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The choices we have here in America are different from the choices people have in Russia. We can vote. That is the most important right that has not been taken away. In Putin's Russia, elections have not been free for decades. Opposition candidates are barred from running, and even then the results are manipulated to deliver Putin a staggering victory. So this is what I can tell my American listeners: vote. – Svetlana SatchkovaSvetlana Satchkova is a Russian-born journalist and novelist who immigrated to the United States in 2016. She covers culture and politics, with bylines in the Rumpus, Newsweek, LARB, the Independent, and others. Currently a research fellow at the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia at NYU, she holds an MFA from Brooklyn College and lives in Brooklyn. Svetlana has published three novels in Russian; The Undead: A Novel of Modern Russia, is her English-language debut.
The big picture of national politics: Trump is not just sinking in the polls, he's accelerating into the most unpopular and toxic parts of his presidency. People are focused on the economy, they want the war in Iran finished – instead, Trump is pushing his billion-dollar ballroom and his slush fund to pay-off the white-supremacist insurrectionists – Harold Meyerson comments.Also: Trump's Billion-Dollar Ballroom is a familiar kind of corruption, but his slush fund to pay the insurrectionists and paramilitary groups that commit violence in his name is an unprecedented attack on democracy. Rob Weissman of Public Citizen explains, and also talks about the immense, and immensely unpopular, proposed Arc d'Trump.Plus: I met Elmore Leonard, who died on August 20, 2013 at age 87, only a couple of times, but he was a memorable guy, totally unpretentious about his massive accomplishments: 45 novels, including many best-sellers, almost a dozen made into movies and TV shows, and a reputation among the literati as one of the great writers of dialogue in our time. When I spoke with him in 2000, he had just published Pagan Babies, a comic novel on the unlikely subject of genocide in Rwanda. (Originally recorded in October, 2000 and later published in LARB on August 20, 2013.)
Hannah Smart, the noted David Foster Wallace scholar, returns to the show to discuss her debut novel, Meat Puppets. Smart writes metafictions anchored in the anxieties of the human heart. Meat Puppets is an ambitious first novel that, like the work of the late David Foster Wallace, is alternately uproarious, absurdist, and sad. In this discussion, we talk through some key themes of her novel, including the porousness of personal identity, the alienation of celebrity, and the relationship between verisimilitude and metafiction. It is relatively spoiler free and many surprises and delights remain for the reader.Follow Hannah on Twitter(X): @fowlinghantodSubscribe to Hannah's Substack: @howlingfantodOrder Hannah's debut novel, Meat Puppets: https://merchtable.bigcartel.com/product/meat-puppets-by-hannah-smartRead Hannah's LARB piece: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/nothing-ever-happens-mister-squishy-and-the-year-of-the-sentence-diagram/Please consider becoming a paying subscriber to our Patreon to get exclusive bonus episodes, early access releases, and bookish merch: https://www.patreon.com/MoralMinorityFollow us on Twitter(X).Devin: @DevinGoureCharles: @satireredactedEmail us at: moralminoritypod@gmail.com
Kate Wolf and Eric Newman are joined by photographer Reynaldo Rivera, whose work is featured on the cover of the LARB's spring issue, which celebrates 15 years of the Los Angeles Review of Books. Rivera discusses his latest photobook, Propiedad Privada, edited by Lauren Mackler and Hedi El Kholti. Along with essays and stories by writers such as Constance Debre, Brontez Purnell, Colm Tóibín, and Justin Torres, it showcases images from Rivera's personal collection, most of which he never intended to show publicly. The photos are intimate and erotic, full of longing, vulnerability, and hope. They capture Rivera's friends, lovers, his longtime partner Bianco, and Rivera himself, in ephemeral moments of lust and physical connection. Utilizing the close spaces of bedrooms, bars and alleys as their setting, they document private performances, intense intimacy, and moments of charged reflection. Together with Rivera's first book, Propiedad Privada offers a complex portrait of Latinx queer life in the U.S., while also taking its place in the timeless archive of desire.
In honor of the 30th anniversary of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, novelist Hannah Smart once again joins us for a discussion of the ethical limits and critical revaluation of this maximally ambitious and chronically misunderstood novel. A polygenetic and polyphonic novel, Infinite Jest's interlocking themes and characters circle back to the urgent need and paradoxical impossibility of self-forgetting and transcendence within the American psyche ravaged by the grotesqueries of late consumer capitalism and the imperatives of individualism. Infinite Jest builds its literary DNA out from the spiritual seriousness of Dostoevsky, the parables of Kafka, Pynchon conspiracism, and Gassian forebodings of the infantile fascist lurking in the intellectual artifices of the hidden American heart. It is a novel about the deadly pleasures of the culture industry and temptation of the hedonic oblivion promised by advertisers. In this discussion, we focus on what it can still teach us about the hard-won discipline of sustained activity of reading, what's still true about the ethics of individual responsibility, and hold up a comic mirror to the horror of our American political present and besieged future.Follow Hannah on Twitter(X): @fowlinghantodSubscribe to Hannah's Substack: @howlingfantodPreorder Hannah's debut novel, Meat Puppets: https://merchtable.bigcartel.com/product/meat-puppets-by-hannah-smartRead Hannah's LARB piece: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/nothing-ever-happens-mister-squishy-and-the-year-of-the-sentence-diagram/Please consider becoming a paying subscriber to our Patreon to get exclusive bonus episodes, early access releases, and bookish merch: https://www.patreon.com/MoralMinorityFollow us on Twitter(X).Devin: @DevinGoureCharles: @satireredactedEmail us at: moralminoritypod@gmail.com
In this special episode, host Eric Newman is joined by LARB Film Editors Annie Berke and Elizabeth Alsop and Film Comment co-editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute for a look back at the year in film and the current crop of Oscar nominees ahead of this year's awards.
David Foster Wallace, the loquacious novelist behind Infinite Jest, seemingly predicted much of our culture moment from AI avatars to the hypnotic and addictive temptation of the infinite scroll. In his fiction and essays, he agonized over the ways in which advertisers and mass media have coopted techniques of subversion and rebellion like irony to make products that are more entertaining, more flattering to our egos, and more difficult to ply ourselves away from. As a writer of dizzingly erudite, complexly structured, yet morally earnest fiction he was concerned with devising new imaginative ways of competing with our short-circuited attention spans. Great literature he argued, like life, if it is to be meaningful and edifying, requires difficulty, concentration, and attentiveness. Wallace made great demands on his readers, but always with the implicit promise that in wading through the difficulty and by sticking with the forking paths of his sentences and elliptical thoughts, a higher pleasure and more last meaning would arise. The culmination of this effort at demonstrating the virtues of difficuty and choosing what we pay attention to is his posthumously published novel, The Pale King. In this episode, Hannah Smart, joins us to discuss this novel's profound meditations on civics, conversion experiences, and the transcendence of boredom. The novel posits a new kind of modern hero and solution to the problem of meaning that has plagued modernity and life under capitalism. According to Wallace, the secret to enduring modern life is the ability to withstand the despair of boredom and push through tedium and meaningless data to the point of transcendent acceptance and singular awareness. Through a discussion of her recent essay, Nothing Ever Happens: "Mister Squishy" and The Year of the Sentence Diagram, we analyze how Wallace on an atomic sentence level enacts the alienation, fretful search for meaning, and the dissolution of the self. Wallace longed for an escape from the prison of a neurotic self-consciousness and The Pale King was his final attempt to flee the analysis-paralysis of the reflexive self towards a higher purpose.It is a novel that poses the provocative thesis that true heroism in modern American life consists in the endurance of soul-crushing boredom, and that by cultivating sustained attentiveness and wading through the myriad noise of the culture industry we may find on the other side an enlightened tranquility. Follow Hannah on Twitter(X): @fowlinghantodSubscribe to Hannah's Substack: @howlingfantodRead the LARB piece: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/nothing-ever-happens-mister-squishy-and-the-year-of-the-sentence-diagram/Please consider becoming a paying subscriber to our Patreon to get exclusive bonus episodes, early access releases, and bookish merch: https://www.patreon.com/MoralMinorityFollow us on Twitter(X).Devin: @DevinGoureCharles: @satireredactedEmail us at: moralminoritypod@gmail.com
Memoirist and director of the Institute for American Indian Arts MFA program Deborah Jackson Taffa talks to Jared about her new book, Whiskey Tender. Deborah shares how memoir writing is a form of familial and historical preservation, and offers advice on having difficult conversations with the real people who appear in our creative nonfiction. Plus, she discusses the value of the low-res IAIA program for both indigenous and non-indigenous writers, offers strategies for sustaining creative energy, and describes methods to avoid falling into a common misstep for MFA students: social comparison.A citizen of the Quechan (Yuma) Nation and Laguna Pueblo, Deborah Jackson Taffa is the director of the MFA in Creative Writing program at the Institute for American Indian Arts. She is the author of the memoir WHISKEY TENDER and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa. Her writing can be found at PBS, Salon, LARB, Brevity, A Public Space, The Boston Review, The Rumpus, and the Best American Nonrequired Reading. In late 2021, she was named a MacDowell Fellow, Kranzberg Arts Fellow, and Tin House Scholar. In 2022, she won a PEN American Grant for Oral History and was named a Hedgebrook Fellow. Find her at deborahtaffa.com and on social media @deborahtaffa.MFA Writers is hosted by Jared McCormack and produced by Jared McCormack and Hanamori Skoblow. New episodes are released every two weeks. You can find more MFA Writers at MFAwriters.com.BE PART OF THE SHOWDonate to the show at Buy Me a Coffee.Leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts.Submit an episode request. If there's a program you'd like to learn more about, contact us and we'll do our very best to find a guest who can speak to their experience.Apply to be a guest on the show by filling out our application.STAY CONNECTEDTwitter: @MFAwriterspodInstagram: @MFAwriterspodcastFacebook: MFA WritersEmail: mfawriterspodcast@gmail.com
The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience
Cheers! Welcome to our year-end Holiday Party for 2025. How Long Did Famous Novels Take to Write (infographic)? Kafka's diaries are heartening Why We Should Keep Notebooks (According to Joan Didion) Milena on being more intentional as a reader/writer The last chapter of Stephen Pressfield's The War of Art and his blurb of Adam's American Tiger Who couldn't use 3 years uninterrupted in a cabin in the woods to finish your novel lol Revisiting “Beginner's Mindset” and the concept of the Duning-Kruger Effect: The “Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias where people with low ability in a specific area overestimate their competence, while experts often underestimate theirs, stemming from a lack of self-awareness about their own deficiencies or the complexity of the topic. Essentially, you need some knowledge to realize how much you don't know; the unskilled lack this meta-cognitive ability, leading to inflated confidence, while the skilled recognize the vastness of what's unknown, sometimes leading to underconfidence.” Milena's Two Favorite Books of 2025! Milena read (or listened to) 64 books this year, and her faves all come down to language Joining up with yours truly and our favorite TWF interviews in 2025: Albom, Zang, Lockhart, Skolnick, and Jeneva (freakin) Rose lol, and a shoutout to the most popular episode of the year with Emma Knight We were named one of the “12 Best Writing Podcasts” by LARB, and won a Spotify “2025 Most Shared Show” Awarde a dream, and American Tiger is a gorgeous, subtly subversive yarn ringing with truth." [This episode is sponsored by Ulysses. Go to ulys.app/writeabook to download Ulysses, and use the code FILES at checkout to get 25% off the first year of your yearly subscription."] [Discover The Writer Files Extra: Get 'The Writer Files' Podcast Delivered Straight to Your Inbox at writerfiles.fm] [If you're a fan of The Writer Files, please click FOLLOW to automatically see new interviews. And drop us a rating or a review wherever you listen] Show Notes: How Long Did Famous Novels Take to Write? (infographic) Ever wondered how long it takes to write a classic? via @agelessliterature Why We Should Keep Notebooks (According to Joan Didion) via @literahua Milena's Two Favorite Books of 2025 Milena Gonzalez | Writer | Reader | Book Reviewer diary_of_a_book_babe on Instagram Kelton Reid Instagram Kelton Reid on Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Today I have the privilege and pleasure of speaking with Nicholas Mirzoeff and Priscilla Wathington about the genocide in Gaza, and how developing a new way of seeing and writing is demanded of us to address this historical moment. In the words of Silvia Federici, “Palestine is the World.” We take Nick's recent book, To See in the Dark, and animate it by having Priscilla read from her poetry. Nick writes: “After a year of genocide, I think politics is now the meeting of the visible and the unspeakable. Unspeakable in that what is visible is so awful as to be beyond ordinary words. Unspeakable in that what is visible is forbidden to be said.What has been sayable about the unspeakable? It has been poets who have found ways to make language do what it should not have to do.”The goal behind this dynamic interplay is to create the grounds for solidarity with Palestine, and with all other oppressed peoples in the world, and with the planet itself.Nicholas Mirzoeff is Professor and chair in the Department of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. To See In The Dark: Palestine and Visual Activism (2025) is being translated into Czech, Italian and Spanish. It is the most recent of more than a dozen books, including How To See The World (2015), translated into eleven languages. Since Occupy Wall Street (2011), his work has been in dialogue with social movements, including Black Lives Matter (The Appearance of Black Lives Matter) and #MeToo. His writing has appeared in the Guardian, The Nation and LARB. He lives in New York.Priscilla Wathington is a Palestinian American poet/editor and the author of the chapbook, Paper and Stick, which draws from her past human rights advocacy work. She is asking you to resist the lie that you are too helpless, or too busy, or too small to change anything. Take your small hand and your small voice and add it to this symphony against the genocide taking place in Gaza; and speak up not only about Gaza but also Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and your own backyard, and everywhere that humanity is at risk.
It's that time of the year again! Hosts Kate Wolf, Medaya Ocher, and Eric Newman look back on some of the bright lights from a pretty dark year with a rundown of their favorite books, movies, TV shows, music, and scandals from 2025. For a full list of this year's picks, visit lareviewofbooks.org/podcasts/larb-radio-hour/
Dice nuestra muy citada Claire Dederer que Hemingway y Picasso moldearon la idea que se tenía en el siglo XX del “hombre genio”, del monstruo del arte. A partir de la expo ‘Miró y los Estados Unidos' nos preguntamos dónde encaja Miró en este esquema, aprovechamos para indagar sobre un montón de mujeres artistas con sus repetidas historias de ninguneo y desequilibrio en la ‘power couple' y buceamos en la compleja taxonomía del ‘bro' moderno, del bro académico al bro algorítmico. Desde la Fundació Miró de Barcelona, y con Dolors Rodríguez Roig. Artículos relacionados: Sobre el brodernismo literario: ‘Against High Brodernism', por Federico Perelmuter en LARB. Las artistas de ‘Atelier 17', por Christina Weyl La taxonomía del nuevo bro: ‘A TEASE NO. 19: A TAXONOMIZATION OF MODERN BROS', por Gray Chapman La mística del cryptobro asalta la cultura. Noelia Ramírez, El País Sobre las nuevas sátiras en el cine y la cosa entre ‘Bugonia' y ‘Una batalla tras otra': Stop trying to educate me; I came here to laugh, por Shania Jade en ‘Filmbug' (Substack) Libros: ‘Monstruos', Claire Federer (Península) Trad. Ana Camallonga Cortos: ‘+10K', de Gala Hernández López
This is a preview — for the full episode (released: Sept 24, 2025), subscribe: https://newmodels.io https://patreon.com/newmodels https://newmodels.substack.com Writer Gideon Jacobs joins to discuss ontological literacy among other things in the wake of the assassination of American Christian Nationalist Charlie Kirk, which in our assessment was not actually a political assassination. Names Cited: Alexander Dugan, Amanda Askell, Alain Badiou, Jean Baudrillard, Becoming Press, Byung-Chul Han, CERN, Charlie Kirk, Donald Trump, Kevin Munger, Elon Musk, Eric Davis, Grok, Felix Guattari, Jay Springet, Jesus Christ, Jezebel, Keith Johnstone, Kamala Harris, Larry Ellison, Luigi Mangione, Marshall McLuhan, Mara McKevitt, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Carroll, Vladamir Putin, RFK Jr., René Girard, Theo Anthony, Tyler Robinson, UnitedHealthcare, Walter Ong See also: https://www.instagram.com/gideon___jacobs NM Talkcore: Gideon Jacobs on Trump as Image (Nov 2024) NM Talkcore: Gideon Jacobs on Musk, Trump, and Fiction (2025) Gideon Jacobs, “Player One and Main Character,” (Apr. 2025) https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/player-one-and-main-character/ Gideon Jacobs, “Trump l'Oeil,” (LARB, Nov 2024) https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/trump-loeil/ Jay Springett: https://thejaymo.net/permanentlymoved/ https://newmodels.io
Casella heads to Readercon, a Boston-based science fiction convention that’s unusually good at keeping the focus literary. This episode includes an interview with one of the conrunners, a discussion of translated SFF and the Translated Hugo Initiative, and a visit with a new romance bookstore in Cambridge. Some quick coffee reporting, as well. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Credits: Featuring interviews with: Rae Borman @ Readercon Riley @ Lovestruck Books Host: Jake Casella Brookins Music by Giselle Gabrielle Garcia Artwork by Rob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough Transcribers: Kate Dollarhyde and John WM Thompson References: Rae Borman New England Finger Dancers Naomi Novik’s Scholomance Brandon Mull’s Fablehaven Katherine Rundell’s Impossible Creatures James Blish Joanna Russ’s The Female Man Benjamin Rosenbaum & our episode on Fire Logic Sunny Moraine & our episode on Pattern Recognition Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons Will McMahon NEA grant cuts and translated SF: 3% Podcast, Adam Morgan’s LARB article, and Strange Horizon’s reviews & podcast on the subject. Eden Kupermintz & our episode on The Silmarillion The Translated Hugo Initiative: translatedhugo.org Renay's "That's a Nice Review You've Got There" Michael Cisco Jon Stone’s The Monster At The End of This Book George Howell & Broadsheet coffee Chip Pons's Winging it With You Sarah McLean Omegaverse (do be careful where you look that up) The Ripped Bodice Grump & Sunshine Read My Lips Boston Harvard Coop Bookstore, Trident, Purple Couch Candlewick Press Ingram distributors Cat Sebastian's We Could Be So Good & Star Shipped Rachel Reid's The Shots You Take Adam Silvera Sarah J. Maas Rebecca Yarros’s Fourth Wing S.T. Gibson’s Evocation & Ascencion Rina Kent, Navessa Allen Heather Bartos’s Quickies Emily Henry, Tessa Bailey, Sarah McLean, Kim Swizz Everina Maxwell’s Winter Orbit
Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books.Please consider supporting ARB's Patreon!Credits:Featuring interviews with:Rae Borman @ ReaderconRiley @ Lovestruck BooksHost: Jake Casella BrookinsMusic by Giselle Gabrielle GarciaArtwork by Rob PattersonOpening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John BroughTranscribers: Kate Dollarhyde and John WM ThompsonReferences:Rae BormanNew England Finger DancersNaomi Novik's ScholomanceBrandon Mull's FablehavenKatherine Rundell's Impossible CreaturesJames BlishJoanna Russ's The Female ManBenjamin Rosenbaum & our episode on Fire LogicSunny Moraine & our episode on Pattern RecognitionBeneath Ceaseless Skies, Clarkesworld, Strange HorizonsWill McMahonNEA grant cuts and translated SF: 3% Podcast, Adam Morgan's LARB article, and Strange Horizon's reviews & podcast on the subject.Eden Kupermintz & our episode on The SilmarillionThe Translated Hugo Initiative: translatedhugo.orgRenay's "That's a Nice Review You've Got There"Michael CiscoJon Stone's The Monster At The End of This BookGeorge Howell & Broadsheet coffeeChip Pons's Winging it With YouSarah McLeanOmegaverse (do be careful where you look that up)The Ripped BodiceGrump & SunshineRead My Lips BostonHarvard Coop Bookstore, Trident, Purple CouchCandlewick PressIngram distributorsCat Sebastian's We Could Be So Good & Star ShippedRachel Reid's The Shots You TakeAdam Silvera Sarah J. MaasRebecca Yarros's Fourth WingS.T. Gibson's Evocation & AscencionRina Kent, Navessa AllenHeather Bartos's QuickiesEmily Henry, Tessa Bailey, Sarah McLean, Kim SwizzEverina Maxwell's Winter Orbit
Eric Newman and Medaya Ocher are joined by writer and professor Sebastian Castillo whose new novel Fresh, Green Life is the LARB Book Club pick for the summer. Fresh, Green Life follows a narrator, also named Sebastian Castillo, who has resolved to spend a year alone, exercising, watching self-improvement videos and thinking about how he has arrived at this particular point in his life: a lapsed adjunct philosophy professor, obsessed with a former classmate named Maria, but disconnected from everyone around him. Castillo discusses a certain type of lost literary man, the creation of art, and the why it may or may not all be worth it.
Eric Newman and Medaya Ocher are joined by writer and professor Sebastian Castillo whose new novel "Fresh, Green Life" is the LARB Book Club pick for the summer. "Fresh, Green Life" follows a narrator, also named Sebastian Castillo, who has resolved to spend a year alone, exercising, watching self-improvement videos and thinking about how he has arrived at this particular point in his life: a lapsed adjunct philosophy professor, obsessed with a former classmate named Maria, but disconnected from everyone around him. Castillo discusses a certain type of lost literary man, the creation of art, and the why it may or may not all be worth it.
"Do I dare / Disturb the universe?" I've been waiting to record this episode for a long time: Megan Quigley, my dear friend and colleague, joins the podcast to talk about T. S. Eliot and "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."Megan Quigley is an associate professor of English at Villanova University, where she is also on the Irish Studies and Gender and Women's Studies faculties. She is the author of Modernist Fiction and Vagueness: Philosophy, Form, and Language (Cambridge UP, 2015) and the co-editor of Eliot Now (Bloomsbury, 2024). She is also the editor of two clusters of essays on #MeToo, Eliot, and modernism in Modernism/modernity Print+ (2019, 2020). Her essays have appeared in the James Joyce Quarterly, Modernism/modernity, Philosophy and Literature, Poetics Today, LARB, the T. S. Eliot Studies Annual, nonsite, and the Cambridge Companion to European Modernism. She is a four-time lecturer and seminar leader at the T. S. Eliot International Summer School. Her current book project is called "The Love Song of Modernism" and is on modernism and fan fiction. She has two essays in progress on AI and literature and an essay forthcoming on "T. S. Eliot's Women" in A Companion to Eliot's Complete Prose.As always, make sure you're following the podcast on your platform of choice, and, if you've been enjoying it, leave a rating and review. Please also share the podcast with your friends. More soon!
*Patreon- and Substack-only bonus episode teaser, click here for the full episode*For this month's bonus episode, we're mixing things up a little—this time, Traci is the one being interviewed! The fine folks at LARB Radio Hour, Medaya Ocher and Eric Newman, speak with Traci to discuss the impact of social media on publishing, the content creator life, and the way readers discover books today. At the end of the episode, Medaya, Eric, and Traci offer readers a rundown of recommendations for the books getting us through 2025.You can find everything we discuss on today's show on The Stacks' website:https://www.thestackspodcast.com/unabridged/2025/7/11/tsu-48-larbConnect with LARB Radio: Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Youtube | PodcastConnect with The Stacks: Instagram | Twitter | Shop | Patreon | Goodreads | SubscribeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Medaya Ocher and Eric Newman speak with Traci Thomas, host of the "The Stacks” podcast. They discuss the impact of social media on publishing, the content creator life, and the way readers discover books today. At the end of the episode, Medaya, Eric, and Traci offer readers a rundown of recommendations for the books getting us through 2025.
Medaya Ocher and Eric Newman speak with Traci Thomas, host of the "The Stacks” podcast. They discuss the impact of social media on publishing, the content creator life, and the way readers discover books today. At the end of the episode, Medaya, Eric, and Traci offer readers a rundown of recommendations for the books getting us through 2025.
This is a preview — for the full episode, subscribe: https://newmodels.io https://patreon.com/newmodels https://newmodels.substack.com Gideon Jacobs joins NM to discuss his latest piece for the LA Review of Books, “Player One and Main Character,” which explores the logic of power in a time when some of its key agents are no longer operating in base reality. Related: Lil Internet's “Hallucinator's Dice” (unlocked) https://soundcloud.com/newmodels/hallucinators-dice See also: "Player One and Main Character" (LARB, Apr 2025) https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/player-one-and-main-character/ “Trump l'Oeil,” (LARB, Nov 2024) https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/trump-loeil/ NM Talkcore w/ Gideon Jacobs on Trump as Image (Nov 2024) https://on.soundcloud.com/kC8NzddUcGynZyZj6 Episode image adapted from photo by Daniel Arnold for Document Journal of Gideon Jacobs as the character Father Bartholomew Mary, 2025.
Eric Newman and Medaya Ocher speak with writer Katie Kitamura about her recent novel, "Audition," which explores a tense, complex relationship between a middle-aged actress and a young man who may or may not be her son. The book raises questions about the roles we play, the stories we inhabit, and the many choices we make. “Audition” is LARB's Book Club pick this month. Join in on the conversation at https://lareviewofbooks.org/event/larb-book-club-discussion-audition-by-katie-kitamura/
Eric Newman and Medaya Ocher speak with writer Katie Kitamura about her recent novel, "Audition," which explores a tense, complex relationship between a middle-aged actress and a young man who may or may not be her son. The book raises questions about the roles we play, the stories we inhabit, and the many choices we make. “Audition” is LARB's Book Club pick this month. Join in on the conversation at https://lareviewofbooks.org/event/larb-book-club-discussion-audition-by-katie-kitamura/
In this special episode, host Eric Newman joins LARB senior editor Paul Thompson and Film Comment co-editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute for a look at this year's Oscar nominees ahead of this weekend's award ceremony. Surveying this rather strange year in film, the gang discusses the gory camp of The Substance, the omnipresence of Wicked, the multi-genre madness of Emilia Pérez, and much more.
In this special episode, host Eric Newman joins LARB senior editor Paul Thompson and Film Comment co-editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute for a look at this year's Oscar nominees ahead of this weekend's award ceremony. Surveying this rather strange year in film, the gang discusses the gory camp of The Substance, the omnipresence of Wicked, the multi-genre madness of Emilia Pérez, and much more.
Eric Newman speaks with Colette Shade about her book “Y2K: How the 2000s Became Everything.” Revisiting the strange hallmarks of that era–remember inflatable furniture and phones without touch screens?–Colette's essays explore the social and political antecedents that formed the fashion, culture, and style of the millennial turn. With a sharp eye to the neoliberal forces that shaped the tech-fueled utopianism of the era and its aftermath, Colette's writing brings into focus the promises of Y2K against the considerably less hopeful reality we're living two decades on. "Is the Media Alright" event tickets: https://lareviewofbooks.org/event/is-the-media-all-right-larb-radio-hour-live/ Become a member of LARB: https://lareviewofbooks.org/membership/
In this week's episode, Medaya Ocher, Kate Wolf, and Eric Newman are joined by LARB contributor Gideon Jacobs for a discussion about the power of images in the era of Trump. Recorded in the hours after Trump's inauguration, Gideon and the hosts talk about how Trump and his associates use images and spectacle, the flattening and coarsening of our politics, and the possibilities for counter-imaging in dark times. You can read Gideon's essay, “Trump L'Oeil,” here at the Los Angeles Review of Books.
In this week's episode, Medaya Ocher, Kate Wolf, and Eric Newman are joined by LARB contributor Gideon Jacobs for a discussion about the power of images in the era of Trump. Recorded in the hours after Trump's inauguration, Gideon and the hosts talk about how Trump and his associates use images and spectacle, the flattening and coarsening of our politics, and the possibilities for counter-imaging in dark times. You can read Gideon's essay, “Trump L'Oeil,” at the Los Angeles Review of Books.
On July 18th, Los Angeles Review of Books and The Berggruen Institute hosted a panel discussion titled "Writing Climate Futures," featuring David Wallace-Wells, Jenny Offill, Bharat Venkat, and Jonathan Blake. As our planet faces a climate crisis, questions about the role and efficacy of environmental writing assume greater urgency by the day. Through education, envisioning fictitious new worlds, and pushing forward the public discourse, writing holds the power to move the conversation we have around the future of our planet. LARB and The Berggruen Institute convened exciting voices in the climate movement from across genres to discuss how writing can enact change. David Wallace-Wells is the author of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming (Penguin Random House, 2019), which argues that the state of the world, environmentally speaking, is “worse, much worse, than you think.” He is a weekly columnist and staff writer for the New York Times, deputy editor of New York Magazine, and he was previously the deputy editor of The Paris Review. He writes frequently about climate and the near future of science and technology. Jenny Offill is the author of three novels, Last Things, Dept. of Speculation, and most recently, Weather, which was shortlisted for the Women's Fiction Prize and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. She is also the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship. She teaches at Bard College and lives in upstate New York. Dr. Bharat Jayram Venkat is an Associate Professor at UCLA with a joint appointment spanning the Institute for Society & Genetics, the Department of History, and the Department of Anthropology. His forthcoming title—tentatively titled Swelter: A History of Our Bodies in a Warming World— is about thermal inequality, the history of heat, and the fate of our bodies in a swiftly warming world riven by inequality. Dr. Venkat is the founding director of the UCLA Heat Lab, which investigates thermal inequality from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, ranging from biology and history to anthropology and urban planning. Jonathan Blake directs the Planetary Program at the Berggruen Institute. He is the coauthor, with Nils Gilman, of Children of a Modest Star: Planetary Thinking for an Age of Crises and author of Contentious Rituals: Parading the Nation in Northern Ireland.
Kate Wolf speaks to the author Deborah Levy about her new book, a collection of essays called The Position of Spoons: And Other Intimacies. The piece collected here cite Levy's early influences from French writers like Colette, Simone de Beauvoir and Marguerite Duras to JG Ballard and Anna Quinn. The collection also moves through snippets of Levy's life: her relationship to her mother, her youth in dreary London, her abiding interest in surrealism and psychoanalysis, the way inspiration strikes and then takes shape for her novels, and the sensual and aesthetic pleasures of food and nature. In her review of the book for LARB, Grace Linden writes: “It is evident to everyone who reads Levy that language is her plaything….her words are lit from within.” Also, Emily Witt, author of Health and Safety: A Breakdown. returns to recommend A Song for the River by Philip Connors.
Kate Wolf speaks to the author Deborah Levy about her new book, a collection of essays called The Position of Spoons: And Other Intimacies. The piece collected here cite Levy's early influences from French writers like Colette, Simone de Beauvoir and Marguerite Duras to JG Ballard and Anna Quinn. The collection also moves through snippets of Levy's life: her relationship to her mother, her youth in dreary London, her abiding interest in surrealism and psychoanalysis, the way inspiration strikes and then takes shape for her novels, and the sensual and aesthetic pleasures of food and nature. In her review of the book for LARB, Grace Linden writes: “It is evident to everyone who reads Levy that language is her plaything….her words are lit from within.” Also, Emily Witt, author of Health and Safety: A Breakdown. returns to recommend A Song for the River by Philip Connors.
Sabai Talk Podcast is a conversation about Thai food, Thai cooking and Thai culture from the most visible Thai female Chefs in media: Hong Thaimee and Pailin Chongchitnant. In this episode Hong and Pailin talk about the iconic Thai dish, laab. They cover many topics including the fact that laab refers to two entirely different Thai dishes. You'll learn about why “larb” is a gross mispronunciation, the origin of laab, and of course their tips for making both types of laab at home. Connect with us at sabaitalk@hongthaimee.com As Mentioned in the Episode: Buy Laab Spice Mix: https://www.hongthaimee.com/shop/p/chiang-mai-style-laab-chili-powder Northern Laab Recipe: https://hot-thai-kitchen.com/laab-kua/ Northeastern (Isaan) Laab Recipe: https://hot-thai-kitchen.com/laab-moo/ Video: Spelling Thai Words in English: https://youtu.be/bRHqKWg2-fQ Hong Thaimee Hong's Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hongthaimee Hong's Shop https://www.hongthaimee.com/shop Hong's YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@hongthaimee Pailin Chongchitnant Pailin's YouTube Channel https://youtube.com/pailinskitchen Pailin's Cookbooks https://hot-thai-kitchen.com/htk-cookbook/ Pailin's Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hotthaikitchen
Sabai Talk Podcast is a conversation about Thai food, Thai cooking and Thai culture from the most visible Thai female Chefs in media: Hong Thaimee and Pailin Chongchitnant. In this episode Hong and Pailin talk about the iconic Thai dish, laab. They cover many topics including the fact that laab refers to two entirely different Thai dishes. You'll learn about why “larb” is a gross mispronunciation, the origin of laab, and of course their tips for making both types of laab at home. Connect with us at sabaitalk@hongthaimee.com As Mentioned in the Episode: Buy Laab Spice Mix: https://www.hongthaimee.com/shop/p/chiang-mai-style-laab-chili-powder Northern Laab Recipe: https://hot-thai-kitchen.com/laab-kua/ Northeastern (Isaan) Laab Recipe: https://hot-thai-kitchen.com/laab-moo/ Video: Spelling Thai Words in English: https://youtu.be/bRHqKWg2-fQ Hong Thaimee Hong's Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hongthaimee Hong's Shop https://www.hongthaimee.com/shop Hong's YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@hongthaimee Pailin Chongchitnant Pailin's YouTube Channel https://youtube.com/pailinskitchen Pailin's Cookbooks https://hot-thai-kitchen.com/htk-cookbook/ Pailin's Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hotthaikitchen
More podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books.Please consider supporting ARB's Patreon!Credits:Host: Jake Casella BrookinsGuest: Dan HartlandTitle: The Passion by Jeanette WintersonMusic by Giselle Gabrielle GarciaArtwork by Rob PattersonOpening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John BroughReferences:This blog has a round-up of articles and commentary on the Gaiman allegations.Dan's Snap! Criticism series at AncillaryHandheld PressVonda McInty're The Exile Waiting & DreamsnakeThe 2024 Academic Conference on Canadian Science Fiction and FantasyAnnie Luong on Margaret Atwood's The Heart Goes LastNeal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon and the Baroque CycleLaura van den Berg's State of Paradise & Casella's reviewDon DeLillo's White NoiseWinterson's Written on the Body, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal, and FrankissteinBernard Cornwell's Sharpe novelsWilliam Shakespeare's As You Like It and The Winter's TaleChina Miéville's The City & The City (though I don't think we actually name it)Salman Rushdie, Martin AmisJulian Barnes' A History of the World in 10½ ChaptersThe 1980s: A Decade of Contemporary British Fiction edited by Emily Horton, Philip Tew, and Leigh WilsonNeil Gaiman, Jeff Noon, Steph Swainston“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. EliotFrank Herbert's DuneMary Shelley's FrankensteinWendy Roy on Cherie DimalineWilliam Gibson's Pattern Recognition and othersDan's piece in LARB on Christopher Priest and his last novel, Airside
More podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books.Please consider supporting ARB's Patreon!Credits:Host: Jake Casella BrookinsGuest: Dan HartlandTitle: The Passion by Jeanette WintersonMusic by Giselle Gabrielle GarciaArtwork by Rob PattersonOpening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John BroughReferences:This blog has a round-up of articles and commentary on the Gaiman allegations.Dan's Snap! Criticism series at AncillaryHandheld PressVonda McInty're The Exile Waiting & DreamsnakeThe 2024 Academic Conference on Canadian Science Fiction and FantasyAnnie Luong on Margaret Atwood's The Heart Goes LastNeal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon and the Baroque CycleLaura van den Berg's State of Paradise & Casella's reviewDon DeLillo's White NoiseWinterson's Written on the Body, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal, and FrankissteinBernard Cornwell's Sharpe novelsWilliam Shakespeare's As You Like It and The Winter's TaleChina Miéville's The City & The City (though I don't think we actually name it)Salman Rushdie, Martin AmisJulian Barnes' A History of the World in 10½ ChaptersThe 1980s: A Decade of Contemporary British Fiction edited by Emily Horton, Philip Tew, and Leigh WilsonNeil Gaiman, Jeff Noon, Steph Swainston“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. EliotFrank Herbert's DuneMary Shelley's FrankensteinWendy Roy on Cherie DimalineWilliam Gibson's Pattern Recognition and othersDan's piece in LARB on Christopher Priest and his last novel, Airside
This week Jeremy and Reid are talking baby chicks, Sandra Berhard, Bernadette Peters, and journeys to Northampton. Other topics include Larb! Fish Larb from NYTIMES/Ali Slagle ◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠ ➩ WEBSITE ◦ YOUTUBE ◦ INSTAGRAM ➩ SUPPORT ◦ ✨VIA VENMO!✨ ◦ PATREON ◦ THE MERCH ➩ REID ◦ JEREMY ◦ JACK ◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠ ➩ withdanceandstuff@gmail.com
On July 18th, Los Angeles Review of Books and The Berggruen Institute hosted a panel discussion titled "Writing Climate Futures," featuring David Wallace-Wells, Jenny Offill, Bharat Venkat, and Jonathan Blake. As our planet faces a climate crisis, questions about the role and efficacy of environmental writing assume greater urgency by the day. Through education, envisioning fictitious new worlds, and pushing forward the public discourse, writing holds the power to move the conversation we have around the future of our planet. LARB and The Berggruen Institute convened exciting voices in the climate movement from across genres to discuss how writing can enact change. David Wallace-Wells is the author of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming (Penguin Random House, 2019), which argues that the state of the world, environmentally speaking, is “worse, much worse, than you think.” He is a weekly columnist and staff writer for the New York Times, deputy editor of New York Magazine, and he was previously the deputy editor of The Paris Review. He writes frequently about climate and the near future of science and technology. Jenny Offill is the author of three novels, Last Things, Dept. of Speculation, and most recently, Weather, which was shortlisted for the Women's Fiction Prize and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. She is also the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship. She teaches at Bard College and lives in upstate New York. Dr. Bharat Jayram Venkat is an Associate Professor at UCLA with a joint appointment spanning the Institute for Society & Genetics, the Department of History, and the Department of Anthropology. His forthcoming title—tentatively titled Swelter: A History of Our Bodies in a Warming World— is about thermal inequality, the history of heat, and the fate of our bodies in a swiftly warming world riven by inequality. Dr. Venkat is the founding director of the UCLA Heat Lab, which investigates thermal inequality from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, ranging from biology and history to anthropology and urban planning. Jonathan Blake directs the Planetary Program at the Berggruen Institute. He is the coauthor, with Nils Gilman, of Children of a Modest Star: Planetary Thinking for an Age of Crises and author of Contentious Rituals: Parading the Nation in Northern Ireland.
On July 18th, Los Angeles Review of Books and The Berggruen Institute hosted a panel discussion titled "Writing Climate Futures," featuring David Wallace-Wells, Jenny Offill, Bharat Venkat, and Jonathan Blake. As our planet faces a climate crisis, questions about the role and efficacy of environmental writing assume greater urgency by the day. Through education, envisioning fictitious new worlds, and pushing forward the public discourse, writing holds the power to move the conversation we have around the future of our planet. LARB and The Berggruen Institute convened exciting voices in the climate movement from across genres to discuss how writing can enact change. David Wallace-Wells is the author of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming (Penguin Random House, 2019), which argues that the state of the world, environmentally speaking, is “worse, much worse, than you think.” He is a weekly columnist and staff writer for the New York Times, deputy editor of New York Magazine, and he was previously the deputy editor of The Paris Review. He writes frequently about climate and the near future of science and technology. Jenny Offill is the author of three novels, Last Things, Dept. of Speculation, and most recently, Weather, which was shortlisted for the Women's Fiction Prize and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. She is also the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship. She teaches at Bard College and lives in upstate New York. Dr. Bharat Jayram Venkat is an Associate Professor at UCLA with a joint appointment spanning the Institute for Society & Genetics, the Department of History, and the Department of Anthropology. His forthcoming title—tentatively titled Swelter: A History of Our Bodies in a Warming World— is about thermal inequality, the history of heat, and the fate of our bodies in a swiftly warming world riven by inequality. Dr. Venkat is the founding director of the UCLA Heat Lab, which investigates thermal inequality from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, ranging from biology and history to anthropology and urban planning. Jonathan Blake directs the Planetary Program at the Berggruen Institute. He is the coauthor, with Nils Gilman, of Children of a Modest Star: Planetary Thinking for an Age of Crises and author of Contentious Rituals: Parading the Nation in Northern Ireland.
Keywords: Queer Rhetorics, Archival Research, Techné, Computing, Digital Storytelling. Patricia Fancher has a PhD in Rhetoric and studies rhetorical theory, feminist and queer rhetoric and digital media. She teaches Writing and Gender Studies, Digital Storytelling, Rhetoric, among other courses. Her research has been published in Peitho, Composition Studies, Rhetoric Review, Present Tense, Computers & Composition and Enculturation. She's also published creative non-fiction essays in The Sun, Huffington Post, Washington Post, Northwest Review, Catapult, and LARB. For more information visit thebigrhetoricalpodcast.weebly.com and @thebigrhet across social media platforms.
This Sam Parish has a vege-loaded extraordinary dish, but it's still simple and easy to put together for a midweek meal. This week's version uses chicken mince but Sam says pork works just as well.
In today's episode we talk about, Our Loserness, Big Bro Visits Tha Gang, Stabby Night Drives, and MUCH MORE! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/okaythatsweird/support
Let's Do Lunch! visitsZaab Zaab, a taste of authentic Thai cuisine, and semi-finalists of the 2024 James Beard Awards. With locations in Queens and Brooklyn, New York, owners Pei Wei and Bryan offer wonderful hospitality and a delectable menu of Northeastern Thai delicacies. When you enter the main dining room you are greeted by Perry, the prawn hanging from the ceiling, surrounded by a mural of sea creatures. Come with an appetite as the portions are shareable. Some of their classic signature dishes include Larb, minced duck or catfish with roasted rice lime leaves, roasted chili, mint, cilantro, and lime juice served with house greens to cut the heat, and roasted peanuts. Make it a combination with Larb Ped Udon. Their selection of whole fish features a salt-encrusted tilapia, Mieng Pia pow, marinated in cumin garlic and white pepper, stuffed with pandan and lemongrass, and charcoal roasted served with rice noodles. You'll want to suck out the head where some of the herbs and spices are hidden. Their Som Tum offerings feature Tum Ko Lat, a combination of Isan and Thai flavors of sour spicy shredded green papaya, fermented fish with roasted peanuts, and sun-dried shrimp. Don't forget to order a cocktail before you eat; some of which have just the right amount of spicey kick. The Old Siam Fashioned is smoky but tangy with smoked Phraya rum, orange bitter, star anise, and cinnamon. When it arrives at the table, a plume of smoke is literally seeping out of the top. Try their sticky rice served in tiny colorful bamboo holders, but a warning, it is addicting. So much so that they serve it as a dessert underneath juicy slices of mango.
Memoirist and director of the Institute of American Indian Arts MFA program Deborah Jackson Taffa talks to Jared about her new book, Whiskey Tender. Deborah shares how memoir writing is a form of familial and historical preservation, and offers advice on having difficult conversations with the real people who appear in our creative nonfiction. Plus, she discusses the value of the low-res IAIA program for both indigenous and non-indigenous writers, offers strategies for sustaining creative energy, and describes methods to avoid falling into a common misstep for MFA students: social comparison. A citizen of the Quechan (Yuma) Nation and Laguna Pueblo, Deborah Jackson Taffa is the director of the MFA in Creative Writing program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. She is the author of the memoir WHISKEY TENDER and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa. Her writing can be found at PBS, Salon, LARB, Brevity, A Public Space, The Boston Review, The Rumpus, and the Best American Nonrequired Reading. In late 2021, she was named a MacDowell Fellow, Kranzberg Arts Fellow, and Tin House Scholar. In 2022, she won a PEN American Grant for Oral History and was named a Hedgebrook Fellow. Find her at deborahtaffa.com and on social media @deborahtaffa. MFA Writers is hosted by Jared McCormack and produced by Jared McCormack and Hanamori Skoblow. New episodes are released every two weeks. You can find more MFA Writers at MFAwriters.com. BE PART OF THE SHOW — Donate to the show at Buy Me a Coffee. — Leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. — Submit an episode request. If there's a program you'd like to learn more about, contact us and we'll do our very best to find a guest who can speak to their experience. — Apply to be a guest on the show by filling out our application. STAY CONNECTED Twitter: @MFAwriterspod Instagram: @MFAwriterspodcast Facebook: MFA Writers Email: mfawriterspodcast@gmail.com
In this special episode, Eric Newman chats with LARB Film & TV editor Annie Berke and Film Comment co-editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute for a preview of this year's Academy Awards. Breaking down the top Oscar contenders, the group talks the best and worst of the year in movies, from Barbie to Oppenheimer, Killers of the Flower Moon, Poor Things, Maestro, and more. If you loved–or hated!–the year in film, this episode is for you.
It's once again that time of year: that's right, the Academy Awards are just around the corner. Before the winners are revealed on Sunday, Film Comment Editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute teamed up with some colleagues from Tinseltown—the editors of the Los Angeles Review of Books—to preview this year's nominees. Eric Newman, editor-at-large at LARB, and Annie Berke, the publication's Film & TV editor, joined us for a special collaboration with their podcast, the LARB Radio Hour. We had spirited debates about all the Best Picture nominees—from Oppenheimer to Killers of the Flower Moon to The Holdovers—and also talk about trends, surprises, and snubs. The Los Angeles Review of Books is a reader-supported online magazine and quarterly print journal that publishes incisive, rigorous, and engaging writing on contemporary literature and culture. If you're interested in supporting their mission, consider becoming a member at lareviewofbooks.org/membership, where you can get access to LARB's exclusive book club, featuring members-only chats with editors and luminary authors, in addition to a subscription to their quarterly journal.
In this special episode, Eric Newman chats with LARB Film & TV editor Annie Berke and Film Comment co-editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute for a preview of this year's Academy Awards. Breaking down the top Oscar contenders, the group talks the best and worst of the year in movies, from Barbie to Oppenheimer, Killers of the Flower Moon, Poor Things, Maestro, and more. If you loved–or hated!–the year in film, this episode is for you.
In the first half of the show, Medaya Ocher speaks with Hilary Leichter about her novel Terrace Story. It follows a young family who live in cramped quarters in a big city, surviving but financially strapped. One day, a woman named Stephanie comes over and when she opens the closet door they discover a magic terrace, which immediately disappears once Stephanie leaves, and only appears again when she returns. Suddenly, the family's tight, mediumrestricted lives take a turn for the magical—and the tragic. Then, Kate Wolf is joined by writer, artist, and beloved former LARB senior editor Lisa Teasley to talk about her latest book of gripping short stories, Fluid, her first in two decades.
In the first half of the show, Medaya Ocher speaks with Hilary Leichter about her novel Terrace Story. It follows a young family who live in cramped quarters in a big city, surviving but financially strapped. One day, a woman named Stephanie comes over and when she opens the closet door they discover a magic terrace, which immediately disappears once Stephanie leaves, and only appears again when she returns. Suddenly, the family's tight, mediumrestricted lives take a turn for the magical—and the tragic. Then, Kate Wolf is joined by writer, artist, and beloved former LARB senior editor Lisa Teasley to talk about her latest book of gripping short stories, Fluid, her first in two decades.
The hosts discuss one of the most memorable online meltdowns in recent memory, and then they talk about the fallout from last week’s episode. To discuss this episode with other premium subscribers, click here.Show notes/Links:“Allegations of white supremacy are tearing apart a prestigious medieval studies group”: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/09/19/its-all-white-people-allegations-white-supremacy-are-tearing-apart-prestigious-medieval-studies-groupJesse on Gabriele: https://reason.com/2020/07/08/the-reaction-to-the-harpers-letter-on-cancel-culture-proves-why-it-was-necessary/Some David Perry receipts:Original complaint about spiked review and more positive one published in LARB was here but is now protected: This is whiteness in action. This is silencing BIPOC scholars *doing* the work and labor while white men (and women) profit by doing half-assed work and their club of editors (yes they are friends - as noted in an email) work behind the scenes to keep us in the "dark".Also:24 hrs later & no word from anyone. Notably columbusing, gatekeeping and academic dishonesty takes place daily for BIPOC and it is more often than not that particular wyte scholars aren't receptive to call-ins, let alone being held accountable.Seph Rodney backs up Bond:Erik Wade tweetstorm:Bond is weaponizing her feelings: She also apologized too quickly for MRO’s liking: Some whole other apology rejection: The spiked review: https://mrambaranolm.medium.com/sounds-about-white-333d0c0fd201Gabriele apology: The LARB, too, has failed various accountability checks: Smithsonian Mag review of The Northman: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-true-history-behind-robert-eggers-the-northman-180979954/The Guardian on same: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/apr/22/norse-code-white-supremacists-reading-the-northman-robert-eggersThe image of “Christ of Mercy between the Prophets David and Jeremiah” by Diego de la Cruz comes from here. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.blockedandreported.org/subscribe