Podcasts about Coffee House Press

Authors Voices gives writers a platform for reading their work. It's an honor for me to be able to present poet and literary critic Rachel Blau DuPlessis reading from her extraordinary long poem, Drafts, which she began in 1986 and completed in 2012. Now the great Minneapolis-based independent literary publisher Coffee House Press is publishing […] The post Rachel Blau DuPlessis reading from The Complete Drafts first appeared on WritersCast.

Today's episode features Mark Haber talking about his brand new novel, Lesser Ruins, his influence, the Bernhard thing, going from bookselling to publishing, and much more. It's a fun conversation that goes deep into the book, but also explains the publishing landscape to some degree—in part because this conversation was recorded as part of Chad's "Intro to Literary Publishing" class.  Couple other notes about this episode: In addition to Lesser Ruins, Mark talks about Melvill by Rodrigo Fresán, and True Failure by Alex Higley. And for anyone who'd like to listen to "Marcel's Mix" while reading Lesser Ruins, you can find it here. The music on this episode is "Momma, It's a Long Journey" by Felipe Gordon. (Also found on Marcel's Mix.) If you don't already subscribe to the Three Percent Podcast you can find us on iTunes, Spotify, and other places. And follow Open Letter and Chad W. Post on Twitter/X for more info about upcoming episodes and guests.

We're joined today by Josh Cook. Josh is a bookseller and co-owner at Porter Square Books in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he has worked since 2004. He is the author of the critically acclaimed postmodern detective novel An Exaggerated Murder and most recently of The Art of Libromancy: Selling Books and Reading Books in the Twenty-First Century, published by our friends at Biblioasis.We chat about his work as well as I Hotel by Karen Tei Yamashita, published by Coffee House Press. Some words get thrown around a bit too often and are frequently misapplied. However, I Hotel is absolutely a masterpiece. To give any kind of synopsis is to do the book (and you) a disservice, but in a somewhat quixotic attempt at that: this is a novel comprised of novellas, all set in the San Francisco of the late 60s and early 70s exploring the revolutionary movements (political, cultural, artistic, romantic, and everything that makes life a dazzling experience) of that time and place. It's a wide-ranging conversation and one we hope you'll find as exciting and engaging as we did.Books/authors mentioned (another curriculum for you!):all of Yamashita's other works (Tropic of Cancer is next up for Tom, he thinks)Tell Me How It Ends by Valeria LuiselliWhite Teeth by Zadie SmithNever Did the Fire by Diamela Eltit, translated by Daniel HahnThree Trapped Tigers by G. Cabrera Infante, translated by Donald Gardner and Suzanne Jill LevineThe Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño, translated by Natasha WimmerGravity's Rainbow by Thomas PynchonUnderworld by Don DeLilloInfinite Jest by David Foster WallaceIf you'd like to read a bit more about/from Yamashita, here's a LitHub article Josh wrote “Why Everyone Should Read the Great Karen Tei Yamashita” and another LitHub article on the “The Craft of Writing” by Yamashita herself.To hear more from Josh follow him on Instagram (@joshthelibromancer) and Bluesky (@joshthelibromancer), and follow Porter Square Books on Instagram (@porter_square_books), Bluesky (@portersqbooks), and Threads (@porter_square_books).Click here to subscribe to our Substack and find us on the socials: @lostinredonda just about everywhere.Music: “The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys” by TrafficLogo design: Flynn Kidz Designs

Our guest this week is New York Magazine Features Writer Emily Gould. Emily was previously an editor at Gawker and a publisher of Emily Books, an imprint of Coffee House Press focusing on women's first-person writing. She is the author of the novels PERFECT TUNES and FRIENDSHIP and the essay collection AND THE HEART SAYS WHATEVER and, most recently, she wrote the moving essay "The Lure of Divorce," which we talk about a lot in this episode, along with mental health crises, two-writer marriages, being "famous in Midtown," the great media scourge, ambition later in life and a lot more. You can find Kim on her Substack: kimfrance.substack.comYou can pre-order Jenn's book, AMBITION MONSTER: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Ambition-Monster/Jennifer-Romolini/9781668056585To follow Jenn's beauty recs: instagram.com/jennromolinisvanity/Concerns? Critiques? Suggestions? Just want to say "hi"? You can email us: everythingisfinethepodcast@gmail.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're joined today by Mark Haber of Coffee House Press (formerly of Brazos Bookstore in Houston). Mark is the author of two novels, Reinhardt's Garden and Saint Sebastian's Abyss, and the forthcoming novel Lesser Ruins, as well as a forthcoming novella, Ada. We chat about his work as well as Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald, translated by Anthea Bell. A quick note that there was some construction noise we didn't detect during the recording but did get picked up by our mics. We've eliminated it to the best of our ability, but if you hear a bit of an odd thrumming in the background or our voices crackle, it's not your ears.This is a fantastic and wide-ranging conversation, really digging into a lot of what makes Sebald's work unique (and how it does or does not influence Mark's own work). We discuss memory, liminality, style, surveillance and organization, the lack of literary feuds on TikTok, and more.Titles/authors mentioned:W.G. Sebald (all of it, but especially):Vertigo, A Place in the Country, and Campo SantoSergio Chejfec: The Dark and My Two WorldsJavier MaríasFranz KafkaD.H. Lawrence: Lady Chatterley's Lover, The Rainbow, and Sons & LoversAnthony Trollope (like, all of him)Juan Jose Saer: Scars and The Sixty-Five Years of WashingtonKazuo Ishiguro: The UnconsoledFollow Mark on Instagram (@markhaber) and follow Coffee House on Instagram (@coffeehousepress) and Twitter (@Coffee_House_). And be sure to pre-order Lesser Ruins from your preferred indie bookseller!Click here to subscribe to our Substack and find us on the socials: @lostinredonda just about everywhere.Music: “The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys” by TrafficLogo design: Flynn Kidz Designs

In November 2023, Coffee House Press released American Precarite: Parables of Exclusion, an anthology of essays edited by a collective of incarcerated writers involved in the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. The volume interrogates the complexity and fluidity of class and caste systems in the United States, and includes transcribed conversations of the editors discussing each essay. In the latest Works of Justice podcast, two of the editors, C. Fausto Cabrera and Zeke Caligiuri, talk about how they developed a friendship rooted in writing while incarcerated, what they did to bring writing programs into Minnesota prisons, and the history of how the volume came to be.

Does Alyson Sinclair sleep? We had to keep asking ourselves as we chatted it up with Alyson from the floor of AWP (Association of Writing and Writing Program)'s Conference and Bookfair. She's done it all when it comes to the writing world—bouncing between the bureaucracy of big-four publishers—um, she sent faxes to Seamus Heaney?—to the hustle and bustle world (emphasis on the hustle) of independent presses. Currently, Alyson is the Owner/Publisher at The Rumpus and founder of Nectar Literary, a boutique publicity and communications firm for authors, independent presses, and literary organizations of all ilk. Making literary community might just be the crux of our conversation. After learning that hunker-down-and-drink-tea-all-day-with-page-turny-manuscripts editorial roles are not the default at an eye-opening internship, she turned to publicity. Connecting authors to the broader writing ecosystem thrilled her. Publicity and pitching media, in Alyson's eyes, is a fascinating form of problem solving. Her insight comes from a wide range of experiences in all corners of our ecosystem, spanning from soliciting advertising at a magazine, to setting off individually in the convoluted publishing universe, to coexisting with other literary collectives that share the same mission. Let's just say—both before and after soaking in this conversation—Bloomsday is a certified Alyson Sinclair fangirl. Honorable Mentions:Independent Press, Alice James BooksIndependent Press, City LightsLiterary Network, Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP)Literary Magazine, CrazyhorseNonprofit Publisher, Graywolf PressDirector of Coffee House Press, Mark HaberNonprofit Publisher, McSweeney'sSeamus HeaneyYusef Komunyakaa Audio by Bloomsday Literary in partnership with the official 2023 AWP Conference & Bookfair

Join poet, editor, and translator Poupeh Missaghi as well as Ad Aster hosts Emma and Celina to reflect on her work. We discuss Missaghi's book trans(re)lating house one, what it means to be a writer and reporter during times of violence and crisis, and how to subvert traditional narratives of backwardness and victimhood with aesthetics, form, and emphasis of questions over answers. ad as•ter ep•i•sode 23/ˌad ˈa-str ep ˌ-sōd 'twen-ty /ˈθri / /n. / What is the role of the writer or artist in times of turmoil and crisis? What does it mean to translate(re)late? What should we keep in mind when joining together stories? What is lost in creating content for the “other”? How does one subvert expectations of “traumaporn” and victimhood in marginalized literature through questions, aesthetics, and form? What is the relationship between searching for the truth and searching for how to tell the truth? In what ways can fragmentation reveal a more accurate truth? What is the strength in revisiting questions and open ended text, in intentional form and style? How do we ask questions when we know there isn't an answer? Is reporting/writing/exploration just a labyrinth of stories? How can young writers and artists explore and create for positive social change? Poupeh Missaghi is a writer, translator, and editor. Her debut book trans(re)lating house one (Coffee House Press, 2020) is a hybrid investigation of the role of the witness through the frame of the 2009 protests in Iran. her second book Sound Museum, forthcoming from Coffee House Press in 2024, investigates the history of global torture enterprise. her translation of Nasim Marashi's I'll be Strong for You was published in 2021 (Astra House), and she has two other translation books forthcoming in 2023 and 2024. An assistant professor of literary arts and studies at the University of Denver and a faculty mentor at Pacific Northwest College of Art MFA, she is currently based in Denver, Colorado. links ⁠trans(re)lating house one Poupeh Missaghi - Words Without Borders Mapping Tehran Visual Spotlight: Some Artists on Developing a New Visual Language of Protest The Many Voices of the Displaced Nowruz Journal 

On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Sara Rauch interviews Hilary Leichter.Hilary Leichter is the author of the novels Terrace House, which came out from Ecco early this fall, and Temporary, which came out, to much acclaim, from Coffee House Press in 2020. Hilary's writing has appeared in The New Yorker, n+1, The New York Times, Conjunctions, and elsewhere. Her work in Harper's Magazine won the 2021 National Magazine Award in Fiction.Sara Rauch is the author of the book-length essay XO, from us at Autofocus Books. She's also the author of the story collection, What Shines from it, from Alternating Current Press. Her book reviews and author interviews have been featured in the LA Review of Books, Newcity Lit, Lambda Literary, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.____________PART ONE, topics include:-- boredom and daydreaming-- the internal/external nature of writing-- teaching undergrad at Columbia after doing their MFA-- screenwriting and starting as a playwright-- writing her first novel Temporary____________PART TWO, topics include:-- drafting novels in a month-- writing her new novel Terrace Story-- book length and access-- indicating space in fiction-- an unspoiled emotional experience____________PART THREE, topics include:-- space and limited space-- short stories turning into novels-- the unintentional and intentional parts of writing--  loneliness and aloneness ____________Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.

Writing Latinos, from Public Books, features interviews with Latino (a/x/e) authors discussing their books and how their writing contributes to the ever-changing conversation about the meanings of latinidad. In this episode, Geraldo Cadava and Tasha Sandoval talk with Raquel Gutiérrez about their critically acclaimed book, Brown Neon: Essays, published by Coffee House Press in 2022. Brown Neon won the 2023 Publishing Triangle Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction, and was a finalist for the 2023 Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Memoir/Biography and the 2023 Firecracker Award for Creative Nonfiction. It has received praise from the New Yorker, Vogue, Oprah Daily, SPIN, Ms. Magazine, and so many other publications. Gutiérrez, Cadava, and Sandoval discuss the legendary activist Jeanne Córdova, Leslie Marmon Silko, gentrification, belonging, performance, border walls, the Sonoran Desert, the drive on I-10 through Arizona and California, and Tucson. Really, it was a lot about Tucson, and you can thank Sandoval for editing that part down to a reasonable length. On the other hand, if you're from the desert, or just a fan of the “Dirty T,” as Gutiérrez called it, then you're welcome! A critic, essayist, poet, performer, and educator, Gutiérrez was born and raised in Los Angeles, and is today based in Tucson. They teach in the low-residency creative writing MFA programs at Oregon State University–Cascades and the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA). Geraldo L. Cadava is a historian of the United States and Latin America. He focuses on Latinos in the United States and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. He hosts the podcast "Writing Latinos." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latino-studies

Writing Latinos, from Public Books, features interviews with Latino (a/x/e) authors discussing their books and how their writing contributes to the ever-changing conversation about the meanings of latinidad. In this episode, Geraldo Cadava and Tasha Sandoval talk with Raquel Gutiérrez about their critically acclaimed book, Brown Neon: Essays, published by Coffee House Press in 2022. Brown Neon won the 2023 Publishing Triangle Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction, and was a finalist for the 2023 Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Memoir/Biography and the 2023 Firecracker Award for Creative Nonfiction. It has received praise from the New Yorker, Vogue, Oprah Daily, SPIN, Ms. Magazine, and so many other publications. Gutiérrez, Cadava, and Sandoval discuss the legendary activist Jeanne Córdova, Leslie Marmon Silko, gentrification, belonging, performance, border walls, the Sonoran Desert, the drive on I-10 through Arizona and California, and Tucson. Really, it was a lot about Tucson, and you can thank Sandoval for editing that part down to a reasonable length. On the other hand, if you're from the desert, or just a fan of the “Dirty T,” as Gutiérrez called it, then you're welcome! A critic, essayist, poet, performer, and educator, Gutiérrez was born and raised in Los Angeles, and is today based in Tucson. They teach in the low-residency creative writing MFA programs at Oregon State University–Cascades and the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA). Geraldo L. Cadava is a historian of the United States and Latin America. He focuses on Latinos in the United States and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. He hosts the podcast "Writing Latinos." 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

Writing Latinos, from Public Books, features interviews with Latino (a/x/e) authors discussing their books and how their writing contributes to the ever-changing conversation about the meanings of latinidad. In this episode, Geraldo Cadava and Tasha Sandoval talk with Raquel Gutiérrez about their critically acclaimed book, Brown Neon: Essays, published by Coffee House Press in 2022. Brown Neon won the 2023 Publishing Triangle Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction, and was a finalist for the 2023 Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Memoir/Biography and the 2023 Firecracker Award for Creative Nonfiction. It has received praise from the New Yorker, Vogue, Oprah Daily, SPIN, Ms. Magazine, and so many other publications. Gutiérrez, Cadava, and Sandoval discuss the legendary activist Jeanne Córdova, Leslie Marmon Silko, gentrification, belonging, performance, border walls, the Sonoran Desert, the drive on I-10 through Arizona and California, and Tucson. Really, it was a lot about Tucson, and you can thank Sandoval for editing that part down to a reasonable length. On the other hand, if you're from the desert, or just a fan of the “Dirty T,” as Gutiérrez called it, then you're welcome! A critic, essayist, poet, performer, and educator, Gutiérrez was born and raised in Los Angeles, and is today based in Tucson. They teach in the low-residency creative writing MFA programs at Oregon State University–Cascades and the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA). Geraldo L. Cadava is a historian of the United States and Latin America. He focuses on Latinos in the United States and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. He hosts the podcast "Writing Latinos." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Writing Latinos, from Public Books, features interviews with Latino (a/x/e) authors discussing their books and how their writing contributes to the ever-changing conversation about the meanings of latinidad. In this episode, Geraldo Cadava and Tasha Sandoval talk with Raquel Gutiérrez about their critically acclaimed book, Brown Neon: Essays, published by Coffee House Press in 2022. Brown Neon won the 2023 Publishing Triangle Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction, and was a finalist for the 2023 Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Memoir/Biography and the 2023 Firecracker Award for Creative Nonfiction. It has received praise from the New Yorker, Vogue, Oprah Daily, SPIN, Ms. Magazine, and so many other publications. Gutiérrez, Cadava, and Sandoval discuss the legendary activist Jeanne Córdova, Leslie Marmon Silko, gentrification, belonging, performance, border walls, the Sonoran Desert, the drive on I-10 through Arizona and California, and Tucson. Really, it was a lot about Tucson, and you can thank Sandoval for editing that part down to a reasonable length. On the other hand, if you're from the desert, or just a fan of the “Dirty T,” as Gutiérrez called it, then you're welcome! A critic, essayist, poet, performer, and educator, Gutiérrez was born and raised in Los Angeles, and is today based in Tucson. They teach in the low-residency creative writing MFA programs at Oregon State University–Cascades and the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA). Geraldo L. Cadava is a historian of the United States and Latin America. He focuses on Latinos in the United States and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. He hosts the podcast "Writing Latinos." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

City Lights presents LaTasha N. Nevada-Diggs, Eleni Sikelianos, and Anne Waldman reading new poetry and celebrating their three new books of poetry from Coffee House Press: "Village" by LaTasha N. Nevada-Diggs – "Your Kingdom" by Eleni Sikelianos – "Bard, Kinetic" by Anne Waldman. This event was originally broadcast via Zoom and hosted by Peter Maravelis. You can purchase copies of "Village" directly from City Lights here: https://citylights.com/general-poetry/village-4/ "Your Kingdom" here: https://citylights.com/general-poetry/your-kingdom/ And "Bard, Kinetic" here: https://citylights.com/general-poetry/bard-kinetic/ To learn more about the authors, visit: https://citylights.com/events/coffee-house-press-extravaganza-with-latasha-nevada-diggs-eleni-sykelianos-and-anne-waldman/ Coffee House Press creates new spaces for audiences and artists to interact, inspiring readers and enriching communities by expanding the definition of what literature is, what it can do, and who it belongs to. They are one of the nation's leading independent literary publisher, and demonstrate a vision for the future of literature through innovative off-the-page programming that broadens and deepens literature's relevance to the world. Visit https://coffeehousepress.org/ This event was made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation: citylights.com/foundation

City Lights in conjunction with Naropa University and Nightboat Books present Anne Waldman with Emma Gomis, joined by Alan Gilbert, Cedar Sigo, and Eleni Sikelianos, celebrating the publication of "New Weathers: Poetics from the Naropa Archive," edited by Anne Waldman with Emma Gomis and published by Nightboat Books. This event was originally broadcast via Zoom and hosted by Peter Maravelis. You can purchase copies of "New Weathers: Poetics from the Naropa Archive" directly from City Lights here: https://citylights.com/story-anthologies/new-weathers-poetics-from-the-naropa-a/ Anne Waldman is a poet, performer, professor, literary curator, cultural activist, has been a prolific and active poet and performer many years, creating radical hybrid forms for the long poem, both serial and narrative, as with "Marriage: A Sentence," "Structure of the World Compared to a Bubble," "Manatee/Humanity," and "Gossamurmur," all published by Penguin Poets. She is also the author of the magnum opus "The Lovis Trilogy: Colors in the Mechanism of Concealment" (Coffee House Press 2011), a feminist “cultural intervention” taking on war and patriarchy which won the PEN Center 2012 Award for Poetry. Recent books include: "Voice's Daughter of a Heart Yet To Born" (Coffee House 2016) and "Trickster Feminism" (Penguin, 2018). She has been deemed a “counter-cultural giant” by Publishers Weekly for her ethos as a poetic investigator and cultural activist, and was awarded the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation for Lifetime Achievement in 2015. She has also been a recipient of numerous honors for her work including The Shelley Award for Poetry (from the Poetry Society of America), a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Elizabeth Kray Award from Poets House, NYC in 2019. She was one of the founders of the Poetry Project at St Mark's Church In-the-Bowery, and its Director a number of years and then went on to found The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University with Allen Ginsberg and Diana di Prima in1974 and went on to create its celebrated MFA Program. She has continued to work with the Kerouac School as a Distinguished Professor of Poetics and Artistic Director of its Summer Writing Program. During the global pandemic she and co-curator Jeffrey Pethybridge have created the online “Carrier Waves” iteration of the famed Summer Writing Program. She is the editor of "The Beat Book" and co-editor of "Civil Disobediences: Poetics and Politics in Action," and "Beats at Naropa" and most recently, "Cross Worlds: Transcultural Poetics." She is a Chancellor Emeritus of the Academy of American Poets. Emma Gomis is a Catalan American poet, essayist, editor and researcher. She is the cofounder of Manifold Press. Her texts have been published in Denver Quarterly, The Berkeley Poetry Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Entropy, and Asymptote among others and her chapbook "Canxona" is forthcoming from b l u s h lit. She was selected by Patricia Spears Jones as The Poetry Project's 2020 Brannan Poetry Prize winner. She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing & Poetics from Naropa's Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, where she was also the Anne Waldman fellowship recipient, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in criticism and culture at the University of Cambridge. To learn more about the other participants, visit: https://citylights.com/events/on-new-weathers-poetics-from-the-naropa-archive/ This event was made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation: citylights.com/foundation

In this episode Nick is joined by Tom Comitta, aficionado of citational fiction and author of The Nature Book, newly released and available now from Coffee House Press. Tom selected Henri Lefebvre's The Missing Pieces as the work of focus for today's discussion, so listen in as we talk through the history of authors remixing words, Lefebvre's ability to invoke emotion with lists, and the apparent popularity of the destruction of art in antiquity. Post-script: The remix artist referenced at 43:20 is People Like Us.

Lab community saves 25% off Ellen Cooney's book with code ONENIGHT25 through March 14, 2023. Order at http://bit.ly/3JqRR55. Join the Lab for a conversation with the author of this novel centered on the work of a chaplain and informed by Cooney's life. From the publisher: “I believe in expecting light. That's my job.” A hospital chaplain offers compassion to her patients over the course of an eventful night shift, and finds some for herself, too. The young interfaith chaplain is joined on her hospital rounds one night by an unusual companion: a rough-and-tumble dog who may or may not be a ghost. As she tends to the souls of her patients—young and old, living last moments or navigating fundamentally altered lives—their stories provide unexpected healing for her own heartbreak. Balancing wonder and mystery with pragmatism and humor, Ellen Cooney has written a generous, intelligent novel that grants the most challenging moments of the human experience a shimmer of light and magical possibility. Ellen Cooney was born in Clinton, Massachusetts in 1952. She is the author of ten novels, most recently One Night Two Souls Went Walking. Her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Literary Review, New England Review, and many other journals, and were listed several times in Best American Short Stories. She has received fellowships in creative writing from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Massachusetts Artists Foundation. Now retired from over twenty-five years of teaching, she was a writer in residence at MIT, and also taught classes and workshops at Boston College, Harvard Extension School, the Seminars at Radcliffe, and Northeastern University, and as visiting writer at Holy Cross College and the University of Maine at Farmington. She left Massachusetts for midcoast Maine at the time of her teaching retirement, and writes full-time at her home on the Phippsburg peninsula. Her new novel, A Cowardly Woman No More, will be published in April by Coffee House Press.

On today's episode, I talk to author Lincoln Michel. Originally from Virginia, Lincoln's fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, Pushcart Prize anthology and his essays and criticism have appeared in The New York Times, The Believer, The Guardian and many other places. His debut story collection, Upright Beasts, was published by Coffee House Press in 2015, and his debut novel, The Body Scout, was published by Orbit just last year! This is the website for Beginnings, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, follow me on Twitter.

Brian Evenson is the author of eleven novels, eight short fiction collections, and dozens of short stories, essays, chapbooks, and translations. He has won three O. Henry Prizes, an International Horror Guild Award, a Shirley Jackson Award, a World Fantasy Award, and an ALA/RUSA prize. His work has also been a finalist for an Edgar Award, and he has been awarded NEA and Guggenheim fellowships. His fiction has been translated into several languages, including Czech, French, Italian, Greek, Hungarian, Japanese, Spanish, Russian, and Turkish among others. He lives in Los Angeles and teaches in the Critical Studies Program at CalArts Link: Song for the Unraveling of the World from Coffee House Press: https://coffeehousepress.org/products/song-for-the-unraveling-of-the-world

This week on ‘The Write Question,' Lauren speaks with poet Eloisa Amezcua, author of ‘Fighting Is Like a Wife' (Coffee House Press), a collection of poems that reveal the love story and tragedy of two-time world boxing champion “Schoolboy” Bobby Chacon and his first wife, Valerie Ginn.

This week on ‘The Write Question,' Lauren speaks with poet Eloisa Amezcua, author of ‘Fighting Is Like a Wife' (Coffee House Press), a collection of poems that reveal the love story and tragedy of two-time world boxing champion “Schoolboy” Bobby Chacon and his first wife, Valerie Ginn.

Join Chris and Courtney Margolin of The Poetry Question in a sitdown with Saeed Jones, author of Alive at the End of the World (Coffee House Press), about passions, process, pitfalls, and poetry! Saeed Jones is the author of the memoir HOW WE FIGHT FOR OUR LIVES, winner of the 2019 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction, as well as the poetry collection PRELUDE TO BRUISE, winner of the 2015 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry and the 2015 Stonewall Book Award/Barbara Gittings Literature Award. Their debut poetry collection was also a finalist for the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and awards from Lambda Literary and the Publishing Triangle in 2015. Their next poetry collection, ALIVE AT THE END OF THE WORLD, is forthcoming from Coffee House Press in Fall 2022. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Brought up in a Southern-family style of card reading and divination, Selah Saterstrom (she/her) has been offering divinatory support and guidance to her communities for over thirty years. Founder of Apotheca, a social-justice-centered apothecary, she also specializes in prescriptive magic. She is the author of the novels Slab, The Meat and Spirit Plan, and The Pink Institution, all published by Coffee House Press. She is also the author of two collections of essays: Rancher, and the award-winning Ideal Suggestions: Essays in Divinatory Poetics. She teaches and lectures across the United States and abroad, and is the director of creative writing at the University of Denver. In this episode, Selah and Brandi talk about the intersections of Tarot + Christianity, including: Not allying with any person, belief system, or institution that would require us to diminish ourselves. How writing helps give context to each “rupture” of our identity. Writing as a way to be “in the question.” Letting go of what we believed we knew and crafting a relationship with uncertainty and discomfort instead. Being a femme-identifying queer as a form of contradiction Selah feels like she inhabits every day. What “divining” means to Selah, along with her long family history of divination. Southern tarot and divination not as separate from God, but as a tool to engage with God. Where Christianity does and does not fit into Selah’s current practice. The gnostic experience vs. the institution of Christianity. How each of us claiming our wholeness gives others permission to do the same. Curiosity, bibliomancy, prophecy, and aliveness all as a quality of presence and awareness you practice in the world. Our bodies—including our teeth—and tarot as “archives.” And much more. Listeners can find Selah online, at selahsaterstrom.org, and on Instagram and Twitter. Four Queens Divination can be found online at fourqueens.org, as well as on Twitter. Get more This Plus That:Sign up for the newsletter.Check out this episode's show notes.Follow along on Twitter: @thisplusthatpodFollow along on Instagram:

Mark Nowak's books include Shut Up Shut Down, Coal Mountain Elementary, and Social Poetics, all from Coffee House Press. He recently edited Coronavirus Haiku, an anthology of haiku written in his workshops by “frontline workers” during the Covid-19 pandemic. A native of Buffalo, Nowak is the founding director of the Worker Writers School (https://www.instagram.com/workerwritersschool/).

Episode 91 Notes and Links to Annie McDermott's Work            On Episode 91 of The Chills at Will Podcast, Pete welcomes Annie McDermott, translator extraordinaire. The two talk about, among other things, Annie's early reading inspirations, her journey to professional translator, and her excellent translation of Mario Levrero's The Luminous Novel, in addition to details of her trip to Montevideo to learn more about him, and the books baffling and intriguing themes and ruminations.       Annie McDermott's published and forthcoming translations include Mario Levrero's Empty Words and The Luminous Novel (And Other Stories and Coffee House Press), Feebleminded by Ariana Harwicz (co-translation with Carolina Orloff, Charco Press) and City of Ulysses by Teolinda Gersão (co-translation with Jethro Soutar, Dalkey Archive Press).  She has previously lived in Mexico City and São Paulo, Brazil, and is now based in London. Buy Annie McDermott's Translation of The Luminous Novel   “Levrero Hunting” by Annie McDermott   New York Times Review- “This Novel Is a Record of Its Own Failure. Somehow It Succeeds.”   Review in The Guardian: “The Luminous Novel by Mario Levrero review – an extraordinary autofictional diary”   Asymptote, July, 2021- “The Full Spectrum of Phrases: An Interview with Annie McDermott” At about 2:15, Annie McDermott talks about the immediate aftermath of the translation being published recently    At about 4:00, Annie responds to Pete's questions about her relationship with words and reading as a kid; she points out Samuel Beckett and Virgina Woolff as writers who “floored her”   At about 8:15, Annie talks about her immersion into Spanish and English   At about 10:30, Annie talks about her experience in México City and some particular “Chilongo” slang   At about 11:45, Annie talks about “ ‘Eureka' moments” in deciding to become a professional translator   At about 13:55, Annie is asked about “standard” Spanish and English and how she takes these into account when she translates    At about 16:05, Annie discusses her evolution as a translator from her beginnings to now At about 17:45, Pete wonders how Annie manages to “fill in the gaps” with idioms, contemporary events, etc., that are very specifically located in a certain time and place   At about 21:50, Pete and Annie discuss particular idioms from The Luminous Novel and how Annie engineered particular ones to fit in English   At about 24:05, Pete asks Annie how she measures “success” in translating   At about 25:25, Pete and Annie summarize The Luminous Novel in its format and background, and Pete asks Annie to describe her trip to Montevideo and what she learned about Mario Levrero   At about 27:20, Annie talks about the singular independence of Mario Levrero   At about 31:00, Annie looks back on the year she spent doing the translation of Levrero's writing and the parallels between her work and Levrero's   At about 33:00, Annie discusses Leverero's younger years and his natural eccentricities    At about 34:30, Pete and Annie ruminate on the book and its connection to Levrero's perspective on mortality   At about 36:00, Annie discusses the inspired writing that Levrero was constantly searching for and its connection to mortality    At about 38:30, Annie and Pete emphasize the understated mindfulness that is featured in the book   At about 40:00, Annie talks about Levrero's cycle of inertia as described in the book, as well as his dreams and subconscious    At about 41:40, Annie analyzes the telltale pigeon of the book   At about 44:30, Pete and Annie remark about Levero's prescient thoughts on climate change   At about 46:10, Pete and Annie discuss the intangibility of Levrero's dreams, both for him and for his translators    At about 49:20, Pete and Annie discuss the theme of intimacy as covered in the book, both with women and outside of these relationships, in addition to procrastination and the “subjective”   At about 52:00, Pete and Annie point out some highlights in Levrero's life chronicled by him in his book   At about 53:05, Annie juxtaposes the original Spanish with her English translations and she and Pete discuss the process and wording   At about 56:30, Pete asks Annie how she knows that her translations are done and are ready for publication   At about 57:20, Annie gives out her contact info   At about 57:55, Pete asks Annie about future projects, and she mentions an upcoming translation of No Es Un Río by Selva Almada You can now subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and leave me a five-star review. You can also ask for the podcast by name using Alexa, and find the pod on Stitcher, Spotify, and on Amazon Music. Follow me on IG, where I'm @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where I'm @chillsatwillpo1. You can watch other episodes on YouTube-watch and subscribe to The Chills at Will Podcast Channel. Please subscribe to both my YouTube Channel and my podcast while you're checking out this episode.  This is a passion project of mine, a DIY operation, and I'd love for your help in promoting what I'm convinced is a unique and spirited look at an often-ignored art form. The intro song for The Chills at Will Podcast is “Wind Down” (Instrumental Version), and the other song played on this episode was “Hoops” (Instrumental)” by Matt Weidauer, and both songs are used through ArchesAudio.com. Please tune in for the next episode, a conversation with Alan Chazaro, the author of the highly-praised poetry collection Piñata Theory. He is currently a creative writing adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco, and is a writer and editor of NBA stories at HeadFake. The episode will air on November 23.

Michael talks with Selah Saterstrom about initiations into the medium of language and the study of creative writing, divinatory poetics and the writing process, her recent book Rancher (Burrow Press), healing and writing in community, and much more.Selah Saterstrom is the author of three novels (all from Coffee House Press), the collection Ideal Suggestions: Essays in Divinatory Poetics (Essay Press), and most recently the book-length essay Rancher (Burrow Press). She teaches and lectures across the United States, and is the director of Creative Writing at the University of Denver.Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.

In this episode, guest host Shelby Vincent speaks with translator, writer, and editor Samantha Schnee. Schnee's translation of Carmen Boullosa's penultimate novel, The Book of Anna, was published by Coffee House Press last year, and her translation of Boullosa's Texas: The Great Theft was shortlisted for the PEN America Translation Prize. Listen to this insightful conversation to learn about Schnee's process of translation, her experience as founding editor of Words Without Borders, which by now has published issues from 140 countries from more than 120 languages, and her exciting reading recommendations for listeners. Schnee's intellectual and creative energy is sure to inspire translators, writers, and readers alike. This conversation was recorded on June 9, 2021.

Novelist Mark Haber joins the podcast to talk about one of his underdogs: Santiago Gamboa and his excellent novel Necropolis. Necropolis is a novel full of narratives, soaked in storytelling, and driven by a cast of colorful characters seeking some kind of redemption. Mark and David dive into the novel's plots and craft, and Mark touches upon his own conversations with Gamboa and Gamboa's other works of fiction available in English. Mark Haber's novel Reinhardt's Garden was published by Coffee House Press in 2019 and is "an exhilarating fever dream about the search for the secret of melancholy" according to Publisher's Weekly, and we here at BOSS think it's a damn fine novel indeed. Highly recommended.  

The wickedly talented Brian Evenson recently talked with me about his upcoming book from Coffee House Press, "The Glassy Burning Floor of Hell." Along the way we discussed potential further publications, the art of crafting a horror tale, and his vote on pancakes vs. waffles. ––– INCARNATION READ will return with Season 2 on HALLOWEEN 2021. In the meantime, I've got lots of in-between-season bonus content on top of this interview planned and in the works, so stay tuned for that, and stay tuned this October 31st. –C. S. W. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/c-s-w/support

In this final episode of Season One of Community Conversations, Nick Sturm, NEH Postdoctoral Fellow in Poetics at Emory's Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry, does a deep dive into small press publishing with Maureen Owen, legendary publisher of Telephone Books and Telephone Magazine in New York from 1969-1983, bringing many then-unknown poets' books into the world, including Susan Howe, Patricia Spears Jones, and Yuki Hartman. The Raymond Danowski Poetry Library, a part of the Rose Library's literary and poetry collections, recently acquired several Telephone books and magazine issues, which completes the collection, and is the only educational institution to house the complete run.Maureen Owen, former editor and chief of Telephone Magazine and Telephone Books, is the author of Erosion's Pull from Coffee House Press, a finalist for the Colorado Book Award and the Balcones Poetry Prize. Her title American Rush: Selected Poems was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize and her work AE (Amelia Earhart) was a recipient of the prestigious Before Columbus American Book Award. She has taught at Naropa University, both on campus and in the low-residency MFA Creative Writing Program, in Naropa's Summer Writing Program, and co-edited Naropa's on-line zine not enough night through 19 issues. Her newest title Edges of Water is available from Chax Press. She has most recently had work in Blazing Stadium, Positive Magnets, Posit, and The Denver Quarterly. Click here to learn about her  Poets on the Road Tour with Barbara Henning. She can be found reading her work on the PennSound website. Her manuscript titled Let the Heart hold Down the Brakage  Or The Caregiver's Log is forthcoming from Hanging Loose Press.

Gala Mukomolova is a Moscow-born, Brooklyn-raised, poet and essayist. Her full length book, Without Protection, is available through Coffee House Press. Her chapbook, One Above One Below: Positions & Lamentations, is available with YesYes Books. She is a recipient of the 2016 Discovery Prize from 92nd St Y & Boston Review and has held residencies at Vermont Studio Center, Pink Door, and ASYLUM Arts. Gala currently writes astrology articles for Refinery29 , co-hosts Big Dyke Energy Podcast, and is one of the creators of QueerHealers.com. She is a founder and part of The Cheburashka Collective. https://galacticrabbit.com "Ana I Don't Forget" was originally published in Home is Where You Queer Your Heart Anthology, https://foglifterjournal.com/product/home-is-where-you-queer-your-heart-anthology/ Text of today's poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/ Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.  Queer Poem-a-Day is directed by poet and teacher Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Deerfield Public Library. Music for our series is from Excursions Op. 20, Movement 1, by Samuel Barber, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by a generous donation from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library. Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language. 

How does translation grapple with place and transport us through language? Chinese translator Jennifer Feeley joins Abby Ryder-Huth to talk about bringing a sense of Hong Kong and Cantonese speech to her translation of "Patient," a short story by Wong Yi published in 2020 by Asymptote. Wong Yi herself reads from the original, which you can read here. Later, Julia Conrad is in conversation with Persian translator Poupeh Missaghi, whose novel trans(re)lating house one (Coffee House Press, 2020) translates the city of Tehran in the wake of the city's 2009 election. They talk about how language and identity manifest in Poupeh's work both in and out of Persian, and the expansive forms translation can take. Listen here, or find us on Spotify or Apple Podcasts! **To be further transported-- You can catch Wong Yi's radio show, Book Review (開卷樂) on RTHK, or as a podcast here. Jennifer Feeley's translation of Wong Yi's Cantonese-language chamber opera, Women Like Us, is also streaming as part of the Hong Kong Arts Festival through the 31st of May. Grab your rice noodle rolls with sweet sauce and enjoy from wherever you are. **Our theme music is by Nate Repasz, and this episode also features music by Ketsa, Daniel Birch, and Metre.

Literary horror icon Brian Evenson is on the show! We talk about: the uncanny psychogeography of Utah, religious text & parables, writing as a replacement for spirituality, Brian’s philosophical approach, the machinations of Dark Properties, Michael Gira’s The Consumer, the trancelike intensity of the Soundtrack for the Blind by the Swans, Sunn O))), and Pierre Guyotat's writing, Deleuze and Guattari, the Evensonesque aesthetic and trajectory, our loss of agency to technology, distortion/blur, the appeal of invoking destabilization, Immobility, the relationship between the mode of horror and mood, being a mentor, comfort listening.... “There is not a more intense, prolific, or apocalyptic writer of fiction in America than Brian Evenson.” —George Saunders “Missing persons, paranoia and psychosis . . . the kind of writer who leads you into the labyrinth, then abandons you there. It’s hard to believe a guy can be so frightening, so consistently.” —New York Times Brian Evenson is the author of over a dozen works of fiction. He has received three O. Henry Prizes for his fiction. His most recent book, Song for the Unraveling of the World, won a Shirley Jackson Award and was a finalist for both the Los Angeles Times Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Speculative Fiction and the Balcones Fiction Prize. He lives in Los Angeles and teaches at CalArts. THE GLASSY, BURNING FLOOR OF HELL comes out in August 2021 by Coffee House Press - preorder here. A sentient, murderous prosthetic leg; shadowy creatures lurking behind a shimmering wall; brutal barrow men―of all the terrors that populate The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell, perhaps the most alarming are the beings who decimated the habitable Earth: humans. In this new short story collection, Brian Evenson envisions a chilling future beyond the Anthropocene that forces excruciating decisions about survival and self-sacrifice in the face of toxic air and a natural world torn between revenge and regeneration. Combining psychological and ecological horror, each tale thrums with Evenson’s award-winning literary craftsmanship, dark humor, and thrilling suspense. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/wake-island/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/wake-island/support

Episode transcript available here.On today's episode, hosted by producer Rebekah (@bex2241), a fourth-year undergraduate student at the University of Toronto pursuing a double major degree in History and Russian Language & Literature and a minor in Practical French, you will hear part of a conversation that she moderated, titled: Looking to the Future of LGBTQ Identities in Eastern Europe and the Slavic Diaspora, which took place on Zoom on Monday, November 2nd, 2020, and it was organized by the Slavic Languages and Literatures Department here at the University of Toronto. She sits down with writer and poet Gala Mukomolova, Dr. Mateusz Świetlicki, and Musician Damir Imamović to discuss the role of culture and activism in the community as they look toward the future. Rebekah would like to thank Professors Dragana Obradovic, Zdenko Mandusic, and Agnieszka Jezyk for putting together this conversation and the invitation to moderate. The bios for these accomplished speakers will be below: Gala Mukomolova (@Galactic_Rabbit) is a Moscow-born, Brooklyn-raised poet and essayist. Her full-length poetry collection, Without Protection, is available through Coffee House Press. Her chapbook, One Above One Below: Positions & Lamentations, is available with YesYes Books. She is a recipient of the 2016 Discovery Prize from 92nd St Y & Boston Review and has held residencies at Vermont Studio Center, Pink Door, and ASYLUM Arts. Gala currently writes astrology articles for NYLON Magazine, co-hosts Big Dyke Energy Podcast, and is one of the creators of QueerHealers.com. She is a founder and part of The Cheburashka Collective (@the_cheburashki), a growing collective of women & nonbinary writers who are emigres/refugees/first-generation from the Soviet diaspora. Damir Imamović (@damirimamovich) is a singer, musician, author, and sevdah master from Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. He comes from a family of sevdah musicians and represents a new generation of the traditional music of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Although he showed interest in music since childhood, he devoted himself to it only after studying philosophy. In 2004 he worked with Farah Tahirbegović on a monograph of his grandfather and one of the most influential sevdah singers – Zaim Imamović. That book introduced him to the world of sevdah and the world of professional music. Soon he started developing his own repertoire while performing in Bosnia and abroad. Damir has a trio and a quartet that he performs with, as well as individual musicians. Damir is very active as a traditional music researcher and educator with his SevdahLab program. He curated a multimedia exhibition on sevdah music, «Sevdah, the art of freedom,» in Sarajevo in 2015. His book «Sevdah» is the first history of the genre of sevdah (Vrijeme, 2016). Link to song mentioned by Damir: https://open.spotify.com/track/6sLfXy2Bxsacg2boDxv7kq?si=ysccniofRqKuvfQJ58WyTQ Dr. Mateusz Świetlicki (@drswietlicki) is an Assistant Professor at the University of Wrocław (Institute of English Studies) and a founding member of the Centre for Research on Children's and Young Adult Literature (Faculty of Letters, University of Wrocław). He was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago (2018). He has held multiple fellowships in Munich, Kyiv, and Harvard. Mateusz specializes in North American and Slavic studies, and his expertise is contemporary children's and YA literature and culture, gender, and queer studies, as well as popular culture and film. Mateusz is the author of more than 50 scholarly publications in English, Polish, and Ukrainian, including a book monograph, six co-edited volumes, 25 articles, and nine book chapters. His work appeared in Children's Literature in Education, International Research in Children's Literature, and The Lion and the Unicorn. Link to Book and article mentioned by Dr. Świetlicki: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25695258-kim-jest-limak-samhttps://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/30/arts/music/taco-hemingway-poland-rap.html 

Our first pick for February's prompt is Temporary by Hilary Leichter, published by Coffee House Press. It gets us talking about the mundanity of office life and the strangeness of life under capitalism.   Next week we are reading Frontier by Can Xue. Find it at your local bookstore or library and read along with us! Get two months for the price of one at Libro.fm with code 'bookstore' at checkout. Website | Patreon

Mark Nowak's Social Poetics (Coffee House Press, 2020) is a history of the poetry workshop "from below and to the left." Inspired by previous workers' poetry workshops led by writers like June Jordan and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Nowak's book traces the history of worker poetry both in the US and abroad. It also details Nowak's own involvement with workers' poetry workshops held with autoworkers facing layoffs, farm workers in Hudson Valley, and metal workers in South Africa. Nowak shows that poetry is not a luxury for the elite, but a vital tool in describing working class lives and in imagining a classless future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mark Nowak's Social Poetics (Coffee House Press, 2020) is a history of the poetry workshop "from below and to the left." Inspired by previous workers' poetry workshops led by writers like June Jordan and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Nowak's book traces the history of worker poetry both in the US and abroad. It also details Nowak's own involvement with workers' poetry workshops held with autoworkers facing layoffs, farm workers in Hudson Valley, and metal workers in South Africa. Nowak shows that poetry is not a luxury for the elite, but a vital tool in describing working class lives and in imagining a classless future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mark Nowak's Social Poetics (Coffee House Press, 2020) is a history of the poetry workshop "from below and to the left." Inspired by previous workers' poetry workshops led by writers like June Jordan and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Nowak's book traces the history of worker poetry both in the US and abroad. It also details Nowak's own involvement with workers' poetry workshops held with autoworkers facing layoffs, farm workers in Hudson Valley, and metal workers in South Africa. Nowak shows that poetry is not a luxury for the elite, but a vital tool in describing working class lives and in imagining a classless future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Mark Nowak's Social Poetics (Coffee House Press, 2020) is a history of the poetry workshop "from below and to the left." Inspired by previous workers' poetry workshops led by writers like June Jordan and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Nowak's book traces the history of worker poetry both in the US and abroad. It also details Nowak's own involvement with workers' poetry workshops held with autoworkers facing layoffs, farm workers in Hudson Valley, and metal workers in South Africa. Nowak shows that poetry is not a luxury for the elite, but a vital tool in describing working class lives and in imagining a classless future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“If you don’t clean up your apples, then bears will come and eat them.” "I think it's naive to just assume poetry is a form of entertainment and nothing more. It does matter...language and what you say, who's writing it, who can read it." Poems: In Hieu Minh Nguyen's book "Not Here" (Coffee House Press, 2018) Beer: Ranch Hand Hard Cider by Western Cider (Missoula, Montana) Finally, a new No Rhyme or Refill!! After Erica and Alyx take some time off to not fail their semesters during the pandemic, and just survive mental health-wise, they're back with the long-promised ~switch episode~ where they get out of their comfort zone a bit. Alyx talks local hard cider in Missoula, specifically the cider Ranch Hand, and shares how she learned about the Wassail celebration (coming up soon!)and Erica shares some important and powerful poems from one of her favorite poetry books this year, "Not Here" by Hieu Minh Nguyen. Thanks for tuning in, and cheers!

In this episode, guest host Dr. Shelby Vincent, research associate in the Center for Translation Studies and lecturer in the School of Arts and Humanities at the University of Texas at Dallas, interviews Colombian writer, art critic and curator, Juan Cárdenas and translator Lizzie Davis about Juan’s English-language debut novel Ornamental (Coffee House Press, 2020). Juan was named one the thirty-nine best Latin American writers under the age of thirty-nine by the Hay Festival in Bogotá in 2017. He is the author of several novels including Zumbido, Los estratos, and Ornamento (2015). Juan is also a translator, who has translated the works of William Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe, Gordon Lish, Machado de Assis, and Eça de Queiros. He currently coordinates the Masters program in Creative Writing at the Caro y Cuervo Institute in Bogotá, where he works as a professor and researcher. Lizzie Davis is a writer, translator from Spanish and Italian to English, and editor at Coffee House Press. She has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Translators’ Conference and Omi International Arts Center for her translations. Lizzie is passionate about championing writing that takes risks and pushes boundaries thematically or formally. She has co-translated Valeria Luiselli’s Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions, an important book at this moment of crisis for unaccompanied minors at the US-Mexico border, and translated Juan Cárdenas’s novel Ornamental, which is the topic of this podcast episode.

Since you listen to us, you'll also like the podcast from Atelier26 Books, called "In the Atelier." It's a weekly audio essay for book-loving, creative people like you. Listen and subscribe today! _____"Hey there office lady...", it's time to look at masculinity, gender roles, and all the things that can go wrong in teaching our kids this crap.Plus, we're defending reputations with footraces, peeing in celebration, navigating vast oceans of emotions, and hearing a Podcat's opinion on Barbies. Listen to "I'm a Man," the incredible song that inspired this week's episode. The song comes from the band Pissed Jeans, and is written and performed by author Lindsay Hunter. _____Our picks this week: Novels:Amy: Any Man, Amber Tamblyn (and check out pictures from Amy's opening reading on the book tour!)Erin: Imperfect Women, Araminta HallOther Books:Amy: Don't Call Us Dead, Danez SmithErin: Things to Make and Break, May-Lan Tan (and shop at Coffee House Press, where 10% of web profits are being donated to the National Bail Out Collective)Pop Culture:Amy: Mindhunter (TV, Netflix)Erin: Lego Movie 2 (Movie) _____Broads and Books is a book podcast. A funny podcast. A feminist podcast. And one of the BEST podcasts. Each week Amy and Erin choose a unique theme. Then we choose two fiction books, two other genre books (short story collections, memoir, non-fiction, true crime, poetry, etc.), and two pop culture picks based on that theme. We surprise each other with our picks, talk about why we like them, and give you unexpected recommendations for every reading taste. Along the way, we share embarrassing stories, pitch amazing-slash-crackpot business ideas, implicate ourselves in future crimes, check in on our Podcats, and so much more. Broads and Books is fresh, funny, thought-provoking, and basically the best time you'll have all week.Visit us at www.broadsandbooks.com, and talk to us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook!

We're always children, aren't we? We always look for, and depend on in the deepest part of our beings, our parents. We want them to take care of us, to see us, to soothe us, to recognize our accomplishments and our graces. Words by Winter: Conversations, reflections, and poems about the passages of life. Because it’s rough out there, and we have to help each other through.Original theme music for our show is by Dylan Perese. Artwork by Mark Garry. Today's poem, "How About?" by Steve Healey, is from his wonderful book Safe Houses I Have Known, published by Coffee House Press. It was read by Nico and Ramona and also by Luke O'Brien. Words by Winter can be reached at wordsbywinterpodcast@gmail.com.

Hello beautifuls—we're nearing the end of our second season (one more episode to go!) and we're grateful you're here with us. This week we answer TWO audience questions about capital-P Poetry and reading rituals. Then, we get the chance to (virtually) chop it up with the one and only delight Justin Phillip Reed. JUSTIN PHILLIP REED is an American poet, essayist, and amateur bass guitarist. His preoccupations include horror cinema, poetic form, morphological transgressions, and uses of the grotesque. He is the author of two poetry collections: The Malevolent Volume (2020) and Indecency (2018), both published by Coffee House Press. He participates in vague spirituality and alternative rock music cultures. He was born and raised in South Carolina and enjoys smelling like outside. WHISKEY FROM THE BOTTLE: Whiskey from the bottle to your mouth.

Wednesday Reading Series: Youmna Chlala & Jennifer Firestone— January 29th, 2020 Hosted by Kyle Dacuyan. Youmna Chlala is an artist and a writer born in Beirut based in New York. She is the author of the poetry collection, The Paper Camera (Litmus Press, 2019). She is the recipient of a 2018 O. Henry Award, a Joseph Henry Jackson Award and the Founding Editor of Eleven Eleven {1111} Journal of Literature and Art. Her writing appears in BOMB, Guernica, Prairie Schooner, Bespoke, Aster(ix), CURA and MIT Journal for Middle Eastern Studies. She has exhibited at the Hayward Gallery, The Drawing Center, Art In General, Rotterdam International Film Festival, Dubai Art Projects, Hessel Museum of Art, and MAK Center for Art and Architecture. She participated in the 33rd Bienal de Sao Paulo, 2017 LIAF Biennial in Norway and the 11th Performa Biennial. She is co-editing a new series for Coffee House Press entitled Spatial Species (2021). She is a Professor in Humanities and Media Studies and Writing at the Pratt Institute. Jennifer Firestone is the author of five books of poetry and four chapbooks including Story (Ugly Duckling Presse), Ten, (BlazeVOX [books]), Gates & Fields (Belladonna Collaborative), Swimming Pool (DoubleCross Press), Flashes (Shearsman Books), Holiday (Shearsman Books), Waves (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs), from Flashes and snapshot (Sona Books) and Fanimaly (Dusie Kollektiv). She co-edited (with Dana Teen Lomax) Letters To Poets: Conversations about Poetics, Politics and Community (Saturnalia Books) and is collaborating with Marcella Durand on a book entitled Other Influences about feminist avant-garde poetics. Firestone has work anthologized in Kindergarde: Avant-Garde Poems, Plays, Songs, & Stories for Children and Building is a Process / Light is an Element: essays and excursions for Myung Mi Kim. She won the 2014 Marsh Hawk Press' Robert Creeley Memorial Prize. Firestone is an Associate Professor of Literary Studies at the New School's Eugene Lang College and is also the Director of their Academic Fellows pedagogy program.

In The Dominant Animal, compression is key. Sentences have been relentlessly trimmed, tuned, and teased, rendering both their syntax and subjects wondrous and strange. A ferocious attention to rhythm and sound creates a thrum of excitability and distress. The nature of love is questioned at a golf course, a flower shop, an all-you-can-eat buffet. The clay head of a man is bought and displayed as a trophy. Interior life manifests on the physical plane, where characters—human and animal—eat and breathe, provoke and injure one another. With exquisite control, Kathryn Scanlan moves from expansive moods and fine afternoons to unease and violence—and also from deliberate and generative ambiguity to shocking, revelatory exactitude. Disturbances accrue as the collection progresses. How often the conclusions open—rather than tie—up. How they twist alertly. No mercy, a character says—and these stories are merciless and strange and absolutely masterful. Scanlan is in conversation with Brian Evensen, author of a dozen books of fiction, most recently the story collection Song for the Unraveling of the World (Coffee House Press, 2019). _______________________________________________ Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Emily Gould is the author of Perfect Tunes: A Novel. She also wrote the books And the Heart Says Whatever and Friendship. She has contributed to many anthologies, Bookforum, and The Cut. She also ran Emily Books, an imprint of Coffee House Press which publishes books by women! Perfect Tunes is a fusion of love, music, loss, and motherhood. Emily and I talked about the dreams of her protagonists and herself, what it's really like to put aside a full draft and start over, whether or not we should worry about what’s in our obituaries, and the pull of collective anguish that really makes people come together.

Mary Kay and Louise talk about important literary things like, what’s going on in the literary world right now? What are the books of literary fiction that changed your life? And, what are you reading now? This episode is sponsored by Shelf Addiction podcast,Catapult, and The Malevolent Volume by Justin Phillip Reed, published by Coffee House Press. Subscribe to the podcast via RSS, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. BOOKS AND TEXTS DISCUSSED: "Book sales surge as self-isolating readers stock up on ‘bucket list’ novels"  in The Guardian What our contagion fables are REALLY about in The New Yorker, by Jill Lepore The Color Purple by Alice Walker "Everyday Use" by Alice Walker Beloved and Paradise by Toni Morrison Roots by Alex Haley Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer In Cold Blood by Truman Capote A Void (La Disparation) by Georges Perec The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy by Lawrence Sterne She Came to Stay (L'Invitee) by Simone de Beauvoir Ducks Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo "The Mermaid in the Tree" by Timothy Schaffert, in My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Meedited by Kate Bernheimer Wow, No Thank You and We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby "Inventory" in Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier Unflattening by Nick Sousanis YOU CAN FIND YOUR HOSTS HERE: Louise @ www.didyoueverstoptothink.com and @chaletfan on Twitter. Mary Kay @ www.marykaymcbrayer.com, Twitter at @mkmcbrayer, and Instagram at @marykaymcbrayer.

Ten men have already died while searching the jungles of Uruguay for a reclusive writer, Emiliano Gomez Carrasquilla, who Jacov Reinhardt believes knows the key to understanding melancholy. Carried in circles through the jungle on a stretcher, the narrator recalls how Reinhardt fueled himself with copious amounts of cocaine, built himself an outrageous castle with fake walls and trap doors, and cared nothing for the safety of those those around him, including Ulrich the dog killer, Sonja the one-legged former prostitute, and the unnamed narrator himself. The only thing that really mattered to Reinhardt, according to his amanuensis, was his search for the essence of melancholy. Mark Haber is the author of Reinhardt's Garden (Coffee House Press, 2019). He was born in Washington DC and grew up in Florida. His first collection of stories, Deathbed Conversions, was translated into Spanish in a bilingual edition as Melville’s Beard. His debut novel, Reinhardt’s Garden was longlisted for the 2020 PEN/Hemingway Award for a Debut Novel and was listed as one of the Texas Observer’s Best Texas Books of the Decade. He lives in Houston, Texas, loves reading and Vietnamese soup, and is operations manager and a bookseller at Brazos Bookstore in Houston. If you enjoyed today’s podcast and would like to discuss it further with me and other New Books network listeners, please join us on Shuffle. Shuffle is an ad-free, invite-only network focused on the creativity community. As NBN listeners, you can get special access to conversations with a dynamic community of writers and literary enthusiasts. Sign up by going to www.shuffle.do/NBN/join G.P. Gottlieb is the author of the Whipped and Sipped Mystery Series and a prolific baker of healthful breads and pastries. Please contact her through her website (GPGottlieb.com) if you wish to recommend an author (of a beautifully-written new novel) to interview, to listen to her previous podcast interviews, to read her mystery book reviews, or to check out some of her awesome recipes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ten men have already died while searching the jungles of Uruguay for a reclusive writer, Emiliano Gomez Carrasquilla, who Jacov Reinhardt believes knows the key to understanding melancholy. Carried in circles through the jungle on a stretcher, the narrator recalls how Reinhardt fueled himself with copious amounts of cocaine, built himself an outrageous castle with fake walls and trap doors, and cared nothing for the safety of those those around him, including Ulrich the dog killer, Sonja the one-legged former prostitute, and the unnamed narrator himself. The only thing that really mattered to Reinhardt, according to his amanuensis, was his search for the essence of melancholy. Mark Haber is the author of Reinhardt's Garden (Coffee House Press, 2019). He was born in Washington DC and grew up in Florida. His first collection of stories, Deathbed Conversions, was translated into Spanish in a bilingual edition as Melville’s Beard. His debut novel, Reinhardt’s Garden was longlisted for the 2020 PEN/Hemingway Award for a Debut Novel and was listed as one of the Texas Observer’s Best Texas Books of the Decade. He lives in Houston, Texas, loves reading and Vietnamese soup, and is operations manager and a bookseller at Brazos Bookstore in Houston. If you enjoyed today’s podcast and would like to discuss it further with me and other New Books network listeners, please join us on Shuffle. Shuffle is an ad-free, invite-only network focused on the creativity community. As NBN listeners, you can get special access to conversations with a dynamic community of writers and literary enthusiasts. Sign up by going to www.shuffle.do/NBN/join G.P. Gottlieb is the author of the Whipped and Sipped Mystery Series and a prolific baker of healthful breads and pastries. Please contact her through her website (GPGottlieb.com) if you wish to recommend an author (of a beautifully-written new novel) to interview, to listen to her previous podcast interviews, to read her mystery book reviews, or to check out some of her awesome recipes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

REBROADCAST! In honor of Black History Month and because it's primary season and this incredible poem touches on presidential themes, we are rebroadcasting our episode about "How to Keep It Down / Throw It Off / Defer Until Asleep" by National Book Award winner Justin Phillip Reed. Content Warning: Suicidality Connor and Jack discuss a poem by this year's National Book Award winner for Poetry: Justin Phillip Reed. The poem, "How to Keep it Down / Throw It off / Defer Until Asleep," is from that award-winning collection, Indecency, published by Coffee House Press. We talk about the effects of the poem's shifting POV, the intersection of mental illness and white supremacy, and get to maybe two or three of the poem's nearly infinite layers on layers. Plus, Al Pacino makes a surprise cameo! Read the poem below. More on Justin Phillip Reed: www.justinphillipreed.com/ Check out his collection, Indecency, where this poem comes from: coffeehousepress.org/collections/po…ucts/indecency Find us on facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking
Find us on twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking
You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com. How to Keep it Down / Throw It off / Defer Until Asleep by Justin Phillip Reed My stomach imagines itself as an injury. I steep ginger-mint tea in the inauguration memorabilia mug from Momma, monument-white but for Obama. Between self-harm and my hand, I’ve rigged a list of reliable illusions. This is the first gesture. I am a gentle fist. My body has been deboned of its irony. My life wants to be proven to. I didn’t check the list of Black church dead in Charleston for friend or cousin because this morning it was Thursday. Work was quiet after I asked a white girl if she could quit whispering—the hissing hit his reddest venous notes until a droning rain applauded. His ears ring full of answers to his own knocking when he’s home alone—i.e., almost always. Pacing the apartment for a nest in which to knuckle shut and wax unknown, he statues and envisions both spread hands rooting a brown expanse into the kitchen floor’s glaucous linoleum, and after, the image on Instagram with heightened contrast, hashtagged emblem etc, and producing this proof would require one of his hands, and what if— Nearby in the drying rack, a knife shines. Impetuous. And it occurs to you that this occurring to you is a thinner ice than most other Thurs- days, is skin quickly shucked off a winter’s lip. The hour itself murmurs open better yet back like a hang nail, as in persistent rawness and in the wrong direction. You hunker the mug sternumwise— it’s hot as a kind of heart meat but a blanched blues —and mother your torso around it like a matryoshka mold, chest sickled over the steaming vent that is the President’s head, though you pretend it isn’t.

M. Evelina Galang is the author of the story collection Her Wild American Self (Coffee House Press, 1996), novels One Tribe (New Issues Press, 2006) and Angel De La Luna and the Fifth Glorious Mystery (Coffee House Press, 2013), the nonfiction work Lolas’ House: Filipino Women Living With War (Curbstone Books, 2017), and the editor of Screaming Monkeys: Critiques of Asian American Images (Coffee House Press, 2003). Among her numerous awards are the 2004 Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) Prize for the Novel, the 2007 Global Filipino Literary Award for ONE TRIBE, the 2004 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Awards Advancing Human Rights, and a 2002 Senior Research Fellowship from Fulbright. Galang teaches in the MFA Creative Writing Program at the University of Miami and is core faculty and President of the Board of Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA/Voices).

The second summer of conversations recorded at the Sewanee Writers' Conference begins with James speaking with Marilyn Nelson, who has written poetry in many forms and for many audiences. Marilyn tells James about her fears of being pigeonholed as well as her love of musicality, embodying voices, and finding a way forward. Plus, Copper Canyon Executive Editor Michael Wiegers.      - Marilyn Nelson: https://marilyn-nelson.com/ Buy Marilyn's books: Shop your local indie bookstore for Marilyn Nelson Marilyn and James discuss:  Andrea Davis Pinkney Igor Stravinsky  Maurice Manning  Wyatt Prunty Childcraft Books  Sara Teasdale  Gwendolyn Brooks  Linda Ronstadt "Songs for My Father"  Norton's Anthology of Children's Literature  Stephen Roxburgh Front Street Publishing Augusta Savage  - Michael Wiegers: https://www.coppercanyonpress.org/authors/michael-wiegers/ Copper Canyon Press: https://www.coppercanyonpress.org/ Michael and James discuss:  The New York Times  Goodreads  Amazon Michiko Kakutani  Ocean Vuong  RAILSPLITTER by Maurice Manning  Melissa Stein  Coffee House Press  W.S. Merwin  Robert Graves  Alan Brilliant  Unicorn Press  -  Music courtesy of Bea Troxel from her album, THE WAY THAT IT FEELS: https://www.beatroxel.com/ -  http://tkpod.com / tkwithjs@gmail.com / Twitter: @JamesScottTK /Instagram: tkwithjs / FB: https://www.facebook.com/tkwithjs/

Always Blue is a work of literary science fiction that explores how our day-to-day struggles and inconveniences—irritating colleagues, entitled students, aloof administrators, uninspired lunch choices—can make it impossible to see the real threats to our world. John Dermot Woods writes stories and draws comics in Brooklyn, NY. His books include the novel, The Baltimore Atrocities, published by Coffee House Press, and a collection of comics with the title Activities (published by Publishing Genius Press). He recently published a science fiction chapbook, Always Blue, as part of Radix Media’s FUTURES series. He is a founder of the online arts journal Action, Yes and a professor of English and Creative Writing at SUNY Nassau Community College. The post Always Blue – Ep 68 with John Dermot Woods appeared first on Read Learn Live Podcast.

Chad and Tom are joined by Mark Haber from Brazos Bookstore and author of the forthcoming Reinhardt's Garden (October 1, Coffee House Press). They talk a bit about Translation Bread Loaf (two thumbs up) and about a special poster for anyone who buys the First 100 from Open Letter, before trying their best to breakdown a nonsensical metaphor that Chad heard at this weekend's The Ladder Literary Conference. They also talk about Reinhardt's Garden, Mark's influences, the voice of the main character, and Chad's "Five Tools for Authors" post. (Also: See the "Five Tools for Translators.") Then, they recommend a slew of books to check out: Hold Fast Your Crown by Yannick Haenel, trans. by Teresa Lavender Fagan Riots I Have Known by Ryan Chapman  The Remainder by Alia Trabucco Zerán, trans. by Sophie Hughes The Incompletes by Sergio Chejfec, trans. by Heather Cleary The Dreamed Part by Rodrigo Fresán, trans. by Will Vanderhyden Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming by László Krasznahorkai, trans. by Ottilie Mulzet "The Revised Boy Scout Manual" by William S. Burroughs  Time Is the Thing a Body Moves Through by T Fleischmann Axiomatic by Maria Tumarkin Banshee by Rachel DeWoskin Feeble Minded by Ariana Harwicz, trans. by Annie McDermott and Carolina Orloff The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy The Promise and Forgotten Journey by Silvina Ocampo, trans. by Suzanne Jill Levine, Jessica Powell, and Katie Lateef-Jan Monsterhuman by Kjersti Skomsvold, trans. by Becky Crook That Other World: Nabokov and the Puzzle of Exile by Azar Nafisi, trans. by Lotfali Khonji Nikolai Nikolaevich and Camouflage by Yuz Aleshkovsky, trans. by Duffield White Anatomy. Melancholy. by Edy Poppy The MVP Machine by Ben Lindbergh and Travis Sawchik  This week's intro music is "Scream" by Stef Chura, and the outro music is "Sweet Sweet Midnight" from the same album, but featuring Will Toledo of Car Seat Headrest.  As always, feel free to send any and all comments or questions to: threepercentpodcast@gmail.com. Also, if there are articles you’d like us to read and analyze (or just make fun of), send those along as well. And if you like the podcast, tell a friend and rate us or leave a review on iTunes! You can also follow Open Letter, Riffraff, and Chad and on Twitter and Instagram (OL, Riffraff, Chad) for book and baseball talk. If you don’t already subscribe to the Three Percent Podcast you can find us on iTunes, Stitcher, and other places. Or you can always subscribe by adding our feed directly into your favorite podcast app: http://threepercent.libsyn.com/rss

Satire can be the last, best way to critique difficult topics, and Ryan Chapman's blistering novel, RIOTS I HAVE KNOWN, takes on, among other things, incarceration, literature's standing in the culture, and intellectual pretension. He and James talk novellas, using contemporary cultural references, writing to a melody, and publishing a book after working in the field. Plus, literary advocate, legend, and Ryan's editor, Ira Silverberg.   - Ryan Chapman: https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Ryan-Chapman/140796679 Buy RIOTS I HAVE KNOWN: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781501197307 Ryan and James discuss:  Joseph Heller  Mark Leyner  Martin Amis  Don DeLillo  Thomas Pynchon  AO Scott Wesley Morris  BREAKING BAD  Philip Roth  Roberto Bolano  Horacio Castellanos Moya  New Directions Books Poopy Atherton  University of Iowa  WG Sebald  THE CRYING OF LOT 49 by Thomas Pynchon  Kanye West  A$AP Rocky  DRAM  JURASSIC PARK  Steve Martin  Michel Foucault  "Pardon Edward Snowden" by Joseph O'Neill Tin House Summer Workshop  Joy Williams  Guy Debord  Andy Dufresne  THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION  Frank Darabont  THE VIRGIN SUICIDES by Jeffrey Eugenides  THE LOSER by Thomas Bernhard  TRAINSPOTTING by Irvine Welsh  THE BEACH by Alex Garland  THE GODFATHER  THE GODFATHER by Mario Puzo  Eric Andre  TOO MANY COOKS  Toni Morrison  Ira Silverberg  THE NEW YORK TIMES  Marya Spence  Daniel Torday  DEAR CYBORGS by Eugene Lim  - Ira Silverberg: https://twitter.com/silverbergira?lang=en Ira and James discuss:   Sam Lipsyte  FSG Macmillan Publishers  BOMB Magazine  Marya Spence  Simon & Schuster  Mark Twain  OZ  SCRUBS  NAKED LUNCH by William S. Burroughs  THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW  BOOKFORUM  LITHUB  THE MILLIONS  Parul Sehgal  HIGH RISK: AN ANTHOLOGY OF FORBIDDEN WRITINGS  PUSH by Sapphire  Knopf Kathy Acker  Grove Press Dennis Cooper  Ben Lerner  Coffee House Press  Three Lives & Co.  Melville House  SOHO  Emily St. John Mandel  Katherine Faucett  THE ARGONAUTS by Maggie Nelson  Leslie Jamison  Graywolf Press  Little, Brown and Company  Random House  Andrew Wiley  Overlook Press  Allen Ginsberg  Marguerite Duras  Alain Robbe-Grillet  Samuel Beckett  Eugene Ionesco  Barney Rosset  JT LeRoy  NEA  Cave Canem: The Retreat  Whiting Awards  LAMBDA Literary  NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS  PARIS REVIEW  Ann Kjellberg  BOOK POST  AWP  Poetry Society of American  Academy of American poets  AIR TRAFFIC by Gregory Pardlow  ON EARTH WE'RE BRIEFLY GORGEOUS by Ocean Vuong  Cathy Park Hong  Poem-A-Day  Alex Dimitrov Four Way Books  Copper Canyon Press  - http://tkpod.com / tkwithjs@gmail.com / Twitter: @JamesScottTK Instagram: tkwithjs / Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tkwithjs/

"Those are some slow growing fruits." "Lest you be a witch, figure out what a clit is." Beer: Pineapple and Lemon Tritonia Gose from Creature Comforts (Athens, Georgia) Poems: "HISTORIES: A Woman Was Constructed in 20 oz. Antiquity, Certainly She Existed" by Eleni Sikelianos (Earliest Worlds, published by Coffee House Press in 2001, taken from her first book Of Sun, Of History, Of Seeing) Girl Crush: Natasha Lyonne (always and forever but particularly in Russian Doll) Also: We mentioned show notes in this episode, but the poem itself isn't online for us to link to, and we aren't ready to navigate the legal grey area that is posting the full text of a poem. If future poems are online for everyone to read, we'll share those links. Bonus points for catching words we pronounced wrong. Cheers!

Ed Bok Lee reads a poem from his new collection, Mitochondrial Night, published in March by Coffee House Press.

Worker Writers School workshop (with Mark in the center) Mark Nowak is the author of Revenants, Shut Up Shut Down (a New York Times Editor’s Choice”), Coal Mountain Elementary (which Howard Zinn called “a stunning educational tool”), and Social Poetics (forthcoming), all from Coffee House Press. He is a Guggenheim fellow (2010), a Lannan Literary Fellow (2015), and recipient of the Freedom Plow Award for Poetry and Activism. A native of Buffalo, Nowak is the founding director of the Worker Writers School, currently in its eight year of collaboration with PEN America, and a professor at Manhattanville College. WWS member Seth Goldman reading workshop poems outside NYTWA City Hall protests to cap Uber & Left (which passed the next day) Tanka Workers Collective chapbook release party at Berl’s Poetry shop

Content Warning: Suicidality Connor and Jack discuss a poem by this year's National Book Award winner for Poetry: Justin Phillip Reed. The poem, "How to Keep it Down / Throw It off / Defer Until Asleep," is from that award-winning collection, Indecency, published by Coffee House Press. We talk about the effects of the poem's shifting POV, the intersection of mental illness and white supremacy, and get to maybe two or three of the poem's nearly infinite layers on layers. Plus, Al Pacino makes a surprise cameo! Read the poem below. More on Justin Phillip Reed: http://www.justinphillipreed.com/ Check out his collection, Indecency, where this poem comes from: https://coffeehousepress.org/collections/poetry/products/indecency Find us on facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking
Find us on twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking
You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com. How to Keep it Down / Throw It off / Defer Until Asleep by Justin Phillip Reed My stomach imagines itself as an injury. I steep ginger-mint tea in the inauguration memorabilia mug from Momma, monument-white but for Obama. Between self-harm and my hand, I’ve rigged a list of reliable illusions. This is the first gesture. I am a gentle fist. My body has been deboned of its irony. My life wants to be proven to. I didn’t check the list of Black church dead in Charleston for friend or cousin because this morning it was Thursday. Work was quiet after I asked a white girl if she could quit whispering—the hissing hit his reddest venous notes until a droning rain applauded. His ears ring full of answers to his own knocking when he’s home alone—i.e., almost always. Pacing the apartment for a nest in which to knuckle shut and wax unknown, he statues and envisions both spread hands rooting a brown expanse into the kitchen floor’s glaucous linoleum, and after, the image on Instagram with heightened contrast, hashtagged emblem etc, and producing this proof would require one of his hands, and what if— Nearby in the drying rack, a knife shines. Impetuous. And it occurs to you that this occurring to you is a thinner ice than most other Thurs- days, is skin quickly shucked off a winter’s lip. The hour itself murmurs open better yet back like a hang nail, as in persistent rawness and in the wrong direction. You hunker the mug sternumwise— it’s hot as a kind of heart meat but a blanched blues —and mother your torso around it like a matryoshka mold, chest sickled over the steaming vent that is the President’s head, though you pretend it isn’t.

Justin Phillip Reed published his first collection of poetry (“Indecency,” Coffee House Press) earlier this year — and it won the National Book Award for poetry. “Indecency” is in large part a product of the 29-year old’s time in St. Louis. His work foregrounds his identity as a queer black man in America, and examines the complex social calculus he’s navigated as he earns literary accolades and is celebrated by traditionally white institutions.

Episode #19 of The Talking Book Podcast featuring the amazing Amy Fusselman and her book IDIOPHONE from Coffee House Press. Go check out the audiobook right flippin now! www.thetalkingbooks.com/idiophone

’66 Frames – Gordon Ball – Coffee House Press – 9781566890823 – paperback – 320 pages – $15.95 Allen Ginsberg, who helped Ball with some of the research for his book, once remarked on Ball’s vantage point: From city and country communes, underground and avant garde film and photography, Gordon Ball has been marvelously placed as […]

Despite their easy descriptions-- a book about small town baseball, a memoir of grief and addiction, a discussion of reality television-- Lucas Mann's books are unlike anything else, with each page revealing a fresh perspective or a surprising insight. He tells James about writing weird books in a way that feels normal, throwing subjects off-kilter in interviews, learning to write unhinged to create emotion, and playing Jenga with narrative. Plus, Nathan McNamara on the art of book reviewing.  - Lucas Mann: http://www.lucasmann.com/ James and Lucas discuss:  The University of Iowa  HOMAGE TO CATALONIA by George Orwell  Arundhati Roy  Amitava Kumar  James Baldwin  THE VILLAGER  Film Forum  THRONE by Kerry Howley  THE NEW YORKER  Roger Angell "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu" by John Updike  David Halberstam  BLUETS by Maggie Nelson  THE LOVER by Marguerite Duras  THE SUICIDE INDEX by Joan Wickersham  SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE  Malcolm Gladwell  Virginia Center for the Creative Arts  The Kardashians  - Nathan McNamara: http://nathanscottmcnamara.com/ Nathan and James discuss:  PLOUGHSHARES  Johns Hopkins University  Vassar College  COFFEE HOUSE PRESS  SAMUEL JOHNSON'S ETERNAL RETURN by Michael Riker  DOROTHY, A PUBLISHING PROJECT   Megan McDowell Christina MacSweeney  Emma Ramadan  Riff Raff Bookstore  Michael Silverblatt  BOOKWORM  Annie Hartnett  THE LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS  Ellie Duke  Danielle Dutton   THE SHUTTERS by Ahmed Bouanani THE HOSPITAL by Ahmed Bouanani  NEW DIRECTIONS PRESS  COMEMADRE by Roque Larraquy Alejandra Pizarnik  THE POETRY FOUNDATION  Jeremy Lybarger  THINGS WE LOST IN THE FIRE: STORIES by Mariana Enriquez  FEVER DREAM by Samantha Schweblin  MY HEART HEMMED IN by Marie NDiaye  TWO LINES PRESS  THE BABYSITTER AT REST by Jen George  -  http://tkpod.com / tkwithjs@gmail.com / Twitter: @JamesScottTK Instagram: tkwithjs / Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tkwithjs/

In this episode, writer Chris Kraus reads “Miserable Life” by Steve Levine and discusses how New York School poetry influenced the development of her distinctive style. Kraus is the author of I Love Dick (now an Amazon Original Series) and, most recently, After Kathy Acker. “Miserable Life” is used by permission from To and For (Coffee House Press, 1992). Copyright © 1992 by Steve Levine. Keep up with Chris Kraus' latest releases at Semiotext(e). We feature one listener haiku at the end of every episode. To submit, call the Haiku Hotline at 612-440-0643 and read your poem after the beep. For the occasional prompt, follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, or RadioPublic.

Episode #12 of The Talking Book Podcast featuring Barbara Browning and her book The Gift from Coffee House Press and Emily Books. Go check it out! https://www.thetalkingbooks.com/the-gift

Inspiring creativity in communities everywhere. In This Podcast: It was a lucky find that inspired Margret Aldrich to change her direction and motivated her to write a book about how the finding or creating that same thing has affected many others. The Little Free Library project is going worldwide and with each little one there is more community building, inspiration ignited, and enlightenment coming to pass. Learn how you can partake of this through the Little Free Library Movement! Don't miss an episode! Click here to sign up for weekly podcast updatesor visit www.urbanfarm.org/podcast Margret is the author of The Little Free Library Book through Coffee House Press, and has published her work with The Atlantic, The Huffington Post, Experience Life, and beyond.  From Little Free Libraries to tiny houses, integrative medicine to introverted kids, digital detoxing to co-op bookstores, her writing hunts for happiness, community, and what makes humans thrive. A former editor at Utne Reader, longtime book editor, and seasoned news producer, Margret is now the programming manager at the Little Free Library nonprofit organization and is a regular contributor to Book Riot. She lives in Minneapolis, MN with her husband, two entertaining young boys, a little garden, and of course her own Little Free Library. Go to www.urbanfarm.org/littlefreelibrary for more information and links on this podcast, and to find our other great guests.

Welcome to Season 2, Episode 3 of The Poetry Gods! On this episode of The Poetry Gods, we talk to one of our favorite poets and people, Patricia Smith live from Vassar College about experiencing setbacks on the path forward, what community means, Prince, & more. Check out the episode and let us know what you think. As always you can reach us at emailthepoetrygods@gmail.com. PATRICIA SMITH BIO: Patricia Smith has been called “a testament to the power of words to change lives.” She is the author of seven books of poetry, including Incendiary Art (2017); Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah (2012), which won the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets; Blood Dazzler (2008), a chronicle of the human and environmental cost of Hurricane Katrina which was nominated for a National Book Award; and Teahouse of the Almighty, a 2005 National Poetry Series selection published by Coffee House Press. Her work has appeared in Poetry, the Paris Review, the New York Times, TriQuarterly, Tin House, The Washington Post, and in both Best American Poetry and Best American Essays. Her contribution to the crime fiction anthology Staten Island Noir, which she edited, won the Robert L. Fish Award from the Mystery Writers of America for the best debut story of the year and was chosen for Best American Mystery Stories 2013. Smith also penned the critically acclaimed history Africans in America (1999) and the award-winning children's book Janna and the Kings (2003). She is a 2014 Guggenheim fellow, a 2012 fellow at both MacDowell and Yaddo, a two-time Pushcart Prize winner, recipient of a Lannan fellowship and a four-time individual champion of the National Poetry Slam, the most successful poet in the competition's history. She is currently working on a biography of Harriet Tubman, a poetry volume combining text and 19th century African-American photos, and a collaborative novel with her husband Bruce DeSilva, the Edgar-Award winning author of the Liam Mulligan crime novels. Follow Patricia Smith on Twitter and Instagram: @pswordwoman Follow The Poetry Gods on all social media: @_joseolivarez, @azizabarnes, @iamjonsands, @thepoetrygods & CHECK OUR WEBSITE: thepoetrygods.com/ (much thanks to José Ortiz for designing the website! shouts to Jess X Snow for making our logo)

Welcome to Season 2, Episode 2 of The Poetry Gods! On this episode of The Poetry Gods, we talk to one of our favorite poets and people, Patricia Smith live from Vassar College about all the books we won't get to read, poetry, music, and beyond. Check out the episode and look out for Part 2 on May 2nd, 2017. As always you can reach us at emailthepoetrygods@gmail.com. PATRICIA SMITH BIO: Patricia Smith has been called “a testament to the power of words to change lives.” She is the author of seven books of poetry, including Incendiary Art (2017); Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah (2012), which won the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets; Blood Dazzler (2008), a chronicle of the human and environmental cost of Hurricane Katrina which was nominated for a National Book Award; and Teahouse of the Almighty, a 2005 National Poetry Series selection published by Coffee House Press. Her work has appeared in Poetry, the Paris Review, the New York Times, TriQuarterly, Tin House, The Washington Post, and in both Best American Poetry and Best American Essays. Her contribution to the crime fiction anthology Staten Island Noir, which she edited, won the Robert L. Fish Award from the Mystery Writers of America for the best debut story of the year and was chosen for Best American Mystery Stories 2013. Smith also penned the critically acclaimed history Africans in America (1999) and the award-winning children's book Janna and the Kings (2003). She is a 2014 Guggenheim fellow, a 2012 fellow at both MacDowell and Yaddo, a two-time Pushcart Prize winner, recipient of a Lannan fellowship and a four-time individual champion of the National Poetry Slam, the most successful poet in the competition's history. She is currently working on a biography of Harriet Tubman, a poetry volume combining text and 19th century African-American photos, and a collaborative novel with her husband Bruce DeSilva, the Edgar-Award winning author of the Liam Mulligan crime novels. Follow Patricia Smith on Twitter and Instagram: @pswordwoman Follow The Poetry Gods on all social media: @_joseolivarez, @azizabarnes, @iamjonsands, @thepoetrygods & CHECK OUR WEBSITE: thepoetrygods.com/ (much thanks to José Ortiz for designing the website! shouts to Jess X Snow for making our logo)

Bruja (Civil Coping Mechanism) Book of Endless Sleepovers (Civil Coping Mechanism) CCM is pleased to announce Bruja by Wendy C. Ortiz, the author of the critically acclaimed Excavation: A Memoir and Hollywood Notebook. With Bruja, Ortiz continues to upend and reinvent the memoir in inventive and deeply emotional ways to better fit the terms and trajectory of her exploration.  Behold the “dreamoir”–the details from the most malleable and revelatory portions of one’s dreams, catalogued in bold detail. Ortiz has created a new literary form, a parallel plane where the cast of characters are the people that occupied one’s waking life; Bruja is a narrative that’s equal parts delicate and bold, a literary adventure through the boundaries of memoir, where the self is viewed from a position anchored into the deepest recesses of the mind.  The end result is perhaps one of the most candid expressions of personal history, the subconscious bared in full, revealing the part of oneself that is often the most difficult to see. Bruja will be released as part of the Quarter Four 2016 CCM Catalogue. We can’t wait to show you more. We’re coping.  Guests are encouraged to come dressed as a character/person/animal/object from their dreams.  Praise for Bruja  "In Bruja, Wendy C. Ortiz deftly navigates the land of dreams in what she calls a dreamoir. By telling us her dreams, by revealing her most unguarded and vulnerable self, Ortiz is, truly, offering readers the most intimate parts of herself–how she loves, how she wants, how she lives, who she is. Bruja is not just a book–it is an enigma and a wonder and utterly entrancing." -- Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist and An Untamed State "Bruja calls into question not only what is a memoir, but what is a life. Politics, books, mass media, random encounters, work, relationships tumble into the depths of consciousness, and the self spirals open, huge and passionate. Ortiz’s dreamoir is a multidimensional love story with the whole mess of existence. I loved it."--Dodie Bellamy, author of When the Sick Rule the World, The TV Sutras, Cunt-Ups, and many more "Wendy C. Ortiz has invented her own genre, in her sleep, no less. Bruja is at once lush and spare, funny and weird, disturbing and sometimes even beautiful in the way that dreams can be. She’s crafted an absurdly real and compelling story here, one dream at a time." - Elizabeth Crane, author of The History of Great Things Wendy C. Ortiz is the author of Excavation: A Memoir and Hollywood Notebook. Her work has been profiled or featured in the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Rumpus, and the National Book Critics Circle Small Press Spotlight blog. Her writing has appeared in such places as The New York Times, Hazlitt, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, The Nervous Breakdown, Fanzine, and a year-long series appeared at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. Wendy lives in Los Angeles. Book of Endless Sleepovers Bring your favorite stuffed animal, hold it tight, and stay awake as long as you can. The Book of Endless Sleepovers tosses and turns with telepathic campfire stories, crypto-zoological memoir and Mark Twain slash fiction. It’s fourteen interconnected tales of haunted childhood identity and exploded imagination. Nobody wants to fall asleep first. Praise for Book of Endless Sleeovers “I love how Henry Hoke plays fast and loose with autobiography and genre. His Book of Endless Sleepovers is wry and finely-wrought, a philosophical fever dream studded with the pleasure of proper names and surprising turns of phrase, a lyric page-turner.”-Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts “In his atmospheric debut, Henry Hoke maps the wild country of adolescence, the murky realm of childhood and its mysterious stirrings, where the names of cities are always changing along with our own, as we swap them for those of our favorite characters: The Hardy Boys or Huck Finn or Peter Pan. A land where pet bunnies are eaten by owls in the night and cats change owners at their own will. The Book of Endless Sleepovers is beguiling and evocative and sometimes sad. It is not to be missed.”-Kate Durbin, author of E! Entertainment “The Book of Endless Sleepovers is hot and cool, fine and blunt, new and ancient, puzzling and cannily revealing. Hoke's sharp, funny fictions are like shards of the books I hope to find lying around in Borges' garden of forking paths.”-Mark Childress, author of Crazy in Alabama “Hoke’s book dazzles. Beneath the surface of linguistic playfulness and narrative experimentation are real truths about love and brotherhood and especially about childhood: wild and thrilling and, as all childhoods are, full of terror. Worth reading for the brilliant reimaginings of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn alone, there is so much here that will astonish, surprise, and delight.”-Rahul Mehta, author of No Other World Henry Hoke was a child in the South and an adult in New York and California. He's the author of Genevieves (winner of the Subito Press prose contest, forthcoming 2017) and The Book of Endless Sleepovers (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016). Some of his stories appear in The Collagist, Gigantic, Winter Tangerine and Carve. He co-created and directs Enter>text, a living literary journal.  Ashley Perez lives, writes, and causes trouble in Los Angeles. She has a strong affinity for tattoos, otters, cat mystery books, and actual cats, but has mixed feelings about pants. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. She runs the literary site Arts Collide and does work of all varieties for Jaded Ibis Press, and Midnight Breakfast. Iris De Anda is a Guanaca Tapatia poet who hosts The Writers Underground Open Mic at the Eastside Cafe every third Thursday of the month and the author of CODESWITCH: Fires From Mi Corazon. www.irisdeanda.com. Myriam Gurba is a writer, artist, and low key bon vivant living at the southern most tip of LA County. Her memoir Mean is forthcoming from Coffee House Press. Amanda Yates Garcia is an artist, writer, witch, healer and the Oracle of Los Angeles. Recent performance rituals include Capitalism Exorcism at Human Resources and Devouring Patriarchy at the Women’s Center for Creative Work. Her writing has been featured in publications such as Black Clock, the Rough Magick anthology, Entropy, Synema Publikationen (Cinema Magazine), and WITCH. Amanda hosts her bi-monthly show The Oracle Hour on KCHUNG radio; teaches the Magical Praxis monthly mystery school; and performs private rites of healing and empowerment at her magical studio in West Adams.

“Literature is not the same thing as publishing. We're in the literature business and publishing is one thing that we do.” Chris Fischbach talks about taking over leadership of an organization, the health of print and the challenge of getting someone to actually purchase a specific book. He also excitedly talks about the work of Kao Kalia Yang and the latest work from Valeria Luiselli.  Twenty-two years ago, Chris Fischbach got an internship at Coffee House Press in Minneapolis. In 2011 he became publisher. Chris has served as co-chair of the Minneapolis Arts Commission and as assistant director of the Twin Cities Book Festival and currently sits on the board of directors of the Friends of the Hennepin Country Library. The mission of Coffee House Press is to publish exciting, vital, and enduring authors of our time; to delight and inspire readers; to contribute to the cultural life of our community; and to enrich our literary heritage. By building on the best traditions of publishing and the book arts, we produce books that celebrate the imagination; innovation in the craft of writing; and the many authentic voices of the American experience.

We speak with Patrick R. O’Leary about his new book from Freeborn to Freetown & Back, which details his experiences in Sierra Leone as a volunteer with the Peace Corps. We also speak with Hans Weyandt and Celia Mattison from Milkweed Editions. Hans Weyandt has been a bookseller in the Twin Cities since 1999. He currently manages Milkweed Books in the Open Book Building and is the editor of "Read This! Handpicked Favorites from America's Indie Bookstores" which was published by Coffee House Press. Celia Mattison started at Milkweed Editions after graduating from college last year and is now a bookseller at Milkweed Books.

Friday Reading Series Vi Khi Nao holds an MFA in fiction from Brown University, where she received the John Hawkes and Feldman Prizes in fiction and the Kim Ann Arstark Memorial Award in poetry. Her work includes poetry, fiction, film, and cross-genre collaboration. Her stories, drawings, and poems have also appeared in numerous literary journals, including Glimmer Train, NOON, and Ploughshares. She is the author of two novellas, Swans In Half-Mourning (2013) and The Vanishing Point of Desire (2011), and her poetry collection, The Old Philosopher, was the winner of 2014 Nightboat Poetry Prize. Her manuscript, A Brief Alphabet of Torture, won the 2016 Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Contest. In Fall 2016, Coffee House Press will publish her novel Fish in Exile. She lives in Iowa City, Iowa. Jayson P. Smith is a writer, editor, & educator. Their poems & interviews appear in journals such as fields magazine, The Offing, Day One, The Rumpus, & boundary2. Jayson has been the recipient of fellowships from The Conversation, Millay Colony for the Arts, & Callaloo as well as scholarships from Cave Canem & The New Harmony Writers' Workshop. Jayson is currently a Mentor at Urban Word NYC & Creative Director for The Other Black Girl Collective. Jayson lives in Brooklyn and at www.jaysonpsmith.com.

Caroline Casey from Coffee House Press joined Chad and Tom on this podcast to talk about 2016 movies, TV shows, and podcasts. Before they got into a long discussion about the royal family, Luke Cage, Crimetown, Midnight Special, and more, they touched on a number of things that are both intriguing and a little bit batshit.   Here's the full rundown of this week's episode:   Sylvester Stallone to head the NEA? John O'Brien: "The National Endowment to the Arts in the United States has consistently demonstrated either an indifference to or a hostility towards translations, though it bristles with indignation when this is brought to their attention. A number of years ago I would be told what objections some panel members had to our applications, and in almost all cases the objections centered on panelists not seeing how translations benefited the public and further objected to American money going to writers who weren't American." Andrew Wylie: "Many agencies only think about money. But we only look at the quality of the writing. We train people in the agency to forget about money. It’s not of interest whether we think a book will sell thousands of copies. Pay attention to the quality of the work. If the writing is unusual, appealing, and drives you a little crazy, then that’s someone that we want to represent." Little Boxes The best commercial ever   This episode's music is "Run to Your Mama" by Goat.   Also, a reminder, since we changed our podcast feed, you may need to unsubscribe and resubscribe to the correct feed in iTunes at that link, or right here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-percent-podcast/id434696686   Or, you can just put this feed link into whichever is your podcast app of choice: http://threepercent.libsyn.com/rss   And, as always, feel free to send any and all comments or questions to threepercentpodcast@gmail.com.    Also, if you like the podcast, tell a friend and rate us or leave a review on iTunes.  

Wednesday Reading Series Maureen Owen is the author of Erosion's Pull from Coffee House Press, a finalist for the Colorado Book Award and the Balcones Poetry Prize. Her title American Rush: Selected Poems was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize and her work AE (Amelia Earhart) was a recipient of the prestigious Before Columbus American Book Award. Her newest title Edges of Water is available from Chax Press. Karen Weiser is the author of To Light Out (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010) and the soon to be released Or, The Ambiguities (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2015), a collection of long poems in correspondence with various books by Herman Melville.

Wednesday Reading Series Michael Davidson is Professor of Literature at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of The San Francisco Renaissance: Poetics and Community at Mid-Century (Cambridge U Press, 1989), Ghostlier Demarcations: Modern Poetry and the Material Word (U of California Press, 1997), Guys Like Us: Citing Masculinity in Cold War Poetics (U of Chicago, 2003) and Concerto for the Left Hand: Disability and the Defamiliar Body (U of Michigan, 2008). His most recent book, Outskirts of Form: Practicing Cultural Poetics was published in 2011 by Wesleyan University Press. He is the editor of The New Collected Poems of George Oppen (New Directions, 2002). He is the author of five books of poetry, the most recent of which is The Arcades (O Books, 1998). He is the co-author, with Lyn Hejinian, Barrett Watten, and Ron Silliman, of Leningrad (Mercury House Press, 1991). Marjorie Welish is the author of The Annotated “Here” and Selected Poems, Word Group, Isle of the Signatories, and In the Futurity Lounge / Asylum for Indeterminacy (Spring 2012), all from Coffee House Press. The papers delivered at a conference on her writing and art held at the University of Pennsylvania were published in the book Of the Diagram: The Work of Marjorie Welish (Slought Books). In 2009, Granary Books published Oaths? Questions?, a collaborative artists' book by Marjorie Welish and James Siena which was the subject of a special exhibition at Denison University Museum, Granville, Ohio, and part of a two-year tour of artists' books throughout the United States. Her honors include the George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Fellowship from Brown University, the Judith E. Wilson Visiting Poetry Fellowship at Cambridge University, and two fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts. She has held a Senior Fulbright Fellowship, which has taken her to the University of Frankfurt and to the Edinburgh College of Art. She is now Madelon Leventhal Rand Distinguished Lecturer in Literature at Brooklyn College.

“The good news is that I don't think I would have done much differently.” Andy Sturdevant is an artist and writer living in Minneapolis. He has written about art, history and culture for a variety of Twin Cities-based publications and websites. Andy also writes a weekly column on neighborhoods, art, history and architecture in Minneapolis-St. Paul for MinnPost. His first book, Potluck Supper with Meeting to Follow, was published by Coffee House Press in 2013. In this episode of the podcast, Andy talks about the times when he feels like a writer and the times when he feels like a fine artist. He talks about studying painting in college and wanting to be a filmmaker. Andy also shares stories of creating weird projects with his siblings while growing up and how his parents encouraged them all to be creative and strange.

Literature for the Halibut reels in a live one this week! Ted Mathys recenlty published his most recent collection from the singular Coffee House Press. It's Null Set (2015), following up on his two previous collections, The Spoils(2009) and Forge (2005).    Ted's poetry is intelligent and challenging while revealing a vulnerability that never reeks of weakness. Heartfelt and heady stuff.   Best of all, Ted reads work from his book and we discuss form, voice, his work in the field of international environmental policy, and how the hell he works on poems while distance driving.   Listen... and you'll get hooked.   --Ann

This week's episode finds us discussing the merits of eBook subscriptions services. And by us, I mean Tahmeka because Jeanette thinks she's made of money and just keeps buying books. We discuss Oyster, Kindle Unlimited, & Scribd (briefly). The bulk of the episode is spent discussion Julie Iromuanya's Mr. and Mrs. Doctor, a novel released on Coffee House Press on 5/15. The episode concludes with the What Are You Reading? segment where we discuss a few books that have graced our shelves recently.

Wednesday Reading Series Ed Sanders is a poet, historian and composer. Sanders' books include Tales of Beatnik Glory, 1968, a History in Verse; The Poetry and Life of Allen Ginsberg; The Family, a history of the Charles Manson murder group; and Chekhov, a biography in verse. His 1987 collection, Thirsting for Peace in a Raging Century, won an American Book Award. His selected poems, 1986-2008, Let's Not Keep Fighting the Trojan War, was published by Coffee House Press. In 2011, Da Capo Press published his memoir of the 1960s, Fug You. He has received a Guggenheim fellowship in poetry, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in verse, an American Book Award for his collected poems, and a 2012 PEN-Oakland Josephine Miles Prize. Sanders was the founder of the satiric folk/rock group, The Fugs. He lives in Woodstock, New York with his wife, the essayist and painter Miriam Sanders, and both are active in environmental and other social issues. Park McArthur is an artist from North Carolina living in New York. Solo shows include Essex Street, New York; Lars Friedrich, Berlin; Yale Union, Portland, OR. Her writing has been included in the International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics and The Happy Hypocrite. “Other forms of conviviality: the best and least of which is our daily care, the most of which is our collaborative work,” an essay co-written with Constantina Zavitsanos was included in Women & Performance: A journal of feminist theory's special issue We are Born in Flames. She is co-editing the book Beverly Buchanan: 1978-1981 with Jennifer Burris Staton.

Bill Berkson was born and grew up in New York and has lived in Northern California since the early 1970s. He is Professor Emeritus at the San Francisco Art Institute, where he taught art history and literature from 1984 to 2008. He is a corresponding editor for Art in America and a contributor to such other journals as Aperture and The Brooklyn Rail. His most recent books include: Portrait and Dream: New & Selected Poems; BILL, a words-and-images collaboration with Colter Jacobsen; Lady Air; Snippets; Not an Exit, with drawings by Léonie Guyer; and Repeat After Me, with watercolors by John Zurier; a new collection of his art writings, For the Ordinary Artist; and Parties du corps, a selection of his poetry in French translation. He is working on a set of memoirs entitled Since When. A new book of poems, Expect Delays, has just arrived from Coffee House Press.

This week's podcast features a true roundtable discussion, with Tom and Chad being joined by Caroline Casey from Coffee House Press, Mark Haber and Jeremy Ellis from Brazos Bookstore, Stephen Sparks from Green Apple Books, and Danish author Naja Marie Aidt (Baboon, Rock, Paper, Scissors) to discuss the American Booksellers Association Winter Institute. One of the funniest podcasts to date, they break down what Winter Institute is, why it's so important for the future of bookselling, and what various publishers get out of attending. They also make fun of all the crappy crutch phrases you find in jacket copy. 

Valeria Luiselli is a Mexican novelist and nonfiction writer. She is the author of the essay collection "Sidewalks," and the internationally acclaimed novel, "Faces in the Crowd." Her work has been translated into several languages, and in 2014, she was the recipient of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 award. Her second novel, "The Story of My Teeth" will be published next fall by Coffee House Press.

On this week's installment: Hmong American writer, Kao Kalia Yang In the Summer of 2012, WNYC's widely popular show, Radiolab, sought the Hmong perspective on chemical warfare during the Vietnam War, dubbed Yellow Rain.  Producers from that show interviewed Kao Kalia Yang, award winning author of The Latehomecomer, and Eng Yang, documentarian of the Hmong experience post Vietnam War for Thailand.  What would ensue in the interview has been widely discussed, and mostly criticized by Radiolab fans. Kao Kalia Yang recently spoke at the annual Listen to the Silence conference at Stanford University. Yang also sat with APEX Contributor, R.J. Lozada to express her perspective on recent developments with WNYC, Radiolab, and the Hmong community. Also it's fund drive at KPFA, and we've been in touch with Coffee House Press, the publisher of Kao Kalia Yang's award-winning memoir, The Latehomecomer-if you donate during broadcast, you receive The Latehomecomer as a thank you gift! To listen to Radiolab's amended segment vist here: http://www.radiolab.org/2012/sep/24/yellow-rain/ They made four different edits from it's initial launch on their website on September 24, 2012 to October 05, 2012: first, to add Radiolab host, Jad Albumrad's context, the second, to remove snickering at the end of the segment, third, to shorten the silence following Kao Kalia Yang's tearful close of the interview, and fourth, to add Radiolab host, Robert Kruwich's apology. To read Kao Kalia Yang's response she posted to Hyphen, vist here: http://www.hyphenmagazine.com/blog/archive/2012/10/science-racism-radiolabs-treatment-hmong-experience To read a much more complete treatment of Yellow Rain that includes the Yang's perspective, vist here: http://www.citypages.com/2012-11-14/news/behind-laos-s-yellow-rain-and-tears/ To sign a petition put together by 18 Million Rising, visit here: http://act.engagementlab.org/sign/18mr_Radiolab/ The post APEX Express – February 28, 2013 appeared first on KPFA.

Bob Holman Sing This One Back to Me: The Spoken Word Bob Holman studied poetry at Columbia University in the 1970s (where he now teaches), but considers his “major poetry schooling” to be his time on the Lower East Side in New York with Allen Ginsberg, John Giorno, Anne Waldman, Miguel Piñero, Hettie Jones, Ed Sanders, Amiri Baraka, Ted Berrigan, Alice Notley, Pedro Pietri, David Henderson, Steve Cannon, and many others. Join Michael Lerner in a conversation about Bob Holman’s life, history with the Beat Poets, his activism, and the oral tradition of spoken word or “slam” poetry. Bob Holman As a promoter of poetry in many media, Bob has spent the last four decades working variously as an author, editor, publisher, performer, emcee of live events, director of theatrical productions, producer of films and television programs, record label executive, university professor, poet’s house proprietor, and archivist. Bob is the founder and proprietor of the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City, which opened to the public in September 2002. Holman’s most recent work has been devoted to bringing attention to Endangered Languages — he is the host of Language Matters!, a PBS documentary shot in Wales, Hawaii, and Australia, that airs in late 2013. His most recent collection, Sing This One Back to Me, was released by Coffee House Press in May 2013. Find out more about Bob on his website. Find out more about The New School at tns.commonweal.org.

The Poetry Episode! Anne Waldman with Steve Lacy! Clark Coolidge with Alvin Curran! Carla Harryman with Jon Raskin! FLARF! Susana Gardner, Aaron Belz, Ron Silliman, Leslie Scalapino, Jackson Mac Low, Hannah Weiner, Marcella Durand, David Antin, Heather Fuller, Jen Hofer! (starts at 00:00) “Ice” ~ Anne Waldman ~Live in Amsterdam 6.2.91 (Soyo Records) (starts at 02:26) ”Herso Mashup 1″ ~ Susana Gardner* (starts at 03:22) ”Good Directions” ~ Jen Hofer ~ Snake Hiss: A Transcendental Friend Audio Project (Transcendental Friend, 1999) (starts at 04:29) ”A Pile of Trees and an Actuary” ~ Aaron Belz* (starts at 05:33) ”Song for Asa” ~ Jon Raskin / Carla Harryman ~ Open Box(Tzadik, 2012) (starts at 11:14) Selections from Snips and War and Pee. ~ Rod Smith ~ Flarf Orchestra (Aerial/Edge, 2012)**  (starts at 19:54) ”I Loved My Father” ~ Katie Degentesh ~ Flarf Orchestra(Aerial/Edge, 2012)** (starts at 23:12) ”The Dog Fox” and selections from “The Gospel of Justin” ~ Michael Magee ~ Flarf Orchestra (Aerial/Edge, 2012)** (starts at 27:26)  ”Drew Gardner” ~ Rodney Koeneke  Flarf Orchestra(Aerial/Edge, 2012)** (starts at 32:06) “Open Box II” ~ Jon Raskin / Carla Harryman ~ Open Box(Tzadik, 2012) (starts at 42:54) “Fish Speech” ~ Jon Raskin / Carla Harryman ~ Open Box(Tzadik, 2012) (starts at 47:58) “from OZ” ~ Ron Silliman (starts at 53:55) “from Bum Series” ~ Leslie Scalapino (starts at 58:42) “from Spoke” ~ Hannah Weiner (12-14 from Live at the Ear(Elemenope Productions, 1994) (starts at 1:04:19) “Excerpt from Phoneme Dance in Memoriam John Cage” ~ Jackson Mac Low & Anne Tardos ~ All Poets Welcome (Univ. of California Press, 2003) (starts at 1:08:21) “Hunt” ~ Marcella Durand ~ Snake Hiss: A Transcendental Friend Audio Project (Transcendental Friend, 1999) (starts at 1:10:08) “Who Are My Friends?” ~ David Antin ~ All Poets Welcome(Univ. of California Press, 2003) (starts at 1:13:16) “from Pieces of an Hour (‘Dear John Cage’)” ~ Anne Waldman with Steve Lacy ~ Battery (Fast Speaking Music, 2003) (starts at 1:17:46) “Stereo” ~ Anne Waldman ~ Alchemical Elegy (Fast Speaking Music, 2001) (starts at 1:21:49) “Herso Mashup II” ~ Susana Gardner* (starts at 1:23:51) “Mine” ~ Alvin Curran with Clark Coolidge ~ Maritime Rites(New World Records, 2004) (starts at 1:35:00) “Mr. Fibitz” ~ Aaron Belz* (starts at 1:36:35) “Stricken” ~ Heather Fuller ~ Snake Hiss: A Transcendental Friend Audio Project (Transcendental Friend, 1999) *Recorded by the poets exclusively for Papers for the Border. ** Tracks 6-9, from the Flarf Orchestra CD, features music written and conducted by Drew Gardner. More information can be found here: http://www.aerialedge.com/DrewGardnerFlarfOrchestraCD.html Anne Waldman’s “Ice,” also known as “You’re Like Ice,” was published in her book Journals and Dreams (Stonehill Press, 1976). It’s part of a larger poem titled “In April.” “Pieces of an Hour” was originally published in IOVIS: All Is Full of Jove (Coffee House Press, 1992) and republished in The Iovis Trilogy: Colors in the Mechanism of Concealment (Coffee House Press, 2011). “Stereo” was published in Marriage: A Sentence (Penguin, 2000). Susana Gardner’s pieces are from her recent book HERSO: An Heirship in Waves (Black Radish Books, 2011). Aaron Belz’s poems “A Pile of Trees and an Actuary” and “Mr. Fibitz” are from his book Lovely, Raspberry (Persea Books, 2010). Carla Harryman had this to say about “Song for Asa”: “Song for Asa” was published as a broadside in a very limited edition for a reading series in New Orleans. I believe it was also published in a very little magazine that came out Naropa, possibly in about 1999. Other than that it makes an appearance, broken up, in Gardener of Stars, a Novel. Harryman’s “Fish Speech” was published in Memory Play (O Books, 1994) and reprinted in 12 x 12: Conversations in 21st-Century Poetry and Poetics (University of Iowa Press, 2009). “Open Box II” is a selection from her book Open Box: Improvisations (Belladonna Books, 2007). The text of “Song for Asa” is sung by Aurora Josephson. Text for “Open Box II” is read by Carla Harryman and Jon Raskin. Text for “Fish Speech” is read by Aurora Josephson, Jon Raskin, and Roham Sheikhani. Rod Smith’s recording is comprised of  selections from two manuscripts: Snips and War and Pee. Katie Degentesh’s poem is from The Anger Scale (Combo Books, 2006). Ron Silliman’s “OZ” is a portion of his long workThe Alphabet (University of Alabama Press, 2008). Leslie Scalapino’s “bum series” can be found in her book Way (North Point Press, 1988). Hannah Weiner’s “Spoke” is from the book of the same name (Sun & Moon, 1984). Marcella Durand’s “Hunt” is unpublished. David Antin’s “Who Are My Friends?” was published in Selected Poems, 1963-1973 (Sun & Moon, 1991). “Mine” features Clark Coolidge reading from his book Mine: The One that Enters the Stories (The Figures, 1981; republished, 2004). From the CD liner notes: “Also heard is Arlan Coolidge, retired chairman of the Brown University Music Department, reminiscing about Block Island, Rhode Island, in 1918 and playing a portion of the popular 1917 song “Smiles” on the violin. This material is mixed with the foghorns of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, all three horns on Block Island, and the foghorn on the Block Island Ferry during its crossing.” Heather Fuller’s “Stricken” was published in her book perhaps this is a rescue fantasy (Edge Books, 1997).

Coffee House started out as the Toothpaste Press in Iowa in the early 1970s. Founded by Allan Kornblum after taking a University of Iowa typography course with the famed printer Harry Duncan, this small publishing house dedicated itself to producing poetry pamphlets and letterpress books. After 10 years, Kornblum closed the press, moved to Minneapolis, reopened it as a nonprofit organization, and began publishing trade books.  In the early 1990s, books such as Donald Duk by Frank Chin and Through the Arc of the Rainforest by Karen Tei Yamashita (a 1991 American Book Award winner) drew national attention and helped cement the press's reputation as a publisher of exceptional works by writers of color. According to Kornblum, Coffee House has actively published writers of color as writers, "as representatives of the best in contemporary literature, first and foremost—then, only secondly, as representatives of minority communities." This could well be the press's most important contribution to American literature. In July 2011, after a two-year leadership transition process, Kornblum stepped down to become the press's senior editor. Chis Fischbach, who began at the press as an intern in 1994, succeeded him as publisher. Coffee House has published more than 300 books, and releases 15-20 new titles each year. It is known for long-term commitment to the authors it chooses to publish, and is currently located in the historic Grain Belt Bottling House in Northeast Minneapolis, where I met with Kornblum to conduct this interview. Please note: Allan Kornblum died in November, 2014 

Internationally renowned as a performance poet, Patricia Smith is four-time national individual champion of the notorious and wildly popular poetry slam, an energized competition where poets are judged on the content and performance of their work. She is also regarded as one of the few performance poets whose work translates effortlessly to the page. Indeed, the Small Press Review declares, "Smith writes the way Tina Turner sings." Smith's most recent collection, Teahouse of the Almighty , was chosen by Ed Sanders for the 2005 National Poetry Series, and was published by Coffee House Press in 2006. Her three previous books of poetry are, Close to Death (Zoland Books), Big Towns, Big Talk (Zoland Books), and Life According to Motown (Tia Chucha). She has won the prestigious Carl Sandburg Award, as well as a literary award from the Illinois Arts Council and an honorary degree from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. In 2006, she was inducted into the International Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent, putting her in the company of Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Alice Walker, and others. She was featured in the nationally-released film "Slamnation", and was a featured poet on the award-winning HBO series "Def Poetry Jam." Smith has shared the stage with Adrienne Rich, Rita Dove, Joyce Carol Oates, Allen Ginsburg, Walter Mosley, Ntozake Shange, Gwendolyn Brooks, Galway Kinnell and Viggo Morgensen. An author of prose as well poetry, Smith wrote Africans in America (Harcourt Brace), a chronicle of slavery in this country and the companion volume to the groundbreaking four-part PBS series.