Podcasts about dinaw mengestu

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 27, 2016 49:17

Quicksand (Simon & Schuster)A daring, brilliant new novel from Man Booker Prize finalist Steve Toltz, for fans of Dave Eggers, Martin Amis, and David Foster Wallace: a fearlessly funny, outrageously inventive dark comedy about two lifelong friends. Liam is a struggling writer and a failing cop. Aldo, his best friend and muse, is a haplessly criminal entrepreneur with an uncanny knack for disaster. As Aldo's luck worsens, Liam is inspired to base his next book on his best friend's exponential misfortunes and hopeless quest to win back his one great love: his ex-wife, Stella. What begins as an attempt to make sense of Aldo's mishaps spirals into a profound story of faith and friendship. With the same originality and buoyancy that catapulted his first novel, A Fraction of the Whole, onto prize lists around the world--including shortlists for the Man Booker Prize and the "Guardian" First Book Award--Steve Toltz has created a rousing, hysterically funny but unapologetically dark satire about fate, faith, friendship, and the artist's obligation to his muse.Sharp, witty, kinetic, and utterly engrossing, Quicksand is a subversive portrait of twenty-first-century society in all its hypocrisy and absurdity.Praise for Quicksand:“Steve Toltz possesses an imagination that knows no limits. His work is mordant, prophetic, and very funny. He is a true original.” —Patrick McGrath, author of Asylum“Steve Toltz writes with a singular, propulsive energy, with sentences and characters that rise off the page with a force that leaves you almost breathless. There is more heart, and joy and compassion and hard-earned wisdom in Quicksand than seems possible for a single novel; it is life, literature at its fullest.”—Dinaw Mengestu, award-winning author of The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears and All Our Names“Quicksand is one of the smartest, funniest, angriest novels I have ever read. But it's also a surprisingly touching meditation on friendship and family, on art and God, on law-breaking and law enforcement. … A brilliant piece of fiction, from a novelist who so clearly sees the outsized pleasures and terrors of our troubled time.” —Brock Clarke, author of An Arsonist's Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England and The Happiest People in the World“Quicksand crackles with such intensity it made me turn the pages with a harder snap, lean closer, want to gnaw the words. This is a novel of sneak-attack seriousness, so funny it fools you into letting down your guard—then knocks you upside the head with intense intelligence, probing thought, raw pain. For all the wit and wisdom in this book, all the pleasures contained in its raucous, furious, fearless pursuit of truths, the greatest thrill comes when it strikes you that you’ve never read anything quite like it before, that you just might have stumbled—startlingly, unsettlingly—on something close to genius in the writing of Steve Toltz.”—Josh Weil, author of The Great Glass Sea“Steve Toltz is a verbal magician and lunatic storyteller. Every page of this novel bursts with ideas and humor and pathos and incisive riffs that perfectly express the grand absurdities of the irrational universe, along with the smaller ones of a very particular friendship. Quicksand is the work of a writer in full command of his many outsized gifts, not least of which is his humanity.”—Teddy Wayne, Whiting Award-winning author of The Love Song of Jonny ValentineSteve Toltz was born in Sydney and graduated from the University of Newcastle, New South Wales. His first novel, A Fraction of the Whole, was shortlisted for the 2008 Man Booker Prize. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.After working on Baz Luhrmann's adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in 1996, Anton Monsted went on to co-found Luhrmann’s music company, Bazmark Music, and served as Music Supervisor and Executive Music Producer on Luhrmann’s film Moulin Rouge! He was Executive Producer of Luhrmann’s 2004 campaign for Chanel No.5 starring Nicole Kidman, and was the Co-Producer and Executive Music Supervisor for Luhrmann’s Australia and The Great Gatsby. He is currently Senior Vice President of Music at Twentieth Century Fox, and, notably, has been Steve Toltz's friend since they met in a bowling alley in 1988.

god music new york university australia guide praise new england senior vice president newcastle executive producer sharp anton reads new south wales william shakespeare nicole kidman moulin rouge great gatsby baz luhrmann quicksand david foster wallace co producer new novel man booker prize dave eggers music supervisors twentieth century fox martin amis luhrmann chanel no whiting award patrick mcgrath teddy wayne executive music producer josh weil dinaw mengestu

Sunil Yapa author of Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of Your Fist

The Avid Reader Show

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 11, 2016 43:34

“Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist is a stunningly orchestrated, symphonic work of narrative power. This novel marshals all the vital forces of our existence—from the domestic to the political—and offers them to the reader with equal doses of compassion and beauty.” –Dinaw Mengestu, author of All Our Names The Avid Reader Show is sponsored and produced by Wellington Square Bookshop in Chester County, PA. The Show airs at 5PM EST on WCHE AM 1520. Please visit our website at www.wellingtonsquarebooks.com

muscle fist your heart chester county dinaw mengestu sunil yapa

VU TRAN reads from his debut novel DRAGONFISH together with TOD GOLDBERG

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 13, 2015 51:03

Dragonfish (W. W. Norton & Company)Robert, a rugged Oakland cop, still can’t let go of Suzy, the mysterious Vietnamese wife who left him. Now she’s disappeared from her new husband, Sonny, a dangerous Vietnamese smuggler and gambler who blackmails Robert into finding her for him. Pursuing Suzy through the glitzy gambling dens of Las Vegas, Robert finds himself chasing the past that haunts Suzy—one that extends back to a refugee camp in Malaysia after the fall of Saigon and to her daughter, Mai, abandoned long ago, now a steely professional poker player. The dangerous legacy of Suzy’s guilt threatens to immolate them all.Taut, cinematic storytelling, vivid dialogue, and mesmerizing atmosphere combine here with beautiful, original prose. Some aspects of Tran’s own life are present in Dragonfish. He was born on September 17, 1975, six months after the fall of Saigon. In 1980—like the novel’s characters Suzy and her daughter Mai—Vu Tran, with his mother and sister, escaped Vietnam by boat and ended up in the refugee camps on Pulau Bidong. They spent four months there until Tran’s father sponsored them and they moved to the United States. Their reunion in Tulsa, Oklahoma—where Tran would grow up—was where he met his father for the first time. “On the pure joyous level of great storytelling, Dragonfish is a top notch mystery; but it also deals with so goddamn much: the ramifications of war and the perils of assimilation, the impossibility of straddling two cultures and belonging to none, the limitations of the past, grief, lost lovers, gambling, ghosts, and Vegas, baby, Vegas. Note-perfect. Heartbreaking. Profound. Dragonfish is a polished dagger of a novel that will cut out your heart." -- Charles Bock, New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Children“A haunting, beautifully written novel, almost more ghost story than thriller, as Tran explores the world of refugees, immigrants, and the long hold the past and its dead hold on the present.” – Sara Paretsky, New York Times bestselling author of the V. I. Warshawski novels"Dragonfish is a novel about identity, exile and the chains of memory wrapped in the muscle of a thriller. The suspense kept me turning the pages, but the beautiful writing and aching sense of loss remained with me long after I reached the end.” -- Lisa Brackmann, New York Times bestselling author of Rock Paper Tiger and Dragon Day“Is this an immigrant saga disguised as a crime novel? Or a smart thriller that just happens to be set in the Vietnamese immigrant community in Las Vegas? It’s both -- but what matters is that Vu Tran has written a debut novel of uncommon artistry, about a group of Vietnamese Americans and the history of love, violence, and sacrifice that binds them together and tears them apart.” – Tom Perrotta, New York Times-bestselling author of Nine Inches and Little Children“Vu Tran's spellbinding debut novel had me turning pages late into the night. I was drawn in partly by the book's utterly engrossing plot, partly by its vivid portrayal of a pitiless and dangerous Las Vegas, but mostly by its lovingly interwoven themes of loss, longing, renewal, and cultural memory.” – Tim O’Brien, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Lifetime Achievement“Vu Tran’s Dragonfish is that rare hybrid marvel—a literary thriller, a narrative of migration and loss that upends the conventions of any form. Tran draws the reader into an exquisitely rendered world of violence and heartbreak, loss and love that is impossible to forget.” – Dinaw Mengestu, author of The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears and How to Read the Air“Sometimes it's creepy, like a really fine noir novel. Other times it's heartbreaking, as when it dives deep into the anguish of Vietnamese refugees. But either way, Dragonfish is absolutely gripping. Vu Tran has written a terrific novel.” – Tom Bissell, author of The Father of All Things: A Marine, His Son, and the Legacy of VietnamVu Tran is the winner of a Whiting Award recognizing “exceptional talent and promise,” and he teaches creative writing at the University of Chicago. In 2008, Tran was asked to contribute a short story about Chinatown to the Las Vegas Noir anthology (Akashic Books). After “This Or Any Desert” was included in the 2009 Best American Mystery Stories, he found himself still intensely drawn to the four main characters—Robert, Suzy, Sonny, and Sonny Jr.. In particular, he thought it would be interesting to apply elements of his own life to their backstories. Tran expanded the story and devised Suzy’s letters, the novel’s secondary narrative, which provides a riveting literary and emotional contrast to the crime narrative.Tod Goldberg is the author of several books of fiction, including the novels Living Dead Girl, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Fake Liar Cheat and the popular Burn Notice series, as well as two collections of short stories, Simplifyand Other Resort Cities. His essays, nonfiction, and journalism have appeared widely, including, most recently, in Best American Essays 2013. His latest novel, Gangsterland, was release in fall 2014. Tod Goldberg holds an MFA in Creative Writing and Literature from Bennington College and lives in Indio, CA where he directs the Low Residency MFA program in Creative Writing & Writing for the Performing Arts at the University of California, Riverside.

First Cuts from First Draft - Dinaw Mengestu

Aspen Public Radio

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 6, 2015 6:59

Dinaw Mengestu was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1978. He is the recipient of a fellowship in fiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts and a Lannan Literary Award, and received a "5 under 35" Award from the National Book Foundation. His first novel, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, was named a New York Times Notable Book and awarded the Guardian First Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, among numerous other honors. His latest novel is called All Of Our Names. More about First Draft at aspenpublicradio.org/programs/first-draft

arts cuts ethiopia first draft addis ababa new york times notable books new york foundation national book foundation first fiction guardian first book award lannan literary award dinaw mengestu los angeles times art seidenbaum award

First Draft - Dinaw Mengestu

Aspen Public Radio

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 6, 2015 29:23

Dinaw Mengestu was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1978. He is the recipient of a fellowship in fiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts and a Lannan Literary Award, and received a "5 under 35" Award from the National Book Foundation. His first novel, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, was named a New York Times Notable Book and awarded the Guardian First Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, among numerous other honors. His latest novel is called All Of Our Names. More about First Draft at aspenpublicradio.org/programs/first-draft

arts ethiopia first draft addis ababa new york times notable books new york foundation national book foundation first fiction guardian first book award lannan literary award dinaw mengestu los angeles times art seidenbaum award

Dinaw Mengestu

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 9, 2015 28:29

In All Our Names, Dinaw Mengestu explores unlikely love in the midst of conflict.

dinaw mengestu

Dinaw Mengestu

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 9, 2015

In All Our Names, Dinaw Mengestu explores unlikely love in the midst of conflict.

dinaw mengestu

Dinaw Mengestu

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 9, 2015

In All Our Names, Dinaw Mengestu explores unlikely love in the midst of conflict.

stories podcast href dinaw mengestu

Dinaw Mengestu

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 9, 2015

In All Our Names, Dinaw Mengestu explores unlikely love in the midst of conflict.

dinaw mengestu

Dinaw Mengestu : All Our Names

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 30, 2014 29:25

All Our Names is the story of two young men who come of age during an African revolution, drawn from the safe confines of the university campus into the intensifying clamor of the streets outside. But as the line between idealism and violence becomes increasingly blurred, the friends are driven apart—one into the deepest peril, […] The post Dinaw Mengestu : All Our Names appeared first on Tin House.

african names tin house dinaw mengestu

JOSH WEIL reads from THE GREAT GLASS SEA and MIKE HARVKEY reads from IN THE COURSE OF HUMAN EVENTS

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 25, 2014 54:02

The Great Glass Sea (Grove Press) In The Course of Human Events (Soft Skull Press) Join us for a captivating reading from two dynamic writers of fiction. Josh Weil's critically acclaimed 2009 novella collection The New Valley was the winner of the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction, a National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” selection, and a New York Times Editor's Choice. He follows this success with his debut novel, The Great Glass Sea, an epic, dystopian tale inspired by the true story of Agrikombinat Moskovsky, an area on the outskirts of Moscow that was transformed into a 24 hour greenhouse. Set in an alternate present, Weil spins a tale of brotherly love steeped in Russian folklore that will appeal to fans of Cormac McCarthy's The Road and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, beautifully illustrated throughout with Weil's own line drawings. In this thrilling debut novel - equal parts satire and morality play - Mike Harvkey shines a sharp light on the dark and radical underbelly of the floundering American Midwest. As he leads us down the violent spiral of a desperate youth, he explores with unflinching acuity the ugly nature of hate, the untempered force of personality, and the sometimes horrific power of having someone believe in you. Praise for Josh Weil "Weil meticulously imagines people and their histories, and presents them as a product of their places. This is perhaps the hardest thing for a fiction writer of any age, working in any form, to accomplish.."--Anthony Doerr, New York Times Book Review "[Weil] gives voice to those without, to those entombed on forgotten hillsides, to those orphaned and tending calves and tractors, reminding us that no matter how isolated, how lonely, tender hearts burn everywhere, they burn bright, and they burn on."--Don Waters, The Believer Praise for Mike Harvkey "With this stunning debut, a major new talent bursts upon the world of American Letters. In the Course of Human Events is as brave as it is brilliant, as unsettling as it is important, and unlike anything else I've read. Mike Harvkey writes scenes of uncommon imagination, characters that leap to life at a single stroke. They will grab you in a bear hug, or by the throat (and sometimes both), and carry you along through a story every bit as gripping. A fearless exploration of an uncomfortable corner of the human heart--and an America little examined and even less understood--this is an important novel. Add to that the fact that it's also so damn funny and here comes one hell of a book." - Josh Weil, author of "The New Valley" "In the Course of Human Events is a dark, and yet compassionate gaze into the frustrated, violent, and broken heart of America. Mike Harvkey has written a gripping, bold and daring novel unlike any I've had the pleasure of reading before."--Dinaw Mengestu, MacArthur Genius Fellow and author of "How to Read the Air" and "The Wonderful Things that Heaven Bears" Josh Weil is the author of the The Great Glass Sea (Grove, 2014) and The New Valley (Grove, 2009), a New York Times Editors Choice that won the Sue Kaufman Prize from The American Academy of Arts and Letters, the New Writers Award from the GLCA, and a “5 Under 35” Award from the National Book Foundation. Weil's other writing has appeared in Granta, Esquire, One Story, The Sun, and The New York Times. A recipient of fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation, MacDowell, Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers' Conferences, he has been Distinguished Visiting Writer at Bowling Green State University and Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi. He lives in the northern the Sierra Nevada mountains. Mike Harvkey grew up in rural northwest Missouri, near the city of Independence, a crystal meth stronghold long before Breaking Bad. When he moved to New York in 2001 to attend Columbia's Creative Writing MFA Program as a Bingham Fellow, he began training Kyokushin, a brutal form of martial art known for bare-knuckle fighting, and was promoted to black belt in 2006. One of his short stories won Zoetrope All-Story Magazine's short fiction contest; others have been published in Mississippi Review and Alaska Quarterly Review.

Dinaw Mengestu

Play Episode Listen Later May 29, 2014 28:29

The author discusses the NEA Big Read selection, The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears, his novel about an Ethiopian exile in a gentrifying Washington, DC neighborhood.

washington dc ethiopian beautiful things dinaw mengestu heaven bears

Dinaw Mengestu

Play Episode Listen Later May 29, 2014

The author discusses the NEA Big Read selection, The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears, his novel about an Ethiopian exile in a gentrifying Washington, DC neighborhood.

washington dc ethiopian beautiful things stories podcast href dinaw mengestu heaven bears

Dinaw Mengestu

Play Episode Listen Later May 29, 2014

The author discusses the NEA Big Read selection, The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears, his novel about an Ethiopian exile in a gentrifying Washington DC neighborhood.

washington dc ethiopian beautiful things dinaw mengestu heaven bears

Dinaw Mengestu

Publishers Weekly Insider

Play Episode Listen Later May 29, 2014

The author discusses the NEA Big Read selection, The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears, his novel about an Ethiopian exile in a gentrifying Washington, DC neighborhood.

washington dc ethiopian beautiful things dinaw mengestu heaven bears

Dinaw Mengestu author of All Our Names

The Avid Reader Show

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 24, 2014 38:23

From acclaimed author Dinaw Mengestu, a recipient of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 award, The New Yorker’s 20 Under 40 award, and a 2012 MacArthur Foundation genius grant, comes an unforgettable love story about a searing affair between an American woman and an African man in 1970s America and an unflinching novel about the fragmentation of lives that straddle countries and histories. The Avid Reader show is sponsored by Wellington Square Bookshop in Chester County, PA. and hosted by WCHE AM 1520 every Monday at 5PM. www.wellingtonsquarebooks.com

america american books african names new yorker audiobooks macarthur foundation chester county national book foundation avid reader dinaw mengestu

PW Radio 67: Dinaw Mengestu

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 24, 2014 32:55

publishing dinaw mengestu

All Our Names: Dinaw Mengestu

ALOUD @ Los Angeles Public Library

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 27, 2014 68:43

From the MacArthur Award-winning writer, comes a subtle and quietly devastating new novel about love, exile and the fragmentation of lives that straddle countries and histories. All Our Names is a tale of friendship between two young men who come of age during an African revolution and the emotional and physical boundaries that tear them apart--one drawn into peril, the other into the safety of the American Midwest. In this political novel, Mengestu presents a portrait of love and grace, of self-determination, of the names we are given and the names we earn. *Click here to see photos from the program!

african names american midwest macarthur award dinaw mengestu

Dinaw Mengestu (BSS #539)

The Bat Segundo Show & Follow Your Ears

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 25, 2014 48:40

MacArthur Fellow Dinaw Mengestu's novels have been needlessly categorized as "immigrant fiction" when his work is about so much more. On the publication of his third novel, ALL OUR NAMES, Mengestu unpacks these issues with us, discussing how journalism helped him to peer into revolutionary turmoil, writing about quiet African immigrants, the American perspectives that are often overlooked, the depths of emotional trauma, and contemporary fiction's relationship with the postcolonial.

american african dinaw mengestu

Dinaw Mengestu, How to Read the Air

Famous and Award Winning Authors

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 14, 2013

This interview takes place after Dinaw Mengestu read from his book, How to Read the Air. He was the sixth author to speak at the Walt Whitman series at St. Francis College.

air walt whitman st francis sfc dinaw mengestu sfcny

Ismet Prcic