Podcast appearances and mentions of Angela Flournoy

Ethan, Anne, and Maggie discuss books set in, or (roughly) from, the 1970s.  Books Discussed:  The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton The Crime of Punishment by Karl A Menninger Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll Other books mentioned: The Turner House by Angela Flournoy, Patriot by Alexei Navalny, and Wind & Truth by Brandon Sanderson. 

Detroit has an essential relationship to genre in American literature and popular culture. The contemporary formations of the suburban sitcom, the post-apocalyptic genre, the sci-fi dystopia, crime fiction, the superhero genre, and contemporary horror would not exist in the way they do today without the aesthetic material and racial history of Detroit. When DC Comics wanted to compete with Marvel and market “socially relevant” comics, especially ones dealing with issues of race, they swapped Gotham and Metropolis for Detroit. What about vampires concerned with de-industrialization, heritage conservation, and impending water wars? Must be Detroit. A story about a half-man, half-robot wrestling with what it means to be human by fighting crime? Improbably, Detroit has two. Author Vincent Haddad's The Detroit Genre: Race, Dispossession, and Resilience in American Literature and Film, 1967-2023 (Lever Press, 2024) provides the first comprehensive literary and cultural investigation of the representations of Detroit in popular and literary culture. The book first establishes the concept of the “Detroit genre” that emerged in late 1960s and traces the tropes of this white-centric narrative genre in popular culture, touching on key texts including Blue Collar, Robocop, The Crow, It Follows, and Barbarian. The second part shows how Black writers, including Alice Randall, adrienne maree brown, Stephen Mack Jones, and Angela Flournoy, reclaimed and revised the Detroit genre by un-fixing Detroit narratives of dispossession, criminality, and industrial and social failure through formal experimentations on genre itself. Where Detroit has typically been painted in the news as one of three things—the center of the automotive industry; crime-ridden and in ruins; or as a “blank canvas” with limitless potential of entrepreneurship—Vincent Haddad shows that the Detroit genre in literature and film can be far more powerful than news media in narrating Black dispossession as a pragmatic, even liberal consensus. The texts studied here condition forgetfulness about Detroit's history or expose it to a full reckoning, direct attention toward or away from the city's agents of injustice, fetishize resilience or model resistance, and foreclose or imagine a future of Black liberation. Appealing to scholars of popular literature, media, race, and American studies, The Detroit Genre is an accessible and engaging study of the city's influence on a wide array of genres in pop culture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

Detroit has an essential relationship to genre in American literature and popular culture. The contemporary formations of the suburban sitcom, the post-apocalyptic genre, the sci-fi dystopia, crime fiction, the superhero genre, and contemporary horror would not exist in the way they do today without the aesthetic material and racial history of Detroit. When DC Comics wanted to compete with Marvel and market “socially relevant” comics, especially ones dealing with issues of race, they swapped Gotham and Metropolis for Detroit. What about vampires concerned with de-industrialization, heritage conservation, and impending water wars? Must be Detroit. A story about a half-man, half-robot wrestling with what it means to be human by fighting crime? Improbably, Detroit has two. Author Vincent Haddad's The Detroit Genre: Race, Dispossession, and Resilience in American Literature and Film, 1967-2023 (Lever Press, 2024) provides the first comprehensive literary and cultural investigation of the representations of Detroit in popular and literary culture. The book first establishes the concept of the “Detroit genre” that emerged in late 1960s and traces the tropes of this white-centric narrative genre in popular culture, touching on key texts including Blue Collar, Robocop, The Crow, It Follows, and Barbarian. The second part shows how Black writers, including Alice Randall, adrienne maree brown, Stephen Mack Jones, and Angela Flournoy, reclaimed and revised the Detroit genre by un-fixing Detroit narratives of dispossession, criminality, and industrial and social failure through formal experimentations on genre itself. Where Detroit has typically been painted in the news as one of three things—the center of the automotive industry; crime-ridden and in ruins; or as a “blank canvas” with limitless potential of entrepreneurship—Vincent Haddad shows that the Detroit genre in literature and film can be far more powerful than news media in narrating Black dispossession as a pragmatic, even liberal consensus. The texts studied here condition forgetfulness about Detroit's history or expose it to a full reckoning, direct attention toward or away from the city's agents of injustice, fetishize resilience or model resistance, and foreclose or imagine a future of Black liberation. Appealing to scholars of popular literature, media, race, and American studies, The Detroit Genre is an accessible and engaging study of the city's influence on a wide array of genres in pop culture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Detroit has an essential relationship to genre in American literature and popular culture. The contemporary formations of the suburban sitcom, the post-apocalyptic genre, the sci-fi dystopia, crime fiction, the superhero genre, and contemporary horror would not exist in the way they do today without the aesthetic material and racial history of Detroit. When DC Comics wanted to compete with Marvel and market “socially relevant” comics, especially ones dealing with issues of race, they swapped Gotham and Metropolis for Detroit. What about vampires concerned with de-industrialization, heritage conservation, and impending water wars? Must be Detroit. A story about a half-man, half-robot wrestling with what it means to be human by fighting crime? Improbably, Detroit has two. Author Vincent Haddad's The Detroit Genre: Race, Dispossession, and Resilience in American Literature and Film, 1967-2023 (Lever Press, 2024) provides the first comprehensive literary and cultural investigation of the representations of Detroit in popular and literary culture. The book first establishes the concept of the “Detroit genre” that emerged in late 1960s and traces the tropes of this white-centric narrative genre in popular culture, touching on key texts including Blue Collar, Robocop, The Crow, It Follows, and Barbarian. The second part shows how Black writers, including Alice Randall, adrienne maree brown, Stephen Mack Jones, and Angela Flournoy, reclaimed and revised the Detroit genre by un-fixing Detroit narratives of dispossession, criminality, and industrial and social failure through formal experimentations on genre itself. Where Detroit has typically been painted in the news as one of three things—the center of the automotive industry; crime-ridden and in ruins; or as a “blank canvas” with limitless potential of entrepreneurship—Vincent Haddad shows that the Detroit genre in literature and film can be far more powerful than news media in narrating Black dispossession as a pragmatic, even liberal consensus. The texts studied here condition forgetfulness about Detroit's history or expose it to a full reckoning, direct attention toward or away from the city's agents of injustice, fetishize resilience or model resistance, and foreclose or imagine a future of Black liberation. Appealing to scholars of popular literature, media, race, and American studies, The Detroit Genre is an accessible and engaging study of the city's influence on a wide array of genres in pop culture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Detroit has an essential relationship to genre in American literature and popular culture. The contemporary formations of the suburban sitcom, the post-apocalyptic genre, the sci-fi dystopia, crime fiction, the superhero genre, and contemporary horror would not exist in the way they do today without the aesthetic material and racial history of Detroit. When DC Comics wanted to compete with Marvel and market “socially relevant” comics, especially ones dealing with issues of race, they swapped Gotham and Metropolis for Detroit. What about vampires concerned with de-industrialization, heritage conservation, and impending water wars? Must be Detroit. A story about a half-man, half-robot wrestling with what it means to be human by fighting crime? Improbably, Detroit has two. Author Vincent Haddad's The Detroit Genre: Race, Dispossession, and Resilience in American Literature and Film, 1967-2023 (Lever Press, 2024) provides the first comprehensive literary and cultural investigation of the representations of Detroit in popular and literary culture. The book first establishes the concept of the “Detroit genre” that emerged in late 1960s and traces the tropes of this white-centric narrative genre in popular culture, touching on key texts including Blue Collar, Robocop, The Crow, It Follows, and Barbarian. The second part shows how Black writers, including Alice Randall, adrienne maree brown, Stephen Mack Jones, and Angela Flournoy, reclaimed and revised the Detroit genre by un-fixing Detroit narratives of dispossession, criminality, and industrial and social failure through formal experimentations on genre itself. Where Detroit has typically been painted in the news as one of three things—the center of the automotive industry; crime-ridden and in ruins; or as a “blank canvas” with limitless potential of entrepreneurship—Vincent Haddad shows that the Detroit genre in literature and film can be far more powerful than news media in narrating Black dispossession as a pragmatic, even liberal consensus. The texts studied here condition forgetfulness about Detroit's history or expose it to a full reckoning, direct attention toward or away from the city's agents of injustice, fetishize resilience or model resistance, and foreclose or imagine a future of Black liberation. Appealing to scholars of popular literature, media, race, and American studies, The Detroit Genre is an accessible and engaging study of the city's influence on a wide array of genres in pop culture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Detroit has an essential relationship to genre in American literature and popular culture. The contemporary formations of the suburban sitcom, the post-apocalyptic genre, the sci-fi dystopia, crime fiction, the superhero genre, and contemporary horror would not exist in the way they do today without the aesthetic material and racial history of Detroit. When DC Comics wanted to compete with Marvel and market “socially relevant” comics, especially ones dealing with issues of race, they swapped Gotham and Metropolis for Detroit. What about vampires concerned with de-industrialization, heritage conservation, and impending water wars? Must be Detroit. A story about a half-man, half-robot wrestling with what it means to be human by fighting crime? Improbably, Detroit has two. Author Vincent Haddad's The Detroit Genre: Race, Dispossession, and Resilience in American Literature and Film, 1967-2023 (Lever Press, 2024) provides the first comprehensive literary and cultural investigation of the representations of Detroit in popular and literary culture. The book first establishes the concept of the “Detroit genre” that emerged in late 1960s and traces the tropes of this white-centric narrative genre in popular culture, touching on key texts including Blue Collar, Robocop, The Crow, It Follows, and Barbarian. The second part shows how Black writers, including Alice Randall, adrienne maree brown, Stephen Mack Jones, and Angela Flournoy, reclaimed and revised the Detroit genre by un-fixing Detroit narratives of dispossession, criminality, and industrial and social failure through formal experimentations on genre itself. Where Detroit has typically been painted in the news as one of three things—the center of the automotive industry; crime-ridden and in ruins; or as a “blank canvas” with limitless potential of entrepreneurship—Vincent Haddad shows that the Detroit genre in literature and film can be far more powerful than news media in narrating Black dispossession as a pragmatic, even liberal consensus. The texts studied here condition forgetfulness about Detroit's history or expose it to a full reckoning, direct attention toward or away from the city's agents of injustice, fetishize resilience or model resistance, and foreclose or imagine a future of Black liberation. Appealing to scholars of popular literature, media, race, and American studies, The Detroit Genre is an accessible and engaging study of the city's influence on a wide array of genres in pop culture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film

Detroit has an essential relationship to genre in American literature and popular culture. The contemporary formations of the suburban sitcom, the post-apocalyptic genre, the sci-fi dystopia, crime fiction, the superhero genre, and contemporary horror would not exist in the way they do today without the aesthetic material and racial history of Detroit. When DC Comics wanted to compete with Marvel and market “socially relevant” comics, especially ones dealing with issues of race, they swapped Gotham and Metropolis for Detroit. What about vampires concerned with de-industrialization, heritage conservation, and impending water wars? Must be Detroit. A story about a half-man, half-robot wrestling with what it means to be human by fighting crime? Improbably, Detroit has two. Author Vincent Haddad's The Detroit Genre: Race, Dispossession, and Resilience in American Literature and Film, 1967-2023 (Lever Press, 2024) provides the first comprehensive literary and cultural investigation of the representations of Detroit in popular and literary culture. The book first establishes the concept of the “Detroit genre” that emerged in late 1960s and traces the tropes of this white-centric narrative genre in popular culture, touching on key texts including Blue Collar, Robocop, The Crow, It Follows, and Barbarian. The second part shows how Black writers, including Alice Randall, adrienne maree brown, Stephen Mack Jones, and Angela Flournoy, reclaimed and revised the Detroit genre by un-fixing Detroit narratives of dispossession, criminality, and industrial and social failure through formal experimentations on genre itself. Where Detroit has typically been painted in the news as one of three things—the center of the automotive industry; crime-ridden and in ruins; or as a “blank canvas” with limitless potential of entrepreneurship—Vincent Haddad shows that the Detroit genre in literature and film can be far more powerful than news media in narrating Black dispossession as a pragmatic, even liberal consensus. The texts studied here condition forgetfulness about Detroit's history or expose it to a full reckoning, direct attention toward or away from the city's agents of injustice, fetishize resilience or model resistance, and foreclose or imagine a future of Black liberation. Appealing to scholars of popular literature, media, race, and American studies, The Detroit Genre is an accessible and engaging study of the city's influence on a wide array of genres in pop culture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Detroit has an essential relationship to genre in American literature and popular culture. The contemporary formations of the suburban sitcom, the post-apocalyptic genre, the sci-fi dystopia, crime fiction, the superhero genre, and contemporary horror would not exist in the way they do today without the aesthetic material and racial history of Detroit. When DC Comics wanted to compete with Marvel and market “socially relevant” comics, especially ones dealing with issues of race, they swapped Gotham and Metropolis for Detroit. What about vampires concerned with de-industrialization, heritage conservation, and impending water wars? Must be Detroit. A story about a half-man, half-robot wrestling with what it means to be human by fighting crime? Improbably, Detroit has two. Author Vincent Haddad's The Detroit Genre: Race, Dispossession, and Resilience in American Literature and Film, 1967-2023 (Lever Press, 2024) provides the first comprehensive literary and cultural investigation of the representations of Detroit in popular and literary culture. The book first establishes the concept of the “Detroit genre” that emerged in late 1960s and traces the tropes of this white-centric narrative genre in popular culture, touching on key texts including Blue Collar, Robocop, The Crow, It Follows, and Barbarian. The second part shows how Black writers, including Alice Randall, adrienne maree brown, Stephen Mack Jones, and Angela Flournoy, reclaimed and revised the Detroit genre by un-fixing Detroit narratives of dispossession, criminality, and industrial and social failure through formal experimentations on genre itself. Where Detroit has typically been painted in the news as one of three things—the center of the automotive industry; crime-ridden and in ruins; or as a “blank canvas” with limitless potential of entrepreneurship—Vincent Haddad shows that the Detroit genre in literature and film can be far more powerful than news media in narrating Black dispossession as a pragmatic, even liberal consensus. The texts studied here condition forgetfulness about Detroit's history or expose it to a full reckoning, direct attention toward or away from the city's agents of injustice, fetishize resilience or model resistance, and foreclose or imagine a future of Black liberation. Appealing to scholars of popular literature, media, race, and American studies, The Detroit Genre is an accessible and engaging study of the city's influence on a wide array of genres in pop culture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Detroit has an essential relationship to genre in American literature and popular culture. The contemporary formations of the suburban sitcom, the post-apocalyptic genre, the sci-fi dystopia, crime fiction, the superhero genre, and contemporary horror would not exist in the way they do today without the aesthetic material and racial history of Detroit. When DC Comics wanted to compete with Marvel and market “socially relevant” comics, especially ones dealing with issues of race, they swapped Gotham and Metropolis for Detroit. What about vampires concerned with de-industrialization, heritage conservation, and impending water wars? Must be Detroit. A story about a half-man, half-robot wrestling with what it means to be human by fighting crime? Improbably, Detroit has two. Author Vincent Haddad's The Detroit Genre: Race, Dispossession, and Resilience in American Literature and Film, 1967-2023 (Lever Press, 2024) provides the first comprehensive literary and cultural investigation of the representations of Detroit in popular and literary culture. The book first establishes the concept of the “Detroit genre” that emerged in late 1960s and traces the tropes of this white-centric narrative genre in popular culture, touching on key texts including Blue Collar, Robocop, The Crow, It Follows, and Barbarian. The second part shows how Black writers, including Alice Randall, adrienne maree brown, Stephen Mack Jones, and Angela Flournoy, reclaimed and revised the Detroit genre by un-fixing Detroit narratives of dispossession, criminality, and industrial and social failure through formal experimentations on genre itself. Where Detroit has typically been painted in the news as one of three things—the center of the automotive industry; crime-ridden and in ruins; or as a “blank canvas” with limitless potential of entrepreneurship—Vincent Haddad shows that the Detroit genre in literature and film can be far more powerful than news media in narrating Black dispossession as a pragmatic, even liberal consensus. The texts studied here condition forgetfulness about Detroit's history or expose it to a full reckoning, direct attention toward or away from the city's agents of injustice, fetishize resilience or model resistance, and foreclose or imagine a future of Black liberation. Appealing to scholars of popular literature, media, race, and American studies, The Detroit Genre is an accessible and engaging study of the city's influence on a wide array of genres in pop culture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

In the first episode of Season 1, co-hosts Annie Liontas and Lito Velázquez speak with LitFriends Angela Flournoy & Justin Torres about their enduring friendship, writing in a precarious world, and chosen family. Links https://sites.libsyn.com/494238 www.annieliontas.com www.litovelazquez.com https://linktr.ee/litfriendspodcast https://www.instagram.com/litfriendspodcast/ https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61553436475678 https://justin-torres.com/ https://www.angelaflournoy.com/ https://www.asalisolomon.com/ Transcript Annie & Lito (00:01) Welcome to LitFriends! Hey LitFriends! Annie: Welcome to the show. Lito: Today we're speaking with the great writers and LitFriends, Justin Torres and Angela Flournoy. Annie: About chosen family, the dreaded second novel, and failure and success. Lito: So grab your bestie and— 
 Both: Get ready to get lit! Lito: That's so cute. Annie: It's cute. It's cute. We're cute! Lito: Cute, cute… So you had a question? Annie (00:29) I do. I have a question for you, Lito. Are you a cat or an ox? Lito: I mean, I would hope that the answer is so obvious that it almost bears not asking the question. I'm a cat. Annie: Okay, so Asali Solomon at The Claw asked us all, are you an ox or a cat? Lito: That's a great question. Annie: And as a writer... You know, the oxen are the people who work every day in the field, clock in, clock out, pay themselves a quarter an hour. I'm literally talking about me. The cats are people who are playful, exploratory, when the mood strikes them… Lito: Why are you looking at me when you say that? Annie Lito (01:26) So are you an ox or a cat? Lito: I'm a cat. I think anyone who's ever met me would say I'm a cat. Annie: How does that show up in your writing? Lito: Well, I mean, play is so important to me—she'll be on the  podcast in a couple of episodes, but when I first...was studying with Lucy, that was one of the first things that she spoke about in our class, and it kind of blew up my whole world. I had been writing for a long time already, but I hadn't thought of it as play, or there was some permission I needed or something. So the idea of play is really central to what I do and love. You wouldn't necessarily know that from the novel that I'm writing, which is sort of a dark book. Um, but it did start out with a lot of play and, I'm also, as you could probably just hear, my cat is coming into the room. Annie: Your cat is like, yes, Lito is us. RiffRaff is like, "Lito is cat." Lito: My cat Riff Raff, yes. Smarty pants. Um, he needed to join in on this conversation. Anyways, I'm a cat. I, I'm fickle when it comes to my work. Um. I don't want to work on my novel all the time, which is great because life has found so many ways to prevent it from happening. So in the new year, in 2024, it will be 7 years since I've started writing this book, and it's still, it's going to take a few more months at least. And what about you? Annie:  (03:09) I'm four oxen pulling a cart carrying all of my ancestors. I am very much the immigrant who says, get up, go do the work, come back, go do the work. And believe it or not, for me, there is a lot of joy in that. It's a... It allows, you know, it's Csikszentmihalyi's Flow, actually. So it doesn't feel like drudgery, usually. It does feel like joy. And I'm actually curious for all you LitFriends out there, if you're an ox or a cat. Lito: Yes, that's such a great idea. Please email us at litfriendspodcast@gmail.com, and tell us if you're a cat or an oxen or share on all your socials. Annie: Yeah, maybe we should poll them. That would be fun. Lito: That's a good idea. #LitFriendsPodcast. Annie: The reason I'm asking is because, of course, both Justin and Angela, who we speak with today in this episode, talk about what it's like to go for 10 years between books. "A banger a decade," is what Angela says. Lito: It's so funny. Annie: And you, you know, part of that, they have this very rich conversation about how, when you put everything into the first book, it takes a lot to get to the second book. But I think also there's a lot of play, right? And there's a lot of understanding that writing appears in different forms. And it might be the second novel, but it might be something else. Lito: For sure. I really like how they talk about— that the practice of writing is actually a practice of reading. And I think that any serious writer spends most of their time reading. And not just reading books, but texts of all kinds, in the world, at museums, as Justin points out, art, television, even the trashiest TV show has so much to offer. Annie: (05:12) And there's such a generosity to the way they think of themselves as artists, and also generosity in how they show up for one another as friends, and acknowledging when they fail one another as we as we see in this episode. And I remember my introduction to Justin when I was a grad student at Syracuse. I read We the Animals and fell in love with it, asked him to come do a reading at Syracuse, which was wonderful. And my wife who, at that time was my Bey-ancé, she was turning 30. We had no money. I couldn't buy her anything. Not in grad school. So I asked Justin if he would autograph his story, "Reverting to a Wild State," which is about a breakup in reverse, for Sara. Lito: Oh, I love that story. Annie: And he did, and he thought it was so beautiful, and I was like, "let me send it to you." He's like, "no, I've got it." He just shipped it to me. He didn't know me. We didn't know each other. Lito: He knew you because of books. He knew you because he loved literature. Annie: Yeah. And I remember that in it. I held on to it at a time when that act really mattered. Lito: One of the things I love about our interview with Justin and Angela is how much all of us talk about generosity, and how Justin and Angela display it in their conversation with each other and with us. And I'm just curious, how do you see that coming through also in Angela's work? Annie: (07:00) You know, I remember her talking about how the idea for the book began with this image of people moving around a house at night. This is The Turner House. And she says this image opens up a lot of questions. And one of the things that really stays with me about that book is how masterful she is at shifting perspective, particularly between siblings, which I find to be such a challenge for writers, right? Like your siblings are the people who are closest to you and sometimes also the farthest away. And she gets that so intimately on the page. And of course, in our conversation with Angela and Justin, one of the things they talk about is being family, essentially being siblings. And that's one of the most powerful echoes of the conversation. They talk about being a chosen family and having to choose again and again and again. And that spirit of consciousness and connection, I feel that very much in Angela's work, and of course in Justin's too. Lito: Oh Annie, I choose you again and again, I choose you. Annie: Oh, I choo-choo-choose you! Lito: So stupid. Annie: (08:05) After the break, we'll be back with Justin and Angela. Annie: (08:24) And we're back. Lito: I just wanted to mention, too, that we spoke with Angela and Justin in October during the writer's strike in Hollywood, and just before Justin's new book, Blackouts, was released. And just last week, as you're hearing this podcast. Annie: Just last week. Lito: Just last week! He won the National Book Award for a book that took him 10 years to write. Annie: Absolutely. Annie: Justin Torres is the author of Blackouts, a novel about queer histories that are hidden, erased and re-imagined. Blackouts won the 2023 National Book Award for fiction. His debut novel, We the Animals, has been translated into 15 languages and was adapted into a feature film. He was named National Book Foundation's Five Under 35. His work appears in the New Yorker, Harper's, Granta, Tin House, Best American Essays, and elsewhere. He lives in Los Angeles and teaches at UCLA. Lito: Angela Flournoy is the author of The Turner House, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, won the VCU-Cabel First Novel Prize, and was also a finalist for both the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and an NAACP Image Award. Angela is a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine, and her nonfiction has appeared in The Nation, the Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. Angela is a faculty member in the low residency MFA program at Warren Wilson College. Lito: (10:36) I'm so grateful that you guys found time to meet with us today, and I've thought about you two as friends since I think this is like the first time you've done something like what you did in 2017, the "Proper Missive"—do you remember that—you published in Spook? And it stuck with me. I was like a big, nerding out, and I bought it and I have it still. And I thought about that. And Justin, you know that you're very personal— there's a personal connection with me because I found your book on my way to my first master's program. No one had said anything about it to me where I was coming from, and it was really great. And Angela, I first found your book. I was so amazed and moved by the talk you don't remember at Syracuse. Angela: I don't remember the lunch. I remember being at Syracuse, and there being a talk, yes. Lito: You inscribed your book, "Here's to Language," which I think is hilarious and also really sweet. And I think we must have said something about language at some point. But anyways, thank you so much both for being here. Justin: Thank you for having us. Angela: Very happy to be here. Lito: So let's start. Why don't you tell us about your friend in a few sentences? So Angela, you can go first. Tell us about Justin. Angela: (11:23) Justin is the first person that I met in Iowa City when I was visiting and deciding if I was going to go there, but was I really deciding no? I'll let you go there. But that I could like, deciding whether I would be miserable while I was there. And so Justin was the first person I met. And feel like Justin is five years older than me. It has to be said.  Justin: Does it? Angela: When I think about people, and I think about like mentors, I have other like amazing mentors, but like, I think that there's really something special about somebody who some people might think is your peer, but like, in a lot of ways you've been like looking up to them and, um, that has been me with Justin. I think of him as like a person who is not only, he's a Capricorn, and he has big Capricorn energy. I am an Aquarius. I do not want to be perceived— Justin: I don't agree with any of this. But I don't know. I don't follow any of this. Angela: But Justin is in the business of perceiving me and also gathering me up and helping me do better. My life is just always getting better because of it. I'm grateful for it. Annie: That is beautiful, all of that is beautiful. Justin, tell us about Angela. Justin: I can't follow that, that is so...  Angela: Acurate! Justin: You're so prepared! You're so sweet! I'm so touched! Angela: Only a Capricorn would be touched by somebody saying that you perceive them and gather them up and make them feel better. Ha ha ha! Justin: I like that, I do like that. Let's see, yeah. I mean, I think that when we met, I had already been in Iowa for a year, and within two seconds, I was like, oh, we're gonna be friends, and you don't know it yet. But I knew it intensely. And yeah, I think that one of the, I agree that I think we keep each other honest, I think. I think that one of the things that I just so appreciate about Angela is that, you know, yeah, you see my bullshit. You put up with it for like a certain amount of time, and then you're like, all right, we need to talk about the bullshit that you're pulling right now. And I love it, I love it, love it, love it, because I don't know, I think you really keep me grounded. I think that, yeah, it's been really (14:09) wonderful to have you in my life. And like, our lives really, really kind of pivoted towards one another. You know, like we've, it was not just like, oh, we were in grad school and then, you know, whatever, we have similar career paths, so we stayed friends or whatever. It's like, we became family. And, you know, every, every kind of major event in either of our lives is a major event, a shared major event, right? And that's like, yeah, I don't know. I can't imagine my life without you. I honestly can't. Angela: Likewise. I gave birth in Justin's home. Annie: Oh! Sweet! Justin: In my bathroom, over there. Right over there. Lito: Whoa, congratulations, and also scary(?)! Angela: It's in a book I'm writing, so I won't say so much about it, but it was a COVID home birth success story. And yeah, like family. Lito: Was that the plan or did that just happen? Angela: Well, It wasn't the plan and then it was the plan. Justin: Yeah, exactly. COVID wasn't the plan. Angela: No. Justin: The plan was Angela was gonna sublet my place with her husband and she was pregnant. And then, COVID happened Angela: There were a lot of pivots. But we did, it was like enough of a plan where we got his blessing to give birth in his home. Justin: It wasn't a surprise. Angela: It was a surprise that it was in the bathroom, but that's a different story. Annie: You blessed that bathroom is all I can say. Angela: Yeah. Lito: We'll be right back. Back to the show. Annie: (16:22) Well, I want to come back to what Lido was saying about proper missives. I love the intimacy. I mean, I know you weren't writing those to one another for kind of public consumption, but the intimacy and the connection, it's so moving. And I was thinking about, you know, Justin, you, you talk about Angela as kind of pointing the way to beauty and helping you see the world anew or differently. And Angela, you talked about how Justin encourages you to take up space as a political act. I'm just wondering what else you all have taught one another. What has your LitFriend taught you? Justin: Yeah, I mean, we did write that for public consumption. Angela: Yes, it was the editor-in-chief of Spook, Jason Parham. Spook is relaunching soon, so look out for it. He just told me that, like, the other day. And he's moving to L.A. So many things are happening. But he reached out to us and was really interested in—he's a big archives guy and like how—he thought it was valuable the way that writers of past generations, they have these documents of their letters to each other, to their editors, to their friends, to their enemies, and how this generation, because we're just texting through it, we don't really have that. And so that was really just the extent of the assignment, was to write letters to each other, which, of course, we still ended up using email to do. But we really tried to keep it in the spirit of a letter and not just something you kind of dash off. Justin: And we were not living in the same place at that time. Angela: No. Justin: So it was, it did feel kind of— Angela: I was in Provincetown, I think. Justin: Yeah, I remember I was on a train when I was, when I was doing— I can't remember where I was going or, but I remember a lot of it was— or a few of those correspondences— because it went over days, weeks. Lito: Yeah, you were going to Paris. Angela: Oh. Glamorous train. You were on the Eurostar. Justin: Wow. Annie: You basically said the same thing then, Angela. Call him out. Justin: (18:32) Yeah, and I think that what I was saying was that one of the things I loved about that was it really forced us to dive deeper, right? To kind of— Sometimes we can stay very much on the surface because we talk every day. And so it was really nice to see, not just what was kind of on your mind in the background, but also how you were processing it, how you kind of made language and meaning out of it. I was just like... I don't know, it's like, I know you're so deep, but then we also love to be shallow. And so it's so nice to be like, to connect from that deep place. Annie: One of the things that I'm so drawn to about both of your work is how you write about family, the way it shapes us, the way it wounds us, what it means to watch family members suffer. You talk about it as the question of the donut hole in "Proper Missive. Angela, I remember you were writing about your father. When you were writing about him, you talk about, "the assumption that a flawed person should be subject to anyone's definition." And Justin, I'm thinking quite broadly in terms of, you know, chosen or logical family. One of my favorite pieces that I teach in my creative non-fiction class is "Leashed," and you write there, "my friends, those tough women and queers were all too sharp and creative for their jobs. If I'm nostalgic, it's not because I was happy in those precarious years, but because I was deeply moved by our resourcefulness." I'm just wondering how you think about, you know, (20:09) family, logical family, and how your lit friendship fits into this? Justin: Who's going first? Angela: You. Justin: Let's see, I think that it's such a great question. I actually like, I use that little short kind of tiny little piece that you referenced. I use that in my book, in Blackouts, that's coming out. I think that, which is a book about chosen family as well, and lineages, and what do you do when you feel there's some kind of disruption, right? That like if you're estranged from your biological family or you know or you just need these connections, these kind of queer connections to and other ways of thinking about family that are not related to (21:06) bloodlines. Like we said earlier, we are family, and we've known that for quite a while. It was something that, I don't know. You know, it's like something that I don't think you ever really need to say. It's just you know who your people are. And I think that, and I think that it's a choice that you make and remake again and again and again. And that is something that is, I don't know, it's so exceptional, right? Compared to bloodlines and biological family, which can be hugely important and bring a lot of meaning to people. But that you're choosing this again and again. Like almost like the kind of past tense chosen family is like, it's like a little bit inaccurate, right? It's like the family you choose, and keep choosing, and you're choosing right now, you know? So I love that. Yeah. Angela: Just that the continuity of it, not in the sense that it's always going to be there, but that like you are, you're like an active, uh, engager like in it. In it, I just think about, I think about that, like, uh, at this point we know each other for 14 years. And the way that there's just necessarily we're not the same people but you have to keep, and you have to keep engaging, and you have to keep figuring out how to navigate different things and I think particularly as like LitFriends there's the huge thing you have to navigate which is especially if you're friends before that you're just like some kids who got into this program that people think are fancy, but you're just like, anything can happen, right? From there to being the capital— going from just like lowercase w, "writer," to capital A, "Author." And like what that, I mean, I've seen many a friendship where that is the rupture. And so particularly figuring out, like, how are you going to navigate that, and how are you going to still be in each other's lives. (23:16.33) Um, one thing I think about, as a person who thinks about family a lot is, with your family, sometimes you can like harm one another, and you'll just take some time off, or you'll just be like, that's how they are. But with the family that you continue to choose, you have to, ideally, you gotta do something about it. You have to actually have the engagement, and you have to figure out how to come out on the other side of it. And that is something that is harder and really in so many ways, all the more precious because of it. And it requires a kind of resilience and also just like a trust. And again, because Justin, you know, likes to gather me up, there's been a few times when I was like, "Oh, no, like, we've got beef, what's gonna happen?" And Justin is like, "we're family, what's gonna happen is we're gonna have to talk about this beef, and then move on." Justin: Yeah. And I think that I think that also you have, you're really good at reminding me to be responsible, right? That just because I've made this commitment, in my mind, right, Like we're committed forever. Like we're family. Like we can't, we can't break up, right? Like it's just like, that's just the way it is. It doesn't get me off the hook of showing up in other ways and being responsible and like, you know, that I can be quite flaky. Angela: I mean, that's just, you've been in L.A. long enough. It's just, you're just becoming native. Justin:  I think I always don't, I don't wanna disappoint you. I don't want you ever to feel like you were looking around for support, and I wasn't there. Angela: Do people cry on this podcast? Annie: We time it. Right at the half hour. Justin: There's been a few moments when I feel it, when I've felt (25:21) maybe that wasn't there enough, you know? And, you know, and if, you know, and like, I don't know, that's when you know it's the real stuff because it like keeps me up at night. You know, I'm just like, wow, you know, what does she need? What can I give? How can I be there? And yeah. Angela: Wow.  There you are. Justin: Here we are. Annie: Lito and I are also family, and it sort of feels never too late. But what you're saying about kind of the like renewing your vows, renewing your commitment over and over, it feels very, very true. Lito: Very true. Yeah yeah yeah. Annie: And life-saving, you know, like life affirming. Lito: It feels real. Justin: Yeah. Look at us. I'm proud of us. I'm proud of you guys too. Lito: It's a love fest over here. Angela: Thanks for having it. Annie: We'll be right back. Annie: (26:26) Welcome back. Angela: Also, particularly again, thinking about a lot of the friends that you have, they're not necessarily also sometimes colleagues. And I think that one thing that Justin really modeled, because I didn't have anything to be transparent about, was just transparency about things. Not just how much he's getting paid for things, but just like what was worth it, what's not worth it, like what is just the way something is and you can like take it or leave it. And I think that in the beginning it was more of me kind of taking that information because I didn't have anybody offering me anything. But now I feel like it's really an exchange of information. And I think that there are people who I love, like, in this industry, if you will, who that's just not our relationship. That doesn't mean we don't have great friendships, but like that is something that like if I'm broke, he knows I'm broke. I never feel the need to pretend and hide or like, you know, and likewise, like if he don't got it, I know he don't got it. It's not, it's just, it just, and I feel like that is something also that is a, it's, um, I think it's important. Especially because you write a book, you know, it does well. And then there are some years in between before you write another. Some of us in this room, maybe take a decade. All of us in this room, maybe take a decade. But yeah, so just really being able to be, to feel like you can still show up at any point in whatever you're doing creatively. Justin: (28:16) Because this is about literary friendships, I think that it's, yeah, there's those two sides, right? There's the business side, which can cause a lot of friction, especially if, you know, things go differently for different books and people have different trajectories. I mean, you're like, you know:  you've surpassed.  Angela: I don't know if that's true.  Justin: But there's that like business side of it. And then there's the literary side as well. And I think that sometimes if it just slides too much into talking about—it's like we could both be selling sprockets, right? There's so much minutiae. It's like we could talk about contracts and whatever and like gigs and da-da-da ad nauseam. And we have to remember to talk about literary side, the literature, the work, the sentences, what we're reading in order to kind of sustain the literary quality of a literary friendship, right?  Angela: One thing I remember you told me, I don't know, ages ago that I thought at the time like oh he's gassing me he's practicing things that he says his students tell me—but now I realize that it is also one of the reasons why our friendship has sustained is you were like ,you know, we can talk about whether a book is successful in 800 ways, but we have to try to remember to just be fans, to be fans of books, of literature, of people writing. And I think that is something that I not only try to practice, but that's something that I think is really foundational to relationship. Everyone can be a hater, and it can be fun sometimes, but like… (30:08) We really do like want to put each other on to the books that we're like excited about. Like I remember when you read or reread Seasons of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih, and I hadn't read it before.  I mean, it's like a, it's a seminal or really a really famous African text, but I had never read it. Or like Maryse Condé, like I hadn't read it as like a real adult and being able to just like talk about that and know that there's a person who's, you know, you could be in polite conversation with somebody who you think is really smart and then you're like you know what I decided I wanted to reread—I don't know—something a person might wanna reread and they're like, Oh, what are you gonna do next? You gonna read a Moby Dick? And you're like, Oh damn, they just shamed me. You know, they just shamed me for being a nerd. But that's not gonna happen here. Yeah, beautiful. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.  Annie: I do wanna go back to something you were alluding to. Angela, you were talking quite openly about it, too, which is shifting from writer to capital A author and the pressure that comes with that.  For the two of you, you had incredible well-deserved success early in your career, but I imagine that doesn't come without a lot of sleepless nights, right? I'm thinking about an interview I heard with Ta-Nehisi Coates where he talks about his friends not reaching out thinking, like, He's good, like, You blew up, you're good. And talking about actually what a lonely position that can be. I'm just wondering, you know, how you've both managed to take care of one another through those highs and lows, or being on that track alongside one another.  And even, you know, competition between lit friends. Justin: (32:13) Yeah, I mean, I think that we're just kind of, like our dispositions: we're very lucky in that I think we, before we met, it wasn't something that we like decided on. It was just before we met, I think we're just boosters, right. We're like, The people we love, their success is our success, right? And I think that's one of the reasons to where we are such good friends, it's because we share that, right? So that I think makes it slightly easier as far as like the competition side of things goes. I think that if it really does feel like you're a family and you're community and like you understand that this is a kind of shared win. I don't know, it's hard to talk about though because we both got really lucky.  Angela: Yeah.  Justin: You know, I mean, who wants to hear from people who got really lucky with their first books talking about how hard it is? You know what I mean?  We just, we didn't have, we didn't have any kind of that disparity between— Angela: Yeah, I'm sure, but—I would say even so—if we had different dispositions, we might be trying to split hairs about who got what. But I think for me—and Justin and I grew up very differently in some ways, but I think we grew up from a class background similarly, and we're both like, We're not supposed to be here, like, what can we get? Like, what can we get? And like, who has the information to help us get it? And so I've never been like, why is he in that room when I'm not in that room? I'm like, give me the intel about the room. That might be the closest I ever get to being in there, but I need to know like what's going on in there. And that has, I think, been the way that I just view any success of anybody that I know. that I feel like I can ask those questions to is like, not necessarily like, oh, can you put me on? Like now that you have something, can I have some of it? But just like, just information, just like, what's it like? And that to me is really useful. But also I think that one thing, when you have people, not just Justin, but like other friends and mentors of mine, when you have people who are honest and upfront about whatever kind of success they've had, you… you just realize that there's a lot of different ways to feel successful, right? Because I have friends who, to me, I'm like, they made it, but they're not convinced they have. And I have other friends that, like, to the outside world, they'd be like, wow, they have a little book, nobody cares. But they feel like they did it, you know? And so I realized it's so much about disposition also. Lito:   Do you feel that a lot about being each other's boosters? I mean, obviously it's about your personalities and who you are as people. I'm also curious how much of that, like Angela, you said you were a gatecrasher. You feel like a gatecrasher a lot. I don't know. What are your thoughts on intersectionality? How does it inform your work and your friendship? How does it affect how you boost each other? I'm also curious if there's something particular about lit friendships that intersect with intersectionality and those categories, especially for people who form intimate relationships with men.  Justin:   Wait, say more.  Like how do blowjobs come in?   Angela:  (36:01.171). I was like one thing we have in common is— Lito: More like, less blow jobs, more like having to deal with men and the various ways they, you know, respond to patriarchy.  Justin: Yeah, I think you kind of said it, right? I think that there's something about hustling and figuring out, like, how am I gonna find some stability in this world.  And I mean we have nominated each other for every single thing that there is. If either one of us gets a chance.  Angela: Till the end of time.  Justin:   Till the end of time, right? And it's just, and I think that, and we've shared all information about everything. There's no, and I think that that's kind of like that quote that you read before, right, about this nostalgia and feeling nostalgic, not for the precarity, but for the way that it bonds people, right? The way that the precarity, like you pull, you share resources, you pull resources, you come together and you talk shit and you don't let people get too down in the dumps and depressed. And you're like, no, we're going to do this. We're going to get ourselves out of this hole and we're going to pull each other up. And, and that I think is like, that's, that's the secret, I think.  Angela: Are you answering the question about men?  Justin:   Oh, men!  Angela: And dealing with men.  Justin: I love that I was just like, oh, you're talking about blow jobs. But no, you were talking about patriarchy.  Lito: Same thing, really.  Annie: In the room I'm in, we do not think there's a difference.  Justin: It's fascinating, right? Because when we were at Iowa together, I remember some of the critiques I got from some of the men, some of the straight men, some of the white straight men, was about a kind of provincialism to my writing, right? That what I was writing about was small and minor and just about particularities of identity and that it wasn't broad and expansive and it wasn't universal. That was expected. That was the kind of critique that was expected. The world has changed so much and so quickly in the last 15 years. It's hard for me to kind of wrap my mind around because that kind of thing, I wasn't, I didn't feel indignant. Maybe I felt a little.  Angela: Yeah, you just, but you just like knew you were going to ignore them. Like, you know, like, but no, but you didn't feel like you were going to, like it was worth, except there were some instances we're not going to get into details, but like, it didn't feel like it was worth spending, like unpacking it or trying to call them out. You just were like, Oh, boop, you're over here. Like, you're not.  Justin: Yeah, yeah. Like, I've been hearing this shit my whole life. Like, it wasn't like, there's no space for this kind of thing in the workshop. I was like, this is the world. This is unexpected. But now I don't think that would fly, right?  Angela:   No. I think maybe in like 70% of workshop spaces that I have been in. Well, I guess I've been running them. But like, I just don't, but like also just the disposition of the students is that they assume that somebody is going to like say something or push back on that. But also I guess maybe more broadly the idea of when you say intersectionality, what do you mean exactly? Lito: I think I wanted to keep it open on purpose. But I think I mean the ways that all of these different identities that we take up and that are imposed upon us, how they intersect with one another, race, class, et cetera. Yeah. Angela: I think one of the reasons why Justin and I gravitated toward each other probably in the beginning and why we ended up in Spook is because I think that—which maybe is also not happening 15 years from then—there is a way that back then, there was a way that even your identity could be flattened, right? Like you're Puerto Rican, which means that you are like a lot of things, right? One of those things like, one of it's like we're both diasporic people, right? But that's one of the things that I think a lot of people would not necessarily think is like a kinship between us, but like I've seen pictures of Justin's cousins. I know I'm giving Primo over here. Like I know what I'm doing. And like that's one way that I think that our relationship feels like, like we just felt like kin when we first met because of that. I think that there's just a lot of ways that in a lot of spaces in this country, you're just not allowed to like have all of those parts of you in the room because people just don't understand it or they do, but they just don't want you to be that also.  Justin: It's not convenient.  Angela: Right. Which is why I was like, of course, Jason would ask you and I to be in Spook, which is a magazine that's a black literary magazine. Cause Jason gets it. Shout out to Jason again.  Justin: I can't believe he's moving to L.A., that's so exciting.  Angela: Supposedly like any day now, he's just gonna arrive. There's just ways that when you find your people, you don't have to always separate these parts of you and you don't always have to keep reminding them also, they sort of understand. But also parts of you change obviously and the way that you feel about your identity changes and your people will embrace that and keep, you know, keep making space for that too. Justin: Making space.  Annie: We'll be back in a moment with Angela and Justin. Lito: (42:22) Hey Lit Fam, we hope you're enjoying our conversation with Justin and Angela. We are quite awed by their thoughtful discussion and moved by their deep love for each other and their art. If you love what we're doing, please take a moment now to follow, subscribe, rate, and review the LitFriends Podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you listen to podcasts. Just a few moments of your time will help us so much to continue bringing you great conversations like this week, after week. Thank you for listening. Annie: (42:59.178) Back to our interview with Justin Torres and Angela Flournoy.  Lito: Justin, you have your sophomore book. How do you feel about it? Are you going to write a sequel for We the Animals like you talked about at one point? Angela, same question. Are there sequels coming forth for you, Angela, to Turner House, or are you moving on to something else? Or you sort of briefly mentioned another book about, uh, I remember you mentioning at some point a book about friends, four female friends, if I remember correctly. Anyways, what's coming next?  Annie: Yeah, and I wanna know about the dreaded second novel because I feel like that's where I'm at. I feel like that's where a lot of writers get stuck. Jutin: Second novel's awful. I mean, you think the first one's bad. You think it takes everything that you have inside of you and then you're like, oh, I've gotta do it again. And yeah, I don't know. I really had a very hard time with it. And I mean, nobody knows better than Angela. I really, really didn't feel like I was up to the task. I knew that I wanted to do something different. I knew I wanted to kind of change the way I write and be a different kind of writer, but I just felt like I was falling on my face.  Even after it was done and out until like last week, I was just, I just felt anxiety about it, and I felt really neurotic and I was being really neurotic. And I remember the other night we were hanging out and drinking and maybe there was some mushroom chocolate involved. I was just, like I was just on my bullshit and Angela was just like stopped and she was just like, What is it gonna take to make you happy? Like what is it gonna take? Like look around. And it was like, it was a really good intervention. But then it also led to this conversation about happiness, right? And about like whether that is the goal, right? Like feeling kind of tortured and, and feeling like this gap between what you want for your book and your own capabilities. And that never goes away. You just live in this, in this torturous phase. And like, maybe it's about just coming to acceptance with that, rather than striving for happiness. I don't know. But it's still ringing in my ear. What is it gonna take?  Lito: It's a great question.  Angela:   Maybe some projection, I don't know, on my part.  I am still working on that novel. It's due at the end or at the beginning of next year. It's gonna come out in 2025. You know, God willing. And... similarly the second novel, I think it depends on your disposition, but I think both of us are very interested in and task ourselves with having real skin in the game with what we right. That means sometimes you got to figure out where you get that skin from.  Lito: There's only so much.  Angela: Like, if you played yourself for the first book, then it's gonna take a while. And when I think about, like, when I try to count for the years, I don't know I could have done it any quicker. Like, I just don't know. And I don't think that's gonna be the case for every book, but I do think between that first and that second, especially, were you 30? Where were you? I was 30, yeah. And then I was 30, too. I was 30 also when my book came out. You're just a baby.  You're just a baby.  Lito: Do you fall into the trap of comparing yourself to other people? Well, they wrote a book in two years and I— Justin:  (47:07) Yeah, sure. I mean, I also like compare myself to people who took longer like that feels good. That feels good.  Angela: Listen, I'm like Deborah Eisenberg. Just a banger every decade. That's it. That's all I owe the world. A banger a decade. Lito: A banger a decade. I like that. I like comparing myself to Amy Clampitt, who wrote her first collection of poetry, like in her 70s or something and had some success.  Justin: I generally wish people would slow down. I mean, I get that sometimes there's just like an economic imperative, right? But if you're lucky enough that, I don't know, you get a teaching job and you can slow down, why not slow down, right? Like, I don't know, sometimes I feel like there are a lot of books in this world. And the books that somebody spent a lot of time over, whether or not they are my tastes—I'm just so appreciative of the thoughtfulness that went in.  You can feel it, right? That somebody was really considering what they're building versus dashing it off. They should slow down, if they can.  Angela: But I also feel like we need both kinds. There are people who I appreciate their books, their kind of time capsules of just like, this is the two years, this is where I was. I think of Yiyun. We need an Yiyun Li and we need an Edward P. Jones. Edward P. Jones, you're gonna get those books when you get the books. And Yiyun Li, every couple years, you're gonna get something that, to me, I still, they still feel like really good books, but they're also just like, this is where she is right here, and I respect it and I appreciate it. Everybody can't be one or the other, you know?  Justin: You're right, you're right, you're right. It's much fairer.  Annie: She's someone who, I mean, you know, seems to have changed so much even within that time period. And we had her on a couple of episodes ago and yeah, she's just on fire. She's amazing.  Justin: (49:06) And people speed up as well, right? Because her first couple of books, there were big gaps. And then same thing with like Marilynne Robinson, right? She had massive gaps between books. And then suddenly it starts to speed up. And they're coming out every year, every two years. Yeah. Annie: It's the mortality.  Lito: Well, and life, well, I think lifestyle too, right? Like what you do, how busy you are and what you do out in the world. Like going out and meeting people and being gay in the world, that takes up time.  Annie: And your work has had other lives too. I mean, I'm thinking about how We the Animals was adapted to film in that beautiful, intimate portrait. And I know, you know, Angela, you've been working with HBO and some projects as well. I'm just, just wondering if you want to talk about your work in these other media, how it's been, and even thinking about the strikes, right? Like the WGA-SAG strikes and how that has been on the ground too.  Angela:  Very happy that the strike is over. Solidarity to our SAG-AFTRA brothers and sisters still out there. I passed them on the way here on Sunset. I did honk, wish I was out there today. But I think that for me, it's just like a bonus. Like I, especially now, there's a way that right now writers will say things that are a little snobby like, Oh, I could never be in a writer's room, the group project, man. But like when now that I know so many TV writers living here and I've met so many over the past 146 days on the line, I realized that it is, you just have to be so nimble and agile and you have to also be so not precious about story. But no less smart. A lot of things might end up on TV dumb, but I don't want to blame the writers for that. Now that I really have a real understanding of just how the sausage is made and just how big of like a game of telephone it is—and how much you have to relinquish control because at the end of the day it's like you're making this text, it's literary, but it's also like an instruction manual. It's a completely different way to think about writing. And I don't know how long I live in LA or how many like of those kind of projects I will do but I'm really grateful. And one reason I'm really grateful is because doing those projects and having those years where people thought I wasn't doing anything, but I was actually writing so much and like doing so many revisions.  It helped me realize that there is a way that I blame MFAs for making us like feel very siloed. And like, if you're supposed to be a fiction writer, that's the only thing that you do that's like an output that anyone cares about. But it's so new—like, how many screenplays did Joan Didion write? Like James Baldwin wrote screenplays. Before, it was just like, you're writing, you're writing. Like it's all, it all is the job. And I think every time a poet friend of mine like puts out a novel, sends it to me, read, sends it for me to read—first off, they usually are very good. But then also I'm just like, yes, fiction writers, I think, I don't know who did it. I blame graduate programs, but they have put themselves in this small box. Justin: But yeah, I mean, it's like the MFA, a lot of them feel like teacher training programs and that the next step is teaching. But if you don't want to teach the old models, definitely like you just write for TV. Angela: You write for film, you write for magazines, newspapers, you just do the thing. And that has felt very freeing to me, to just see meet more people who are doing that and also to allow myself to do that. Justin (52:49) Yeah, I mean, I really enjoyed the process of having my film—the book made into a film. I think I had an unusual experience with that. Like a lot of times the author is cut out or, you know, is not deferred to in any way, or nobody's inviting you in. I think because it was such a low budget film, and the director is just a really wonderful person who is incredibly collaborative.  He wanted me involved in every single part of it, and so I loved that. I think, I don't know, I think I might wanna adapt Blackouts for a play. I've been thinking about it lately. Angela: You should. I mean, in so many ways, it is kind of like a two-hander. Yeah. I could see it. Yeah.  Justin: A two-hander. Look at you ready to lingo. No, that's some biz lingo.  Lito: That's going to be the title of this podcast. It's a two-hander. How has art shaped your friendship? And I mean, art, like other genres, we've talked about getting out of the box of fiction, but what movies or art or music do you love to talk about or do you just talk about everything or anything that you're watching and how have other genres affected your work? Like, do you listen to music? Are you influenced by visual art?  Angela: You wanna talk about things you watch on television? You ready to come out in that manner?  Justin: No.  Lito: You watch lots of TV? No. Are you a Housewives person?  You're a Housewives watcher, aren't you?  Justin: Housewives is too highbrow for me. I have like a…I have a secret fetish that is mine. Angela: You have to keep some things for yourself. Justin: Yes. But it's just like, that's how I turn my brain off when my brain needs to be turned off.  Annie: I will wait another decade for that story. Justin: I also like culture and high art as well. You write about art a lot. You do profiles. Angela: I do. I wish I did it more. It's just everything, you know, takes time. I think for me, like when I think about—I just am learning different ways to make a life out of, you know, out of your mind and out of art. And one thing that I've learned when I talk to, like visual artists, particularly, is this idea—I think poets also have this—but fiction writers, a friend of mine actually, a poet, recently asked me, like, how does a fiction writer get a practice, like a practice of writing? Practicing their craft in a way that like a visual artist, you know, they go to the studio practice or poet might have a practice. And I don't believe necessarily that sitting down to write every, you know, three hours every day is the same thing. Because like if you don't know what you're writing, but I really do think that practice is more grounded in reading.  Justin: And reading, I think reading literature for sure, but also reading the world, right? And that's what you do when you go to an exhibit or you go to a museum or you go to a concert or whatever, right, you're like reading, you know, and you're reading the experience, you're reading for other things.  Lito: Is there anything you're both fans of that you both talk about a lot? Any artists or musicians or movies? Justin (56:26) You know, I think that we have some lowbrow sharing tastes. But I think that our highbrow, I don't know. We don't talk a lot about our pursuant— I think I'm into a lot of, like when I was looking at, when I was putting together Blackouts, I was looking at a lot of archival photos and like the photos of Carl Van Vechten, I just, I'm obsessed with…  I've been spending a lot of time with them, thinking about him and his practice. I think that, you know, I like all kinds of stuff. I'm like a whatever, what's that horrible term? Culture vulture?  Angela: I don't think that's what you wanna say. But I know what you mean, yeah.  Justin: Yeah, I am democratic in my tastes. I'm just like, I like everything. We don't have a lot of shared tastes, I don't think.  Angela: Um... No?  Justine: No.  Annie:  I sort of love that. I mean, it, um, the friendship, belies, that, you know, it's only a bonus in that way. I think Lito and I also have very different tastes. There's something kind of lovely about that. Lito: I remember Annie making fun of me for not being hardcore enough in my taste in hip-hop. Annie:    I guess we're putting our dirt out there too.  Lito:   We'll be right back with the Lightning Round. Annie:   Ooh, Lightning Round. Annie: (58:12) Thank you both for talking with us today. This was really wonderful. We really feel the honesty and warmth in your friendship and we're so appreciative that you're sharing that with us today and with all of our LitFriends. We're excited for both your books and we're so grateful you spent the last hour with us.  Angela: That was a pleasure.  Justin: Thank you. Lito: All right, we're gonna we— wrap up the podcast with a Lightning Round, just a few questions. We will ask the question and then I guess we'll do it this way. When I ask the question, Angela, you can answer. And when Annie asks the question, Justin, you answer first. Sorry, first answer first. You're both going to answer the question. What is your first memory?  Angela:  My sister roller skating through sprinklers and falling and hitting her head. Justin: I literally have no idea. I, yeah, I don't know. It's a blackout.  Angela: How many times have you said that?  Lito:  Very on brand.  Angela: You've had a long book tour. Justin: I'm practicing.  Annie: Who or what broke your heart first?  Angela: Is it too deep to say my daddy? I know.  Justin: I was going to say my daddy.  Angela: That's why we're friends.  Justin: I know. It's so sad.  Angela: (59:37) Daddy issues.  Lito: Who would you want to be lit friends with from any time in history?  Angela: Toni Morrison.   Justin: Yeah, maybe Manuel Puig. He seemed really cap and hilarious. And also a brilliant genius.  Angela: I need Toni Morrison to tell me how to raise my child. And to still write books. Someone help me. Annie: What would you like to see your lit friend make or create next, maybe something collaborative or something different or a story they haven't told yet?  Justin: I mean, I think I would love to see you actually write something kind of ekphrastic. Like I'd love to see you write about art. I love when you write about art. I love your thoughts about art and art makers. So maybe, like, a collection of essays about culture. I'd love that. Angela: Besides this two-handed, this play, which I would love for you to write. Maybe there's more, I mean, there's more voices in the book than two, though. So it doesn't have to be. Justin is a poet. I have said this since the beginning. I'm ready for this collection.  Justin: Never occurred to me in my life. Angela:   That is not true.  Justin:   Well, writing a collection. Angela:   Okay, well, I would love for you to write a collection of poetry.  Justin:   Maybe I will. Maybe you just gave me permission, as the children say.  Angela:   Mm-hmm. I know.  Lito: If you could give any gift to your LitFriend without limitations, what would you give them?  Angela: I would give him a house with a yard and a pool.  Justin: That's what I want.  Angela: In a city he wants to live in. That's the key.  Lito: That's the hard part. Justin:  (01:01:35) Um, I would give Angela time to be with her thoughts and her craft. I guess what does that involve?  Angela:   This is because I call myself a busy mom all the time.  Justin: You are a busy mom. Angela: (01:02:08) Thank you, that's a nice gift. Time is the best.  Justin: I mean, it's not as good as a house with a pool.  Angela: I know, because I can use my time as wisely as possible and yet—no pool. Lito: Well, that's our show. Annie & Lito: Happy Friendsgiving! Annie: Thanks for joining us, Lit Fam. Lito:   We'll be back next week with our guests, Lucy Corin and Deb Olin Unferth. Annie: Find us on all your socials @LitFriendsPodcast. Annie: I'm Annie Liontas.  Lito:   And I'm Lito Velázquez.  Annie:   Thank you to our production squad. Our show is edited by Justin Hamilton. Lito:   Our logo was designed by Sam Schlenker.  Annie:   Lizette Saldaña is our marketing director.  Lito:   Our theme song was written and produced by Robert Maresca.  Annie:   And special thanks to our show producer, Toula Nuñez. This was LitFriends, Episode One.

City Lights LIVE celebrates the publication of “The Unsettled” by Ayana Mathis, published by Alfred A Knopf, with a discussion between Ayana and Angela Flournoy. From the best-selling author of “The Twelve Tribes of Hattie,” a searing multi-generational novel—set in the 1980s in racially and politically turbulent Philadelphia and in the tiny town of Bonaparte, Alabama. This is a story about a mother fighting for her sanity and survival. From the moment Ava Carson and her ten-year-old son, Toussaint, arrive at the Glenn Avenue family shelter in Philadelphia in 1985, Ava is already plotting a way out. She is repulsed by the shelter's squalid conditions: their cockroach-infested room, the barely edible food, and the shifty night security guard. She is determined to rescue her son from the perils and indignities of that place, and to save herself from the complicated past that led them there. A brilliant, explosive, vitally important new work from one of America's most fiercely talented storytellers. Ayana Mathis' first novel, “The Twelve Tribes of Hattie” was a New York Times bestseller, 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 New York Times, The Atlantic, Guernica and Rolling Stone. 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. Angela Flournoy is the author of “The Turner House,” which was a finalist for the National Book Award. The novel won the VCU Cabell First Novel Prize and was also a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and an NAACP Image Award. She is a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine, and her nonfiction has appeared in many publications, including The Nation, The Los Angeles Times and The New Yorker. You can purchase copies of “The Unsettled” at https://citylights.com/unsettled-2/. This event is made possible with the support of the City Lights Foundation. To learn more visit: https://citylights.com/foundation/.

Show Notes On our inaugural episode, co-hosts Annie Liontas and Lito Velázquez introduce LitFriends, a podcast.  Each week, we welcome two literary friends to discuss the writing life, how literary friendships get us through tough times, and what they love about their literary bestie. Join Annie and Lito for Season One as they speak with today's most engaging literary talents and their lit friends. Coming up this season, conversations with: * Justin Torres & Angela Flournoy * Lucy Corin & Deb Olin Unferth * Melissa Febos & Donika Kelly * Yiyun Li & Edmund White * George Saunders & Paula Saunders * Liz Moore & Asali Solomon * CJ Hauser & Marie-Helene Bertino * and more! Links https://sites.libsyn.com/494238 www.annieliontas.com www.litovelazquez.com https://linktr.ee/litfriendspodcast https://www.instagram.com/litfriendspodcast/ https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61553436475678 https://justin-torres.com/ https://www.angelaflournoy.com/ https://www.lucycorin.com/ https://debolinunferth.com/ https://www.melissafebos.com/ https://www.donikakelly.com/ https://georgesaundersbooks.com/ https://paulasaundersbooks.com/ https://www.lizmoore.net/ https://www.asalisolomon.com/ https://cjhauser.com/ https://www.mariehelenebertino.com/   Transcript Annie & Lito: (00:01) Hey, LitFriends! Annie: Thanks for joining us for episode zero. This episode is a little special because we'll introduce you, our LitFam, to the LitFriends podcast. We'll talk about our origins, our season one guests, and how much I love Lito. Aww, and how much I love you, Annie. Annie:  This is Annie Liontas. Lito: And I'm Lito Velázquez. Welcome to LitFriends, a podcast in which we speak with novelists, poets, memoirists, writers, and thinkers of all kinds about the great work that they do in the world, on and off the page, and about their great literary friendships. Annie: This show has everything, British nicknames, e-flirtations, picking up fam when they're down, literary competition, rooting for one another, and more. Lito: And much, much more. Join us this season as we welcome the amazing writers: Annie & Lito: * Marie-Helene Bertino and CJ Hauser * Liz Moore and Asali Solomon * George Saunders and Paula Saunders * Yiyun Lee and Edmund White * Melissa Febos and Danika Kelly * Deb Olin-Unferth and Lucy Corin * Justin Torres and Angela Flournoy Annie & Lito: Get ready to get lit! Lito: Welcome to the show. I'm so glad we're here, Annie. It's been a long time coming. We've been thinking about– Annie: Ages! Lito: …making this show for over a year and a half, pretty much since the pandemic, though. So maybe more like two or three years. Annie: Yeah, I feel like I've waited my whole life to do this show with you, Lito. Lito: I know I've been wanting someone to collaborate with, and you're the perfect friend to do this with. A show about two of our greatest loves, writing, literature—  Annie: Friendship! Lito: And friendship. Yeah, I guess that's three things. Annie: The more the merrier. Lito: The more the merrier. Every week we're going to have writers on the show who we admire, whose work has moved us deeply, and whose friendships we think are really impressive and interesting. Annie: Yeah, we're going to talk about literary competition between friends, hardships, how you pick one another up when you're down. Heartbreak. Lito: Big wins, like celebrating things. It's amazing the stories that have come out of these conversations because people get to talk about their friends, and how great is that? Annie: They really talk about parts of their friendship that they don't even talk about with one another.  Lito: That's right, because when do you get a chance to really talk to your friend about them. Annie: (02:20) When do you say to your friend, I love you? Lito: I love you. But beyond just I love you, like, here's all the reasons why I love you. Here's what you do in my life. That's really great. Here's why you're beautiful, not just in the work that you do, but how you show up as a person. And that's not how writers get portrayed. We were looking for a project to interview people who we thought were great and interesting. And you were already doing that, right? Annie: Yeah, I was doing that with the Gloss interview series with Marie-Helene Bertino, and a number of others, through Electric Lit, Bomb, The Believer. That really arose out of pandemic, when I saw all of these amazing writers who weren't really able to share their work because of the pandemic. Lito: So, one day we were sitting at your house, Annie, I don't know if you remember this, on your couch and we were talking about writing podcasts and making podcasts. I've been wanting to do one for a really long time and I've been writing for a long time, and I've spoken with different people about it, and it's never quite worked out. This is the first time when we both came up with a great idea. I said, "I think it would be really great to talk to people about their friendships, because no one really does that enough." And then you said, I don't know if you remember, you said, "what if we got literary friendships? Because they're so special, like ours." Ours is a friendship on a deep, deep level, but we're like family, but we're also in this very unique world, which is the writing world. Annie: In the struggle. Lito: In the struggle! Annie: In the never ending struggle! Yes. In the never ending struggle that is writing. We know a lot about the industry. We both got our MFA at Syracuse University, though at very different times. And we love people, we love friends, and we love great writing. And so it made perfect sense to make a podcast about it. Annie: You know, and I don't think I could do this with anybody else. I have a lot of lit friends—making this with you is has been so special. It's something I'm going to hold on to forever. Lito: It's such a pleasure and a joy. Annie: One of the great similarities and worldviews that we share. I mean, we're both queer. We both have the immigrant experience. Lito: That's right. Annie: (04:39) And I think that a lot of what literary friendships are, are in fact quite queer, right? Like there is a there's a queering of the experience simply in recognizing. This is chosen family and this is how we get through. Lito: The thing that surprises me the most and you'll see when you hear these interviews is the material that comes out. It's like nothing else. And people want to get so intimate and so comfortable because they're speaking about their favorite person who's intimate in their lives, but in a special way that has to do with writing. Annie: Yeah. You know, and this for me came out of thinking a lot about the function and the role of literary friendships. I mean, we can all remember back to Bad Art Friend and other pieces that were run in places like the New York Times, maybe unnecessarily glorifying and dramatizing the kinds of drama, just straight drama between former friends, right? And there's a whole lot of, I mean, there's an entire lineage and inheritance of this. And the writer, Isle McElroy writes about this in Esquire and talks about, you know, there are like all those great historical feuds, usually between straight white dudes. Like— We're not wrong. Like when Mailer headbutts Gore Vidal or Gabriel Garcia Marquez gets punched out by Mario Vargas Llosa because he told his wife to divorce him. You know, and so that's what we remember culturally. That's sort of what we glorify. But the reality, and what we're hearing in all of these conversations is what feeds us and what nourishes us is actually these friendships that pick us up when we're down, that celebrate us when we have these successes, without limitation or inhibition, really allow us to rise to our better selves to put our egos and fears and insecurities about our own writing success down so that we can do that for one another. And so for me, this podcast is actually the reality. This is the reality of how writers get by, and how they get through. Lito: (07:02) That's right. I think we have this idea in our cultural imagination that writers sit in a room by themselves in the dark or with a candlelight and a pencil, and they just, from their brain, pull out a story out of nowhere because they are "inspired to." Whereas actually all writing is generated, I think from lots of conversations with people living and dead, but especially close literary friendships in which the intimacy revolves around writing. It's a community practice, but it's a friend practice. We don't show our work to just everyone. We show it to our literary friends, our first readers. And we talk about literature in a certain way with other writers who we admire and whose work we think is somehow symbiotic with our own, even if we're doing completely different practices. Annie: Yeah, it's about sharing the work, but it's also about sharing the vulnerabilities. I'm thinking about Asali Solomon and Liz Moore, who will have later this season, who are both part of the Claw, a writer's salon for women and non-binary writers in Philadelphia. And, you know, they don't necessarily share work, but they share experiences. They commiserate, they talk about their anxieties, they talk about their successes. And it really makes me think about the industry necessity of having mutual knowledge like this. When publishers want to keep us really divided as writers and artists, right? If we are quiet in our corners and not collaborating, then we actually don't have the kind of collective understanding of how to advocate for ourselves, how to protect our work, and how to support one another. Lito: Yes, and I'm thinking of Angela Flournoy, whose first novel was shortlisted for the National Book Award, and Justin Torres, who just won the National Book Award. And their conversation with us, in which they really get into the boostering of each other, the promoting of each other, the helping each other through, the counseling each other through, that happens in these quiet spaces between friends on the phone, like with Lucy Corin and Deb Olin Unferth. I think you'll join us for an incredible season of inspiring conversations in which we talk to some of the best thinkers of our time. Both: Happy Friendsgiving LitFam! Lito: In our first episode, we speak with Justin Torres and Angela Flournoy, available for download on Friendsgiving, Friday, November 24th. Join us. Annie: Find us on all your socials at LitFriends Podcast. Annie & Lito: (09:24) Thank you to our production squad for all their hard work. Our show is edited by Justin Hamilton. Our logo was designed by Sam Schlenker. Lizette Saldana is our marketing director. Our theme song was written and produced by Robert Maresca. And special thanks to our show producer, Tula Nunez. Annie: This was LitFriends, Episode 0.  

This week is the first of a new feature on the podcast: conversations with authors about what indie bookstores mean to them and their careers. I'm joined by Richard Mirabella, whose debut novel "Brother and Sister Enter the Forest" was released earlier this year to critical acclaim. His short stories have appeared in Story Magazine, American Short Fiction online, One Story, Split Lip Magazine, and elsewhere. Richard shares his favorite bookshops and the books he'd recommend to customers. Books We Talk About: The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself by Marissa Crane, Endpapers by Jennifer Savron Kelly, Hawk Mountain by Conner Habib, Stephen Florida by Gabe Habash, and The Turner House by Angela Flournoy.

This week on the Book Case we have two more authors from the Brooklyn Book Festival. You can find Angeline Boulley's The Firekeeper's Daughter on the YA shelves of your local library or bookstore, but the book transcends the genre. She'll talk about how she approaches world-building and gives us a sneak preview of her highly-anticipated new novel coming out next spring. Kate also catches up with Book Case favorite Sidik Fofana and sits down with Jory Southurst, the manager of the bookstore at the Center for Fiction. This episode was recorded at The Center for Fiction. It's a beautiful part of the Brooklyn literary community with classes and events. Their bookstore shouldn't be missed! Books mentioned in this podcast; Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley Stories from the Tenants Downstairs by Sidik Fofana Crazy Horse's Girlfriend by Erika T. Wurth A Lesson in Vengeance by Victoria Lee Murder on the Red River by Marcie R. Rendon The Last Time They Met by Anita Shreve The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline Sisters of the Neversea by Cynthia Leitich Smith Babel by R.F. Kuang A Little Life Hanya Yanagihara Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh Greenland by David Santos Donaldson A Novel Obsession by Caitlin Barasch The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb Neruda on the Park by Cleyvis Natera The Turner House by Angela Flournoy

Jeff and Rebecca talk about John Green getting banned in his home school, new ereader news, recent reading, and much more. Follow the podcast via RSS, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. The show can also be found on Stitcher. For more industry news, sign up for our Today in Books daily newsletter! This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Discussed in this episode: The Book Riot Podcast Patreon Out of Print job posting Book banning weirdness: John Green's first novel might be banned at his old school Long-awaited great news that Angela Flournoy has two more books coming Kobo's new eco-conscious ereader Amazon's new base Kindle This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub In the Early Times by Tad Friend Afterlives by Abdulrazak Gurnah The Mosquito Bowl by Buzz Bissinger Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Commonplace guests as they appear in this episode:Molly Peacock is a poet, biographer, essayist, and short fiction writer. Her most recent book is The Analyst: poems.Alicia Jo Rabins is a writer, musician, composer, performer and Torah teacher. She creates multi-genre works of experimental beauty which explore the intersection of ancient wisdom texts with everyday life. Her most recent book is Fruit Geode.D. A. Powell’s books include Cocktails and Chronic, as well as Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys. He recently published a chapbook with Rescue Press, called Atlas T; all proceeds from the sale of Atlas T will be donated to Youth Speaks in San Francisco.Rosa Alcalá is the author of three books of poetry: Undocumentaries, The Lust of Unsentimental Waters, and MyOTHER TONGUE. She is a Professor in the Bilingual MFA in Creative Writing Program at the University of Texas at El Paso.Bernadette Mayer is the author of numerous books of poetry and prose, including Midwinter Day and Poetry State Forest.Laynie Browne is the author of numerous collections of poetry and one novel. Her publications include A Forest on Many Stems: Essays on the Poet’s Novel (editor) and The Desires of Mothers to Please Others in Letters.John Biewen directs the audio program at the Center for Documentary Studies, where he teaches and produces/hosts the podcast Scene on Radio.Darcey Steinke has written five novels as well as a memoir, Flash Count Diary: Menopause and the Vindication of Natural Life.Stephanie Burt is a poet, literary critic, and professor. Her most recent book is Don’t Read Poetry: A Book About How to Read Poems.Rita Dove served as Poet Laureate of the United States and Consultant to the Library of Congress from 1993 to 1995 and as Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia from 2004 to 2006. Her most recent book is The Darker Face of the Earth.New Books Written by and/or authors/texts recommended/mentioned byMolly Peacock:The Analyst (W.W. Norton, 2017)James Joyce scholar Michael Groden (Molly Peacock’s husband)Cartoon Fundamentals with New Yorker cartoonist Maggie Larsen online at the 92nd St. YAlicia Jo Rabins:Fruit Geode (Augury, 2018)Alicia Jo’s Instagram (where you can find her bathtub poems)Alicia Jo’s weekly Kabbalat Shabat (through Kveller)D. A. Powell:Atlas T (Rescue Press, 2020)Angela Flournoy’s The Turner House (Houghton Mifflin, 2015)Hugh Martin’s In Country (BOA Editions, 2018)A Fast Life: The Collected Poems of Tim Dlugos By Tim Dlugos, David Trinidad (Editor) (Nightboat, 2011)Derrick Austin’s Trouble the Water (BOA Editions, 2016)Akira Kirosowa's DreamsTJ DiFrancesco (manuscript in progress)“Gratitude” by Cornelius Eady“Good Bones” by Maggie Smith“What the End is For” by Jorie GrahamEmily DickinsonJudy GrahnRobert DuncanRosa Alcalá:Darkness Spoken: The Collected Poems of Ingeborg Bachmann (Zephyr, 2006)Bernadette Mayer:Works and Days (New Directions, 2016)Memory (Siglio, 2020)Sonnets (Tender Buttons Press)Lee Ann BrownLaynie Browne:A Forest on Many Stems (Nightboat, 2020)Poetry and Art at the Rail ParkSylvia Townsend Warner’s Lolly Willowes (Penguin Modern Classics, 2020)Lisa Robertson’s The Baudelaire Fractal (Coach House Books, 2020)Collaborator Brent WahlPrageeta SharmaCD WrightHarmony HolidayDivya VictorJohn Biewen:The newest series of Scene on Radio is The Land that Never Has Been YetDarcey Steinke:Flash Count Diary: Menopause and the Vindication of Natural Life (Sarah Crichton Books, 2019)The Last Man by Mary Shelley (Oxford University Press)Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower (Grand Central, 2019)Severance by Ling Ma (Picador, 2019)Cormack McCarthy’s The Road (Vintage, 2007)A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel DefoeSamuel Pepys’ Diary of the PlagueAlison Hagy’s Scribe (Graywolf, 2018)Rachel CarsonFredrick Law OlmsteadWilliam Miller (7th Day Adventist)“Understanding the Book of Revelation” by L. Michael WhiteKristin Prevallet:Flying Rolls of the Golden DawnStephanie Burt:After Callimachus: Poems (Princeton University Press, 2020)Don’t Read Poetry (Basic Books, 2019)Andy Slavitt (Twitter)Jeremy Konyndyk (Twitter)Juliette Kayyem (Twitter)Commonplace Videos are HEREPlease support Commonplace & BECOME A PATRON!A list of bail funds, sorted by city, can be found here.

Angela Flournoy is a photographer and all around creative with a love for coffee, travel and new adventures. She was born and raised in Louisiana, matured and shaped in New York City and is currently building my own brand here in Dallas, Texas. Listen to today's episode to hear more about her photography journey, the importance of community when building a business and what it means to her to be a #blackgirlwithpurpose. Stay connected with Angela on IG. Book a session to upgrade your personal brand photography.  --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/blackgirlswithpurpose/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/blackgirlswithpurpose/support

Show Notes Artists Charles White: A Retrospective https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/3930 Gordon Parks: http://www.gordonparksfoundation.org/ Books Queenie by Candice Carty Williams https://amzn.to/2RzuNpf The Turner House by Angela Flournoy https://amzn.to/2GIX9aJ Movies/TV When They See Us directed by Ava DuVernay  Just Mercy starring Micheal B. Jordan The Photograph starring LaKeith Stanfield and Issa Rae FruitVale Station directed by Ryan Coogler  If Beale Street Could Talk directed by Barry Jenkins  Homecoming starring Beyonce Insecure (viewer discretion advised sexual content and strong language)  Writing If You Believe in Just Mercy, You’ll Do More Than Buy a Ticket to Just Mercy by Kathryn Freeman ‘American Dirt’ Fails to Understand the Border. Here Are 7 Books that Get it Right by Alejandra Oliva 17 Great Books on the Border to Read Instead of ‘American Dirt’ by Rose Cahalan How Pop’s Biggest Weirdo Swept the Grammys by Spencer Kornhaber   Tyler, the Creator Eloquently Breaks Down Why Grammys Voting Is Unfair After His First Win The Kobe I Knew Became a Champion for Others by Jemele Hill  Gigi Bryant Was a Great Basketball Player by Josh Levin  The Unfinished Kobe Bryant by Jamil Smith  Kobe Bryant loved being a ‘girl dad’ – Elle Duncan Show Sponsors:  Be the Bridge to Racial Unity: Go to https://bethebridge.com/ to download the new Transracial Adoption Guide.  Subscribe to Podcast: Apple | Spotify | Google Play  Follow Us on Social Media: Instagram

By the time Toni Morrison died last week, a whole generation of readers had come of age in a world where she was already a legend. So, on this week’s show, we’re talking to women about growing up with Morrison’s books—how they first discovered her work, and what it’s meant to them over the years. Featuring: Brittany Luse, Zoe Haylock, Aminatou Sow, Glory Edim, Kaitlyn Greenidge, Angela Flournoy, and Ashley C. Ford.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest for The Happy Hour # 197 is Amena Brown. Amena is a poet, speaker, author, and event host. Named one of Rejuvenate Magazine’s Top 40 under 40 Changemakers, Amena is the author of five spoken word CDs and two non-fiction books. She has performed and spoken at events across the nation, and she and her husband, DJ Opdiggy, live in Atlanta. On the show today, Amena and I talk about everything from grief, infertility, ministry, and the creative process she goes through to bring a poem to life on stage. One thing's for sure - I could never do her job! Amena and I dive right in and start talking about the feelings of living a life you didn't think you'd live. Amena shares how she learned to grieve the loss of expectations, and how she realized, "to experience joy most fully, I had to also experience the grief." We also talk about the importance of finding those people who will walk beside you and be truly present with you amidst different seasons of life. In the second half of the show Amena describes her creative process as a poet and you guys, it's incredible. We talk about performance as a craft and ministry, and she tells us how we can find spoken word in our own communities. Amena then discusses her involvement in international ministry. Amena reminds us how important it is to really know the organizations you're going with, what they represent, and most importantly who and how they're partnering and led by those in that country. {You can listen to the show HERE. And of course, I would love if you would share with your friends. Just use the FB & Twitter links at the end of this post!} Links from the Show Amena's website Amena's podcasts:  HER with Amena Brown, How to Fix a Broken Record (10 episode mini-series), Here For the Donuts Amena's Books: How to Fix A Broken Record, Breaking Old Rhythms What Amena is loving: Beyonce, Real Housewives of Atlanta, Cardi B What Amena is reading: Turner House by Angela Flournoy and When the Heart Waits by Sue Monk Kidd  Join the Happy Hour summer book club! The Happy Hour Facebook Group If You Only Knew Connect with Amena Facebook // Twitter // Instagram // YouTube Connect with Jamie Facebook // Twitter // Instagram // YouTube Sponsors Prep Dish - $4 for one month Winc Wines - $20 off SAS Footwear - code: happyhour for free shipping or mention Happy Hour in-store for $10 off. Follow SAS Footwear on Instagram!

National Book Award finalist Angela Flournoy pulled up to Pink Pig Productions to chop it up about her debut novel The Turner House, writing middle-aged characters, segregated school systems, and why listening to women can you make men better writers.

From an author of rare, haunting power, a stunning novel about a young African-American woman coming of age--a deeply felt meditation on race, sex, family, and country.  Raised in Pennsylvania, Thandi views the world of her mother's childhood in Johannesburg as both impossibly distant and ever present. She is an outsider wherever she goes, caught between being black and white, American and not. She tries to connect these dislocated pieces of her life, and as her mother succumbs to cancer, Thandi searches for an anchor--someone, or something, to love. In arresting and unsettling prose, we watch Thandi's life unfold, from losing her mother and learning to live without the person who has most profoundly shaped her existence, to her own encounters with romance and unexpected motherhood. Through exquisite and emotional vignettes, Clemmons creates a stunning portrayal of what it means to choose to live, after loss. An elegiac distillation, at once intellectual and visceral, of a young woman's understanding of absence and identity that spans continents and decades, What We Lose heralds the arrival of a virtuosic new voice in fiction. Praise for What We Lose "Penetratingly good and written in vivid still life, What We Lose reads like a guided tour through a melancholic Van Gogh exhibit--wonderfully chromatic, transfixing and bursting with emotion. Zinzi Clemmons's debut novel signals the emergence of a voice that refuses to be ignored." --Paul Beatty, author of The Sellout  "An intimate narrative that often makes another life as believable as your own." --John Edgar Wideman, author of Writing to Save a Life  "The narrator of What We Lose navigates the many registers of grief, love and injustice, moving between the death of her mother and the birth of her son, as well as an America of blacks and whites and a South Africa of Coloreds. What an intricate mapping of inner and outer geographies! Clemmons's prose is rhythmically exact and acutely moving. No experience is left unexamined or unimagined." --Margo Jefferson, author of Negroland  "Zinzi Clemmons' first book heralds the work of a new writer with a true and lasting voice--one that is just right for our complicated millennium. Bright and filled with shadows, humor, and trenchant insights into what it means to have a heart divided by different cultures, What We Lose is a win, just right for the ages." --Hilton Als, author of White Girls  "I love how Zinzi Clemmons complicates identity in What We Lose. Her main character is both South African and American, privileged and outsider, driven by desire and gutted by grief. This is a piercingly beautiful first novel." --Danzy Senna, author of New People  "It takes a rare, gifted writer to make her readers look at day-to-day aspects of the world around them anew. Zinzi Clemmons is one such writer.What We Lose immerses us in a world of complex ideas and issues with ease. Clemmons imbues each aspect of this novel with clear, nuanced thinking and emotional heft. Part meditation on loss, part examination of identity as it relates to ethnicity, nationality, gender and class, and part intimate look at one woman's coming of age, What We Lose announces a talented new voice in fiction." --Angela Flournoy, author of The Turner House  "Wise and tender and possessed of a fiercely insightful intimacy, What We Lose is a lyrical ode to the complexities of race, love, illness, parenthood, and the hairline fractures they leave behind. Zinzi Clemmons has gifted the reader a rare and thoughtful emotional topography, a map to the mirror regions of their own heart." --Alexandra Kleeman, author of You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine  Zinzi Clemmons was raised in Philadelphia by a South African mother and an American father. She is a cofounder and former publisher of Apogee Journal, a contributing editor to Literary Hub, and deputy editor for Phoneme Media. Her writing has appeared in Zoetrope, The Paris Review Daily, Transition, and the Common. She has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Bread Loaf, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the Kimbilio Center for African American Fiction. Clemmons lives in Los Angeles with her husband. Event date:  Wednesday, July 12, 2017 - 7:30pm

Brea and Mallory help you break up with bad books and interview writer and podcaster Aaron Mahnke. Use the hashtag #ReadingGlasses to participate in online discussion! Email us at readingglassespodcast at gmail dot com! Reading Glasses Merch   Sponsor - SquareSpace www.squarespace.com Offer Code - GLASSES   Links - Reading Glasses Transcriptions on Gretta   Reading Glasses Facebook Group Reading Glasses Goodreads Group   Apex Magazine Page Advice Article   Amazon Wish List     Aaron Mahnke http://aaronmahnke.com/ http://theworldoflore.com/books/ Twitter Lore   Books Mentioned - Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen   The Merman by Carl-Johan Vallgren, translated by Ellen Flynn The Turner House by Angela Flournoy   Artemis by Andy Weir The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman 11/22/63 by Stephen King    

This week, we discuss “customer of size” policies and our top travel tips, gifts for educating your family on the bodyposi lifestyle, and Aunt Terri.  Also covered: a Jabba update, dry shampoo, and Pikachu. This episode is sponsored by Cake Plus-Size Resale, a body positive resale boutique. Cake has both an online shop and a brick-and-mortar store in Minneapolis. Cake Plus-Size Resale is for people of all genders sizes XL and up. They offer all kinds of clothes with femme, masc, and androgynous styles. Go to www.cakeplussize.com and enter code SAF at checkout for 10% off until December 31st. Every week, Sophie and April listen to a pump up song to get them ready to record! Listen to this week’s pump up song here. To get access to further reading on today’s topics and some stuff we didn’t have time for, join our Patreon! Need advice? Email/send voice memo to fyi@shesallfatpod.com. Follow us! Twitter / Instagram / Get updates! You can find us on: Apple Podcasts / Stitcher / Google Play / Pocket Cast / PlayerFM / CastBox Need something else? Check out our site: shesallfatpod.com Mentioned in this episode: I’m Obsessed: Sophie’s Glossier referral link for 10% off. Pikachu can talk. Bodak Yellow as a Gospel song. Tila Tequila and other famous Flat-Earthers. Demeter fragrances - Honeysuckle and Mulled Cider. Origins of the Polka “doco.” The Meat Of It: Earplanes. Airline seats are getting smaller. Southwest Customer of Size Policy. Ask A Fattie: Our resource page. The Body Positive’s book. Intersectional books for kids. Bitch Media. Safety Pin Box. Shrill, by Lindy West. The Turner House, by Angela Flournoy. Redefining Realness, by Janet Mock. This Is Just My Face, by Gabourey Sidibe.

This week, Jeff and Rebecca follow-up about Reading Rainbow beef, gripe about sales figures, mark the departure of a couple of gross dudes in books, and much more.  This episode is sponsored by: Ready Player One by Ernie Cline HelloFresh (use offer code bookriot30) Haven by Mary Lindsey Win 500 Bucks to spend at the bookstore of your choice!   Links discussed in this episode: Update: LeVar Burton no longer being sued over Reading Rainbow catchphrase  Colin Kaepernick gets $1million book deal  Talking numbers: new John Green helps lift sales 8% in early October. But really it's Dan Brown.  Gross Bill O’Reilly gets his ass dropped Gross Harvey Weinstein used book deals to buy silence Angela Flournoy developing an HBO show with Issa Rae  Hallmark is accepting submissions for romance & mystery novels

It's another Nsquared episode, and we're keeping it light this time around. Don't we all need a break from the heavy, harrowing and horrible? YES. The answer is absolutely yes. We got into the vibe of the season and talked about Halloween. We get into some of our fave traditions and the ones that need to be thrown in the trash (ugh, trunk-or-treat); "classic" Blades Fam old school costumes; and the candies we always go for first. (Step off, candy corn! Nobody's talking 'bout you, witcho gross self.) Plus, we are All A Twitter about Amazon Key, the new service for Prime Members that allows couriers to have access to open your door to leave packages for you. Um, whuuut?! And we sound the Air Horn Salute for our friend author Angela Flournoy, who is teaming up with Issa Rae to pen a new '90s family drama for HBO. Yaaaay! So proud of Angela! Have a listen.  

Flournoy's novel is the Daniel Boone Regional Library's One Read selection this year. The author discusses her book and other aspects of writing.

On this episode of My Sistas' Keeper, Abby and I discuss how to hopefully resist the spirit of defensiveness when talking about race, specifically on social media. We consider some practical ways to emulate Jesus' posture toward others described in 1 Peter 2:23, "When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly." We also discuss the terms backfire effect and confirmation bias, and engage listener comments and questions such as how to know when to enter into an online conversation, when to just keep scrolling, and how to encourage offline extensions of online dialogu We mention: The nonprofit organization Abby works for, His Grace Foundation, which serves patients and families on the Bone Marrow Transplant Unit of Texas Children’s Hospital: www.hisgracefoundation.org The Beautiful Creatures book series: http://thenovl.com/BeautifulCreatures The Backfire Effect as described in a comic strip: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe Confirmation Bias: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/science-choice/201504/what-is-confirmation-bias Books Lists http://www.scrapingraisins.com/2016/07/70-race-resources-for-white-people/ https://electricliterature.com/34-books-by-women-of-color-to-read-this-year-581eda906a76 http://www.refinery29.com/2017/02/141801/best-books-by-black-female-authors http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/10-new-books-by-women-writers-of-color-to-add-to-your-must-read-list_us_58b49a75e4b060480e0b1184 The Turner House by Angela Flournoy:  http://www.nationalbook.org/nba2015_f_aflournoy.html#.WRyYkRPyuRs   Want more Shalom in your life? Follow Shalom in the City on Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest @shalominthecity.You can find me, Osheta Moore, on Twitter @osheta, Instagram @oshetam and Pinterest. Abby is on Facebook @AbbyJoyAndersonPerry, on Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest @abbyjperry and online at joywovendeep.com. Save

Angela Flournoy on Solange's “F.U.B.U.”

  No specific book this month. To celebrate the new year, we look back on some of the titles that helped us survive the dumpster fire that is 2016. Mentioned titles include The Turner House by Angela Flournoy, An Extraordinary Union by Aylssa Cole and Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. We hope you have an awesome and safe New Year’s Eve, and especially hope you’ll join us for another year of books in 2017. We’re kicking off January by reading an urban lit title, This Could Be Us But You Playin’ by Cachet. Thanks for all your support and we’ll see you next year! (Correction: At 15:03 Danielle says Harlan Ellison when she means Ralph Ellison. She’s aware of this and hopes you don’t judge her knowledge of literature based on this slip. Please feel free to judge her public speaking skills, though. They a mess.)

Angela Flournoy writes about the complications of a large family, especially when deciding what to do about their family home in 'The Turner House'.

I talk to novelist Angela Flournoy about her debut book, The Turner House, which has received wide recognition and accolades. Angela herself was nominated for a National Book Award and The Turner House was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2015. We talk about her book, the wide spectrum of the millennial experience and what she is reading. +1 SEGMENT: - Yaa Gyasi's "Homegoing: A novel" Footnotes: http://theseam.co/aiatla-podcast-angela-flournoy-the-turner-house/ Find Angela on Twitter @angelaflournoy | angelaflournoy.com

Angela Flournoy discusses her debut novel, The Turner House, why she wanted to tell a blacker Detroit story and why men make it easy to write about them.

Angela Flournoy, author of the Turner House, stops by the Damn Library, fresh off her Tournament of Books win in round one against Ban en Banlieue. She and the guys talk where she was when her novel published, whether or not she believes in ghosts, and how it was to write in Iowa. And of course they all discuss Tournament happenings and could-happens. 15 Seconds of a song: Kamasi Washington "Rerun" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nov. 19, 2015. Colin Barrett, Angela Flournoy, Megan Kruse, Tracy O'Neill, and Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi participate in moderated discussion with Benjamin Samuel, programs manager at National Book Foundation, sponsors of this program honoring young emerging writers who are poised to make a lasting impression on the literary landscape. For transcript, captions, and more information, visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=7144

Nov. 19,2015. Colin Barrett, Angela Flournoy, Megan Kruse, Tracy O'Neill, and Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi read selections from their work in this program honoring young emerging writers who are poised to make a lasting impression on the literary landscape. For transcript, captions, and more information, visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=7143

When Angela's sprawling, keenly observed debut novel, "The Turner House," dropped last spring, it won rave reviews in big, important outlets like The New York Times. The novel picks up in 2008, with the housing market in full swoon. The many siblings of the huge Turner family in Detroit are fighting over what to do with the home in which they grew up: their matriarch is elderly and fading; the house is practically worthless. The novel hopscotches across the decades, telling the story of the Turners and the big, messy city they call home. Six months after it dropped, "The Turner House" is on the fiction shortlist for the National Book Award, the winner of which will be announced this Wednesday. Angela has been part of the PostBourgie family since nearly the beginning, and we were amped that she sat down to talk with G.D. about writing dialogue, channeling the very different POVs of her characters, and her otherwise big-ass year. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week we're talking what makes a book good to us. Feel free to talk back via email (betterthanthemovie@gmail.com) or Google voice (210-816-2886) to let us know what draws you in! Articles discussed in news section: Marlon James Wins the Man Booker Prize! http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-34527496 Marlon James recommends 5 Jamaican Novels http://lithub.com/marlon-james-five-jamaican-novels-you-should-read/ Kirkus Award winners http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/10/15/yanagihara-coates-and-muoz-ryan-win-kirkus-prizes/?ribbon-ad-idx=7&rref=books&module=Ribbon&version=origin®ion=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Books&pgtype=article Angela Flournoy nom or 2015 National Book Award http://www.nationalbook.org/nba2015.html#.ViVXvFUViko PW Annual Salary Survey http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/68405-publishing-industry-salary-survey-2015-a-younger-workforce-still-predominantly-white.html

Terryn is packing up and moving to the D for a new gig! To help get her ready, we convened some folks who have Big Thoughts about the state of the Motor City. Angela Flournoy, the author of the critically acclaimed new novel, "The Turner House," set her book there, the city where her father grew up. And Siwatu Moore, a writer in Brooklyn, is a Detroit native. Will Detroit have to morph into something unrecognizable in order to survive? And does Detroit have more cat daddies per capita than any city in the world? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week's show begins with a petite chat about Magic Mike XXL that's anything but literary, haha! We also have an interview with the ever so talented Angela Flournoy in which we discuss her novel The Turner House, among other things. Finally, we wrap up discussing a few novels whose central focus is the black family unit. Books discussed in the Angela Flournoy segment: The Turner House - Angela Flournoy: http://amzn.to/1VoQ4g3 Into the Go Slow - Bridget M. Davis: http://amzn.to/1JufT5v The Star Side of Bird - Naomi Jackson: http://amzn.to/1IgdHSr Under the Udara Trees - Chinelo Okparanta: http://amzn.to/1Juh1pM We Love You, Charlie Freeman - Kaitlyn Greenidge: http://amzn.to/1GyADXD Happiness Like Water - Chinelo Okparanta: http://amzn.to/1VoRW8D Books discussed in the main show segment: This Is Where I Leave You - Jonathan Tropper: http://amzn.to/1VoRW8D Seating Arrangements - Maggie Shipstead: http://amzn.to/1OjN9jt Mama - Terry McMillan: http://amzn.to/1IgfyH0 A Day Late & a Dollar Short - Terry McMillan: http://amzn.to/1GyCFah Getting to Happy - Terry McMillan: http://amzn.to/1GyCFXL Waiting to Exhale - Terry McMillan: http://amzn.to/1IgfE1o Salvage the Bones - Jesmyn Ward: http://amzn.to/1OjNoLn The Darkest Child - Delores Phillips: http://amzn.to/1MhXjme Perfect Peace - Daniel Black: http://amzn.to/1KiCR2n Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry - Mildred D.Taylor: http://amzn.to/1TNP2Zp If Sons, Then Heirs - Lorene Cary: http://amzn.to/1GyD5x6 Men We Reaped - Jesmyn Ward: http://amzn.to/1IgfHKr We Ain't the Brontes - Rosalyn McMillan: http://amzn.to/1OjNAu0 Peace from Broken Pieces - Iyanla Vanzant: http://amzn.to/1MhXDBf BTTM on Social: www.twitter.com/BetterThanTM www.facebook.com/BetterThantheMovie bttmpodcast.tumblr.com Google Voice: 210-618-2886