Abra.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon
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10/24/2021 • 1 hour, 58 minutes, 5 seconds
733. Catherine Raven
Catherine Raven is the author of the memoir Fox & I: An Uncommon Friendship, available from Spiegel and Grau.
Raven received her Ph.D. in biology from Montana State University and is a former National Park Ranger at Glacier, Mount Rainier, North Cascades, Voyageurs, and Yellowstone National Parks. Her natural history essays have appeared in American Scientist, Journal of American Mensa, and Montana Magazine. She is currently an Assistant Program Director and Professor at South University in Savannah, Georgia.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon
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10/20/2021 • 1 hour, 58 minutes, 30 seconds
732. Alexandra Kleeman
Alexandra Kleeman is the author of the novel Something New Under the Sun, available from Hogarth Press.
Kleeman's other books include Intimations, a short story collection, and the novel You Too Can Have A Body Like Mine, which was awarded the 2016 Bard Fiction Prize and was a New York Times Editor’s Choice. In 2020, she was awarded the Rome Prize and the Berlin Prize.
Her fiction has been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Zoetrope, Conjunctions, and Guernica, among others, and other writing has appeared in Harper's, The New York Times Magazine, VOGUE, Tin House, n+1, and The Guardian. Her work has received fellowships and support from Bread Loaf, Djerassi, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Headlands Center for the Arts.
Born in 1986 in Berkeley, California, she was raised in Colorado and lives in Staten Island with her husband, the writer Alex Gilvarry.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon
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10/13/2021 • 1 hour, 41 minutes, 11 seconds
731. Julie Poole
Julie Poole is the author of the poetry collection Bright Specimen, available now from Deep Vellum.
Poole was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest. She received a BA from Columbia University and an MFA in poetry from The New Writers Project at The University of Texas at Austin. She has received fellowship support from the James A. Michener Center, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, The Corsicana Artist and Writer Residency, and Yaddo. In 2017, she was a finalist for the Keene Prize for Literature. Her poems and essays have appeared in Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, CutBank, Denver Quarterly, Poet Lore, Cold Mountain Review, Porter House Review, HuffPost, and elsewhere. Her arts and culture writing has appeared in Publishers Weekly, the Ploughshares Blog, Sightlines, The Texas Observer, Texas Monthly, Scalawag, and Bon Appétit. She lives in Austin, Texas, with her growing collection of found butterflies.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon
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10/10/2021 • 1 hour, 33 minutes, 49 seconds
730. Jose Vadi
José Vadi is the author of the debut essay collection Inter State: Essays from California (Soft Skull).
He received the San Francisco Foundation’s Shenson Performing Arts Award for his debut play “a eulogy for three” produced by Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s Living Word Project. He is the author of SoMa Lurk, a collection of photos and poems published by Project Kalahati / Pro Arts Oakland. His work has been featured by the Paris Review, the PBS NewsHour, the San Francisco Chronicle, Catapult, McSweeney’s, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Quartersnacks, Free Skate Magazine and Pop-Up Magazine. He lives in Sacramento.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon
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10/6/2021 • 1 hour, 49 minutes, 41 seconds
729. Louise Nealon
Louise Nealon is the author of the debut novel Snowflake (Harper Books), a #1 International Bestseller. It is the official September pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
Nealon is a writer from County Kildare, Ireland. In 2017, she won the Seán Ó Faoláin International Short Story Competition and was the recipient of the Francis Ledwidge Creative Writing Award. She has been published in the Irish Times, Southword, and The Open Ear.
Nealon received a degree in English literature from Trinity College Dublin in 2014 and a master's degree in creative writing from Queen's University Belfast in 2016. She lives on the dairy farm where she was raised, and Snowflake is her first novel.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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9/29/2021 • 1 hour, 48 minutes, 58 seconds
728. Rachel Long
Rachel Long is the author of the poetry collection My Darling from the Lions, available from Tin House. First published by Picador in the UK, it was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize, the Costa Poetry Award, and was named a Best Poetry Book of 2020 by The Guardian.
Long is the founder of Octavia Poetry Collective for Women of Colour, which is housed at Southbank Centre in London. My Darling from the Lions is her debut collection. She was born in London, and resides there today.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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9/26/2021 • 1 hour, 48 minutes, 36 seconds
727. Lucie Elven
Lucie Elven is the author of the debut novel The Weak Spot, available from Soft Skull Press.
Elven has written for publications including The London Review of Books, Granta, and NOON. She is the former deputy editor of The Believer magazine, and The Weak Spot is her first book. She lives in London.
***
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9/22/2021 • 1 hour, 22 minutes, 18 seconds
726. Remembering Mark Baumer
Today on the podcast, an episode devoted to the life and legacy of the late author, activist, diarist, and digital native Mark Baumer. A new book, The One on Earth: Selected Works of Mark Baumer, is available now from Fence Books. It was edited by Blake Butler and Shane Jones, with a foreword by Claire Donato. Butler, Jones, and Donato are the guests.
Born and raised in Durham, Maine, Baumer was a graduate of the MFA program at Brown University, after which he became a web content specialist, a climate activist, and a labor organizer in Providence, RI. A member of the group FANG (Fighting Against Natural Gas Convergence), he walked barefoot across America to draw attention to climate change. His work is continued by the Mark Baumer Sustainability Fund.
***
This Week's Sponsor:
Join New York Times #1 best-selling author George Saunders in conversation with author and professor Imani Perry for Humanities New York’s third annual History and the American Imagination benefit. The live discussion will take place online on October 5th at 7 PM EASTERN. Purchase your tickets at humanitiesny.org and use code OTHERPPL for half off membership tickets.
***
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9/15/2021 • 2 hours, 5 minutes, 23 seconds
725. Anna Qu
Anna Qu is the author of Made in China: A Memoir of Love and Labor, available from Catapult.
Qu is a Chinese American writer. She writes personal essays on identity and growing up in New York as an immigrant. Her work has appeared in Poets & Writers, Lithub, Threepenny Review, Lumina, Kartika, Kweli, Vol.1 Brooklyn, and Jezebel, among others. She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Sarah Lawrence College.
She also serves as the Nonfiction Editor at Kweli Journal, and teaches at the low res MFA program at New England College, Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop, and Catapult. She lives in Brooklyn with her partner and their cat, Momo.
***
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9/12/2021 • 1 hour, 42 minutes, 1 second
724. Leigh Stein
Leigh Stein is the guest. Her new poetry collection, What to Miss When, is available from Soft Skull.
Stein is the author of five books including the novel Self Care and the poetry collection Dispatch from the Future. She has also written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Allure, ELLE, The Cut, Salon, and Slate. She is a recipient of an Amy Award from Poets & Writers and The Cut named her poet laureate of The Bachelor.
***
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9/8/2021 • 2 hours, 9 minutes, 42 seconds
723. Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi
Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi is the author of the novel Savage Tongues, available from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Her previous novel, Call Me Zebra, won the Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the John Gardner Award. She was a National Book Foundation "5 Under 35" honoree for her debut novel, Fra Keeler, and her work has appeared in a variety of publications, including the Paris Review, Guernica, Granta, and BOMB. She splits her time between South Bend, Indiana, and Chicago.
***
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9/1/2021 • 1 hour, 9 minutes, 6 seconds
722. Katie Crouch
Katie Crouch is the author of the novel Embassy Wife, available from Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. It is the official August pick of the TNB Book Club.
Crouch is the New York Times bestselling author of Girls in Trucks, Men and Dogs, and Abroad. She has also written essays for The New York Times, Glamour, The Guardian, Slate, Salon, and Tin House. A former resident of Namibia and San Francisco, Crouch now lives in Vermont with her family and teaches creative writing at Dartmouth College.
***
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8/25/2021 • 1 hour, 28 minutes, 8 seconds
721. Sam Cohen
Sam Cohen is the author of the debut story collection Sarahland, available from Grand Central Publishing.
Cohen is a queer, Jewish femme born and raised in suburban Detroit. Her fiction is published in Fence, Bomb, Diagram, and Gulf Coast, among others. The recipient of a MacDowell fellowship and a PhD fellow at the University of Southern California, she lives in Los Angeles.
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8/18/2021 • 1 hour, 38 minutes, 53 seconds
720. Kendra Allen
Kendra Allen is the author of the poetry collection The Collection Plate (Ecco).
Allen was born and raised in Dallas, Texas. She is the recipient of the 2018 Iowa Prize for Literary Nonfiction for her essay collection When You Learn the Alphabet, awarded by Kiese Laymon. She has been featured on C-SPAN, interviewed in The Rumpus and Poets & Writers, and her work has been taught by New York Times bestselling author Jason Reynolds alongside that of Jamaica Kincaid and Eve Ewing, among other distinctions. She lives in San Antonio.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
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8/11/2021 • 2 hours, 4 minutes, 1 second
719. Tao Lin
Tao Lin is the author of the novel Leave Society (Vintage). This is his fourth time on the program.
Lin's other books include Trip: Psychedelics, Alienation, and Change, the novels Taipei, Richard Yates and Eeeee Eee Eeee, the novella Shoplifting from American Apparel, the story collection Bed, and the poetry collections cognitive-behavioral therapy and you are a little bit happier than i am. He was born in Virginia, has taught in Sarah Lawrence College's MFA program, and is the founder and editor of Muumuu House. He lives in Hawaii.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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8/4/2021 • 2 hours, 3 minutes, 10 seconds
718. Matthew Specktor
Matthew Specktor is the author of Always Crashing in the Same Car: On Art, Crisis, and Los Angeles, California, available from Tin House.
Specktor’s other books include the novels That Summertime Sound and American Dream Machine, which was long-listed for the Folio Prize. Born in Los Angeles, he received his BA from Hampshire College in 1988, and his MFA in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson College in 2009. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, GQ, The Paris Review, Tin House, Black Clock, and numerous other periodicals and anthologies. He is a founding editor of the Los Angles Review of Books.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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7/28/2021 • 2 hours, 51 seconds
717. Reginald Dwayne Betts
Reginald Dwayne Betts is the author of the poetry collection Felon, available from W.W. Norton & Co.
Betts is a poet, essayist, and national spokesperson for the Campaign for Youth Justice. He writes and lectures about the impact of mass incarceration on American society. His previous books include the poetry collections Bastards of the Reagan Era and Shahid Reads His Own Palm, and a memoir entitled A Question of Freedom. A graduate of Yale Law School, he lives in New Haven, Connecticut.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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7/21/2021 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 51 seconds
716. Matt Bell
Matt Bell is the author of the novel Appleseed, available from Custom House Books. It is the official July pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
Bell is also the author of the novels Scrapper and In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods, as well as the short story collection A Tree or a Person or a Wall, a non-fiction book about the classic video game Baldur's Gate II, and several other titles. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Tin House, Conjunctions, Fairy Tale Review, American Short Fiction, and many other publications. A native of Michigan, he teaches creative writing at Arizona State University.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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7/14/2021 • 1 hour, 40 minutes, 22 seconds
715. Greg Gerke
Greg Gerke is the author of the essay collection See What I See (Zerogram Press).
Gerke’s work has appeared in Tin House, Film Quarterly, The Kenyon Review, and other publications. He is also the author of a story collection entitled Especially the Bad Things, which was published by Splice in 2019. He lives in New York.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
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7/7/2021 • 1 hour, 24 minutes, 38 seconds
714. Mark Leidner
Mark Leidner is the author of the poetry collection Returning the Sword to the Stone (Fonograf Editions).
Leidner is also the author of two feature films: the sci-fi noir Empathy, Inc. (2019) and the relationship comedy Jammed (2014), as well as the story collection Under the Sea (Tyrant Books, 2018), the poetry collection Beauty Was the Case that They Gave Me (Factory Hollow, 2011), and the book of aphorisms The Angel in the Dream of Our Hangover (Sator, 2011). He lives in California.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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7/4/2021 • 1 hour, 49 minutes, 22 seconds
713. Pedro Mairal
Pedro Mairal is the author of the novel The Woman from Uruguay (Bloomsbury), translated by Jennifer Croft.
Mairal was born in Buenos Aires in 1970. He studied a degree in ‘Letras’ (‘Humanities’) at USAL (‘University of el Salvador’) where he was an assistant lecturer of English Literature. He has published three novels, a volume of short stories and two poetry books. His first novel, Una noche con Sabrina Love, was awarded the ‘Premio Clarín’ (‘Clarín Prize’) in 1998 with a panel of judges comprising Roa Bastos, Bioy Casares and Cabrera Infante, and was adapted to the screen in the year 2000. His work has been translated and published in France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Poland and Germany. In 2007 the Bogotá39 jury selected him among the most notorious 39 young Latin-American authors. He currently lives in Montevideo.
***
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6/30/2021 • 1 hour, 50 minutes, 48 seconds
712. Forrest Gander
Forrest Gander is the author of the poetry collection Twice Alive, available now from New Directions. In 2019, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his collection Be With.
Gander's other books include Core Samples from the World, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He has collaborated frequently with other artists including photographers Sally Mann, Graciela Iturbide, Raymond Meeks, and Lucas Foglia, glass artist Michael Rogers, ceramic artists Rick Hirsch and Ashwini Bhat, artists Ann Hamilton, Tjibbe Hooghiemstra, dancers Eiko & Koma, and musicians Vic Chesnutt and Brady Earnhart, among others.
Gander was born in the Mojave Desert and grew up in Virginia. In addition to writing poetry, he has translated works by Coral Bracho, Alfonso D'Aquino, Pura Lopez-Colome, Pablo Neruda, and Jaime Saenz. The recipient of grants from the Library of Congress, the Guggenheim, Howard, Whiting, and United States Artists Foundations, he taught for many years as the AK Seaver Professor of Literary Arts & Comparative Literature at Brown University.
***
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6/23/2021 • 1 hour, 42 minutes, 45 seconds
711. Lana Bastasic
Lana Bastasic is the author of the debut novel Catch the Rabbit, winner of the 2020 European Union Prize for Literature. Available now in translation from Restless Books. The official June pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
Bastasic is a Yugoslav-born writer. She majored in English and holds a master’s degree in cultural studies. She has published three collections of short stories, one book of children’s stories and one of poetry. She lives in Belgrade.
Her short stories have been included in regional anthologies and magazines throughout the former Yugoslavia. She has won the Best Short Story section at the Zija Dizdarević competition in Fojnica; the Jury Award at the ‘Carver: Where I’m Calling From’ festival in Podgorica; Best Short Story at the Ulaznica festival in Zrenjanin; Best Play by a Bosnian Playwright (Kamerni teatar 55 in Sarajevo) and the Targa Unesco Prize for poetry in Trieste. In 2016 she co-founded Escola Bloom in Barcelona and she now co-edits the school’s literary magazine Carn de cap. She is one of the creators of the ‘3+3 sisters’ project, which aims to promote women writers of the Balkans.
***
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6/16/2021 • 1 hour, 53 minutes, 48 seconds
710. Barrett Swanson
Barrett Swanson is the author of the essay collection Lost in Summerland (Counterpoint Press).
Swanson is a contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine. He was the recipient of a 2015 Pushcart Prize, and his short fiction and essays have been distinguished as notable in Best American Short Stories (2019), Best American Nonrequired Reading (2014), Best American Essays (2014, 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2020) and Best American Sports Writing (2017). His work has appeared in many places, including Harper’s, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The New York Times Magazine, The Believer, American Short Fiction, The New Republic, The Atavist, Guernica, The Guardian, Best American Travel Writing 2018, and Best American Travel Writing 2020. He and his wife live in the Midwest.
***
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6/9/2021 • 1 hour, 50 minutes, 29 seconds
709. Melissa Febos
Melissa Febos is the author of the essay collection Girlhood (Bloomsbury). It is a national bestseller.
Her other books include the critically acclaimed memoir, Whip Smart (St. Martin’s Press 2010), and the essay collection, Abandon Me (Bloomsbury 2017), which was a LAMBDA Literary Award finalist, a Publishing Triangle Award finalist, an Indie Next Pick, and was widely named a Best Book of 2017. A craft book, Body Work, will be published by Catapult in March 2022.
The inaugural winner of the Jeanne Córdova Nonfiction Award from LAMBDA Literary, her work has appeared in publications including The Paris Review, The Sun, The Kenyon Review, Tin House, Granta, The Believer, McSweeney’s, The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, Elle, and Vogue. Her essays have won prizes from Prairie Schooner, Story Quarterly, The Sewanee Review, and The Center for Women Writers at Salem College. She is a four-time MacDowell fellow and has also received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, The Barbara Deming Memorial Foundation, The BAU Institute at The Camargo Foundation, The Ragdale Foundation, and The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, which named her the 2018 recipient of the Sarah Verdone Writing Award.
She co-curated the Mixer Reading and Music Series in Manhattan for ten years and served on the Board of Directors for VIDA: Women in Literary Arts for five. The recipient of an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, she is an associate professor at the University of Iowa, where she teaches in the Nonfiction Writing Program.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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6/2/2021 • 2 hours, 7 minutes, 20 seconds
708. Sam Tallent
Sam Tallent is the guest. His debut novel, Running the Light, is available on Too Big To Fail Press.
Known for whip-quick wit and rollicking improvisations, Sam Tallent is one of the sharpest, most original rising talents in comedy today. For the last 10 years, he has performed at least 45 weekends annually across America, Canada and France. Called "the absurd voice of a surreal generation" by the Denver Post, Sam is beloved by fans of contemporary comedy. He was a New Face at the 2019 Just for Laughs Montreal Comedy Festival, he won his battle on Comedy Central's Roast Battle, hosted the Denver episode of VICELAND's Flophouse and appeared on the Chris Gerhard Show to impress a girl. His critically acclaimed debut novel Running the Light — heralded as the “definitive novel about stand up comedy” (Marc Maron, WTF) — was published in 2020 and his short fiction has been published on VICE.com and in BIRDY magazine. He lives in Colorado with his wife and his dog.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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5/26/2021 • 2 hours, 5 minutes, 48 seconds
707. Courtney Zoffness
Courtney Zoffness is the author of Spilt Milk, a collection of memoirs available now from McSweeney's. It is the official May pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
Zoffness writes fiction and nonfiction. She won the 2018 Sunday Times Short Story Award, the most valuable international prize for short fiction, amid entries from 38 countries. Other honors include an Emerging Writers Fellowship from the Center for Fiction, the Arts & Letters Creative Nonfiction Prize, and two residency fellowships from MacDowell. Her writing has appeared in various outlets, including the Paris Review Daily, the New York Times, The Southern Review, Guernica, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, and she had “notable” essays in Best American Essays 2018 & 2019.
Zoffness holds graduate degrees from Johns Hopkins University and the University of Arizona, and a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania. She directs the Creative Writing Program at Drew University and is a faculty member at Writing Workshops in Greece. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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5/19/2021 • 1 hour, 39 minutes, 25 seconds
706. Elissa Washuta
Elissa Washuta is the author of the essay collection White Magic, now available from Tin House.
Washuta is a member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe and a nonfiction writer. Her other books are My Body Is a Book of Rules and Starvation Mode, and with Theresa Warburton, she is co-editor of the anthology Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers. She has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Creative Capital, Artist Trust, 4Culture, and Potlatch Fund. She is an assistant professor of creative writing at the Ohio State University.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
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5/12/2021 • 1 hour, 24 minutes, 32 seconds
Shanna Mahin 1963-2021
This conversation first aired on June 17, 2015.
It is being reposted in memory of Shanna Mahin, who died last week. She had been battling a particularly difficult case of Covid-19 this past year. The cause of death was suicide.
Shanna's debut novel, Oh! You Pretty Things is available from Dutton.
Heartfelt condolences to all of Shanna's family and friends. She will be missed.
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5/10/2021 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 52 seconds
705. Gina Nutt
Gina Nutt is the author of the essay collection Night Rooms, available now from Two Dollar Radio.
Nutt's other books include the poetry collection Wilderness Champion and two chapbooks—Here Is My Adventure I Call it Alone and Ars Herzogica (dancing girl press). Her writing has appeared in online and print journals, including Cosmonauts Avenue, Joyland, Ninth Letter, and Salt Hill. Poems have appeared on Verse Daily and in the Best of the Net Anthology. She graduated from Syracuse University’s MFA program in Creative Writing and lives in New York.
***
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5/5/2021 • 1 hour, 41 minutes, 54 seconds
704. Mik Grantham
Mik Grantham is the author of the debut poetry collection Hardcore, available from Short Flight / Long Drive Books.
Grantham is the founder and co-editor of Disorder Press which she runs with her brother. Her work has appeared in New World Writing, Hobart, Maudlin House, The Nervous Breakdown, and Fanzine. She currently lives in New Orleans. Hardcore is her first book.
***
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4/28/2021 • 1 hour, 41 minutes, 29 seconds
703. Patricia Engel
Patricia Engel is the author of the novel Infinite Country, available from Avid Reader Press. It is the official April pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
Engel is the author of The Veins of the Ocean, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize; It's Not Love, It's Just Paris, winner of the International Latino Book Award; and Vida, a finalist for the Pen/Hemingway and Young Lions Fiction Awards, New York Times Notable Book, and winner of Colombia's national book award, the Premio Biblioteca de Narrativa Colombiana. She is a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her stories appear in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Mystery Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and elsewhere. Born to Colombian parents, Patricia teaches creative writing at the University of Miami.
***
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4/25/2021 • 1 hour, 4 minutes, 17 seconds
702. Andrea Bajani
Andrea Bajani is the author of the novel If You Kept a Record of Sins, available from Archipelago Books. It was translated from the Italian by Elizabeth Harris.
Bajani is one of the most respected and award-winning novelists and poets of contemporary Italian literature. He is the author of four novels and two collections of poems. If You Kept a Record of Sins has brought him a great deal of attention. In just a few months, the book won the Super Mondello Prize, the Brancati Prize, the Recanati Prize and the Lo Straniero Prize. His works have been translated into many languages, and published by some of the most prestigious European publishers, such as Gallimard, Siruela, MacLehose, Atheneum, DTV, Humanitas. He now lives in Houston and teaches at Rice University.
***
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4/21/2021 • 1 hour, 28 minutes, 43 seconds
701. Shannon McLeod
Shannon McLeod is the author of the novella Whimsy, available from Long Day Press.
McLeod is also the author of the essay chapbook Pathetic (University of Indianapolis Etchings Press). Her writing has appeared in Tin House Online, Wigleaf, Hobart, Joyland Magazine, Cosmonauts Avenue, and Prairie Schooner, among other publications. She teaches high school English in Virginia.
***
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4/14/2021 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 18 seconds
700. Gina Frangello
Gina Frangello is the author of the memoir Blow Your House Down, available from Counterpoint Press.
This is Gina's second time on the program. She first appeared in Episode 16 on November 9, 2011.
Frangello's other books include Every Kind of Wanting, A Life in Men, Slut Lullabies, and My Sister's Continent. Her short fiction, essays, book reviews, and journalism have been published in Ploughshares, The Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, HuffPost, Fence, Five Chapters, Prairie Schooner, Chicago Reader, and many other publications. She lives with her family in the Chicago area.
***
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4/7/2021 • 1 hour, 37 minutes, 5 seconds
Giancarlo DiTrapano 1974-2021
This episode first aired on March 27, 2013.
It is being reposted in memory of Giancarlo DiTrapano (1974-2021), founder and publisher of Tyrant Books. He died unexpectedly on March 30 in New York City. No official cause of death has been reported as of yet.
I didn't know Gian well, but I did know him a bit. He was always kind, always memorable. One of the few true originals out there, and certainly an original in the world of publishing. He did very good work and helped shepherd the publication of books that will far outlive him. He made a positive difference in the world.
My heartfelt condolences to his friends and family. He will be greatly missed.
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4/2/2021 • 1 hour, 12 minutes, 36 seconds
699. Hari Kunzru
Hari Kunzru is the author of the novel Red Pill, available now from Knopf.
This is Hari's second time on the program. He first appeared in Episode 57, on April 1, 2012.
Born in London, he is the author of the novels The Impressionist, Transmission, My Revolutions, Gods Without Men, and White Tears, as well as a short story collection, Noise, and a novella, Memory Palace. He is an honorary fellow of Wadham College Oxford, and has received fellowships from the Cullman Center at the New York Public Library, the Guggenheim Foundation and the American Academy in Berlin. He is the host of the podcast Into The Zone, coming in September from Pushkin Industries, and lives in New York City.
***
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3/31/2021 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 42 seconds
698. Tod Goldberg
Tod Goldberg is the guest. His critically acclaimed new story collection, The Low Desert, is available from Counterpoint.
This is Tod's third time on the program. He first appeared in Episode 320 on October 12, 2014, and again in Episode 488, on October 18, 2017.
Goldberg is the author of more than a dozen books, including Gangsterland, a finalist for the Hammett Prize; Gangster Nation; The House of Secrets, which he coauthored with Brad Meltzer; and the crime-tinged novels Living Dead Girl, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Fake Liar Cheat, plus five novels in the popular Burn Notice series. He is also the author of the story collection Simplify, a 2006 finalist for the SCIBA Award for Fiction and winner of the Other Voices Short Story Collection Prize, and Other Resort Cities. His essays, journalism, and criticism have appeared in many publications, including the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Review of Books, Las Vegas Weekly, and Best American Essays, among many others, and have won five Nevada Press Association Awards. He lives in Indio, California, where he directs the Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing & Writing for the Performing Arts at the University of California, Riverside.
***
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3/24/2021 • 1 hour, 40 minutes, 28 seconds
697. Yamen Manai
Yamen Manai is the author of the novel The Ardent Swarm, available now from Amazon Crossing. Winner of the Prix Comar d'Or and the Prix des Cinq Continents, it is the official March pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
Manai was born in 1980 in Tunis and currently lives in Paris. Both a writer and an engineer, Manai explores the intersections of past and present, and tradition and technology, in his prose. In The Ardent Swarm (originally published as L'Amas ardent), his first book to be translated into English, he celebrates Tunisia's rich oral culture, a tradition abounding in wry, often fatalistic humor. He has published three novels with the Tunisia-based Elyzad Editions--a deliberate choice to ensure that his books are accessible to Tunisian readers: La marche de l'incertitude (2010), awarded Tunisia's prestigious Prix Comar d'Or; La sérénade d'Ibrahim Santos (2011); and L'Amas ardent (2017), which earned both the Prix Comar d'Or and the Prix des Cinq Continents, a literary prize recognizing exceptional Francophone literature.
***
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3/17/2021 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 45 seconds
696. Vesna Maric
Vesna Maric is the author of the debut novel The President Shop (Sandorf Passage).
Maric was born in Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina, in 1976. She left the country at sixteen as part of a convoy of refugees bound for the Lake District in England. She attended University College London and later went on to work for the BBC World Service. She now writes Lonely Planet travel guides, translates literary fiction and non-fiction from Croatian into English, and writes a variety of journalism for publications including the Guardian. Vesna has collaborated with various artists, including Jane and Louise Wilson, and on art projects at the Tate Modern's Who Are We? project. Her memoir, Bluebird, was published by Granta in 2009, and was longlisted for The Orwell Prize. She lives in Madrid.
***
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3/10/2021 • 1 hour, 32 minutes, 3 seconds
695. Melissa Broder
Melissa Broder is the guest. Her new novel, Milk Fed, is available from Scribner.
This is Melissa's fourth time on the podcast. She first appeared in Episode 58 on April 4, 2012. Her second appearance was in Episode 404 on March 13, 2016. Her third appearance came in Episode 519, on May 9, 2018.
Broder's other books include the novel The Pisces, the essay collection So Sad Today, and five poetry collections, including Superdoom: Selected Poems (Summer 2021) and Last Sext.
Broder has written for The New York Times, Elle.com, VICE, Vogue Italia, and New York Magazine‘s The Cut. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Iowa Review, Guernica, Fence, et al. She is the winner of a Pushcart Prize for poetry.
She lives in Los Angeles.
***
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3/3/2021 • 1 hour, 56 minutes, 31 seconds
694. David Tromblay
David Tromblay is the guest. His new memoir, As You Were, is available from Dzanc Books. It is the official February pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
Tromblay served in the U.S. Armed Forces for over a decade before attending the Institute of American Indian Arts for his MFA in Creative Writing. He's since written and published a memoir and three novels. His other books include The Essentials: A Manifesto and The Ramblings of a Revenant. He currently works as an editor for Shotgun Honey Magazine and lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with his cat, Walter, and dogs, Bentley and Hank.
***
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2/24/2021 • 1 hour, 32 minutes, 10 seconds
693. Candace Jane Opper
Candace Jane Opper is the author of the debut memoir Certain and Impossible Events. It was selected by Cheryl Strayed as the winner of the Kore Press Memoir Award.
Opper is a writer, a mother, and an occasional visual artist. She grew up in the woods of Southern Connecticut. Her essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Longreads, Guernica, Creative Nonfiction, LitHub, Narratively, Brevity, and Vestoj, among others. She is a Creative Nonfiction Foundation Fellowship recipient and a member on the advisory council for Write Pittsburgh, a program collective that empowers writers to amplify their voices and strengthen their communities. Certain and Impossible Events is her first book.
Today's monologue: listener mail
***
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2/17/2021 • 1 hour, 47 minutes, 25 seconds
692. Ahmed Naji
Ahmed Naji is the guest. He is the author of three novels, including Using Life (University of Texas Press), which led to his imprisonment in Egypt—and then led to the writing of a new memoir, Rotten Evidence: Reading and Writing in Prison, currently excerpted in The Believer magazine.
In 2016, Naji was sentenced to 2 years in prison after a reader complained that an excerpt of Using Life published in a literary journal harmed public morality. His imprisonment marks the first time in modern Egypt that an author has been jailed for a work of literature. Writers and literary organizations around the world rallied to support Naji, and he was released in December 2016. His original conviction was overturned in May 2017.
His other books include the novels Rogers and And Tigers to My Room.
Throughout his career, he has won several prizes, including the 2016 PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award.
He is now a fellow at the Black Mountain Institute in Las Vegas, where he lives with his small family.
***
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2/10/2021 • 1 hour, 31 minutes, 48 seconds
691. Michael Bible
Michael Bible is the guest. His new novel, The Ancient Hours, is available from Melville House.
Support independent booksellers! Get your copy here.
Bible's other books include Empire of Light and Sophia, also from Melville House. He is originally from North Carolina. His work has appeared in the Oxford American, The Paris Review Daily, Al-Jazeera America, ESPN The Magazine, and New York Tyrant Magazine. He is a former bookseller at Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi, and lives in New York.
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2/3/2021 • 1 hour, 26 minutes, 41 seconds
690. Te-Ping Chen
Te-Ping Chen is the guest. Her debut story collection, Land of Big Numbers, is available from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. It is the official January pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
Chen's fiction has been published in The New Yorker, Granta and Tin House. She is a Wall Street Journal correspondent in Philadelphia who was previously based in Beijing and Hong Kong. She has reported on rice cookers and wrongful convictions, gotten hung up on by Edward Snowden and eaten more robot-cooked noodles than she can count.
***
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1/27/2021 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 44 seconds
689. Rob Doyle
Rob Doyle is the guest. His new book, Threshold, is available from Bloomsbury.
Doyle's debut novel, Here Are the Young Men, was published in 2014 by Bloomsbury and the Lilliput Press. It was selected as one of Hot Press magazine’s ‘20 Greatest Irish Novels 1916-2016’, and has been made into a film starring Dean Charles Chapman and Anya Taylor Joy. This is the Ritual, a collection of short stories, was published in 2016 to widespread acclaim.
Doyle is the editor of the anthology The Other Irish Tradition (Dalkey Archive Press), and In This Skull Hotel Where I Never Sleep (Broken Dimanche Press). He has written for the Guardian, TLS, Vice, Sunday Times, Dublin Review, Observer and many other publications, and throughout 2019 he wrote a weekly column on cult books for the Irish Times.
He lives between Ireland and Berlin.
***
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1/20/2021 • 1 hour, 38 minutes, 42 seconds
688. Gil Adamson
Gil Adamson is the guest. Her new novel, The Ridgerunner, will be published in the United States by House of Anansi Press on February 2, 2021.
Adamson is the critically acclaimed author of The Outlander, which won the Dashiell Hammett Prize for Literary Excellence in Crime Writing, the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, the ReLit Award, and the Drummer General’s Award. It was a finalist for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, CBC Canada Reads, and the Prix Femina in France; longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award; and chosen as a Globe and Mail and Washington Post Top 100 Book. She is also the author of a collection of linked stories, Help Me, Jacques Cousteau, and two poetry collections, Primitive and Ashland. She lives in Toronto.
***
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1/13/2021 • 1 hour, 23 minutes, 16 seconds
687. George Saunders
George Saunders is the guest. His new book, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, is available from Random House.
This is George's second time on the program. He first appeared in Episode 100, on August 29, 2012.
Saunders is the author of eleven books, including Lincoln in the Bardo, which won the 2017 Man Booker Prize for best work of fiction in English, and was a finalist for the Golden Man Booker, in which one Booker winner was selected to represent each decade, from the fifty years since the Prize’s inception. The audiobook for Lincoln in the Bardo, which featured a cast of 166 actors, won the 2018 Audie Award for best audiobook.
His stories have appeared regularly in The New Yorker since 1992. The short story collection Tenth of December was a finalist for the National Book Award, and won the inaugural Folio Prize in 2013 (for the best work of fiction in English) and the Story Prize (best short story collection).
He has received MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships, the PEN/Malamud Prize for excellence in the short story, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2013, he was named one of the world’s 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine. In support of his work, he has appeared on The Colbert Report, Late Night with David Letterman, All Things Considered, and The Diane Rehm Show.
Saunders was born in Amarillo, Texas and raised in Oak Forest, Illinois. He has a degree in Geophysics from the Colorado School of Mines and has worked as a geophysical prospector in Indonesia, a roofer in Chicago, a doorman in Beverly Hills, and a technical writer in Rochester, New York. He has taught, since 1997, in the Creative Writing Program at Syracuse University.
***
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1/6/2021 • 1 hour, 38 minutes, 7 seconds
686. Holiday Spectacular
In keeping with the tenets of 2020, this year's holiday episode unfolded online, not in a Zoom room but in a "Skype amphitheater."
With guest appearances by Megan Boyle, Leland Cheuk, Richard Chiem, Rachel Bell de Navailles, Juliet Escoria, Joseph Grantham, Mik Grantham, Ben Loory, Gene Morgan, Timothy Willis Sanders, and Bud Smith.
Special guest: Rich Ferguson.
***
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12/23/2020 • 1 hour, 49 minutes, 45 seconds
685. Alex Branson
Alex Branson is the guest. His new novel, Water, Wasted, is available from Rare Bird Books. It is the official December pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
Branson works for a non-profit in South Jersey. Before that, he worked at group homes in rural Missouri and Chicago for eight years. He is one of the hosts of E1 Podcast.
***
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12/16/2020 • 1 hour, 24 minutes, 11 seconds
684. Michael Schumacher
Michael Schumacher is the guest. He is the editor of The Fall of America Journals, 1965-1971, by the late Allen Ginsberg, available now from the University of Minnesota Press.
Schumacher is also the author of the acclaimed Ginsberg biography Dharma Lion (Minnesota, 2016). Along with Ginsberg’s Iron Curtain Journals and South American Journals and Conversations with Allen Ginsberg (all from Minnesota), he has edited Family Business, selected correspondence between Allen and Louis Ginsberg, and The Essential Ginsberg, a reader of Ginsberg’s best work. He lives in Wisconsin.
***
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12/9/2020 • 1 hour, 57 minutes, 32 seconds
683. Travis Hoewischer
Travis Hoewischer is the guest. He is the author of the Two Dollar Radio Guide to Naming Your Baby, available now from Two Dollar Radio.
Hoewischer has spent twenty years as a journalist, standup comedian, and non-profit leader. This is his first book. He was almost called Andrew.
***
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12/2/2020 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 33 seconds
682. Darien Gee
Darien Gee is the guest. She has two books out this year. The first is called Other Small Histories, a poetry collection available from Poetry Society of America. And the second is a collection of micro-essays called Allegiance, available from Legacy Isle Publishing.
Gee is the author of five novels published by Penguin Random House that have been translated into eleven languages, including An Avalon Christmas and The Friendship Bread. She won the 2019 Poetry Society of America’s Chapbook Fellowship award for Other Small Histories. She lives with her family on the Big Island of Hawai‘i.
***
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11/25/2020 • 1 hour, 25 minutes, 16 seconds
681. Kasey Thornton
Kasey Thornton is the guest. Her debut novel-in-stories, Lord the One You Love is Sick, is available now from Ig Publishing. It is the official November pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
Thornton attended both the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and North Carolina State University for her MFA in Fiction. She lives with fellow author Kevin Kauffmann in Durham County, North Carolina, where members of her family have resided for over two hundred years. Her creative work has been featured in the Masters Review, TJ Eckleberg Review, tinyjournal, Colonnades Literary & Art Journal, and Apeiron Review.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
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11/18/2020 • 1 hour, 21 minutes, 14 seconds
680. Andrew Weatherhead
Andrew Weatherhead is the guest. His latest book, $50,000, is available from Publishing Genius.
Weatherhead is a writer and artist from Chicago, Illinois. His other books include the poetry collections TODD and Cats and Dogs -- and a chapbook, The Kids I Teach, with Mallory Whitten. He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
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11/11/2020 • 1 hour, 27 minutes, 25 seconds
679. Sebastian Castillo
Sebastian Castillo is the guest. His new book, Not I, is available from Word West Press.
Castillo is the author of 49 Venezuelan Novels (Bottlecap Press). You can find his writing in Hobart, Peach Mag, X-R-A-Y, and elsewhere. He lives in New York, where he teaches writing.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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11/4/2020 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 13 seconds
678. Jared Yates Sexton
Jared Yates Sexton is the guest. His new book, American Rule, is available from Dutton.
This is Jared's second time on the program. He first appeared in Episode 478 on August 23, 2017.
Sexton is the author of The Man They Wanted Me to Be and The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore. His political writing has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The New Republic, Politico, and Salon.com. Sexton is also the author of three collections of fiction and is an associate professor of creative writing at Georgia Southern University.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
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10/28/2020 • 1 hour, 55 minutes, 25 seconds
677. Anne Helen Petersen
Anne Helen Petersen is the guest. Her new book, Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation, is available from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. It is the official October pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
A former senior culture writer for BuzzFeed, Petersen now writes her newsletter, Culture Study, as a full-time venture on Substack. She received her PhD at the University of Texas at Austin, where she focused on the history of celebrity gossip. Her previous books, Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud and Scandals of Classic Hollywood, were featured in NPR, Elle, and the Atlantic. She lives in Missoula, Montana.
***
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Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
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10/21/2020 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 14 seconds
676. Laura Bogart
Laura Bogart is the guest. Her debut novel, Don't You Know I Love You, is available from Dzanc Books.
Bogart is also a non-fiction writer who focuses on personal essays, pop culture, film and TV, feminism, body image and sizeism, and politics (among other topics). She is a featured contributor to The Week and DAME magazine; her work has also appeared in The Atlantic, The Guardian, SPIN, The AV Club, Vulture, and Indiewire (among other publications). She lives in Baltimore.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
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10/14/2020 • 1 hour, 34 minutes, 27 seconds
675. Dean Koontz
Dean Koontz is the guest. His new novel, Elsewhere, is available from Thomas & Mercer.
Koontz is the author of fourteen number one New York Times bestsellers, including One Door Away from Heaven, From the Corner of His Eye, Midnight, Cold Fire, The Bad Place, Hideaway, Dragon Tears, Intensity, Sole Survivor, The Husband, Odd Hours, Relentless, What the Night Knows, and 77 Shadow Street. He’s been hailed by Rolling Stone as “America’s most popular suspense novelist,” and his books have been published in thirty-eight languages and have sold over five hundred million copies worldwide.
Born and raised in Pennsylvania, he now lives in Southern California with his wife, Gerda, their golden retriever, Elsa, and the enduring spirits of their goldens Trixie and Anna.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
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10/7/2020 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 59 seconds
674. Lynn Steger Strong
Lynn Steger Strong is the guest. Her new novel, Want, is available from Henry Holt.
Strong was born and raised in South Florida. Her first novel, Hold Still, was released by Liveright/WW Norton in 2016. Her nonfiction has been published by Guernica, Los Angeles Review of Books, Elle.com, Catapult, Lit Hub, and others. She teaches both fiction and non-fiction writing at Columbia University, Fairfield University, and the Pratt Institute.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
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10/4/2020 • 1 hour, 24 minutes, 1 second
673. Steven Dunn
Steven Dunn is the guest. His latest novel, water & power, is available from Tarpaulin Sky.
Dunn's other novel, Potted Meat, is also available from Tarpaulin Sky.
He was born and raised in West Virginia, and after 10 years in the Navy, he earned a B.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Denver.
Some of his work can be found in Columbia Journal, Granta Magazine, and Best Small Fictions 2018.
He lives in Denver.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
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9/30/2020 • 1 hour, 28 minutes, 49 seconds
672. Amy Shearn
Amy Shearn is the guest. Her new novel, Unseen City, is available from Red Hen Press. It is the official September pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
Shearn is the author of the novels The Mermaid of Brooklyn and How Far Is the Ocean From Here. She has an MFA from the University of Minnesota, and currently lives in Brooklyn.
***
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Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
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9/23/2020 • 1 hour, 40 minutes, 4 seconds
671. Kathleen Rooney
Kathleen Rooney is the guest. Her new novel, Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey, is available from Penguin Books.
This is her second time on the program. She first appeared in Episode 274 on May 4, 2014.
Rooney is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press, a nonprofit publisher of literary work in hybrid genres, as well as a founding member of Poems While You Wait, a team of poets and their typewriters who compose commissioned poetry on demand. She teaches in the English Department at DePaul University, and her most recent books include the national best-seller, Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk (St. Martin’s Press 2017 / Picador 2018) and The Listening Room: A Novel of Georgette and Loulou Magritte (Spork Press, 2018).
A winner of the Ruth Lilly Fellowship from Poetry magazine, she is the author of nine books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, including the novel O, Democracy! (Fifth Star Press, 2014); the novel in poems Robinson Alone (Gold Wake Press, 2012), based on the life and work of Weldon Kees; the essay collection For You, For You I Am Trilling These Songs (Counterpoint, 2010); and the art modeling memoir Live Nude Girl: My Life as an Object (University of Arkansas Press, 2009). Her first book is Reading with Oprah: The Book Club That Changed America (University of Arkansas Press, 2005), and her first poetry collection, Oneiromance (an epithalamion) won the 2007 Gatewood Prize from the feminist publisher Switchback Books.
With Elisa Gabbert, she is the co-author of the poetry collection That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness (Otoliths, 2008) and the chapbook The Kind of Beauty That Has Nowhere to Go (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2013).. And with fellow DePaul professor Eric Plattner, she is the co-editor of Rene Magritte: Selected Writings (University of Minnesota Press, 2016).
Her reviews and criticism have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Poetry Foundation website, The New York Times Book Review, BITCH, Allure, The Chicago Review of Books, The Chicago Tribune, The Paris Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Nation and elsewhere.
She lives in Chicago with her spouse, the writer Martin Seay.
***
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Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
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9/16/2020 • 1 hour, 27 minutes, 25 seconds
670. Matthew Salesses
Matthew Salesses is the guest. His new novel, Disappear Doppelgänger Disappear, is available from Little A Publishing.
This is Matthew's second time on the program. He first appeared in Episode 145 on February 3, 2013.
Salesses is the bestselling author of The Hundred-Year Flood, an Amazon Best Book of September and Kindle First pick, an Adoptive Families Best Book of 2015, and a Best Book of the season at Buzzfeed, Refinery29, and Gawker, among others. Forthcoming in 2021 are a craft book, Craft in the Real World, and a collection of essays, Own Story. His previous books include I’m Not Saying, I’m Just Saying; Different Racisms: On Stereotypes, the Individual, and Asian American Masculinity; and The Last Repatriate.
Salesses was adopted from Korea. In 2015 Buzzfeed named him one of 32 Essential Asian American Writers. His essays have been published in Best American Essays 2020, NPR Code Switch, The New York Times Motherlode, VICE.com, Gay Magazine, and many other venues. His short fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train, American Short Fiction, PEN/Guernica, and Witness, among others. He has received awards and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Glimmer Train, Mid-American Review, [PANK], HTMLGIANT, IMPAC, Inprint, and elsewhere.
He is currently an Assistant Professor of English at Coe College, where he teaches fiction writing and Asian American literature. He earned a Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston and an M.F.A. in Fiction from Emerson College. He serves on the editorial boards of Green Mountains Review and Machete (an imprint of The Ohio State University Press), and has held editorial positions at Pleiades, The Good Men Project, Gulf Coast, and Redivider. He has read and lectured widely at conferences and universities and on TV and radio, including PBS, NPR, Al Jazeera America, various MFA programs, and the Tin House, Kundiman, Writers @ Work, and Boldface writing conferences.
***
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Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
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9/9/2020 • 2 hours, 1 minute, 34 seconds
669. David Goodwillie
David Goodwillie is the guest. His new novel, Kings County, is available from Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster.
Goodwillie's other books include the novel American Subversive, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and the memoir Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time.
Goodwillie has written for the New York Times, New York magazine, Newsweek, and Popular Science, among other publications.
He has also been drafted to play professional baseball, worked as a private investigator, and was an expert at Sotheby’s auction house. A graduate of Kenyon College, he lives in Brooklyn.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
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9/2/2020 • 1 hour, 33 minutes, 43 seconds
668. Emerson Whitney
Emerson Whitney is the guest. He is the author of a memoir called Heaven, available from McSweeney's.
Whitney is also the author of Ghost Box. He teaches in the BFA creative writing program at Goddard College and is a postdoctoral fellow in gender studies at the University of Southern California.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
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8/26/2020 • 1 hour, 37 minutes, 7 seconds
667. Nick Flynn
Nick Flynn is the guest. His new memoir, This is the Night Our House Will Catch Fire, is available now from W.W. Norton & Co. It is the official August pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
Flynn is the author of three previous memoirs, including the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award–winning Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, and four volumes of poetry. A professor on the creative writing faculty at the University of Houston, he lives in Brooklyn, New York.
***
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Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
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8/19/2020 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 18 seconds
666. Stephen Graham Jones
Stephen Graham Jones is the guest. His latest novel, The Only Good Indians, is available from Gallery Books.
Jones is the author of twenty-five or so novels and collections, and there’s some novellas and comic books in there as well. Stephen’s been an NEA recipient, has won the Texas Institute of Letters Award for Fiction, the Independent Publishers Award for Multicultural Fiction, a Bram Stoker Award, four This is Horror Awards, and he’s been a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award and the World Fantasy Award. He’s also made Bloody Disgusting’s Top Ten Horror Novels. He lives in Boulder, Colorado.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
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8/16/2020 • 1 hour, 32 minutes, 58 seconds
665. Mesha Maren
Mesha Maren is the guest. Her debut novel, Sugar Run, is available from Algonquin Books.
Maren's short stories and essays can be read in Tin House, The Oxford American, The Guardian, Crazyhorse, Triquarterly, The Southern Review, Ecotone, Sou’wester, Hobart, Forty Stories: New Writing from Harper Perennial, and elsewhere. She was the recipient of the 2015 Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize, a 2014 Elizabeth George Foundation grant, an Appalachian Writing Fellowship from Lincoln Memorial University, and fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and the Ucross Foundation. She was the 2018-2019 Kenan Visiting Writer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is an Assistant Professor of the Practice of Creative Writing at Duke University and also serves as a National Endowment of the Arts Writing Fellow at the federal prison camp in Alderson, West Virginia.
***
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8/12/2020 • 1 hour, 31 minutes, 56 seconds
664. Sabrina Orah Mark
Sabrina Orah Mark is the guest. Her story collection, Wild Milk, is available from The Dorothy Project.
Sabrina grew up in Brooklyn, New York. She earned a BA from Barnard College, Columbia University, an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and a PhD in English from the University of Georgia. She is the author of the book-length poetry collections The Babies (2004), winner of the Saturnalia Book Prize chosen by Jane Miller, and Tsim Tsum (2009), as well as the chapbook Walter B.’s Extraordinary Cousin Arrives for a Visit & Other Tales from Woodland Editions.
Her poetry and stories most recently appear in American Short Fiction, The Bennington Review, Tin House (Open Bar), The Collagist, jubilat, The Believer, and have been anthologized widely.
She lives in Athens Georgia with her husband, Reginald McKnight, and their two sons. For The Paris Review she writes a monthly column on fairytales and motherhood entitled HAPPILY.
***
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8/9/2020 • 1 hour, 42 minutes, 3 seconds
663. Hilary Leichter
Hilary Leichter is the guest. Her debut novel, Temporary, is available from Coffee House Press.
Hilary teaches at Columbia University, where she earned her MFA in Fiction. She has received fellowships from The Edward F. Albee Foundation, the Table 4 Writers Foundation, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She lives in New York.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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8/5/2020 • 1 hour, 27 minutes, 23 seconds
662. Leigh Stein
Leigh Stein is the guest. Her new novel, Self Care, is available from Penguin.
This is Leigh's third time on the program. She first appeared in Episode 105, on September 16, 2012, and again in Episode 407, with Lux Alptraum, on March 30, 2016.
Stein is a writer interested in what the internet is doing to our identities, relationships, and politics. She is also the author of the memoir Land of Enchantment, the poetry collection Dispatch from the Future, and the novel The Fallback Plan. Her non-fiction writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Yorker online, Allure, ELLE, Poets & Writers, BuzzFeed, The Cut, Salon, and Slate.
From 2014 – 2017, she was cofounder and executive director of Out of the Binders/BinderCon, a feminist literary nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing the careers of women and gender variant writers. Nearly 2,000 writers attended BinderCon events in NYC and LA, to hear speakers including Lisa Kudrow, Anna Quindlen, Claudia Rankine, Jill Abramson, Elif Batuman, Effie Brown, Leslie Jamison, Suki Kim, and Adrian Nicole LeBlanc. Leigh also moderated the private Facebook community of 40,000 writers.
Leigh is no longer on Facebook.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
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8/2/2020 • 1 hour, 36 minutes, 32 seconds
661. Raphael Bob-Waksberg
Raphael Bob-Waksberg is the guest. He is the creator of the animated television series BoJack Horseman and the author of a new story collection called Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory (Knopf).
Bob-Waksberg was raised in Palo Alto, California. He attended Bard College and lives in Los Angeles. This is his first book.
***
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7/29/2020 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 10 seconds
660. Maggie Downs
Maggie Downs is the guest. Her new memoir, Braver Than You Think: Around the World on the Trip of My (Mother's) Lifetime, is available from Counterpoint Press.
Downs is an award-winning writer based in Palm Springs, California. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Palm Springs Life, and McSweeney's and has been anthologized in The Lonely Planet Travel Anthology: True Stories from the World's Best Writers and Best Women's Travel Writing. This is her first book.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
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7/26/2020 • 1 hour, 53 minutes, 13 seconds
659. Jean Kyoung Frazier
Jean Kyoung Frazier is the guest. Her new novel, Pizza Girl, is available from Doubleday. It is the official July pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
Jean lives in Los Angeles. This is her debut.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
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7/22/2020 • 1 hour, 28 minutes, 48 seconds
658. Nikki Dolson
Nikki Dolson is the guest. Her new story collection, Love and Other Criminal Behavior, is available from Bronzeville Books.
Dolson is a writer primarily of short fiction, which has been published in places like Shotgun Honey, Tough, Thuglit, and Bartleby Snopes. Her other book, All Things Violent, is available from Fahrenheit Press. She lives in Las Vegas.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
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7/19/2020 • 1 hour, 28 minutes, 20 seconds
657. Genevieve Hudson
Genevieve Hudson is the guest. Their new novel, Boys of Alabama, is available from Liveright Publishing.
This is their second time on the program. They first appeared in Episode 544 on September 26, 2018.
Hudson's other books include the critical memoir A Little in Love with Everyone (2018), and Pretend We Live Here: Stories (2018), which was a LAMBDA Literary Award finalist.
They hold an MFA in fiction from Portland State University, and their work has appeared or is forthcoming in ELLE Magazine, OprahMag.com, McSweeney’s, Catapult, Bookforum, Bitch, and other places. They have received fellowships from the Fulbright Program, MacDowell, Caldera Arts, and The Vermont Studio Center. They are a Visiting Fiction Faculty member at Antioch University-Los Angeles’s MFA Program, a freelance writer, and also work in advertising. They live in Portland, Oregon.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
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7/15/2020 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 51 seconds
656. Wayne Koestenbaum
Wayne Koestenbaum is the guest. His new essay collection, Figure It Out, is available from Soft Skull Press.
Koestenbaum has published nineteen books, including Camp Marmalade, Notes on Glaze, The Pink Trance Notebooks, My 1980s & Other Essays, Hotel Theory, Best-Selling Jewish Porn Films, Andy Warhol, Humiliation, and Jackie Under My Skin. His essays and poems have been widely published in periodicals and anthologies, including The Best American Poetry, The Best American Essays, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Paris Review, London Review of Books, The Believer, The Iowa Review, Cabinet, and Artforum. Formerly an Associate Professor of English at Yale and a Visiting Professor in the Yale School of Art’s painting department, he is a Distinguished Professor of English, French, and Comparative Literature at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
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7/12/2020 • 1 hour, 29 minutes, 43 seconds
655. Joseph Di Prisco
Joseph Di Prisco is the guest. His new novel, The Good Family Fitzgerald, is available from Rare Bird Books. It was the official May pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
Di Prisco has published four other novels (Confessions of Brother Eli, Sun City, All for Now, and The Alzhammer), three books of poetry (Wit’s End, Poems in Which, and Sightlines from the Cheap Seats), two books on childhood and adolescence co-written with psychologist and educator Michael Riera (Field Guide to the American Teenager and Right from Wrong), and two memoirs (Subway to California and The Pope of Brooklyn). His book reviews, essays, and poems have appeared in numerous journals and newspapers, and his poetry has been awarded prizes from Poetry Northwest, Bear Star Press, and Bread Loaf.
He is the graduate of a Catholic boys’ high school, Syracuse University summa cum laude, and the University of California, Berkeley, where he completed his dissertation on Mark Twain. He taught English for some twenty years, middle school, high school, and college. In other lives he has lived, he was a novice in a Catholic monastery, managed restaurants, been a wine consultant, and (when he was a young man who was broke in the ‘80s) played high-stakes blackjack professionally around the world for several years, bankrolled by big-money backers with multiple vowels in their names.
He has sat on, and consulted with, non-profit boards dedicated to children’s mental health, the arts, theater, and education. He is Board Chair Emeritus of Redwood Day School and Founding Chair of the Simpson Family Literary Project, a collaborative enterprise of the UC Berkeley English Department and the Lafayette Library and Learning Center Foundation.
He lives with his wife, photographer Patti James, and their two whippets (Raylan and Ava—yes, their names straight out of Elmore Leonard) in Lafayette, California.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon
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7/8/2020 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 54 seconds
654. Meredith Talusan
Meredith Talusan is the guest. Her new memoir, Fairest, is available from Viking.
Talusan is an award-winning journalist and author. She has written features, essays, and opinion pieces for many publications, including The New York Times, The Guardian, The Atlantic, VICE, Matter, Backchannel, The Nation, and the American Prospect. She has contributed to several books including the New York Times Bestselling Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture edited by Roxane Gay. She lives in New York.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
www.otherppl.com
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7/5/2020 • 1 hour, 25 minutes, 8 seconds
653. Brian Allen Carr
Brian Allen Carr is the guest. His new novel, Opioid, Indiana, is available from Soho Press.
This is Carr's second time on the program. He first appeared in Episode 135 on December 30, 2012.
Carr is the author of Sip (Soho Press) and other novellas and story collections, and he has been published in McSweeney’s, Hobart, and The Rumpus. He was the inaugural winner of the Texas Observer short story prize as judged by Larry McMurtry, and the recipient of a Wonderland Book Award. He splits his time between Texas and Indiana, where he writes about engineers and inventors at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon
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7/1/2020 • 1 hour, 30 minutes, 41 seconds
652. Natalie Diaz
Natalie Diaz is the guest. Her new poetry collection, Postcolonial Love Poem, is available from Graywolf Press. It is the official June pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
Diaz was born and raised in the Fort Mojave Indian Village in Needles, California, on the banks of the Colorado River. She is Mojave and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Tribe. Her first poetry collection, When My Brother Was an Aztec, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2012. She is 2018 MacArthur Foundation Fellow, a Lannan Literary Fellow and a Native Arts Council Foundation Artist Fellow. She was awarded a Bread Loaf Fellowship, the Holmes National Poetry Prize, a Hodder Fellowship, and a PEN/Civitella Ranieri Foundation Residency, as well as being awarded a US Artists Ford Fellowship. Diaz teaches at the Arizona State University Creative Writing MFA program.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
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6/28/2020 • 1 hour, 34 minutes, 13 seconds
651. Brady Hammes
Brady Hammes is the guest. His debut novel, The Resolutions, is available from Ballantine Books.
Hammes lives in Los Angeles by way of Colorado and Iowa. His short stories have appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Guernica, The Rattling Wall, and Harper Perennial’s Forty Stories Anthology.
He’s also an Emmy-Award winning documentary film editor whose most recent project, Tom vs. Time—about NFL quarterback Tom Brady—won a 2018 Sports Emmy. Before that, he edited the feature film Social Animals, which had its world premiere at the 2018 SXSW film festival. For more of Brady's documentary work, please visit range-la.com.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon
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6/24/2020 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 40 seconds
650. Spring Washam
Spring Washam is the guest. She is the author of A Fierce Heart: Finding Strength, Courage, and Wisdom in Any Moment (Hay House).
Washam is a well-known meditation teacher based in California and Peru. She is considered a pioneer in bringing mindfulness-based healing practices to diverse communities. She is one of the founders and core teachers at the East Bay Meditation Center, located in downtown Oakland, CA. She received extensive training by Jack Kornfield, is a member of the teacher’s council at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in northern California, and has practiced and studied Buddhist philosophy in both the Theravada and Tibetan schools of Buddhism for the last 20 years.
In addition to being a teacher, she is also a shamanic practitioner and has studied indigenous healing practices for over a decade. She is the founder of Lotus Vine Journeys, an organization that blends indigenous healing practices with Buddhist wisdom. Her writing and teachings have appeared in many online journals and publications such as Lions Roar, Tricycle, and Belief.net. She has been a guest on many popular podcasts and radio shows. She currently travels and teaches meditation retreats, workshops and classes worldwide. She lives in the Bay Area.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon
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6/21/2020 • 1 hour, 34 minutes, 12 seconds
649. Ashleigh Bryant Phillips
Ashleigh Bryant Phillips is the guest. Her debut story collection, Sleepovers, is available from Hub City Press. It is the winner of the 2019 C. Michael Curtis Short Story Book Prize.
Phillips was raised in rural Woodland, North Carolina. She's a graduate of Meredith College and earned an MFA from the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. Her stories have appeared in The Oxford American, The Paris Review and others. Sleepovers is her first book. She lives in Baltimore.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon
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6/17/2020 • 1 hour, 58 minutes, 21 seconds
648. Roxane Gay
Roxane Gay is the guest. A contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, she is the author of several bestselling books, including Bad Feminist, Difficult Women, and Hunger.
Gay’s writing appears in Best American Mystery Stories 2014, Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many others. Her other books include Ayiti, An Untamed State, and the World of Wakanda for Marvel. She has several books forthcoming and is also at work on television and film projects. She lives in Los Angeles.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
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6/14/2020 • 1 hour, 7 minutes, 50 seconds
647. Susan Choi
Susan Choi is the guest. Her novel, Trust Exercise, is available in trade paperback from Henry Holt. It is the winner of the 2019 National Book Award for Fiction.
Choi’s first novel, The Foreign Student, won the Asian-American Literary Award for fiction. Her second novel, American Woman, was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize. Her third novel, A Person of Interest, was a finalist for the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award. In 2010 she was named the inaugural recipient of the PEN/W.G. Sebald Award. Her fourth novel, My Education, received a 2014 Lammy Award. Her first book for children, Camp Tiger, was published in 2019. A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, she teaches fiction writing at Yale and lives in Brooklyn.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon
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6/10/2020 • 1 hour, 32 minutes, 11 seconds
A Few Words
The podcast is dark this week, in light of the events of the past few days.
A few brief words on the current state of things, recorded in Los Angeles on June 2, 2020.
Back next week in some capacity.
Hang in there, everybody.
Peace.
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6/3/2020 • 12 minutes, 14 seconds
646. Kristen Millares Young
Kristen Millares Young is the guest. Her debut novel, Subduction, is available from Red Hen Press.
Young is a prize-winning journalist and essayist whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Guardian and the New York Times, along with the anthologies Pie & Whiskey, a 2017 New York Times New & Notable Book, and Latina Outsiders: Remaking Latina Identity. The current Prose Writer-in-Residence at Hugo House, Kristen was the researcher for the New York Times team that produced “Snow Fall,” which won a Pulitzer Prize. She graduated from Harvard with a degree in history and literature, later earning her MFA from the University of Washington. She serves as board chair of InvestigateWest, a nonprofit news studio she co-founded in Seattle, where she lives with her family.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon
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5/27/2020 • 1 hour, 28 minutes, 20 seconds
645. Chelsea Bieker
Chelsea Bieker is the guest. Her debut novel, Godshot, is available from Catapult Press.
Bieker's forthcoming story collection, Cowboys and Angels, is due out in 2022. Her writing has been published by The Paris Review, Granta, McSweeney’s, Lit Hub, and Electric Literature. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award and a MacDowell Colony fellowship. Originally from California’s Central Valley, she now lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and two children, where she teaches writing.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon
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5/20/2020 • 1 hour, 27 minutes, 4 seconds
644. Chris Dennis
Chris Dennis is the guest. His new story collection, Here is What You Do, is available from Soho Press.
Dennis' work has appeared in The Paris Review, McSweeney's, Granta, Lit Hub, and Guernica. He holds a master's degree from Washington University in St. Louis, where he also received a postgraduate fellowship. He lives in Southern Illinois.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon
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5/17/2020 • 1 hour, 33 minutes, 33 seconds
643. Mary South
Mary South is the guest. Her debut story collection, You Will Never Be Forgotten, is available from FSG Originals.
South is a graduate of Northwestern University and the MFA program in fiction at Columbia University. For many years, she has worked with Diane Williams as an editor at the literary journal NOON. She is also the recipient of a Bread Loaf work-study fellowship and residences at VCCA and Jentel. Her writing has appeared in American Short Fiction, The Baffler, The Believer, BOMB, The Collagist, Conjunctions, Electric Literature, Guernica, LARB Quarterly, The New Yorker, NOON, The Offing, The White Review, and Words Without Borders. She lives in New York.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
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5/13/2020 • 1 hour, 33 minutes, 44 seconds
642. Danielle Trussoni
Danielle Trussoni is the guest. Her new novel, The Ancestor, is available from William Morrow.
Trussoni is the New York Times, USA Today, and Sunday Times Top Ten bestselling author of the supernatural thrillers Angelology and Angelopolis. She currently writes the Horror column for the New York Times Book Review and has recently served as a jurist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. Trussoni holds an MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she won the Michener-Copernicus Society of America award. Her books have been translated into over thirty languages. She lives in the Hudson River Valley with her family and her pug Fly.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
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5/6/2020 • 1 hour, 36 minutes, 41 seconds
641. Rowan Hisayo Buchanan
Rowan Hisayo Buchanan is the guest. Her new novel, Starling Days, is available from The Overlook Press. It is the official April pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
Buchanan is also the author of Harmless Like You, winner of The Authors’ Club First Novel Award and a Betty Trask Award. It was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and an NPR 2017 Great Read.
Her short work has appeared in several places including Granta, Guernica, The Guardian, The Harvard Review, and NPR’s Selected Shorts.
She lives in London.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
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4/29/2020 • 1 hour, 26 minutes, 51 seconds
640. Kevin Bigley
Kevin Bigley is the guest. His new novel, Comaville, is available from Clash Books.
Bigley is an actor/author. He can be seen on such television as Amazon’s Undone, USA’s Sirens, as well as heard on Netflix’s Bojack Horseman. Currently, he’s starring in the new Greg Daniels show Upload, coming to Amazon on May 1st.
He lives in Los Angeles.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon
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4/22/2020 • 1 hour, 42 minutes, 25 seconds
639. Juliana Delgado Lopera
Juliana Delgado Lopera is the guest. Their new novel, Fiebre Tropical, is available from The Feminist Press. It was the official February pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
Lopera's other books include Quiéreme (Nomadic Press 2017) and ¡Cuéntamelo!, an illustrated bilingual collection of oral histories by LGBT Latinx immigrants which won a 2018 Lambda Literary Award and a 2018 Independent Publisher Book Award.
Their work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Teen Vogue, The Rumpus, The White Review, LALT, Four Way Review, Broadly,TimeOut Mag, and more.
They live in San Francisco.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
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4/19/2020 • 1 hour, 26 minutes, 43 seconds
638. Amanda Goldblatt
Amanda Goldblatt is the guest. Her debut novel, Hard Mouth, is available from Counterpoint Press.
Goldblatt's work can lately be found at NOON, Fence, and Diagram. She was a 2018 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow, and teaches creative writing at Northeastern Illinois University.
She lives in Chicago, with her architect partner, and no dog.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon
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4/15/2020 • 1 hour, 42 minutes, 36 seconds
637. Megan Boyle
Megan Boyle is the guest. Her novel LIVEBLOG is available from Tyrant Books.
This is Megan's second time on the program. She first appeared in Episode 13 on October 30, 2011.
She is also the author of selected unpublished blog posts of a mexican panda express employee (Muumuu House, 2011). Her writing has appeared in Vice, the Believer, Thought Catalog, and other places online and in print. She has been liveblogging her life since March 17, 2020 on her Tumblr. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon
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4/12/2020 • 2 hours, 5 minutes
636. Crissy Van Meter
Crissy Van Meter is the guest. Her debut novel, Creatures, is available from Algonquin Books.
She teaches creative writing at The Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College and is the founder of the literary project Five Quarterly. She's also the managing editor for Nouvella Books and serves on the board of directors for the literary non-profit Novelly. She lives in Los Angeles.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon
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4/8/2020 • 1 hour, 49 minutes, 36 seconds
635. Sarah Kendzior
Sarah Kendzior is the guest. Her new book, Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America, is available from Flatiron Books.
This is Sarah's second time on the podcast. She first appeared in Episode 516 on April 25, 2018.
She is best known for her reporting on St. Louis and the 2016 election, her academic research on authoritarian states, and her New York Times bestselling debut The View from Flyover Country. She is a co-host of the podcast Gaslit Nation and was named one of Foreign Policy's “100 people you should be following on Twitter to make sense of global events.” Her reporting has been featured in Politico, The Atlantic, Fast Company, The New York Times, Globe and Mail, and more. She lives in St. Louis.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon
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4/5/2020 • 1 hour, 20 minutes, 18 seconds
634. Jenn Shapland
Jenn Shapland is the guest. Her debut, My Autobiography of Carson McCullers, is a genre-bending work of nonfiction. It is available from Tin House Books.
Shapland's nonfiction has been published in O, the Oprah Magazine, The Paris Review daily, Tin House, Outside online, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. Her essay "Finders, Keepers" won a 2017 Pushcart Prize, and she was awarded the 2019 Rabkin Foundation Award for art journalism. She has a PhD in English from the University of Texas at Austin and lives in New Mexico.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon
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4/1/2020 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 1 second
633. Deb Olin Unferth
Deb Olin Unferth is the guest. Her new novel Barn 8 is now available from Graywolf Press. It is the official March pick of the TNB Book Club.
This is Deb's second time on the program. She first appeared in Episode 178 on May 29, 2013.
Unferth is the author of six books, including Wait Till You See Me Dance and Revolution. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and three Pushcart Prizes, and was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. Her work has appeared in Granta, Harper’s, McSweeney’s, and The Paris Review. She lives in Austin, Texas.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
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3/29/2020 • 1 hour, 33 minutes, 39 seconds
632. Monika Woods
Monika Woods is the guest. She is a literary agent and founder of Triangle House Literary in New York.
Woods' clients have won the PEN Bingham Award, been listed for the National Book Award, The Kirkus Prize, The Edgar Awards, LAMBDA Awards, and the Believer Book Award, appeared on the New York Times bestseller list, and been named books of the year by The New York Times and NPR, among other honors.
She is a graduate of SUNY Buffalo and the Columbia Publishing Course and has worked closely with leading voices in contemporary literature over her decade-long publishing career. Her interests include literary fiction and compelling non-fiction in cultural criticism, food, popular culture, journalism, science, and current affairs.
She is particularly excited about plot-driven literary novels, non-fiction that is creatively critical, unique perspectives, a great cookbook, and above all, original prose.
(Photo credit: Sylvie Rosokoff)
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
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3/25/2020 • 1 hour, 50 minutes, 22 seconds
631. Sam Farahmand
Sam Farahmand is the guest. His debut novel, Chimero, is available from dr.Doctor Press.
Farahmand is originally from Los Angeles. His writing has appeared in Electric Literature, Hobart, and PANK Magazine.
He lives in Nashville.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
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3/18/2020 • 1 hour, 30 minutes, 49 seconds
630. Erin Eileen Almond
Erin Eileen Almond is the guest. Her debut novel, Witches' Dance, is available from Lanternfish Press.
Almond is a novelist, short story writer, essayist and reviewer. Her work has been published in The Boston Globe, Colorado Review, Normal School, Small Spiral Notebook, and on Cognoscenti.com, and The Rumpus.net.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
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3/11/2020 • 1 hour, 44 minutes, 42 seconds
629. April Dávila
April Dávila is the guest. Her debut novel, 142 Ostriches, is available from Kensington Books.
Dávila received her undergraduate degree from Scripps College before going on to study writing at USC. She was a resident of the Dorland Mountain Arts Colony in 2017 and attended the Squaw Valley Community of Writers in 2018. In 2019 her short story “Ultra” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. A fourth-generation Californian, she lives in La Cañada Flintridge with her husband and two children. She is a practicing Buddhist, half-hearted gardener, and occasional runner. 142 Ostriches is her first novel.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
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3/8/2020 • 1 hour, 35 minutes, 38 seconds
628. Emily Nemens
Emily Nemens is the guest. Her debut novel, The Cactus League, is available from Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.
In 2018, Nemens became the seventh editor of The Paris Review, the nation’s preeminent literary quarterly. Since her arrival, the magazine has seen record-high circulation, published two anthologies, produced a second season of its acclaimed podcast, and won the 2020 National Magazine Award for Fiction. Previously, she coedited The Southern Review, a storied literary quarterly published at Louisiana State University. Stories published during her tenure at The Southern Review were selected for the Pushcart Prize anthology, Best American Short Stories, the O. Henry Prize anthology, and the inaugural edition of PEN America Best Debut Fiction.
Nemens grew up in Seattle and received her bachelor’s degree from Brown University, where she studied art history and studio art. She completed an MFA degree in fiction at Louisiana State University. As an illustrator, she’s collaborated with Harvey Pekar, published her work in The New Yorker, and her watercolor portraits of every woman in congress were featured across the web and on national TV. Her short stories have appeared in Blackbird (Tarumoto Prize winner), Esquire, n+1, The Iowa Review, Hobart, and The Gettysburg Review. She lives in New York and remains a Mariners fan.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
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3/4/2020 • 1 hour, 35 minutes, 44 seconds
627. Megan Fernandes
Megan Fernandes is the guest. Her new poetry collection, Good Boys, is available from Tin House Books. It was a finalist for the Kundiman Book Prize and the Saturnalia Book Prize.
Fernandes is a writer living in New York City. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in The New Yorker, Tin House, Ploughshares, Denver Quarterly, Chicago Review, Boston Review, Rattle, Pank, The Common, Guernica, the Academy of American Poets, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, among others. She is also the author of The Kingdom and After (Tightrope Books 2015).
An Assistant Professor of English at Lafayette College, Fernandes teaches courses on poetry, creative nonfiction, and critical theory. She holds a PhD in English from the University of California, Santa Barbara and an MFA in poetry from Boston University.
***
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Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
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3/1/2020 • 1 hour, 38 minutes, 9 seconds
626. Garth Greenwell
Garth Greenwell is the guest. His new book Cleanness is available from Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.
Greenwell is the author of What Belongs to You, which won the British Book Award for Debut of the Year, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was a finalist for six other awards, including the PEN/Faulkner Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, it was named a Best Book of 2016 by over fifty publications in nine countries, and is being translated into a dozen languages. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, A Public Space, and VICE, and he has written criticism for The New Yorker, the London Review of Books, and the New York Times Book Review, among others. He lives in Iowa City.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
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2/26/2020 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 6 seconds
625. Katharine Coldiron
Katharine Coldiron is the guest. Her debut novella, Ceremonials, is available from Kernpunkt Press.
Coldiron's work has appeared in Ms., the Washington Post, LARB, the Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian, BUST, the Kenyon Review, the Rumpus, VIDA, Brevity, and elsewhere. She earned a B.A. in film studies & philosophy from Mount Holyoke College and an M.A. in creative writing from California State University, Northridge. She has read many, many books. Born in the American South to a professor of poetry and translation and a U.S. Navy captain, and raised along the East Coast, she now lives in Los Angeles.
Today's episode is brought to you by Blinkist. With Blinkist, you get unlimited access to read or listen to a massive library of condensed non-fiction books -- all the books you want and all for one low price. Right now, for a limited time, Blinkist has a special offer for Otherppl listeners. Go to Blinkist.com/Otherppl try it free for 7 days and save 25% off your new subscription.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon
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2/19/2020 • 1 hour, 45 minutes, 1 second
624. Nicolette Polek
Nicolette Polek is the guest. Her new story collection, Imaginary Museums, is available from Soft Skull Press.
Polek is a writer from Cleveland, Ohio and is a recipient of the 2019 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
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2/12/2020 • 1 hour, 29 minutes
623. Amina Cain
Amina Cain is the guest. Her new novel, Indelicacy, is available from Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.
This is Amina's second time on the program. She first appeared in Episode 390 on November 25, 2015.
She is also the author of the short story collection Creature, out with Dorothy, a publishing project, and her writing has appeared in Granta, n+1, The Paris Review Daily, BOMB, Full Stop, Vice, the Believer Logger, and elsewhere.
She lives in Los Angeles and is a literature contributing editor at BOMB.
Today’s episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Go to Betterhelp.com/Otherppl to get 10% off your first month with discount code OTHERPPL.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
www.otherppl.com
@otherppl
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Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
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2/5/2020 • 1 hour, 31 minutes, 17 seconds
622. Elaine Kahn
Elaine Kahn is the guest. She is a writer and artist currently based in Los Angeles. Her new poetry collection, Romance or The End, is available from Soft Skull.
Kahn's other book is called Women in Public (City Lights). She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a BFA from California College of the Arts. And she teaches at the Poetry Field School.
Today’s episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Go to Betterhelp.com/Otherppl to get 10% off your first month with discount code OTHERPPL.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
www.otherppl.com
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Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
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1/29/2020 • 1 hour, 37 minutes, 30 seconds
Episode 621 — Matthew Zapruder
Matthew Zapruder is the guest. His latest poetry collection, Father's Day, is available from Copper Canyon Press.
This is his second time on the program. He first appeared in Episode 477 on August 9, 2017.
He is a poet, translator, professor and editor. He earned a BA in Russian literature at Amherst College, an MA in Slavic languages and literature at the University of California, Berkeley, and an MFA in poetry at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he studied with Dara Wier, James Tate, and Agha Shahid Ali.
He is the author most recently of Sun Bear, Copper Canyon, 2014, and Why Poetry, a book of prose about poetry, Ecco/Harper Collins, 2017. An Associate Professor in the MFA at Saint Mary’s College of California, he is also editor at large at Wave Books, and from 2016-7 held the annually rotating position of Editor of the Poetry Column for the New York Times Magazine. He lives in Oakland, California. He also plays lead guitar in the rock band The Figments, a Western Massachusetts based band led by songwriter Thane Thomsen.
Zapruder’s other collections of poetry include Come On All You Ghosts (2010), The Pajamaist (2006), and American Linden (2002). He collaborated with painter Chris Uphues on For You in Full Bloom (2009) and co-translated, with historian Radu Ioanid, Romanian poet Eugen Jebeleanu’s last collection, Secret Weapon: Selected Late Poems (Coffee House, 2008).
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1/22/2020 • 1 hour, 40 minutes, 25 seconds
Episode 620 — Amanda Yates Garcia
Amanda Yates Garcia is the guest. Her new memoir, Initiated: Memoir of a Witch, is available from Grand Central Publishing.
This is Amanda's second time on the podcast. She first appeared in Episode 444 on December 21, 2016.
Garcia is a writer, artist, professional witch, and the Oracle of Los Angeles. Her work has been featured in The Millions, The LA Times, Time Out, LA Weekly, GOOP, Glamour, The London Times, CNN, Salon, as well as a viral appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight. She has led classes and workshops on magic and witchcraft at UCLA, UC Irvine, MOCA Los Angeles, The Hammer Museum, LACMA, The Getty and many other venues. Co-host of the popular Between the Worlds podcast, Initiated is her first book.
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1/15/2020 • 1 hour, 28 minutes, 11 seconds
Episode 619 — Steffie Nelson, Heather John Fogarty, & Sarah Tomlinson
Steffie Nelson, Heather John Fogarty, and Sarah Tomlinson are the guests. All are contributors to a new essay anthology called Slouching Towards Los Angeles: Living and Writing by Joan Didion's Light. The collection is edited by Steffie Nelson and is available from Rare Bird Books. It is the official January pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
In The White Album, Joan Didion famously wrote that “a place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively…loves it so radically that he remakes it in his image.” Cruising in her Daytona yellow Corvette Stingray, taking it all in behind dark glasses, Joan Didion claimed California for all time. Slouching Towards Los Angeles is a multi-faceted portrait of the literary icon who, in turn, belongs to us.
This collection of original essays covers the turf that made Didion a sensation—Hollywood and Patty Hearst; Malibu, Manson and the Mojave; the Summer of Love and the Central Park Five—while bringing together some of the finest voices of today’s Los Angeles and beyond. Slouching Towards Los Angeles is a love letter and thank you note; personal memoir and social commentary; cultural history and literary critique. Fans of Didion, lovers of California, and fellow writers alike will all find something to dig into, in this rich exploration of the inner and outer landscapes Joan Didion traveled, shaping our own journeys in the process.
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1/8/2020 • 1 hour, 48 minutes, 7 seconds
Episode 618 — Milo Martin
Milo Martin is the guest. He is the author of the poetry collections Poems for the Utopian Nihilist (Echo Park Press) and the forthcoming sublemon/sublime. He is also collaborating on an upcoming art book with Gigi Spratley and Jack Waltrip.
A poet by trade, Martin has toured extensively throughout the United States and Europe. He has been invited to perform at international literature and poetry festivals in France, Italy, Germany and Croatia as well as numerous venues in Estonia, Switzerland, Holland, Liechtenstein and Serbia. His works have been translated into four languages. Educated at San Francisco State University and the University of Southern California, he currently resides in Los Angeles. He contends that birds and insects are manifest angels.
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12/25/2019 • 2 hours, 20 minutes, 41 seconds
Episode 617 — Mark Guerin
Mark Guerin is the guest. His debut novel, You Can See More From Up Here, is available from Golden Antelope Press. It is the official December pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
Guerin is a 2014 graduate of Grub Street’s Novel Incubator program in Boston. He also has an MFA from Brandeis University and is a winner of an Illinois Arts Council Grant, the Mimi Steinberg Award for Playwriting and Sigma Tau Delta's Eleanor B. North Poetry Award. A contributor to the novelist’s blog, Dead Darlings, he is also a playwright, copywriter and journalist. He currently resides in Harpswell, Maine, with his wife, Carol, and two Brittany Spaniels.
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12/18/2019 • 1 hour, 22 minutes, 23 seconds
Episode 616 — Tim O'Brien
Tim O'Brien is the guest. He is the author of The Things They Carried, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award. And he is the recipient of the 1979 National Book Award for Fiction for his novel Going After Cacciato. His latest book, a memoir, is called Dad's Maybe Book, available now from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
O'Brien was born in 1946 in Austin, Minnesota, and spent most of his youth in the small town of Worthington, Minnesota. He graduated summa cum laude from Macalester College in 1968. From February 1969 to March 1970 he served as infantryman with the U.S. Army in Vietnam, after which he pursued graduate studies in government at Harvard University. He worked as a national affairs reporter for The Washington Post from 1973 to 1974.
His short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper's, The Atlantic, Playboy, and Ploughshares, and in several editions of The Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Prize Stories. In 1987, O'Brien received the National Magazine Award for the short story, “The Things They Carried,” and in 1999 it was selected for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories of the Century, edited by John Updike. O'Brien is the recipient of literary awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has been elected to both the Society of American Historians and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. O'Brien currently holds the University Endowed Chair in Creative Writing at Texas State University. He lives with his wife and children in Austin, Texas.
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12/11/2019 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 48 seconds
Episode 615 — Abigail Tarttelin
Abigail Tarttelin is the guest. Her new novel, Dead Girls, is available from Rare Bird Books. It was the official November pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
This is Abigail's second time on the program. She first appeared in Episode 194 on July 28, 2013.
Tarttelin is also the author of Golden Boy, “a grippingly innovative” coming-of-age novel with a “radical non-binary, pro-intersex message” (Autostraddle). Golden Boy is the winner of an Alex Award from the American Library Association, a LAMBDA Literary Award Finalist for Best LGBT Debut, a Booklist Top Ten First Novel of 2013, a School Library Journal Best Book of 2013, and is published in eight languages.
Her journalism has appeared in The Guardian, The Independent, Glamour, Phoenix, Oh Comely, and The Huffington Post. Also a screenwriter, in 2016 Abigail served as a juror for the British Independent Film Awards. She is the recipient of awards from The Authors Foundation and The K Blundell Trust in Great Britain.
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12/4/2019 • 1 hour, 55 minutes, 19 seconds
Episode 614 — Fiona Alison Duncan
Fiona Alison Duncan is the guest. Her debut novel, Exquisite Mariposa, is available from Soft Skull Press.
Duncan is a Canadian-American artist, writer and organizer. She is the founding host of Hard to Read, a lit series, and Pillow Talk, community organising on sex, love and communication. She lives in New York City and Los Angeles.
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11/27/2019 • 1 hour, 43 minutes, 40 seconds
Episode 613 — Leland Cheuk
Leland Cheuk is the guest. His new novel, No Good Very Bad Asian, is available from C&R Press.
A MacDowell Colony and Hawthornden Castle Fellow, Cheuk is also the author of the story collection Letters from Dinosaurs (2016) and the novel The Misadventures of Sulliver Pong (2015), which was also published in translation in China (2018). His work has been covered in Buzzfeed, The Paris Review, VICE, San Francisco Chronicle, and elsewhere, and has appeared in publications such as Salon, Catapult, Joyland Magazine, Literary Hub, among other outlets. He is the founder of the indie press 7.13 Books.
Cheuk lives in Brooklyn and teaches at the Sarah Lawrence College Writing Institute.
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11/20/2019 • 1 hour, 29 minutes, 19 seconds
Episode 612 — Adrienne Brodeur
Adrienne Brodeur is the guest. Her memoir, Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me, is available from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. It was the official October pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
Brodeur has spent the past two decades of her professional life in the literary world, discovering voices, cultivating talent, and working to amplify underrepresented writers. Her publishing career began with founding the fiction magazine, Zoetrope: All-Story, with filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, where she served as editor in chief from 1996-2002. The magazine has won the prestigious National Magazine Award for best fiction four times. In 2005, she became an editor at Harcourt (later, HMH Books), where she acquired and edited literary fiction and memoir. Adrienne left publishing in 2013 to become Creative Director — and later Executive Director — of Aspen Words, a literary arts nonprofit and program of the Aspen Institute. In 2017, she launched the Aspen Words Literary Prize, a $35,000 annual award for an influential work of fiction that illuminates a vital contemporary issue and demonstrates the transformative power of literature on thought and culture.
She splits her time between Cambridge and Cape Cod, where she lives with her husband and children.
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11/13/2019 • 1 hour, 27 minutes, 25 seconds
Episode 611 — Mimi Lok
Mimi Lok is the guest. Her debut story collection, Last of Her Name, is available from Kaya Press.
Lok is the recipient of a Smithsonian Ingenuity Award and an Ylvisaker Award for Fiction, and was a finalist for the Susan Atefat Arts and Letters Prize for nonfiction. Her work can be found in McSweeney’s, Electric Literature, LitHub, Nimrod, Lucky Peach, Hyphen, the South China Morning Post, and elsewhere. She is currently working on a novel.
Lok is also the executive director and editor of Voice of Witness, an award-winning human rights/oral history nonprofit she cofounded that amplifies marginalized voices through a book series and a national education program.
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11/6/2019 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 47 seconds
Episode 610 — Adam Mansbach
Adam Mansbach is the guest. He is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Go the Fuck to Sleep, and has just published a new book called Fuck, Now There are Two of You.
Go the F*ck to Sleep has been translated into forty languages, named Time Magazine's 2011 "Thing of the Year," and sold over three million copies worldwide. The 2014 sequel, You Have to Fucking Eat, is also a New York Times bestseller.
Mansbach was recently nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and an NAACP Image Award for his screenplay Barry. The film premiered to rave reviews at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it was acquired by Netflix and released as a Netflix Original on December 16, 2016.
Mansbach's 2013 novel, Rage is Back, was named a Best Book of the Year by National Public Radio and the San Francisco Chronicle. Adapted for television by Mansbach and Danny Hoch, it is currently in development at USA as an hour-long drama.
Mansbach's previous novels include The End of the Jews (2008) which won the California Book Award, and the cult classic Angry Black White Boy, or the Miscegenation of Macon Detornay (2005), which is taught at more than eighty schools and was adapted into a prize-winning stage play in 2008.
His work has appeared in The New Yorker, New York Times Book Review, Esquire, The Believer, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, and on National Public Radio's All Things Considered, The Moth Storytelling Hour, and This American Life.
He lives in Berkeley, California, and is a frequent lecturer on college campuses.
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11/3/2019 • 1 hour, 41 minutes, 15 seconds
Episode 609 — Ashley Wurzbacher
Ashley Wurzbacher is the guest. A 5 Under 35 honoree, her debut story collection, Happy Like This, won the 2019 John Simmons Short Fiction Award. It is available from the University of Iowa Press.
Wurzbacher's writing has appeared in The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, The Cincinnati Review, Colorado Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Gettysburg Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She earned her BA from Allegheny College, her MFA from Eastern Washington University, and her PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston.
Originally from Titusville, Pennsylvania, she currently lives in Birmingham, Alabama and teaches creative writing at the University of Montevallo.
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10/30/2019 • 1 hour, 5 minutes, 26 seconds
Episode 608 — Steph Cha
Steph Cha is the guest. Her new novel, Your House Will Pay, is available from Ecco.
This is Steph's second time on the program. She first appeared in Episode 319 on October 8, 2014.
Cha is also the author of the Juniper Song crime trilogy. She’s an editor and critic whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. A native of the San Fernando Valley, she lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two basset hounds.
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10/27/2019 • 1 hour, 32 minutes, 35 seconds
Episode 607 — Jarett Kobek
Jarett Kobek is the guest. His new novel, Only Americans Burn in Hell, is available from We Heard You Like Books.
This is Kobek's third time on the program. He first appeared in Episode 399 on February 3, 2016, and in Episode 476 on August 2, 2017.
Kobek is an internationally bestselling Turkish-American writer who lives in California. His work has been translated into nine languages and published in twelve countries. His previous books include ATTA, I Hate the Internet, and Do Every Thing Wrong!: XXXTentacion Against the World.
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10/23/2019 • 1 hour, 40 minutes, 29 seconds
Episode 606 — Madeline Stevens
Madeline Stevens is the guest. Her debut novel, Devotion, is available from Ecco.
Stevens is from Boring, Oregon and is currently based in Los Angeles. She holds an MFA from Columbia University and her work has been published in a variety of literary magazines. She teaches creative writing to adults and children through Catapult and Writopia Lab.
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10/20/2019 • 1 hour, 21 minutes, 53 seconds
Episode 605 — Zulema Renee Summerfield
Zulema Renee Summerfield is the guest. Her debut novel, Every Other Weekend, is available in trade paperback from Back Bay Books.
Summerfield holds an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University, and her work has appeared in a number of literary journals. She is also the author of a book of flash fiction, Everything Faces All Ways At Once (Fourteen Hills Press).
In addition to her writing, Summerfield is an educator and creative coach and is one half of Thoughts & Feelings. She lives in Portland, Oregon, where she is at work on a collection of short stories and a new novel.
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10/16/2019 • 1 hour, 22 minutes, 11 seconds
Episode 604 — Elizabeth Cantwell
Elizabeth Cantwell is the guest. Her new poetry collection, All the Emergency-Type Structures, is available from Inlandia Institute.
Cantwell lives in Claremont, CA, where she teaches Humanities at The Webb Schools. She has a B.A. from Yale University and a Ph.D. in Literature & Creative Writing from the University of Southern California. Her poetry has appeared in a variety of journals, including DIAGRAM, The Cincinnati Review, The Los Angeles Review, Hobart, and The Missouri Review. Her first book of poems, Nights I Let The Tiger Get You (Black Lawrence Press, 2014), was a finalist for the 2012 Hudson Prize; she is also the author of a chapbook, Premonitions (Grey Book Press, 2014).
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10/9/2019 • 1 hour, 26 minutes, 5 seconds
Episode 603 — Adam Popescu
Adam Popescu is the guest. His debut novel, Nima, is available from Unnamed Press.
Popescu is a writer and journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Bloomberg Businessweek, Vanity Fair, National Geographic, Conde Nast Traveler, Marketplace, Playboy, Fast Company, Scientific American, Outside,The Guardian, New Scientist, Los Angeles Magazine, and others.
His journalism has focused on a wide range, from business, the internet and the arts, to vanishing cultures and wildlife, reporting from places threatened by climate change, globalism, and the march of technology. In 2013, he climbed 18,000 feet up Mount Everest, covering the impact of tourism on the land and local Nepali people for the BBC. That experience would inspire his debut novel, NIMA, published in late May, 2019, from Unnamed Press.
He's tracked mountain lions in urban LA, polar bears in Northern Canada, covered Arctic tsunamis, glacial melt and erosion in Greenland and Alaska, and spent time in drought-plagued East Africa and Indonesia, places and people at the vanguard of this world shift. Heads of state in Mexico, politicos tasked with governing alongside narcos, Tibet's exiled leader, the Dalai Lama, founders of Instagram, Twitter, Tinder, real cyborgs, convicts, dissidents, billionaires, all have been interview subjects. He recently profiled Steven Spielberg for The New York Times.
In 2018, Popescu spent weeks in Ladakh, in search of snow leopards in India's Himalayas, sailed to the edge of the globe in the Russian High Arctic and into the deceptively placid Pacific waters of the Galapagos, on assignment for Bloomberg, the Washington Post and New York Times. A year later, he returned to Ladakh and saw a leopard with the naked eye.
Popescu holds a master’s degree in journalism from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, and a BA in creative writing from Pitzer College.
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10/6/2019 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 7 seconds
Episode 602 — Robin Page
Robin Page is the guest. Her debut novel, Small Silent Things, is available from Harper Perennial.
Page was raised in Cincinnati and has degrees from UCLA and UC Irvine’s MFA program. She is married, has two daughters, and lives in Los Angeles.
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10/2/2019 • 1 hour, 32 minutes, 44 seconds
Episode 601 — Belén Fernández
Belén Fernández is the guest. Her new book, Exile: Rejecting America and Finding the World, is available from OR Books. It is the official September pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
After growing up in Washington, D.C. and Texas, and then attending Columbia University in New York, Belén Fernández ended up in a state of self-imposed exile from the United States. From trekking—through Europe, the Middle East, Morocco, and Latin America—to packing avocados in southern Spain, to close encounters with a variety of unpredictable men, to witnessing the violent aftermath of the 2009 coup in Honduras, the international travel allowed her by an American passport has, ironically, given her a direct view of the devastating consequences of U.S. machinations worldwide. For some years Fernández survived thanks to the generosity of strangers who picked her up hitchhiking, fed her, and offered accommodations; then she discovered people would pay her for her powerful, unfiltered journalism, enabling—as of the present moment—continued survival.
In just a few short years of publishing her observations on world politics and writing from places as varied as Lebanon, Italy, Uzbekistan, Syria, Mexico, Turkey, Honduras, and Iran, Belén Fernández has established herself as a one of the most trenchant observers of America’s interventions around the world, following in the footsteps of great foreign correspondents such as Martha Gellhorn and Susan Sontag.
She is a contributing editor at Jacobin and graduated from Columbia with a BA in political science. She frequently writes for Al Jazeera, Middle East Eye, and Jacobin, and is also the author of The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work.
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9/29/2019 • 1 hour, 11 minutes, 29 seconds
Episode 600 — Sarah M. Broom
Sarah M. Broom is the guest. Her debut memoir, The Yellow House, is available now from Grove Press.
Broom began her writing career as a newspaper journalist working in Rhode Island, Dallas, New Orleans and Hong Kong (for TIME Asia). She also worked as an editor at O, The Oprah Magazine for several years. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, O, The Oprah Magazine and elsewhere. In 2016, she received the prestigious Whiting Award for Creative Nonfiction.
Broom has an undergraduate degree in anthropology and mass communications from the University of North Texas and a Master’s degree in Journalism from the University of California, Berkeley.
A native New Orleanian, she is the youngest of twelve children, and now makes her home in New York City.
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9/25/2019 • 1 hour, 55 minutes, 37 seconds
Episode 599 — Dora Malech
Dora Malech is the guest. Her most recent poetry collection, Stet, is available from Princeton University Press.
Malech's other collections include Say So (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2011), and Shore Ordered Ocean (Waywiser Press, 2009). Her fourth collection, Flourish, will be published by Carnegie Mellon University Press in 2020.
Malech has been the recipient of an Amy Clampitt Residency Award from the Amy Clampitt Fund, a Mary Sawyers Baker Prize from the Baker Artist Awards, a Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, and a Writing Residency Fellowship from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, and she has served as Distinguished Poet-in-Residence at Saint Mary's College of California. She is a co-founder and former director of the arts engagement organization the Iowa Youth Writing Projects, and she is currently an assistant professor in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.
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9/22/2019 • 1 hour, 11 minutes, 50 seconds
Episode 598 — Kimberly King Parsons
Kimberly King Parsons is the guest. Her debut story collection, Black Light, is available now from Vintage.
Born in Lubbock, Texas, Parsons earned a BA in English and an MA in Literary Studies (emphasis on the works of William Faulkner) from the University of Texas at Dallas. She later moved to New York City, where she earned an MFA in fiction from Columbia University and served as the editor-in-chief of Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art.
A recipient of fellowships from Columbia University and the Sustainable Arts Foundation, her fiction has been published in The Paris Review, Best Small Fictions 2017, Black Warrior Review, No Tokens, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere.
She lives with her partner and sons in Portland, OR, where she is completing a novel about Texas, motherhood, and LSD.
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9/18/2019 • 1 hour, 25 minutes, 48 seconds
Episode 597 — Josh Gondelman
Josh Gondelman is the guest. His new book, Nice Try: Stories of Best Intentions and Mixed Results, is available from Harper Perennial (Sept. 17).
Gondelman is a writer and comedian who incubated in Boston before moving to New York City, where he currently lives and works as a writer and producer for Desus and Mero on Showtime. Previously, he spent five years at Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, first as a web producer and then as a staff writer. In 2016, he made his late night standup debut on Conan (TBS), and he recently made his network tv debut on Late Night With Seth Meyers (NBC).
He is the winner of two Peabody Awards, three Emmy awards, and two WGA Awards for his work on Last Week Tonight. He is also the co-author (along with Joe Berkowitz) of the book You Blew It, published October 2015 by Plume. His writing has also appeared in prestigious publications such as McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, New York Magazine, and The New Yorker.
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9/11/2019 • 1 hour, 25 minutes, 53 seconds
Episode 596 — R.O. Kwon
R.O. Kwon is the guest. Her bestselling debut novel, The Incendiaries, is available in trade paperback from Riverhead Books.
Named a best book of the year by over forty publications, The Incendiaries was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award for Best First Book, Los Angeles Times First Book Prize, and Northern California Independent Booksellers Association Fiction Prize. The book was also nominated for the Aspen Prize, Carnegie Medal, and the Northern California Book Award. Kwon’s next novel, as well as an essay collection, are forthcoming.
Kwon’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Paris Review, Buzzfeed, NPR, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Yaddo, MacDowell, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Born in Seoul, Kwon has lived most of her life in the United States.
In today's monologue, I respond to more mail.
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9/4/2019 • 1 hour, 10 minutes, 33 seconds
Episode 595 — Chris L. Terry
Chris L. Terryis the guest. His new novel, Black Card, is available from Catapult Press.
This is Terry's second time on the podcast. He first appeared in Episode 217 on October 16, 2013.
Terry was born in 1979 to an African American father and an Irish American mother. He has an BA in English from Virginia Commonwealth University and a creative writing MFA from Columbia College Chicago. His debut novel, Zero Fade, was named a Best Book of the Year by Slate and Kirkus Reviews. He lives in Los Angeles with his family.
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8/28/2019 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 18 seconds
Episode 594 — Shane Jones
Shane Jones is the guest. His latest novel, Vincent and Alice and Alice, is available from Tyrant Books. It is the official August pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
This is Shane's second time on the program. He first appeared in Episode 301 on August 6, 2014.
Jones' other books include the novels Light Boxes, Daniel Fights a Hurricane, and Crystal Eaters.
He lives in Albany, New York.
In today's monologue, I talk briefly about the guy at the cafe who had a problem with my dog.
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8/21/2019 • 1 hour, 12 minutes, 27 seconds
Episode 593 — Juliet Escoria
Juliet Escoriais the guest. Her debut novel, Juliet the Maniac, is available from Melville House. It was the official May pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
This is Juliet's second time on the program. She first appeared in Episode 273 on April 30, 2014.
She also wrote the short story collection Black Cloud, which was originally published in 2014 by Civil Coping Mechanisms. In 2015, Emily Books published the ebook, Maro Verlag published a German translation, and Los Libros de la Mujer Rota published a Spanish translation. Witch Hunt, a collection of poems, was published by Lazy Fascist Press in 2016.
She was born in Australia, raised in San Diego, and currently lives in West Virginia.
In today's monologue, I respond to more listener mail.
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8/14/2019 • 1 hour, 21 minutes, 40 seconds
Episode 592 — Sarah Rose Etter
Sarah Rose Etter is the guest. Her debut novel, The Book of X, is available from Two Dollar Radio.
She is also the author of the chapbookTongue Party, selected by Deb Olin Unferth as the winner of the Caketrain Press award.
Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Cut, Electric Literature, Guernica, VICE, New York Tyrant, Juked, Night Block, The Black Warrior Review, Salt Hill Journal, The Collagist, and more.
She is the co-founder of the TireFire Reading Series, and a contributing editor at The Fanzine. She has also served as an arts columnist at Philadelphia Weekly.
She has been awarded residences at Disquiet International program in Portugal and the Gullkistan Writing Residency in Iceland. In 2017, she was the keynote speaker at the Society for the Study of American Women Writers conference in Bordeaux, France, where she presented on surrealist writing as a mode of feminism.
She earned her B.A. in English from Pennsylvania State University and her M.F.A. in Fiction from Rosemont College.
In today's monologue, I respond to listener mail.
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8/7/2019 • 1 hour, 30 minutes, 55 seconds
Episode 591 — J. Ryan Stradal
J. Ryan Stradal is the guest. His new novel, The Lager Queen of Minnesota, is available from Viking / Pamela Dorman Books.
This is Stradal's second time on the podcast. He first appeared in Episode 376on August 19, 2015.
His first novel, Kitchens of the Great Midwest, reached the New York Times Hardcover Best Seller list at #19 on its third week of release. His shorter writing has appeared in Hobart, The Rumpus, The Wall Street Journal, Granta, The Guardian, Electric Literature, The Nervous Breakdown, and more.
He lives in Los Angeles.
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7/31/2019 • 1 hour, 29 minutes, 52 seconds
Episode 590 — Chip Cheek
Chip Cheek is the guest. His debut novel, Cape May, is available from Celadon Books.
Cheek's stories have appeared in The Southern Review, Harvard Review, Washington Square, and other journals and anthologies. He has been awarded scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Tin House Summer Writer's Workshop, and the Vermont Studio Center, as well as an Emerging Artist Award from the St. Botolph Club Foundation in Boston.
For many years, Chip taught fiction at GrubStreet in Boston. He now lives in El Segundo, California, with his wife and daughter.
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7/24/2019 • 1 hour, 28 minutes, 54 seconds
Episode 589 — Steve Almond
Steve Almondis the guest. His new book, William Stoner and the Battle for the Inner Life, is available from Ig Publishing.
This is Steve's fourth time on the program. He first appeared in Episode 9, on October 16, 2011, and again in Episode 302, on August 10, 2014, and Episode 513, on April 8, 2018.
Almond is the author of ten books of fiction and nonfiction, including the New York Times bestsellers Candyfreak and Against Football. You can check those out here.Last year, he published Bad Stories, a literary investigation of what the hell just happened to our country, which he wrote to keep from going crazy. (You can find his latest rants here or here.)
For four years, Steve hosted the New York Times Dear Sugars podcast with his pal Cheryl Strayed. His short stories have been anthologized widely, in the Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, Best American Erotica, and Best American Mysteries series. He also publishes crazy, DIY books.
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7/17/2019 • 1 hour, 21 minutes, 50 seconds
Episode 588 — Erin Hosier
Erin Hosieris the guest. Her new memoir, Don't Let Me Down, is available from Atria Books.
Hosier is also the coauthor of Hit So Hard by Patty Schemel (Da Capo, 2017). She has been a literary agent since 2001 (currently with Dunow Carlson & Lerner), and was an original co-host of the Literary Death Match. As an agent, she primarily works with authors of nonfiction and has a special interest in popular culture, music biography, humor, women's history (and untold stories of all kinds). She lives in Brooklyn.
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7/10/2019 • 1 hour, 48 minutes, 48 seconds
Episode 587 — Bret Easton Ellis
Bret Easton Ellis is the guest. His new essay collection, White, is available from Knopf.
Ellis is the author of six novels, including Less Than Zero, The Rules of Attraction, and American Psycho, and a collection of stories, which have been translated into thirty-two languages. He lives in Los Angeles and is the host of The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast, available on Patreon.
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7/3/2019 • 1 hour, 57 minutes, 41 seconds
Episode 586 — Karen Stefano
Karen Stefanois the guest. Her new book, What a Body Remembers: A Memoir of Sexual Assault and Its Aftermath, is available from Rare Bird Books.
It is the official June pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
Stefano's other books include the short story collection The Secret Games of Words (1GlimpsePress 2015) and the how-to business writing guide, Before Hitting Send (Dearborn 2011). Her work has appeared in Ms. Magazine, The Rumpus, Psychology Today, California Lawyer, The South Carolina Review, Tampa Review, Epiphany, Volume 1 Brooklyn, and many other journals and magazines.
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6/26/2019 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 27 seconds
Episode 585 — Elvia Wilk
Elvia Wilkis the guest. Her debut novel, Oval, is available from Soft Skull Press.
Wilk is a writer and editor living in New York and Berlin. She contributes to publications like Frieze, Mousse, Metropolis, Artforum, and Zeit Online. From 2012 to 2016 she was a founding editor at uncube magazine and from 2016 to 2018 she was the publications editor for transmediale. She is currently a contributing editor at e-flux journal and is finishing a masters at the New School for Social Research. She has taught at the University of the Arts Berlin, Eugene Lang College, and City College of New York.
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6/19/2019 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 33 seconds
Episode 584 — Kathryn Scanlan
Kathryn Scanlanis the guest. Her new book, Aug 9 — Fog, is available from MCD Books.
Scanlan lives in Los Angeles. Her stories have appeared in NOON, Fence, American Short Fiction, Tin House, Caketrain, and The Iowa Review, among other publications.
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6/12/2019 • 1 hour, 10 minutes, 28 seconds
Episode 583 — Jennifer Pastiloff
Jennifer Pastiloffis the guest. Her new book, On Being Human: A Memoir of Waking Up, Living Real, and Listening Hard, is available from Dutton.
Pastiloff travels the world with her unique workshop On Being Human, a hybrid of yoga-related movement, writing, sharing aloud, letting the snot fly, and the occasional dance party. She has been featured on Good Morning America, New York Magazine, Health Magazine, CBS News, and others for her unique style of teaching, which she has taught to thousands of women in sold-out workshops all over the world.
Jen is also the guest speaker at Canyon Ranch and Miraval Resorts, and she leads Writing and The Body workshops with author Lidia Yuknavitch, as well as retreats with Emily Rapp Black. Founder of the online magazine The Manifest Station, when Jen is not traveling she is based in Los Angeles with her husband and son.
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6/5/2019 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 3 seconds
Episode 582 — Elisa Gabbert
Elisa Gabbertis the guest. Her new essay collection, The Word Pretty, is available from Black Ocean Press.
This is Elisa's second time on the podcast. She first appeared in Episode 241 on January 8, 2014.
Gabbert is a poet and essayist whose other books include L’Heure Bleue, or the Judy Poems (Black Ocean, 2016), The Self Unstable (Black Ocean, 2013), and The French Exit (Birds LLC, 2010). The Word Pretty was a New York Times Editors’ Pick, and The Self Unstable was chosen by the New Yorker as one of the best books of 2013. Elisa’s work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, the New York Review of Books, the Guardian Long Read, Boston Review, the Paris Review Daily, Pacific Standard, Guernica, The Awl, Electric Literature, the Harvard Review, Threepenny Review, Real Life, Catapult, Jubilat, Diagram, and many other venues. Elisa is currently writing a book about disaster culture and human failure, The Unreality of Memory, forthcoming from FSG Originals. She lives in Denver.
Other adventures: Elisa writes an advice column for writers, The Blunt Instrument, at Electric Literature. Send her a question at [email protected]. She occasionally writes about perfume for Bois de Jasmin. She occasionally teaches at Lighthouse Writers Workshop. She has co-written several collaborative collections with Kathleen Rooney, including That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness. She holds degrees from Rice University and Emerson College.
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5/29/2019 • 1 hour, 12 minutes, 19 seconds
Episode 581 — Saskia Vogel
Saskia Vogelis the guest. Her debut novel, Permission, is available from Coach House Books.
Vogel was born and raised in Los Angeles and now lives in its sister city, Berlin, where she works as a writer and Swedish-to-English literary translator.
Previously she worked as Granta magazine’s global publicist and as an editor at the AVN Media Network, where she reported on pornography and adult pleasure products. She volunteers her time as the honorary secretary of SELTA and as part of the team that organizes Viva Erotica, an annual film festival in Helsinki that explores the art, history, and culture of sex on film.
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5/22/2019 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 53 seconds
Episode 580 — Lydia Fitzpatrick
Lydia Fitzpatrick is the guest. Her debut novel, Lights All Night Long, is available from Penguin Press.
Fitzpatrick’s work has appeared in the The O. Henry Prize Stories, The Best American Mystery Stories, One Story, Glimmer Train,and elsewhere. She was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, a fiction fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and a recipient of an Elizabeth George Foundation grant. She graduated from Princeton University and received an MFA from the University of Michigan. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughters.
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5/15/2019 • 1 hour, 15 minutes
Episode 579 — Lilliam Rivera
Lilliam Rivera is the guest. Her new YA novel, Dealing in Dreams, is available from Simon & Schuster.
Rivera's previous novel, The Education of Margot Sanchez (February 2017) was nominated for a 2019 Rhode Island Teen Book Award, a 2017 Best Fiction for Young Adult Fiction by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), and has been featured on NPR, New York Times Book Review, New York magazine, MTV.com, and Teen Vogue, among others.
She is a 2016 Pushcart Prize winner and a 2015 Clarion alumni with a Leonard Pung Memorial Scholarship. Lilliam has also been awarded fellowships from PEN Center USA, A Room Of Her Own Foundation, and received a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation and the Speculative Literature Foundation. Her short story "Death Defiant Bomba" received honorable mention in Bellevue Literary Review's 2014 Goldenberg Prize for Fiction, selected by author Nathan Englander. She recently received honorable mention in the 2018 James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award.
Lilliam's work has appeared in The New York Times, Elle, Lenny Letter, Tin House, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and more. She has been a featured speaker in countless schools and book festivals throughout the United States and teaches creative writing workshops.
She lives in Los Angeles
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5/8/2019 • 1 hour, 29 minutes, 15 seconds
Episode 578 — Balli Kaur Jaswal
Balli Kaur Jaswal is the guest. Her new novel, The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters, is available from William Morrow. It is the official April 2019 pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
Jaswal is the author of Inheritance, which won the Sydney Morning Herald’s Best Young Australian Novelist Award in 2014 and was adapted into a film at the Singapore International Festival of the Arts in 2017. Her second novel Sugarbreadwas a finalist for the 2015 inaugural Epigram Books Fiction Prize and the 2018 Singapore Literature Prize.
Her third novel Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows (Harper Collins/William Morrow) was released internationally to critical acclaim in March 2017. Translation rights to this novel have been sold in France, Spain, Italy, Israel, Poland, Germany, Sweden, Greece, China, Brazil and Estonia. Film rights to Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows have been acquired by Ridley Scott’s production company, Scott Free Productions and Film Four in the UK. Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows was also picked by Reese Witherspoon’s book club and The Girly Book Club in 2018.
Jaswal’s short fiction and non-fiction writing have appeared in the UK Sunday Express, Cosmopolitan Magazine, The New York Times, Harpers Bazaar, Conde Nast Traveller and Best Australian Short Stories, among other publications and periodicals. She has travelled widely to appear in international writers festivals to conduct workshops and lectures on creative writing, pursuing an artistic career, the power of storytelling, global citizenship and social justice advocacy through literature. A former writing fellow at the University of East Anglia, Jaswal has taught creative writing at Yale-NUS College and Nanyang Technological University where she is currently pursuing a PhD.
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5/1/2019 • 1 hour, 22 minutes, 48 seconds
Episode 577 — David Shields
David Shieldsis the guest. His two most recent books are The Trouble with Men: Reflections on Sex, Love, Marriage, Porn, and Power (Mad Creek Books) and Nobody Hates Trump More than Trump: An Intervention (Thought Catalog Books).
Shields is the internationally bestselling author of twenty-two books, including Reality Hunger (named one of the best books of 2010 by more than thirty publications), The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead (New York Times bestseller), Black Planet (finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award), and Other People: Takes & Mistakes (NYTBR Editors’ Choice). The film adaptation of I Think You’re Totally Wrong: A Quarrel was released by First Pond Entertainment in 2017.
A recipient of Guggenheim and NEA fellowships and a senior contributing editor of Conjunctions, Shields has published essays and stories in the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, Esquire, Yale Review, Salon, Slate, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, and Believer. His work has been translated into two dozen languages. He lives in Seattle.
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4/24/2019 • 1 hour, 24 minutes, 16 seconds
Episode 576 — T Kira Madden
T Kira Madden is the guest. Her new memoir, Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls, is available from Bloomsbury. It was the official March pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
T Kira Madden is a lesbian APIA writer, photographer, and amateur magician living in New York City. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College and an BA in design and literature from Parsons School of Design and Eugene Lang College. She is the founding Editor-in-chief of No Tokens, a magazine of literature and art, and is a 2017 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in nonfiction literature from the New York Foundation for the Arts. She has received fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Hedgebrook, Tin House, DISQUIET, Summer Literary Seminars, and Yaddo, where she was selected for the 2017 Linda Collins Endowed Residency Award. She facilitates writing workshops for homeless and formerly incarcerated individuals and currently teaches at Sarah Lawrence College. There is no period in her name.
In today's monologue, I talk about buying a birthday gift for my wife.
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4/17/2019 • 1 hour, 21 minutes, 4 seconds
Episode 575 — Lori Gottlieb
Lori Gottliebis the guest. Her new memoir, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed, is available from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Gottlieb is a psychotherapist and New York Times bestselling author who writes the weekly “Dear Therapist” advice column for The Atlantic. She has written hundreds of articles related to psychology and culture, many of which have become viral sensations all over the world. A contributing editor for the Atlantic, she also writes for The New York Times Magazine, and appears as a frequent expert on relationships, parenting, and hot-button mental health topics in media such as The Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, Dr. Phil, CNN, and NPR.
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4/10/2019 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 45 seconds
Episode 574 — Richard Chiem
Richard Chiem is the guest. His new novel, King of Joy, is available from Soft Skull Press.
This is Richard's second time on the podcast. He first appeared in Episode 142on January 23, 2013.
Chiem is also the author of You Private Person (Sorry House Classics). It was named one of Publishers Weekly's 10 Essential Books of the American West. His work has appeared in City Arts Magazine, NY Tyrant, and Gramma Poetry, among other places. He lives in Seattle, WA.
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4/3/2019 • 1 hour, 28 minutes, 42 seconds
Episode 573 — Chloe Aridjis
Chloe Aridjis is the guest. Her new novel, Sea Monsters, is available from Catapult Press.
Aridjis is a Mexican-American writer who was born in New York and grew up in the Netherlands and Mexico. After completing her Ph.D. at the University of Oxford in nineteenth-century French poetry and magic shows, she lived for nearly six years in Berlin. Her debut novel, Book of Clouds, has been published in eight languages and won the Prix du Premier Roman Étranger in France. Aridjis sometimes writes about art and insomnia and was a guest curator at Tate Liverpool. In 2014, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. She lives in London.
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3/31/2019 • 1 hour, 9 minutes, 39 seconds
Episode 572 — Eva Hagberg Fisher
Eva Hagberg Fisher is the guest. Her new book, How to Be Loved: A Memoir of Life-Saving Friendship, is available from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Eva's writing has appeared in the New York Times, Tin House, Wallpaper*, Wired, and Dwell, among other places. She holds degrees in architecture from UC Berkeley and Princeton as well as a PhD in Visual and Narrative Culture from UC Berkeley.
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3/27/2019 • 1 hour, 54 minutes, 5 seconds
Episode 571 — Roger McNamee
Roger McNamee is the guest. His new book Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe, is a New York Times bestseller, available from Penguin Press.
McNamee has been a Silicon Valley investor for 35 years. He co-founded successful funds in venture, crossover and private equity. His most recent fund, Elevation, included U2’s Bono as a co-founder. He holds a B.A. from Yale University and an M.B.A. from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. Roger plays bass and guitar in the bands Moonalice and Doobie Decibel System and is the author of The New Normal and The Moonalice Legend: Posters and Words, Volumes 1-9. He has served as a technical advisor for seasons two through five of HBO’s “Silicon Valley” series and was also responsible for raising the money that created the Wikimedia Foundation.
In today's monologue, I talk about Disorder Salon, a new reading series starting up in New Orleans.
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3/20/2019 • 1 hour, 46 minutes, 19 seconds
Episode 570 — Steve Anwyll
Steve Anwyll is the guest. His debut novel, Welfare, is available from Tyrant Books.
Anwyll's work has appeared in Hobart and Tyrant Magazine, among other places. He lives in Montreal.
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3/13/2019 • 1 hour, 33 minutes, 22 seconds
Episode 569 — Pam Houston
Pam Houstonis the guest. Her new essay collection, Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country, is available now from W.W. Norton & Co.
Houston's other books include two novels, Contents May Have Shifted and Sight Hound, two collections of short stories, Cowboys Are My Weakness and Waltzing the Cat, and a collection of essays, A Little More About Me, all published by W.W. Norton.
Her stories have been selected for volumes of The O. Henry Awards, The Pushcart Prize, Best American Travel Writing, and Best American Short Stories of the Century, among other anthologies. She is the winner of the Western States Book Award, the WILLA Award for contemporary fiction, the Evil Companions Literary Award and several teaching awards.
She teaches in the Low Rez MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts, is Professor of English at UC Davis, and co-founder and creative director of the literary nonprofit Writing By Writers. She lives at 9,000 feet above sea level near the headwaters of the Rio Grande.
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3/6/2019 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 46 seconds
Episode 568 — Sam Lipsyte
Sam Lipsyte is the guest. His new novel, Hark, is available now from Simon & Schuster.
This is Sam's second time on the podcast. He first appeared in Episode 154, on March 6, 2013.
Lipsyte is the author of the story collections Venus Drive (named one of the top twenty-five books of its year by the Voice Literary Supplement) and The Fun Parts, and three other novels: The Ask, The Subject Steve, and Home Land, which was a New York Times Notable Book and received the first annual Believer Book Award. He is also the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship. He lives in New York City and teaches at Columbia University.
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3/3/2019 • 1 hour, 8 minutes, 32 seconds
Episode 567 — Sarah McColl
Sarah McColl is the guest. Her debut memoir, Joy Enough, is available now from Liveright Publishing.
McColl's essays have appeared in Paris Review, McSweeney's, StoryQuarterly, and elsewhere. She has been the recipient of fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, where she was named the 2017 Mary Carswell Fellow, the Millay Colony for the Arts, Ucross Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Wrangell Mountains Center. Before receiving her MFA at Sarah Lawrence College, she was the founding editor in chief of Yahoo Food. Her food writing has been featured in print and online for Bon Appétit, House Beautiful, The Guardian, Modern Farmer, Extra Crispy and others. She teaches creative writing and is based in Los Angeles, California.
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2/27/2019 • 1 hour, 44 minutes, 40 seconds
Episode 566 — Madhuri Vijay
Madhuri Vijay is the guest. Her debut novel, The Far Field, is available now from Grove Press.
A graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop, Vijay was born in Bangalore. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, and her writing has appeared in Best American Non-Required Reading, Narrative Magazine and Salon, among other publications. The Far Field is her first book.
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2/20/2019 • 1 hour, 11 minutes, 44 seconds
Episode 565 — Peter Stenson
Peter Stenson is the guest. His new novel Thirty Seven is available from Dzanc Books. It is the official February pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
Stenson received his MFA from Colorado State University in 2012. His first novel, Fiend, was an Amazon Best Book of the Month for July 2013. His stories and essays have been published in The Bellevue Literary Review, The Greensboro Review, Confrontation, Blue Mesa Review, and elsewhere. He lives with his wife and family in Denver, Colorado.
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2/17/2019 • 1 hour, 10 minutes, 11 seconds
Episode 564 — Brad Phillips
Brad Phillips is the guest. His new story collection, ESSAYS AND FICTIONS, is available from Tyrant Books.
The late Anthony Bourdain calls it: "Searingly honest, brilliant and disturbing. Brad Phillips peels back the skin and bone and stares right into the human soul."
Born in 1974, Phillips is also an accomplished visual artist known for dark work that engages with themes of eroticism, depression, and mortality. His paintings display stylistic breadth, from text-based to photorealist, referring in many cases directly to his daily life. He lives in Toronto.
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2/13/2019 • 1 hour, 53 minutes, 28 seconds
Episode 563 — Duke Haney
Duke Haney is the guest. His new essay collection, Death Valley Superstars, is available now from Delancey Street Press.
Haney has spent most of his adult life working in the movie business, with twenty feature-film credits as an actor and twenty-two as a screenwriter. He used pseudonyms for some of the screenplays and went by “D. R. Haney” as the author of a novel, Banned for Life, and an essay collection, Subversia. After he was struck by a car in a crosswalk on Sunset Boulevard, a friend claimed he walked like John “Duke” Wayne and gave him the nickname by which most people know him and he has adopted belatedly as his pen name. He plans to follow Death Valley Superstars with a novel tentatively titled XXX. He lives in Los Angeles.
This is Duke's second time on the podcast. He first appeared in Episode 36on January 18, 2012.
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2/6/2019 • 1 hour, 24 minutes, 19 seconds
Episode 562 — Ingrid Rojas Contreras
Ingrid Rojas Contreras is the guest. Her debut novel, FRUIT OF THE DRUNKEN TREE (Doubleday), is a national bestseller, an Indie Next selection, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and a New York Times editor's choice.
Born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia, Contreras' essays and short stories have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Buzzfeed, Nylon, and Guernica, among others. She is the book columnist for KQED, the Bay Area's NPR affiliate, teaches writing at the University of San Francisco, and works with immigrant high school students as part of a San Francisco Arts Commission initiative bringing writers into public schools. She is working on a family memoir about her grandfather, a curandero from Colombia who it was said had the power to move clouds.
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1/30/2019 • 1 hour, 30 minutes, 51 seconds
Episode 561 — Thomas Kohnstamm
Thomas Kohnstamm is the guest. His debut novel, Lake City, is available from Counterpoint Press. It is the official January pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
Kohnstamm is also the author of Do Travel Writers Go to Hell? (Crown). He was born in Seattle and lives there with his wife and two children.
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1/23/2019 • 1 hour, 53 minutes, 1 second
Episode 560 — Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is the guest. Her new novel SKETCHTASY is available from Arsenal Pulp Press.
Described as "startlingly bold and provocative" by Howard Zinn, "a cross between Tinkerbell and a honky Malcolm X with a queer agenda” by the Austin Chronicle, and “a gender-fucking tower of pure pulsing purple fabulous” by The Stranger, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is the author of a memoir and three novels, and the editor of five nonfiction anthologies.
Sycamore's memoir, The End of San Francisco(City Lights 2013), won a Lambda Literary Award, and her most recent anthology, Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots?: Flaming Challenges to Masculinity, Objectification, and the Desire to Conform (AK Press 2012), was an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book and a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award.
Mattilda's novels include So Many Ways to Sleep Badly (City Lights 2008) and Pulling Taffy (Suspect Thoughts 2003). She is the editor of four additional nonfiction anthologies, Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity (Seal 2007), That’s Revolting! Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation (Soft Skull 2004; 2008), Dangerous Families: Queer Writing on Surviving (Haworth 2004), and Tricks and Treats: Sex Workers Write about Their Clients (Haworth 2000), which now also appears in Italian (Effepi Libri 2007).
Mattilda has written for a variety of publications, including the San Francisco Chronicle, BOMB, Bookforum, The Baffler, the New York Times, New Inquiry, Los Angeles Review of Books, Truthout, Time Out New York, Utne Reader, AlterNet, Bitch, Bookslut, and The Stranger, and for ten years, Mattilda was the reviews editor and a columnist for the feminist magazine Make/shift.
Mattilda made a short 16mm film, All That Sheltering Emptiness, in collaboration with Joey Carducci. The film premiered in 2010, and has screened around the world.
Mattilda created Lostmissing, a public art project about the friend who will always be there, and what happens when you lose that
relationship.
Mattilda’s activism has included ACT UP in the early ‘90s, Fed Up Queers in the late ‘90s, Gay Shame, and numerous lesser-known (or even unnamed) groups.
Mattilda's papers are archived at the San Francisco Public Library, and are accessible to the public.
Mattilda lives in Seattle, Washington, but will be on tour for Sketchtasy from fall 2018 through spring 2019. In the past, she has appeared in independent bookstores, community centers, performance venues and universities across the US (and Canada), from Yale to Evergreen, UCLA to Harvard to Mills to McGill.
Mattilda loves feedback, so contact her, okay?
Mattilda is now on Twitter. Don't tell anyone, but she kind of loves it.
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1/16/2019 • 1 hour, 33 minutes, 12 seconds
Episode 559 — Tommy Pico
Tommy Pico is the guest. A poet, performer, and screenwriter, he is the author of the poetry collections IRL (Birds, LLC), NATURE POEM, JUNK, and the forthcoming FEED (Tin House Books). A Whiting Award winner, Pico is originally from the Viejas Indian reservation of the Kumeyaay nation. He now divides his time between Los Angeles and Brooklyn, where he co-curates the reading series Poets With Attitude (PWA) with Morgan Parker at the Ace Hotel, co-hosts the podcast Food 4 Thot, and is a contributing editor at Literary Hub.
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1/9/2019 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 53 seconds
Episode 558 — Morris Collins
Morris Collinsis the guest. He is the author of the debut novel Horse Latitudes (Dzanc Books). It was the official December 2018 pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club. Collins' other fiction and poetry has recently appeared in Pleiades, Gulf Coast, The Chattahoochee Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Iron Horse Review, Nimrod, among others.
He attended the University of Rochester where he studied English and Medieval Studies and received his MFA from Penn State University in 2008.
He is a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at the College of the Holy Cross.
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1/2/2019 • 1 hour, 59 seconds
Episode 557 — Brittany Ackerman
Brad Listi talks with Brittany Ackerman, author of the debut memoir THE PERPETUAL MOTION MACHINE (Red Hen Press). Ackerman is a graduate of Florida Atlantic University's Master of Fine Arts program in Creative Writing. Since graduation, she has completed a residency at the Wellstone Center in the Redwoods, and has attended the Mont Blanc Workshop in Chamonix, France under the instruction of Alan Heathcock.
She recently attended the Writers by Writers Methow Valley Workshop in May of 2017 under the leadership of Ross Gay. She lives in Los Angeles.
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12/26/2018 • 1 hour, 30 minutes
Episode 556 — Katya Apekina
Katya Apekina is the guest. She is the author of the debut novel THE DEEPER THE WATER THE UGLIER THE FISH (Two Dollar Radio). Apekina's short stories have appeared in various literary magazines. She is the recipient of an Elizabeth George grant, an Olin Fellowship, the Alena Wilson prize and a 3rd Year Fiction Fellowship from Washington University in St. Louis where she did her MFA. She has done residencies at VCCA, Playa and Ucross. Her prose and poetry translations from Russian appeared in Night Wraps the Sky: Writings by and About Mayakovsky(FSG 2008), which was short-listed for the Best Translated Book Award. She co-wrote the script for the independent film New Orleans, Mon Amour (2008), directed by Michael Almereyda and starring Elisabeth Moss and Christopher Eccleston. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter.
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12/19/2018 • 1 hour, 23 minutes, 35 seconds
Episode 555 — Anita Felicelli
Anita Felicelli is the guest. She is the author of the debut story collection LOVE SONGS FOR A LOST CONTINENT (Stillhouse Press), winner of the 2016 Mary Roberts Rinehart Award. Felicelli's stories have appeared in The Normal School, Joyland, The Rumpus, Kweli Journal, Eckleburg, and elsewhere. Her essays, reviews, and criticism have appeared or are forthcoming in the New York Times (Modern Love), Slate, Salon, SF Chronicle, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Babble, Romper, and Electric Literature. She is a graduate of UC Berkeley and UC Berkeley School of Law, a member of the National Book Critics Circle, and a Voices of Our Nations alum. Her work has placed as a finalist in multiple Glimmer Train contests and received a Puffin Foundation grant, two Greater Bay Area Journalism awards, and Pushcart Prize nominations. She lives in the Bay Area with her family.
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12/12/2018 • 1 hour, 10 minutes, 52 seconds
Episode 554 — John Wray
John Wray is the guest. He is the author of the novel GODSEND (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux). His other novels include The Lost Time Accidents, Lowboy, Canaan's Tongue, and The Right Hand of Sleep. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, a Cullman Fellowship from the New York Public Library, and a Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fellowship from the American Academy in Berlin, he was named one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists in 2007. A citizen of the United States and Austria, he currently lives in Mexico City.
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12/5/2018 • 1 hour, 33 minutes, 15 seconds
Episode 553 — Christopher Zeischegg
Christopher Zeischegg is the guest. He is the author of the memoir BODY TO JOB (Rare Bird Books). A writer, musician, and filmmaker, he spent eight years working in the adult industry as performer Danny Wylde.
His other two books are Come to my Brother and The Wolves that Live in Skin and Space. He has also contributed to The Feminist Porn Book, Best Sex Writing, Coming Out Like a Porn Star, Split Lips, and a variety of digital publications, such as Somesuch and Nerve.
His industrial metal band, Chiildren, released their second EP, The Circle Narrows, through Records Ad Nauseam in 2015.
He became the face of Wyldefire Hot Sauce in 2016.
Zeischegg lives in Los Angeles with his two cats, Victoria and Isis.
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11/28/2018 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 56 seconds
Episode 552 — Daniel Gumbiner
Daniel Gumbiner is the guest. His debut novel THE BOATBUILDER is available from McSweeney's. It was nominated for the National Book Award. Gumbiner is the managing editor of THE BELIEVER magazine. He was born and raised in Northern California, graduated from UC Berkeley in 2011, and now lives in Southern Nevada.
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11/21/2018 • 1 hour, 11 minutes, 18 seconds
Episode 551 — Lydia Kiesling
Lydia Kiesling is the guest. Her debut novel THE GOLDEN STATE is available from MCD Books. Kiesling is a 2018 National Book Foundation “5 under 35” honoree, and her writing has appeared at outlets including The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker online, The Guardian, and Slate. She lives in San Francisco with her family.
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11/14/2018 • 1 hour, 23 minutes, 9 seconds
Episode 550 — Leah Dieterich
Brad Listi talks with Leah Dieterich, author of the debut memoir VANISHING TWINS: A MARRIAGE (Soft Skull Press). Dietrich's essays and short fiction have been published by Lenny Letter, Buzzfeed, LitHub, and Bomb Magazine among others. She is also the author of a book of thank-you notes, entitled "thxthxthx: thank goodness for everything" (Andrews McMeel, 2011). She lives in Portland, Oregon and Los Angeles with her husband and daughter.
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11/7/2018 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 35 seconds
Episode 549 — Andre Dubus III
Brad Listi talks with Andre Dubus III, bestselling author of the novel GONE SO LONG (W.W. Norton). His other book include "House of Sand and Fog," "The Garden of Last Days," and a memoir called "Townie." A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Magazine Award for Fiction, his books are published in over twenty-five languages, and he teaches full-time at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife, Fontaine, a modern dancer, and their three children.
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10/31/2018 • 1 hour, 11 minutes, 42 seconds
Episode 548 — Meghan O'Gieblyn
Brad Listi talks with Meghan O'Gieblyn, author of the essay collection INTERIOR STATES (Anchor Books). It is the official October pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club. O'Gieblyn's essays have appeared in Harper's Magazine, n+1, the New York Times, The Guardian, Oxford American, Ploughshares, newyorker.com, The Point and Tin House, and have been included in the Pushcart Prize anthologies and in The Best American Essays 2017. She lives in Wisconsin.
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10/24/2018 • 1 hour, 38 minutes, 57 seconds
Episode 547 — Kristi Coulter
Brad Listi talks with Kristi Coulter, author of the essay collection NOTHING GOOD CAN COME FROM THIS (MCD/FSG Originals). Coulter holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan. She is a former Ragdale Foundation resident and the recipient of a grant from the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, The Awl, Glamour, Vox, The Mississippi Review, Longreads, and elsewhere. She lives in Seattle, where she is working on her next book.
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10/17/2018 • 2 hours, 2 minutes, 7 seconds
Episode 546 — Laura van den Berg
Brad Listi talks with Laura van den Berg, author of the novel THE THIRD HOTEL (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux). Her other books include two collections of stories, The Isle of Youth (FSG, 2013) and What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us (Dzanc Books, 2009), and the novel Find Me (FSG, 2015).
Laura van den Berg is a Briggs-Copeland Lecturer in Fiction at Harvard University and also teaches in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She lives in Cambridge, MA.
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10/10/2018 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 27 seconds
Episode 545 — Mark Leidner
Brad Listi talks with Mark Leidner, author of the story collection UNDER THE SEA (Tyrant Books). Leidner's other books include "Beauty Was the Case They Gave Me," (Factory Hollow, 2011), and a collection of aphorisms called "The Angel in the Dream of Our Hangover" (Sator, 2011). He has taught at Elms College and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and his poems have appeared in Action Yes, The Iowa Review, Sixth Finch, and Supermachine. He lives in Georgia.
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10/3/2018 • 1 hour, 12 minutes, 32 seconds
Episode 544 — Genevieve Hudson
Brad Listi talks with Genevieve Hudson, author of A LITTLE IN LOVE WITH EVERYONE (Fiction Advocate), a work of queer commentary, and a story collection called PRETEND WE LIVE HERE (Future Tense Books). Her writing has been published in Catapult, Hobart, Tin House online, Joyland, The Millions, Bitch, The Rumpus, and other places. She received an MFA in creative writing from Portland State University, where she occasionally teaches fiction writing and gender studies courses. She lives in Amsterdam.
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9/26/2018 • 1 hour, 20 minutes, 57 seconds
Episode 543 — Lisa Locascio
Brad Listi talks with Lisa Locascio, author of the debut novel OPEN ME (Grove Atlantic). Her work has appeared in The Believer, Tin House, n+1, Bookforum, and many other magazines. She is the editor of the anthology "Golden State 2017: Best New Writing from California," co-publisher of Joyland and editor of its West section, as well as of the ekphrastic collaboration magazine 7x7LA. She is Executive Director of the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference. She lives in California.
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9/19/2018 • 1 hour, 58 minutes, 33 seconds
Episode 542 — Joseph Grantham
Brad Listi talks with Joseph Grantham, poet and author of the debut collection TOM SAWYER, available now from Civil Coping Mechanisms. Grantham was born in Kansas City, Missouri. He grew up in California. He read books for awhile and wrote bad stories and poems and went to school. Not much happened. He lost his virginity when he was 18. He got his BA from Bennington College. He still reads books and writes. He runs Disorder Press with his sister, Mik. He currently lives in Woodland, North Carolina.
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9/12/2018 • 1 hour, 25 minutes, 13 seconds
Episode 541 — T. Greenwood
Brad Listi talks with T. Greenwood, author of the novel RUST & STARDUST (St. Martin's Press). Greenwood has published twelve novels and has received grants from the Sherwood Anderson Foundation, the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Maryland State Arts Council. She has won three San Diego Book Awards. Five of her novels have been BookSense76/IndieBound picks. BODIES OF WATER was finalist for a Lambda Foundation award.
She lives in San Diego and Vermont.
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9/9/2018 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 53 seconds
Episode 540 — Maggie Nelson
Brad Listi talks with Maggie Nelson, author of the poetry collection SOMETHING BRIGHT, THEN HOLES (Soft Skull Press). Nelson is the author of nine books of poetry and prose, including the National Book Critics Circle Award winner The Argonauts, The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning, Bluets, The Red Parts, and Jane: A Murder. She has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Nonfiction, an NEA Fellowship in Poetry, and in 2016 was awarded a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship. She lives in Los Angeles.
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9/5/2018 • 1 hour, 27 minutes, 2 seconds
Episode 539 — Victoria Patterson
Brad Listi talks with Victoria Patterson, author of the story collection THE SECRET HABIT OF SORROW (Counterpoint Press). Patterson is the author of the novels THE PEERLESS FOUR and THIS VACANT PARADISE, a 2011 NY Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. Her story collection, DRIFT, was a finalist for the California Book Award, the 2009 Story Prize, and was selected as one of the best books of 2009 by The San Francisco Chronicle. She lives with her family in Southern California and teaches at Antioch University
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8/29/2018 • 1 hour, 38 minutes, 50 seconds
Episode 538 — Amber Tamblyn
Brad Listi talks with author, actress, and director Amber Tamblyn, author of the novel ANY MAN (Harper Perennial) and three books of poetry, including the critically acclaimed best seller, "Dark Sparkler." A book of essays is forthcoming from Crown in 2019. Most recently Tamblyn wrote and directed the feature film, “Paint it Black”, based on the novel by Janet Fitch, currently on Netflix. She's a contributing writer for The New York Times and is a founding member of Time’s Up. She lives in New Yor
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8/22/2018 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 40 seconds
Episode 537 — Adam Greenfield
Brad Listi talks with Adam Greenfield, author of the debut novel CIRCA (Pelekinesis Press), the official August pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club. Greenfield's short fiction has appeared in many literary magazines, including MungBeing, Outsider Ink, and Prole. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and children.
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8/15/2018 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 46 seconds
Episode 536 — Amanda Stern
Brad Listi talks with Amanda Stern, author of the memoir LITTLE PANIC: DISPATCHES FROM AN ANXIOUS LIFE (Grand Central Publishing). Stern's first novel "The Long Haul" (Soft Skull Press) was published in 2003. That same year, she launched The Happy Ending Music and Reading Series, producing over 250 shows and welcoming over 700 creative artists, ranging from Lena Dunham to Laurie Anderson, before ending the series in 2016. She has also published nine children's books. She lives in Brooklyn.
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8/8/2018 • 1 hour, 24 minutes, 18 seconds
Episode 535 — Allie Rowbottom
Brad Listi talks with Allie Rowbottom, author of JELL-O GIRLS: A FAMILY HISTORY (Little, Brown). Her essays can be found in Vanity Fair, Salon, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She has taught fiction and non-fiction at the University of Houston and CalArts and holds a PhD in literature and creative writing from the University of Houston. She is lives in Los Angeles with her husband Jon, French bulldogs Butter and Jammy, and Ham the Morgan horse.
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8/1/2018 • 1 hour, 24 minutes, 5 seconds
Episode 534 — Robert Goolrick
Brad Listi talks with Robert Goolrick, author of the novel THE DYING OF THE LIGHT (Harper). It is the official July pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club. Goolrick is the author of the bestselling novels "A Reliable Wife," "Heading Out to Wonderful," and "The Fall of Princes," and the acclaimed memoir "The End of the World as We Know It." He lives and works in Baltimore.
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7/25/2018 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 6 seconds
Episode 533 — Adrienne Celt
Brad Listi talks with Adrienne Celt, author of the novel INVITATION TO A BONFIRE (Bloomsbury). Celt's debut novel "The Daughters"(Norton/Liveright) won the 2015 PEN Southwest Book Award for Fiction and was named a Best Book of the Year by NPR. She has also authored a collection of comics called "Apocalypse How? An Existential Bestiary" (DIAGRAM/New Michigan Press 2016). A recipient of an O. Henry Prize, the Glenna Luschei Award, and multiple residencies, she lives in Tucson, Arizona.
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7/18/2018 • 1 hour, 9 minutes, 49 seconds
Episode 532 — Ottessa Moshfegh
Brad Listi talks with Ottessa Moshfegh, author of the novel MY YEAR OF REST AND RELAXATION (Penguin Press). Moshfegh's first book, McGlue, a novella, won the Fence Modern Prize in Prose and the Believer Book Award. She is also the author of the short story collection Homesick for Another World. Eileen, her first novel, was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Man Booker Prize, and won the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction. She lives in Los Angeles.
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7/11/2018 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 25 seconds
Episode 531 — Bethany C. Morrow
Brad Listi talks with Bethany C. Morrow, author of the debut novel MEM (Unnamed Press). A California native, Morrow graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz with a BA in Sociology. Following undergrad, she studied Clinical Psychological Research at the University of Wales, Bangor, in Great Britain before returning to North America to focus on her literary work.
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7/4/2018 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 34 seconds
Episode 530 — Ruth Ozeki
Brad Listi talks with Ruth Ozeki—author, filmmaker, and Zen Buddhist priest. Her most recent novel, A TALE FOR THE TIME BEING (2013), won the LA Times Book Prize and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her other novels include "My Year of Meats" and "All Over Creation." In 2016, she published a work of personal nonfiction called "The Face: A Time Code." Her film "Halving the Bones" appeared on PBS. She lives in British Columbia and teaches at Smith College
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7/1/2018 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 54 seconds
Episode 529 — Poe Ballantine
Brad Listi talks with Poe Ballantine, author of the novel WHIRLAWAY (Hawthorne Books). He currently lives in Chadron, Nebraska. His work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Sun, Kenyon Review, and The Coal City Review. In addition to garnering numerous Pushcart and O. Henry nominations, Mr. Ballantine’s work has been included in the anthologies The Best American Short Stories 1998 and The Best American Essays 2006.
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6/27/2018 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 39 seconds
Episode 528 — Jamel Brinkley
Brad Listi talks with Jamel Brinkley, author of the story collection A LUCKY MAN (Graywolf Press). Brinkley's fiction has appeared, or is forthcoming, in The Best American Short Stories 2018, A Public Space, Ploughshares, Gulf Coast, The Threepenny Review, Glimmer Train, American Short Fiction, Epiphany, and LitMag. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he will be a 2018-2020 Wallace Stegner Fellow in Fiction at Stanford University beginning this fall.
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6/20/2018 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 6 seconds
Episode 527 — Chelsea Hodson
Brad Listi talks with Chelsea Hodson, author of the essay collection TONIGHT I'M SOMEONE ELSE (Henry Holt) and a chapbook called "Pity the Animal." She is a graduate of the MFA program at Bennington College and has been awarded fellowships from MacDowell Colony and PEN Center USA Emerging Voices. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Frieze Magazine, Black Warrior Review, The Lifted Brow, Fanzine, Hobart, and elsewhere. She teaches at Catapult in New York and at Mors Tua Vita Mea in Rome.
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6/13/2018 • 1 hour, 35 minutes, 16 seconds
Re-post: Episode 238 — Jennifer Michael Hecht
A re-posting of this December 29, 2013 conversation between Brad Listi and Jennifer Michael Hecht, author STAY: A HISTORY OF SUICIDE AND THE ARGUMENTS AGAINST IT. Hecht is a poet, historian, and commentator. Her other books include the bestseller "Doubt: A History," "The Happiness Myth," and "The End of the Soul: Scientific Modernity, Atheism, and Anthropology."
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6/8/2018 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 26 seconds
Episode 526 — Aja Gabel
Brad Listi talks with Aja Gabel, author of the debut novel THE ENSEMBLE (Riverhead Books). Gabel's short fiction can be found in New England Review, New Ohio Review, Glimmer Train, BOMB, and elsewhere. She has taught fiction, non-fiction, and literature at the University of Virginia, the University of Houston, Sweet Briar College, and Pacific University, as well as at undergraduate creative writing conferences and community workshop organizations. She lives in Los Angeles with her dog, Bear.
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6/6/2018 • 1 hour, 10 minutes, 8 seconds
Episode 525 — Jonathan Evison
Brad Listi talks with Jonathan Evison, bestselling author of the novel LAWN BOY (Algonquin Books). Evison is the author of four previous novels, including All About Lulu, West of Here, The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving, and This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance! He lives with his wife and family in Washington State.
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6/3/2018 • 1 hour, 24 minutes, 47 seconds
Episode 524 — Michelle Dean
Brad Listi talks with Michelle Dean, author of SHARP: THE WOMEN WHO MADE AN ART OF HAVING AN OPINION (Grove Press). Dean is a journalist, critic, and the recipient of the National Book Critics Circle’s 2016 Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing. A contributing editor at the New Republic, she has written for the New Yorker, Nation, New York Times Magazine, Slate, New York Magazine, Elle, Harper’s, and BuzzFeed. She lives in Los Angeles.
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5/30/2018 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 19 seconds
Episode 523 — Adrian Todd Zuniga
Brad Listi talks with Adrian Todd Zuniga, author of the debut novel COLLISION THEORY (Rare Bird Books). Zuniga the host/creator/CCO of Literary Death Match (now featured in over 60 cities worldwide) and host of LDM Book Report on YouTube. A WGA Award-nominated screenwriter, he co-wrote Madden NFL 18’s interactive movie Longshot (EA Sports). His short fiction has been featured in Gopher Illustrated and Stymie, and online at Lost Magazine and McSweeney’s. He lives between London and Los Angeles.
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5/27/2018 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 12 seconds
Episode 522 — Sloane Crosley
Brad Listi talks with Sloane Crosley, author of the essay collection LOOK ALIVE OUT THERE (MCD Books). Crosley's other books include the bestselling essay collections "I Was Told There’d Be Cake," a finalist for The Thurber Prize, "How Did You Get This Number," and the novel "The Clasp." Her work has appeared in Esquire, Elle, GQ, Vogue, The New York Times Book Review, The Guardian, NY Magazine, McSweeney's, The Believer, Vice and on NPR. She lives in Manhattan.
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5/23/2018 • 1 hour, 29 minutes, 50 seconds
Episode 521 — Tao Lin
Brad Listi talks with Tao Lin, author of TRIP: PSYCHEDELICS, ALIENATION, AND CHANGE (Vintage). Lin's other books include Taipei (2013), Richard Yates (2010), Shoplifting from American Apparel (2009), cognitive-behavioral therapy (2008), Eeeee Eee Eeee (2007), Bed (2007), & you are a little bit happier than i am (2006). He is also the author of Selected Tweets (2015) with Mira Gonzalez. He is the founder and editor of Muumuu House and lives in New York City (but is probably moving to Hawaii).
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5/20/2018 • 1 hour, 30 minutes, 31 seconds
Episode 520 — Jonathan Ames
Brad Listi talks with Jonathan Ames, author of the novel YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE (Pushkin Press), now a major motion picture starring Joaquin Phoenix. Ames' other books include the novels I Pass Like Night, The Extra Man, Wake Up, Sir!, and the essay collections My Less Than Secret Life, I Love You More Than You Know, and The Double Life is Twice As Good. Ames is also the creator of two television shows: Bored to Death (HBO, 2009-2011) and Blunt Talk (STARZ, 2015-2016). He lives in Los Angeles.
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5/16/2018 • 1 hour, 24 minutes, 32 seconds
Episode 519 — Melissa Broder
Brad Listi talks with Melissa Broder, whose debut novel THE PISCES is available now from Hogarth Press. Broder is the author of four poetry collections, including LAST SEXT (Tin House, 2016), and the essay collection SO SAD TODAY (Grand Central, 2016). She writes the @sosadtoday Twitter feed, the So Sad Today column for VICE, the horoscopes for Lenny Letter, and the Beauty and Death column at Elle.com. She lives with her husband and her dog Pickle in Los Angeles.
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5/9/2018 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 31 seconds
Episode 518 — Susan Henderson
Brad Listi talks with Susan Henderson, author of the novel THE FLICKER OF OLD DREAMS (Harper Perennial). Henderson is a five-time Pushcart Prize nominee and the recipient of an Academy of American Poets award. Her debut novel, UP FROM THE BLUE, was published in 2010, and shorter work has been published in a number of anthologies, magazines, and newspapers. She lives in New York and blogs at the writer support group, LitPark.com.
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5/6/2018 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 25 seconds
Episode 517 — Lauren Grodstein
Brad Listi talks with Lauren Grodstein, author of the novel OUR SHORT HISTORY, available now from Algonquin Books. Grodstein is the author of four other novels, including the New York Times bestseller "A Friend of the Family" and the Washington Post Book of the Year "The Explanation for Everything." She directs the MFA Program at Rutgers University-Camden and lives in New Jersey with her husband, children, and dog.
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5/2/2018 • 1 hour, 7 minutes, 8 seconds
Episode 516 — Sarah Kendzior
Brad Listi talks with Sarah Kendzior, author of the essay collection THE VIEW FROM FLYOVER COUNTRY: DISPATCHES FROM THE FORGOTTEN AMERICA (Flatiron Books). A frequent contributor to Fast Company, NBC News, and other national outlets, she has been covering the transformation of the US under the Trump administration, writing on authoritarian tactics, kleptocracy, racism and xenophobia, media, voting rights, and the Russian interference case, among other topics. She lives in St. Louis.
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4/25/2018 • 1 hour, 22 minutes, 38 seconds
Episode 515 — Natalia Sylvester
Brad Listi talks with Natalia Sylvester, author of the novel EVERYONE KNOWS YOU GO HOME (Little A Books). Sylvester was born in Lima, Peru and came to the U.S. at age four. She was raised in Florida and Texas. Her debut novel CHASING THE SUN was named the Best Debut Book of 2014 by Latinidad and was chosen as a Book of the Month by the National Latino Book Club. A former magazine editor, she now works as a freelance writer in Texas and is a faculty member of the low-res MFA program at Regis University.
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4/25/2018 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 34 seconds
Episode 514 — Elle Nash
Brad Listi talks with Elle Nash, author of the novel ANIMALS EAT EACH OTHER (Dzanc Books). It is the official April pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club. Nash's other works include the chapbooks AVOKA (Ghost City Press, 2017) and i can remember the meaning of every tarot card but i can’t remember what i texted you last night (Nostrovia Press, 2016). She is a founding editor at Witch Craft Magazine, a fiction editor at Hobart Pulp, and lives in the Ozarks with her husband and their dog.
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4/22/2018 • 1 hour, 8 minutes, 17 seconds
Episode 513 — Steve Almond
Brad Listi talks with Steve Almond, author of BAD STORIES: WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED TO OUR COUNTRY? (Red Hen Press). Almond is the author of nine books of fiction and nonfiction, including the New York Times bestsellers CANDYFREAK and AGAINST FOOTBALL. He also hosts the New York Times Dear Sugars podcast with his pal Cheryl Strayed. His short stories have been anthologized widely, and he has been known to publish crazy DIY books. He lives in Massachusetts.
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4/18/2018 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 46 seconds
Episode 512 — Shauna Barbosa
Brad Listi talks with Shauna Barbosa, author of the poetry collection CAPE VERDEAN BLUES (University of Pittsburgh Press). Barbosa's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Boulevard, Lit Hub, Lenny Letter, Awl, Colorado Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Foundry, Wildness, The Atlas Review, PANK, and others. She is a Disquiet International Luso-American fellow and received her MFA from Bennington College in Vermont. She currently resides in Los Angeles, California.
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4/11/2018 • 1 hour, 22 minutes, 27 seconds
Episode 511 — Jami Attenberg
Brad Listi talks with bestselling author Jami Attenberg, whose latest novel, ALL GROWN UP, is now available in trade paperback from Mariner Books. Attenberg has written about sex, technology, design, books, television, and urban life for The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Lenny Letter and others. Her other books include INSTANT LOVE, THE KEPT MAN, THE MELTING SEASON, THE MIDDLESTEINS, and SAINT MAZIE. She lives in New Orleans.
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4/4/2018 • 1 hour, 24 minutes
Episode 510 — Will Mackin
Brad Listi talks with Will Mackin, author of the story collection BRING OUT THE DOG, available from Random House. Mackin is a veteran of the U.S. Navy His work has appeared in The New Yorker, GQ, and The New York Times Magazine. His story “Kattekoppen” was selected by Jennifer Egan for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories 2014, and his essay about being an extra on Breaking Bad, published in GQ, was nominated for an American Society of Magazine Editors “Ellie” award. He lives in New
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3/28/2018 • 1 hour, 35 minutes, 25 seconds
Episode 509 — Lynne Tillman
Brad Listi talks with Lynne Tillman, author of the novel MEN AND APPARITIONS, available from Soft Skull Press. Her novels include Haunted Houses; Motion Sickness; Cast in Doubt; No Lease on Life, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and American Genius, A Comedy. Her nonfiction books include The Velvet Years: Warhol’s Factory 1965–1967; and What Would Lynne Tillman Do?, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism. She lives in New York.
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3/21/2018 • 1 hour, 24 minutes, 32 seconds
Episode 508 — Troy James Weaver
Brad Listi talks with Troy James Weaver, author of the novel TEMPORAL, available now from Disorder Press. Weaver is the author of three other books—WITCHITA STORIES, MARIGOLD, and VISIONS. He lives in Kansas, where he works as a florist.
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3/14/2018 • 1 hour, 23 minutes, 24 seconds
Episode 507 — Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi
Brad Listi talks with Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, author of the novel CALL ME ZEBRA (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). Oloomi is the winner of a 2015 Whiting Writers' Award, a National Book Foundation "5 Under 35" honoree, the recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship, and a Fulbright Fellowship in Fiction to Catalonia, Spain. She currently teaches in the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing at the University of Notre Dame and splits her time between South Bend, Indiana and Florence, Italy.
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3/7/2018 • 1 hour, 20 minutes, 54 seconds
Episode 506 — Elif Batuman
Brad Listi talks with Elif Batuman, author of the bestselling debut novel THE IDIOT, available now in trade paperback from Penguin. Batuman's first book, THE POSSESSED (2010), a collection of comic interconnected essays about the pursuit of Russian literature, was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award. She has been a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine since 2010 and holds a PhD in comparative (mostly Russian) literature from Stanford University.
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2/28/2018 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 49 seconds
Episode 505 — Willy Vlautin
Brad Listi talks with Willy Vlautin, author of the novel DON'T SKIP OUT ON ME (Harper Perennial). It is the official February pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club. Born and raised in Reno, Nevada, Vlautin Vlautin has published four other novels: THE MOTEL LIFE (2007), NORTHLINE (2008), LEAN ON PETE (2010), and THE FREE (2014). Otherppl with Brad Listi is a free weekly podcast featuring in-depth conversations with today's leading writers.
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2/21/2018 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 37 seconds
Episode 504 — Rachel Lyon
Brad Listi talks with Rachel Lyon, author of the debut novel SELF-PORTRAIT WITH BOY (Scribner). Lyon teaches for the Sackett Street Writers Workshop, Catapult, Slice, and elsewhere, and offers private writing coaching. Most weeks she sends out a free writing/thinking prompts newsletter. She is a cofounder of the monthly reading series Ditmas Lit. Otherppl with Brad Listi is a free weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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2/14/2018 • 1 hour, 20 minutes, 31 seconds
Episode 503 — Liska Jacobs
Brad Listi talks with Liska Jacobs, author of the debut novel CATALINA, available now from MCD/FSG. Jacobs holds an MFA from the University of California, Riverside. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in The Rumpus, Los Angeles Review of Books, Literary Hub, The Millions, and The Hairpin, among other publications. Otherppl with Brad Listi is a free weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading authors.
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2/7/2018 • 1 hour, 25 minutes, 11 seconds
Episode 502 — Debbie Graber
Brad Listi talks with Debbie Graber, author of KEVIN KRAMER STARTS ON MONDAY, available now from Unnamed Press. Graber's fiction has appeared in Harpers, Zyzzyva, Hobart, The Nervous Breakdown and Word Riot, among other journals. She received an MFA from the University of California, Riverside. Otherppl with Brad Listi is a free weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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1/31/2018 • 1 hour, 23 minutes, 49 seconds
Episode 501 — Tim Wirkus
Brad Listi talks with Tim Wirkus, author of the novel THE INFINITE FUTURE (Penguin Press). Wirkus is the author of one previous novel, CITY OF BRICK AND SHADOW (Tyrus Books, 2014), which was a finalist for the Shamus Award and the winner of the Association for Mormon Letters Best Novel Award. He’s currently a doctoral candidate in the University of Southern California’s Creative Writing and Literature Program. Otherppl is a free weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading auth
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1/24/2018 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 52 seconds
Episode 500 — Clay Byars
Brad Listi talks with Clay Byars, author of the memoir WILL & I, available from FSG Originals. Byars attended The School of Letters at Sewanee, Tennessee. His work has appeared in the Paris Review, the Oxford American, and Narrative Magazine, where he serves as a consulting editor. He lives on a farm in Alabama.
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1/17/2018 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 4 seconds
Episode 499 — Lauren Haldeman
Brad Listi talks with Lauren Haldeman, author of the poetry collection INSTEAD OF DYING (Center for Literary Publishing at Colorado State University). It is the winner of the Colorado Prize for Poetry. Haldeman is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop. Her other books include CALENDAY (Rescue Press, 2014) and THE ECCENTRICITY IS ZERO (Digraph Press, 2014). A finalist for the Walt Whitman Award and National Poetry Series, her work has appeared in Tin House, Fence, the Iowa Review, and the Rumpus.
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1/10/2018 • 2 hours, 44 seconds
Goodbye 2017 with Adam & Gene
Brad Listi, Adam Greenfield, and Gene Morgan gather in the studio to reflect on 2017 and eat some homemade bread, trying hard to end the year on a high note. Adam is the author of the novel CIRCA, due out in August 2018, and Gene is the founder and CEO of the literary site HTMLGiant.
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12/29/2017 • 55 minutes, 58 seconds
Episode 498 — Daniel A. Hoyt
Brad Listi talks with Daniel A. Hoyt, author of the novel THIS BOOK IS NOT FOR YOU, available from Dzanc Books. It is the recipient of the Dzanc Fiction Prize and the official December pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club. Hoyt's first short story collection, THEN WE SAW THE FLAMES, won the 2008 Juniper Prize for Fiction. He teaches creative writing, mainly fiction, and lit classes, at Kansas State University.
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12/20/2017 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 52 seconds
Episode 497 — Patty Schemel and Erin Hosier
Brad Listi talks with Patty Schemel and Erin Hosier. Schemel was the drummer for the rock band Hole from 1992-98 and has just published a memoir called HIT SO HARD, available now from Da Capo Press. Hosier is a literary agent at Dunow, Carlson, and Lerner; she helped shepherd the book to publication. (Full disclosure: She is also Brad Listi's literary agent.)
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12/13/2017 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 22 seconds
Episode 496 — Bud Smith
Brad Listi talks with author Bud Smith about his new memoir WORK, available from Civil Coping Mechanisms. Smith is a writer from New Jersey who also works heavy construction. His other books include DUST BUNNY CITY (Disorder Press), F250 (Piscataway House), TOLLBOOTH (Piscataway House), EVERYTHING NEON (Marginalia), OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT (Unknown Press), and CALM FACE (House of Vlad). This is Bud's second time on the program. He first appeared in Episode 373, on July 29, 2015.
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12/6/2017 • 1 hour, 22 minutes, 33 seconds
Episode 495 — Ivy Pochoda
Brad Listi talks with Ivy Pochoda, author of the novel WONDER VALLEY (Ecco Press). Her previous books include THE ART OF DISAPPEARING and the critically acclaimed VISITATION STREET (Ecco / Dennis Lehane Books), which was chosen as an Amazon Best Book of the Month, Amazon Best Book of 2013, and a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. A former world ranked squash player, Pochoda is originally from Brooklyn and now lives in Los Angeles with her daughter Loretta and husband Justin Nowell.
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11/29/2017 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 26 seconds
Episode 494 — Panio Gianopoulos
Brad Listi talks with Panio Gianopoulos, author of the story collection HOW TO GET INTO OUR HOUSE AND WHERE WE KEEP THE MONEY, available now from Four Way Books. Gianopoulos is the author of the novella A FAMILIAR BEAST. His stories, essays, and poetry have appeared in Tin House, Northwest Review, Salon, The Rattling Wall, Chicago Quarterly Review, Big Fiction, The Brooklyn Rail, Catamaran Literary Reader, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. He lives in New York with his wife and three children.
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11/26/2017 • 1 hour, 8 minutes, 55 seconds
Episode 493 — Emily Geminder
Brad Listi talks with Emily Geminder, author of DEAD GIRLS AND OTHER STORIES, winner of the Dzanc Books Short Story Prize. Geminder's work has appeared or is forthcoming in American Short Fiction, Conjunctions, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Prairie Schooner, Tin House, and elsewhere. The recipient of an AWP Intro Journals Award, a Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award, and a Pushcart Special Mention, she previously worked as a journalist in New York and Cambodia. She lives in Los Angeles.
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11/22/2017 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 23 seconds
Episode 492 — Elizabeth Ellen
Brad Listi talks with Elizabeth Ellen, author of the story collection SAUL STORIES (Short Flight / Long Drive Books). Earlier this year, she published a novel called PERSONA, and her poetry collection, ELIZABETH ELLEN, is coming soon. Ellen's other books include "Before You She Was a Pit Bull" (Future Tense), "Sixteen Miles Outside of Phoenix" (Rose Metal Press) and "Fast Machine" (Short Flight/Long Drive Books). She lives in Michigan.
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11/15/2017 • 1 hour, 40 minutes, 48 seconds
Episode 491 — Carmen Maria Machado
Brad Listi talks with Carmen Maria Machado, author of the story collection HER BODY AND OTHER PARTIES, available now from Graywolf Press. It is a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award and the Kirkus Prize, and the winner of the Bard Fiction Prize. Her memoir "House in Indiana" is forthcoming in 2019 from Graywolf Press. Machado holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and lives in Philadelphia with her wife.
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11/8/2017 • 1 hour, 21 minutes, 12 seconds
Episode 490 — Jarret Middleton
Brad Listi talks with Jarret Middleton, author of the debut novel DARKANSAS, available now from Dzanc Books. It is the official November selection of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club. Middleton's other book is a novella entitled "An Dantomine Eerly." He was the founding editor of Dark Coast Press and the classics library Pharos Editions, an imprint of Counterpoint/Soft Skull Press. His fiction, essays, and reviews have appeared in a number of online and print publications. He lives in Seattle, WA.
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11/1/2017 • 1 hour, 45 minutes, 37 seconds
Episode 489 — Will Dowd
Brad Listi talks with Will Dowd, author of the essay collection AREAS OF FOG, due out from Etruscan Press on November 14, 2017. Dowd is a writer and artist from the Boston area. His work has appeared in Post Road Magazine, The Rialto, NPR.org, and elsewhere. Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. All episodes free.
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10/25/2017 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 23 seconds
Episode 488 — Tod Goldberg
Brad Listi talks with Tod Goldberg, New York Times bestselling novelist and author of GANGSTER NATION, available now from Counterpoint Press. Goldberg's other books include Gangsterland (Counterpoint), a finalist for the Hammett Prize, and Living Dead Girl (Soho Press), a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He is the director of the Low Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts at the University of California, Riverside.
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10/18/2017 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 17 seconds
Episode 487 — Vanessa Grigoriadis
Brad Listi talks with Vanessa Grigoriadis, author of BLURRED LINES: RETHINKING SEX, POWER, & CONSENT ON CAMPUS, available now from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. It is the official October pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club. Grigoriadis is a contributing editor at the New York Times Magazine and Vanity Fair, specializing in pop culture, youth movements, and crime reporting. She is a National Magazine Award winner and has been featured on MSNBC, CNN, Dateline, and Investigation/Discovery shows.
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10/15/2017 • 1 hour, 39 minutes, 29 seconds
Episode 486 — Chelsea Martin
Brad Listi talks with Chelsea Martin, author of the essay collection CACA DOLCE: ESSAYS FROM A LOWBROW LIFE, available now from Soft Skull Press. Martin's other books include 'Even Though I Don’t Miss You', which was named one of the Best Indie Books of 2013 by Dazed magazine, and the novel 'Mickey.' Her work has appeared in Buzzfeed, Hobart, Lenny Letter, and Vice, and chosen as a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2016. She is a comic artist and illustrator and currently lives in Washington State.
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10/11/2017 • 1 hour, 25 minutes, 58 seconds
Episode 485 — Ayobami Adebayo
Brad Listi talks with Ayobami Adebayo, author of the debut novel STAY WITH ME, available now from Knopf. Her stories have appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies, and she has worked as an editor for Saraba magazine since 2009. She has received fellowships and residencies from Ledig House, Sinthian Cultural Centre, Hedgebrook, Ox-bow School of Arts, Ebedi Hills and Siena Art Institute. She was born in Lagos, Nigeria.
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10/4/2017 • 1 hour, 29 minutes, 59 seconds
Episode 484 — Karl Geary
Brad Listi talks with Karl Geary, author of the debut novel MONTPELIER PARADE, available from Catapult. Geary was born in Dublin, and moved to New York City at age sixteen. He cofounded two East Village institutions: the music venue Sin-é, and later the Scratcher. He has worked as a scriptwriter (Coney Island Baby) and an actor (Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet; Ken Loach’s Jimmy’s Hall), and has adapted and directed Dorothy Parker’s story “You Were Perfectly Fine” for the screen. He lives in Glasgow
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9/27/2017 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 28 seconds
Episode 483 — Lisa Lucas
Brad Listi talks with Lisa Lucas, Executive Director of the National Book Foundation. Prior to joining the Foundation, she served as the Publisher of Guernica, a non-profit online magazine focusing on writing that explores the intersection of art and politics with an international and diverse focus. She has also served as Director of Education at the Tribeca Film Institute, and on the development team at Steppenwolf Theatre Company. This year's National Book Awards will be held on November 15th in New York.
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9/24/2017 • 1 hour, 9 minutes, 1 second
Episode 482 — Chiara Barzini
Brad Listi talks with Chiara Barzini, author of the debut novel THINGS THAT HAPPENED BEFORE THE EARTHQUAKE, available from Doubleday. Barzini is a screen, fiction, and journalism writer who was born in Rome and raised as a teenager in Los Angeles, where she became obsessed with canyons, quartz, and the Grateful Dead. She now lives in Rome with her partner Luca, their children Sebastiano and Anita, two cats, and one dog.
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9/20/2017 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 11 seconds
Episode 481 — Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
Brad Listi talks with Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, author of the debut novel A KIND OF FREEDOM, available from Counterpoint Press. It was recently long-listed for the 2017 National Book Award for Fiction. Wilkerson studied creative writing at Dartmouth and law at UC Berkeley. She was a recipient of the Lombard fellowship and spent a year in the Dominican Republic working for a civil rights organization. She lives in the Bay Area, California.
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9/13/2017 • 1 hour, 25 minutes, 19 seconds
Episode 480 — Alex Gilvarry
Brad Listi talks with Alex Gilvarry, author of the novel EASTMAN WAS HERE, available from Viking. It is the official September pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club. Gilvarry is a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 nominee and he has received fellowships from the Harry Ransom Center and the Normal Mailer Center. Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. All episodes are free.
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9/6/2017 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 59 seconds
Episode 479 — Ben Loory
Brad Listi talks with Ben Loory, author of the new story collection TALES OF FALLING AND FLYING, available from Penguin. Loory has appeared 'This American Life' and other radio programs, and first guested on this podcast in Episode 29 on December 25, 2011. Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. All episodes are free.
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8/30/2017 • 1 hour, 12 minutes, 42 seconds
Episode 478 — Jared Yates Sexton
Brad Listi talks with Jared Yates Sexton, author of the new book THE PEOPLE ARE GOING TO RISE LIKE THE WATERS UPON YOUR SHORE, available from Counterpoint Press. Sexton is a writer, academic, and political correspondent whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic, Salon, and literary journals around the world. Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. All episodes are free.
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8/23/2017 • 1 hour, 32 minutes, 49 seconds
Episode 477 — Matthew Zapruder
Brad Listi talks with Matthew Zapruder, author of the new book WHY POETRY, available from Ecco. Zapruder is an award-winning poet, editor, translator, and professor who from 2016-17 held the annually rotating position of Editor of the Poetry Column for New York Times Magazine. Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. All episodes are free.
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8/9/2017 • 1 hour, 30 minutes, 2 seconds
Episode 476 — Jarett Kobek
Brad Listi talks with Jarett Kobek, author of the novels THE FUTURE WON'T BE LONG (Viking Press) and I HATE THE INTERNET (We Heard You Like Books). The Otherppl with Brad Listi podcast is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. All episodes are free.
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8/2/2017 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 24 seconds
Episode 475 — Fiona Helmsley
Fiona Helmsley is the guest. Her new essay collection, Girls Gone Old, is available from We Heard You Like Books. In today's monologue, I talk about skywriting.
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7/26/2017 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 38 seconds
Episode 474 — Siel Ju
Siel Ju is the guest. Her new novel-in-stories, Cake Time, is available from Red Hen Press. In today's monologue, I talk about some recent celebrity interactions.
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7/19/2017 • 1 hour, 52 minutes, 30 seconds
Episode 473 — Scott McClanahan
Scott McClanahan is the guest. His new novel The Sarah Book is now available from Tyrant Books. It is the official July pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club. This is Scott's second appearance on the program. He was my guest in Episode 87 on July 15, 2012. In today's monologue, I talk about six years of Otherppl and I also talk about not talking about what I tend to talk about.
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7/12/2017 • 2 hours, 35 minutes, 23 seconds
Episode 472 — Julia Fierro
Julia Fierro is the guest. Her new novel, The Gypsy Moth Summer, is available now from St. Martin's Press. This is Julia's second time on the program. She first appeared in Episode 292 on July 6, 2014. In today's monologue, I discuss eating during interviews, politics, and health care.
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6/28/2017 • 1 hour, 22 minutes, 6 seconds
Episode 471 — Nathan Hill
Nathan Hill is the guest. His debut novel The Nix is now available in trade paperback from Vintage. In today's monologue, I read some listener mail and talk about getting a massage.
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6/21/2017 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 20 seconds
Episode 470 — Jonathan Safran Foer
Jonathan Safran Foer is the guest. His latest novel, Here I Am, is available now in trade paperback from Picador. It is the official June selection of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club. In today's monologue, I read more listener mail and discuss the role of political dialogue on the show.
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6/14/2017 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 25 seconds
Episode 469 — Paula Priamos
Paula Priamos is the guest. Her new novel, Inside V, is now available from Rare Bird Books. In today's monologue, I talk about Trump and answer some mail.
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6/7/2017 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 54 seconds
Episode 468 — Charmaine Craig
Charmaine Craig is the guest. Her new novel, Miss Burma, is available now from Grove Press. In today's monologue, I talk about the apparent death of my novel.
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5/31/2017 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 15 seconds
Episode 467 — Amelia Gray
Amelia Gray is the guest. Her new novel Isadora is available now from Farrar, Straus, & Giroux. In today's monologue, I eulogize my dog Walter.
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5/24/2017 • 1 hour, 53 minutes, 25 seconds
Episode 466 — Elizabeth L. Silver
Elizabeth L. Silver is the guest. Her new memoir, The Tincture of Time, is available now from Penguin. In today's monologue—which is long—I talk about the Trump presidency.
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5/17/2017 • 1 hour, 41 minutes, 13 seconds
Episode 465 — Erika Carter
Erika Carter is the guest. Her debut novel Lucky You is available now from Counterpoint. In today's monologue, I talk about the Republican health care bill.
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5/10/2017 • 1 hour, 25 minutes, 4 seconds
Episode 464 — Brian McGreevy
Brian McGreevy is the guest. His new novel, The Lights, is available from Rare Bird Books. Brian is also a co-creator of the AMC series The Son, based on the bestselling novel by Philipp Meyer. In today's monologue, I read listener mail and talk about peak performance culture.
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5/3/2017 • 1 hour, 22 minutes, 55 seconds
Episode 463 — Annabelle Gurwitch
Annabelle Gurwitch is the guest. Her new book, Wherever You Go, There They Are: Stories About My Family You Might Relate To, is available now from Blue Rider Press. In today's monologue, I tell a tragic, over-long story involving spinning class, code names, spelling, and grim humiliation.
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4/26/2017 • 1 hour, 38 minutes, 6 seconds
Episode 462 — Lidia Yuknavitch
Lidia Yuknavitch is the guest. Her new novel, The Book of Joan, is available now from Harper. It is the official April selection of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club. This is Lidia's third appearance on the podcast. She first appeared on August 5, 2012, in Episode 93, and again on July 15, 2015, in Episode 370. All episodes can be streamed free of charge. In today's monologue, I read more listener mail.
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4/19/2017 • 1 hour, 22 minutes, 13 seconds
Episode 461 — Michael Finkel
Michael Finkel is the guest. He is the author of True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa, which was made into a film starring Jonah Hill and James Franco. His latest book is called The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit, available now from Knopf. In today's monologue, I talk briefly about becoming a hermit, and then I respond to some listener mail.
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4/12/2017 • 1 hour, 23 minutes, 9 seconds
Episode 460 — Melissa Febos
Melissa Febos is the guest. Her new memoir is called Abandon Me, available now from Bloomsbury. This is Melissa's second appearance on the program. She was my guest in Episode 2, which first aired on September 22, 2011. In today's monologue, I read listener mail. The topic is drinking and writing.
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4/5/2017 • 1 hour, 22 minutes, 10 seconds
Episode 459 — Ron Currie
Ron Currie is the guest. His new novel, The One-Eyed Man, is available now from Viking. It is the official March selection of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club. In today's monologue, I respond to listener mail.
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3/29/2017 • 1 hour, 24 minutes, 14 seconds
Episode 458 — Abigail Ulman
Abigail Ulman is the guest. Her debut story collection, Hot Little Hands, is now available from Spiegel & Grau. In today's monologue, I talk about writing to and calling Republicans, and pouring my heart out to Lachlan Murdoch of Fox News.
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3/22/2017 • 1 hour, 35 minutes, 8 seconds
Episode 457 — Kristin Dombek
Kristin Dombek is the guest. Her new book, The Selfishness of Others: An Essay on the Fear of Narcissism, is available now from FSG Originals. In today's monologue, I talk about my decision to open up the archive and make the Otherppl podcast completely free of charge.
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3/15/2017 • 1 hour, 27 minutes, 50 seconds
Episode 456 — David Berenbaum
David Berenbaum is the guest. He is an accomplished screenwriter whose credits include the Christmas classic Elf, directed by Jon Favreau and starring Will Ferrell. In today's monologue, I read some listener mail.
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3/8/2017 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 7 seconds
Episode 455 — Min Jin Lee
Min Jin Lee is the guest. Her new novel, Pachinko, is available now from Grand Central Publishing. It is the official February pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club. In today's monologue, I basically just get right to the interview. But I talk a little bit about the Academy Awards at the end of the show.
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3/1/2017 • 1 hour, 9 minutes, 44 seconds
Episode 454 — David Shields
David Shields is the guest. His new book, Other People: Takes and Mistakes, is available now from Knopf. David last appeared on this program on Episode 26, in December 2011. In today's monologue, I talk about possibly starting a blog.
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2/22/2017 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 24 seconds
Episode 453 — Natashia Deón
Natashia Deón is the guest. Her debut novel is called Grace. It is available now from Counterpoint Press. In today's monologue, I offer outtakes from a failed attempt at a monologue. �
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2/15/2017 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 57 seconds
Episode 452 — Sarah Manguso
�Sarah Manguso is the guest. Her new book, 300 Arguments, is available now from Graywolf Press. In today's monologue, I basically just get right to the interview.
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2/8/2017 • 1 hour, 23 minutes, 38 seconds
Episode 451 — Jonathan Herman
Jonathan Herman is the guest. He is an Oscar-nominated screenwriter of the film Straight Outta Compton. In today's monologue, I talk about my new email newsletter and read some reactions from subscribers��.
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2/1/2017 • 1 hour, 40 minutes, 41 seconds
Episode 450 — Tom McAllister
Tom McAllister�� is the guest. His debut novel The Young Widower's Handbook is available now from Algonquin Books. It is the official January pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club. In today's monologue, I pay tribute to Mark Baumer.
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1/25/2017 • 1 hour, 23 minutes, 18 seconds
Episode 449 — Lindsey Lee Johnson
Lindsey Lee Johnson is the guest. Her debut novel, The Most Dangerous Place on Earth, is available now from Random House. In today's monologue, I read some listener mail in response to last week's conversation with Roxane Gay.
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1/18/2017 • 1 hour, 42 minutes, 54 seconds
Episode 448 — Roxane Gay
Roxane Gay is the guest. Her new story collection, Difficult Women, is available now from Grove Press. This is Roxane's second appearance on the podcast. She was my guest on Episode 34, which you can listen to via Otherppl Premium. In today's monologue, I read listener mail.
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1/11/2017 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 4 seconds
Episode 447 — Vanessa Hua
Vanessa Hua is the guest. Her debut story collection, Deceit and Other Possibilities, is available now from Willow Press. In today's monologue, I talk about the holidays, Christmas presents, and New Year's resolutions.
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1/4/2017 • 1 hour, 25 minutes, 45 seconds
Episode 446 — Masande Ntshanga
Masande Ntshanga is the guest. His debut novel The Reactive is now available in the United States from Two Dollar Radio. It is the official December pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club. In today's monologue, I get right to the interview. Happy New Year, everybody!
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12/28/2016 • 1 hour, 1 minute, 10 seconds
Episode 445 — Holiday Spectacular
This is the second annual Holiday Spectacular. The guests are Melissa Broder, Gene and Jenny Schlief Morgan, Amelia Gray, Lee Shipman, Ben Loory, Rich Ferguson, and Adam Greenfield. Recorded on December 10, 2016. Get the free Otherppl app. Listen via iTunes. Support the show at Patreon. Happy holidays, everyone. I should be back next week with the final episode of the year. Stay tuned...
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12/22/2016 • 42 minutes, 39 seconds
Episode 444 — The Oracle of Los Angeles
The Oracle of Los Angeles is the guest. Her name is Amanda Yates Garcia. She is an artist, writer, witch, healer, and oracle. Recent performance rituals include Capitalism Exorcism at Human Resources and Devouring Patriarchy at the Women’s Center for Creative Work. Other venues to feature her work include Side Street Projects, REDCAT, Public Fiction, Highways Performance Space, and the Laband and Ben Maltz galleries among others. Her writing has been featured in publications such as CARLA, Black Clock, the Rough Magickanthology, Entropy, Synema Publikationen (Cinema Magazine), and WITCH. Amanda hosts her bi-monthly show The Oracle Hour on KCHUNG radio; teaches the Magical Praxis monthly mystery school; and performs private rites of healing and empowerment at her magical studio in West Adams. Please support this podcast at http://patreon.com/otherpplpod In today's monologue, I basically just get right to the main event.
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12/21/2016 • 1 hour, 54 minutes, 3 seconds
Episode 443 — Jason Diamond
Jason Diamond is the guest. His new memoir Searching for John Hughes is available now from William Morrow. In today's monologue, I talk about the current shit show.
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12/14/2016 • 1 hour, 23 minutes, 19 seconds
Episode 442 — Adam Soldofsky
Adam Soldofsky is the guest. His new poetry collection, Memory Foam, is available now from Disorder Press. In today's monologue, I talk about cold meds and gas lines and no heat and our plumber's fear of heights.
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12/7/2016 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 19 seconds
Episode 441 — Kool A.D.
Kool A.D. is the guest. His new novel OK is available now from Sorry House. In today's monologue, I talk about Kool A.D. and how he describes his own book. And I talk some more at the end of the show too.
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11/30/2016 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 47 seconds
Episode 440 — Sonya Chung
Sonya Chung is the guest. Her new novel The Loved Ones is available now from Relegation Books. It was the official October pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club. In today's monologue, I talk about dystopia and Thanksgiving.
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11/23/2016 • 1 hour, 10 minutes, 36 seconds
Episode 439 — Jade Chang
Jade Chang is the guest. Her debut novel The Wangs vs. the World is available now from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. In today's monologue, I talk about going pro.
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11/16/2016 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 44 seconds
Thoughts on Election 2016
I'm not doing a regular show this week. It's the day after the election and I'm not feeling all that great. It seems wrong to do a show. The only thing on my mind is the election. I don't want a guest of mine to appear this week. It's not fair to the guest. I'll be back with a regular episode next week. For now, and maybe against my better judgment, I'm gonna share my thoughts on what just happened to our country and the world. A little while ago I sat down and thought out loud and talked into the microphone. I tried to think as deeply as I could about what just happened and how best to respond. And I'm sharing it with you here. I hope that's okay.
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11/9/2016 • 43 minutes, 19 seconds
Episode 438 — Michelle Tea
Michelle Tea is the guest. Her new novel, Black Wave, is available now from Feminist Press. In today's monologue, I talk about Halloween.
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11/2/2016 • 1 hour, 24 minutes, 44 seconds
Episode 437 — Meredith Alling
Meredith Alling is the guest. Her debut story collection Sing the Song is available now from Future Tense Books. In today's monologue, I talk briefly about wine.
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10/26/2016 • 1 hour, 12 minutes, 49 seconds
Episode 436 — Wendy C. Ortiz
Wendy C. Ortiz is the guest. Her new book Bruja—a "dreamoir"—is available now from Civil Coping Mechanisms. In today's monologue, I basically just get right to the interview.
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10/19/2016 • 1 hour, 21 minutes, 26 seconds
Episode 435 — Mike Roberts
Mike Roberts is the guest. His debut novel, Cannibals in Love, is available now from FSG Originals. He also wrote the screenplay for the movie Goat, out in theaters now. In today's monologue, I talk about finishing my novel. And the election.
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10/12/2016 • 1 hour, 11 minutes, 33 seconds
Episode 434 — Melissa Yancy
Melissa Yancy is the guest. Her debut story collection, Dog Years, is available now from the University of Pittsburgh Press. In today's monologue, I talk about the good lives and legacies of my Uncle Elmore and my friend Barb.
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10/5/2016 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 59 seconds
Episode 433 — Rich Ferguson
Rich Ferguson is the guest. His debut novel, New Jersey Me, is available now from Rare Bird Books / A Barnacle Book. In today's monologue, I talk about the debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
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9/28/2016 • 1 hour, 10 minutes, 29 seconds
Episode 432 — 5 Years of Otherppl
Today's episode is a bit unorthodox. It's just me talking for an hour. Sorry about that. As most of you know, the podcast has been homeless since June. I've managed to have a guest each week since that time, but this week I finally hit the wall. Couldn't get my shit together. Logistically too difficult. The good news is, I should have a recording space within the next few days. The new home studio is almost done, almost operational. I even got myself some new gear to celebrate the show's 5-year anniversary. So once I get everything set up and moved into the new space, it'll be all systems go. Thanks for bearing with me. And thanks for supporting the show for the past 5 years. Here's to whatever's next. -BL
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9/21/2016 • 59 minutes
Episode 431 — Nicole Dennis-Benn
Nicole Dennis-Benn is the guest. Her debut novel Here Comes the Sun is available now from Liveright. It is the official September pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club. In today's monologue, I talk about my novel.
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9/14/2016 • 1 hour, 8 minutes, 29 seconds
Episode 430 — Garth Risk Hallberg
Garth Risk Hallberg is the guest. His debut novel, City on Fire, is available now in trade paperback from Vintage. In today's monologue, I talk briefly about my weekend trip to Wisconsin.
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9/8/2016 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 14 seconds
Episode 429 — Margaret Wappler
Margaret Wappler is the guest. Her debut novel Neon Green is available now from The Unnamed Press. This is the final conversation recorded in the old garage. In today's monologue, I catch up on listener mail.
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8/31/2016 • 1 hour, 26 minutes, 1 second
Episode 428 — S.J. Watson
S.J. Watson is the guest. His novel Second Life is available now in paperback from Harper. It was the official July pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club. In today's monologue, I talk about recording in a crowded house. And I talk with my daughter, who is about to celebrate her sixth birthday.
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8/24/2016 • 1 hour, 12 minutes, 39 seconds
Episode 427 — Lesley M. M. Blume
Lesley M. M. Blume is the guest. Her new book is called Everybody Behaves Badly: The True Story Behind Hemingway's Masterpiece The Sun Also Rises, available now from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. In today's monologue, I talk about Lesley's book and Ernest Hemingway.
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8/17/2016 • 1 hour, 10 minutes, 39 seconds
Episode 426 — Jonathan Franzen
Jonathan Franzen is the guest. His latest novel, Purity, is available now in trade paperback from Picador. It is the official August selection of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club. In today's monologue, I discuss being in flux. And my dog Walter.
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8/10/2016 • 1 hour, 11 minutes, 55 seconds
Episode 425 — Dorthe Nors
Dorthe Nors is the guest. Her new book, So Much For That Winter, is available now in the United States from Graywolf Press. I had a great time talking with Dorthe. She is, I believe, the first Danish author to guest on the program.
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8/3/2016 • 1 hour, 11 minutes, 26 seconds
Episode 424 — Sloane Crosley
Sloane Crosley is the guest. Her debut novel, The Clasp, is available now in trade paperback from Picador. A great pleasure to have Sloane on the program.
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7/27/2016 • 1 hour, 10 minutes, 9 seconds
Episode 423 — Chuck Klosterman
Chuck Klosterman is the guest. His new book, But What If We're Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past, is available now from Blue Rider Press. So great to have Chuck on the program.
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7/20/2016 • 1 hour, 11 minutes, 44 seconds
Episode 422 — Frances Stroh
Frances Stroh is the guest. Her new memoir, Beer Money, is available now from Harper. In today's monologue, I talk about the logistics of vacationing with my family.
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7/13/2016 • 1 hour, 21 minutes, 42 seconds
Episode 421 — Mike Edison
Mike Edison is the guest. He is the former publisher of High Times magazine and was the editor-in-chief of Screw magazine. He is also a musician and a professional wrestler. His new memoir, You Are a Complete Disappointment, is available now from Sterling Books. Great fun talking with Mike. Also heartbreaking. The title of his memoir also happens to be the last thing his father ever said to him. Brutal. But he has found a kind of peace with it, and he has written this fine memoir. Aside from that, Mike is a person who has really lived some lives. He's authored 28 pornographic novels. Has been a correspondent for Penthouse and Hustler. The professional wrestling. He's in a band. High Times. We talk about all of it. Fasten your seat belts. In today's monologue, I talk about my sense of urgency and the heat of summer.
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7/6/2016 • 1 hour, 10 minutes, 46 seconds
Episode 420 — Max Porter
Max Porter is the guest. His debut novel, Grief is the Thing with Feathers, is the official June pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club. Winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize, it is available now from Graywolf Press. Max and I spoke by telephone. He was at home in London. It was nighttime for him. I was here in Los Angeles, mid-morning. His publication story is a good one. He wrote a book that isn't easily classifiable. Usually such books have a hard road to publication. But Grief found a way, and thank goodness. It's short, poetic, and wonderfully surprising novel. There's a talking bird in it. It takes chances. Packs a punch. The fact that it has gone on to do so well is a testament to Max's vision and skill. Wise, witty, and very deeply felt. A real gift to the reader. In today's monologue, I talk about compression in literature, compression of schedule, the podcast's logistical crossroads, Kickstarter, and my need to podcast in a cloistered environment.
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6/29/2016 • 1 hour, 8 minutes, 6 seconds
Episode 419 — Viet Thanh Nguyen
Viet Thanh Nguyen is the guest. His debut novel, The Sympathizer, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2016. It is available now from Grove Press. I want to say that Viet is the first Pulitzer winner ever to appear on the program. I could be wrong. (Am I forgetting someone?) I read The Sympathizer earlier this year when I was a judge for the Tournament of Books at The Morning News. (You can read my judgment here.) This was before the Pulitzer. Fortunately I had the good sense to pick it as the winner and advance it to the next round; otherwise this conversation might never have happened. Kidding aside, Viet was great. He showed up ready to talk and was everything one might expect after reading the novel: sharp, funny, opinionated, and full of stories. In today's monologue, I talk about moving. Again. I promise this will end soon.��
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6/22/2016 • 1 hour, 11 minutes, 18 seconds
Episode 418 — Stephen Elliott
Stephen Elliott is the guest. He is the founding editor of The Rumpus, the author of seven books, and the director of three films. His latest film, After Adderall, will be premiering at the Rumpus Lo-Fi Los Angeles Film Festival on July 30th. I can't believe it's taken me this long to meet Stephen Elliott. He just moved out to Los Angeles for the summer and he came over and we sat down and talked. I admire Stephen. He does things. He gets things done. He's able to mobilize people. Build communities. He takes risks. He makes stuff. He's a writer. He's the editor of an online literary magazine. And now he's making films. He just keeps going. Great to have had the chance to meet him in person and talk to him for an hour. In today's monologue, I discuss my brief (very brief) history with adderall.
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6/15/2016 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 42 seconds
Episode 417 — Claire Hoffman
Claire Hoffman is the guest. Her new memoir, Greetings from Utopia Park, is available now from Harper Books. Claire is a friend of mine here in Los Angeles. She grew up in Fairfield, Iowa in an intentional community founded by the late Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Maharishi, for the uninitiated, was a spiritual guru and the progenitor of transcendental meditation, or TM. Claire's memoir deals in family history, her experiences growing up in Fairfield, and her struggle to come to terms with what it means to lead a spiritual life. In today's monologue, I talk about my friendship with Claire, and about interruptions, and (again) about my impending move.
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6/8/2016 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 40 seconds
Episode 416 — Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney
Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney is the guest. Her debut novel, The Nest, is available now from Ecco Books. Cynthia is living the dream. Or at least one kind of dream. It's a common dream: write novel, sell novel for big advance, watch as novel becomes New York Times bestseller, do media tour for novel, feel somewhat weird and even at times guilty that novel is doing so well. And so on. Really good time talking with Cynthia. Very candid conversation. And one of the best conversations I've ever had about what it really takes to make a book a bestseller. In today's monologue, I talk about moving, and customer service representatives, and spiritual depletion at the hands of customer service representatives. And also my dog's bleeding anus.
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6/1/2016 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 10 seconds
Episode 415 — Jung Yun
Jung Yun is the guest. Her debut novel, Shelter, is now available from Picador. Jung's novel has gotten an incredibly warm critical reception. Not surprisingly, it took years to write, the gestation was arduous, the psycho-spiritual agony along the way was often intense. This, I'm finding, is what's called "the creative process." This is what I'm learning as I do this show and have these conversations. This particular conversation I remember fondly for a variety of reasons, not least of which being that Jung is a first-generation Korean American from Fargo, North Dakota whose father is a world-renowned martial arts instructor. We had fun. In today's monologue, I read some tweets from my @BradListi twitter account. Lucky you.
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5/25/2016 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 47 seconds
Episode 414 — Nayomi Munaweera
Nayomi Munaweera is the guest. Her new novel, What Lies Between Us, is available now from St. Martin's Press. And here it should be mentioned that Nayomi's debut novel, Island of a Thousand Mirrors, was long-listed for the Man Asia Prize. The story of that book—its arduous, unconventional road to publication and eventual glory—should be heartening to anyone out there slaving away in obscurity. Nayomi was a lot of fun. She's originally from Sri Lanka but immigrated to the States as a child by way of Nigeria. Pretty sure she's the first Sri Lankan-American author to appear on this program. Happy to share this episode with you guys. In today's monologue, I field questions from Twitter followers.
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5/18/2016 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 16 seconds
Episode 413 — Dana Spiotta
Dana Spiotta is the guest. Her new novel, Innocents and Others, is available now from Scribner. It is the official May selection of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club. This is Dana's second appearance on the podcast. (Her first appearance, Episode 31, can be heard via Otherppl Premium.) I spoke with her by phone. She was at home in Syracuse, New York. We talked a lot about movies, which feature prominently in her fiction and especially in Innocents. And towards the end of our conversation, we discussed her writing process—how it tends to take her five years to write a novel, how she drafts, how she edits, and so on. It's illuminating. And that's really a good word for Dana Spiotta, as both a person and a writer. She's illuminating. There isn't much of a monologue today—I just get right to the main event—but for those of you who can't live without my rambling, I talk a bit at the end of the show.
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5/11/2016 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 47 seconds
Episode 412 — Kirstin Valdez Quade
Kirstin Valdez Quade is the guest. Her debut
story collection, Night at the Fiestas, is now
available in paperback from W.W. Norton & Company.
I first met Kirstin on April 1, 2016, at the Ace Hotel Theater
in downtown Los Angeles. We were standing side-by-side in the
wings, just as she was being introduced at Literary Death
Match. She went to walk out onstage, and as she did
I turned to her and said, in a deadpan/jokey way, "Don't fuck this
up." She smiled, but only kind of (to be fair, it was dark, and
things were happening fast), and then almost immediately I began to
question my judgment, wondering if the joke had been
ill-advised. The good news is, Kirstin didn't hold it against me.
In fact, she barely remembered it.
In today's monologue, I talk about mediocrity and Hollywood and
delusions of grandeur.
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5/4/2016 • 1 hour, 30 minutes, 50 seconds
Episode 411 — Kathy Fish & Robert Vaughan
Kathy Fish and Robert Vaughan are the guests. They are the co-authors of a flash fiction collection called Rift, available now from Unknown Press. Rift was the official December 2015 selection of the TNB Book Club. Kathy and Robert were in town for AWP about a month ago. Normally I interview book club authors in the month that their book is featured. In this case, we waited a bit so that we could record in-person. It was worth the wait. Fun meeting these guys. We got into all sorts of stuff. And I think they're the first flash fiction authors I've ever interviewed. I could be wrong. But to the best of my recollection they're the first. In today's monologue, I answer some mail from a listener. He wants to know how I feel about the work of authors younger than I am.
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4/27/2016 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 39 seconds
Episode 410 — Elizabeth Crane
Elizabeth Crane is the guest. Her new novel, The History of Great Things, is available now from Harper Perennial.
Great to see Elizabeth again. She came over not too long ago and sat down across from me and we caught up. Her new novel is all about her late mother. It's about other things, too, but mostly it's about her mom. We get into that. We also talk about writing and fiction vs nonfiction and childhood and fears. We talk about preconception of structure vs intuitive making-it-up-as-you-go. We talk.
In today's monologue, I answer questions as smooth jazz plays in the background.
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4/20/2016 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 22 seconds
Episode 409 — Tony Tulathimutte
Tony Tulathimutte is the guest. His debut novel, Private Citizens, is available now from William Morrow.
Had a good time talking with Tony. He's a smart guy. I feel like he has a lot of intensity to him. There's a coiled intensity thing happening. He doesn't miss much. He had a hard childhood. We talk about that. His novel has gotten the kinds of reviews that debut authors dream about. It's a promising beginning to a career. We talk about that, too. We talk about a lot of stuff.
In today's monologue, I experiment with a groundbreaking new broadcasting technique and share a short conversation I had with Bud Smith, whose novella, I'm From Electric Peak, is the official April pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
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4/13/2016 • 1 hour, 23 minutes, 4 seconds
Episode 408 — Jim Krusoe
Jim Krusoe is the guest. His new novel, The Sleep Garden, is available now from Tin House.
Can't believe it's taken me this long to meet Jim Krusoe. I've been hearing about him forever. He's a pillar of the LA lit community and was even my colleague for a time at Santa Monica College, where he has taught for years and where I taught for a spell. (How did we not meet then?) Anyway. He came over and sat down and we talked for an hour and could've talked for another hour. He's been in Los Angeles for a long time, transplanted, just like me, from the Midwest, and has seen the city through a few evolutions. Fun to ask him about his early years here, and how the city has changed and so on.
In today's monologue, I read some mail from listeners.
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4/6/2016 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 17 seconds
Episode 407 — Leigh Stein & Lux Alptraum
Leigh Stein and Lux Alptraum are the guests. They are co-directors, with Jenny Lumet, of a non-profit organization called Out of the Binders. It is devoted to advancing the careers of women and gender non-conforming writers.
Had a great time with Leigh and Lux. It's very impressive what they've built. We sat down in the wake of BinderCon LA and talked about gender politics and community-building and how much work it takes to run a grassroots organization. It's one thing to know about social injustices; it's another thing to do something about them. These guys are doers. And they're helping an awful lot of people.
In today's monologue, I talk about AWP and the LA Times Festival of Books. And I plug my upcoming appearances at Literary Death Match and the Lit/Comedy Roundtable.
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3/30/2016 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 37 seconds
Episode 406 — Juan F. Thompson
Juan F. Thompson is the guest. His new memoir, Stories I Tell Myself: Growing Up with Hunter S. Thompson, is now available from Knopf.
I tore through Juan's book. Read it in like 24 hours. I'm a huge fan of Hunter. He's in my top 5 all-time. I think he's among the funniest writers America has ever produced. I've read most everything he wrote, and I've read about him at length, but up until a few days ago, I knew little about his son, whom I've always wondered about. What was it like to be him?
It can be easy to think that the child of Hunter Thompson would automatically be some kind of savage hell-raiser, but in fact Juan comes off as the opposite. In reading about him lately, the word "monkish" keeps coming up. I wouldn't go that far, but I will say we didn't snort any cocaine during the interview. Nor did we detonate any homemade explosives, which kind of bums me out.
In the monologue, I talk about Hunter. And I read an excerpt of a review of one of his books.
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3/23/2016 • 1 hour, 31 minutes, 5 seconds
Episode 405 — Michelle Adelman
Michelle Adelman is the guest. Her debut novel, Piece of Mind, is available now from W.W. Norton & Company.
Michelle and I have the same birthday (August 1), which we discovered before we started recording. That put us on a good footing right away. I feel predisposed to liking someone who shares my birthday, which probably makes little sense, and yet I suspect it's a common impulse. I should also admit that I may have mispronounced Michelle's last name in this episode. I pronounced it Add-uhl-man. But then at the tail end of the show, in my closing remarks, I pronounced it Aid-uhl-man and spiraled into a rambling crisis of confidence. You have to understand how much I fear this kind of mistake. Fucking something up that is so elemental, mispronouncing a guest's name...it feels egregious to me. Inexcusable. And yet here I am, racing against the clock to get this episode posted, unable to spend the time to verify and, if need be, fix it. I'm out of time. So all I can do is stand before you and admit my failing, assuming that I've failed, which I'm not sure if I have, but if I did: I feel awful about it.
Michelle, please forgive me. Assuming that I need to be forgiven. And if don't need to be forgiven, then please don't forgive me. We share a birthday, for godsake. Doesn't that mean anything?
In today's monologue, I read some mail from listeners. And then respond to it.
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3/16/2016 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 14 seconds
Episode 404 — Melissa Broder
Melissa Broder is the guest. Her debut essay collection, So Sad Today, is available now from Grand Central Publishing. She has also written a new poetry collection called Last Sext, due out from Tin House in June.
So much to say about my friend Melissa. I've known her for years. We met back when she was still in New York. Then she and her husband moved to LA, and not long after that she "came out" to me as her Twitter alter-ego, @sosadtoday. You'll hear all about this in the podcast. And you'll hear about how, for the past two years, Melissa and I have been working together as writing partners for film and TV stuff. It's been an experience. It's been fun. It has involved many meetings. Endless meetings. Many studio lots. Many bottles of water. Many coffee shop writing sessions. Many pieces of Nicorette. (Melissa loves Nicorette and has tried to get me addicted. We chew it together after meetings.) And...what else can I say? She's a dear friend and collaborator, and I'm thrilled to see her having such great success.
In today's monologue, a special guest! I talk with Heidi Pitlor, whose novel The Daylight Marriage is now out in trade paperback from Algonquin. The Daylight Marriage is the official March selection of The TNB Book Club.
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3/13/2016 • 1 hour, 24 minutes, 58 seconds
Episode 403 — Adrian Todd Zuniga
Adrian Todd Zuniga is the guest. He's the creator and host of Literary Death Match, an international reading series, comedy show, and all-around entertainment.
Note: I will be appearing with Melissa Broder at the April 1st edition at Ace Hotel Theater in Los Angeles during AWP. For tickets, click here.
Nice to finally have Adrian on the show. When I first met him, he was Todd. I've always called him Todd, which he still allows on the basis of a grandfather clause. I've known him for a number of years but didn't know a ton about his life until he came over the other day and sat down across from me. We discussed "Adrian." We discussed "Todd." We discussed "Adrian Todd." He had a hell of a childhood, which I'm not sure he fully realizes. Or maybe it seems less dramatic to him because it's his childhood and he lived it. For me, in hearing about it, I thought: Jesus, that's a lot. It's also interesting. And it makes Literary Death Match make more sense somehow. It makes it seem more unlikely, which then makes it seem more impressive. I have a soft spot for people who conduct cultural experiments and have weird ideas and try to actualize them—and then do. Having pursued a few weird ideas in my day, I have a feel for how much work it is to put on a Death Match. (Hint: it's a fuck-ton.) Todd—sorry, Adrian Todd—has been doing this thing for a decade, largely on his own. Yes, he's had help. But he's the prime mover. It's takes a Herculean amount of effort, and he deserves some credit for that. A tip of the cap as LDM turns 10.
In today's monologue, I talk about LDM Los Angeles on April 1st, and how I'm going to interview someone in public (Melissa Broder) for the second time in my life.
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3/9/2016 • 1 hour, 22 minutes, 15 seconds
Episode 402 — Mark de Silva
Mark de Silva is the guest. His debut novel, Square Wave, is available now from Two Dollar Radio.
If I recall correctly, Mark's parents dropped him off at my house, which, if true, would make him the first guest in the history of the program to be dropped off by his parents, which is hopefully the start of a trend. (Maybe I should do a series of interviews called "Writers and Their Parents" wherein writers come over with their parents, and we all sit down and talk.) Mark went to Cambridge and got a Ph.D. in Philosophy. I feel like I should tell you that. He grew up in the Inland Empire here in Southern California, the child of psychotherapists. I think I'm remembering that correctly. This conversation took place two or three weeks ago. My life has been crazy since then. My brain is completely shot. I can't remember much. But I do remember laughing a lot during this interview, and feeling like it went really well. So there's that. I hope you guys enjoy it.
In today's monologue, I think I talk about caffeine. And I talk about my barista, a gentle man with a ponytail.
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3/2/2016 • 1 hour, 9 minutes, 47 seconds
Episode 401 — Hanya Yanagihara
Hanya Yanagihara is the guest. Her novel A Little Life was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Award, and it is now available in trade paperback from Anchor Books.
I feel like A Little Life is having the kind of existence that pretty much all writers hope their books will have. It seems to provoke passionate responses. The people who love it really fucking love it and the people who hate it are incensed by it and there are way more people who love it than hate it. You can't ask for much more than that.
Hanya was only in town for a day and pretty solidly booked but she found an hour to come over and talk with me, and for that I'm grateful. I learned a lot from her. She knows her shit, and she really fought hard for her novel. She fought hard to see her vision of this book realized, and she's protective of it in a way that seems both smart and endearing. Also: it paid off huge. Few works of literary fiction strike a nerve the way this book has struck a nerve. Also: it's 700 pages long and she wrote it in 18 months. Also: she doesn't own a cell phone.
In today's monologue, I give a quick update on the health of my son and share news about some appearances I'll be making during AWP here in Los Angeles in April.
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2/24/2016 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 40 seconds
Episode 400 — Alexander Chee
Alexander Chee is the guest. His new novel, The Queen of the Night, is available now from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. It is the official February pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
Years ago Alex was out in LA and we had a drink and he told me he was working on this novel. It's amazing to see it all come to fruition, to see him on Late Night with Seth Meyers, to see the book reviewed all over the place, to see everybody chattering about it online. Just happy for him. It was a long road from start to finish, but he got there, and we talk about that. We also talk about his late, beloved father, and what an incredible polymath he was, and what it was like to be a mixed race kid growing up in Portland, Maine. We talk about the Iowa Writers Workshop and AIDS activism and what it was like to be in the green room getting ready to appear before a national television audience. And of course we talk opera and historical fiction and The Queen of the Night.
In today's monologue I talk about 400 episodes and what, if anything, that means. I also give an update on the health of my son.
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2/16/2016 • 1 hour, 26 minutes, 48 seconds
Episode 399 — Jarett Kobek
Jarett Kobek is the guest. His new novel is called I Hate the Internet, available now from We Heard You Like Books.
This one was fun. I didn't know what to expect. Or I guess I sort of knew what to expect: Jarett and I would talk about the internet and what it feels like to hate it. But I didn't know quite what to expect from Jarett himself. Jonathan Lethem called him "the American Houellebecq," so I guess I was imagining that he would be drunk and smoking cigarettes and difficult to talk to, and so on. I imagined him as preemptively hating me, thinking of me as "the media," annoyed that he had agreed to do the podcast. Then he showed up and it was easy. More than that, it was interesting. This is a guy who really thinks about the world that we live in and the information we consume and the products we buy and how the powers that be make these things come to pass. He thinks about a lot more than that, but those are some of his main preoccupations. He's a good conversationalist, a curious person, a skeptic, and, I think it's safe to say, a man who has a very well-developed problem with authority. The interview runs longer than normal. Hope that's okay. On this one, I just let the tape run.
In today's monologue, I talk about some scary health stuff that we're going through with our son, and how that has been all-consuming lately, and how unhealthy (but unavoidable) it is to start Googling when confronted with medical troubles.
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2/3/2016 • 1 hour, 55 minutes, 22 seconds
Episode 398 — Elizabeth Bruenig
Elizabeth Bruenig is the guest. She is a staff writer for The New Republic. Her work focuses on politics and religion.
Really excited to have Elizabeth on the program. I've been a big fan for a while now and feel like she is already, at the ripe old age of 25, an indispensable voice in our political discourse, and on the topic of religion. She first came to my attention (and you'll hear me mention this in the monologue) when she submitted an essay to The Nervous Breakdown several years ago. She must have been twenty or twenty-one at the time. Something like that. The quality of the writing blew me away. To see her have the success that she's having now is really wonderful, and not at all surprising. In our conversation we discuss her personal history, growing up in Texas, her religious upbringing and her conversion, in college, to Catholicism. We talk about God, Augustine, the nature of belief. And of course we talk about politics. Hillary Clinton vs. Bernie Sanders. Donald Trump and Ted Cruz and the GOP shit-show. All of it.
In the monologue, I talk, as I said, about the history of my Elizabeth Bruenig fandom and then I get into Election 2016 and start rambling and don't stop rambling for roughly fifteen minutes. You're welcome, America.
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1/27/2016 • 1 hour, 45 minutes, 42 seconds
Episode 397 — Ruth Wariner
Ruth Wariner is the guest. Her new memoir, The Sound of Gravel, is available now from Flatiron Books. It is the official January selection of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
This is one of the most devastating reading experiences I've had in recent memory. Ruth Wariner's childhood in LeBaron, a fundamentalist Mormon colony in Mexico, is almost beyond belief. That she was able to survive seems miraculous, and the fact that she has now transmuted the horrors of her youth into a book is, I feel, an act of real heroism. When she showed up at my door, I was a little rattled. I had just finished the book and was still processing it. Ruth and her husband pulled up in front of the house and got out of their rental car and...the word that comes to mind is "sunny." They are sunny people. I feel like Ruth has the right to be ultra-goth and cynical—after what she's been through, it seems like she should be allowed to chain-smoke everywhere she goes, including in hospitals and on airplanes—but that wasn't the sense that I got when I met her—not at all. She sat down in the garage and we talked for an hour about all of it—Mormonism, polygamy, child abuse, the prison of belief, the deep pain of loss, the love of family, time, healing, catharsis, you name it. It was a good hour. I hope you guys enjoy it as much as I did.
In today's monologue, I recall how I raced to read Ruth's memoir and wound up listening to the audiobook version at double-speed, and what it did to my head. I also pay a little homage to Glenn Frey of The Eagles, yet another Baby Boomer rock icon, gone, it seems, too soon.
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1/20/2016 • 1 hour, 20 minutes, 2 seconds
Episode 396 — Margaret Malone
Margaret Malone is the guest. Her debut story collection, People Like You, is available now from Atelier 26 Books.
Really enjoyed meeting Margaret. She showed up at my door and I almost felt like I knew her already. There was something familiar about her. We have a friend in common. Maybe that was it. She used to live in LA. Maybe that was it. We're roughly the same age. Maybe that was it. Or maybe it was a combination of all of these things. Anyway, she seemed familiar and it was easy talking with her. We've been through some similar stuff as parents, too. Trying to have kids. How harrowing that can be. And then she and I talked about some difficult health issues that her husband faced, and what that was like. We talked about Portland, too. She lives in Oregon now, and is involved in the literary community, and so on. We talked about other stuff, too. Margaret is a gem.
In today's monologue I talk about the Powerball lottery and the death of David Bowie. And social media grief.
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1/13/2016 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 28 seconds
Episode 395 — Chiwan Choi
Chiwan Choi is the guest. His latest poetry collection is called Abductions, available now from Writ Large Press.
First episode of 2016. Here we go. Though technically Chiwan and I spoke in late 2015. He came over. It was cold. He was in a t-shirt. I offered him a coat. He said he was fine. I couldn't believe it. I felt like a sissy. He sat for the hour and seemed unaffected. Maybe something's wrong with me. Anyway it was really fun talking with him. We've met on a handful of occasions at literary events around Los Angeles. He grew up in LA, is very active in the literary community here. He was born in Korea. He lived in South America on his way to living in Los Angeles. He's an immigrant. His family immigrated. A sense of dislocation has been with him to a degree for all of his life. Or for most of his life. I think that's true. I hope I said that right. He can obviously say it better than I can. We talk about those parts of his life, among other things. I found his stories about being a child and moving around really touching. Listen to it. You'll see.
In today's monologue I talk about the holidays. And Star Wars. I talk about Christmas trees. And the shame I feel over how few books I read last year compared to some people.
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1/6/2016 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 44 seconds
Episode 394 — Holiday Spectacular
For this, the 2015 Holiday Spectacular episode, I was happy to be joined in-studio by my friends Mira Gonzalez, Tyler Madsen, and Gene Morgan. They arrived at my house to help me execute a simple plan: we would drink alcohol together and call people and record it. And that's what we did.
Happy holidays, everybody. This is the final show of 2015. Thanks for all of your continued support. I appreciate it very much and will talk to you in the new year.
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12/23/2015 • 1 hour, 21 minutes, 15 seconds
Episode 393 — Brandi Wells
Brandi Wells is the guest. Her latest novel, This Boring Apocalypse, is available now from Civil Coping Mechanisms.
Brandi moved to LA recently to get her PhD. She's going to be a doctor of literature. She's a shy Southern girl originally from Georgia and spent time in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, which she loved, and which she misses, and we talk about that. She is also very much into body dismemberment—I don't mean to say that she wants to dismember anyone, or be dismembered herself. She's just fascinated with the body and with the alteration and desecration of the body, and with the body generally. We talk about that, too. What else? She used to hula hoop a lot. Not in a hippie way. In a circus way. And she grew up going to a Pentecostal church where people spoke in tongues and writhed on the ground, electrified by the power of The Lord. All of this and more in today's episode.
In the monologue, I talk about the shutting down of LAUSD schools due to an unspecific terrorism threat, and about the fear in the air, and my outrage over all of the recent violence and America's stupid gun laws, and the chaos and horrors of the Middle East, and so on, and so on. All of it. I attempt to get it off my chest.
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12/16/2015 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 13 seconds
Episode 392 — Alexandra Kleeman
Alexandra Kleeman is the guest. Her debut novel, You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine, is available now from Harper.
Alexandra is from Boulder, so we have that in common. Not that I'm "from" Boulder, but I did live there for eight years, went to college there, and so on. The feeling I came away with after talking to her is that she's an unusually kind person. She's one of those people who emanates goodness. Just sweet as could be. And behind that sweetness is a really fierce intelligence. Her book has been getting all kinds of raves, and Ben Marcus called it "the fiction of the future" or something along those lines, and he tends to be right about those kinds of things, so...a very promising start to a literary career. And I'm happy I got to talk with Alexandra just as things are getting under way.
In today's monologue I talk about the holidays. And jury duty. And then at the tail end of the show I talk about some movies I've seen recently.
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12/9/2015 • 1 hour, 25 minutes, 15 seconds
Episode 391 — Nic Kelman
Nic Kelman is the guest. His new novel, How to Pass As Human, is now available from Dark Horse Comics. Nic is also an accomplished screenwriter—he sold a script to Stephen Spielberg a few years back and has since made other sales for other projects.
Funny story: Nic and I are neighbors and didn't know it. He walked over, sat down, we talked. Very pleased to have a guest on the show who works in film and television in addition to writing books. It's a no-brainer for a podcast based in LA and something I need to do more often. It's on my list for 2016. Nic is a smart guy with a deep interest in artificial intelligence. He studied brain and cognitive science at MIT, with a minor in film and media studies. How's that for a combination? I did my best to keep up.
In today's monologue, I discuss Thanksgiving and the perils of holiday travel and the fact that I haven't gone anywhere in way too long. I also discuss a text message that my wife sent me in the middle of the monologue which underscored this very point and made me feel like a negligent parent.
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12/2/2015 • 1 hour, 5 minutes, 36 seconds
Episode 390 — Amina Cain
Amina Cain is the guest. Her latest story collection, Creature, is available now from Dorothy Books.
I was unusually tired on the day that Amina came over to do the show. I'm almost always tired these days because of the newborn, but on this particular day it was especially so. The comparison I often make is drunk driving. It can feel like you're driving drunk, talking into a microphone on three hours of sleep. That's probably not the best comparison but you know what I mean. Anyway, my point is that, as tired as I was, talking to Amina was easy and it gave me energy and made me feel better. She has that kind of effect. I imagine I'm not the only person who feels this way. Just a very thoughtful, kind, sincere person, and a very good writer. Hers is a point of view that feels valuable to me, and I'm glad she's writing books and making art.
In today's monologue, I read some mail and then talk about money and class anxiety and having low-level panic attacks at parties and try to make sense of what seems to be a growing caste system in America. And so on.
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11/25/2015 • 1 hour, 21 minutes, 6 seconds
Episode 389 — Andrea Kleine
Andrea Kleine is the guest. Her debut novel, Calf, is available now from Counterpoint Press.
This is a novel rooted in history, both personal and cultural. I lived through the cultural part of it. Anyone alive and aware in 1981 can say that. Andrea, however, lived through both parts of it, and now has a book to show for it, a book that grapples with these darknesses head on. She was in town on book tour and stopped by and sat down and gave very thoughtful responses to my questions, sometimes pausing to think things over before speaking. This is not the easiest subject matter to talk about, but she was game, and I appreciate that.
Speaking of subject matter that's not easy to talk about, in today's monologue I talk about Paris and Beirut and the Russian airliner that got bombed, and terrorism, and the sorry state of the world, and so on. I try to stay coherent. I think I was mostly coherent.
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11/18/2015 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 34 seconds
Episode 388 — Myriam Gurba
Myriam Gurba is the guest. Her new story collection is called Painting Their Portraits in Winter, available now from Manic D Press.
Myriam showed up in a pair of new shoes. She went shopping before the podcast. Bought some shoes. Wore them out of the store. I found that charming. It reminded me of being a kid and getting new shoes and insisting on wearing them out of the store because I felt like they would make me run faster or something. Another thing about Myriam: she's an easy talker. I love it when I get a guest like this. Makes it easy on me. Good sense of humor. Opinions. Plenty to say. Also very direct about not wanting to talk about certain things, which is always fine. She's a California girl, born and raised. Grew up in Santa Maria, not far from Santa Barbara. Land of the saints. Wine country, farmland, ocean air, strawberries. We talk about it all.
In today's monologue, I discuss my recent crisis of confidence regarding monologues and read from a Twitter exchange I had with listeners regarding the continued existence of the monologue at the top of the show.
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11/11/2015 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 26 seconds
Episode 387 — Eileen Myles
Eileen Myles is the guest. She has two books out from Ecco, the first of which is a collection of poetry called I Must Be Living Twice: New and Selected Poems 1975-2014, and the second of which is a reissue of her novel Chelsea Girls.
Such a pleasure to have Eileen on the show. I've been wanting to talk with her for a long time and finally it all worked out. I should add that the interview almost didn't happen, because my computer died. But I managed to get that rectified just in the nick of time. You'll hear me talk about this in the monologue. And if you follow me on Twitter, then you know that in the aftermath of my computer's death I had what can only be described as an epic customer service experience with Apple.
So anyway. Eileen Myles was here at my house. She sat down across from me, and we talked. She's having a moment, as they say. And it's the kind of moment that feels rare and very well-deserved. I feel lucky to have had the chance to talk with her as all of this is happening, and grateful that she gave me an hour of her time.
In the monologue, as I just mentioned, you'll hear me talk about the death of my computer. And you'll also hear Eileen read a poem. Which is way better than hearing me talk about the death of my computer.
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11/4/2015 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 5 seconds
Episode 386 — Alex Mar
Alex Mar is the guest. Her new memoir, Witches of America, is available now from Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.
Alex showed up in the car of a journalist. She was, I think, fresh from the airport, and a journalist had picked her up and interviewed her on the way to my house. Busy author. She got out of the journalist's car and walked back to my garage and sat down and talked to me for an hour about witches and Paganism and magic and religion and the occult. I often worry, when an author is on an extended tour, doing a ton of media, that I'll catch her in a state of fatigue, that she'll be "all talked out" by the time she gets to me. (This can happen.) Fortunately, this wasn't the case with Alex, who was totally game and has a truly incredible story to tell. I hold journalists, and particularly those who work deep in the field, in the very highest regard. It's a noble line of work. Alex has spent much of the past five years doing just that, and Witches in America is the very fine result.
Today's monologue is (spoiler alert) pretty long. The podcast got a mention in the New York Times this past Sunday, and it meant something to me. I talk about that, and about the origins of this show and the people who inspired me to create it, and so on.
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10/28/2015 • 1 hour, 34 minutes, 11 seconds
Episode 385 — Matt Bell
Matt Bell is the guest. His new novel, Scrapper, is now available from Soho Press. It is the official October selection of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
This is Matt's second time on the show. Last we spoke, he was living up in northern Michigan, in Marquette. Since then he's moved to Tempe, Arizona. A big change in all sorts of ways. We start off talking about that, and then we get into Detroit, the setting of Scrapper, and try to wrap our heads around what's happened there and why and what might happen in the future. Detroit, like post-Katrina New Orleans, is something that from a distance can be hard to believe. Not until you're on the ground and looking at it with your own eyes does the scale of it even begin to come into focus. So Matt, with his good brain, has done us all a service by writing this book and imagining this world in such richness and depth. Seems hard to believe, as I've known (or "internet known") him for a long time, but this was the first time Matt and I have ever met in person (our previous interview was conducted over the phone). He was passing through Los Angeles on book tour and was kind enough to stop by to do the show.
In today's monologue I talk about going out to dinner and my failure to do the kinds of cultural things that I should probably be doing. And I talk about Starbucks.
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10/21/2015 • 1 hour, 8 minutes, 13 seconds
Episode 384 — Chris Tarry
Chris Tarry is the guest. His debut story collection, How to Carry Bigfoot Home, is available now from Red Hen Press.
This one was fun. Chris had flown in the day before from New York and then was up late working—he's a professional bass guitarist—and this, he told me, led to a few drinks, and well, you get the picture. It was nothing too dramatic, but he was dragging a little when he showed up, hadn't slept much, and it's how we got started with the conversation. And from there things just sort of rolled. Easy guy to talk to. And it was nice to meet a writer who is also an honest-to-God professional musician who makes his living playing music. They do exist. But just a few. Almost as rare as Bigfoot. And another thing: Chris is Canadian. Nice to have another Canadian on the program.
In the monologue, I talk about the difficulties inherent in talking about music, and my disdain for the words "jam" and "gig." I've probably talked about this before.
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10/14/2015 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 39 seconds
Episode 383 — Catie Disabato
Catie Disabato is the guest. Her debut novel, The Ghost Network, is available now from Melville House.
Catie came over here and sat down in the middle of her workday and talked to me. I always appreciate it when someone with a serious day job makes time to do the show. As you'll hear, she's a Midwestern girl. We have that in common. The Midwest. I feel like I have a certain shorthand with people who were raised in the Midwest. And I feel something similar with people who were raised in the South, as my extended family is from the South and I grew up going down South and so there's a certain comfort level there, a Southern comfort level. What else? Catie went to Oberlin at the same time as Lena Dunham. We talk about that a little. And we talk about bisexuality and bullying, and so on. We had a good conversation. Catie was game. She was delightful. I think you guys are gonna really like hearing from her.
In the monologue today I talk about manic happiness and this woman in my neighborhood who is always, without fail, insanely happy, and how this morning when she saw me she did a karate kick.
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10/7/2015 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 45 seconds
Episode 382 — Jonathan Evison
Jonathan Evison is the guest. His new novel, This is Your Life, Harriet Chance!, is now available from Algonquin Books. It was the official August pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
A little late getting to this one, considering that Harriet was the August pick for the book club, but as most of you know, my new policy is to only do in-person interviews, so I waited for Johnny to get down here on tour, and then he came over and sat down and we talked. Always great to see Mr. Evison. Known him for a long time. We met on Myspace years ago. True story. And we've been buddies ever since. Johnny is one of those writers who can really do the work. He's prolific and yet the quality is so high. Every time I look up, I feel like he's got another novel coming out. (And here I should mention that his last one, Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving, has been adapted for the silver screen, starring Paul Rudd and Selena Gomez, and should be out in theaters before too long. Stay tuned.) And what else? I think you're gonna like this one. I know I always say that, but with this one I really mean it. I had a good time talking with Johnny Evison. We haven't seen each other in a while and this was our chance to catch up and there's just an essential goodness to him that always comes through, both in art and in life.
In today's monologue I somehow start talking about Janis Joplin and how a certain Janis Joplin moment encapsulates my inner world when I'm deep in the throes of sleep deprivation. I also talk briefly about the recent blood moon.
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9/30/2015 • 1 hour, 12 minutes, 25 seconds
Episode 381 — Bill Clegg
Bill Clegg is the guest. His debut novel, Did You Ever Have a Family?, is available now from Scout Press. It has been long-listed for both the Man Booker Award and National Book Award.
Bill and I talked on the hottest day of the year in LA, or one of the hottest days of the year. It was sweltering in the garage and it had rained the night before (odd), which made it humid, which made the heat worse. Plus, we did the interview at four in the afternoon, the hottest time of the day. So it was hot. And Bill, bless him, arrived at my door after a day of media and travel and was, despite the heat and fatigue, completely game and willing to sit there and field my questions for an hour. We had a great conversation in spite of it all.
Not much of a monologue today. I just get to the main event. I do, however, get more expansive than usual at the tail end of the show. Stay tuned.
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9/23/2015 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 46 seconds
Episode 380 — Carmiel Banasky
Carmiel Banasky is the guest. Her debut novel, The Suicide of Claire Bishop, is now available from Dzanc Books. It is the official September selection of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
Carmiel and I talked about Los Angeles and New York and Judaism and her dad. We also talked about Portland; she grew up in Portland (Oregon). Of particular interest to me was the fact that she lived on the road, housesitting and working odd jobs for (if I recall correctly) four years. She wrote much of Claire Bishop during this time. A very admirable resourcefulness. And quiet tenacity. I think writers have to be tenacious. And disciplined. Carmiel is also a meditator. She does TM. We talked about that, too. A regular writing practice and a regular meditation practice: they seem of a piece. You have to be willing to sit down and sit still and be quiet and watch your thoughts. You have to be disciplined. You have to be quietly tenacious.
Quietly tenacious.
In the monologue, I talk about being up all night with my eight-week-old son, and how recently, after a 2 a.m. feeding, rather than fall back asleep, he stayed awake and stared at me for two solid hours. My point, if there is one, is that it's weird to have someone, anyone, even your own infant child, stare at you for that long in the middle of the night. Especially when conversation isn't possible.
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9/16/2015 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 12 seconds
Episode 379 — Jennifer Pashley
Jennifer Pashley is the guest. Her debut novel The Scamp is available now from Tin House Books.
Jennifer and I had a mix-up on time. She thought we were scheduled for a different day. She also had a migraine headache. She got into an Uber with a migraine and raced across Los Angeles to be here. Shanna Mahin (my guest in Episode 365) was with her. I had to be somewhere in an hour. We were up against the clock but we got it done. Jennifer is from New York state and is one of the rare people I've met who has lived in the same place for her entire life. Maybe it's not that rare. It seems rare to me. I live in Los Angeles and most people in Los Angeles seem to have come here from somewhere else, or else they left at some point and then came back. I do know a few Los Angelenos who never left. I'm not denigrating that choice, by the way. I envy it. I envy people who have a real sense of place. But I'm sure there are downsides to it, too. The grass is always greener, and so on. Anyway, it was great fun talking with Jennifer, migraine headache and all.
My monologue is about time and sleep-deprivation, the two main themes of my life right now, and maybe always. I feel like I have a lot to do and lack the time and/or brain power to do it. But of course this is temporary, I think it's temporary. Everything is temporary. It had better be temporary. It's temporary.
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9/9/2015 • 1 hour, 16 minutes
Episode 378 — Joshua Mohr
Joshua Mohr is the guest. His new novel, All This Life, is available now from Soft Skull Press. This is, I think, the third time I've talked to Josh on the program. The first time we did a full hour and the second time we did a few minutes at the top of a show and now we've done another hour. Always great talking with him. Some writers are good writers and bad talkers and some writers are bad writers and good talkers and other writers are good writers and good talkers. Joshua Mohr is a good writer and a good talker. Actually, I think a lot of writers are good talkers. I think communication is communication, and if a person has a facility for the written word they're often good to talk with as well. But not always. Which is fine. I'm just saying. Anyway. Great talking with Joshua Mohr and great to see his new novel get the kind of glowing reviews that it's been getting. Well-deserved and then some. Mr. Mohr fights the good fight. In the monologue, I read some more mail. One letter comes from an angry listener stepping up to defend me, and another comes from a listener who just saw the new movie The End of the Tour about the late-great David Foster Wallace.
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9/2/2015 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 3 seconds
Episode 377 — Karolina Waclawiak
Karolina Waclawiak is the guest. Her new novel is called The Invaders, available now from Regan Arts.
This is my second time talking with Karolina. The first time, it was over the phone. She was living in Brooklyn. Things were different for her then. Then she moved to Los Angeles and is now a neighbor of mine, more or less. She took a long lunch break from her day job and drove over and sat down across from me, and we had a great conversation. When I do repeat interviews I'm always worried that it's going to be a retread, but I don't think that's the case here. Karolina and I covered a lot of new ground. We even talked about crystals. I was really tired but didn't feel it during the conversation. The conversation brought me to life. Hopefully it does the same for you. (Note: You can hear my first interview with Karolina Waclawiak via Otherppl Premium.)
In the monologue today, I read some more mail. A listener wrote in accusing me of glorifying recreational drug use and denigrating antidepressant use and also accused me of behaving selfishly by trying to "crowdsource" positive thoughts for myself via the podcast. I respond.
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8/26/2015 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 5 seconds
Episode 376 — J. Ryan Stradal
J. Ryan Stradal is the guest. His bestselling debut novel, Kitchens of the Great Midwest, is available now from Viking.
Really happy for J. Ryan. He lives here in Los Angeles and I've known him for a while and he's one of those guys who really deserves the success he's having. Not only has he worked hard and written well, he's been showing up at literary events all over town for years, he hosts his own reading series, he volunteers at 826LA, and is generally just an all-around mensch in the LA writing community and beyond. I know I'm not alone in being thrilled for him.
In the monologue today, I bitterly assess the state of my novel while in a state of epic sleep-deprivation. Hopefully some humor shines through.
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8/19/2015 • 1 hour, 21 minutes, 30 seconds
Episode 375 — Meg Howrey
Meg Howrey is the guest. Her two novels, Blind Sight and The Cranes Dance, are both available from Vintage Contemporaries.
This is the first interview I conducted after the birth of my son, which is to say "in the throes of acute sleep deprivation." I was pretty caffeinated, and Meg was great to talk with, which helped a lot. I hope I did an okay job. Meg seems like one of those people whom you might call an old soul. It's hard for me to imagine her as a child. An accomplished dancer, she went off to study ballet in New York City at age 15. And now she's the author of two critically acclaimed novels. A gifted person who has lived an interesting life, or lives, in a short amount of time. Also: she wants to go to Mars.
In the monologue, I catch up on more mail. Thanks again for all the letters. If you want to email me, you can do so at letters [at] otherppl [dot] com.
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8/12/2015 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 24 seconds
Episode 374 — Matt Sumell
Matt Sumell is the guest. His novel-in-stories, Making Nice, is available now from Henry Holt.
Note: Our conversation was recorded earlier in July, days before my son was born, so you'll hear us talking about the impending birth a little bit. I logged a bunch of interviews in the weeks leading up to delivery, anticipating a busy late summer, so if you hear things that seem chronologically lagging, baby-wise, that's why.
And so. Matt Sumell. There are people in the world who are naturally funny, I feel, and by that I mean this: they're the ones who don't even have to tell a joke, and they're still funny. They barely have to say a word. It's like their essence is funny. They walk into the room, and things get funnier automatically. It's just who they are, it's the charge they give off. Matt Sumell is like this. He's a character. You'll get it almost right away when you listen to him talk. And he's a hell of a writer.
In the monologue, I read and respond to some mail from listeners. I've been getting a lot of great email lately. So much. Many of you have taken the time to send good wishes re: the arrival of my son, and I want you to know how much I appreciate that. Thank you. (I'm not gonna overdo it reading such emails, as I feel like that would be overkill.) That said, the mail runs the gamut, subject-matter-wise, and I'll be reading more of it in episodes to come; I want to try to get to as much of it as possible on-air.
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8/5/2015 • 1 hour, 33 minutes, 40 seconds
Episode 373 — Bud Smith
Bud Smith is the guest. His new novel, F 250, is available now from Piscataway House.
I did a reading with Bud here in Los Angeles earlier this summer. He was kind enough to invite me. Ben Loory, Mira Gonzalez, and xTx also read. The next day Bud came over and we sat down and talked. What strikes me about him is that his path to writing is different from most everyone I know in literature. Different and the same, I guess. The word "refreshing" comes to mind. By day he works as a boilermaker. He writes his novels on his iPhone, typing with his thumbs, during his lunchbreaks and whanot. He doesn't get too neurotic about it. We discuss all of this in the interview, and more. Bud is a good one. He has the right attitude.
In today's monologue, I talk about the birth of my son, River, who arrived on July 21st, a few hours after I recorded my last episode. Hard to put it into words, especially since I'm so sleep-deprived, but I give it a shot. Let's just say it's been a great week for my family, and I want to thank those of you who wrote/tweeted/Facebooked your good wishes. Really appreciate it, you guys. Means a lot to me.
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7/29/2015 • 1 hour, 40 minutes, 46 seconds
Episode 372 — Jim Gavin
Jim Gavin is the guest. His story collection, Middle Men, is available now from Simon & Schuster.
Jim is another in a long line of Catholic (and recovering Catholic) authors who have appeared on this program, a completely accidental trend that was pointed out to me by listener Nick Ripatrazone, who wrote about it in an essay over at The Millions. Jim and I talk Catholicism—as a child he wanted to be a priest—and we get into other stuff as well, including how he managed to get one of his stories published in The New Yorker.
The monologue today is short and sweet. It looks like my wife is beginning to go into labor. I talk about it. That doesn't mean the baby is hours from being born—though this could be the case. It's up in the air. I might have over-shared. I'm not sure. It's debatable. Let me know.
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7/22/2015 • 1 hour, 20 minutes, 55 seconds
Episode 371 — Tao Lin & Mira Gonzalez
Tao Lin and Mira Gonzalez are the guests. Their new book, Selected Tweets, is available now from Short Flight / Long Drive. (Please note that Tao has written an addendum/clarification to the content of this episode; it is posted below.1 Also: listeners who would like to weigh in on this or any episode can email me here. I may feature your responses in a future episode.)
Selected Tweets, as its title suggests, is a collection of Tao and Mira's tweets. It's not all of their tweets; it's an edited selection, published in a little black bible-like volume. For those of you who might be doubting the literary value of the book, I would suggest considering it as a work of poetry, though it feels like more than a work of poetry. In the aggregate, I suppose it reads like a kind of memoir-poetry hybrid or something. Maybe it's its own thing. It's kind of a jokebook, too. Both Mira and Tao are funny writers.
In the monologue, I talk about Tao and Mira's arrival at my house and the shopping bag that Tao brought, and a conversation that he and I had about a tree in my backyard. I also talk about Twitter.
1 Statement from Tao Lin: During the interview, I think Brad Listi might have asked me if Ellen and I used to talk about rape in a joking kind of way, and I think I may have said "yes". I remember feeling myself cringe when I said that, knowing it wasn’t what I meant. What I wish I had said, and what is true, is: "No, we did not ever joke about rape. What we joked about had to do solely with the somewhat absurd and, in a black humor sort of way, comical fact that the meanings for 'statutory rape' and 'rape' which both abbreviate to 'rape' are extremely different—one is based on age and state/area and is always consensual, the other is based on violence and is internationally defined and is never consensual. Our jokes had something to do about this fact, which I think on some level we felt could/should be pointed out so that we and other people can be more aware of it and therefore reduce the amount of possible distortion it (and other random unideal usages of language in society today) can have on their realities. We didn’t joke about rape itself which we both, I think, did not view as something at all funny, but we did joke about the term/words 'statutory rape' and the word 'rape' and how it’s kind of unfortunate and misleading that these two similar terms reference two very different crimes. For an idea of how Ellen (now E.R.) and I used to communicate, the language and tone we used, I recommend reading hikikomori, a book of letters we wrote together and and to each other in 2007." I would also like to point out that the only kind of rape that could possibly not be "horrific rape", as Jezebel misreported in their headline before correcting it to "statutory rape", is statutory rape between two people in a long-term romantic relationship, which is the accusation they were writing about. Finally, here is a link to some of E.R. Kennedy’s tweets that were mentioned in the interview.
And, one other thing I would like to mention—as an example of how articles, written solely for hits and rushed to publication, can be misleading and, it seems to me, harmful and counterproductive for everyone involved—is New York Magazine's online article about this, which was probably, in my view, the most considered and earnest article about this from mainstream media, published just four days after Jezebel's article. In it, the writer misreported (by accepting what Jezebel had posted as fact) that I "threatened legal action" against E.R. Kennedy. I emailed the writer (we were acquaintances—she had talked to me before when reporting on this, for example) saying so and to thank her for her calm, (relatively) careful reporting, and she responded that she would see if she could add a clarification or soften the language of "threatened legal action". (It was changed to "considered legal action" which still isn't true—the idea of me suing E.R. seems ridiculous and completely undesirable to me, though suing Jezebel was something I considered.) She also responded that there was a version of her article that mentioned my support for consequential personal writing from women, including my own subjects and exes, and that it was "a shame" that that information didn’t make it to the final draft. She said the conversation had been "flattened and warped" and hoped it wouldn't discourage me in my future support of women. I think it could be useful to everyone involved, and anyone who cares about reducing prejudice and increasing equality, especially between women and men, in the world, to know that this is what happens with articles that you read online that have been rushed to publication and serve purposes other than truth. Editors and writers, even at New York Magazine and even when space is not an issue (the article was posted online), flatten and distort reality, thereby manipulating and deceiving their readers. Why do they do this? I think this is an interesting, crucial, and serious question to consider, and one whose answers could be helpful for everyone to keep in mind when reading articles. Flattening and distorting is less of an issue, I think, in books, which often incorporate years of calm consideration and research—something to keep in mind.
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7/19/2015 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 8 seconds
Episode 370 — Lidia Yuknavitch
Lidia Yuknavitch is the guest. Her new novel, The Small Backs of Children, is available now from Harper. It's the official July selection of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
Had such a fun time talking with Lidia. It was one of those conversations that could've easily gone longer. She's just a great person to have a conversation with, especially when you're talking about things like books and art and life and death and writing, and so on. She's been through some stuff. She's written her way through some stuff. She's very generous in sharing what's on her mind and in her heart. I think you guys will really enjoy hearing from her. I always do.
In the monologue I talk about my daughter, a recent hike we took, and a question that she asked me out of the blue. It involves incarceration.
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7/15/2015 • 1 hour, 11 minutes, 43 seconds
Episode 369 — Chet Weise
Chet Weise is the guest. He is the editor and co-founder of Third Man Books, based in Nashville, TN.
Third Man is a young indie press, and if you've listened to this podcast for any amount of time, you probably know that I'm a fan of the indies and feel like a lot of our best and most interesting literature is produced on the periphery. Third Man is unique, an offshoot of what started as a record label founded by a major rock star. What are these guys doing out in Nashville? I wanted to know. Chet was kind enough to talk with me.
The monologue involves listener mail and is, to a degree, an extension of the monologue from Episode 366. I read a letter from a listener named Keegan, who has a question involving David Foster Wallace, and then I read a letter from a listener named Clay, who survived a terrible car accident, was severely injured, almost died, and then had what he describes as "a flash of liberating brilliance."
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7/12/2015 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 50 seconds
Episode 368 — David L. Ulin
David L. Ulin is the guest. He is the book critic for the Los Angeles Times, a Guggenheim fellow, and the author of Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles, due out from the University of California Press in October. You can pre-order it now.
I've been reading David for years in the LA Times and had the pleasure of meeting him this past winter during a residency in Palm Desert. His new book deals with a subject we have in common: the city of Los Angeles, a city notoriously difficult to wrap one's head around. David, though, does it masterfully, shining a light on LA's strange beauty, little idiosyncrasies, and big contradictions.
In the monologue, I talk about my complete lack of imagination and tendency toward very thinly veiled autobiographical work, and I ponder my decision to read a sex scene in front of people at a local bookstore.
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7/8/2015 • 1 hour, 9 minutes, 33 seconds
Episode 367 — Maggie Shipstead
Maggie Shipstead is the guest. She is the author of the novels Astonish Me and Seating Arrangements, both of which are available from Vintage Contemporaries.
Maggie is one of those people who seems to be doing everything right. Harvard. Iowa Writers Workshop. Stegner Fellow. Her first novel was a critically acclaimed national bestseller. Her second novel, many say, is even better. We talk about all of this. I try to get answers out of her. How did she do it? How was she raised? Is it nature? Is it nurture? How does a person turn out to be so accomplished, and at such a young age?
In the monologue, I talk about an episode from last night at around 2 a.m. I woke up and my wife was doing some Lamaze breathing. She had some sort of abdominal contraction, some sort of cramping, and the pain was so bad it woke her up from a dead sleep. And so then there I am, in the dark, trying to process this, trying to decide whether or not I should call the gynecologist (or 911). Fun stuff. Late stage pregnancy. We're getting down to the wire over here. (All is well, by the way. The cramping went away. No home births...yet...)
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7/1/2015 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 39 seconds
Episode 366 — Ryan O'Connell
Ryan O'Connell is the guest. His new memoir, I'm Special, is available now from Simon & Schuster.
This one was easy. It's always great when a guest is funny and forthcoming, and Ryan is both of these things in spades. His new book deals with, among other things, his experiences with cerebral palsy, homosexuality, addiction, and more—all or most of it delivered with dark humor.
In addition to book stuff, Ryan has written for Awkward and is also working on getting I'm Special adapted for television with executive producer Jim Parsons. He's got a lot going on and has achieved an unusual amount of success for someone so young. Fun to catch him now, as his star is on the rise.
In the monologue I talk about existential stuff related to the impending birth of my second child. I also talk about death, which came up recently in an impromptu question-and-answer session with my 4-year-old daughter. She's starting to wrap her head around some stuff, namely the reality of having a baby brother and what it means to get older and, well, eventually die. I fielded her questions, or tried to.
Hope you enjoy.
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6/24/2015 • 1 hour, 20 minutes, 45 seconds
Episode 365 — Shanna Mahin
Shanna Mahin is the guest. Her debut novel Oh! You Pretty Things is available now from Dutton.
Shanna has lived quite a life. Been through a lot. And has managed to emerge from very tough circumstances with her sense of humor intact. And now she's written a novel. I'm always heartened by this kind of alchemy. It's heroic, I think, when people are able to make art from life, particularly when the life in question has been difficult.
In the monologue I talk about my day. In addition to producing Shanna's episode, I also recorded an interview (forthcoming) with an author who shall remain unnamed (just to keep you in suspense). Shortly before the interview started, my wife, Kari, informed me that she was going to the doctor because she was having contractions—probably Braxton Hicks contractions (which are sorta like "false alarm" contractions that don't signify labor)—but she wanted to be sure. So I conducted the interview with my phone on silent, looking down every five minutes, checking to see if Kari was texting me to tell me she was going into labor, and also there was a wasp in the garage that was buzzing around, threatening both me and my guest.
You'll see what I mean. I explain it all, or try to. It's been a long day. It's hot here, and it's hot as hell in the garage when I record. I'm dehydrated.
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6/17/2015 • 1 hour, 22 minutes
Episode 364 — Mat Johnson
Mat Johnson is today's guest. His new novel Loving Day is available now from Spiegel & Grau.
Very happy to have had the chance to talk with Mat, particularly at this moment in his career, with Loving Day just featured on the cover of the New York Times Book Review and enthusiasm for his work seeming to reach new heights after the big success of his previous novel, Pym.
As I mentioned in a recent episode, I'm making the shift to in-person interviews only (better sound quality, etc) and was lucky enough to catch Mat as he swung through town. We talked about a variety of things, among them early failures, depression and humility, false summits and false nadirs, work ethic, liberation from expectation, how he deals with book reviews (good and bad and in between), police violence, race, identity, and more.
I also took a few minutes to interview my four-year-old daughter during today's monologue. As many of you know, I've checked in with her periodically over the past several months, as my wife has gotten increasingly pregnant and the arrival of our second child (a boy) has grown imminent. As we're now into mid-June and the official due date is August 2nd, shit is getting real, and preparations are starting to ramp up: crib assembly, closet organizing, and so on.
And I'll be honest, there's also a sense of dread when it comes to sleep. I'm not a great sleeper to begin with, but in the coming months it's gonna be particularly intense. Sorta girding myself for that. And in a way I feel fascinated about what it will mean for the podcast. Which is to say: it's one thing to put yourself on the microphone in your normal, disheveled state; it's another thing entirely to do it in a state of maximal newborn sleep deprivation. But of course I will try.
Stay tuned.
And thanks, as always, for listening.
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6/14/2015 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 5 seconds
Episode 363 — Colin Winnette
Colin Winnette is the guest. His new novel, Haints Stay, is available now from Two Dollar Radio.
Had a great time talking with Colin. He came over and sat down across from me and we got into all kinds of things, among them drugs, which seems to be a recurring topic of conversation on the podcast. I'm confused, I suppose, about drugs, which would explain the interest/recurrence, and in today's monologue I talk about that confusion. What to make of drugs, finally? Good? Bad? Useful? Therapeutic? Spiritual? All of the above? Hallucinogens in particular seem to present real value and possibility. But of course there are the downsides.
It's hard as a parent who wants to be an honest broker to know precisely how to feel and communicate about these things. So maybe the podcast is functioning as a kind of dress rehearsal. Eventually I'll figure out my lines, and then when my kids are, like, fifteen, I'll attempt to deliver them and my kids, in keeping with tradition, will ignore me.
Anyway. A good talk with Colin Winnette. His novel, Haints Stay, is out there now from Two Dollar Radio. Go get it.
Oh—I also read some mail in the monologue. Haven't done that in a bit. Thanks, as always, for the letters. If you wanna send word, the address is letters [at] otherppl [dot] com.
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6/10/2015 • 1 hour, 25 minutes, 4 seconds
Episode 362 — Kate Durbin
Kate Durbin is the guest. She is a writer, curator, and performance artist whose books include The Ravenous Audience and E! Entertainment.
Kate also happens to be a huge fan of Disneyland. We talk about that. She grew up in Southern California. Loves it. Is unapologetic about loving it. We talk about that, too. What else? We talk about our shared love of Gwen Stefani. We talk about religion, family stuff, love, marriage, divorce. We get into things.
Monologue topics: airplanes. Mostly I talk about my trip to Louisiana and my return flight home and I try to build a morality tale out of something that happened in the lavatory. It's unnecessary.
Enjoy.
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6/3/2015 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 35 seconds
Episode 361 — Amelia Gray
Amelia Gray is the guest. Her short story collection Gutshot is available now from FSG Originals. Gutshot is the official May selection of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
What does it mean to be a working writer? What do you say when The New Yorker sends you an email? In this interview with Amelia Gray, we'll talk work, life, anxiety, and the strange worlds of Gray's short fiction.
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5/27/2015 • 1 hour, 12 minutes, 15 seconds
Episode 360 — Sean H. Doyle
Sean H. Doyle is the guest. His new memoir is called This Must Be The Place, available now from Civil Coping Mechanisms.
The Chicago Tribune says
“Memoir depends on its teller for empathy and insight into its subject’s character. Angry, obliterated, yet, by turns, mournful and self-aware, Doyle lays himself bare. But he manages to do so without eliciting pity or scorn. In others’ hands, similar material — drug abuse, desperate sex, violence, suicidal thoughts — have often resulted in wallowing or descriptions of depravity for depravity’s sake. It is a testament to Doyle’s clear examination and probing of his past that when he drops us into one charged situation after another we neither sink nor are incredulous at the messes he finds himself in. His spare words rescue us from despair, while still communicating the profound pain of just being alive with pinprick precision.”
And Juliet Escoria says
“Reading This Must Be The Place is like getting mugged, and then once the mugger takes your wallet, they push you on the ground. And then once you’re on the ground, they kick you in the stomach, over and over and over again. And then when you think they’ve finally decided to leave you alone, they kick you once more in the teeth. The only difference is that when Sean H. Doyle is mugging you, the experience is cleansing, invigorating, something that tests your heart but also makes it glow, an experience you don’t want to ever stop. Otherwise, they’re basically identical.”
Monologue topics: pregnancy update, David Letterman, Indiana, canoes, my dorm room, the elevated couch, retirement, going out on your own terms
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5/24/2015 • 1 hour, 28 minutes, 6 seconds
Episode 359 — Sarah Tomlinson
Sarah Tomlinson is the guest. Her new memoir, Good Girl, is available now from Gallery Books.
Jill Soloway says
"Good Girl is a father-daughter story unlike any other I’ve read before. Tomlinson’s prose is vivid and compelling, bringing you right along with her as she travels from her rural hometown to the big city in search of fulfillment, clarity, and—hopefully—a sense of peace in her relationship with the man who made her who she is."
And Edan Lepucki calls it
"A forthright, sensitive, and compelling memoir about one woman's often fraught relationship with her father. I read it in a day and felt mournful when it was over. Tomlinson is a clear-eyed yet compassionate writer, and the emotional rigor that she brings to this book is both rare and beautiful."
Monologue topics: Chicago, houseguests, broken bones, closed door paranoia.
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5/20/2015 • 1 hour, 43 minutes, 4 seconds
Episode 358 — Janaka Stucky
Janaka Stucky is the guest. His new poetry collection, The Truth is We Are Perfect, is available now from Third Man Books. Bill Knott says
"Stucky’s verse has the power of the best East European poets—some of his poems seem to be perfect, magnificent, and instantly anthologizable. He is a forceful, cogent, incisive phrase-maker."
And Phantasmaphile says
"Stucky has catapulted into the firmament of my favorite ecstatic writers alongside Diane di Prima, Bill Callahan, Hafiz, e.e. cummings, and Larkin Grimm."
Monologue topics: LA Weekly
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5/13/2015 • 1 hour, 8 minutes, 43 seconds
Episode 357 — Cate Dicharry
Cate Dicharry is the guest. Her debut novel, The Fine Art of Fucking Up, is now available from Unnamed Press.
Kirkus Reviews calls it
"Funny and charmingly ridiculous."
And Jill Alexander Essbaum says
"Cate Dicharry’s comic timing is unimpeachable and though her characters are idiosyncratic and quirky, they are deeply dimensional and exceptionally real. A richly complicated and rewarding novel."
Monologue topics: Person of 2015, LA Weekly, my mom, mail
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5/6/2015 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 55 seconds
Episode 356 — Erika Krouse
Erika Krouse is the guest. Her new novel, Contenders, is available now from Rare Bird Books. It is the official April pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
Bookslut says
"Krouse...writes with a pulse-pounding and engaging ferocity that grabs at the reader...Contenders is heart-racingly original."
And Steve Almond says
"Contenders is a knockout! I've never read anything like it. The marvelous Erika Krouse has crafted one of the most unforgettable heroines in modern fiction. Nina Black is not the kind of woman you'd want to meet in a dark alley. But she's precisely the kind of character I always hope to encounter in fiction: a badass streetfighter forced by fate to confront her capacity for maternal tenderness, her need for love, and the anguished contents of her heart."
Monologue topics: San Diego, roadtrips, carsickness, wipes, fatherhood, going to see a bluegrass band, catching up, the antisocial nature of live music.
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4/29/2015 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 51 seconds
Episode 355 — Heidi Pitlor
Heidi Pitlor is the guest. She is the editor of the Best American Short Stories anthologies and the author of the new novel The Daylight Marriage, available now from Algonquin Books.
Stephen King calls it
"Hypnotically readable--I absolutely couldn't put it down. The structure is brilliant, and I turned the pages with increasing dread. This book is terrific.”
And Booklist, in a starred review, says
“Pitlor brings forth the emotions that surge beneath the surface with the precision and power of a conductor . . . This powerful analysis of how dreams become nightmares will make readers want to hold their loved ones close.”
Monologue topics: iTunes rating, pregnancy update, Dustin Hoffman.
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4/22/2015 • 1 hour, 11 minutes, 9 seconds
Episode 354 — Sarah Nicole Prickett
Sarah Nicole Prickett is the guest. She is the founder of Adult magazine and a contributing editor at The New Inquiry.
Monologue topics: Ex Machina, artificial intelligence, hiking, nature, mountain lions.
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4/15/2015 • 1 hour, 2 minutes, 1 second
Episode 353 — Monica McClure
Monica McClure is the guest. Her debut poetry collection, Tender Data, is now available from Birds LLC.
NPR says
"McClure may be the poster-girl for a new generation of poets: irreverent, well-read, sexy, even dirty, snarky, but ultimately fighting an earnest battle against reductiveness and easy answers to the complex problems of the Internet age: 'Every citizen of this world is on trial/ I'm learning to speak legalese/ as I stroll through civil law like/ a gamine through a sample sale.'"
Monologue topics: the Michiko Kakutani April Fool's Day episode, mail, listener reactions
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4/8/2015 • 1 hour, 23 minutes, 18 seconds
Episode 352 — Michiko Kakutani
Michiko Kakutani is the guest. She is the chief book critic for the New York Times and a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize.
Monologue topics: kicking, worrying, mail, bless you, all businesses are awful.
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4/1/2015 • 1 hour, 11 minutes, 36 seconds
Episode 351 — Daniel Handler
Daniel Handler is the guest. His new novel We Are Pirates is now available from Bloomsbury.
Booklist, in a starred review, says
"Handler (aka children's author Lemony Snicket) has never been known for writing precisely happy novels, and his latest certainly doesn't deviate. What could easily have been a slightly silly, fantastical romp becomes, instead, in Handler's capable hands, a macabre, darkly human portrayal of family dynamics and growing up in a world running low on adventure . . . peppered with black humor."
And Jess Walter says
"We Are Pirates will dazzle, disturb, and delight you. It might even do things to you that don't start with the letter D, like remind you what it's like to be young, or convince you that Daniel Handler can do anything."
Monologue topics: the dentist, cough, mail, work, fear, money, children.
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3/25/2015 • 1 hour, 5 minutes, 48 seconds
Episode 350 — Will Chancellor
Will Chancellor is the guest. His debut novel, A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall, is now available from Harper.
The Daily Beast says
“To compare a debut novel to Infinite Jest is likely either too flippant or too generous, but consider the bona fides...Will Chancellor’s wonderful debut novel...more than merely promising, is one of the best of the year.”
And Kirkus, in a starred review, calls it
“Bracingly rich...the author maintains an almost thrillerlike pace while taking well-aimed shots at academic and art-market fads and helping two lost souls through essential transformations.”
Monologue topics: hellishness, annoying/hectic day, ATT customer service, ultrasounds.
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3/18/2015 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 9 seconds
Episode 349 — Adam Robinson
Adam Robinson is the guest. He is the founding editor of Publishing Genius Press.
Monologue topics: LA, yoga, celebrity sneezes, God bless you.
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3/11/2015 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 48 seconds
Episode 348 — Timothy Willis Sanders
Timothy Willis Sanders is the guest. His debut novel, Matt Meets Vik, is available now from Civil Coping Mechanisms.
Blake Butler says
"I have no idea how Timothy Willis Sanders is able to accumulate so many small reflections into such a mesmerizing mass. Matt Meets Vik makes maybe the most stripped-down paragraphs I've ever seen somehow hold a hundred thousand colors, emotions, tones, like if there were a website that made you forget all other websites ever existed, or that you're even still online. Hilarious, moving, insane, real."
And Megan Boyle says
"As I was reading Matt Meets Vik (and long after I'd finished), I couldn't get the voice of 'Matt' out of my head, like it gave my inner monologue extra-charming-sounding subwoofers. Everything I did felt funnier and more important. There are only a few books that get in my head the way Matt Meets Vik has. This is one of my favorite books. I didn't want it to end. I can see myself reading this many times."
Monologue topics: my daughter threw a fit, mail, Neem Karoli Baba
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3/4/2015 • 1 hour, 23 minutes, 32 seconds
Episode 347 — Stewart O'Nan
Stewart O'Nan is the guest. His new novel, West of Sunset, is available now from Viking. It is the official Februrary pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
Maureen Corrigan, writing for The Washington Post, says
“[The] grim yet undeniably fascinating last act of Fitzgerald’s life is the subject of Stewart O’Nan’s gorgeous new novel. . .West of Sunset is a pretty fine Hollywood novel, too, but it’s an even finer novel about a great writer’s determination to keep trying to do his best work.”
And George Saunders says
“O'Nan is an incredibly versatile and charming writer. This novel, which imagines F. Scott Fitzgerald's troubled time in Hollywood (with cameos by Dorothy Parker, Bogie, and Hemingway), takes up (like much of O'Nan's work) that essential conundrum of grace struggling with paucity. One brilliant American writer meditating on another--what's not to love?”
Monologue topics: paranoia, pregnancy, fear, hovering, mail.
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2/25/2015 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 1 second
Episode 346 — Halle Butler
Halle Butler is the guest. Her debut novel, Jillian, is available now from Curbside Splendor.
Lindsay Hunter says
"This book is incredible. The deadpan way it nails what it is to be a human who lies to herself and tells different lies to everyone else makes me want to laugh and scream. It is hilarious and weird, my two favorite qualities in a book."
And Kirkus Reviews says
"[Jillian] offers up its characters for hatred and ridicule with such energy, obsessive detail and hopelessness that the reader can't help but read on, through exasperating flinches of sympathy and recognition. A novel that reads like rubbernecking or a junk-food binge, compelling a horrified fascination and bleak laughter in the face of outrageously painted everyday sadness."
Monologue topics: thanks, worry, sleeplessness, corporate pitchman fantasies, idealism, crazy people, Starbucks, Valentine's Day, my dog, jokes that fail to land.
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2/18/2015 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 54 seconds
Episode 345 — Porochista Khakpour
Porochista Khakpour is the guest. Her novel The Last Illusion is now available from Bloomsbury.
Claire Messud says
“Utterly original and compelling, Porochista Khakpour's The Last Illusion weaves Iranian myth with very contemporary American neurosis to create a bittersweet poetry all its own. This ambitious, exciting literary adventure is at once grotesque, amusing, deeply sad—and wonderful, too.”
And Kirkus, in a starred review, calls it
"An audaciously ambitious novel that teeters along a tightrope but never falls off."
Monologue topics: big news, superstition, not wanting to be dominated by superstition despite demonstrably being dominated by superstition by knocking wood repeatedly.
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2/11/2015 • 1 hour, 20 minutes, 40 seconds
Episode 344 — Kitty
Kitty is the guest. She is a rapper/musician whose latest EP, Frostbite, is now available.
RollingStone says
"Love is pain, and nobody understands that quite like this suburban teen-rap every-girl. Pryde went viral with ["Okay Cupid"]...a homemade mumblecore hit, in the voice of a bored kid from Florida. It's full of wit ("It's my party, couldn't cry if I wanted to") and mall-rat ambience, as she waits for her boyfriend's drunk-dials at 3:30 a.m."
And The New York Times says
"She doesn’t rap because it’s funny or novel, but rather because it’s simply the best and most comfortable tool available to her. The results so far, while almost no one has been watching, have the intimacy and comfort of private recordings. They transfix."
Monologue topics: privilege, mail.
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2/4/2015 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 21 seconds
Episode 343 — Tim Johnston
Tim Johnston is the guest. His new novel, Descent, is available now from Algonquin Books. It is the official January selection of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
The Washington Post raves
“I’ve read many variations on this theme, some quite good, but never one as powerful as Tim Johnston’s Descent . . . The story unfolds brilliantly, always surprisingly, but the glory of Descent lies not in its plot but in the quality of the writing. The magic of his prose equals the horror of Johnston’s story; each somehow enhances the other . . . Read this astonishing novel. It’s the best of both worlds.”
And Mary Roach says
“Descent is the best novel I've read in a long time. Unlike most books that fall into the category of Page Turner, this one also falls in the category of Writing So Good You Can't Even Believe It. Johnston has a superhuman gift for watching and listening to the world and rendering, on the page, its beauty and savagery with such detail and power that the story feels almost more like memory than something read. I was so absorbed in the final incredible fifty pages that I missed my flight to La Guardia.”
Monologue topics: Ann Bauer, Salon, writing, writers, money, class, privilege, honesty, The Struggle.
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1/28/2015 • 1 hour, 25 minutes, 24 seconds
Episode 342 — Alexis Coe
Alexis Coe is the guest. She is the author of Alice + Freda Forever, available now from Pulp/Zest Books.
Peter Orner says
"Alexis Coe rescues a buried but extraordinarily telling episode from the 1890's that resonates in all sorts of ways with today. That in itself would be an accomplishment. But this is a book that is truly riveting, a narrative that gallops. Lizzy Borden eat your heart out. Here's a real crime of passion. Or was it? 'And so Alice carried the razor around every day in her dress pocket, just in case Freda came to town…' I dare you to pick this one up and try, just try to put it down."
And Vol. 1 Brooklyn says
"Though the history recounted in Alexis Coe's Alice + Freda Forever is captivating in its own right, Coe also provides a larger context for it, elevating this to the level of a societal indictment. This story of a star-crossed love with a violent ending at times reads like a microcosm of Memphis at the end of the 19th century. As Coe's narrative delves into perceptions of sexuality and the ways in which the case touched on different aspects of daily life, it never loses sight of the tragic romance at its core."
Monologue topics: mail, Chelsea Hodson, prurience, sex, manners, gender.
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1/21/2015 • 1 hour, 23 minutes, 4 seconds
Episode 341 — Cameron Pierce
Cameron Pierce is the guest. He is the author of several books and the editor of Lazy Fascist Press.
Vol. 1 Brooklyn says
"Whether he's describing a grandmother who gets pulled into a watery grave by an almost mythological fish or telling the creepy story of a creature that wouldn't be out of place in an H.P. Lovecraft story, Pierce constantly pulls together concepts from the outmost edges of outré fiction and the kind of unassumingly profound storytelling that made authors like Flannery O'Connor and George Singleton household names."
And Beach Sloth says
“Black humor has never been darker than this; this is the absolute pitch black of humor."
Monologue topics: war, war on terror, word usage, Charlie Hebdo, terrorism.
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1/14/2015 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 30 seconds
Episode 340 — Chelsea Hodson
Chelsea Hodson is the guest. Her chapbook entitled Pity the Animal is available now in print from Future Tense Books at Powells.com, and electronically from Emily Books as a Kindle Single.
Tobias Carroll calls it
“One of the best literary works I’ve encountered this year... much of its power comes from the way it juxtaposes seemingly unrelated elements: a retrospective of Marina Abramović’s art, scenes from Hodson’s life, economic musings, and considerations of adventure. The way these eventually coalesce is immeasurably powerful; the accumulated effect is devastating, and hits harder than many works ten times its length.”
And Bitch magazine calls it
"Pointed, scathing, and suspenseful. This critical yet intimate essay is not to be missed."
Monologue topics: leafblowers, chainsaws, suffering.
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1/7/2015 • 1 hour, 10 minutes, 29 seconds
Episode 339 — Mark Gluth
Mark Gluth is the guest. His new novel No Other is available now from Sator Press.
Kate Zambreno says
"In Mark Gluth's beautiful family gothic No Other, the reader encounters a landscape of mood and mystery, burning with a stripped-down pain. Gluth's sentences devastate in their raw economy, attempting to penetrate the everyday, tracing abbreviated existences struggling to survive through bare seasons."
And Blake Butler says
"In clipped, incantatory verse shined from whorls somewhere between Gummo and As I Lay Dying, Mark Gluth's No Other invents new ambient psychological terraforma of rare form, a world by turns humid and eerie, nowhere and now, like a blacklight in a locked room."
Monologue topics: the holidays, Santa, mail, answering questions with questions.
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12/31/2014 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 59 seconds
Episode 338 — Luke B. Goebel
Luke B. Goebel is the guest. His new novel, Fourteen Stories, None of Them Are Yours, is now available from Fiction Collective Two.
Kirkus Reviews says
“If Kerouac were writing today, his work might look something like this—and despite the title, many of the stories are indeed ours, as they focus on love and loss, pain and yearning.… This is a fierce, untamed, riotous book—and from the first page you’ll know you’re not reading Jane Austen.”
And Lidia Yuknavitch says
"I'm in love with language again because Luke B. Goebel is not afraid to take us back through the gullet of loss into the chaos of words. Someone burns a manuscript in Texas; someone's speed sets a life on fire; a heart is beaten nearly to death, the road itself is the trip, a man is decreated back to his animal past--better, beyond ego, beautiful, and look: there's an American dreamscape left. There's a reason to go on."
Monologue topics: holidays, Santa Claus, lying, shattering my daughter's dream.
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12/24/2014 • 1 hour, 10 minutes, 50 seconds
Episode 337 — Lynn Lurie
Lynn Lurie is the guest. Her new novel, Quick Kills, is available now from Etruscan Press.
Kirkus Reviews says
"Prepare to be disturbed by this slim but disquieting novel about the perils of youth and the trespasses committed against a young girl. This second novel by Lurie (Corner of the Dead, 2008) is purposefully vague in its descriptions but nevertheless carries with it a feeling of dread for its unnamed female narrator. As the book opens, she is roughly 13 years old and engaged in an unsuitable relationship with a photographer who tells her that young girls fill canvasses and who takes many, many nude photographs of her. She also has a rough-and-tumble brother, Jake, and a fragile sister, Helen. Their father, a hunter, also seems to represent an omnipresent threat. In one scene, Helen arrives with smeared eyeliner, trailing blood: "As she passes me in the foyer, she says to Mother. I had nothing to do with this. Why don't you ask Daddy?" The mother in question is equally guilty of the crimes of this household, emotionally absent and quick to overlook the obvious damage being done to her daughters. As the narrator indulges her own interests in photographing the world around her, readers should experience these flashes of imagery much as she does—the grotesque and the beautiful, all wrapped up in one another. By the end of the book, it becomes a story of survivor's guilt as the narrator invests her hurt in brief, broken and unwise liaisons. "By having done nothing all these years I didn't protect the others that must have come after me," she admits, in the end. As a bildungsroman, the story is lacking in detail, emotional depth and character arc, but it nevertheless leaves a frightening and lingering restlessness in its wake that may be hard for readers to shake."
Monologue topics: moving, freezing, rain, 24-hr grocery stores, the dirty heart of LA, cosmically significant accidental verbal puns.
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12/17/2014 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 28 seconds
Episode 336 — Michael McGriff & J.M. Tyree
Michael McGriff and J.M. Tyree are the guests. Their new story collection, Our Secret Life in the Movies, is now available from A Strange Object.
The Washington Post says
"This beautiful, devastating little book is quite unlike anything else I've ever encountered, and if you grew up in a small town in the 1980s feeling even remotely marginal, it's specifically engineered to break your heart."
And the BBC calls it
"Brilliant."
Monologue topics: the move, exhaustion, the new home studio, schedule changes.
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12/10/2014 • 1 hour, 11 minutes, 9 seconds
Episode 335 — Mike Bushnell
Mike Bushnell is the guest. His latest poetry collection is called OHSO, and it's available now from Scrambler Books.
Scott McClanahan says
"OHSO is revolutionary. It has seen death. Mike Bushnell is a ghost of the classics."
And Beach Sloth says
"Mike Bushnell is a tornado of a person. Everything around him gets sucked into his vortex. What comes out are some of the single best lines I have encountered. The energy he possesses with live readings translates extremely well into the written word. OHSO has been a long time a coming but thank goodness it is finally here."
Monologue topics: moving, schedule changes.
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12/3/2014 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 24 seconds
Episode 334 — Dmitry Samarov
Dmitry Samarov is the guest. His new memoir, Where To?, is now available from Curbside Splendor.
Rick Kogan calls it
"Funny, touching, observant, philosophical, sad, world-weary, artful and wonderful are the stories that pepper this book. There has never been a cab driver like Dmitry Samarov and, since he's given up for keeps late-night for-hire driving, there never will be."
And Wendy MacNaughton says
"With his gorgeous pen and ink drawings and funny, tragic, and all too true stories, Samarov's chronicle of his adventures as a Chicago taxi driver is by far the best ride you'll ever take in a cab."
Monologue topics: mail, recent episodes.
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11/30/2014 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 35 seconds
Episode 333 — Dorothea Lasky
Dorothea Lasky is the guest. Her latest poetry collection, Rome, is available now from Liveright.
Maggie Nelson says
“Dorothea Lasky is one of the very best poets we've got. Her poems radiate weirdness and raw power; you can feel your mind grow new folds as you read them. They lay waste to milquetoast notions of poetic longing or melancholy, and instead go in for the vibrating, bloody facts of sadness, anger, desire, bare life, all returned to us more intensely, strangely, and sometimes comedically, by her words. The line is Lasky's measure, and she wields it like an axe she's been carrying through several lifetimes, that kind of wisdom. Her Rome is huge and intrepid and perfect, a total gift.”
And Fanny Howe says
“Rome is a trip with the wheels engaged to land at every line ending, then flipped up again. A wholly open-hearted book bringing me back to Bernadette Mayer, Maureen Owen and the suffragettes. True life.”
Monologue topics: holiday gift ideas, support the show, Dorothea reads a poem.
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11/26/2014 • 1 hour, 11 minutes, 19 seconds
Episode 332 — William Giraldi
William Giraldi is the guest. His latest novel, Hold the Dark, is now available from Liveright Publishing.
The New York Times Book Review calls it
“[F]ierce, extraordinary…. Hold the Dark is an unnerving and intimate portrayal of nature gone awry. It’s all but bereft of levity, spectacularly violent and exquisitely written.”
And the Boston Globe says
“Maybe it all began with Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock in 1938, but there is a variety of modern thriller, created these days by Robert Stone and Denis Johnson at their best, that delivers narrative thrust and beautifully composed sentences by the pageful even as it peels away the thin membrane that separates entertainment from art, and nature from civilization. Here’s Boston writer William Giraldi adding to the slender ranks of such masterly fiction… [Hold the Dark] certainly stands out as one of the decade’s best books of its kind, and one that deserves, because of its stylish flaunting of some of our darkest fears, a future readership.”
Monologue topics: holiday gift ideas, the holidays, capitalist orgies, bad attitudes.
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11/23/2014 • 1 hour, 29 minutes, 5 seconds
Episode 331 — Atticus Lish
Atticus Lish is the guest. His debut novel, Preparation for the Next Life, is available now from Tyrant Books. It is the official November selection of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
The New York Times calls it
“Perhaps the finest and most unsentimental love story of the new decade.”
And Joy Williams says
"So much of American fiction has become playful, cynical and evasive. Preparation for the Next Life is the strong antidote to such inconsequentialities. Powerfully realistic, with a solemn, muscular lyricism, this is a very, very good book."
Monologue topics: TNB Book Club, mail, transcribing this podcast, Dear Sugar, advice.
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11/19/2014 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 2 seconds
Episode 330 — Meghan Daum
Meghan Daum is the guest. Her new essay collection, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion, is available now from Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.
Hilton Als says
“I think it’s fair to say that I can’t tell you what Meghan Daum’s remarkable book means to me—the exceptional often denies verbalization. Her diverse subject matter aside—Mom, Joni Mitchell, the fetishization of food—it’s Daum’s galvanizing energy that one finds so attractive; nowhere in her work is there evidence of the ‘trance’ that Virginia Woolf said characterized so many women’s lives. Instead, Daum builds her various worlds out of great presence and imagination, and who wouldn’t want to live in her new city?”
And Geoff Dyer says
“The Unspeakable is a fantastic collection of essays: funny, clever, and moving (often at the same time), never more universal than in its most personal moments (in other words, throughout), and written with enviable subtlety, precision, and spring.”
Monologue topics: mail, dead animals, sleep, naps.
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11/16/2014 • 1 hour, 22 minutes, 53 seconds
Episode 329 — Hannah Pittard
Hannah Pittard is the guest. Her new novel is called Reunion, and it is available now from Grand Central Publishing.
Emily St. John Mandel calls it
"A nuanced and intriguing study of family and love, money and debt, failure and success, starring one of the most likeable flawed narrators to come along in some time."
And Publishers Weekly calls it
"Emotionally astute...When this family of sorts gathers in Atlanta for the funeral, there is tension, pain, comedy, and finally, some healing and resolution. Kate is a winning narrator, whose insights into herself and her family keep the pages turning."
Monologue topics: wheat, internet holes, movies, Birdman, Gone Girl.
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11/12/2014 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 25 seconds
Episode 328 — Bich Minh Nguyen
Bich Minh Nguyen is the guest. Her new novel, Pioneer Girl, is available now from Viking.
The San Francisco Chronicle calls it
"[A] sincere and moving novel... a surprising synthesis of the personal and the public, the intimate and the epic, the historical and the fictional. Nguyen takes two disparate strands of our national mythology and weaves them into a powerful and wholly original American saga."
And Kirkus Reviews says
"Nguyen has a perceptive understanding of the tension between mothers and daughters and the troubling insights to be gained from digging into the past. An unexpected pleasure, with a well-drawn and compelling narrator."
Monologue topics: Las Vegas, pot, gambling, losing, winning, ethics.
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11/9/2014 • 1 hour, 22 minutes, 7 seconds
Episode 327 — Frederick Barthelme
Frederick Barthelme is the guest. His latest novel, There Must Be Some Mistake, is available now from Little, Brown & Co.
David Shields says
"Very nearly alone among his peers, Frederick Barthelme has, over the last thirty-five years, written fiction about what it actually feels like to live in contemporary post-religious, hyper-mediated America. And—even more of a rarity—he works hard to find a way to somehow tolerate/celebrate, with enormous subtlety and without an ounce of sentimentality, our bare-bones existence. In There Must Be Some Mistake, Barthelme has distilled his brutal, crucial vision into useable essence."
And Publishers Weekly says
"Barthelme, a master of minimalist suburbia-set fiction, returns with a buoyantly offbeat murder tale that doubles as a meditation on everything from contemporary art to Google to mortality... Throughout the novel, his narration provides punchy, wry commentary on the banality of pop culture, but the tone is, ultimately, infectiously optimistic."
Monologue topics: mail, food, animal rights, Sarah Gerard, not voting, apathy, George Carlin.
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11/5/2014 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 9 seconds
Episode 326 — Elizabeth McCracken
Elizabeth McCracken is the guest. Her latest book is a story collection called Thunderstruck & Other Stories, and it is available now from The Dial Press.
The New York Times Book Review says
“Elizabeth McCracken knows how loss can melt reality, forever altering a person’s sense of time....In her new collection, McCracken gives brilliantly splintered life to just that kind of story....The fact that there is nothing depressing about the ubiquity of accident and disaster in Thunderstruck & Other Stories is a powerful testament to the scratchy humor and warm intelligence of McCracken’s writing....Her wisdom and wit have a moral dimension that deepens our sympathy for her straying souls.... [A] restorative, unforgettable collection.”
And Nick Hornby says
“Elizabeth McCracken is one of my favorite writers. Or, to put it another way: I’ve read everything she’s written...and there’s nothing I haven’t liked and admired enormously...She writes with acuity, soul, and a kind of easy grace that probably kills her, about characters she has created to love.... Thunderstruck showcases all the things this remarkable writer is so good at: the eccentric but illuminating metaphors, the deft characterization, the heart-lurching narrative development, the tenderness, the fantastic aphorisms....Anything new by her is an excuse for wild, drunken celebration.”
Monologue topics: mail, Christianity, Jesus, God, confusion.
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11/2/2014 • 1 hour, 22 minutes, 52 seconds
Episode 325 — Sarah Gerard
Sarah Gerard is the guest. Her debut novel, Binary Star, is due out from Two Dollar Radio in January 2015.
Kate Zambreno says
"I felt a breathless intensity the whole time I read Sarah Gerard's brilliant Binary Star. I sped through it, dizzy, devastated, loving all of it."
And Jenny Offill calls it
"A bold, beautiful novel about wanting to disappear and almost succeeding. Sarah Gerard writes about love and loneliness in a new and brilliantly visceral way."
Monologue topics: Legoland, fear, masks, chaos, exhaustion, fire alarms, meth, cops, neighbors, pandemonium.
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10/29/2014 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 27 seconds
Episode 324 — Lin Enger
Lin Enger is the guest. His new novel, The High Divide, is available now from Algonquin Books. It is the official October selection of The TNB Book Club.
Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, calls it
"[A] masterfully told Western reinvention of Homer’s Odyssey...Set against a backdrop of beauty and danger, this is the moving story of a man coming to terms with his past. In its narrative simplicity and emotional directness, it is reminiscent of John Ford’s classic The Searchers."
And Library Journal, in a starred review, says
"Moving through the High Divide--'the rough country between the Yellowstone and Missouri rivers'--even as its characters move through important divides, or turning points, of their own, Enger's novel is told in beautifully exact, liquid language that wastes no time, just as one cannot afford to waste time when making a journey such as the Pope family's. Highly recommended."
Monologue topics: exhaustion, going to the doctor, Legoland, fear, loathing.
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10/26/2014 • 1 hour, 10 minutes
Episode 323 — Diane Cook
Diane Cook is the guest. Her debut story collection, Man V. Nature, is available now from Harper Books.
Tea Obreht says
"Man V. Nature is as close to experiencing a Picasso as literature can get: the worlds in Diane Cook’s impressive debut are bizarre, vertiginous, funny, pushed to the extreme-but just familiar enough in their nuances of the human condition to evoke an irresistible, around-the-corner reality.”
And the Boston Globe says
“Here’s a good rule: If Diane Cook wrote it, read it…Safety is tenuous, if not an illusion, in her thoughtful, unsettling, and darkly funny collection.”
Monologue topics: Kathleen Hale, Blythe Harris, don't feed trolls, Goodreads, stalking.
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10/22/2014 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 23 seconds
Episode 322 — Celeste Ng
Celeste Ng is the guest. Her debut novel, Everything I Never Told You, is now available from Penguin.
The New York Times Book Review says
"If we know this story, we haven’t seen it yet in American fiction, not until now… Ng has set two tasks in this novel’s doubled heart—to be exciting, and to tell a story bigger than whatever is behind the crime. She does both by turning the nest of familial resentments into at least four smaller, prickly mysteries full of secrets the family members won’t share… What emerges is a deep, heartfelt portrait of a family struggling with its place in history, and a young woman hoping to be the fulfillment of that struggle. This is, in the end, a novel about the burden of being the first of your kind—a burden you do not always survive."
And the LA Times calls it
"[A]n accomplished debut... It's also heart-wrenching. Ng deftly pulls together the strands of this complex, multigenerational novel. Everything I Never Told You is an engaging work that casts a powerful light on the secrets that have kept an American family together — and that finally end up tearing it apart."
Monologue topics: Halloween, costume parties, ebola, comedy, missed opportunities.
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10/19/2014 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 33 seconds
Episode 321 — Mira Jacob
Mira Jacob is the guest. Her debut novel, The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing, is now available from Random House.
Kirkus, in a starred review, says
"Comparisons of Jacob to Jhumpa Lahiri are inevitable; Lahiri may be more overtly profound, Jacob more willing to go for comedy, but both write with naked honesty about the uneasy generational divide among Indians in America and about family in all its permutations.”
And the Boston Globe calls it
“Beautifully wrought, frequently funny, gently heartbreaking . . . Moving forward and back in time, Jacob balances comedy and romance with indelible sorrow, and she is remarkably adept at tonal shifts. When her plot springs surprises, she lets them happen just as they do in life: blindsidingly right in the middle of things.”
Monologue topics: mail, scripts, the emotional demands this podcast places on me, outtakes, ebola, The Fear, end times, zombie apocalypse.
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10/15/2014 • 1 hour, 21 minutes
Episode 320 — Tod Goldberg
Tod Goldberg is the guest. His new novel Gangsterland is now available from Counterpoint Press.
Kirkus, in a starred review, says
“Clearly influenced by the great Elmore Leonard, Goldberg puts his own dry comic spin on the material…Clever plotting, a colorful cast of characters, and priceless situations make this comedic crime novel an instant classic.”
And Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, says
"Goldberg injects Talmudic wisdom and a hint of Springsteen into the workings of organized crime and FBI investigative techniques and makes it all work splendidly."
Monologue topics: bothersome phrases, I wish there was something I could do.
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10/12/2014 • 1 hour, 20 minutes, 31 seconds
Episode 319 — Steph Cha
Steph Cha is the guest. Her new novel, Beware Beware, is available now from Minotaur Books.
The Los Angeles Times says
“Before this cautionary tale is over, secrets will be revealed, lies within lies told, more people injured or killed and Song's core values compromised in ways that will have psychological reverberations for years, and books, to come. Nathanael West and Raymond Chandler would be proud.”
And Publishers Weekly says
“Engaging… Song soon becomes caught in a complex plot involving deception, betrayal, and revenge. Cha follows noir conventions, with Daphne as femme fatale and Song forced into morally ambiguous choices, but she also offers a plucky heroine, warm secondary characters, and a vivid portrait of L.A.’s Koreatown.”
Monologue topics: mail, the monologue to Episode 318.
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10/8/2014 • 1 hour, 20 minutes, 59 seconds
Episode 318 — Merritt Tierce
Merritt Tierce is the guest. Her debut novel Love Me Back is now available from Doubleday.
The Oxford American says
“What’s so compelling about this compulsively readable yet highly literary novel is not the 'unflinching' depiction of Marie’s behavior—though it’s crafted so carefully that readers want to consume each detail—but instead the beautifully plain and unsentimental access Tierce gives us to her protagonist’s interior…How rare it is to find a writer who can encapsulate a character’s sweeping motivation in a page or paragraph or single sentence…Tierce’s magnetic portrayal of a woman whose behavior is conventionally allowed only of men announces Tierce as a writer we’ve been waiting for for much too long."
And Carrie Brownstein says
“Tierce's prose possesses the force, bluntness and surprise of a sucker punch. Love Me Back is an unflinching and galvanic novel full of heart and heartache; one of my favorite books of the last few years.”
Monologue topics: the darkness of the past week, literary media, Ed Champion, Stephen Tully Dierks, Tao Lin, Emily Gould, Porochista Khakpour, Twitter, ambivalence, flailing.
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Sheila Heti, Heidi Julavits, and Leanne Shapton are the guests. They are the editors of the bestselling book Women in Clothes, which features the work of more than 600 authors, including notables like Cindy Sherman, Lena Dunham, Kim Gordon, and Molly Ringwald.
Kirkus Reviews says
“Poems, interviews, pieces that read like diary or journal entries—all these responses help the editors fulfill their aims: to liberate readers from the idea that women have to fit a certain image or ideal, to show the connection between dress and ‘habits of mind,’ and to offer readers ‘a new way of interpreting their outsides.’ ‘What are my values?’ one woman asks. ‘What do I want to express?’ Those questions inform the multitude of eclectic responses gathered in this delightfully idiosyncratic book.”
And Publishers Weekly says
“Thoughtfully crafted and visually entertaining, this collection, edited by Heti, Julavits, and Shapton, uses personal reflections from 642 contributors to examine women’s relationship with clothes in a deceptively lighthearted and irreverent tone….it also inspires meaningful questions…the prose is spliced with striking visuals…[a] provocative time capsule of contemporary womanhood.”
Monologue topics: nerves, confusion, technology, not talking about literary scandal.
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10/1/2014 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 47 seconds
Episode 316 — Sarah McCarry
Sarah McCarry is the guest. She is the author of several books, and her next novel, About a Girl, is due out from St. Martin's Griffin in the summer of 2015.
Bennett Madison says
"Sarah McCarry's strange and gorgeous punk fairytales make magic accessible and imbue the everyday with the weight of myth."
And Erica Lorraine Scheidt says
"Sarah McCarry is the patron saint of girls on the edge."
Monologue topics: Derek Jeter, envy, confusion, Clay Shirky, Amazon, Big 5 publishers, not knowing what I think about anything, mail.
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9/28/2014 • 1 hour, 28 minutes, 16 seconds
Episode 315 — Courtney Moreno
Courtney Moreno is the guest. Her debut novel, In Case of Emergency, is available now from McSweeney's.
Kirkus Reviews says
"In this emotionally moving, well-written, engaging novel, Moreno strikes a profound balance between the clinical logic of trauma and the personal irrationality of a young woman dealing with her demons."
And The Huffington Post says
"Reminiscent of Leslie Jamison's essay on medical acting in her collection The Empathy Exams, Courtney Moreno's book uses the coping mechanisms she learned while working as an EMT to color her narrator's painful past. Moreno confronts both physical and psychological trauma, expertly blurring the lines between the two."
Monologue topics: bad news, not voting, bad attitude, mail, leotarded.
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9/24/2014 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 11 seconds
Episode 314 — Laila Lalami
Laila Lalami is the guest. Her new novel, The Moor's Account, is available now from Pantheon.
Salman Rushdie says
"Laila Lalami has fashioned an absorbing story of one of the first encounters between Spanish conquistadores and Native Americans, a frightening, brutal, and much-falsified history that here, in her brilliantly imagined fiction, is rewritten to give us something that feels very like the truth."
And Kirkus, in a starred review, calls it
"Assured, lyrical . . . Certainly the most extensive telling of the tale from ‘the Moor’s’ point of view . . . Adding a new spin to a familiar story, Lalami offers an utterly believable, entertainingly told alternative to the historical record. A delight."
Monologue topics: mail, Jim Morrison, my friend pain.
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9/21/2014 • 1 hour, 10 minutes, 54 seconds
Episode 313 — Eric Obenauf
Eric Obenauf is the guest. He is the co-founder and editorial director of Two Dollar Radio, an independent press based in Columbus, Ohio.
Full Stop says
"[Two Dollar Radio books] are ambitious, far-reaching, and even visionary."
And the Virginia Quarterly Review says
"Two Dollar Radio, a relatively new indie making a big splash, made an even bigger splash when it announced the launch of Two Dollar Radio Moving Pictures, a 'micro-budget film division.' These aren’t book trailers; they aren’t done just to promote their titles, or even their brand. These are creative, exciting works of art in their own right; each one gives you the sense that the people behind it are incredibly creative people who love books, but who also love movies, and love making things, making things happen, trying something new. It sounds so simple, but it really was a paradigm shift for Two Dollar Radio to even think this was a possibility."
Monologue topics: mail, reactions to Episode 312, how to download episodes of this show online.
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9/17/2014 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 10 seconds
Episode 312 — Wendy C. Ortiz
Wendy C. Ortiz is the guest. Her memoir, Excavation, is now available from Future Tense Books. It is the official September selection of the TNB Book Club. (Photo: Francine Orr/ LA Times) Lidia Yuknavitch says
The time has finally arrived when women are telling the truth--the hard truths, the messy, glorious, loud, tender, screeching corporeal truths--about their lives as they live them and not lived as we are asked to live them. Wendy C. Ortiz's writing will rearrange your DNA. Permanently, beautifully...
And Emily Rapp says
Excavation by Wendy C. Ortiz will change your life. Readers will find everything here: a gripping and necessary story, luminous writing and an utterly compelling heroine who is both generous and fierce. You will emerge changed, dazzled, energized, disbelieving and yet a believer. Most of all, read this book because, like all great literature, and especially the best memoirs, it will make you feel more alive.
Monologue topics: mail, the word "retarded," podcast criticism, narcissism, too much me.
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9/14/2014 • 1 hour, 23 minutes, 50 seconds
Episode 311 — Patrick Hoffman
Patrick Hoffman is the guest. His debut novel The White Van is now available from Grove/Atlantic.
Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, says
"A heist propels Hoffman’s outstanding first novel. Sophia, a Russian émigré, plans to rob a San Francisco branch of US Bank with some inside assistance from its manager, Rada Harkov, and the help of two people recruited (decidedly against their wills) for the job: “the Russian,” another émigré and a black-market trader who owes Sophia money; and Emily, a young woman coerced into helping with drugs and threats (“She had been made into a slave”). The robbery nets some $880,000, a powerful temptation for another major character, Elias, an officer with the SFPD Gang Task Force. An alcoholic, Elias is plagued by money worries. Beyond the engaging plot, the book focuses on people’s behavior in the face of impossible choices. Hoffman, who spent nine years working as a PI in San Francisco, writes with great authority about the city’s seamy side and the grim realities of life for its down-on-their-luck denizens."
Monologue topics: Apple, technology fetishization, camping outside of stores, Ray Rice, public outrage.
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9/10/2014 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 26 seconds
Episode 310 — Amy Lawless
Amy Lawless is the guest. Her latest poetry collection, My Dead, is available now from Octopus Books.
Janae Green says
"Lawless writes poetry that itches; you have to bury your fingernails into your skin and bleed a little to remind yourself not to scratch it."
And Interview magazine says
"My Dead delves into the process of mourning loved ones with Lawless' calm, characteristically non-melodramatic poise. She cites videos of elephant mourning rituals seen on the Internet as a main source of inspiration. While humor might have been used to subvert heavier topics in the past, she chooses control and intimate dissection this time around."
Monologue topics: unlived lives, mediocrity, fate, bifurcation, Joan Rivers.
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9/7/2014 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 24 seconds
Episode 309 — David Connerley Nahm
David Connerley Nahm is the guest. His debut novel, Ancient Oceans of Central Kentucky, is available now from Two Dollar Radio.
Library Journal calls it
"A powerful first novel, the kind that makes you want to stop people in the street to tell them about it."
And NPR says
"Ancient Oceans of Central Kentucky is far from a conventional novel...The pacing is perfect -- while this isn't a thriller, at least in any traditional sense of the word, it's deeply suspenseful...it's impossible to stop reading until you've gone through each beautiful line, a beauty that infuses the whole novel, even in its darkest moments."
Monologue topics: dinosaurs, weirdness, weather, vacation, lethargy, rest, impatience.
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9/3/2014 • 1 hour, 9 minutes, 17 seconds
Episode 308 — Michael Earl Craig
Michael Earl Craig is the guest. His latest book, Talkativeness, is available now from Wave Books.
Publishers Weekly says
"Craig renders unsettling dreams and quotidian clutter with sparse language and a quiet, distant voice to conjure poems brimming with the bizarre. His knack for the disturbing materializes in images from Dick Cheney being wheeled in á la Dr. Strangelove to President Obama's inauguration, to a husband and wife witnessing 'dark turkeys' encroaching on their property, to a speaker declaring his penchant for vocational talent: 'I have just very carefully cut/ my best friend's wife's bangs.' Even the lighter elements of the book seem a bit foul, such as the quick cameo of Death from Ingmar Bergman's Seventh Seal. This is the work of a writer who lives 'in an experimental town' where the 17 on-duty cops can only say, 'That's the way the cookie crumbles.' If it's the qualities of the macabre that lure the reader in, then it's our inability to look away from the grotesque that drive us to continue reading. That inability to turn back, much like the advice Craig offers about catching horses, is what remains at the end of this read: 'you can't fake looking away, horses/ know when you are doing this./ You have to really look away./ Some horsemen never come out of this.'"
Monologue topics: re-reading, Hunter S. Thompson, The Razor's Edge, my bad memory, melatonin, nightmares, fear, superstition.
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8/31/2014 • 1 hour, 26 minutes, 24 seconds
Episode 307 — Jim Ruland
Jim Ruland is the guest. His new novel, Forest of Fortune, is available now from Tyrus Books. It is the official August selection of The TNB Book Club.
The Los Angeles Times calls it
"[A] masterpiece of desperation, delusion and misdeeds.... Ruland...brilliantly taps the fundamental irony of casinos.... A satisfying read."
And Jerry Stahl says
"...[Forest of Fortune] captures the soul and voice of hard-luck, hard-living Americans in a way that conjures up earlier masters like Raymond Carver and Richard Ford. Jim Ruland has an uncanny ability to get inside his characters...."
Monologue topics: National Geographic, Going Deep, David Rees, Otherppl Premium, dive bars, disillusionment, fetishizing filth.
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8/27/2014 • 1 hour, 21 minutes, 3 seconds
Episode 306 — Joshua Wolf Shenk
Joshua Wolf Shenk is the guest. His new book, Powers of Two, is now available from Eamon Dolan Books, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Andrew Solomon says
"In this surprising, compelling, deeply felt book, Joshua Wolf Shenk banishes the idea of solitary genius by demonstrating that our richest art and science come from collaboration: we need one another not only for love, but also for thinking and imagining and growing and being."
And Susan Orlean says
"This is a book about magic; about the Beatles; about the chemistry between people; about neuroscience; and about the buddy system; it examines love and hate, harmony and dissonance, and everything in between. The result is wise, funny, surprising, and completely engrossing."
Monologue: solitude, individualism, hubris, needing people.
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8/24/2014 • 1 hour, 22 minutes, 44 seconds
Episode 305 — Cassandra Troyan
Cassandra Troyan is the guest. Her new book, Kill Manual, is available from Artifice Books in October 2014.
Chris Kraus says
"The sometime-narrator of Kill Manual anastasiasteele3577 haunts chat rooms and BDSM dating sites in search of oblivion. But oblivion hardly needs to be searched for: It’s already there. This disturbing and radical book reveals, among other things, the half-life left in the wake of ubiquitous, data-mined, robotically fabricated internet content. The world ends in exhaustion. Troyan’s piercingly felt, sampled text probes the immateriality of language. Her work is brilliant and brave."
And Megan Milks says
"This book beats with a steady intensity that is equal parts hot and terrifying; its words are sticky emissions, or fists in the flesh of the eyeball. With a voice both chillingly disembodied and viscerally corporeal, cut with mordant wit, Kill Manual moans, snarls, and laughs, harshly. Riveted by shame, refusing any boundary between pleasure and disgust, with these poems Cassandra Troyan orchestrates a fever march towards negation: 'You are not allowed to call this radical.'"
Monologue topics: sleeplessness, My Little Pony, lying, unicorns.
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8/20/2014 • 1 hour, 10 minutes, 4 seconds
Episode 304 — Austin Kleon
Austin Kleon is the guest. He is the bestselling author of the books Steal Like an Artist and Show Your Work!. Both are available from Workman Publishing.
Publishers Weeklysays
“Some people are natural self-promoters. For others, it’s painfully difficult to put their work out there. In this creatively designed pocket-sized book, Kleon offers the latter group effective strategies that allow them to share their work without leaving their comfort zone…. Kleon’s advice is sassy and spot-on.”
And The Atlantic says
"Austin Kleon is positively one of the most interesting people on the Internet... Kleon makes an articulate and compelling case for combinatorial creativity and the role of remix in the idea economy."
Monologue topics: creativity, block, doing the work, privilege, fun.
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8/17/2014 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 33 seconds
Episode 303 — Tim O'Connell
Tim O'Connell is the guest. He is an editor at Vintage, Anchor, Knopf, and Pantheon.
Monologue topics: death, the old man who died, DMT, Tao Lin, Terence McKenna, psychedelic crocodiles who want to rape me, machine elves, fear.
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8/13/2014 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 2 seconds
Episode 302 — Steve Almond
Steve Almond is the guest. His new book, Against Football: One Fan's Reluctant Manifesto, is due out from Melville House on August 26, 2014. (Author photo: Sharona Jacobs)
Publishers Weekly calls it
"Powerful… Almond is drawing on his own experiences as a fan to illustrate how difficult the problem, which provides the book with an engaging personal angle that will lure readers who are mature enough to hear him out whether they agree with his conclusions… An important read, even if as Almond concedes, it offers more questions than answers."
And Kirkus Reviews says
“A provocative, thoughtful examination of an ’astonishingly brutal’ sport… Comic, compassionate and thought-provoking.”
Monologue topics: football, fandom, non-fans, football as a lens through which to view the wider culture.
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8/10/2014 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 22 seconds
Episode 301 — Shane Jones
Shane Jones is the guest. His latest novel, Crystal Eaters, is now available from Two Dollar Radio.
Vice says
"Jones demonstrates a tightrope-like eye for finagling between Pynchon-esque quasi-science-fictional feels and the books' physics, allowing almost anything to happen at any time, wrapped in a Wallace-like grip of childlike awe. The result is a novel that, paragraph to paragraph, is alive with imagination. Crystal Eaters is the rarest of kinds of objects, one that replenishes its readers' crystal counts by simply being read."
And The Millions says
"Crystal Eaters is splattered with Technicolor crystal vomit and eye goo, with bodies leaking red, yellow, and blue; the sun wants to swallow the earth; and the indestructible city encroaches on the country like kudzu. This crystal mining country is Jones’s own Yoknapatawpha County, a town with its own peculiar inhabitants and notions and schemes (such as a prison break in reverse). These fantastical trappings give way to deeper questions — about death, the nature of life, of what it takes to be remembered after you die."
Monologue topics: mail, emotionally satisfying mail.
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8/6/2014 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 46 seconds
Episode 300 — Aimee Bender
Aimee Bender is the guest. She is the bestselling author of several books, including The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, and The Color Master.
The LA Times says
"Bender’s work has never been the stuff of manic pixie dream-girl lit. Her fairy tales are dark and wicked, not hipster-precious and faux old-timey. Her sorcery altogether avoids the saccharine, and the thrills and chills of this sometimes sexual, often horror-drenched collection are completely adult. At a time when realism reigns supreme over the literary landscape, one can argue it is absolutely imperative that Aimee Bender be spotlighted for what she is: a vital MVP of modern letters, period…In our world of flash-and-trash insta-Internet-oddities and stranger-than-fiction social-media-bloopers, she will have surpassed the simple feat of inventiveness to own a most dazzlingly urgent relevancy."
And The Wall Street Journal says
“The fairy-tale elements in her writing, far from seeming outlandish, highlight the everyday nature of her characters’ flaws and struggles. In Ms. Bender’s stories and novels, relationships and mundane activities take on mythic qualities.”
Monologue topics: Episode 300, thank you.
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8/3/2014 • 1 hour, 11 minutes, 22 seconds
Episode 299 — Dan Chaon
Dan Chaon is the guest. He is the acclaimed author of several books, including the story collection Among the Missing, a finalist for the National Book Award, Stay Awake, and You Remind Me of Me.
The Boston Globe calls him
"The modern day John Cheever."
And the New York Times Book Review calls his work
"Superbly disquieting."
Monologue topics: complaining, Twitter, robots, simplicity, second-guessing.
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7/30/2014 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 14 seconds
Episode 298 — Stuart Dybek
Stuart Dybek is the guest. He is the award-winning author of several books of fiction and poetry, including Childhood and Other Neighborhoods, The Coast of Chicago, Streets in Their Own Ink, and I Sailed With Magellan.
George Saunders says
"[Stuart Dybek] somehow manages to conjure up beautiful, detailed imitations of real America, and then infuse them with so much surreal truth that they read like myths or fairy tales. Like the Chicago he often writes about, his work is full of genuine sentiment, and edge, and beauty. One of the most soulful writers in America, and a national treasure."
And the Chicago Tribune calls him
"A magician comparable to Eudora Welty and Joy Williams."
Monologue topics: Episode 300, wondering if it means anything, writing in coffee shops, guilt.
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7/27/2014 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 1 second
Episode 297 — Cynthia Bond
Cynthia Bond is the guest. Her debut novel, Ruby, is now available from Hogarth Press. Ruby is the official July selection of The TNB Book Club.
Edwidge Danticat raves
“Reading Cynthia Bond’s Ruby, you can’t help but feel that one day this book will be considered a staple of our literature, a classic. Lush, deep, momentous, much like the people and landscape it describes, Ruby enchants not just with its powerful tale of lifelong quests and unrelenting love, but also with its exquisite language. It is a treasure of a book, one you won’t soon forget.”
And the Dallas Morning News says
"In Ruby, Bond has created a heroine worthy of the great female protagonists of Toni Morrison…and Zora Neale Hurston… Bond’s style of writing is as magical as an East Texas sunrise, with phrases so deftly carved, the reader is often distracted from the brutality described by the sheer beauty of the language.”
Monologue topics: mail, war, peace, duality, mocking myself.
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7/23/2014 • 1 hour, 22 minutes, 33 seconds
Episode 296 — Jac Jemc
Jac Jemc is the guest. Her new story collection, A Different Bed Every Time, is due out from Dzanc Books this fall.
Jesse Ball says
"To Jemc the world is a place where each person, every human cypher, must devour another. What then can we do, if we are devoured, if we are overcome with our own devouring? Her escape plan is inspired and ancient -- to become protean, to dwell in costume after costume, parcelling away the truth that can be found in each. But where is it hid? Ask her, though she may not say."
And Lindsay Hunter says
"Jac Jemc is an artisan. A Different Bed Every Time stays with you long after you've finished reading. Every story is painstakingly crafted with words and imagery that are honed and placed just so, creating a mosaic you feel grateful, exhilarated, thrilled to experience."
Monologue topics: awards shows, the word "lil," humanity, world peace, fuckedness.
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7/20/2014 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 49 seconds
Episode 295 — Letitia Trent
Letitia Trent is the guest. Her debut novel, Echo Lake, is now available from Dark House Press.
Kirkus Reviews says
"Trent’s years as a poet serve her well in this heavily atmospheric novel, which deftly conjures up both evil and the small town’s complicit reluctance to face its past."
And Kyle Minor says
"Echo Lake is more than just a good debut novel. It is the coming-out party for Letitia Trent, the new poet-queen of neo-noir."
Monologue topics: awards shows, celebrities, awkwardness, The Dude, Jeff Bridges.
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7/16/2014 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 38 seconds
Episode 294 — Leesa Cross-Smith
Leesa Cross-Smith is the guest. Her debut story collection Every Kiss a War is now available from Mojave River Press. It was a finalist for the Flannery O'Connor Short Fiction Award and the Iowa Short Fiction Award.
Roxane Gay says
“Leesa Cross-Smith is a consummate storyteller who uses her formidable talents to tell the oft-overlooked stories of people living in that great swath of place between the left and right coasts. She offers thrilling turns of phrase like, 'His mouth tasted like thousand-page Russian novels I’d never read,' or 'let your smeary mouth be his question mark.' Where she is most stunning is in the endings of each of the 27 stories in Every Kiss a War, creating crisp, evocative moments that will linger long after you’ve read this book’s very last word.”
Monologue topics: mail, friends, IRL communities, fostering connectivity, being social.
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7/13/2014 • 1 hour, 12 minutes, 40 seconds
Episode 293 — Guillaume Morissette
Guillaume Morissette is the guest. His debut novel, New Tab, is now available from Vehicule Press.
Melissa Broder says
“In this hilarious novel, Morissette meditates on finding and making meaning in a time when distractions coalesce to form the new and glossy void. The deconstruction of regrets, an email with feelings and the screaming universe cement Morissette as both a master of the absurd and a seer of the real. I lol’d.”
And Dazed and Confused calls him
"Canada's Alt Lit poster boy."
Monologue topics: being late, rushing, being unprepared, Alt Lit initiation, Frank Hinton's genitals.
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7/9/2014 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 43 seconds
Episode 292 — Julia Fierro
Julia Fierro is the guest. She is the founder of the Sackett Street Writers' Workshop and her debut novel, Cutting Teeth, is now available from St. Martin's Press.
The Millions says
"When a group of thirty-something parents gather at a ramshackle beach house called Eden, no serpent is required for the sins, carnal and otherwise, to pile up. Fierro, founder of Brooklyn's Sackett Street Writers' Workshop, argued in The Millions last year that writers need to put the steam--and the human sentiment--back into sex scenes in literary novels. You may want to keep Fierro's debut novel on a high shelf, away from children and prudish literary snobs."
And Megan Abbott says
"Julia Fierro’s Cutting Teeth offers immense rewards to readers far beyond those who will identify with the frantic, conflicted, yearning parents who fill the novel (though many will). It’s for any reader seeking a tale rich in character, strong in voice and filled with both incisive social critique and a luminous generosity of spirit, a rare combination indeed."
Monologue topics: mail, Labor Day, childbirth.
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7/6/2014 • 1 hour, 21 minutes, 49 seconds
Episode 291 — John Brandon
John Brandon is the guest. His new story collection, Further Joy, is now available from McSweeney's.
Kirkus Reviews calls it
“An impressive collection, cleareyed and penetrating.”
And Booklistcalls it
"Intensely readable, and enormously entertaining.”
Monologue topics: vacation, relaxation, terrifying hippies, chickens, dancing white women, Coldplay.
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7/2/2014 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 24 seconds
Episode 290 — Smith Henderson
Smith Henderson is the guest. His debut novel, Fourth of July Creek, is now available from Ecco.
Ron Charles of The Washington Post calls it
“The best book I’ve read so far this year...Henderson choreographs these parts so masterfully that the novel is never less than wholly engaging… All week I was looking for opportunities to slip back into these pages and follow the trials of this rural social worker.”
And The New York Times says
“First novels don’t come much more confidently written or fully imagined than this.”
Monologue topics: travel, family travel, parental aspirations, travel hell.
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6/29/2014 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 39 seconds
Episode 289 — Miranda Beverly-Whittemore
Miranda Beverly-Whittemore is the guest. Her new novel, Bittersweet, is now available from Crown. It is a New York Times bestseller and the official June selection of The TNB Book Club.
Entertainment Weekly says
“What begins a little like Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep quickly warps into a sickly addictive thriller…think ABC’s Revenge when it was good, only more scandalous…With books like Bittersweet to stuff in beach bags, it’s beginning to feel a lot more like summer."
And The New York Times Book Review says
"A fairy tale aspect—of the Grimm, not the Disney variety—pervades the novel, which artfully builds an increasing sense of menace…Like a Downton-in-Vermont, Bittersweet takes swift, implausible plot turns, and its family secrets flow like a bottomless magnum of champagne, but Beverly-Whittemore succeeds in shining a light into the dark, brutal flaws of the human heart.”
Monologue topics: success, competition, ego, Vanity Fair, The Last Magazine.
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6/25/2014 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 45 seconds
Episode 288 — Mike Sacks
Mike Sacks is the guest. His new book, Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today's Top Comedy Writers, is now available from Penguin.
Bob Odenkirk says
“No one generates more interesting, revealing, or entertaining interviews than Mike Sacks. Poking a Dead Frog is a classic.”
And Will Ferrell says
“This book is what I really look forward to in a book about humor: rich with words and humor, and funny stories with words. Thank you for your time.”
Monologue topics: family vacation, sweltering heat, chickens, fear, sexlessness.
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6/22/2014 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 12 seconds
Episode 287 — Robin Sloan
Robin Sloan is the guest. His bestselling novel, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, was the May 2014 selection of the TNB Book Club. It is now available in paperback from Picador.
George Saunders calls it
“A real tour de force [and] a beautiful fable...The reader is swept along by Sloan’s enthusiasm.”
And John Hodgman says
“In a time when actual books are filling up tag-sale dollar boxes, along with VHS tapes and old beepers, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore reminds us that there is an intimate, adventurous joy in the palpable papery things called novels, and in the warm little secret societies we used to call ‘bookstores.’ Robin Sloan’s novel is delightfully funny, provocative, deft, and even thrilling. And for reasons more than just nostalgia, I could not stop turning these actual pages."
Monologue topics: Episode 300, Stephen King, Lorrie Moore, Teju Cole, angst, Mary Karr, false summits.
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6/18/2014 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 25 seconds
Episode 286 — Ariel Schrag
Ariel Schrag is the guest. Her new novel Adam is now available from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Publishers Weekly says
"Schrag's frisky debut...is one of the most original coming-of-age stories of recent years."
And Flavorwire says
"Ariel Schrag’s story about a teenager who goes to spend the summer in New York with his sister is unlike any coming-of-age story you’ll read anytime soon. Funny and tender... Anybody familiar with Schrag’s comics won’t be disappointed with her work as a novelist; if you haven’t read her other work, let Adam be your introduction and read everything else you can find of hers from there."
Monologue topics: preschool, social anxiety, inferiority, courtesy, instincts.
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6/15/2014 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 15 seconds
Episode 285 — Tom Barbash
Tom Barbash is the guest. His story collection Stay Up With Me is now available in paperback from Ecco.
The Daily Beast calls it
“Fantastic…These Cheever-esque stories all show that Barbash has a sensitive ear towards the subtle ways that relationships are formed and altered, but he’s also not afraid to open a story with a car accident and watch the sparks fly.”
And The New York Times says
“These stories should come with a warning: They might undo you.”
Monologue topics: competition, competitive mania, confusion, fear, loathing.
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6/11/2014 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 49 seconds
Episode 284 — Brittani Sonnenberg
Brittani Sonnenberg is the guest. Her debut novel, Home Leave, is now available from Grand Central Publishing.
Karen Russell says
"It's hard to believe that this astonishing novel is Brittani Sonnenberg's first--she writes about family with wisdom, humor, and native daring. Here is Persephone's journey, undertaken by an entire family, the Kriegsteins, who ricochet through time zones, moving from Berlin to Singapore to Wisconsin to Shanghai to Atlanta, together and alone. Sonnenberg's prose is so vital and so enchanting that you will read this book in the dilated state of a world-traveler, with all of your senses wide open. Her family members are so well-drawn and complex that you'll close this book certain they exist."
And Wim Wenders calls it
"A captivating tour de force that follows a nomadic family across generations and continents."
Monologue topics: mail, multilingualism, cultural superiority, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut, Iran, Egypt.
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6/8/2014 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 3 seconds
Episode 283 — Nicholas Grider
Nicholas Grider is the guest. His story collection, Misadventure, is now available from A Strange Object.
Brian Evenson calls it
"A dark and luscious hell ride through the damaged but nonetheless appealing rituals of bondage. These are tantalizing and difficult stories in which fantasy and reality bleed (quite literally) into one another."
And Matt Bell says
"Each of these compelling stories is ruled not by certainty but by maybe, by sometimes, by ‘this is not necessarily a proclamation of anything’—and so we finally sense behind their pages the nervous heart of the modern man, stubbornly clinging to a fading authority, now more desperately than ever before.”
Monologue topics: thanks, Skylight Books, xTx, Roxane Gay, Lisa Mecham, curtseying.
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6/4/2014 • 1 hour, 12 minutes, 23 seconds
Episode 282 — Aaron Gwyn
Aaron Gwyn is the guest. His new novel, Wynne's War, is now available from Eamon Dolan Books.
Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, says
"Gwyn’s (Dog on the Cross) story is a gripping tale of men at war in the desolate snow-capped mountains of eastern Afghanistan, and captures the essence of close combat—the terror, excitement, chaos, tension, and cruelty, as well as the harsh decisions men make under stress...its gritty realism is part of the strength."
And Nic Pizzolatto, creator of HBO's True Detective, says
“Wynne's War is a deep and beautifully written story of men, war, and madness, told by a young American master. A page-turner of poetic and savage grace, of our time but transcending it, this novel takes its rightful place among the great American literature of war.”
Monologue topics: bad news, miscarriage, feeling bad about feeling bad, bad luck, bad.
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6/1/2014 • 1 hour, 10 minutes, 36 seconds
Episode 281 — Ana Carrete
Ana Carrete is the guest. Her poetry collection Baby Babe is now available from Civil Coping Mechanisms.
Sam Pink says
“The first time I heard Ana’s writing was 2 years ago. In November of 2010, I read at the ‘Ear Eater’ reading series in Chicago. Ana was another reader. She was reading via Skype. There were a lot of people at the reading. After I read, I walked out of the room and stood in a hallway, staring at the floor. After a few difficult conversations with people in the hallway, I heard the host of the reading talking to someone on the computer. It was Ana. Ana started reading. I laughed a lot and enjoyed her reading. Seemed like other people weren’t enjoying it as much as me but I was enjoying it a lot. I stood in the hallway laughing and shaking my head ‘Yes’ and people looked at me. I kept thinking, ‘I want to go into the room and watch her face reading’ but then I would think, ‘No, don’t do that, just listen.’ Not sure why I kept telling myself not to go into the room where she was reading but I stood in the hallway and listened and enjoyed it a lot. Two years later, Ana emailed me Baby Babe. I opened the PDF just to skim a few poems but then I read the whole book. When I was done reading the book, I thought, ‘I’ll be glad to have this book so I can look at it whenever I want.’”
Monologue topics: foreign languages, bilingualism, power dynamics, ego, inferiority, anger.
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5/28/2014 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 43 seconds
Episode 280 — Kelly Braffet
Kelly Braffet is the guest. Her novel Save Yourself is now available in paperback from Broadway Books.
Dennis Lehane calls it
"The real deal. Save Yourself is an electrifying, tomahawk missile of a thriller with honest-to-God people at its core. It rocks the house."
And The New York Times says
"There’s storytelling skill to burn here. Ms. Braffet has empathy for her working-class characters and brings neglected places to convincing life."
Monologue topics: orders of business, questions from listeners, blogging, what I'm reading currently.
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5/25/2014 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 25 seconds
Episode 279 — Lee Klein
Lee Klein is the guest. He has two books out this year. The first is called Thanks and Sorry and Good Luck, available now from Barrelhouse. The second, due out in August 2014, is called The Shimmering Go-Between (Atticus Books).
Blake Butler says
"Somewhere on the brutal truth continuum between Bill Hicks and Mussolini, Lee Klein’s rejection letters are mini-masterpieces of literary criticism disguised as no-thank-yous from Writer’s Hell. And yet, in each, a little lesson; a steadfast faith that says 'I took the time to read what you created and this is exactly what I thought.' They should be passing these things out under the pillows at MFA camp; we’d all be better off."
And Elizabeth Ellen says
"Lee Klein made me cry. He was the only editor ever to make me. This was back in 2002. I wish I still had the email. I remember it going something like, 'whenever you have the instinct to write a line like that, delete it immediately, without prejudice.' I hated him for a while. I pictured him looking like the guy in that 90’s movie Heavy (the one with Liv Tyler), except housebound and with no redeemable qualities. Then, somewhere around 2004, I met him 'IRL' and he was soft-spoken and sweet. It was harder to hate him after that. Reading all of these rejection letters here in this book made me finally fall a little in love with him, I think. I think if I had had access to (and disassociation from) these letters then, I might have fallen in love with him then. This is the funniest book I have read in a long time. It is also the smartest. I feel confused now, like I’m unsure whether to love or hate Lee Klein. But both of us are married now so it doesn’t really matter."
Monologue topics: analytics, paranoia, See's Candies, death, parenthood, mortal fear.
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5/21/2014 • 1 hour, 22 minutes
Episode 278 — Katherine Faw Morris
Katherine Faw Morris is the guest. Her debut novel, Young God, is now available from Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.
Daniel Woodrell says
"Young God is a poetic, grim, and beautifully dark novel about backwoods violence and horror recounted in a numbed, laconic voice. Morris writes with splendid economy, chapters short as contes, and plenty of slashing insights on the rough world of throwaway lives and varieties of wrong."
And Richard Hell says
"This book is so clean and dirty: thirteen-year-old Nikki’s nipples pop like buttons; Kool Kings come in a hard box; white goo tastes a little salty but mostly like nothing. The best dreams are of nothing. Except that it is not nothing. It is charged white space: These pages happen to you and now you’re awakening, groping groggily to reconstruct. Get mixed up by it. Enter the single-wide and find some ecstasy with Katherine Faw Morris."
Monologue topics: mail, videos, intoxicated listeners on rooftops, my bad memory.
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5/18/2014 • 1 hour, 11 minutes
Episode 277 — Stacey D'Erasmo
Stacey D'Erasmo is the guest. Her new novel, Wonderland, is now available fromHoughton Mifflin Harcourt.
Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, calls it
"A spellbinding look into the protagonist’s being... meticulously crafted ... Days and shows pass, but within this routine, a transformation slowly creeps into the narrative: that of commitment, and, perhaps, hope for the future."
And Michael Stipe says
"The world of Wonderland is authentic, vibrant, and genuine. Stacey D’Erasmo explores the delight and terror of second chances. A great read!"
Monologue topics: heat, Santa Ana winds, climate change, indifference, idiocy, fear.
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5/14/2014 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 8 seconds
Episode 276 — Megan Stielstra
Megan Stielstra is the guest. Her new essay collection, Once I Was Cool, is now available from Curbside Splendor.
Roxane Gay says
"In Once I Was Cool, Megan Stielstra is warm and open and wise. Whether she’s writing about the complex loneliness of early motherhood or failing to rise to the occasion or find the right language while living abroad, Stielstra is a masterful essayist. From the first page to the last, she demonstrates a graceful understanding of the power of storytelling. What she’s truly offering with her words, is the grandest of gifts."
And Christine Sneed says
"What an amazing cri de coeur Once I Was Cool is. Megan Stielstra tells us in a witty, sympathetic, confident voice who she is and what and whom she cares about most. Reading these essays, I laughed out loud and also found myself on the verge of tears so many times. This book should be read by anyone who's been in love, had a child or thought about having a child. So, probably, that's everyone."
Monologue: humans, friendships, community, the fragility of human relationships, loneliness, complexity, simplicity.
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5/11/2014 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 51 seconds
Episode 275 — Leslie Jamison
Leslie Jamison is the guest. Her new collection of essays, entitled The Empathy Exams, is now available from Graywolf Press.
The New York Times Book Review calls it
"Extraordinary and exacting....This capacity for critical thinking, for a kind of cool skepticism that never gives way to the chilly blandishments of irony, is very rare. It's not surprising that Jamison is drawing comparisons to Sontag....There is a glory to this kind of writing that derives as much from its ethical generosity, the palpable sense of stretch and reach, as it does from the lovely vividness of the language itself....It's hard to imagine a stronger, more thoughtful voice emerging this year."
And Phillip Lopate, writing for The San Francisco Chronicle, says
"[Jamison] writes consistently with passion and panache; her sentences are elegantly formed, her voice on the page intimate and insistent. Always intelligent, self-questioning, willing to experiment with form, daring to engage with the weird and thrust herself into danger spots, a patient researcher and voracious processor of literature and critical theory, she is the complete package: state-of-the-art nonfiction."
Monologue topics: mail, cheering up, the struggle, expressing the subterranean.
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5/7/2014 • 1 hour, 21 minutes, 55 seconds
Episode 274 — Kathleen Rooney
Kathleen Rooney is the guest. Her new novel, O, Democracy!, is now available from Fifth Star Press.
Jonathan Evison raves
“O, Democracy! infuriates and inspires. Rooney has written a brilliant and fiercely readable novel of politics and ideals, both an indictment and a celebration of the American Experiment, which will leave you breathless.”
And Elizabeth Crane says
“With O, Democracy!, Kathleen Rooney makes a swift and seamless transition from poetry to fiction, pairing her skill for image with a fresh voice, humor, and a keen eye for the political world she navigates here. An exciting debut.”
Monologue topics: panicking, whining, suffering publicly, ratings, E.T., money, picking up the tab, emotionally needy social behavior.
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5/4/2014 • 1 hour, 22 minutes
Episode 273 — Juliet Escoria
Juliet Escoria is the guest. Her new story collection, Black Cloud, is now available from Civil Coping Mechanisms.
Adam Wilson says
"Juliet Escoria is like a gutter-punk Grace Paley."
And Benjamin Samuel, co-editor of Electric Literature, says
"Reading the stories in Black Cloud is like getting punched in the throat; Juliet Escoria leaves you speechless. Her honesty teaches us that beauty can be found in violence, truth in pain, and life where we've always been afraid to look."
Monologue: travel, American Airlines, family, fatigue, weddings.
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4/30/2014 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 3 seconds
Episode 272 — Sommer Browning
Sommer Browning is the guest. Her new poetry collection, Backup Singers, is now available from Birds Publishing.
Mathias Svalina says
"Sometimes I think Sommer Browning is a James Wright for the basic cable generation, at others the gorgeously deformed lovechild of H.D. and Groucho Marx. What I mean is I cannot categorize these poems, and that's the highest compliment I can give any poetry."
Monologue topics: Birds, Bird, Charlie Parker, being pressed for time.
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4/27/2014 • 1 hour, 10 minutes, 48 seconds
Episode 271 — Josh Raab
Josh Raab is the guest. He is the founder of The Newer York Press, an experimental literary publisher based in Los Angeles. Its latest title, The Inevitable June, by Bob Schofield, is now available for pre-order.
Monologue topics: the desert, Coachella, fish tacos, sunlight, curmudgeonliness.
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4/23/2014 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 59 seconds
Episode 270 — Justin Hocking
Justin Hocking is the guest. His new memoir, The Great Floodgates of the Wonderworld, is now available from Graywolf Press. It is the official April selection of the TNB Book Club.
Cheryl Strayed says
"As generous as it is smart, as intimate as it is grand, as illuminating as it is dark. With grace and guts, Justin Hocking dares to go where few men have gone before: not only out to sea, but also into the depths of the human heart."
And Junot Díaz says
“This beautiful memoir is beyond cool. A voyage both erudite and affecting.”
Monologue topics: TNB Book Club, mail, miscarriage, fatherhood, privilege, sadsploitation.
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4/20/2014 • 1 hour, 27 minutes, 25 seconds
Episode 269 — Labor Day Special
Today's show features conversations with multiple authors, all of whom have contributed to a new anthology entitled Labor Day: True Birth Stories by Today's Best Women Writers. Guests include the anthology's editors, Eleanor Henderson and Anna Solomon, as well as Amy Brill, Arielle Greenberg, Cristina Henriquez, Heidi Julavits, Jane Roper, Rachel Jamison Webster, Sarah Jefferis, and Sarah Strickley.
Booklist says
"This isn’t a how-to book, nor does it present a case for the ‘perfect birth,’ which sets it apart from the plethora of childbirth manuals and lends it broader appeal and a very different type of resonance."
And Emma Straub says
"Pregnancy made my body ravenous for food and my brain ravenous for stories like this, stories of how other women had crossed the great divide. In delivery rooms, in the backseats of cars, and at home, these women tell their birth stories so clearly that they must have had stenographers present on the scene. I loved reading this book with my baby asleep in the next room, and will give it to every pregnant woman I know from here on out, forever."
Monologue topics: Labor Day, hard work, parenthood.
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4/16/2014 • 1 hour, 52 minutes, 10 seconds
Episode 268 — Douglas Coupland
Douglas Coupland is the guest. His new novel is called Worst. Person. Ever. and it is available now from Blue Rider Press.
The Globe and Mail says
“A satirical, misanthropic romp through reality television, environmental disaster and apocalyptic possibilities. Once again, Coupland...has asserted himself as a documenter of our times and anticipator of societal threats.... The plugged-in consumer-culture philosopher has created a brand of his own, becoming—and, over the long haul, remaining—a thinky superstar for a distracted era. More than 20 years after he became a pop-culture darling with Generation X, Coupland is still innovating—not simply cranking out words and sculptures, but making a significant contribution with astute observations.... As the country’s go-to guy for art, design, and contemporary social commentary, could Coupland be Canada’s Biggest. (Cultural). Brain. Ever?”
And The Independent calls it
"...a scatological bun-fight of excess and debauchery, of juvenile humour peppered with bilious rage at the state of the world...It’s riotous, frequently very funny...I can’t locate very much seriousness, but I certainly enjoyed trying.”
Monologue topics: mail, age, generations, Spencer and Mira.
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4/13/2014 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 55 seconds
Episode 267 — T. Greenwood
T. Greenwood is the guest. Her latest novel, Bodies of Water, is now available from Kensington Books.
Publishers Weekly says
"Greenwood is a writer of subtle strength...finding light in the darkest of stories."
And Library Journal calls it
"...intricate and tragic...This compassionate, insightful look at hope and redemption is a richly textured portrait."
Monologue topics: Otherppl Premium, writing, worrying about the quality of my content.
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4/9/2014 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 34 seconds
Episode 266 — Scott O'Connor
Scott O'Connor is the guest. His new novel, Half World, is now available from Simon & Schuster.
The Daily Beast calls it
"Gripping...The perfect book for our present moment."
And Kirkus Reviews calls it
"An invigorating historical thriller... Intimately gripping... O'Connor writes with fire."
Monologue topics: company, family, being too busy, wanting to live in utopia, mail.
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4/6/2014 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 4 seconds
Episode 265 — Rene Denfeld
Rene Denfeld is the guest. She is an accomplished journalist who has written for The New York Times Magazine, The Oregonian, and other publications. She is also a licensed investigator who specializes in death penalty work. Her debut novel, The Enchanted, is now available from Harper.
Publishers Weekly calls it
“A striking one-of-a-kind prison novel....[with] rich, haunting prose...A stunning first novel from an already accomplished writer.”
And Donald Ray Pollock says
“Rene Denfeld is a genius. In The Enchanted, she has imagined one of the grimmest settings in the world--a dank and filthy death row in a corrupt prison--and given us one of the most beautiful, heart-rending, and riveting novels I have ever read.”
Monologue topics: Melissa Broder, public bathrooms, darkened anterooms, tall strangers, misunderstandings, micro-paranoia.
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4/2/2014 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 23 seconds
Episode 264 — Jacinda Townsend
Jacinda Townsend is the guest. Her new novel Saint Monkey is now available from W.W. Norton & Co.
Roxane Gay says
“Saint Monkey is an absolute marvel of a book. Jacinda Townsend is dazzling as she transports the reader to a different time and place—the 1950s, rural Kentucky, and Harlem at the height of the jazz era. Two young girls, Audrey and Caroline, fight for a place in the world and, though their paths at times diverge, their journeys and this writer will utterly captivate you.”
And Booklist, in a starred review, raves
“This is a breathtakingly insightful, suspenseful, and gorgeously realized novel of cruelty and sorrow, anger and forgiveness, improvisation and survival, and the transcendent beauty of nature and art.”
Monologue topics: teaching my 3-year-old about death.
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3/30/2014 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 7 seconds
Episode 263 — D. Foy
D. Foy is the guest. His debut novel, Made to Break, is now available from Two Dollar Radio.
Anthony Swofford says
"Reading D. Foy's prose is like watching Robert Stone and Wallace Stevens drag race across a frozen lake at midnight."
And Matthew Specktor says
“D. Foy’s writing is so rich, so saturated in both life and literature, that one is tempted to strain for comparison, to find whatever madcap equivalencies (“It’s X meets Y!”) might begin to describe it accurately. Yet its whorl and grain, the fantastical strangeness of Foy’s sentences and the astonishing accuracy of his perception, amounts to something I can only call new. Made To Break is that rare thing: a truly original, and ferociously necessary, book.”
Monologue topics: news, new written content, upcoming event.
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3/26/2014 • 1 hour, 11 minutes, 41 seconds
Episode 262 — Mary Beth Keane
Mary Beth Keane is the guest. Her latest novel, Fever, is now available from Scribner.
The New York Times Book Review calls it
“[A] tender, detailed portrayal of willed ignorance collapsing in the face of truth…A fine novel.”
And USA Today says
“[Keane] is a talented storyteller, her style plain and steady, not unlike Mary’s demeanor. What’s most remarkable about this novel is its brilliantly visceral vision of everyday life in early-1900s New York City, a rich and detailed working-class backdrop filled with the sights, sounds and smells of tenement squalor, overcrowded apartments, unsanitary conditions, sweatshops, and streets teaming with people trying to survive…If you have an appetite for historical fiction, this novel could be infectious.”
Monologue topics: new website reminder, rebranding reminder, mail.
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3/23/2014 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 27 seconds
Episode 261 — Antonia Crane
Antonia Crane is the guest. Her new memoir, Spent, is now available from Rare Bird Lit / A Barnacle Book.
Kirkus calls it
"...revelatory, [an] unapologetic life story of a San Francisco stripper and sex worker. A raw, searing self-portrait."
And Stephen Elliott says
“Antonia Crane is a gift. Her writing will change how you look at the world.”
Monologue topics: new website, re-branding, Mira Gonzalez and Spencer Madsen.
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3/19/2014 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 52 seconds
Episode 260 — Heather Christle
Heather Christle is the guest. She was the recipient of the 2012 Believer Magazine Poetry Award for her collection entitled The Trees, The Trees (Octopus Books). Her other collections include The Difficult Farm and What is Amazing (Wesleyan University Press).
John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats says
"If you’re thinking about a new tattoo, may I recommend dropping your finger onto any random phrase in Heather Christle’s new book? That’s how keen her ear for the off-the-cuff aphorism is, how neatly her lines break into glistening parts. You get the impression of the oracle at Delphi trying her hand at stand-up or jamming the broadcast of the nightly news: Christle’s gift for welding surreal visions to living speech rhythms keeps unlocking new surprises, page after page. At least once per poem, you feel like the triple-bars just lined up in the slot-machine window, and you laugh or cry out."
Monologue topics: screenplay excerpts, Man of Letters, poetry, tragedy.
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3/16/2014 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 38 seconds
Episode 259 — Catherine Lacey
Catherine Lacey is the guest. Her debut novel, Nobody Is Ever Missing, is due out from FSG Originals in July 2014.
David Shields says
"At the center of this artfully recursive narrative is an unspeakable abyss, from which the narrator has been unable to turn since her sister’s suicide. Elyria is astounded that other people can conduct their lives as though this abyss isn’t there; she’s wavering on the edge, and the effect is often genuinely terrifying. A dense, subtle series of meditations on domestication, estrangement, wildness, above all loss and absence."
And Laura van den Berg raves
“In Catherine Lacey’s virtuosic debut, a young woman hurls herself into the landscape of New Zealand in search of a way to break the frozen sea within. The story that follows is a gutsy, lyric meditation on identity, love, transformation, and what it means to be free. Nobody Is Ever Missing is a breathtakingly accomplished novel, and it establishes Catherine Lacey as a riveting new voice in contemporary fiction.”
Monologue topics: traffic, the dentist, road rage, A-Ha, "Take On Me," emotional confusion.
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3/12/2014 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 55 seconds
Episode 258 — Willy Vlautin
Willy Vlautin is the guest. His new novel The Free is now available from Harper Perennial. It is the official March selection of The TNB Book Club.
Cheryl Strayed says
“Willy Vlautin writes novels about people all alone in the wind. His prose is direct and complex in its simplicity, and his stories are sturdy and bighearted and full of lives so shattered they shimmer.”
And George Pelecanos says
“The Free is another outstanding book from one of America’s most underappreciated artists.”
Monologue topics: Richmond Fontaine, singing, mail, friendship, new lows for the program, the AWP episode.
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3/9/2014 • 1 hour, 25 minutes, 38 seconds
Episode 257 — Natalie Baszile
Natalie Baszile is the guest. Her debut novel, Queen Sugar, is now available from Pamela Dorman Books.
O Magazine says
“In Queen Sugar, two bulwarks of American literature—Southern fiction and the transformational journey—are given a fresh take by talented first time novelist Natalie Baszile . . . [the novel] is a sensory experience, a tableau vivant that Baszile skillfully paints in a palette simultaneously subtle and bold. Queen Sugar is a bright and enticing reminder that, sometimes, you can go home.”
And Joshilyn Jackson, the NY Times bestselling author of Gods in Alabama, says
“Queen Sugar is a gorgeous, moving story about what grounds us as brothers and sisters, as mothers and daughters, and all the ways we fight to save each other. Natalie Baszile’s characters put brave roots into inhospitable ground, looking for a place, a person, a community to call home home. I alternately laughed and wept as they failed each other, forgave each other, lost each other, found themselves. It’s a wise, strong book, and I loved it. You will, too.”
Monologue topics: The Oscars, darkness, fear, self-loathing
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3/5/2014 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 14 seconds
Episode 256 — Adrianne Harun
Adrianne Harun is the guest. Her new novel, A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain, is now available from Penguin.
Jess Walter calls it
“Mythical, magical, and chillingly real…Adrianne Harun’s writing can hold you breathless.”
And Library Journal raves
“Harun’s mastery clearly lies in establishing atmosphere and mood. Much as it does to the novel’s characters, the gothic ambiance wraps around the reader and won’t let go. Laced with local color, this debut will please fans of the macabre.”
Monologue topics: AWP 2014, negative reviews, literary criticism.
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3/2/2014 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 25 seconds
AWP 2014 Special — Live at The HTMLGIANT House
This special episode of the podcast was recorded spur-of-the-moment on the afternoon of February 28, 2014. I had the chance to talk with some folks at The HTMLGIANT House who are up in Seattle for AWP. (The 'house' in question is the house that HTMLGIANT rented for the festivities.)
Mira Gonzalez. Spencer Madsen. Gene Morgan. Some guys named Gabe and Patrick who were sitting in a hot tub.
Hear it all, now, raw and uncut.
Raw and uncut.
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3/1/2014 • 40 minutes, 18 seconds
Episode 255 — Kelcey Parker
Kelcey Parker is the guest. Her new novella, Liliane's Balcony: A Novella of Fallingwater, is now available from Rose Metal Press.
Booklist says
"The latest from Parker is an inventive novella hybrid, a mix of prose and poetry, past and present, heartbreak and humor. At the core is Liliane Kaufmann, the wife and first cousin of the philandering Edgar Kaufmann, who commissioned architect Frank Lloyd Wright to create the audacious Fallingwater, a Pennsylvania house built over a waterfall. Rippling out from the couple is a cast of characters spanning centuries. Without introduction or background, a different voice narrates each chapter as the iconic home itself becomes a central character. Interspersing fiction with fact (although fact outweighs fiction in this well-researched story), Parker reveals the tragic life of strong, intelligent Liliane, who is slowly eroded by a complicated marriage gone toxic. Adding dimension to her portrayal are three other women, all at different points of self-discovery, all potentially bound for a similar fate as Liliane. Not unlike Fallingwater’s structure, which masterfully balances the man-made with the natural, Parker sculpts and controls myriad, nearly unwieldy elements to construct a driven plot that illuminates the perched house and those who live within it."
Monologue topics: mail, my long creative struggle, creativity identity, showing your work.
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2/26/2014 • 1 hour, 20 minutes, 17 seconds
Episode 254 — Randa Jarrar
Randa Jarrar is the guest. Her debut novel, A Map of Home, is now available from Penguin.
Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, raves
Jarrar's sparkling debut about an audacious Muslim girl growing up in Kuwait, Egypt and Texas is intimate, perceptive and very, very funny. Nidali Ammar is born in Boston to a Greek-Egyptian mother and a Palestinian father, and moves to Kuwait at a very young age, staying there until she's 13, when Iraq invades. A younger brother is born in Kuwait, rounding out a family of complex citizenships. During the occupation, the family flees to Alexandria in a wacky caravan, bribing soldiers along the way with whiskey and silk ties. But they don't stay long in Egypt, and after the war, Nidali's father finds work in Texas. At first, Nidali is disappointed to learn that feeling rootless doesn't make her an outsider in the States, and soon it turns out the precocious and endearing Arab chick isn't very different from other American girls, a reality that only her father may find difficult to accept. Jarrar explores familiar adolescent ground—stifling parental expectations, precarious friendships, sensuality and first love—but her exhilarating voice and flawless timing make this a standout.
Monologue topics: being in a rush, technology, my brain, teaching my daughter about music, Freddy Mercury, Billy Idol.
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2/23/2014 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 2 seconds
Episode 253 — Spencer Madsen
Spencer Madsen is the guest. He is the founder of Sorry House, an independent press based in Brooklyn, and his new book of poetry, You Can Make Anything Sad, is due out from Publishing Genius Press in April.
Dennis Cooper raves
"When I read Spencer Madsen’s poetry, I not only feel awe because he’s so good, one of the best, but I also think about how everything in the world is happening at the same time, and how the world we get to know is so heavily edited down. It’s the hugest, weirdest feeling. I wish Spencer Madsen could be everywhere at once. I really love You Can Make Anything Sad.”
Monologue topics: Mira Gonzalez, mail, misophonia, change of location.
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2/19/2014 • 1 hour, 20 minutes, 49 seconds
Episode 252 — Nina McConigley
Nina McConigley is the guest. Her debut story collection, Cowboys and East Indians, is now available from FiveChapters Books.
Antonya Nelson says
“What I love about this collection of stories is its wit and warmth. McConigley’s characters are “the wrong kind of Indians living in Wyoming,” and their struggles as exoticized and denigrated community members could be, in a less interesting writer’s hands, yet another scolding tract on America’s guilty conscience. Instead, this book celebrates human pluck and humor, a new sensibility for a new time, when everyone is both at home and utterly alien in the contemporary American west. A terrific read.”
And Eleanor Henderson raves
“Nina McConigley crafts out of the Wyoming landscape a West few readers have known before–a place where, when you don’t look like everyone else, there aren’t many places to hide. And yet anyone who has ever felt a complicated kind of love for home, country, and family will find pleasure and wisdom in these stunning stories.”
Monologue topics: Valentine's Day, hatred of holidays, Presidents Day, love.
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2/16/2014 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 55 seconds
Episode 251 — Aubrey Hirsch
Aubrey Hirsch is the guest. Her story collection, Why We Never Talk About Sugar, is now available from Braddock Avenue Books.
Matt Bell says
"In Why We Never Talk About Sugar, Aubrey Hirsch posits an uncertain world, offering us her characters at their most confused, frightened, obsessed. As protection against their troubles, these men and women cling often to science, and also to story and if these two ways of seeing cannot always save them, then still they might provide some comfort, some necessary and sustaining faith, the mechanisms of what greatest mysteries might await us all, when all else is stripped away."
And Roxane Gay says
"Aubrey Hirsch is a bright shining star of a writer and the stories in her flawless debut collection, Why We Never Talk About Sugar, are a little disturbing and a little strange and a little sweet but always a lot to hold on to. Hirsch shows us the charm of her imagination and how carefully she will break your heart. This is a book you will keep coming back to, the one you won t be able to stop talking about because it's that damn good."
Monologue topics: mail, congratulating myself, Elizabeth Ellen, Fast Machine
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2/12/2014 • 1 hour, 15 minutes
Episode 250 — Chris Parris-Lamb
Chris Parris-Lamb is the guest. He is a literary agent at The Gernert Company in New York City. His clients include Chad Harbach (The Art of Fielding) and Garth Risk Hallberg (City on Fire).
The New York Observer says
"Mr. Parris-Lamb has managed over the past year to sell a tall stack of books by first-time authors, some of them for money that would please even the most seasoned veterans."
Also on this episode: A segment of my conversation with Gina Frangello, author of A Life in Men (Algonquin Books), the official February selection of The TNB Book Club. To hear the full hour with Gina, simply click here and sign up for Other People Premium.
Monologue topics: insomnia, TED Talks, anger, disgust, tweets.
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2/9/2014 • 1 hour, 20 minutes, 23 seconds
Premium: Gina Frangello
Gina Frangello is the guest. Her new novel, A Life in Men, is the official February selection of The TNB Book Club. It is available now from Algonquin Books.
Booklist raves
“In this bravura performance, a quantum creative leap...Frangello astutely dissects the quandaries of female sexuality, adoption, terminal illness, and compound heartbreak in a torrent of tough-minded observations, audacious candor, and storytelling moxie.”
And Emily Rapp says
“Gina Frangello’s luminous novel is deeply human, darkly funny, seriously sexy; it brims with artistry and intelligence and heart...Frangello illuminates the ways in which life itself is an illusion, but a grand and beautiful and heartbreaking and brilliant one.”
***Note: This is a Premium episode. It is available for Premium subscribers only.
Please sign up for Premium. It costs $2. That's it. Two bucks a month. (Or else you can pay $4.99 for six months of access, or $8.99 for a year.)
You do that, you can listen to Gina's episode—plus you'll have access to the podcast's complete archives. Every single show.
You can listen online here, or else you can listen while on the go via the free, official Other People app, available now for your iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, or Android device.
Thanks for listening, everybody.
-BL
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2/6/2014 • 57 minutes, 33 seconds
Episode 249 — Kyle Minor
Kyle Minor is the guest. His new story collection, Praying Drunk, is now available from Sarabande Books.
Publishers Weekly raves
"Similar to a great magic trick, the 13 stories in Minor's latest lure reader investment with strong visuals while simultaneously pulling the rug out from underfoot with clever, literary sleights-of-hand. Though not necessarily linked in the traditional sense, there is a sequential order to the collection--ideas, locations, incidents, and characters echo as the volume chugs forward--and the result is an often dazzling, emotional, funny, captivating puzzle."
And Kirkus, in a starred review, says
“An award-winning short fiction author offers twelve stories so ripe with realism as to suggest a roman à clef. . . . This brilliant collection unfolds around a fractured narrative of faith and friends and family, loved and lost.”
Monologue topics: mail, co-branding, the inevitability of co-branding, Katy Perry, Rihanna, the virtue of unskillful co-branding.
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2/5/2014 • 1 hour, 19 minutes
Episode 248 — Bill Cotter
Bill Cotter is the guest. His new novel, The Parallel Apartments, is now available from McSweeney's.
Heidi Julavits says
"Reading Bill Cotter's The Parallel Apartments is like taking some kind of word drug, but a new one, synthesized in a desert lab from molecules of Lipsyte, Dickens, Pynchon, Williams, Chabon, DeWitt, and Joyce, and then spun together with Cotter's own unique particles to yield a book that produces an actual high when read. There's micro-attention paid to sweatpants material and the feel of artificial cheese powder on fingertips and the bouillon smell of nether regions. There is sadness. There is loneliness. There are riffs that make me wish an actor were there to read to me aloud, so I could cry from laughter without needing to clearly see the page. This book is an experience—it is a never-read-anything-like-it-before work of brainy, heartfelt joy."
And Texas Monthly calls it
"Funny and profane and more than slightly unhinged."
Monologue topics: Super Bowl, barbarism, 1970s sitcoms, audio gags, the app.
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2/2/2014 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 46 seconds
Episode 247 — Matthew Specktor
Matthew Specktor is the guest. His novel, American Dream Machine, is now available from Tin House.
Mona Simpson says
"Joan Didion prophesied this novel. In an essay called 'Los Angeles Days,' published in 1992 in After Henry, she wrote that 'Californians until recently spoke of the United States beyond Colorado as 'back east'. If they went to New York, they went 'back' to New York, a way of speaking that carried with it the suggestion of living on a distant frontier. Calfiornians of my daughter's generation speak of going 'Out' to New York, a meaningful shift in the perception of one's place in the world.' Specktor's American Dream Machine may be first literature I've read in which Los Angeles is assumed as London is assumed by Dickens and Paris by Proust and New York by a host of twentieth century American writers. There is nothing ironic, ambivalent, or apologetic about Specktor's relationship to Los Angeles—as it is and was, as myth and as a thriving capitol city. Los Angeles provides an animate pulse under the lives of these men and boys, a source of permanence that lends their struggles gravity and monument."
And David Shields raves
"American Dream Machine is the definitive new Hollywood novel. The tone, the pace, the details—everything is just amazingly right. The whole book is charged with the kind of necessity I almost never see in novels anymore. Thrilling."
Monologue topics: being boring, doing things, my neighborhood, my neighbors, Jamon, listener voicemail.
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1/29/2014 • 1 hour, 21 minutes, 56 seconds
Episode 246 — Michael J. Seidlinger
Michael J. Seidlinger is the guest. He is the book reviews editor for Electric Literature and the founder of an independent press called Civil Coping Mechanisms. His latest novel is The Laughter of Strangers, and it is available now from Lazy Fascist Press.
The Los Angeles Times says
"The Laughter of Strangers delivers a combination of psychological horror and strangeness that would not be out of place in a David Lynch film. Seidlinger's weird new fight fiction suggests that perhaps the best place for boxing contests isn't in the ring but between the pages of a book."
And Flavorwire raves
"Michael J. Seidlinger has given us the boxing novel of the year. The Laughter of Strangers is a tough and gritty book that will challenge you page after page, but it is oh so worth it."
Monologue topics: psychological paralysis after reading, chaos, illusion, confusion.
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1/26/2014 • 1 hour, 11 minutes, 56 seconds
Episode 245 — Rachel Cantor
Rachel Cantor is the guest. Her debut novel, A Highly Unlikely Scenario, Or, A Neetsa Pizza Employee's Guide to Saving the World.
Library Journal says
"Cantor’s novel will be a great hit for fans of Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe. There’s a lot going on here, and all of it is amusing."
And Jim Crace says
“It’s as if Kurt Vonnegut and Italo Calvino collaborated to write a comic book sci-fi adventure and persuaded Chagall to do the drawings. One of the freshest and mostly lively novels I have encountered for quite a while.”
Monologue topics: Paris, The Lost Generation, having A Moment, getting huge, Bob Dylan, hindsight, ego.
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1/22/2014 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 38 seconds
Episode 244 — Hilton Als
Hilton Als is the guest. His latest book, White Girls, is now available from McSweeney's—and it has just been nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism.
Junot Díaz raves
"I read Als not only because he is utterly extraordinary, which he is, but for the reason one is often drawn to the best writers—because one has a sense that one’s life might depend on them. White Girls is a book, a dream, an enemy, a friend, and, yes, the read of the year."
And John Jeremiah Sullivan says
"Hilton Als’s White Girls...is a leap forward not merely for Als as a writer but for the peculiar American genre of culture-crit-as-autobiography. Its bravery lies in a set refusal to allow itself all sorts of illusions—about race, about sex, about American art—and the subtlety of its thinking is wedded maypole-fashion to a real confessional lyricism [...] Als taught me that I have a lot of white girl in me, too, and so does he. And so do you, is where it gets interesting. If you think that sounds like another blurb-job or post-postmodern twaddle, I defy you to read this book and come away with a mind unchanged."
Monologue topics: drought, fire, climate change, the (likely) dystopian future, Finland.
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1/19/2014 • 1 hour, 11 minutes, 51 seconds
Premium: Gloria Harrison
Gloria Harrison is the guest. She is a writer and a longtime contributor to The Nervous Breakdown, and in May of 2013 she was featured on This American Life, Episode 494.
***Note: This is a Premium episode. It is available for Premium subscribers only.
Please sign up for Premium. It costs $2. That's it. Two bucks a month. (Or else you can pay $4.99 for six months of access, or $8.99 for a year.)
You do that, you can listen to Gloria's episode—plus you'll have access to the podcast's complete archives. Every single show.
You can listen online here, or else you can listen while on the go via the free, official Other People app, available now for your iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, or Android device.
Okay? Okay.
Thanks for listening, everybody.
-BL
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1/16/2014 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 47 seconds
Episode 243 — Jennifer Percy
Jennifer Percy is the guest. Her new book, Demon Camp, is available from Scribner. It is the official January selection of The TNB Book Club.
Dexter Filkins, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, calls it
“...a tale so extraordinary that at times it seems conjured from a dream; as it unfolds it’s not just Caleb Daniels that comes into focus, but America, too. Jennifer Percy has orchestrated a great narrative about redemption, loss and hope.”
And Esquire magazine calls it
“A powerful debut and a haunting portrait of PTSD, and the effects of war on the psyches of the soldiers who fight and the extreme lengths they'll go to to find relief and heal."
Monologue topics: war, peace, humanity, pacifism, confusion.
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1/15/2014 • 1 hour, 21 minutes, 7 seconds
Episode 242 — Mary Miller
Mary Miller is the guest. Her debut novel, The Last Days of California, is available from Liveright.
Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, raves
“Beyond the well-crafted coming-of-age narrative, Miller gets every little detail about the South—from the way the sky greens before a storm to gas stations where Hank Williams Jr.’s 'Family Tradition' blares—just right. But it’s Jess’s earnest, searching voice, as she contemplates her parents, the trip, and their values, that lingers after Miller’s story has finished. In Jess, Miller has created a narrator worthy of comparison with those of contemporaries such as Karen Thompson Walker and of greats such as Carson McCullers.”
And Alexis Smith says
“The Last Days of California is the Sense and Sensibility of pre-Apocalypse America, and Jess and Elise may be my new favorite literary sisters: different as night and day, on a road trip to the Rapture with their Evangelical parents, they find they have nothing to lose but each other. Mary Miller is a ventriloquist of adolescent angst and a nervy surveyor of American culture.”
Monologue topics: photos, concretizing the experience for me, where you are, notecards, ventilating my anguish.
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1/12/2014 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 56 seconds
Episode 241 — Elisa Gabbert
Elisa Gabbert is the guest. Her new book, The Self Unstable, is now available from Black Ocean.
Teju Cole, writing for The New Yorker, says
"I found Elisa Gabbert’s The Self Unstable a wonderful surprise. It was the most intelligent and most intriguing thing I’ve read in a while, moving between lyric poetry, aphorism, and memoir, and with thoughts worth stealing on just about every page.”
And Make Magazine says
"Gabbert strikes a perfect balance between heart and head, between cleverness and earnestness, between language that demonstrates its own fallibility and language that is surprisingly, perfectly precise."
Monologue topics: the insufferably stupid anti-sunglasses stance of my early twenties, squinting.
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1/8/2014 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 23 seconds
Episode 240 — Ravi Mangla
Ravi Mangla is the guest. His new novella, Understudies, is now available from Outpost 19.
Laura van den Berg raves
"Ravi Mangla's Understudies is a brilliant meditation on the private cost of celebrity, the longing to transcend the ordinary, and the seductive nature of performance. Darkly funny, sharply-observed, and terrifically moving, Understudies is an essential debut."
And Gary Lutz says
"Ravi Mangla's delightingly tight, micro-chaptered Understudies is an unassumingly beautiful and moving debut. It's elegantly and hilariously precise about everything it touches, and it touches almost everything human."
Monologue topics: repetition, rhyming, making beats, stuff, my annual purge.
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1/5/2014 • 1 hour, 10 minutes, 44 seconds
Episode 239 — James Scott
James Scott is the guest. His debut novel, The Kept, is available from Harper.
Kirkus, in a starred review, says
“Scott is both compassionate moralist and master storyteller in this outstanding debut.”
And Tom Perrotta says
“The Kept starts out as a straightforward revenge narrative, then slowly deepens into something much more mysterious and compelling. James Scott has written a riveting and memorable debut novel.”
Monologue topics: New Year's, mail, iTunes reviews.
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1/1/2014 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 31 seconds
Episode 238 — Jennifer Michael Hecht
[Note: I've decided to make this episode available without subscription so that people can listen to it and share it as easily as possible. -BL]
Jennifer Michael Hecht is the guest. Her new book is called Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It. It is available now from Yale University Press.
Billy Collins says
“The title of this book is an imperative against the departure that is suicide, and its contents provide a learned, illuminating look at the history of what is perhaps the darkest secret in all of human behavior.”
And Newsweek says
"That it's not all a drag and you might as well get on with life's vagaries is the strikingly simple and convincing argument of Jennifer Michael Hecht's Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It. . . . While not insensitive to people who use suicide as a way to end the suffering of terminal illness, Hecht brands suicide an immoral act that robs society — and the self-killer — of a life that is certainly more valuable than what it may seem in that dark moment. It solves nothing, complicates everything. . . . Her argument is that it — whatever dark truth that pronoun signifies — almost always gets better."
Monologue topics: Ned Vizzini, suicide, grief.
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12/29/2013 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 26 seconds
Episode 237 — Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is the guest. Her new memoir, The End of San Francisco, is now available from City Lights Books.
Kirkus calls it
"A blisteringly honest portrait of a young, fast and greatly misunderstood life. . . . An outspoken, gender-ambiguous author and activist reflects on her halcyon days as a wild child in San Francisco."
And The San Francisco Chronicle says
"It would be easy to describe The End of San Francisco as a Joycean 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Queer' (although the book's intense stream of consciousness is reminiscent of the later, more experimental, Joyce) . . . but this is misleading. This journey of a life that begins in the professional upper-middle class (both parents are therapists) and the Ivy League and moves to hustling, drugs, activism -- Sycamore was active in ACT UP and Queer Nation -- and queer bohemian grunge, is profoundly American. At heart, Sycamore is writing about the need to escape control through flight or obliteration."
Monologue topics: my awkwardness, the over-analysis of my awkwardness, preemptive crucifixion, Pontius Pilate-ing.
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12/25/2013 • 1 hour, 11 minutes, 51 seconds
Episode 236 — Olivia Laing
Olivia Laing is the guest. Her new book The Trip to Echo Spring: On Writers and Drinking, is available from Picador.
Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, says
“The tortured relationship between literary lions and their liquor illuminates the obscure terrain of psychology and art in this searching biographical medidation....Laing's astute analysis of the pervasive presence and meaning of drink in the writers' texts, and its reflection of the writers' struggle to shape—and escape—reality...A fine study of human frailty through the eyes of its most perceptive victims.”
And Hilary Mantel, the Booker Prize-winning author of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, says
“I’m sorry I’ve finished this wonderful book because I feel I’ve been talking to a wise friend. I’ve been trying to work out exactly how Olivia Laing drew me in, because I hardly drink myself and have no particular attachment to the group of writers whose trials she describes. I think the tone is beautifully modulated, knowledgeable yet intimate, and she can evoke a state of mind as gracefully as she evokes a landscape....I think this is a book for all writers or would-be writers, whether succeeding or failing, whether standing on their feet or flat on the pavement....It’s one of the best books I’ve read about the creative uses of adversity: frightening but perversely inspiring.”
Monologue topics: Twitter, HTML Giant, The Zambreno Doll controversy, Disney on Ice.
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12/22/2013 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 59 seconds
Ned Vizzini, 1981—2013
This is my conversation with Ned, which first aired on December 16, 2012. I wanted to make it available to those who love him and those who love his work. (Prior to today, it was only available via premium subscription, because it was in the deeper archives.)
My heart goes out to all who feel this loss, especially his family.
-BL
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12/20/2013 • 1 hour, 31 minutes, 32 seconds
Episode 235 — Joyelle McSweeney
Joyelle McSweeney is the guest. Her books include the poetry collection The Red Bird, and the novels Nylund, the Sarcographer and Flet. Recently, her play entitled Dead Youth, or, The Leaks won the inaugural Leslie Scalapino Award for Innovative Women Playwrights. She is also a co-editor of Action Books and the quarterly online literary journal Action Yes.
Kate Bernheimer says
"If Vladimir Nabokov wanted to seduce Nancy Drew, he'd read her Nylund, The Sarcographer one dark afternoon over teacups of whiskey. Welcome to fiction's new femme fatale, Joyelle McSweeney."
And Michael Martone says
"You thought you knew your own language. This book hands it back to you on a platter and includes the instructional manual for its further use."
Monologue topics: Christmas, late capitalism, edginess, curmudgeonly behavior, my daughter.
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12/18/2013 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 48 seconds
Episode 234 — Jonathan Miles
Jonathan Miles is the guest. His new novel, Want Not, is now available from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Dave Eggers, writing for The New York Times Book Review, says
"I loved this book…the work of a fluid, confident, and profoundly talented writer…it’s a joyous book, a very funny book, and an unpredictable book, and that’s because everyone in it is allowed to be fully human.”
And Ben Fountain, author of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, says
"In this powerful, blisteringly funny novel, Jonathan Miles makes a startling discovery: We are what we throw away. It’s in our castoff goods, edibles, chances and people that our authentic selves are revealed; or, as one of his many memorable characters puts it, 'garbage [is] the only truthful thing civilization produced.' Miles mines the depths of waste so artfully that by the end of this extraordinary novel, we’re left with the suspicion that redemption may well be no more, and no less, than an existential salvage operation."
Monologue topics: New York City, feeling overprotective, my best books of 2013
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12/15/2013 • 1 hour, 27 minutes, 58 seconds
Episode 233 — Karolina Waclawiak
Karolina Waclawiak is the guest. Her debut novel, How to Get Into the Twin Palms, is now available from Two Dollar Radio. The New York Times Book Review says "Just as Anya reinvents herself, Waclawiak's novel (her first) reinvents the immigration story...At its most illuminating, How to Get Into the Twin Palms movingly portrays a protagonist intent on both creating and destroying herself, on burning brightly even as she goes up in smoke." And Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, calls it "A taut debut... [that] strikes with the creeping suddenness of a brush fire." Monologue topics: the dentist, cavities, flossing, contagions, demoralization, wheat, paranoia.
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12/11/2013 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 27 seconds
Episode 232 — Noah Cicero
Noah Cicero is the guest. His new novel is called Go to Work and Do Your Job. Care for Your Children. Pay Your Bills. Obey the Law. Buy Products., and it is available now from Lazy Fascist Press.
Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket, says
"I read Noah Cicero and remember that 'hysterical' can refer to something really funny and to a situation completely out of control. His work punches people in the face. Don't get in its way."
Monologue topics: receiving visitors, gentlemen callers, courting, taking a knee, listicles, bullshit.
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12/8/2013 • 1 hour, 23 minutes, 6 seconds
Episode 231 — Colum McCann
Colum McCann is the guest. In 2009, he won the National Book Award for his novel Let the Great World Spin and this year published a new novel called Transatlantic. He is also the curator of a new anthology called The Book of Men, available now from Picador. The Book of Men is the official December selection of The TNB Book Club.
From the publisher:
To help launch the literary nonprofit Narrative 4, Esquire asked eighty of the world’s greatest writers to chip in with a story, all with the title, “How to Be a Man.”The result is The Book of Men, an unflinching investigation into the essence of masculinity.
Monologue topics: the app, travel hell, TNB Book Club, kind mail, Narrative 4.
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12/4/2013 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 42 seconds
Episode 230 — Ben Brooks
Ben Brooks is the guest. His new novel, Lolito, is now available from Canongate Books.
Nick Cave says
"Lolito is the funniest, most horrible book I've read in years. I was blown away."
And The Guardian says
"Both warm and uncompromising, Lolito will be as entertaining for young adults as it is educational for older readers. And if some aspects of the world Brooks inhabits seem alarming, I can't think of a writer I would rather have as my guide."
Monologue topics: coming through in the clutch, voicemail, prank calls, the word 'podcast' as a verb.
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12/1/2013 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 41 seconds
Episode 229 — Jamie Iredell
Jamie Iredell is the guest. His new essay collection, I Was a Fat Drunk Catholic School Insomniac, is now available from Future Tense.
Scott McClanahan says
“Jamie Iredell is one of the two or three best writers I know in this world. If you read him—you’ll say the same thing. If you don’t, that’s fine. Your grandchildren will say it one day.”
Monologue topics: bookstores, trying to find 'the perfect book,' low-level panic, Ten Billion, wanting instructions
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11/27/2013 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 42 seconds
Episode 228 — Claire Vaye Watkins
Claire Vaye Watkins is the guest. Her debut story collection, Battleborn, is now available in paperback from Riverhead.
Antonya Nelson, writing for The New York Times Book Review, says
“Although individual stories stand alone, together they tell the tale of a place, and of the population that thrives and perishes therein… The historical sits comfortably alongside the contemporary and the factual nicely supplements the fictional… Readers will share in the environs of the author and her characters, be taken into the hardship of a pitiless place and emerge on the other side—wiser, warier and weathered like the landscape.”
And The Millions says
“As if Watkins’ prose embodies the desert landscape of Nevada itself, the stories are stony, unkind, and harsh, though never unattractive… Beneath these confessions runs a spiritual undertow—that salvific beauty can arise when brutality is brought to light… All of her stories left me feeling purged and oddly cleansed, easily making Battleborn one of the strongest collections I’ve read in years.”
Monologue topics: titles, titling, Dying Young, nakedly depressing titles.
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11/24/2013 • 1 hour, 23 minutes, 38 seconds
Episode 227 — Kevin Sampsell
Kevin Sampsell is the guest. His debut novel, This is Between Us, is now available from Tin House Books.
Jess Walter, author of Beautiful Ruins, says
"In This Is Between Us Kevin Sampsell writes with grace and intimacy about the toughest subject of all—love—and manages to capture a relationship in its natural state: wry and wistful, strange and sexy, humming with desire, quaking with vulnerability."
And Patrick deWitt, author of The Sisters Brothers, says
"This Is Between Us is an imperturbable, strange, melancholy (but never maudlin) piece of work. Kevin Sampsell straddles the line between candor and oversharing with an artful grace I found infectious."
Monologue topics: mail, art vs. media, Tom Waits, LSD, the devil, doing the podcast live in front of people.
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11/20/2013 • 1 hour, 24 minutes, 51 seconds
Episode 226 — Daniel Alarcón
Daniel Alarcón is the guest. His new novel, At Night We Walk in Circles, is now available from Riverhead Books. The New York Times Book Review calls it
"Wise and engaging...a provocative study of the way war culture ensnares both participant and observer, the warping fascination of violence, and the disfiguring consequences of the roles we play in public...[a] layered, gorgeously nuanced work…the ending is a quiet bomb, as satisfying as it is ambiguous."
And The Daily Beast says
"Alarcón is a young, talented writer who is on the cusp of a breakthrough, a state of mind perfectly captured by the compulsively energetic voice of At Night We Walk in Circles...a gripping story."
Monologue topics: Conan, M.I.A., projected anxiety, kale, milk, mail, Chelsea Martin, alt-lit.
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11/17/2013 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 34 seconds
Episode 225 — Anne Marie Wirth Cauchon
Anne Marie Wirth Cauchon is the guest. Her debut novel, Nothing, is now available from Two Dollar Radio.
Joy Williams calls it
"A burning mean and darkly mysterious read."
And Kate Zambreno says
"I could tell you that Anne Marie Wirth Cauchon has written an utterly contemporary novel of our fragmented culture, a novel that I think might be the great American novel of the selfie, brilliantly alternating the narratives of two young travelers partying and searching and losing themselves in the wild West — a Kerouac hitchhiker juxtaposed with the nihilistic, wanting, wandering Ruth and her toxic friendship with her prettier best friend. But this is what I want to tell you—this is what you need to know — Anne Marie Wirth Cauchon writes like a beast, brutal and ecstatic. You need to read this."
Monologue topics: celebrity sightings, Book Soup, voicemail, Elliott Holt, my thing, navelgazing
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11/13/2013 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 56 seconds
Episode 224 — Laura van den Berg
Laura van den Berg is the guest. Her new story collection, The Isle of Youth, is now available from FSG Originals.
Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, raves
"If ever there was a writer going places, it’s Laura van den Berg, who follows up her debut collection, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us, with the ambitious, modular The Isle of Youth, whose seven stories are arranged along the themes of family secrets with noirish intrigue."
And The New Inquiry says
“Van den Berg excels at complexity, eccentricity, maximalism of plot…Her emphases on elaborate plot and intentional loose ends are a refreshing departure from the contemporary taste for tidy, minimal plot paired with maximal voices.”
Also this episode: a brief conversation with Victoria Patterson, whose new novel, The Peerless Four, is the official November selection of The TNB Book Club.
Monologue topics: congestion, logistics, obsession with logistics
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11/10/2013 • 1 hour, 32 minutes, 25 seconds
Episode 223 — Monica Drake
Monica Drake is the guest. Her new novel, The Stud Book, is now available from Hogarth Press.
Cheryl Strayed says
“Monica Drake has written a take-your-breath-away good, blow-your-mind wise, crack-your-heart-open beauty of a novel. The Stud Book is a smart, sexy, comic, compassionate, absorbing, and necessary story of our times.”
And Publishers Weekly says
“What really stands out is [Drake's] depiction of [the] city. This is not the twee wonderland of Portlandia…Drake combines [her characters’] lives in a quirky, knowing way, showing the complexities of modern-day female life, species Pacific Northwest native.”
Monologue topics: Sweden, responding to criticism, Google Translator, self-loathing, weakness, humiliation.
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11/6/2013 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 3 seconds
Episode 222 — Doug Dorst
Doug Dorst is the guest. His latest novel, co-authored with film director J.J. Abrams, is called S. (Mulholland Books).
USA Today calls it
"...an intriguing and impressive experiment in storytelling that's full of paranoia, conspiracy theory, love and mystery..."
And The Telegraph calls it
"...a beautiful hardback carefully distressed to look like an old library book, stuffed with astonishing ephemera (postcards, newspaper clippings, photos, letters) that flutter from the turning pages - and a dose of film-industrial chicanery in its cover claims as well..."
Monologue topics: Halloween, voicemail, Chelsea Martin, shyness, curiosity
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11/3/2013 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 33 seconds
Episode 221 — Jennifer duBois
Jennifer duBois is the guest. Her new novel, Cartwheel, is now available from Random House.
The New York Times Book Review calls it
“Psychologically astute . . . Dubois hits [the] larger sadness just right and dispenses with all the salacious details you can readily find elsewhere. . . . The writing in Cartwheel is a pleasure—electric, fine-tuned, intelligent, conflicted. The novel is engrossing, and its portraiture hits delightfully and necessarily close to home.”
And Entertainment Weekly calls it
“[A] gripping, gorgeously written novel . . . The emotional intelligence in Cartwheel is so sharp it’s almost ruthless—a tabloid tragedy elevated to high art."
Monologue topics: file sharing, Halloween, last minute costume ideas, Windblown Man.
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10/30/2013 • 1 hour, 5 minutes, 58 seconds
Episode 220 — Chelsea Martin
Chelsea Martin is the guest. Her new book, Even Though I Don't Miss You, is due out from Short Flight / Long Drive Books on November 1, 2013.
Blake Butler says
"Someone who should not die is Chelsea Martin."
Monologue topics: Mellow Pages Library, mail, suspending disbelief, my current reading taste, experimentalism, immersive reading
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10/27/2013 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 37 seconds
Episode 219 — Davis Schneiderman
Davis Schneiderman is the guest. His new novel, [SIC], is now available from Jaded Ibis Productions.
[SIC] includes public domain works published under Davis Schneiderman's name, including everything from the prologue to The Canterbury Tales to Wikipedia pages to genetic codes, along with a transformation of the Jorge Luis Borges story "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote." [SIC] is part of DEAD/BOOKS trilogy of conceptual works by Schneiderman from Jaded Ibis Press. Other books in the trilogy are Blank (2011), and Ink (forthcoming).
Monologue topics: Simple Kind of Life, Gwen Stefani, Chris de Burgh, Lady in Red, Louisiana, nostalgia, emotional breakdowns.
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10/23/2013 • 1 hour, 23 minutes
Episode 218 — Jesmyn Ward
Jesmyn Ward is the guest. She was the 2011 recipient of the National Book Award for her novel, Salvage the Bones, and her new memoir, Men We Reaped, is now available from Bloomsbury.
The New York Times Book Review raves
"[Ward] chronicles our American story in language that is raw, beautiful and dangerous… [Her] singular voice and her full embrace of her anger and sorrow set this work apart from those that have trodden similar ground… With loving and vivid recollection, she returns flesh to the bones of statistics and slows her ghosts to live again… [It’s a] complicated and courageous testimony."
And The Los Angeles Times calls it
"Heart-wrenching… A brilliant book about beauty and death… at once a coming-of-age story and a kind of mourning song… filled [with] intimate and familial moments, each described with the passion and precision of the polished novelist Ward has become… Ward is one of those rare writers who’s traveled across America’s deepening class rift with her sense of truth intact. What she gives back to her community is the hurtful honesty of the best literary art."
Monologue topics: awards, Alice Munro, The Nobel Prize, Trey Parker, Matt Stone, LSD, Bret Easton Ellis
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10/20/2013 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 4 seconds
Episode 217 — Chris L. Terry
Chris L. Terry is the guest. His debut novel, Zero Fade, is now available from Curbside Splendor.
Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler's Wife, says
"Chris Terry has bestowed Kevin, the hero of Zero Fade, with an especially acute case of teenage angst, and the results are sweet, painful, and very recognizable to anyone who has survived seventh grade. This is a wonderful book."
And Lindsay Hunter says
"Reading Chris Terry's Zero Fade offered me a glimpse into a cultural experience that isn't mine, but that I could recognize immediately. Vernacular as world. On the surface, it's just language. But this novel isn't surface. The characters speak in rhythms that reveal emotions not identifiable by just words, but I'll name them nonetheless: humor, sadness, confusion, joy, revelation. It's all here in Terry's first novel, a novel that is practically carbonated, how it sparkles and burns."
Monologue topics: the story behind the story, being interviewed, rambling, HPV, cunnilingus, celebrity marital discord
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10/16/2013 • 1 hour, 6 minutes, 44 seconds
Episode 216 — Lauren Grodstein
Lauren Grodstein is the guest. Her new novel, The Explanation for Everything, is now available from Algonquin Books. It is the official October selection of The TNB Book Club.
Tom Perrotta calls it
"Very smart and touching and unexpected.”
And The Washington Post says
“[Grodstein has] fashioned in her smart, assured third novel, The Explanation for Everything, . . . a gripping tale of a biologist who finds himself approaching midlife and suddenly finding faith . . . Grodstein’s real gift is her emotional precision . . . Finding or losing God proves to be an equally destabilizing tectonic shift, and this novel is full of them . . . Their cumulative force will leave you happily unsteady, and moved.”
Monologue topics: psychic burden, fear, anxiety, Sisyphus, insomnia, failure, dying alone.
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10/13/2013 • 1 hour, 11 minutes, 53 seconds
Episode 215 — Ethel Rohan
Ethel Rohan is the guest. Her new story collection, Goodnight Nobody, is now available from Queen's Ferry Press.
Peter Orner raves
“Ethel Rohan speaks in many voices, all of which need to be heard. She goes so deeply into the hearts and souls of her people. And she wounds, she heals, often in the same sentence. Plain and simple, Goodnight Nobody is a great and unique collection of stories.”
And Roxane Gay says
“Fans of Ethel Rohan’s writing will find, in her latest and outstanding collection, Goodnight Nobody, a writer who has never been more intelligent, more graceful, more moving. Whether it’s a young girl torn between a loving father and an abusive mother, or a photographer who is losing her eyesight while her husband bears witness, or a woman who wants nothing more than a sign from her husband that he sees her, Rohan writes about people searching for a place to belong or a place to breathe or simply, a place to be. In Rohan’s eminently capable hands and words, these stories give us that hope that these searching people she writes will find everything they want or need.”
Monologue topics: Americans' reading habits, polls, sex, sexual dysfunction, lying about sex and reading
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10/9/2013 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 23 seconds
Episode 214 — Cari Luna
Cari Luna is the guest. Her debut novel, The Revolution of Every Day, is now available from Tin House.
Kirkus says
"Luna creates an array of complex characters caught up in emotions, relationships and situations far from the ordinary as they examine their commitment to their merged family and explore their own ideals and expectations. Enlightening and marked by inventive subject matter, intense reflection and stark eloquence."
And Bust magazine raves
"The characters are superbly flawed, and Luna expertly leads us through their vastly different psyches and makes us understand them, even if we don't always sympathize. But just as much as it is a novel of characters, The Revolution of Every Day is the story of a city that's struggling with gentrification, as Cat puts it, 'All the way back to the Dutch and the Indians, yeah?'"
Monologue topics: J.D. Salinger, WWII, weird life sandwiches.
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10/6/2013 • 1 hour, 10 minutes, 28 seconds
Episode 213 — Jeff Jackson
Jeff Jackson is the guest. His debut novel, Mira Corpora, is now available from Two Dollar Radio.
Don DeLillo says
"It's fine work in its manic pacing and its summoning of certain cultural emblems. Present tense with a vengeance. I hope the book finds the serious readers who are out there waiting for this kind of fiction to hit them in the face."
And Dennis Cooper says
"Jeff Jackson is one of the most extraordinarily gifted young writers I've read in a very long time. His strangely serene yet gripping, unsettling, and beautifully rendered novel Mira Corpora has within it all the earmarks of an important new literary voice."
Monologue topics: BuzzFeed, lists, sensationalism, Room 32, D.R. Haney
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10/2/2013 • 1 hour, 12 minutes, 39 seconds
Episode 212 — Jonathan Lethem
Jonathan Lethem is the guest. His latest novel, Dissident Gardens, is now available from Doubleday. The Los Angeles Times raves "Lethem is as ambitious as Mailer, as funny as Philip Roth and as stinging as Bob Dylan...Dissident Gardens shows Lethem in full possession of his powers as a novelist, as he smoothly segues between historical periods and internal worlds...Erudite, beautifully written, wise, compassionate, heartbreaking and pretty much devoid of nostalgia." And Booklist, in a starred review, says "Lethem extends his stylistically diverse, loosely aligned, deeply inquiring saga of New York City (Motherless Brooklyn, 1999; The Fortress of Solitude, 2003; Chronic City, 2009) with a richly saturated, multigenerational novel about a fractured family of dissidents headquartered in Queens...Lethem is breathtaking in this torrent of potent voices, searing ironies, pop-culture allusions, and tragicomic complexities. He shreds the folk scene, eviscerates quiz shows, pays bizarre tribute to Archie Bunker, and offers unusual perspectives on societal debates and tragic injustices. A righteous, stupendously involving novel about the personal toll of failed political movements and the perplexing obstacles to doing good." Monologue topics: travel, the flu, walking, the homeless guy who asked me for my email address
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9/29/2013 • 52 minutes, 13 seconds
Episode 211 — Edwidge Danticat
Edwidge Danticat is the guest. Her new novel Claire of the Sea Light (Knopf), is the official September selection of The TNB Book Club. Kirkus says “Claire of the Sea Light reads like the work of a writer eager to create another world . . . A sense of the possibilities is tangible, where Danticat delves into parenting, revenge, reconciliation and remorse. Claire Limyè Lanmè is the daughter of a widower who is mulling whether or not to let someone else raise his daughter. In this small town, other mothers and fathers are working through reconciling their feelings about parenthood while readers experience a day in her life. Simultaneously, Danticat masterfully weaves in necessary parts of the past.” And Time Out New York calls it "Breathtaking." Monologue topics: mail, corrections, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Lucille Ball.
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9/25/2013 • 1 hour, 8 minutes, 27 seconds
Episode 210 — Curtis Sittenfeld
Curtis Sittenfeld is the guest. She is the bestselling author of the novels Prep and American Wife, and her new book, Sisterland, is now available in hardcover and ebook from Random House. The paperback edition is due out in Spring 2014.
The Boston Globe raves
“The power of [Sittenfeld’s] writing and the force of her vision challenge the notion that great fiction must be hard to read. She is a master of dramatic irony, creating fully realized social worlds before laying waste to her heroines’ understanding of them...Her prose [is] a rich delight.”
And The New York Times calls it
“Psychologically vivid...Sittenfeld’s gifts for portraying the inner lives of her heroines [bring Sisterland] closer, in terms of emotional chiaroscuro, to two classics about pairs of sisters, The Old Wives’ Tale by Arnold Bennett and The Easter Parade by Richard Yates...Sisterland is a testament to the author’s growing depth and assurance as a writer.”
Monologue topics: excerpts of my old journal entries, letters, my twenties, How to Fail.
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9/22/2013 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 40 seconds
Episode 209 — Tom Perrotta
Tom Perrotta is the guest. He is the author of several acclaimed works of fiction, including Election, Little Children, The Abstinence Teacher, and The Leftovers. His new story collection, Nine Inches, is now available from St. Martin's.
Kirkus, in a starred review, says
"The acclaimed novelist displays perfect tonal pitch in this story collection, as nobody explores the darker sides of suburbia with a lighter touch."
And Publishers Weekly raves
"Told with wit and grace, Perrotta's story collection lays bare the shifting relationships we all suffer and seldom comprehend, presenting characters who are ambushed by the hidden intentions of people they thought they knew."
Monologue topics: mail, adderall, voicemail, sad and deranged listeners, Brad song, MFAs, student loans, the writing disease.
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9/18/2013 • 1 hour, 25 minutes, 4 seconds
Episode 208 — Mitchell S. Jackson
Mitchell S. Jackson is the guest. His debut novel, The Residue Years, is now available from Bloomsbury.
Jesmyn Ward says
"I know these characters well: Champ with his swagger and invincibility, doing all he can to protect his fiercely beating heart. Grace, held together with polish and a prayer, trying to make a way when there isn’t one. Both of them longing, for a better life, a clear path out of their predicaments. I know the language they speak: voices redolent of struggle and the South displaced to our country’s far northwestern corner: Portland, Oregon. A wrenchingly beautiful debut by a writer to be reckoned with, The Residue Years marks the beginning of a most promising career."
And Amy Hempel says
"In this raw heartwreck of a novel, every bit of personal wisdom is hard-won. Here is Grace, mother of Champ: 'Some people are latecomers to themselves, but who we are will soon enough surround us.' It's a searing claim and prophecy about lives severely tested. The author is entirely persuasive, such that Grace and her sons, given vivid voice, are one of the fictional families I have cared about most."
Monologue topics: my adderall experiment, writing, juicing, Dumbo's feather, mild paranoia.
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9/15/2013 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 12 seconds
Episode 207 — Roy Kesey
Roy Kesey is the guest. His latest story collection, Any Deadly Thing, is now available from Dzanc Books.
Elizabeth Crane says
"Roy Kesey's stories in Any Deadly Thing are perfect, masterful portraits of an international cross-section of wise, broken souls—hopeful, brutal, funny as hell, and heart-crushing, every last one."
And San Diego City Beat raves
"Most short-story writers are like baseball pitchers. The really good ones have four or five different pitches, but most only have two or three that they've perfected and go to over and over again. Kesey is more like a five-tool outfielder: He can do it all. In Any Deadly Thing, he collects stories about lovable losers, tales of hardscrabble redemption, experimental fiction, Bosnian war stories and expat tales set in Beijing apartments and Peruvian jungles. There's no limit to the man's imagination."
Monologue topics: mail, focusing the podcast on writing, Molly Ringwald, digressions, fame, voicemail, rapping, blushing.
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9/11/2013 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 55 seconds
Episode 206 — Cal Morgan
Cal Morgan is the guest. He is a senior vice president and executive editor at the Harper division of HarperCollins, where he is also the editorial director for Harper Perennial and Harper Paperbacks.
Monologue topics: voicemail, animal rights, vegetarianism, Brooklyn, Los Angeles, Miley Cyrus, the cultural conversation, the show's format.
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9/8/2013 • 1 hour, 24 minutes, 38 seconds
Episode 205 — Beth Lisick
Beth Lisick is the guest. Her new book, Yokohama Threeway and Other Small Shames, is due out from City Lights Publishers on September 24, 2013.
Kathleen Hanna raves
"This book is fucking great. There is a story in it called ‘PANDA AMBULANCE!!!’ How is Beth Lisick not as famous as David Sedaris?”
And Matthew Zapruder says
"These short pieces, which at first seem casually constructed and connected, are immediately funny, ironic, personable, embarrassing and oddly appealing. Yet quickly they accumulate into deep emotional resonance. Just a few pages in and I was totally involved with the struggles of this clearly talented, hilariously confused person to be better in her own weird antic backassward ways. Full of indelible phrases (Panda Ambulance!) and painfully irrefutable observations about art, crappy jobs, friendship, wealth, sex, hygiene, booze, motherhood, and so many other things, this book is basically the inverse of those sappy self-discovery memoirs that inevitably arc into hard earned wisdom and self-discovery. This writer has the courage to stay in difficult places, and therefore be truer to life. I laughed and cringed and cared more and more. Thank you, Beth Lisick, it was and continues to be worth all the struggles."
Monologue topics: voicemail, Felicity, funny books, Leaving the Atocha Station, Ben Lerner, beets, Gore Vidal.
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9/4/2013 • 1 hour, 22 minutes, 21 seconds
Episode 204 — Mark Leibovich
Mark Leibovich is the guest. His new book, This Town, is a #1 New York Times bestseller. It's available now from Blue Rider Press.
Politico says
“Not since Truman Capote’s Answered Prayers knocked New York society on its heels with its thinly fictionalized revelations of real players who had thought the author was their friend has a book so riled a city’s upper echelons.”
And The Financial Times says
“Like a modern-day Balzac to US capital power players….hilarious….perceptive.”
Monologue topics: mail, Max Millwood, voicemail, three-ways.
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9/1/2013 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 22 seconds
Episode 203 — Peter Orner
Peter Orner is the guest. His new story collection, Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge, is now available from Little, Brown.
Tom Bissell says
“Peter Orner is a true writers’ writer, which is to say a writer writers complain to writers about readers not reading. His novel The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo (a title, one senses, Orner had to fight hard to retain) ranks high among the best works of fiction about Africa ever written by an American, and his collection Esther Stories contains work to rival that of David Means and Tobias Wolff. Orner’s latest collection, Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge, is bundled into four sections and includes more than fifty pieces of fiction…Imagine Brief Interviews with Hideous Men written by Alice Munro.”
And Booklist says
"Orner is an undisputed master of the short short story."
Monologue topics: feedback, Max Millwood, Gregory Sherl, the show's format, my dullness and incompetence
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8/28/2013 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 14 seconds
Episode 202 — Lindsay Hunter
Lindsay Hunter is the guest. Her new story collection, Don't Kiss Me, is now available from Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.
Kirkus Reviews raves
“Don’t Kiss Me, Hunter’s second short story collection, is a bold, haunting, and beautiful observation of lives lived outside the scope of the mainstream . . . Hunter near-effortlessly captures the hopes, fears, realizations, regrets, and desires of the uglier, more taboo, and misunderstood side of humanity. Though their worlds may be sordid, Hunter manages to infuse her misfits with incredible amounts of empathy and humor. Instead of repulsed, we often find ourselves rooting from the sidelines. And it’s hard not to voraciously ingest all 26 stories in Don’t Kiss Me, given their breakneck pace, raw emotion, and Hunter’s own propensity for language that pops but never fizzles . . . [Don’t Kiss Me] is transgressive without being navel-gazing, confrontational without being aggressive. But above all, it contains a whole lot of Hunter’s bloody, beating heart.”
And Publishers Weekly says
“Overall these stories land with a wet slap—messy and confrontational. They demand your horrified attention, and they reward it with exaggerated and irresistible humanity.”
Monologue topics: voicemail, mail.
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8/25/2013 • 1 hour, 26 minutes, 12 seconds
Episode 201 — Gregory Sherl
Gregory Sherl is the guest. His new book Monogamy Songs is now available from Future Tense.
The Huffington Post raves
"The problem with post-confessionalism is that its most uninspired iterations have been sprinkled across America for the past quarter-century; that is, the problem with post-confessionalism isn't post-confessionalism, it's post-confessionalists. No longer: Gregory Sherl is the post-confessionalist we've been looking for, which is to say that there's nothing smarmy, self-important, or false about these poems or this poet. Sherl is that rare author who can speak earnestly about the vagaries, pleasures, and discouragements of living and still charm your pants off. You'll enjoy walking around his head a bit, I guarantee."
And Rain Taxi says
"...Sherl has written a book full of love and surprising emotional power."
Monologue topics: facial hair, signifiers, head scarves, hard-won truth, wisdom, messiah complexes, author photos.
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8/21/2013 • 1 hour, 20 minutes, 23 seconds
Episode 200 — Susan Orlean
Susan Orlean is the guest. A staff writer for The New Yorker magazine, she is also the bestselling author of several books, including The Orchid Thief and Rin Tin Tin.
The New York Times Book Review raves
"The collecting mania that Susan Orlean has so painstakingly described is, like the orchid, a small thing of grandeur, a passion with a pedigree...Stylishly written, whimsical yet sophisticated, quirkily detailed and full of empathy for a person you might not have thought about empathetically...The Orchid Thief shows her gifts in full bloom."
And Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, says
"I adored [Rin Tin Tin]. It weaves history, war, show business, humanity, wit, and grace into an incredible story about America, the human-animal bond, and the countless ways we would be lost without dogs by our sides, on our screens, and in our books. This is the story Susan Orlean was born to tell—it's filled with amazing characters, reporting, and writing."
Monologue topics: Episode 200, spreading the word, thank you.
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8/18/2013 • 1 hour, 34 minutes, 22 seconds
Episode 199 — Peter Mattei
Peter Mattei is the guest. His new novel, The Deep Whatsis, is now available in the United States from Other Press, and in the UK from The Friday Project.
Kate Christensen raves
"With zingy, hilarious glee, Peter Mattei takes a sharp stick and pokes it at many deserving underbellies: the puffery of corporate America; hipsters, yoga dudes, and the general pretentiousness of north Brooklyn; and many more. The Deep Whatsis is a provocative, darkly subversive, deeply satisfying novel."
And Publishers Weekly calls it
"[A] morbidly satiric look at corporate culture at the crossroads of art and consumerism...Mattei serves up a rampant critique of haute New York society."
Monologue topics: screenwriting, when comedy is received as tragedy, film school, humiliation
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8/14/2013 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 34 seconds
Episode 198 — Megan Abbott
Megan Abbott is the guest. Her latest novel, Dare Me, is due out in paperback from Reagan Arthur / Back Bay Books on August 27, 2013.
The New York Times Book Review raves
"Megan Abbott has [written]...The Great American Cheerleading Novel, and—stop scowling—it's spectacular.... Subversive stuff... Heathers meets Fight Club good."
And Entertainment Weekly calls it
"A psychologically astute thriller...Abbott's latest is not only a page-turning mystery—it's also a close look at teen girls' ferocious rivalries and intense bonds."
Monologue topics: mail, feminism, Adelle Waldman, Episode 195.
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8/11/2013 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 48 seconds
Episode 197 — Molly Ringwald
Molly Ringwald is the guest. Her debut novel, When It Happens to You, is now available in paperback from It Books, an imprint of HarperCollins.
Lauren Groff, bestselling author of Arcadia, raves
"When It Happens to You is absolutely lovely, a smart, emotionally sophisticated, intricately dovetailed novel of stories. World, I'm telling you now: Molly Ringwald is the real deal."
And Kirkus calls it
"A beautiful exploration of how the heart's irrational responses to love and betrayal can stand in the way of forgiveness... Ringwald deftly weaves together the threads of these stories, creating a tapestry that captures the emotional landscape of both young and well-worn relationships."
Monologue topics: over-thinking things, Sixteen Candles, Anthony Michael Hall, Farmer Ted, near disasters.
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8/7/2013 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 12 seconds
Episode 196 — Janice Clark
Janice Clark is the guest. Her debut novel, The Rathbones, is now available from Doubleday. It is the official August selection of The TNB Book Club.
Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, says
“A teenager comes of age and grapples with the heavy burdens of family secrets against the backdrop of the 19th Century New England whaling industry in this beautifully written, playful and intricate debut novel. Clark creates evocative descriptions . . . making her images and encounters between people especially vivid.”
And The Millions says
"The Rathbones is the most sui generis debut you’re likely to encounter this year. Think Moby-Dick directed by David Lynch from a screenplay by Gabriel Garcia Marquez…with Charles Addams doing the set design and The Decembrists supplying the chanteys. Clark writes a beautiful prose line, and the story, like the ocean, gets deeper, richer, and stranger the farther out you go.”
Monologue topics: bikes, LA, tourist vans, celebrity sightings, mistakes.
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8/4/2013 • 1 hour, 9 minutes, 34 seconds
Episode 195 — Adelle Waldman
Adelle Waldman is the guest. Her debut novel, The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., is now available from Henry Holt.
Jess Walter calls it
“A smart, engaging 21st-century comedy of manners in which the debut novelist Adelle Waldman crawls convincingly around inside the head of one Nathaniel (Nate) Piven. [She shows] herself to be . . . a savvy observer of human nature . . . . terrific at describing the halting miscommunications of a relationship. Nate’s self-destructive moodiness and reverse-engineered justifications are especially well drawn; his shallow pick-a-fight thoughts may even be painfully familiar.”
And Katie Roiphe, writing for Slate, says
"We have lately heard ad infinitum the new sensitive literary man’s account of his life and times... what we haven’t yet heard enough of is the smart literary woman’s view of him. With Adelle Waldman’s funny, provocative satire, The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., we have a valuable new anthropology of the type. In a debut novel told from his point of view, Waldman deftly skewers the new literary man... with his stylish torment, his self-seriousness, his dangerous admixture of grandiosity and insecurity, and old fashioned condescension toward women gussied up as sensitivity, his maddening irony, his very specific way of treating people badly while worrying about liberal politics.... [An] excellent funny novel."
Monologue topics: poem, Michael Earl Craig, Primitive Men.
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7/31/2013 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 49 seconds
Episode 194 — Abigail Tarttelin
Abigail Tarttelin is the guest. Her new novel, Golden Boy, has just been published in the United States by Atria Books.
Booklist, in a starred review, calls it
“A dramatic, thoroughgoing investigation of the complexities of sexuality and gender.... A warmly human coming-of-age story, thanks to the fact that Max is such an appealing character. And so his desperate search for identity is gripping, emotionally engaging, and genuinely unforgettable.”
And Emily St. John Mandel says
“Abigail Tarttelin is a fearless writer. In Golden Boy, she balances a harrowing coming of age with a deeply compassionate portrait of a family in crisis, and the result is sometimes brutal, often tender, and always compelling. This is a gripping and fully-realized novel.”
Monologue topics: politics, media, money, Washington DC, power, This Town, dystopia, depression.
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7/28/2013 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 29 seconds
Episode 193 — Nick Antosca
Nick Antosca is the guest. A staff writer on the upcoming NBC show Believe, helmed by J.J. Abrams and Alfonso Cuarón, he is also the author of several books, the most recent of which is a story collection called The Girlfriend Game, available now from Word Riot Press.
Peter Straub says
"These lovely stories float out to us from a long, dark alley-way where Franz Kafka and Bruno Schultz are mugging Ray Bradbury.... Nick Antosca has reached a level of blissful mastery."
And Publishers Weekly says
"Antosca's scalpel dissects love, family, and illusions of morality in this brutal and often uncomfortably sexual collection. Combining scathing horror and psychological realism, these 12 vivisections of the inhuman condition marry stinging social commentary with psychological horror... Horror's expected icons are replaced by neighbors and families, with relationships being the monsters... This literate, thoughtful horror will inspire long-lasting unease."
Monologue topics: addicition, moral ambiguity, the vastness of space, dark mystery.
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7/24/2013 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 34 seconds
Episode 192 — Alissa Nutting
Alissa Nutting is the guest. Her debut novel, Tampa, is now available from Ecco.
Time magazine calls it
"A gutsy attempt by a young, female author to embody a wholly unsympathetic female narrator and probe the question of whether society lets women essentially get away with crimes for which men are excoriated."
And Salon says
"It may be the summer’s best beach read — that is, if you ditch the disconcertingly woolly black velour dust jacket, and make sure your kids aren’t peeking over your shoulder. ...Beyond mere titillation, Tampa gets at fundamental questions: What are the limits of reader empathy? If an individual we’d view as an unrepentant criminal explains her twisted thought process, are we complicit if we keep reading? And is an adult woman seducing a young male student — with its air of 'hot for teacher' fantasy — meaningfully different from male pedophilia?"
Monologue topics: listener feedback, closing thoughts on the 'lovely and talented' debate.
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7/21/2013 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 28 seconds
Episode 191 — Elliott Holt
Elliott Holt is the guest. Her debut novel, You Are One of Them, is now available from Penguin.
The New York Times Book Review raves
"You Are One of Them is a hugely absorbing first novel from a writer with a fluid, vivid style and a rare knack for balancing the pleasure of entertainment with the deeper gratification of insight. More, please.”
And Darin Strauss says
“Elliott Holt is not just a promising writer, but a great writer. She’s young, and she’s a master. I was going to write that You Are One of Them could’ve been written by an Alice Munro or a Susan Minot, but that would be wrong. Because this book could only have been written by Elliott Holt, whose powerful new voice is her own.”
Also in this episode: a brief conversation with Alexander Maksik, whose new novel A Marker to Measure Drift is the official July selection of the TNB Book Club.
Monologue topics: lovely and talented, sexism, feminism, TNB Book Club.
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7/17/2013 • 1 hour, 29 minutes, 27 seconds
Episode 190 — Sean Carswell
Sean Carswell is the guest. His new novel is called Madhouse Fog.
Patricia Geary says
“I’m a huge fan of Carswell’s fiction: he’s intelligent, hilarious, incisive, and his ear for dialogue is extraordinary. Nevertheless, I found Madhouse Fog to be a geometric progression of his talent—besides being compelling and wonderfully strange (I lost sleep over it; it’s a damn hard book to put down), it is the epitome of literary sophistication. I loved this novel!”
And Scott O'Connor says
“Sean Carswell is full of surprises. He’s funny, frightening, madcap, philosophical. His writing has a real warmth of spirit, and the kind of deft observation that changes the way you see things long after you leave the page.”
Monologue topics: Amazon, Apple, Big 5 publishers, the future of publishing, the business of publishing, paranoia.
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7/14/2013 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 21 seconds
Episode 189 — Alina Simone
Alina Simone is the guest. Her debut novel, Note to Self, is now available from Faber & Faber.
Sam Lipsyte says
“People as multi-talented and skilled as Alina Simone, who sings beautifully, writes essays, and now foists upon us a truly funny and poignant novel, need to be stopped. And maybe they will be, but in the meantime, there is no harm in falling into the soulful voice of Simone's narrator, Anna, as she struggles with the end of numb, cubicled youth and the awkward beginnings of new life.”
And Kirkus calls it
“A remarkably assured debut . . . Wicked, witty.”
Monologue topics: Fourth of July, the weird story of how my bad back was finally healed.
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7/10/2013 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 6 seconds
Episode 188 — Lee Boudreaux
Lee Boudreaux is the guest. She is the editorial director at Ecco Press and has worked with a long list of notable authors, including Stephen King, David Wroblewski, Alissa Nutting, Patrick DeWitt, and Ben Fountain.
Monologue topics: mail, strange mail, Whole Foods, marriage, parenthood, using your words.
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7/3/2013 • 1 hour, 22 minutes, 4 seconds
Episode 187 — Domenica Ruta
Domenica Ruta is the guest. Her new memoir, With or Without You, is now available from Spiegel & Grau.
Entertainment Weekly calls it
“Stunning . . . comes across as a bleaker, funnier, R-rated version of The Glass Castle and marks the arrival of a blazing new voice in literature.”
And The New York Times Book Review calls it
“A luminous, layered accomplishment.”
Also this episode: a brief conversation with Jessica Anya Blau, whose new novel, The Wonder Bread Summer, is now available from Harper Perennial.
Monologue topics: the sun's lethal nature, worrying about people not being worried about me.
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6/30/2013 • 1 hour, 21 minutes, 7 seconds
Episode 186 — Erika Kleinman
Erika Kleinman is the guest. Her new mini-memoir, My Life as a Dyke, is now available as an ebook exclusive from Thought Catalog.
From the publisher:
"Being a lesbian doesn’t come natural to everyone. That’s what Erika Kleinman learned during her sexual awakening in 1990s Seattle, when she began dating a host of butch women who were all too willing to show her the ropes. My Life as a Dyke recounts Kleinmans’ relationships with candor and humor while making one thing clear: no matter who you’re interested in, dating can be a nightmare."
Monologue topics: people smiling at me, cosmic energy, narcissism, walking meditation, Los Angeles.
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6/26/2013 • 1 hour, 21 minutes, 32 seconds
Episode 185 — Maggie Nelson
Maggie Nelson is the guest. She is the critically acclaimed author of books like The Red Parts, Bluets, and The Art of Cruelty.
The New York Times Book Review calls The Art of Cruelty
"An important and frequently surprising book . . . could be read as the foundation for a post-avant-garde aesthetics. . . . Nelson, who is also a poet, is such a graceful writer that I . . . just sat back and enjoyed the show.”
And BOMB Magazine says of Bluets
"From blue factoids like Benedict de Saussure’s 1789 invention of 'cyanometer, with which he hoped to measure the blue of the sky,' to her own struggles with depression, Nelson gifts us with what seems like a lifetime study of blue while somehow slyly avoiding any of the obvious 'blue' clichés. Maggie Nelson continues to raise the bar higher in what a reader can expect from a book. Bluets is smart yet intimate, quiet yet provocative, and a welcome addition to the poetic non-fiction discourse."
Monologue topics: mortality, memory, writing, childhood, wiping, O.J. Simpson, major cultural moments.
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6/23/2013 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 25 seconds
Episode 184 — Julie Sarkissian
Julie Sarkissian is the guest. Her debut novel, Dear Lucy, is now available from Simon & Schuster.
Joyce Carol Oates says
"Dear Lucy introduces a young writer with a most original voice and a tenderly eccentric vision. Julie Sarkissian has created a boldly lyrical, suspenseful, and mysterious fictional world in this striking debut novel."
And Ron Rash raves
"In Dear Lucy, Julie Sarkissian has accomplished what many veteran novelists never achieve: a startlingly original work that is also profound and wise in the vagaries of the heart. What an amazing debut."
Monologue topics: mail, listener reactions to the Tao Lin episodes, Alt-Lit.
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6/19/2013 • 1 hour, 21 minutes, 25 seconds
Episode 183 — Matthew Savoca
Matthew Savoca is the guest. His new novel is called I Don't Know I Said, and it's available now from Publishing Genius Press.
Michael Kimball says
"There’s a hell of a lot more charm in Savoca’s book than a novel about sad and smart twenty-somethings should ever have."
And Scott McClanahan says
“Man, this book gets in you. It’s like baby food. You could go to the store and buy a jar and eat it with your hands, but it’d be better to have someone who shares your last name spoon it out on your tongue. After reading it, you will say, ‘Give me more, Momma.’ I want more. MORE. MORE. GIVE US MORE MATTHEW.”
Monologue topics: writing, superstition, childhood, memory, punting the ball at the new girl, shooting my little sister with a slingshot.
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6/16/2013 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 53 seconds
Episode 182 — Emily Gould
Emily Gould is the guest. She is the author of the memoir And the Heart Says Whatever (Free Press, 2010), and her novel entitled Friendship is due out from FSG in 2014. A former co-editor at Gawker, she now runs her own publishing venture called Emily Books, with Ruth Curry.
Curtis Sittenfield says of And the Heart Says Whatever:
"These smart, poignant essays about being young and literary in New York City are like a twenty-first century version of The Bell Jar but with more pot, sex, technology, and (thank goodness) a different ending."
Monologue topics: moaning, humming, Starbucks, Miles Davis, elevators, neighbors, styrofoam, avoidance, existential pain.
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6/12/2013 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 46 seconds
Episode 181 — Tao Lin (Part 2)
Tao Lin is the guest. His new novel, Taipei, is now available from Vintage Contemporaries.
The New York Observer says
"Tao Lin [is] an excellent writer of avant-garde fiction. His new novel is his most mature work, and follows a young New York writer to Taipei, where he must reconcile his family’s roots with the haze of MDMA, texts and tweets that he’s been living in. Mr. Lin has refined his deadpan prose style here into an icy, cynical, but ultimately thrilling and unique literary voice."
And Blake Butler says
“The insane level of scrutiny of everyday personal behavior in Taipei feels somewhere between that of Andy Warhol and a young, bored Patrick Bateman. All the strange modernity we’ve come to expect from Tao Lin—alienation, obsession, social confusion, drugs, the internet, sex, food, death—is rendered here with an calm intuition, somehow distant and metaphysical at once, brutally honest and avoidant, touching and monotonic, like getting sewn inside a mask of your own face. And as can also always be expected of the author, it is mesmerizing, sharp, singularly him, a work of vision so relentless it forces most any reader to respond.”
Monologue topics: tweets, Denver, water, Matt Bell, TNB Book Club, In the House Upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods.
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6/9/2013 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 9 seconds
Episode 180 — Tao Lin (Part 1)
Tao Lin is the guest. His new novel, Taipei, is now available in trade paperback from Vintage Contemporaries.
Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, says
"For all its straightforwardness, Lin’s previous work—with its flat, Internet-inspired prose issued by small presses—has presented a stumbling stone for readers who fall outside his North Brooklyn contingent, for whom he is the standard bearer. This will change with the breakout Taipei, a novel about disaffection that’s oddly affecting. . . . Everything about Taipei appears to run contrary to the standard idea of what constitutes art. And yet, the documentary precision captures the sleepwalking malaise of Lin’s generation so completely, it’s scary. . . . Yet for all its emotional reality, Taipei is a book without an ounce of self-pity, melodrama, or posturing, making the glacial Lin (Richard Yates) the perfect poster child for a generation facing—and failing to face—maturity.”
And Bret Easton Ellis says
“With Taipei Tao Lin becomes the most interesting prose stylist of his generation.”
Monologue topics: Terence McKenna, telepathy, language, evolution, death, getting [your] act together.
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6/5/2013 • 1 hour, 3 minutes, 39 seconds
Episode 179 — Melanie Thorne
Melanie Thorne is the guest. Her debut novel, Hand Me Down, is now available in paperback from Plume Books. It was named one of the Best Books of 2012 by Kirkus Reviews.
BookPage calls it
“Difficult to read, but impossible to put down—this is perhaps the best way to describe Melanie Thorne’s debut, Hand Me Down. Like Janet Finch’s 1999 bestseller White Oleander, this is a raw and all too realistic story about a California teen forced to move from house to house—and often from bad situation to worse—after her well-intentioned but self-centered mother makes a life-changing choice.”
And The Associated Press says
“Melanie Thorne's debut novel is raw with emotion as she describes Liz's often futile efforts to protect her sister and herself from the predator their mother has invited into their lives. It is often hard to remember that this is, in fact, a novel and not a memoir… Thorne's novel is an eye-opener… she leaves the reader haunted by a nagging question: What happens to the children who are not so lucky?”
Monologue topics: cynicism, Ancient Greece, guerilla theater, graffiti art, public sex.
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6/2/2013 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 2 seconds
Episode 178 — Deb Olin Unferth
Deb Olin Unferth is the guest. She's the author of three books, the most recent of which is a memoir called Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War (Henry Holt). It was a finalist for the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award.
Dave Eggers says
"This is a very funny, excoriatingly honest story of being young, semi-idealistic, stupid and in love. If you have ever been any of these things, you'll devour it."
And Bookslut calls it
“[O]ne of the best memoirs of the past several years. It's a difficult book to stop reading; Unferth is charming, charismatic, and breathtakingly smart… [Revolution is] more than enough to catapult Unferth into the ranks of America's great young writers.”
Monologue topics: Memorial Day weekend, Venice Beach, Katy Perry, celebrity sightings, Alicia Silverstone, Stacey Dash, the gym, Paul Rudd.
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5/29/2013 • 1 hour, 30 minutes, 31 seconds
Episode 177 — Masha Hamilton
Masha Hamilton is the guest. She is currently working in Afghanistan as Director of Communications and Public Diplomacy at the US Embassy, and her new novel, What Changes Everything, is now available from Unbridled Books. Caroline Leavitt raves "As real and immediate as a racing pulse, Hamilton’s dark jewel of a novel turns the political into the personal with a blazing tapestry of characters, all grappling with the terrifying cost of war and the unbreakable bonds of love. Thrilling and magnificent." And Jillian Cantor says "Intensely gripping and beautifully written, What Changes Everything shows the lengths we will go to save each other and ourselves. A stunning collage of loss, grief, love, and most of all, survival, Hamilton’s characters—and their stories—are richly drawn and achingly real." Monologue topics: Memorial Day, Frances Ha, personal lives of celebrities intruding on the moviegoing experience.
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5/26/2013 • 1 hour, 8 minutes, 48 seconds
Episode 176 — Michael Reynolds
Michael Reynolds is the guest. He is the editor-in-chief of Europa Editions.
Maureen Corrigan of NPR's Fresh Air says
"Europa Editions...has been doing the Lord's work in terms of introducing European literary novels, many of them in translation, to an American readership."
And the LA Weekly says
“You could consider Europa Editions...as a kind of book club for Americans who thirst after exciting foreign fiction.”
Monologue topics: blurbs, bullshit, Jim Carroll, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Wahlberg, The Pussy Posse, the grandeur of delusions.
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5/22/2013 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 35 seconds
Episode 175 — Kendra Grant Malone
Kendra Grant Malone is the guest. She is the author of two poetry collections, Everything is Quiet (Scrambler Books) and Morocco (Dark Sky Books), the second of which she co-wrote with Matthew Savoca.
Blake Butler says
"Kendra Grant Malone contains several hundred people. Likewise, her words seem to protect several hundred other words beneath their giddy, precise calm. Here is a mother and a voyeur and a pervert and a magick-making child, somewhere between them all your brand new old friend, teeming with such heat. Here is language more honest than I could ever be. I suggest you keep it close, warm. I suggest you keep an eye, as if this book had human hands beyond its gorgeous shoulders it would tickle you to death; it would hump your funny tired body, then eat your head for what you’ve seen."
And Ben Greenman says
"Any book that thanks ‘vodka, cocaine, and Citalopram, for making mood swings bearable and this book possible’ is likely to a strong sense of its own identity, or identities, and Kendra Grant Malone’s Everything is Quiet certainly does. Strong: her use of language, her voice, her commitment to getting it right, even as she’s describing how she frequently gets it wrong. Sense: a good ear, a good eye, an intimate acquaintance with bodies and what (and who) they do. These fifty sexy, thoughtful, and sometimes pained poems do right by sex, love, and sometimes pain, not to mention menstrual blood, greasy hair, funny faces, and watering eyes."
Monologue topics: bachelor parties, relief, contradiction, antisocial behavior, strip clubs, Wrangler jeans, fly-fishing.
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5/19/2013 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 48 seconds
Episode 174 — Benjamin Percy
Benjamin Percy is the guest. His new novel, Red Moon, is now available from Grand Central Publishing. It is the May selection of the TNB Book Club.
John Irving says
"Red Moon is a serious, politically symbolic novel—a literary novel about lycanthropes. If George Orwell had imagined a future where the werewolf population had grown to the degree that they were colonized and drugged, this terrifying novel might be it."
And Library Journal, in a starred review, raves
"This literary thriller by an award-winning young writer will excite fans of modern horror who enjoy a large canvas and a history to go with their bloody action. . . . Fans of Max Brooks's zombies and Justin Cronin's vampires will enjoy the dramatic breadth of Percy's tale of werewolves."
Monologue topics: the Internet, blackouts, addiction, meditation, masturbation, my mother.
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5/15/2013 • 1 hour, 10 minutes, 14 seconds
Episode 173 — Anna Stothard
Anna Stothard is the guest. Her novel The Pink Hotel is now available in the United States from Picador. And her latest effort, a novel called The Art of Leaving, is just out in the UK from Alma Books.
The New York Times calls The Pink Hotel
“Stylish… captures an outsider’s gape at sun-drenched Los Angeles.”
And Davy Rothbart raves
"The Pink Hotel is mysterious, lyrical, and utterly absorbing, by turns funny and forlorn. [Stothard's] writing bristles with sexiness and suspense, love, loss, and longing. This is the best book I’ve read in years.”
Monologue topics: stopping, vistas, nature, personal space, park benches, eating on airplanes, Reese Witherspoon.
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5/12/2013 • 1 hour, 11 minutes, 19 seconds
Episode 172 — Ken Baumann
Ken Baumann is the guest. He is an actor, writer, and publisher. His new novel, Solip, is now available from Tyrant Books. HTML Giant says: "There is nothing on the back cover. A wall of black staring at you. No pull quotes or blurbs, and by the second page you realize why: because the book speaks for itself....I read this tiny book in one sitting in a coffee shop amazed by its power and had to go indoors to drown out the outside world to reread it and devour it properly....Early frontrunner for best book I’ve read this year, certainly the most memorable. I can’t remember reading anything quite like Solip....Solip is a twitter account from hell, a deranged patient babbling on a shrink’s couch....Concise yet brimming with ideas and thoughts and lists and fragments and run-ons and then it’s over and you’re left wondering what the fuck happened." Monologue topics: fiction, nonfiction, my novel, paralysis, creative quandaries, Errol Morris, Baltimore, The Black Guerilla Family, prison corruption.
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5/8/2013 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 14 seconds
Episode 171 — Matt Nelson
Matt Nelson is the guest. Along with Jacob Perkins, he is the co-founder of the Mellow Pages Library in Brooklyn, New York.
The library was recently featured in the New York Times:
"Matt Nelson, a graduate student in creative writing at Queens College and one of the library’s two founders, explained the origins of the place, which is meant to serve as a reading room and gathering spot in addition to book lender. Mr. Nelson and Jacob Perkins, both 26, started the library in February, inspired in part by Pilot Books, a bookstore in Mr. Nelson’s hometown, Seattle, that carried volumes by independent publishers, and which closed in 2011.
"Mellow Pages also specializes in those more arcane titles. Without the advertising budgets of major houses, the smaller presses have more difficulty finding readers, Mr. Nelson said, and the idea behind the library was to form a community of people who could share books that were not easy to find elsewhere."
Monologue topics: voicemails, Spencer Madsen, Skype, my voice, cheese, New York City.
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5/5/2013 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 28 seconds
Episode 170 — Emily Rapp
Emily Rapp is the guest. Her new memoir, The Still Point of the Turning World, is now available from Penguin.
Cheryl Strayed says
"The Still Point of the Turning World is about the smallest things and the biggest things, the ugliest things and the most beautiful things, the darkest things and the brightest things, but most of all it’s about one very important thing: the way a woman loves a boy who will soon die. Emily Rapp didn’t want to tell us this story. She had to. That necessity is evident in every word of this intelligent, ferocious, grace-filled, gritty, astonishing starlight of a book."
And Kirkus, in a starred review, calls it
"A beautiful, searing exploration of the landscape of grief and a profound meditation on the meaning of life."
Monologue topics: wedding, Chicago, sobriety, alcohol, 5-Hour Energy, Tay-Sachs, NTSAD.org
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5/1/2013 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 18 seconds
Episode 169 — Fiona Maazel
Fiona Maazel is the guest. Her new novel, Woke Up Lonely, is now available from Graywolf Press.
The Daily Beast says
"[Maazel] has a real talent for taking these existential millstones of modern life—fear of death, failure, being alone, everything—and filtering them into morbidly funny, troublingly familiar forms. . . . Woke Up Lonely easily refutes the idea that the novel is a staid, obsolete form of writing. The stakes in Maazel's book are at least as real as any work of nonfiction, and it's a good deal more fun to read than any manifesto."
And Bookforum raves
"Woke Up Lonely is another wunderkammer, a deeply felt and wildly original novel that repays the attention it demands, and once read won't be soon forgotten."
Monologue topics: having nothing to say, saying something anyway, to-do lists, talking about writing, my dogs, dog baths.
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4/28/2013 • 1 hour, 10 minutes, 58 seconds
Episode 168 — Scott Nadelson
Scott Nadelson is the guest. His new memoir, The Next Scott Nadelson: A Life in Progress, is now available from Hawthorne Books.
Kirkus calls it
"Eloquent and universal."
And The Portland Mercury says
"It’s unusual to read a memoir built of short stories, but it works—instead of forcing a narrative arc onto his own life, as so many memoir writers do, Nadelson simply places these stories next to one another, allowing their edges to overlap, tugging the reader forward and backward in time. The results are funny, quietly compelling, and unflinchingly frank. Nadelson has built a golem out of paper and typeface."
Monologue topics: my little sister's wedding, peer pressure, alcohol, the Cajun element.
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4/24/2013 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 43 seconds
Episode 167 — Tupelo Hassman
Tupelo Hassman is the guest. Her debut novel, Girlchild, has just been published in paperback by Picador.
The New York Times raves
"A voice as fresh as hers is so rare that at times I caught myself cheering. . . .I’d go anywhere with this writer."
And The Boston Globe says
"So fresh, original, and funny you’ll be in awe… Tupelo Hassman has created a character you’ll never forget. Rory Dawn Hendrix of the Calle has as precocious and endearing a voice as Holden Caulfield of Central Park.”
Monologue topics: the Internet, Fiona Apple, going crazy, the world is bullshit.
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4/21/2013 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 28 seconds
Episode 166 — Rob Roberge
Rob Roberge is the guest. His new novel, The Cost of Living, is now available from Other Voices Books. It is the April selection of the TNB Book Club.
Cheryl Strayed says
"Roberge’s writing is both drop-dead gorgeous and mindbendingly smart. The Cost of Living is an intimate, original, important novel that I’ll be recommending for years to come."
And Scott Shriner, bass player for Weezer, says
"This is a guy who clearly knows his way around a tour bus. And around a massive drug habit. A dark, funny, frightening, and above all authentic book about the toll the rock and roll lifestyle can take."
Monologue topics: Boston, terrorism, tragedy, talking about speechlessness, confusion, darkness, realism, pragmatism, idealism.
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4/17/2013 • 1 hour, 22 minutes, 31 seconds
Episode 165 — Michelle Orange
Michelle Orange is the guest. Her new essay collection, This is Running for Your Life, is now available from Farrar, Straus, & Giroux. The Daily Beast calls it
"A brilliant collection of essays on modern life, and ways that technology and connectivity are changing how we interact with the world....As Orange brilliantly breaks down the state of modern life and how it stands in relation to technology and the commoditized image, she tells us much of what we already have intuited, but might have been afraid to admit to ourselves...."
And Publishers Weekly raves
"In this whip-smart, achingly funny collection, film critic Orange (The Sicily Papers) trains her lens on aging, self-image, and the ascendancy of the marketing demographic, among other puzzles of the Facebook generation....[this is] a collection whose voice feels at once fresh and inevitable."
Monologue topics: TNB Literary Experience, tweets.
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4/14/2013 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 48 seconds
Episode 164 — Jennifer Spiegel
Jennifer Spiegel is the guest. In 2012, she published two books: The Freak Chronicles, a story collection, now available from Dzanc Books; and Love Slave, a novel out from Unbridled Books.
About The Freak Chronicles, bestselling author Lauren Groff says
"The Freak Chronicles is a miracle of a story collection: passionately political and a shout of ambivalence about political passion, intensely personal and furiously global. We readers are lucky to find Jennifer Spiegel, a writer who is self-satirizing and vulnerable and elegant as hell."
About Love Slave, Publishers Weekly says
"Spiegel's novel evokes the psychic angst of Manhattanites presumptuous enough to describe themselves as struggling artistes, yet entitled enough to melt down when they can't order breakfast in a diner after 11am...the writing is fresh and witty, and Sybil is a sympathetic character worthy of rooting for as she searches for something to believe in."
Monologue topics: the gym, stress, running, the woman with magazines, stopping, Lawn Day.
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4/10/2013 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 36 seconds
Episode 163 — Owen King
Owen King is the guest. His new novel, Double Feature, is now available from Scribner.
Karen Russell raves
“What a kinetic, joyful, gonzo ride—Double Feature made me laugh so loudly on a plane that I had to describe the plot of Sam's Spruce Moose of a debut film (it stars a satyr) to my seatmate by way of explanation. Booth and Sam are an unforgettable Oedipal duo. A book that delivers walloping pleasures to its lucky readers.”
And Larry McMurtry says
“Double Feature is a beautiful, wrenching beginning, and Owen King is a young writer of immense promise.”
Monologue topics: listener feedback, overdoing gender politics, Bad Sex in Fiction Award.
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4/7/2013 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 29 seconds
Episode 162 — Amity Gaige
Amity Gaige is the guest. Her new novel, Schroder, has just been published by Twelve, an imprint of Grand Central Publishing.
Jennifer Egan says
"In Schroder, Amity Gaige explores the rich, murky realm where parental devotion edges into mania, and logic crabwalks into crime. This offbeat, exquisitely written novel showcases a fresh, forceful young voice in American letters."
And Jonathan Franzen raves
"The measure of Gaige's great gifts as a storyteller is that she persuades you to believe in a situation that shouldn't be believable, and to love a narrator who shouldn’t be lovable. Seldom has such a daring concept for a novel been grounded in such an appealing character."
Monologue topics: Amazon, Goodreads, indepenent presses, small furry animals, extinction, predators, apathy, confusion.
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4/3/2013 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 22 seconds
Episode 161 — Periel Aschenbrand
Periel Aschenbrand is the guest. She is the author of two memoirs, the latest of which is called On My Knees. It is available now for pre-order and will be published by Harper Perennial on June 18, 2013.
Jonathan Ames raves
"Ribald, outrageous, gutter-mouthed, hilarious—a startling new voice in American letters. Watch out Portnoy, watch out Caulfield, watch out Bukowski, watch out E. L. James. Hell, everybody, real or imagined, just watch out! Because here comes Periel Aschenbrand!”
And The New York Times calls her
"Unsavorily compelling. . .in the manner of a female Howard Stern.”
Monologue topics: insomnia, nightmares, pool bars, sushi, low tide, sleep apnea, Buddhism, pity.
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3/31/2013 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 16 seconds
Episode 160 — Giancarlo DiTrapano
Giancarlo DiTrapano is the guest. He's the editor of NY Tyrant magazine and the publisher of Tyrant Books, an independent press based in New York City.
His authors include Brian Evensen, Blake Butler, Eugene Marten, and Michael Kimball. And later this year, in June, he'll be publishing Marie Calloway's debut novel, what purpose did i serve in your life.
Sheila Heti says
"I have never read a book like this before. It’s painful, shocking and brilliantly written, with a great sensitivity to which details should be revealed and which should stay concealed. It’s formally complex, completely unforgettable, highly contemporary and plainly great. A terrifying proposal: could this be the Great American Novel for the twilight of “Great” America?"
Monologue topics: nudity, Lena Dunham, streaking, sports, IMAX.
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3/27/2013 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 39 seconds
Episode 159 — Amber Dermont
Amber Dermont is the guest. Her debut novel, The Starboard Sea, was a New York Times bestseller, and her new story collection, Damage Control, is now available. Both were published by St. Martin's.
Marilynne Robinson raves
"With unflinching wit, Amber Dermont examines the harsh vicissitudes of life, and though the worlds she creates are often unsettling places, her sense of detail always makes for a pleasurable read. There is a vibrant lucidity to her language, a daring music."
And Kirkus says
"Dermont’s short story collection, which follows her debut novel (The Starboard Sea, 2012), demonstrates the author’s versatility and sardonic humor…[She] delivers strong prose and intriguing characters who frequently defy stereotypical ideals…the overall effect is a tight collection that takes the reader in unexpected, often disconcerting, directions. Full of irony and contradictions, this compilation of contemporary short stories is a worthwhile effort."
Monologue topics: walking, Los Angeles, headphones, David Lynch, suffocating rubber clown suit, fire, Ashley Greene.
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3/24/2013 • 1 hour, 23 minutes, 55 seconds
Episode 158 — Tom Hansen
Tom Hansen is the guest. He is the author of the memoir American Junkie and a new novel called This is What We Do. Both are available from Emergency Press.
Grace Krilanovich says
"There’s what people say, and then there’s what they do. The phrase will infect your consciousness, contorting and twisting itself around to take on more and more dimensions. What does it mean to act on our desires when one person’s wish fulfillment means another’s nightmare? What does it mean to be free, or to escape? At its core, This is What We Do gives us two people left with nothing, cutting close to the uncoolness of loving without fear."
And Gina Frangello says
"Hansen's debut novel covers even wilder, trickier ground than his memoir, American Junkie. Anti-hero James Nethery seems an ordinary, lonely man drinking Coke at the bar, until he meets "Lily," a Ukrainian prostitute, and what began as a quiet, atmospheric meditation on down-and-out expats in Paris explodes into a nonstop, genre-blending noir-crime-vigilante-political-sexy-nihilistic-almost surreal thrill ride, infused in equal measures with brutality and beauty."
Monologue topics: The Nervous Breakdown, TNB 5.0, sleeping at the mall, kid birthday parties, magicians, the end of tweets?
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3/20/2013 • 1 hour, 21 minutes, 33 seconds
Episode 157 — Ayana Mathis
Ayana Mathis is today's guest. Her debut novel, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie, was an official selection of Oprah's Book Club 2.0 and has since gone on to become a New York Times bestseller. It is available now from Knopf.
Kirkus, in a starred review, calls it
“Cutting, emotional…pure heartbreak…though Mathis has inherited some of Toni Morrison’s poetic intonation, her own prose is appealingly earthbound and plainspoken, and the book’s structure is ingenious…an excellent debut.”
And Marilynne Robinson raves
"The Twelve Tribes of Hattie is a vibrant and compassionate portrait of a family hardened and scattered by circumstance and yet deeply a family. Its language is elegant in its purity and rigor. The characters are full of life, mingled thing that it is, and dignified by the writer’s judicious tenderness towards them. This first novel is a work of rare maturity."
Monologue topics: mail, dinner invitations, IRL.
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3/17/2013 • 1 hour, 35 minutes, 3 seconds
Episode 156 — Tim Horvath
Tim Horvath is the guest. His new story collection, Understories, is now available from Bellevue Literary Press.
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune calls it
“Profound . . . with more to say on the human condition than most full books. . . . A remarkable collection, with pitch-perfect leaps of imagination.”
And HTML Giant says
“This is transformative prose at its best. . . . If you want an actual contemporary wordsmith who does not just tinker but thrives in the micro-worlds of Calvino and Borges, Walser and Perec, read Understories.”
Monologue topics: AWP, silent judgment, my thing, your thing, feeling peripheral.
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3/13/2013 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 36 seconds
Episode 155 — Lenore Zion
Lenore Zion is the guest. She is the author of two books, the first of which, a humor collection called My Dead Pets Are Interesting, was published by TNB Books in 2011. And now her debut novel, Stupid Children, has just been published by Emergency Press.
Necessary Fiction raves
"Stupid Children is a bildungsroman of twisted proportions told with startling clarity through the filter of a smart, psychoanalytic perspective. No character is safe from Zion’s unapologetic examinations. She bestows her protagonist with an open mind, a sharp intellect, and a sweltering imagination—all of the requisite ingredients for a disturbing, fascinating novel."
And Jonathan Evison says
“Stupid Children surprises and dazzles at every turn. You will not forget this book.”
Stupid Children is the March selection of The TNB Book Club, the official book club of The Nervous Breakdown. For only $9.99 a month, you can get a brand new title delivered to your door every 30 days. And all book club authors are interviewed on this program.
Monologue topics: psycho-digital crises, dinner invitations, key parties, manners, overthinking it.
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3/10/2013 • 1 hour, 37 minutes, 31 seconds
Episode 154 — Sam Lipsyte
Sam Lipsyte is the guest. His new story collection, The Fun Parts, is now available from Farrar, Straus, & Giroux. Ben Fountain raves "Lipsyte expertly works the line between hilarity and pathos." And Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, says “In this second story collection, fierce satire mingles with warmth and pathos as Lipsyte (The Ask) showcases his knack for stylistic variety and tangles with the thorny human experiences of moving beyond one’s past or shedding one’s personal baggage . . . Lipsyte’s biting humor suffuses the collection, but it’s his ability to control the relative darkness of each moment that makes the stories so engrossing.” Monologue topics: mountain rescue, urban heroism, mail, ménage-á-trois clarifications.
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3/6/2013 • 1 hour, 36 minutes, 16 seconds
Episode 153 — Christine Sneed
Christine Sneed is the guest. Her new novel, Little Known Facts, was featured on the cover of the New York Times Book Review last week. It is available now from Bloomsbury.
Booklist, in a starred review, calls it
"An ensnaring first novel that delves into the complex challenges and anguish of living with and in the shadow of celebrity. Sneed’s wit, curiosity, empathy, and ability to divine the perfect detail propel this psychologically exquisite, superbly realized novel of intriguing, caricature-transcending characters and predicaments…As Sneed illuminates each facet of her percussively choreographed plot via delectably slant disclosures—overheard conversations, snooping, tabloids, confessions under duress, and journal entries, among them—she spotlights ‘little known facts’ about the cost of fame, our erotic obsession with movie-star power, and where joy can be found."
Also this episode: a conversation with Stephanie Barber, author of the new book Night Moves, available now from Publishing Genius Press.
Kenneth Goldsmith says
"This is a sad and powerful book of love poems. Stephanie Barber understands how things are supposed to work and recognizes that they are broken, and NIGHT MOVES is a screenshot for the help desk in the sky. It's a conceptual ode to Internet philosophy, solidifying the transient nature of online conversation."
Monologue topics: ménage-á-trois, third wheels, Darwinian processes, self-awareness.
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3/3/2013 • 2 hours, 35 minutes, 14 seconds
Episode 152 — Bernie Glassman
Bernie Glassman is the guest. He is a pioneer in the American Zen Movement, an accomplished academic and businessman, and the founder of the Zen Peacemakers. His new book, co-authored by Jeff Bridges, is called The Dude and the Zenmaster. A New York Times bestseller, it is available now from Blue Rider Press.
Sheila Heti, writing for the Financial Times, says
“The Dude and the Zen Master [is] a wonderful book of conversations...about acting and Zen and the long, fond relationship between these men.”
And The Dudespaper calls it
“[A] good conversation between good friends...One of the unexpected treats of The Dude and the Zen Master is the insights into who Jeff Bridges is behind the Dude persona...touching remembrances of his parents, his reflections on life as a devoted family man, and his behind-the-scenes stories of movies he’s worked on [and] profound little Zen observations and insights sprinkled throughout the book.”
Monologue topics: Zen, meditation, discipline and lack thereof, losing my shit, my daughter, guilt, the Oscars.
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2/27/2013 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 3 seconds
Episode 151 — Lesley Arfin
Lesley Arfin is the guest. She was a staff writer on the first two seasons of the hit television show Girls, starring Lena Dunham, and she also writes on the MTV series Awkward. Her book, Dear Diary, is based on a column of the same name that originally appeared in Vice magazine. It was published by Vice Books/MTV Press in 2007.
Sarah Silverman says
“Here’s your chance to have all the benefits of a tortured adolescence without the shitty childhood. Congratulations!”
And Chloe Sevigny says
"What I love about Dear Diary is how strongly it resonates with all girls. We all went through a bitch phase that makes us cringe when we remember it. We tried being good; we tried being bad; we made other girls feel like shit before we knew what it felt like...It seems like the world is ending when you're 17 and in the middle of it, but looking back now I realize that's what adolescence is all about: making mistakes. And that's why I love Dear Diary."
Monologue topics: tweets, mail, alt-lit, Internet literature, Jordan Castro, Mira Gonzalez, Megan Boyle, Sam, women, vaginas, feminism.
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2/24/2013 • 1 hour, 27 minutes, 31 seconds
Late Nite with Megan, Mira, & Sam
A conversation with Megan Boyle, Mira Gonzalez, and a guy named Sam. Recorded late at night on February 13th/14th, 2013.
Megan, Mira, and Sam were in Tao Lin's apartment in New York City. (Tao was not there; he was out of the country at the time.)
I was here in Los Angeles, in the home office.
Things got interesting.
Enjoy.
-BL
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2/20/2013 • 38 minutes, 30 seconds
Episode 150 — Jordan Castro
Jordan Castro is the guest. He is the author of several books, and his latest is a poetry collection called Young Americans, available now from Civil Coping Mechanisms.
Ben Brooks, author of Grow Up, says
“I read these poems three times in one night, then put the duvet over my head and held my knees for a while. It’s good when something makes sense. I really really liked these poems.”
And Chris Killen says
“If you are a person who doesn’t really know what they are doing and you would like to read about another person who doesn’t really know what they are doing either, I recommend reading this poetry book. I enjoyed reading these poems. Or something.”
Monologue topics: Episode 150, premium bonus content, Megan Boyle, Mira Gonzalez, Sam, Skype, festive moods.
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2/20/2013 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 29 seconds
Episode 149 — Terry Tempest Williams
Terry Tempest Williams is the guest. She is the author of several books, including the environmental literature classic, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place. Her latest book is called When Women Were Birds: Fifty-Four Variations on Voice. It was published in hardcover by Farrar, Straus, & Giroux in 2012, and the paperback edition is due out from Picador on February 26, 2013.
Susan Salter Reynolds, writing for The Daily Beast, says
"Williams is the kind of writer who makes a reader feel that [her] voice might also, one day, be heard….She cancels out isolation: Connections are woven as you sit in your chair reading---between you and the place you live, between you and other readers, you and the writer. Without knowing how it happened, your sense of home is deepened."
And The San Francisco Chronicle raves
"Williams displays a Whitmanesque embrace of the world and its contradictions....As the pages accumulate, her voice grows in majesty and power until it become a full-fledged aria."
Monologue topics: media diet, news, minimum wage, operating, ambition, fear, power, nausea, juice, scams, beautiful crazy people.
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2/17/2013 • 1 hour, 32 minutes, 12 seconds
Episode 148 — Michael Robbins
Michael Robbins is the guest. His debut poetry collection, Alien vs. Predator, was named one of the best books of 2012 by The New York Times, Slate, Commonweal, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and The Millions.
Dwight Garner of the The New York Times says
"Mr. Robbins's heart is not lovely but beating a bit arrhythmically; not dark but lighted by a dangling disco ball; not deep but as shallow and alert as a tidal buoy facing down a tsunami. Yet it's a heart crammed full, like a goose's liver, with pagan grace. This man can write."
And Sasha Frere-Jones says
"You may notice the cultural references first -- Guns N' Roses, Eric B. & Rakim, Fleetwood Mac, M*A*S*H, Star Wars -- and be tempted to tie Robbins to these anchors. But there are as many contemporary references in Eliot and Pound and Horace as there are in Robbins: carbon-dating isn't what distinguishes these poems. Robbins works in traditional and nontraditional forms that pivot on the beat, which he turns around, seamlessly and ruthlessly. The thread here is a long-distance conversation crammed into the available enjambment, as charged as the pop songs that play beneath the words."
Monologue topics: Patrick Swayze, tweets, drones.
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2/13/2013 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 27 seconds
Episode 147 — Joyce Johnson
Joyce Johnson is the guest. She is the author of several books, the most recent of which is called The Voice is All: The Lonely Victory of Jack Kerouac, available now from Viking.
Kirkus calls it
“An exemplary biography of the Beat icon and his development as a writer…Johnson [turns] a laser-sharp focus on Kerouac’s evolving ideas about language, fiction vs. truth and the role of the writer in his time…there’s plenty of life in these pages to fascinate casual readers, and Johnson is a sensitive but admirably objective biographer. A triumph of scholarship.”
And Russell Banks says
"This is quite simply the best book about Kerouac and one of the best accounts of any writer's apprenticeship that I have read. And it should generate a serious reconsideration of Kerouac as a classical, because hyphenated, American writer, one struggling to synthesize a doubled language, culture, and class. It's also a terrific read, a windstorm of a story."
Also in this episode: Joshua Mohr, author of the novel Fight Song, now available from Soft Skull Press. Fight Song is the February selection of The TNB Book Club. Publishers Weekly calls it "an interesting mix of Charles Bukowski and Tom Robbins, with a cinematic heaping of the Coen brothers for good measure."
Monologue topics: doubt, doubting doubt, mental downward spirals, confusion.
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2/10/2013 • 1 hour, 40 minutes, 51 seconds
Episode 146 — James Lasdun
James Lasdun is the guest. He is the author of two novels, four collections of poetry, and two collections of short stories, including the collection The Siege, the title story of which was made into a film by Bernardo Bertolucci (Besieged). With Jonathan Nossiter he co-wrote the films Sunday, which won Best Feature and Best Screenplay awards at Sundance, and Signs and Wonders, starring Charlotte Rampling and Stellan Skarsgaard. His new book, Give Me Everything You Have, is a memoir published by Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.
J.M. Coetzee says
“Give Me Everything You Have is a reminder, as if any were needed, of how easily, since the arrival of the Internet, our peace can be troubled and our good name besmirched.”
And Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, says
"Lasdun’s tale of being stalked is only part of the story—his disembodied, if mentally violent, encounters with 'Nasreen,' his stalker, lead him to reflect on topics as diverse as the seductive power of literature, like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the writings of D.H. Lawrence, and his father’s work as an architect in Israel and the aggressively anti-Semitic response it provoked. The 'verbal terrorism' (Nasreen’s phrase) escalates as the book goes on, but it’s almost a red herring—it is indeed terrifying, and as the stalker becomes more sophisticated, she begins tormenting his friends and colleagues. But Lasdun is able to see past the surface-level effects of her attacks to the desperate and pitiable person behind them. This subtle, compassionate take on the subject is rife with insights into the current cyberculture’s cult of anonymity, as well as the power, failure, and magic of writing.”
Monologue topics: Julian Tepper, Philip Roth, bleakness, cynicism, writing, awfulness, the ability to change your fundamental nature.
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2/6/2013 • 1 hour, 12 minutes, 52 seconds
Episode 145 — Matthew Salesses
Matthew Salesses is the guest. He is the author of two chapbooks, Our Island of Epidemics and We Will Take What We Can Get, and his new novel is called I'm Not Saying, I'm Just Saying, which is published by Civil Coping Mechanisms.
Matt Bell raves
“In Matt Salesses’s smart novel-in-shorts, a newly-minted father flees telling his own story by any means necessary—by sarcasm, by denial, by playful and precise wordplay—rarely allowing space for his emerging feelings to linger. But the truth of who we might be is not so easily escaped, and it is in the accumulation of many such moments that our narrator, like us, is revealed: both the people we have been, and the better people we might be lucky enough to one day hope to become.”
And Catherine Chung says
“Matthew Salesses has written an extraordinary and startlingly original novel that explores connection and disconnection, the claims and limitations of the self, and the shifting terrain of truth. Poetic, unforgettable, shot through with fury and yearning, I’m Not Saying, I’m Just Saying captures in clear and chilling flashes our capacity for the cruelty and tenderness of love.”
Also in this episode: a conversation with Reality Hunger author David Shields. His new book, How Literature Saved My Life, is now availalble from Knopf. And later this year, in September, he will publish The Private War of J.D. Salinger, co-authored by Shane Salerno.
Monologue topics: mail, literary ambulance chasing, luck, cause and effect, beautiful people.
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2/3/2013 • 2 hours, 6 minutes, 36 seconds
Episode 144 — Andrea Seigel
Andrea Seigel is the guest. She is the author of three novels: Like the Red Panda, To Feel Stuff, and The Kid Table. She's also an accomplished screenwriter.
Chuck Klosterman says
"If Helen Fielding had been born in 1979 and become a hyper-precocious Goth kid whose favorite book was Prozac Nation, she probably would have ended up writing exactly like Andrea Seigel.”
And Bret Easton Ellis says
"Andrea Seigel’s confidence— her intelligence and verve— lets her take risks that sweep the reader along.”
Monologue topics: capturing the cultural moment, chasing clicks, whorishness, the Super Bowl, grief essays, trending, feeling sickened.
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1/30/2013 • 1 hour, 29 minutes, 35 seconds
Episode 143 — Teddy Wayne
Teddy Wayne is the guest. He is the author of the novel Kapitoil (Harper Perennial), for which he was the winner of a 2011 Whiting Writers' Award. He has also been the recipient of a New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. His second novel, The Love Song of Jonny Valentine, is due out from Free Press on February 5, 2013.
Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, calls it
"Masterfully executed...the real accomplishment is the unforgettable voice of Jonny. If this impressive novel, both entertaining and tragically insightful, were a song, it would have a Michael Jackson beat with Morrissey lyrics."
And Ben Fountain raves
"The Love Song of Jonny Valentine takes us deep into the dark arts and even darker heart of mass-market celebrity, 21st-century version. In the near-pubescent hitmaker of the title, Teddy Wayne delivers a wild ride through the upper echelons of the entertainment machine as it ingests human beings at one end and spews out dollars at the other. Jonny's like all the rest of us, he wants to love and be loved, and as this brilliant novel shows, that’s a dangerous way to be when you’re inside the machine."
Monologue topics: surgery, Vicodin, hernias, tweets.
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1/27/2013 • 1 hour, 8 minutes, 15 seconds
Episode 142 — Richard Chiem
Richard Chiem is the guest. He is the author of You Private Person, a collection of short stories published by Scrambler Books.
Blake Butler says
"Richard Chiem's You Private Person is a bustling prism of a thing, full of passages that actually lead somewhere off of the paper. His words have brains that have bodies that wake you up in the way waking can be the best thing, like into a warm room full of good calm remembered things that feel both like relics and new inside the day. Here rings a wise and bravely sculpted book packed full of stunning thankful color."
And Kate Zambreno says
"Richard Chiem writes of all the weirdness and ooziness and tenderness of young love, with such lucid specificity. Like some beautiful film from the 70s, but also distinctly now. Because I also love how in this book he documents the tremors of contemporary existence, of living and working in a city, measuring days not in coffee spoons but in cigarettes and Simpsons episodes."
Monologue topics: email, memes, Tony Danza.
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1/23/2013 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 8 seconds
Episode 141 — Kate Zambreno
Kate Zambreno is the guest. She is the author of two novels, O Fallen Angel and Green Girl, and her latest book is a critical memoir called Heroines, now available from Semiotext(e). The Paris Review raves "It should come as no surprise that her provocative new work, Heroines, published by Semiotext(e)'s Active Agents imprint... challenges easy categorization, this time by poetically swerving in and out of memoir, diary, fiction, literary history, criticism, and theory. With equal parts unabashed pathos and exceptional intelligence, Heroines foregrounds female subjectivity to produce an impressive and original work that examines the suppression of various female modernists in relation to Zambreno's own complicated position as a writer and a wife." And Bitch magazine calls it "A brave, enlightening, and brutally honest historical inquiry that will leave readers with an urgent desire to tell their own stories." Also in this episode: A conversation with Ron Currie, Jr., whose new novel, Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles (Viking | February 2013) is the January selection of the TNB Book Club. Monologue topics: petroleum-based cows, Ron Currie Jr., TNB Book Club.
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1/20/2013 • 2 hours, 11 minutes, 49 seconds
Episode 140 — Rosie Schaap
Rosie Schaap is the guest. She is a contributor to This American Life and npr.org, and she writes the monthly "Drink" column for The New York Times Magazine. Her memoir, Drinking With Men, will be published on January 24, 2013 by Riverhead Books.
Kate Christensen raves
"This book will be a classic. There is so much joy in this book! It’s a great, comforting, wonderful, funny, inspiring, moving memoir about community and belief and the immense redemptive powers of alcohol drunk properly."
And Wendy McClure says
"There are bar stories and there are coming-of-age stories. And then there is Rosie Schaap's thoughtful and funny chronicle that reminds us of all the drinks, dives, and deep conversations that helped make us who we are. This is a wise, engaging memoir."
Monologue topics: beautiful people, staring, Los Angeles, DNA masterpieces, hand signals, safety words.
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1/16/2013 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 58 seconds
Episode 139 — xTx
xTx is the guest. She is the author of the story collection Normally Special, and her new chapbook, Billie the Bull, has just been published by Nephew, an imprint of Mud Luscious Press.
Says Dennis Cooper:
“xTx is the complete young literary god. Billie the Bull is mind-bogglingly and intricately superb down to its tiniest punctuation marks. To me, she’s about as great as it can get. Seriously, I’m awestruck."
Monologue topics: my unit, my thing, this podcast, hybridized forms, navel-gazing, confusion.
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1/13/2013 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 1 second
Episode 138 — Panio Gianopoulos
Panio Gianopoulos is the guest. He's the author of the novella A Familiar Beast, now available from Nouvella Books.
Jim Lynch, author of Truth Like the Sun, raves
“A Familiar Beast is superb. Always engaging and often provocative, it follows the gut-tightening travails of a man hollowed by his own infidelities. With elegant prose, unforgettable scenes and Philip Roth-like psychological insights, Panio Gianopoulos’s debut novella marks the arrival of a bright and gifted writer.”
And Adam Langer, author of The Thieves of Manhattan, says
“Elegant, erudite and witty, this extremely well-observed and surprisingly suspenseful story offers more insights into love and human relationships than most authors manage in works three times as long.”
Monologue topics: mail, Facebook suicide, savage narcissism, Twitter.
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1/9/2013 • 1 hour, 26 minutes, 28 seconds
Episode 137 — Eli Horowitz
Eli Horowitz is the guest. He was the managing editor and then publisher of McSweeney’s for eight years, where he worked closely with a variety of notable authors, including Michael Chabon, Joyce Carol Oates, and William Vollmann. His latest project is called The Silent History, a serialized novel designed for the iPad and iPhone.
Wired magazine calls it
"Entirely revolutionary."
The New York Times calls it
"One of the most talked-about new experiments [in publishing]."
And The Los Angeles Times calls it
“A landmark project that illuminates a possible future for e-book novels."
Monologue topics: blood pressure, heart rate, Tweets.
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1/6/2013 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 3 seconds
Episode 136 — Christine Schutt
Christine Schutt is today's guest. She's the award-winning author of several books. Her first novel, Florida, was a National Book Award finalist, and her second novel, All Souls, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her latest novel, Prosperous Friends, is now available from Grove Press.
Sam Lipsyte raves
"Prosperous Friends is masterful, a comic-tragic astonishment. Christine Schutt continues to write some of the most original and rewarding prose I've ever read."
And Gary Lutz says
“It is no longer a secret that Christine Schutt is the finest writer among us, and Prosperous Friends is her finest work yet. There isn't a corner in any of her sentences left ungraced by her lyrical genius, her heart-fathoming wisdom. A few pages in, you'll know you have a classic in your hands."
Monologue topics: New Year's resolutions, killing my Facebook account, purging, getting rid of things, newspapers, radios.
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1/2/2013 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 45 seconds
Episode 135 — Brian Allen Carr
Brian Allen Carr is today's guest. He is the award-winning author of the story collection Short Bus, and his latest collection, Vampire Conditions, is now available from Holler Presents.
Harrold Jaffe says
"Vampire Conditions melds a precise Texas regional with gothic, recalling Flannery O'Connor, who wrote out of Georgia. But Carr's intricate narrative patterns, jump cuts and unanticipated segueshave a distinctly postmodern feel. Any way you cut it, Brian Allen Carr is a potently eccentric writer."
And Robert Lopez raves
"At turns dark and brutal and wickedly funny, Brian Allen Carr's Vampire Conditions will put you in mind of Hannah, Pancake, Powell. This book will grab you by the throat and knock the wind out of you, will make you want to drive south, raise hell, hide out, call home, tell your friends."
Monologue topics: dreams, childbirth, salad bars, fetuses, Christmas, doll houses, emasculation, 2012, passage of time.
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12/30/2012 • 1 hour, 21 minutes, 48 seconds
Episode 134 — Robert Kloss
Robert Kloss is the guest. His latest novel, The Alligators of Abraham, is now available from Mud Luscious Press.
David Ohle raves
"In this amazing, collapsed-time text, I’m led along dark alleys of American history by an all-seeing voice-over narrative that reports on things from a great height and in an ultra-factual way. Familiar events of war, sorrow and struggle are seen anew, as if on a slide under a microscope.”
And Adam Braver says
“In The Alligators of Abraham, Robert Kloss drops us into the darkness of the Civil War, showing a culture perpetually on the edge of extinction. Yet out of that murky world, hazed and fogged, rise the clear and distinct shapes of a people not ready to surrender to their own haunting. A novel as lyrical as it is precise in its depiction of the struggle to maintain dignity.”
Monologue topics: burnout, empty-headedness, children's books, subversive kid poems, the power of one, ripple effects.
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12/26/2012 • 1 hour, 11 minutes, 7 seconds
Episode 133 — Mira Gonzalez
Mira Gonzalez is today's guest. Her debut poetry collection is called I Will Never Be Beautiful Enough to Make Us Beautiful Together. It is due out from Sorry House in late January 2013.
Blake Butler says
"Mira Gonzalez’s brain spans the weird space between bodies stuffed with Ambien and food and light from porn on laptops in an anxious, calming kind of way, one concerned more with what blood tastes like than how the blood got out. It’s messed up and feels honest, open, like lying naked on the floor with your arms chopped off."
And Victor 'Kool A.D.' Vasquez says
"Mira Gonzalez is doing her thing. I fuck with these poems. I felt bad for her when she talked about how that dude said 'I’m gonna come on your stomach' like 15-20 times and then didn’t."
Monologue topics: Christmas, travel, my daughter, Best Parts / Worst Parts, sobbing fits, losing it.
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12/23/2012 • 1 hour, 22 minutes, 15 seconds
Episode 132 — Diana Wagman
Diana Wagman is the guest. She is the author of four novels and a past recipient of the PEN West Award for Fiction. Her latest novel, The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets, is now available from Ig Publishing. It is the December selection of The TNB Book Club.
Publishers Weekly raves
“Wagman’s talent for imagery is well served by the subject matter, and the story is perfectly paced, with humorous breaks in the tension. A PEN Center USA Award winner (for Spontaneous), Wagman has crafted an unusual thriller for psychological crime devotees and fans of the peculiar.”
And Book Page calls it
"...a dark, funny and sensitive thriller that might be the first of its kind: the Oedipal abduction tale.”
Monologue topics: holidays, heaviness, Sandy Hook, humanity, self-loathing, anger, depression, compassion.
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12/19/2012 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 36 seconds
Episode 131 — Ned Vizzini
Ned Vizzini is today's guest. He is the award-winning author of It's Kind of a Funny Story (also a major motion picture), Be More Chill, and Teen Angst? Naaah.... In television, he has written for MTV and ABC. His essays and criticism have appeared in The New York Times, The Daily Beast, and Salon. He is the co-author, with Chris Columbus, of the fantasy-adventure series House of Secrets, due out in April 2013. And his latest novel, The Other Normals, is now availalbe from Balzer & Bray.
Lev Grossman raves
"The Other Normals is wildly imaginative, incredibly funny, and weirdly wise. I don’t know where Vizzini gets this stuff —it’s like he’s tapped into the collective unconscious of alienated adolescents everywhere."
And Kirkus says
"With a deft sense of humor and a keen ear for funny and realistic teen dialogue, Vizzini explores one teen everyman’s quest to become a hero, one roll of the six-sided die at a time …. Great geeky fun."
Monologue topics: flu, mail, doubt, self-sabotage, cannabis.
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12/16/2012 • 1 hour, 31 minutes, 32 seconds
Episode 130 — Zena el Khalil
Zena el Khalil is the guest. She is an installation artist, curator, cultural activist, and author. During the July 2006 attacks on Lebanon, her blog, beirutupdate.blogspot.co/uk, was published on CNN and the BCC. In 2008, she was invited to speak at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, and earlier this year she was named a TED fellow. Her memoir, Beirut, I Love You, is now available in the United States in e-book format from NYRB Lit.
Gwyneth Paltrow raves
"Zena El Khalil brings the city and its current events to life through personal anecdotes about loss, tragedy, friendship, life as a young woman in a polarized city, and love for this conflicted, beautiful place she calls home."
And Publishers Weekly says
"Part love letter and part memoir, el Khalil’s work employs her artist’s eye and ear to depict Beirut during and after the Israeli attacks on the country’s south and the Lebanese civil war. No simple chronological narration, this is rather a highly personal, impressionistic depiction of events and emotions…. Her unflinching inside view of Beirut’s tragedy and of ‘Amreekan’ duplicity underscore why her 2006 blog beirutupdate.blogspot.com received international attention."
Monologue topics: Entertainment Capital of the World, iTunes ratings, Board, tweets.
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12/12/2012 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 37 seconds
Episode 129 — Salvatore Pane
Salvatore Pane is the guest. His chapbook, #KanyeWestSavedFromDrowning, was published by NAP in October, and his debut novel, Last Call in the City of Bridges, is now available from Braddock Avenue Books.
Stewart O'Nan raves
“Like his post po-mo Facebook generation, Michael Bishop, the manic narrator of Last Call in the City of Bridges, has reached the end of his irresponsible youth. Stuck and unsure, he looks back at those eight-bit Nintendo years with tender nostalgia while trying to feel his way forward. Like The Moviegoer, Salvatore Pane’s debut novel is a romantic ironist’s plea for authenticity in a fantastic age. It’s telling–and hilarious–that his hero’s model for male adulthood isn’t William Holden but Super Mario.”
And Tom Bissell says
“Quite obviously, Salvatore Pane’s mind has been dunked in video games, social media, comic books, the WebNet, and everything else our august literary authorities believe promote illiteracy. I’d like to hand the authorities Pane’s novel–a funny, moving, melancholy, sad, and immensely literate book about what being young and confused feels like these days–and tell them, ‘See? Things are going to be fine!’”
Monologue topics: worldview, jackhammering, to-do lists, mental lethargy, flying dinosaurs, palm trees.
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12/9/2012 • 1 hour, 11 minutes, 50 seconds
Episode 128 — Lydia Millet
Lydia Millet is the guest. She is a Guggenheim fellow, a past recipient of the PEN-USA Award for Fiction, and her story collection, Love in Infant Monkeys (2009), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her latest novel, Magnificence, is now available in hardcover from W.W. Norton and Company.
Jonathan Lethem raves
“[Magnificence is] elegant, darkly comic. . . with overtones variously of Muriel Spark, Edward Gorey and JG Ballard, full of contemporary wit and devilish fateful turns for her characters, and then also to knit together into a tapestry of vast implication and ethical urgency, something as large as any writer could attempt: a kind of allegorical elegy for life on a dying planet. Ours, that is.”
And Salon calls it
"Flawlessly beautiful."
Monologue topics: chest colds, tuberculosis, the consumption, agent, manuscript, uncertainty, reading, the concept of "good" art, self-perception.
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12/5/2012 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 17 seconds
Episode 127 — Eric Raymond
Eric Raymond is today's guest. His debut novel, Confessions from a Dark Wood, is now available from Sator Press.
Sam Lipsyte raves
"The world of Eric Raymond's winning novel may be the 'post-idea economy,' but rest assured, the book is never post-smart, or post-funny. It's a rollicking and inventive corporate (and cultural) satire—get in now at the ground floor, people."
And Blake Butler says
"In a world where cash has become language, Eric Raymond's Confessions from a Dark Wood wastes no syllable in converting cultural mechanisms into a well-oiled, wise-cracking machine. Smart as Saunders, tight as Ellis, but banking waters of its own, after this one we'll no longer 'forget they built the Magic Kingdom on swamps.'"
Monologue topics: December, The Piñatas, the waiting game, seasonal affective disorder, the holidays, gift ideas, TNB Books.
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12/2/2012 • 1 hour, 12 minutes, 23 seconds
Episode 126 — Erika Rae
Erika Rae is today's guest. Her debut memoir, Devangelical, will be published by Emergency Press on December 11, 2012.
Laurie Notaro, author of The Idiot Girl's Action-Adventure Club, raves
“I'm a believer that Erika Rae will make you cackle with heathen-like delight throughout Devangelical.”
And Frank Schaeffer, author of Crazy for God, says
"Devangelical strikes a darkly funny blow at the central nervous system of evangelical Christianity delivered by a former insider.”
Monologue topics: chest colds, worries, can you imagine me?, bad music, Jack Wagner, cultural tornados.
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11/28/2012 • 1 hour, 10 minutes, 27 seconds
Episode 125 — Michael Kardos
Michael Kardos is the guest. His debut novel, The Three-Day Affair, is now available from Mysterious Press.
The New York Times says
Michael Kardos’s first novel, THE THREE-DAY AFFAIR (Mysterious Press, $24), is so disturbing it makes you wonder what he might have in mind for his second book. The plot is original, if distinctly bizarre: three friends who met at Princeton have left their wives at home and are headed for a golf club to celebrate their annual reunion when one of them — the self-made millionaire who lost his fortune in the dot-com crash — impulsively robs a convenience store and kidnaps the cashier. In a panic, Will Walker, who narrates this nightmare, drives them all to the independent recording studio where he works. What follows is a carefully calibrated study of how even the most highly evolved members of our species can become feral under pressure. (“I was an animal in the woods and I was making this other animal go away” is how one of them describes it.) Surprisingly, the violence proves less shocking than the purely vindictive acts of cruelty even the best of friends can inflict on one another.
Monologue topics: Thanksgiving, illness, Disneyland, the Romneys, Black Friday, holiday misery, bitterness, attitude.
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11/25/2012 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 54 seconds
Episode 124 — Karen Engelmann
Karen Engelmann is the guest. Her debut novel, The Stockholm Octavo, is now available from Ecco.
Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, says
"Neatly mixing revolutionary politics with the erotic tension and cutthroat rivalry of the female conspirators...Engelmann has crafted a magnificent, suspenseful story set against the vibrant society of Sweden’s zenith, with a cast of colorful characters balanced at a crux of history.”
And Library Journal, in a starred review, calls it
“Fantastic . . . This rollicking adventure story reads at times like a fairy tale, with Good Guys and Bad Guys and obstacles to be recognized and overcome. It’s all quite fun. As either historical novel or adventure story, this clever first novel should appeal to a broad range of readers."
Monologue topics: mail, Sam Pink, Disneyland, Thanksgiving, exhaustion, The TNB Book Club.
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11/21/2012 • 1 hour, 11 minutes, 10 seconds
Episode 123 — Sam Pink
Sam Pink is the guest. He is the author of several books, including the novel Person. And his latest novel, Rontel, is due out from Lazy Fascist Press in February 2013.
Electric Literature raves
"Reading Sam Pink may make you a danger to society. The voice here in Rontel, as it was in Pink’s previous novel Person, is invasive. It will burrow its way deep into your brain and then echo through your gray matter. You will find yourself thinking the way his narrators think, and will then wonder if those fucked up thoughts tunneled in recently or if they were always there just waiting to be dug up."
Monologue topics: email from a listener, elevator theater, reality television, Board.
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11/18/2012 • 1 hour, 9 minutes, 37 seconds
Episode 122 — T.C. Boyle
T.C. Boyle is the guest. He is the author of twenty-three books of fiction, including The Tortilla Curtain, Drop City, and World's End, for which he won the PEN/Faulkner award. His latest novel, San Miguel, is now available from Viking.
Publishers Weekly raves
"Boyle’s epic saga of struggle, loss, and resilience tackles Pacific pioneer history with literary verve…[he] subtly interweaves the fates of Native Americans, Irish immigrants, Spanish and Italian migrant workers, and Chinese fisherman into the Waters’ and Lesters’ lives, but the novel is primarily a history of the land itself, unchanging despite its various visitors and residents, and as beautiful, imperfect, and unrelenting as Boyle’s characters."
And Terry Tempest Williams calls it
"A saga of women, three women brought to the island by men…Boyle has carved out a beautiful, damp, atmospheric novel, sharp and exacting…[his] spirited novels are a reckoning with consequence laced with humor, insight, and pathos."
Monologue topics: finishing the novel, extremely personal psycho-spiritual tweets, Board.
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11/14/2012 • 1 hour, 7 minutes, 35 seconds
Episode 121 — Lisa Carver
Lisa Carver is the guest. Also known as Lisa Suckdog, she is a writer and performance artist whose latest book is called Reaching Out with No Hands: Reconsidering Yoko Ono, now available from Backbeat Books.
Zoe Zolbrod, author of Currency, raves
"Lisa Carver can reveal surprising depths in Duran Duran lyrics, so imagine what she can do with a subject as rich as Yoko Ono. This book is a searching, brave, weird, great, historically broad, and highly personal interpretation of one of the most confounding artists of the last sixty years."
And Rachel Sherman, author of The First Hurt, says
"Lisa Carver s prose is the best kind: it reminds you of all the things you know but don t have the words for, and yet still feels completely new. This is a brave work unlike any other I have read."
Monologue topics: insomnia, caffeine, Board excerpt.
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11/11/2012 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 37 seconds
Episode 120 — Michael Kimball
Michael Kimball is the guest. He is the author of four books, the latest of which is a novel called Big Ray, now available in hardcover from Bloomsbury.
The Wall Street Journal calls it
"[An] astonishingly moving novel... We're left gasping for air... Danny's emotions unfold as slowly as the carefully dispensed facts of the story, and to mesmerizing effect... Big Ray is an appalling tale told with anger, dark humor and surprising tenderness."
And Sam Lipsyte raves
"Michael Kimball has been writing innovative, compelling and beautifully felt books for years, but Big Ray seems a break-through and culmination all at once. It's funny and terrifying and it's his masterpiece, at least so far.”
Monologue topics: existential questioning, polar bears, the ocean, eating a burrito on the air, Board, fear of finishing.
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11/7/2012 • 1 hour, 8 minutes, 19 seconds
Episode 119 — Julie Klam
Julie Klam is the guest. She is the author of several books, the most recent of which is called Friendkeeping: A Field Guide to the People You Love, Hate, and Can't Live Without, now available from Riverhead.
Kirkus raves
"Klam's voice is often flat-out hilarious… [she] never fails to come up with terrific comic vignettes and sharp one-liners… highly entertaining."
And the late-great David Rakoff says
"Julie Klam is one funny writer.”
Monologue topics: salvaging the novel, creative breakthroughs, self-immolation, public freakouts involving nudity, unnecessary trips to Israel, bleak episodes of crushing creative stasis, Board.
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11/4/2012 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 54 seconds
Episode 118 — J. Robert Lennon
J. Robert Lennon is today's guest. He is the author of several books, and his latest novel, Familiar, is now available from Graywolf Press.
The New York Times Book Review raves
“Over the last decade, J. Robert Lennon’s literary imagination has grown increasingly morbid, convoluted and peculiar—just as his books have grown commensurately more surprising, rigorous and fun.”
And The Los Angeles Times says
"[Lennon} keeps Familiar balanced at a perfect pitch...a literary puzzle, a marvelous trick of the mind."
Monologue topics: Hurricane Sandy, disaster guilt, socializing, exhaustion, weeping Buddha, TNB Book Club.
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10/31/2012 • 1 hour, 11 minutes, 57 seconds
Episode 117 — Susan Straight
Susan Straight is the guest. She is the author of several books and has been a finalist for the National Book Award. Her new novel, Between Heaven and Here, is now available from McSweeney's.
Ayelet Waldman raves
"It is only the rarest of novels that cry for a sequel, the most unusual of stories that at once satisfies and leaves the reader aching for more. Susan Straight's remarkable Take One Candle Light A Room is such a novel. And she has satisfied our desires in Between Heaven and Here, a magnificent novel, that manages to be at once unflinchingly real and transcendently beautiful. Susan Straight is one of the very best American writers. If you haven't read her, you're in for a delight and an awakening. If you have, then you're probably as thrilled as I am that she has taken us back to Rio Seco."
Kirkus, in a starred review, says
"Straight employs glorious language and a riveting eye for detail to create a fully realized, totally believable world."
Monologue topics: letters, mall tag, Indiana, crisis, novel implosion, melodrama, complete creative collapse.
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10/28/2012 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 56 seconds
Episode 116 — Antoine Wilson
Antoine Wilson is today's guest. He's the author of two novels, the most recent of which is called Panorama City, now available from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, says
"Wilson’s second novel (after Interloper) is fresh and flawlessly crafted as well as charmingly genuine. Oppen Porter is almost 30, a guileless man who lives in a small central California town with his reclusive father in a house overtaken by nature….Oppen experiments with various roles—dedicated worker, student of religion, thinker—eventually finding his place in the world, framing a classic coming-of-age story in an unexpected way."
Monologue topics: Board, literary collage, experimentation, exhaustive cataloging, good news, publication.
This podcast now has its own app, available (free!) for the iPhone, iPod, or iPad, and is also availalble (free!) for Android devices. To learn more about the app and how to get access to premium content, please visit http://otherpeoplepod.com/premium-access.
Also: You can subscribe to the show over at iTunes, or at Stitcher, free of charge.
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10/24/2012 • 1 hour, 26 minutes, 28 seconds
Episode 115 - Jami Attenberg
Jami Attenberg is the guest. Her new novel, The Middlesteins, is now available from Grand Central Publishing.
Jonathan Franzen raves
"The Middlesteins had me from its very first pages, but it wasn't until its final pages that I fully appreciated the range of Attenberg's sympathy and the artistry of her storytelling."
Kate Christensen says
"The Middlesteins is a truly original American novel, at once topical and universally timeless. Jami Attenberg has created a Midwestern Jewish family who are quintessentially familiar but fiercely, mordantly idiosyncratic. This novel will make you laugh, cry, cringe in recognition, and crave lamb-cumin noodles. This is a stunningly wonderful book."
And Kirkus, in a starred review, calls it
"Deeply satisfying. . . . A sharp-tongued, sweet-natured masterpiece of Jewish family life."
Monologue topics: social anxiety, silent judging, dinners, paranoia, Indiana, tag, shopping malls, faux pas.
This podcast now has its own app, available (free!) for the iPhone, iPod, or iPad, and is also availalble (free!) for Android devices. To learn more about the app and how to get access to premium content, please click right here.
Also: You can subscribe to the show over at iTunes, or at Stitcher. It's free.
Like the podcast? Please take a moment to rate and review it on iTunes. Thank you!
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10/21/2012 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 34 seconds
Episode 114 — Sean Beaudoin
Sean Beaudoin is today's guest. He's the author of several books, the most recent of which is a novel called The Infects, now available from Candlewick Press.
Publishers Weekly raves
"Horror goes hand in hand with dark comedy in this wickedly unpredictable adventure, as Beaudoin simultaneously skewers the fast food industry and familiar zombie tropes."
Monologue topics: ayahuasca, psycho-spiritual breakthroughs, frustration, the Mayan Apocalypse, confronting a mountain lion on a sand dune.
This podcast now has its own app, available (free!) for the iPhone, iPod, or iPad, and is also availalble (free!) for Android devices. To learn more about the app and how to get access to premium content, please click right here.
Also: You can subscribe to the show over at iTunes, or at Stitcher. It's free.
Or just push PLAY below.
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10/17/2012 • 1 hour, 20 minutes, 38 seconds
Episode 113 — Paula Bomer
Paula Bomer is today's guest. She's the author of two books, the most recent of which is a novel called Nine Months, which is available now from Soho Press.
Library Journal calls it
A raw, darkly funny, at times appalling page-turner.... Mommy lit lovers will be horrified, but Bomer’s debut novel will resonate with fans of quirky, character-driven fiction in the vein of Richard Russo, John Updike, and Tiffany Baker.
And Marcy Dermansky calls it
Deliciously, dangerously rogue.
Monologue topics: the Other People app, the app, my feelings on the app, how the app works, what you need to know about the app.
Speaking of which: This podcast now has its own app, available (free!) for the iPhone, iPod, or iPad, and also availalble (free!) for Android devices. To learn more about the app and how to get access to premium content, please click right here.
Don't forget to subscribe to the show over at iTunes, or at Stitcher. It's free. Or just push PLAY below.
Like the podcast? Please take a moment to rate and review it on iTunes. Thank you!
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10/14/2012 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 5 seconds
Episode 112 — Lorin Stein
Lorin Stein is the guest. He is the editor of The Paris Review and the co-editor (with Sadie Stein) of a new anthology called Object Lessons: The Paris Review Presents the Art of the Short Story, now available from Picador Paperback Originals.
From the Editors' Note:
Some chose classics. Some chose stories that were new even to us. Our hope is that this collection will be useful to young writers, and to others interested in literary technique. Most of all, it is intended for readers who are not (or are no longer) in the habit of reading short stories. We hope these object lessons will remind them how varied the form can be, how vital it remains, and how much pleasure it can give.
And Publishers Weekly says:
A selection of fiction culled from the influential journal’s archive with a twist: writers often featured in the journal’s pages—Lorrie Moore, David Means, Ann Beattie, Wells Tower, Ali Smith, among others— offer brief critical analyses of their selections, elevating this book from a greatest hits anthology to a kind of mini-M.F.A. Sam Lipsyte’s take on Mary Robison’s “Likely Lake” is as much a demonstration of the economy of powerful writing as the story itself and Ben Marcus’s tribute to Donald Barthelme’s “magician... language” in “Several Garlic Tales” illustrates how learning can occur when one writer inhabits another writer’s mind to geek out over what they both love.
Monologue topics: certainty, uncertainty, strong thinkers, certainty about uncertainty, uncertainty about certainty, the articulation of confusion, a posture of cosmic ambivalence.
Please remember to subscribe to the show over at iTunes, or at Stitcher. It's free. Or just push PLAY below. Like the podcast? Please take a moment to rate and review it on iTunes. Thank you!
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10/10/2012 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 55 seconds
Episode 111 — Kathleen Alcott
Kathleen Alcott is today's guest. Her debut novel, The Dangers of Proximal Alphabets, is now available from Other Press. Bookslut raves Heartbreaking, honest, and wholly engrossing, The Dangers of Proximal Alphabets dredges the depth of love that divides us, unites us, and ... Continue reading →
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10/7/2012 • 1 hour, 9 minutes, 16 seconds
110. Steven Gillis
Steven Gillis is the author of several books and the co-founder of Dzanc Books. His latest story collection, The Law of Strings, is now available from Atticus Books. Support independent bookstores! Shop here.
Also by Steven Gillis: Liars: A Novel
Gillis is the author of six novels and two short story collections. A founding member of the Ann Arbor Book Festival Board of Directors, and a finalist for the 2007 Ann Arbor News Citizen of the Year, Steve taught writing at Eastern Michigan University. In 2004 Steve founded 826Michigan, a mentoring program for students. In 2006 Steve co-founded Dzanc Books.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon / get merch.
www.otherppl.com
@otherppl
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Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
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10/3/2012 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 40 seconds
Episode 109 — Benjamin Wood
Benjamin Wood is the guest. His debut novel, The Bellwether Revivals, is now available from Viking in the United States and Simon & Schuster in the UK. The Bellwether Revivals was an official selection of The TNB Book Club. Joanna ... Continue reading →
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9/30/2012 • 1 hour, 1 minute, 33 seconds
Episode 108 — Amber Sparks
Amber Sparks is today's guest. Her debut story collection, May We Shed These Human Bodies, is now available from Curbside Splendor. Raves Michael Kimball: There was Aesop, Thomas Bulfinch, Edith Hamilton, Angela Carter-and now there is Amber Sparks with a ... Continue reading →
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9/26/2012 • 1 hour, 8 minutes, 52 seconds
Episode 107 — D.T. Max
D.T. Max is the guest. He's a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine and the author of Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace, now available from Viking. The San Francisco Chronicle calls ... Continue reading →
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9/23/2012 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 28 seconds
106. Thad Ziolkowski
Thad Ziolkowski is the author of the debut novel, Wichita (Tonga Books).
Also by Thad Ziolkowski: On a Wave: A Memoir
Ziolkowski is the author of Our Son the Arson, a collection of poems, and a memoir, On a Wave, which was a finalist for the PEN/Martha Albrand Award in 2003. In 2008, he was awarded a fellowship from the John S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. His essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Slate, Bookforum, Artforum, Travel & Leisure and Index. He directs the Writing Program at Pratt Institute. Wichita is his first novel.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon / get
Merch
www.otherppl.com
@otherppl
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9/19/2012 • 1 hour, 10 minutes, 23 seconds
105. Leigh Stein
Leigh Stein is the author of the novel THE FALLBACK PLAN and the poetry collection DISPATCH FROM THE FUTURE (Melville House). Support independent bookstores! Buy your copies here.
Also by Leigh Stein:
SELF CARE: A NOVEL
LAND OF ENCHANTMENT: A MEMOIR
WHAT TO MISS WHEN: POEMS
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon / get merch.
www.otherppl.com
@otherppl
Instagram
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
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9/16/2012 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 59 seconds
Episode 104 — David Abrams
David Abrams is the guest. He's the author of the debut novel Fobbit, which is now available from Grove/Atlantic. Publishers Weekly, in a starred reviews, says Abrams’s debut is a harrowing satire of the Iraq War and an instant classic....Abrams, ... Continue reading →
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9/12/2012 • 1 hour, 10 minutes, 51 seconds
Episode 103 — Dana Johnson
Dana Johnson is the guest. She's the author of the story collection Break Any Woman Down, winner of the Flannery O'Connor award for short fiction, and her debut novel, Elsewhere, California, is now available from Counterpoint. Aimee Bender raves I ... Continue reading →
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9/9/2012 • 1 hour, 8 minutes, 55 seconds
Episode 102 — Alix Ohlin
Alix Ohlin is the guest. She's the author of several books, the most recent of which are the story collection Signs and Wonders, available now from Vintage, and a novel called Inside, available Knopf. Both were published in June of ... Continue reading →
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9/5/2012 • 1 hour, 14 minutes
101. Matthew Batt
Matthew Batt is the author of the memoir Sugarhouse (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).
Support independent bookstores! Buy your copy here.
Batt's work has appeared in Tin House and on The Huffington Post and elsewhere. The Missouri Review called him a "heavy hitter" of nonfiction, and he's been nominated six times for the Pushcart Prize and is the recipient of an individual Artist Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon / get merch
Merch
www.otherppl.com
@otherppl
Instagram
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
Get Otherppl t-shirts, sweatshirts, etc.
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
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9/2/2012 • 1 hour, 11 minutes, 34 seconds
Episode 100 — George Saunders
George Saunders is today's guest. He's the bestselling author of several books, including CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, Pastoralia, and The Braindead Megaphone, and his brand new story collection, Tenth of December, is due out from Random House in January 2013. ... Continue reading →
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8/29/2012 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 8 seconds
99. Elizabeth Ellen
Elizabeth Ellen is the author of the chapbook Before You She was a Pit Bull (Future Tense) and Fast Machine, a collection of her best work from the last decade. Support indie bookstores! Shop here.
Ellen's stories, poems and essays have appeared in numerous online and print journals over the last 15 years, including elimae, Hobart, Fanzine, Bookslut, Muumuu House, BOMBBLOG, American Short Fiction, New York Tyrant, McSweeney’s, The Guardian, Joyland, Catapult, Bennington Review, FENCE, and Salon.
In 2012 Ellen received a Pushcart Prize for her story, “Teen Culture,” originally published in American Short Fiction and included in her second story collection, Saul Stories (SF/LD, 2017). She is also the author of the story collection Fast Machine (a cult classic published in 2012), the novel Person/a, and the poetry collection Elizabeth Ellen.
She is deputy editor at the literary journal Hobart, and, in 2006, Ellen founded Short Flight/Long Drive Books (SF/LD). Through SF/LD, she has published and edited such seminal works as Mary Miller's Big World, Chelsea Martin's Even Though I Don't Miss You, and Chloe Caldwell's Women, among many others.
In 2014, Ellen authored a controversial essay for which she was removed from an anthology of ‘provocative women writers’ to be published by Black Lawrence Press. Upon Ellen's public removal from the anthology, several other prominent female writers pulled their names and contributions from the anthology in support of Ellen, including Roxane Gay, Cheryl Strayed, Laura van den Berg, Amelia Gray, Lindsay Hunter, xTx, Mary Miller and Jac Jemc.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon / get merch.
www.otherppl.com
@otherppl
Instagram
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
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8/26/2012 • 1 hour, 7 minutes, 30 seconds
Episode 98 — Pauls Toutonghi
Pauls Toutonghi is today's guest. He's the author of two novels, the latest of which is called Evel Knievel Days, now available from Crown Books. Kirkus, in a starred review, calls it [A] superb literary effort....With writing both gently ironical ... Continue reading →
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8/22/2012 • 1 hour, 11 minutes, 7 seconds
Episode 97 — Oksana Marafioti
Oksana Marafioti is today's guest. She's the author of a new memoir called American Gypsy, now available from Farrar, Straus, & Giroux. Kirkus calls it Engaging . . . Marafioti describes with humor and introspection how the self-described ‘Split Nationality ... Continue reading →
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8/19/2012 • 1 hour, 12 minutes, 20 seconds
Episode 96 — Steve Roggenbuck
Steve Roggenbuck is the guest. He is a traveling poet-slash-blogger whose latest poetry collection, Crunk Juice, is now available from Lief Books. He also hosts a weekly, web-based television show called The Illuminati Power Hour, which is available via Spreecast. ... Continue reading →
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8/15/2012 • 1 hour, 23 minutes, 25 seconds
Episode 95 — Maria Semple
Maria Semple is today's guest. For years she worked in television, writing for shows like Mad About You and Arrested Development. Then, in 2008, she published her debut novel, This One is Mine. Her follow-up effort, a novel called Where'd ... Continue reading →
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8/12/2012 • 1 hour, 8 minutes, 20 seconds
Episode 94 — Karl Taro Greenfeld
Karl Taro Greenfeld is the guest. He's a journalist who has written for The Nation, Time magazine, and Sports Illustrated. And he's the author of six books, the most recent of which is a novel called Triburbia, now available from ... Continue reading →
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8/8/2012 • 1 hour, 10 minutes, 35 seconds
93. Lidia Yuknavitch
Lidia Yuknavitch is the author of the debut novel Dora: A Headcase (Hawthorne Books). Support indie booksellers!
Also by Lidia Yuknavitch:
The Chronology of Water: A Memoir
The Book of Joan: A Novel
The Misfit's Manifesto
Allegories of Violence
The Small Backs of Children
Yuknavitch is the National Bestselling author of the novels The Small Backs of Children, Dora: A Headcase, and the memoir The Chronology of Water. Her writing has appeared in publications including Guernica Magazine, Ms., The Iowa Review, Zyzzyva, Another Chicago Magazine, The Sun, Exquisite Corpse, and TANK. She writes, teaches and lives in Portland, OR.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon / get
Merch
www.otherppl.com
@otherppl
Instagram
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
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8/5/2012 • 1 hour, 8 minutes, 10 seconds
Episode 92 — Patrick Wensink
Patrick Wensink is today's guest. His latest novel, Broken Piano for President, is now available from Lazy Fascist Press. It recently incited an unusually kind cease-and-desist letter from Jack Daniel's, Inc. Publishers Weekly calls it [A] psychedelic trip of a novel. ... Continue reading →
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8/1/2012 • 1 hour, 7 minutes, 21 seconds
91. Sheila Heti
Sheila Heti is the author of How Should a Person Be? (Henry Holt).
Heti is the author of several books of fiction and nonfiction, including Motherhood and Ticknor. Her books have been translated into twenty-one languages.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
Support the show on
Merch
www.otherppl.com
@otherppl
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Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
Get Otherppl t-shirts, sweatshirts, etc.
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
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7/29/2012 • 1 hour, 3 minutes, 23 seconds
Episode 90 — Christopher Beha
Christopher Beha is the guest. He's an associate editor at Harper's magazine and the author of the debut novel What Happened to Sophie Wilder, now available from Tin House Books. Raves Shelf Awareness: Christopher Beha's short but intricately constructed first ... Continue reading →
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7/25/2012 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 54 seconds
Episode 89 — Jess Walter
Jess Walter is the guest. He's a National Book Award nominee and the author of several novels, the most recent of which is called Beautiful Ruins, now available from Harper. Helen Schulman, writing for the New York Times Book Review, ... Continue reading →
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7/22/2012 • 1 hour, 12 minutes, 7 seconds
Episode 88 — Christopher Narozny
Christopher Narozny is the guest. His debut novel, Jonah Man, is now available from Ig Publishing. Raves Patrick DeWitt, author of The Sisters Brothers: Jonah Man is a vivid and unsettling portrait of naked American ambition, and Chris Narozny is ... Continue reading →
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7/18/2012 • 1 hour, 7 minutes, 31 seconds
Episode 87 — Scott McClanahan
Scott McClanahan is the guest. He is the author of several books, the latest of which is called The Complete Works of Scott McClanahan, Vol. 1, now available from Lazy Fascist Press. Volume I Brooklyn raves: He might be one ... Continue reading →
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7/15/2012 • 1 hour, 7 minutes, 37 seconds
Episode 86 — Alexis Smith
Alexis Smith is today's guest. Her debut novel, Glaciers, is now available from Tin House Books. Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, calls it ...lyrical and luminous... And Karen Russell, bestselling author of Swamplandia!, raves Glaciers, Alexis Smith’s brilliant debut ... Continue reading →
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7/11/2012 • 1 hour, 8 minutes, 51 seconds
85. Seth Greenland
Seth Greenland is the author of three novels, the most recent of which is The Angry Buddhist (Europa Editions).
Also by Seth Greenland:
A Kingdom of Tender Colors
The Hazards of Good Fortune
I Regret Everything: A Love Story
Greenland's work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Le Monde, Le Figaro, Quillette, the Jewish Journal, Black Clock, and the French literary journal America.
He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, the author Susan Kaiser Greenland. They have two grown children.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon / get merch.
www.otherppl.com
@otherppl
Instagram
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
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7/8/2012 • 1 hour, 7 minutes, 29 seconds
Episode 84 — Elizabeth Collins
Elizabeth Collins is today's guest. She's the editor of The Beautiful Anthology, a collection of essays, stories, and poems from TNB Books, all of which are centered on the topic of beauty. She's also the author of a memoir called ... Continue reading →
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7/4/2012 • 1 hour, 5 minutes, 53 seconds
83. Joshua Henkin
Joshua Henkin is the author of the novel The World Without You (Pantheon).
His other books include Morningside Heights, Swimming Across the Hudson, a Los Angeles Times Notable Book, and Matrimony, a New York Times Notable Book. His short stories have been published widely, cited for distinction in Best American Short Stories, and broadcast on NPR's Selected Shorts. He lives in Brooklyn, NY, and directs the MFA program in Fiction Writing at Brooklyn College.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
www.otherppl.com
@otherppl
Instagram
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
Get Otherppl t-shirts, sweatshirts, etc.
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
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7/1/2012 • 1 hour, 7 minutes, 34 seconds
82. Jürgen Fauth
Jürgen Fauth is the author of the novel KINO (Atticus Books).
Fauth is also the author of Raves and The Ashakiran Tape. He lives in Berlin and Dakar.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon / get merch.
www.otherppl.com
@otherppl
Instagram
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
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6/27/2012 • 1 hour, 11 minutes, 24 seconds
Episode 81 — Kate Christensen
Kate Christensen is today's guest (photo credit: Marion Ettlinger). She's the author of six novels, the fourth of which, The Great Man, won the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award. Her latest novel, The Astral, is now available in trade paperback from Anchor ... Continue reading →
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6/24/2012 • 1 hour, 20 minutes, 24 seconds
Episode 80 — Erik Larson
Today's episode of Other People is brought to you by Audible.com. And here's a special offer: Right now, listeners of this program can get a free audiobook download and a free 30-day trial. To get your free audiobook, just click ... Continue reading →
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6/20/2012 • 54 minutes, 16 seconds
Episode 79 — Elizabeth Crane
Elizabeth Crane is the guest. She's the author of three story collections—When the Messenger is Hot, All This Heavenly Glory, and You Must Be This Happy to Enter. Her debut novel, We Only Know So Much, is now available from ... Continue reading →
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6/17/2012 • 1 hour, 6 minutes, 57 seconds
78. Miles Klee
Miles Klee is the author of a debut novel called Ivyland (O/R Books).
Support indie bookstores! Shop here.
Klee is also the author of the story collection True False (OR Books 2015). He lives in LA and writes for MEL Magazine.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon / get merch.
www.otherppl.com
@otherppl
Instagram
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
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6/13/2012 • 1 hour, 9 minutes, 2 seconds
77. Ron Rash
Ron Rash is the author of the novel The Cove (Ecco).
Rash is the author of six novels, five collections of short stories, and four collections of poetry. He is also a two-time finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Prize and winner of the O Henry Prize, the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, the Sherwood Anderson Prize, the James Still Award of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, and other honors. He teaches at Western Carolina University.
Also by Ron Rash:
Serena
Above the Waterfall
Nothing Cold Can Stay
Something Rich and Strange
The World Made Straight
Chemistry and Other Stories
Saints at the River
One Foot in Eden
The Night the New Jesus Fell to Earth
Burning Bright
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth conversations with today's leading writers. Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/otherpplpod
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6/10/2012 • 59 minutes, 37 seconds
Episode 76 — Esi Edugyan
Esi Edugyan is the guest. She's a Canadian author whose novel, Half-Blood Blues, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2011. It won the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and is now available from Picador here in the United States. The ... Continue reading →
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6/6/2012 • 1 hour, 5 minutes, 17 seconds
75. Jerry Stahl
Jerry Stahl is the author of several books, including the memoir Permanent Midnight, which was adapted into a film starring Ben Stiller.
Stahl's other books include Perv: A Love Story, Pain Killers, Plainclothes Naked, Happy Mutant Baby Pills, Love Without, OG Dad, and I, Fatty. He has written extensively for film and television.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
Support the show on
Merch
www.otherppl.com
@otherppl
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Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
Get Otherppl t-shirts, sweatshirts, etc.
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
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6/3/2012 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 34 seconds
Episode 74 — Jim Lynch
Jim Lynch is today's guest. He's the author of three novels, the most recent of which is Truth Like the Sun, now available from Knopf. It was the May selection for the TNB Book Club. Janet Maslin of the New ... Continue reading →
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5/30/2012 • 1 hour, 5 minutes, 46 seconds
Episode 73 — Elna Baker
Elna Baker is the guest. She's the author of memoir The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance, now available from Penguin. She's also an accomplished performer, having appeared at The Moth, on This American Life, WTF, Studio 360, Radiolab, ... Continue reading →
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5/27/2012 • 1 hour, 7 minutes, 39 seconds
72. Edgar Oliver
Edgar Oliver is the guest. He is an American stage and film actor, a poet, a performance artist, and a playwright. His poetry collections include The Man Who Loved Plants, and his plays include The Drowning Pages.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon / get merch.
www.otherppl.com
@otherppl
Instagram
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
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5/23/2012 • 1 hour, 22 minutes, 16 seconds
71. Ben Fountain
Ben Fountain is the author of the novel Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (Ecco Press).
He was born in Chapel Hill and grew up in the tobacco country of eastern North Carolina. A former practicing attorney, he is the author of Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Barnes & Noble Discover Award for Fiction. Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk won the National Book Critics' Circle Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award. It was then adapted into a feature film directed by three-time Oscar winner Ang Lee. Fountain's work has been translated into over twenty languages. His series of essays published in The Guardian on the 2016 U.S. presidential election was subsequently nominated by the editors of The Guardian for the Pulitzer Prize in Commentary. He lives in Dallas.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
www.otherppl.com
@otherppl
Instagram
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
Get Otherppl t-shirts, sweatshirts, etc.
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
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5/20/2012 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 34 seconds
Episode 70 — Emily St. John Mandel
Emily St. John Mandel is the guest. Her latest novel is called The Lola Quartet, and it is available now from Unbridled Books. Library Journal, in a starred review, raves: In this transcendent third novel, Emily St. John Mandel combines ... Continue reading →
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5/16/2012 • 1 hour, 4 minutes, 18 seconds
Episode 69 — Etgar Keret
Etgar Keret is the guest. He's the author of several books, the most recent of which is called Suddenly, a Knock on the Door, now available from Farrar, Straus, & Giroux. Jonathan Safran Foer calls it Keret’s greatest book yet—the ... Continue reading →
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5/13/2012 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 1 second
68. David Rees
David Rees is the author of How to Sharpen Pencils: A Practical & Theoretical Treatise on the Artisanal Craft of Pencil Sharpening for Writers, Artists, Contractors, Flange Turners, Anglesmiths, & Civil Servants (Melville House).
Rees is a humorist and cultural critic. He first rose to prominence as a cartoonist whose best known work combined bland clip art with "trash talk." Rees later created an artisanal pencil sharpening service and has now published a related book on the subject. He also co-created and hosted two seasons of the television series "Going Deep with David Rees," on NatGeo.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth conversations with today's leading writers. Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon / get merch
@otherppl
Instagram
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
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5/9/2012 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 28 seconds
67. Chloe Caldwell
Chloe Caldwell is the author of the debut essay collection Legs Get Led Astray, now available from Future Tense Books.
Caldwell is the author of three books: the essay collection I’ll Tell You in Person (Coffee House/Emily Books, 2016), and the critically acclaimed novella, Women (SF/LD 2014 and Harper Collins UK, 2017). Her memoir, The Red Zone: A Love Story will publish with Soft Skull Press in Spring 2022.
Chloe’s personal essays have appeared in The New York Times, Buzzfeed, New York Magazine, Longreads, Vice, Nylon, Salon.com, Medium, Lenny Letter,The Rumpus, Catapult, Hobart, The Sun, Men’s Health, The Nervous Breakdown, and half a dozen anthologies including Goodbye To All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving NYC and Without A Net: The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class. Her essay “Hungry Ghost” was listed as Notable in 2016 Best American Non Required Reading.
She teaches creative nonfiction writing in New York City and online, offers mentorships, and hosts seasonal writing workshops and retreats upstate New York. She lives in Hudson, N.Y. with her husband and stepdaughter.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon / get merch.
www.otherppl.com
@otherppl
Instagram
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
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5/6/2012 • 1 hour, 21 minutes, 20 seconds
66. Kris D’Agostino
Kris D'Agostino is the author of the debut novel The Sleepy Hollow Family Almanac (Algonquin).
He is also the author of the novel The Antiques.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
www.otherppl.com
@otherppl
Instagram
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
Get Otherppl t-shirts, sweatshirts, etc.
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
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5/2/2012 • 1 hour, 12 minutes, 35 seconds
65. Matt Bell
Matt Bell is the author of several chapbooks, a fiction collection called How They Were Found, and his most recent book is a novella called Cataclysm Baby, now available from Mud Luscious Press. Support indie bookstores! Shop here.
Bell’s next novel, Appleseed, is forthcoming from Custom House in July 2021. His craft book Refuse to Be Done, a guide to novel writing, rewriting, and revision, will follow in early 2022 from Soho Press. He is also the author of the novels Scrapper and In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods, as well as the short story collection A Tree or a Person or a Wall, a non-fiction book about the classic video game Baldur's Gate II, and several other titles. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Tin House, Conjunctions, Fairy Tale Review, American Short Fiction, and many other publications. A native of Michigan, he teaches creative writing at Arizona State University.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
www.otherppl.com
@otherppl
Instagram
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores
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4/29/2012 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 30 seconds
Episode 64 — Noah Hawley
Noah Hawley is the guest. He's the author of several books, the most recent of which is a novel called The Good Father, now available from Doubleday. He's also an accomplished writer and producer in film and television. He wrote ... Continue reading →
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4/25/2012 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 27 seconds
63. James Bernard Frost
James Bernard Frost is the guest. He's the author of the novel A Very Minor Prophet, now available from Hawthorne Books.
Frost is also the author of the novel World Leader Pretend, and the award-winning travel guide The Artichoke Trail. His fiction and nonfiction has been published in many places, including the San Francisco Examiner, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and Wired. He lives in Oregon with the author Kerry Cohen, their four children, the rain, the freaks, and the trees. His bike is currently in disrepair.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
www.otherppl.com
@otherppl
Instagram
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
Get Otherppl t-shirts, sweatshirts, etc.
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
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4/22/2012 • 1 hour, 11 minutes, 37 seconds
Episode 62 — Heidi Julavits
Heidi Julavits is today's guest. She's the author of four books, the most recent of which is a novel called The Vanishers, now available from Doubleday. And she's also the co-editor of The Believer magazine. Here's what The New York ... Continue reading →
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4/18/2012 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 12 seconds
61. Rosecrans Baldwin
Rosecrans Baldwin is a co-founder of The Morning News and the author of a memoir called Paris, I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down (FSG).
Baldwin is also the author of the novel The Last Kid Left. His next book, Everything Now, is forthcoming June 2021 from MCD x FSG (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).
As a magazine writer, Baldwin is a frequent contributor to GQ. Other titles include Esquire, Men’s Journal, Travel + Leisure, AFAR, Saveur, and Bon Appétit, with several features selected as notable essays in the Best American Essays and Best American Travel Writing collections (2013, 2015, 2019). Rosecrans has written opinion pieces for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal and the Guardian, as well as Buzzfeed, Salon, and Slate. As a columnist, he created “The Digital Ramble” for The New York Times T Magazine and the “Confidential” page for Centurion, a magazine for American Express “Black Card” members. (Rosecrans is not a “Black Card” member.) In 1999, he co-founded the online zine TMN with publisher Andrew Womack, and continues to help oversee the Tournament of Books.
Rosecrans also works as half of a screenwriting team with his partner Rachel Knowles. Together, they’ve written scripts and treatments in collaboration with Groundswell Productions, A+E Studios, Patagonia Films, Atlas Entertainment, Film 44, Gran Via Productions, Avalon Television, Assembly Entertainment, and CBS Studios. Rosecrans has also written and produced podcasts with Luminary, Western Sound, Mirum, and m ss ng p eces. From 2012-2014, he was a regular on-air contributor to National Public Radio’s All Things Considered.
A MacDowell fellow, Rosecrans has taught fiction writing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, nonfiction writing at Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies, and he was an author-in-residence at Miami Dade College’s Miami Writers Institute. He lives in Los Angeles.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Life. Death. Etc.
Support the show on Patreon / get merch.
www.otherppl.com
@otherppl
Instagram
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
4/15/2012 • 1 hour, 12 minutes, 23 seconds
Episode 60 — Kris Saknussemm
Kris Saknussemm is the guest. His latest novel, Reverend America, is now available from Dark Coast Press. And the soundtrack to the book is now available at iTunes. From Booklist: Once upon a time, Mathias Gaspenny was a child preacher ... Continue reading →
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4/11/2012 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 27 seconds
Episode 59 — Amelia Gray
Amelia Gray is the guest. She's the author of three works of fiction, the most recent of which is a novel called Threats, now available from Farrar, Straus, & Giroux. Doug Dorst, author of The Surf Guru, has this to ... Continue reading →
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4/8/2012 • 1 hour, 10 minutes, 27 seconds
Episode 58 — Melissa Broder
Melissa Broder is the guest. Her new poetry collection, entitled Meat Heart, is now available from Publishing Genius Press. And by day she is the publicity manager for Penguin Group. Says Publishers Weekly: Broder’s second collection cranks up the weird ... Continue reading →
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4/4/2012 • 1 hour, 7 minutes, 4 seconds
Episode 57 — Hari Kunzru
Hari Kunzru is the guest. He's the author of four books, the most recent of which is a novel called Gods Without Men, now available from Knopf. David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas, calls it a "beautifully written echo chamber ... Continue reading →
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4/1/2012 • 1 hour, 10 minutes, 25 seconds
Episode 56 — Jessica Keener
Jessica Keener is today's guest. Her debut novel, Night Swim, is now available from Fiction Studio Books. Pulitzer Prize-winner Jennifer Egan says: Jessica Keener steps boldly into the terrain of Eugene O'Neill, conjuring up the pathologies and quirks of a ... Continue reading →
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3/28/2012 • 1 hour, 12 minutes, 11 seconds
Episode 55 — Catherine Chung
Catherine Chung is the guest. Her debut novel, Forgotten Country, is now available from Riverhead Books. Booklist, in a starred review, raves: Chung’s superb debut examines the twin hearts of cruelty and compassion between sisters in particular and family in ... Continue reading →
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3/25/2012 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 34 seconds
Episode 54 — Jeff Ragsdale
Jeff Ragsdale is the guest. He's the co-author, along with David Shields and Michael Logan, of Jeff, One Lonely Guy. Here's what Bret Easton Ellis, author of American Psycho, has to say about it: You can either make fun of ... Continue reading →
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3/21/2012 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 35 seconds
Episode 53 — Sarah Manguso
Sarah Manguso is today's guest. She's the author of the new book The Guardians: An Elegy, now available from Farrar, Straus, & Giroux. Megan O'Grady, writing for Vogue, says: Shortly after returning home from a fellowship year in Rome, poet ... Continue reading →
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3/18/2012 • 1 hour, 11 minutes, 20 seconds
Episode 52 — Lysley Tenorio
Lysley Tenorio is the guest. A winner of the Whiting Writer's Award and a former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, he is the author of a debut story collection called Monstress, now available from Ecco. Raves Chang-Rae Lee, New York ... Continue reading →
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3/14/2012 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 58 seconds
Episode 51 — Lauren Groff
Lauren Groff is the guest. She's the author of the novel The Monsters of Templeton, the story collection Delicate Edible Birds, and most recently, a novel called Arcadia, which has received starred reviews from Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and ... Continue reading →
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3/11/2012 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 40 seconds
Episode 50 — Maud Newton
Maud Newton is the guest. One of the web's most influential book bloggers. She also reviews books and is a former attorney who now works as an editor and writer for (a legal publishing division of) Thomson Reuters. She has ... Continue reading →
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3/7/2012 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 11 seconds
Episode 49 — Joe Blair
Joe Blair is the guest. He's the author of the memoir By the Iowa Sea, now available from Scribner. Scott Spencer, author of Main in the Woods, raves: An intimate, startling memoir that honors and elevates our quotidian existence. With ... Continue reading →
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3/4/2012 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 17 seconds
Episode 48 — Ramona Ausubel
Ramona Ausubel is the guest. Her debut novel, No One is Here Except All of Us, is now available in hardcover from Riverhead Press. And her short story "Atria" was published in the April 4, 2011 issue of The New ... Continue reading →
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2/29/2012 • 1 hour, 15 minutes
Episode 47 — Ryan Boudinot
Ryan Boudinot is the guest. He's the author of the new novel, Blueprints of the Afterlife, now available from Grove Press. John Schwartz, in a review for the New York Times, raves: A fierce literary imagination, building the kinds of ... Continue reading →
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2/26/2012 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 24 seconds
Episode 46 — Cheryl Strayed
Cheryl Strayed is the guest. She's the author of the new memoir Wild, due out from Knopf on March 20, 2012. And she's also Sugar, the popular advice columnist over at The Rumpus. Wild, which details Strayed's 1,100-mile solo hike ... Continue reading →
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2/22/2012 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 59 seconds
Episode 45 — Adam Wilson
Adam Wilson is the guest. He's the author of the debut novel Flatscreen, now available from Harper Perennial. Raves Sam Lipsyte: "Adam Wilson is a gutsy, funny, and often beautiful writer, and Flatscreen is one of the most hilarious and ... Continue reading →
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2/19/2012 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 5 seconds
Episode 44 — Eleanor Henderson
Eleanor Henderson is the guest. She's the author of the debut novel Ten Thousand Saints, now available in trade paperback from Ecco. It was named one of the 10 Best Books of 2011 by the New York Times Book Review. ... Continue reading →
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2/15/2012 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 8 seconds
Episode 43 — Ben Marcus
Ben Marcus is today's guest. He's the author of four books of fiction, the most recent of which is the critically acclaimed novel The Flame Alphabet, now available from Knopf. "Think again," writes Fiona Maazel at Book Forum. "[The Flame ... Continue reading →
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2/12/2012 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 29 seconds
Episode 42 — Ben Tanzer
Ben Tanzer is the guest. He's the author of several books, including 99 Problems, You Can Make Him Like You, and My Father's House. He is also the proprietor of vast faux media empire. Michael Fitzgerald, author of Radiant Days, ... Continue reading →
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2/8/2012 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 42 seconds
Episode 41 — Claire Bidwell Smith
Claire Bidwell Smith is the guest. She's the author of the memoir The Rules of Inheritance, available now from Hudson Street Press. Darin Strauss, the author of Half a Life, calls it "a perfectly crafted story — not about grief, ... Continue reading →
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2/5/2012 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 37 seconds
Episode 40 — Susan Sherman
Susan Sherman is the guest. She's the author of the acclaimed debut novel The Little Russian, now available from Counterpoint Press. And she's also the co-creator of one of the most successful television shows in the history of Disney. Library ... Continue reading →
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2/1/2012 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 26 seconds
Episode 39 — Caroline Leavitt
Caroline Leavitt is the guest. She's the author of nine novels, the most recent of which is called Pictures of You, a New York Times bestseller, now available from Algonquin Books. Kirkus Reviews calls it "heartfelt, deft, and highly readable ... Continue reading →
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1/29/2012 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 41 seconds
Episode 38 — Vanessa Veselka
Vanessa Veselka is the guest. She's the author of the novel Zazen, now available from Red Lemonade. Says Publishers Weekly: "Veselka's prose is chiseled and laced with arsenic observations...[Zazen] makes a case for hope and meaning amid sheer madness." Endless ... Continue reading →
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1/25/2012 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 37 seconds
Episode 37 — Alan Heathcock
The guest is Alan Heathcock, author of the critically acclaimed story collection Volt, now available from Graywolf Press. Volt was named a Best Book of 2011 by a variety of publications, including Publishers Weekly, GQ, the Chicago Tribune, the ... Continue reading →
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1/22/2012 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 16 seconds
Episode 36 — D.R. Haney
D.R. Haney is the guest. He's the author of the novel Banned for Life (And/Or Press) and the nonfiction collection Subversia, now available from TNB Books. PANK magazine calls Subversia "...heartfelt and personal...a joyful read..." Duke is an old ... Continue reading →
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1/18/2012 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 11 seconds
Episode 35 — Tayari Jones
The guest today is Tayari Jones, author of the novels Leaving Atlanta, The Untelling, and most recently, Silver Sparrow, now available from Algonquin Books. Library Journal, in a starred review, calls it a "a graceful and shining work about finding ... Continue reading →
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1/15/2012 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 24 seconds
Episode 34 — Roxane Gay
Roxane Gay is the guest. Her debut, Ayiti, is a collection of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and it is now available from Artistically Declined Press. She is an English professor at Eastern Illinois University, co-editor of PANK magazine, fiction ... Continue reading →
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1/11/2012 • 1 hour, 12 minutes, 57 seconds
Episode 33 — Rex Pickett
Rex Pickett is the guest. He's the author of the novel Sideways, which was adapted for the screen by Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor. The movie went on to win the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, among many other awards, ... Continue reading →
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1/8/2012 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 13 seconds
Episode 32 — Cecil Castellucci
The guest is Cecil Castellucci. She's the author of several novels for young adults, the most recent of which is First Day on Earth, now available from Scholastic Press. Kirkus calls it "a simple, tender work that speaks to the ... Continue reading →
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1/4/2012 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 18 seconds
Episode 31 — Dana Spiotta
Happy New Year, everybody! The guest today is Dana Spiotta. She's the author of three novels: Lightning Field, Eat the Document (a finalist for the National Book Award), and, most recently, Stone Arabia, now available from Scribner. Publishers Weekly calls ... Continue reading →
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1/1/2012 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 41 seconds
Episode 30 — Jamal Joseph
Today's guest is Jamal Joseph, author of the memoir Panther Baby, which details his coming of age within the Black Panther movement during the 1960s and '70s—a journey that took him to Riker's Island and Leavenworth prisons before ultimately leading ... Continue reading →
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12/28/2011 • 1 hour, 24 minutes, 41 seconds
Episode 29 — Ben Loory
Ben Loory is the guest. He's the author of the debut collection Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day, now available from Penguin. Long a favorite of small zine readers in print and online, as well as a longtime ... Continue reading →
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12/25/2011 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 56 seconds
Episode 28 — Edan Lepucki
Edan Lepucki is the guest. She's the author of the novella If You're Not Yet Like Me, originally published by Flatmancrooked and now available from Nouvella Books. She's a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop and a staff writer over ... Continue reading →
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12/21/2011 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 49 seconds
Episode 27 — Barry Eisler
The guest is Barry Eisler. He's the author of several bestselling thrillers, the most recent of which is The Detachment, which caused a stir in publishing earlier this year when Eisler turned down a six-figure deal from St. Martin's and ... Continue reading →
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12/18/2011 • 1 hour, 22 minutes, 41 seconds
Episode 26 — David Shields
David Shields is the guest. He's the author of twelve books, including Reality Hunger: A Manifesto (Knopf, 2010), which was named one of the best books of the year by more than thirty publications; The Thing About Life Is That ... Continue reading →
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12/14/2011 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 54 seconds
Episode 25 — John Warner
Today's guest is John Warner. He's the author of four books, most recently a debut novel called The Funny Man, available now from SoHo Press. And he's also the longtime editor of McSweeney's Internet Tendency. Publishers Weekly calls The Funny ... Continue reading →
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12/11/2011 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 49 seconds
Episode 24 — Charles Shields
Charles Shields is the guest. He's the author of And So It Goes — Kurt Vonnegut: A Life, now available in hardcover from Henry Holt. Shields is also the author of Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee, also available from ... Continue reading →
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12/7/2011 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 3 seconds
Episode 23 — Dennis Cooper
Dennis Cooper is the guest. He's the author of several books, including The Sluts, God Jr., the five novels of the George Miles cycle, and, most recently, The Marbled Swarm, now available from Harper Perennial. "Disquieting, humbling, and sadly beautiful ... Continue reading →
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12/4/2011 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 38 seconds
Episode 22 — Darin Strauss
Darin Strauss is today's guest. He is the author of three novels—Chang & Eng, The Real McCoy, and More Than It Hurts You. And his most recent book is a memoir called Half a Life (McSweeney's) which won the National ... Continue reading →
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11/30/2011 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 27 seconds
Episode 21 — Janet Reitman
Janet Reitman is the guest. She is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine and the author of the bestselling Inside Scientology: The Story of America's Most Secretive Religion, recently named by the New York Times as one of its ... Continue reading →
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11/27/2011 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 43 seconds
Episode 20 — Adam Novy
Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! The guest is Adam Novy, author of the debut novel The Avian Gospels, available now from Short Flight / Long Drive Books, an independent press run by the good people over at Hobart. "The Avian Gospels has ... Continue reading →
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11/23/2011 • 1 hour, 20 minutes, 24 seconds
Episode 19 — Elissa Schappell
The guest is Elissa Schappell, author of the story collections Use Me (William Morrow), which was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the brand new Blueprints for Building Better Girls, available now from Simon & Schuster. A former senior ... Continue reading →
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11/20/2011 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 14 seconds
Episode 18 — Katie Arnoldi
Today's guest: Katie Arnoldi, the bestselling author of three novels: Chemical Pink, The Wentworths, and Point Dume. This one's gonna blow your mind, people. Just trust me. It'll make you want to buy a plane ticket. It'll make you want ... Continue reading →
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11/16/2011 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 19 seconds
Episode 17 — Joshua Mohr
Joshua Mohr is the guest. He's the author of three novels: Some Things That Meant the World to Me, Termite Parade, and, most recently, Damascus. All are available from Two Dollar Radio, one of America's finest independent presses. "The bard ... Continue reading →
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11/13/2011 • 1 hour, 24 minutes, 56 seconds
Episode 16 — Gina Frangello
Gina Frangello is the guest. She is the critically acclaimed author of the novel My Sister's Continent (Chiasmus Press), the story collection Slut Lullabies (Emergency Press), and the forthcoming novel A Life in Men (Algonquin). She is also the esteemed ... Continue reading →
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11/9/2011 • 1 hour, 22 minutes, 58 seconds
Episode 15 — Jillian Lauren
The guest is Jillian Lauren, author of the memoir Some Girls: My Life in a Harem, a New York Times bestseller, and the brand new novel Pretty, both available from Plume Books. Kirkus calls her a "deft storyteller," and Antoine ... Continue reading →
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11/6/2011 • 1 hour, 22 minutes, 59 seconds
Episode 14 — Shann Ray
The guest is Shann Ray, author of the critically acclaimed story collection American Masculine, now available from Graywolf Press. A very impressive guy. A college basketball star. A doctorate in psychology. A professor of leadership studies (with an emphasis on ... Continue reading →
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11/2/2011 • 1 hour, 21 minutes, 12 seconds
Episode 13 — Megan Boyle
Megan Boyle is the guest. She's the author of selected unpublished blog posts of a mexican panda express employee, an unorthodox debut poetry collection from Muumuu House. At the time of this interview, she had been up for 36 hours ... Continue reading →
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10/30/2011 • 1 hour, 12 minutes, 57 seconds
Episode 12 — Diana Spechler
A great conversation with Diana Spechler, author of the novels Who By Fire and Skinny, both from Harper Perennial. We get into it. Topics of conversation include: tequila, book tour, cocktail waitressing, pizza delivery, horrible bosses, getting fired, the fact ... Continue reading →
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10/26/2011 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 44 seconds
Episode 11 — Adam Levin
Adam Levin is the guest. He's the author of The Instructions, a 1,030-page novel published by McSweeney's in late 2010 to great critical acclaim. "Evocative of David Foster Wallace," writes Rolling Stone, "full of death-defying sentences, manic wit, exciting provocations ... Continue reading →
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10/23/2011 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 38 seconds
Episode 10 — Alexander Maksik
Alexander Maksik is the guest. An old buddy of mine, one of the original writers at The Nervous Breakdown, and a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop, where he was a Truman Capote Fellow. He's now the author of ... Continue reading →
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10/19/2011 • 1 hour, 20 minutes, 53 seconds
Episode 9 — Steve Almond
Such a great pleasure to have Steve Almond on the show. His new story collection, God Bless America, is due out from Lookout Books on October 25th. Lorrie Moore calls it "funny and beguiling and completely original." Wanna buy it ... Continue reading →
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10/16/2011 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 22 seconds
Episode 8 — Victoria Patterson
Okay then. Here we go. Episode 8 is here. It's ready. You can listen to it. Just push PLAY (below). Or subscribe for free at iTunes. The guest is Victoria Patterson, author of the story collection Drift and the ... Continue reading →
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10/12/2011 • 1 hour, 26 minutes, 43 seconds
Episode 7 — Blake Butler
Blake Butler is the guest. (Just push PLAY below.) Or listen (and subscribe!), free of charge, at iTunes. He's the founder of the popular literary blog HTML Giant. He's the author of the novella Ever (Calamari Press); the author of ... Continue reading →
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10/9/2011 • 1 hour, 21 minutes, 15 seconds
Episode 6 — Jessica Anya Blau
I like this show a lot. I like the conversation. We get into stuff. Jess is a fantastic guest—funny as hell and open and honest and all the rest. We talk about books, of course. But we also talk about ... Continue reading →
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10/5/2011 • 1 hour, 20 minutes, 26 seconds
Episode 5 — Greg Olear
Episode 5 - Greg Olear. Here you go. Greg, in addition to being a terrific author, is the senior editor over at The Nervous Breakdown. He is the author of novels Totally Killer (2009) and the brand new Fathermucker ... Continue reading →
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10/2/2011 • 1 hour, 22 minutes, 35 seconds
Episode 4 — Ron Currie, Jr.
Here we have it: Episode 4 - Ron Currie, Jr. One of the brighter young lights in the literary firmament. One of those guys who deserves a huge audience, who writes daring books that will, as you read them, change ... Continue reading →
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9/29/2011 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 26 seconds
Episode 3 — Emma Straub
Episode 3 is here. Another sneak preview. (Just push PLAY below. Or listen for free via iTunes. And the podcast is also now available over at Stitcher, gratis. Listen on your phone, iPod, iPad, etc. FREE!) In today's show: my ... Continue reading →
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9/26/2011 • 1 hour, 10 minutes, 42 seconds
Episode 2 — Melissa Febos
And here we have the second episode. Melissa Febos, author of the memoir Whip Smart, which details the years she spent working as dominatrix in New York City. There was some heroin addiction. Some college. Some wild experiences. Some ... Continue reading →
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9/22/2011 • 1 hour, 9 minutes, 18 seconds
Episode 1 — Jonathan Evison
Okay. Finally. This is it. Episode 1 of Other People is here. It's done. It exists. It's live. It's real. We start out in style, with Johnny Evison, bestselling author of All About Lulu (Soft Skull) and West of ... Continue reading →
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