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Bret Anthony Johnston is the author of the award-winning short story collection Corpus Christi, the novels We Burn Daylight and Remember Me Like This and the editor of Naming the World: And Other Exercises for the Creative Writer. His short stories have been published in anthologized in New Stories from the South: The Year's Best; The O. Henry Prize Stories and The Best American Short Stories. His work has been widely translated and appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Esquire, The Paris Review, The New York Times Magazine and Virginia Quarterly Review. He is the Director of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin. His new short story collection is Encounters with Unexpected Animals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Emily Nemens is the author of the novel Clutch, available from Tin House. Nemens's debut novel, The Cactus League, was a New York Times Book ReviewEditors' Choice and named one of NPR's and Lit Hub's favorite books of 2020. Her stories have appeared in BOMB, The Gettysburg Review, n+1, and elsewhere; her illustrations have appeared in The New Yorker and in collaboration with Harvey Pekar. Emily spent over a decade editing literary quarterlies, including leading The Paris Review and serving as co-editor and prose editor of The Southern Review. She held the 2022-23 Picador Professorship (University of Leipzig) and teaches in the MFA program at Bennington College. She lives in central New Jersey with her husband and dog. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. This episode is sponsored by Ulysses. Go to ulys.app/writeabook to download Ulysses, and use the code OTHERPPL at checkout to get 25% off the first year of your yearly subscription. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Bret Anthony Johnston is the internationally bestselling author of the novels We Burn Daylight and Remember Me Like This, as well as the award-winning story collection Corpus Christi. He edited the craft book, Naming the World: And Other Exercises for the Creative Writer. His work has been widely translated and appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Esquire, The Paris Review, The Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere. After directing the creative writing program at Harvard University for over a decade, he is now the Director of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin. He joins Marrie Stone to talk about his latest story collection, Encounters with Unexpected Animals. These 12 pieces are masterclasses on managing time in short fiction, showing what dialogue can do, bringing setting to life, playing with POV (including 2nd person), and arranging a collection to read like an album. They discuss it all. For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It's stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you'll find an album's worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. It's perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website. (Recorded February 11, 2026) Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett Host: Marrie Stone Music: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)
Charlotte and Jo go deep on jealousy, self-hatred, and vulnerability in a conversation that touches on A Separate Peace, The Go-Between, Beowulf, and more. Then the canny and intrepid Maya Binyam joins for a discussion about the category of little girlhood, ambiguity in fiction, and female desire.Maya Binyam is the author of Hangman. Her writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the Paris Review, Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere. She is a 2025 - 2026 Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome. Please consider supporting our work on Patreon, where you can access additional materials and send us your guest and book coverage requests! Books discussed on all seasons of the podcast are aggregated here on Bookshop. Questions and comments can be directed to readingwriterspod at gmail dot com. Outro music by Marty Sulkow and Joe Valle.Charlotte Shane's most recent book is An Honest Woman. Her essay newsletter, Meant For You, can be subscribed to or read online for free, and her social media handle is @charoshane. Jo Livingstone is a writer who teaches at Pratt Institute.To support the show, navigate to https://www.patreon.com/ReadingWriters Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Join hosts J.D. Barker, Christine Daigle, Jena Brown, and Kevin Tumlinson as they discuss the week's entertainment news, including stories about Draft2Digital, Bookshop DRM, Harper's Bazaar Short Story Contest, and AI Slop books. Then, stick around for a chat with Benjamin Hale!Benjamin Hale is the author of the novel The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore (Twelve, 2011), the short fiction collection The Fat Artist and Other Stories (Simon & Schuster, 2016), and the nonfiction book Cave Mountain: A Disappearance and a Reckoning in the Ozarks (HarperCollins, 2026). He has received the Bard Fiction Prize, a Michener-Copernicus Award, and nominations for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award. His writing has appeared, among other places, in Conjunctions, Harper's Magazine, the Paris Review, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Dissent and the LA Review of Books Quarterly, and has been anthologized in Best American Science and Nature Writing. He is a senior editor at Conjunctions, teaches at Bard College and Columbia University, and lives in a small town in New York's Hudson Valley. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Much like guest Sarah Aziza's beautiful memoir, The Hollow Half, this week's show covers a lot of territory and shines light on multiple topics of interest to memoirists. We explore memoir as art—what that means and whether memoirists should strive for their work to be art per se. Aziza's book is experimental and ambitious, and as such gives this week's episode delves into craft choices and process and more. Aziza shares her family history and how her grandmother started to show up in her dreams—and how this memoir took root and ultimately became the gift it is—timely, urgent, and beautiful. Sarah Aziza is a Palestinian American writer, translator, and artist with roots in ‘Ibdis and Deir al-Balah, Gaza. She is the author of the genre-bending memoir The Hollow Half, winner of the Palestine Book Award and named a Most Anticipated and Best Book of the Year by Vulture, Vanity Fair, Literary Hub, Elle, Electric Literature, and Mizna, among others. Sarah's award-winning journalism, poetry, essays, and experimental nonfiction have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Best American Essays, among other publications. She is the recipient of fellowships and support from Fulbright, MacDowell, USA Artists, the Asian American Writers Workshop, and others. Sarah has lived and worked in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, South Africa, and Palestine, and now resides in the U.S. on occupied Munsee Lenape and Canarsie land. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Notes and Links to Peter Orner's Work Peter Orner is the author of eight books, most recently the novel, The Gossip Columnist's Daughter, named one of the best books of 2025 by the New Yorker and the Chicago Tribune, as well as the essay collections, Still No Word from You, a finalist for the PEN Award for the Art of the Essay, and Am I Alone Here?, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. His story collection Maggie Brown and Others was a New York Times Notable Book. Other books include Love and Shame and Love (Winner of the California Book Award) Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge, The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo (finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award), and Esther Stories. A recipient of the Rome Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship, Orner is also the editor of three books of oral history for the Voice of Witness series, and co-editor with Laura Lampton Scott of a new oral history series from McSweeney's called “Dispatches.” His work has appeared in The New Yorker, the Atlantic, Harper's, the Paris Review and has been awarded four Pushcart Prizes. With Yvette Benavides, he's the co-host of the Lonely Voice Podcast on Texas Public Radio. Orner recently led short courses on James Joyce's Ulysses, and Melville's Moby-Dick for the Community of Writers/Writers' Annex. He teaches at Dartmouth College and lives in Vermont. Buy The Gossip Columnist's Daughter New York Times Review of The Gossip Columnist's Daughter Peter Orner's Website At about 2:30, Peter responds to Pete's question about the feedback he's gotten since the publication of At about 3:30, Peter expands on ideas of making Chicago concrete for his readers At about 4:40, Peter gives background on family's roots in Chicago and in Eastern Europe At about 6:25, Mike Ditka slander?! At about 7:50, Peter highlights Saul Bellow as a writer who influenced him, as well as Stuart Dybek, Betty Howland, and John Irving among others At about 10:05, Peter reflects on David Foster Wallace as an “Illinois writer” At about 12:10, Peter discusses Zadie Smith and Yiyun Li, and as impressive and chill-inducing contemporary writers At about 13:30, Peter lists some reading favorites of his university students, and he expands on how they are “blown away” by James Joyce's work At about 15:00, The two fanboy over James Joyce's “The Dead” At about 16:15, Peter reflects on Pete asking if his The Gossip Columnist's Daughter would be classified as “historical fiction” At about 17:15, Peter expands on his view of the book's epigraph from Chekhov At about 18:15, Pete cites another great epigraph and great book from Jess Walter At about 18:50, The two lay out the book's exposition, and Peter describes the book's inciting incident, a tragic death At about 20:20, The two discuss the book's beginning as in medias res At about 21:30, Peter talks about the character of Babs as inspired by grandmother, and Pete shares about his Chicago grandfather's longevity At about 22:55, Peter expands on the idea of Jed, the book's narrator, feeling that three key events in 1963 were a pivot point for the family At about 26:15, Jack Ruby and the provinciality and “small world” of Chicago At about 29:10, Pete and Peter lay out Jed's college professor setup At about 30:00, Peter explains the cause of death and theories and conspiracy theories around it At about 31:35, Peter responds to Pete's musings about the old-fashioned “imperative” headlines that At about 33:00, Some of Cookie Kupcinet's last writings are discussed At about 34:30, Peter reflects on the travails and pressures of Cookie At about 36:00, Some of the prodigious pull of Irv Kupcinet is discussed, and Pete compares Irv's work to that of Ace in Casino At about 37:55, Lou Rosenthal's reticence and kinship with Robert Todd Lincoln are discussed At about 39:00, Peter expands on a scene in which the “grieving” narrator walks by the house where his ex-wife and daughter live; he discusses the importance he places on place At about 41:40, Sidney Korshak and his historical background and Chicago connection is discussed At about 44:10, The two discuss doubts in the story about the way in which Cookie died At about 45:20, Cookie's legacy and the ways in which Jed, the narrator, gains a sort of obsession with conspiracy theories and marginalia At about 48:20, Peter talks about the book's storyline as a “family story” and using a “tiny kernel” as a “jump off” point for his book At about 49:20, Peter responds to Pete's questions about the state of the current conspiracy theories involving the Kupcinets and JFK's assassination At about 51:20, The two discuss the breakup of the friendship between the Rosenthals and Kupcinets, as Pete compares a turned-down piece of writing to the book's storyline At about 53:20, Peter reflects on the intrigue that comes with At about 55:00, Peter expands on the “Captain” moniker his grandfather have, and that he played off in his book At about 58:20, The two reflect on the memorable character of Solly At about 1:01:00, Theories involving traumas and low points and broken relationships are discussed At about 1:03:00, Pete highlights a resonant last scene 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 Pete on IG, where he is @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where he is @chillsatwillpo1. You can watch other episodes on YouTube-watch and subscribe to The Chills at Will Podcast Channel. Please subscribe to both the YouTube Channel and the podcast while you're checking out this episode. Pete is very excited to have one or two podcast episodes per month featured on the website of Chicago Review of Books. The audio will be posted, along with a written interview culled from the audio. His conversation with Jeff Pearlman, a recent guest, is up soon at Chicago Review. Sign up now for The Chills at Will Podcast Patreon: it can be found at patreon.com/chillsatwillpodcastpeterriehl Check out the page that describes the benefits of a Patreon membership, including cool swag and bonus episodes. Thanks in advance for supporting Pete's one-man show, DIY podcast and extensive reading, research, editing, and promoting to keep this independent podcast pumping out high-quality content! This month's Patreon bonus episode features an exploration of formative and transformative writing for children, as Pete surveys wonderful writers on their own influences. Pete has added a $1 a month tier for “Well-Wishers” and Cheerleaders of the Show. This is a passion project, a DIY operation, and Pete would love for your help in promoting what he's 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 Episode 323 with second-time guest Luke Epplin. He is the author Our Team: The Epic Story of Four Men and the World Series That Changed Baseball and Moses and the Doctor: Two Men, One Championship, and the Birth of Modern Basketball. The episode airs on February 13, three days after Pub Day for Moses and the Doctor. Please go to ceasefiretoday.org, and/or https://act.uscpr.org/a/letaidin to call your congresspeople and demand an end to the forced famine and destruction of Gaza and the Gazan people.
On this edition of Madison BookBeat, host Sara Batkie chats with author Melissa Faliveno about her debut novel, Hemlock, now available from Little, Brown. Sam, finally sober and stable with a cat and a long-term boyfriend in Brooklyn, returns alone to Hemlock, her family's deteriorating cabin deep in the Wisconsin Northwoods, where her mother disappeared years before and never returned. But a quick, practical trip takes a turn for the worse when the rot and creak of the forest starts to creep in around the edges of Sam's mind. It starts, as it always does, with a beer. As Sam dips back into the murky waters of dependency, the inexplicable begins to arrive at her door in the forms of a neighbor who leaves no trace, a talking doe who sounds just like Sam's missing mother, and a series of mysterious gifts that might be a welcome or a warning. And as Sam's stay extends—as the town's grip on her tightens and her body takes on a strange new shape—the borders of reality begin to blur, and she senses she is battling something sinister—whether nested in the woods or within herself. Melissa Faliveno is the author of the essay collection Tomboyland, named a Best Book of 2020 by NPR, New York Public Library, Oprah Magazine, Electric Literature, and Debutiful, and recipient of a 2021 Award for Outstanding Literary Achievement from the Wisconsin Library Association. Her essays, interviews, and reviews have appeared in Esquire, Paris Review, Kenyon Review, and Literary Hub, among many others. A first-generation college graduate, Melissa received a BA from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. She is currently the Margaret R. Shuping Fellow and assistant professor of creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Erin Somers discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Erin Somers is a reporter and news editor at Publishers Lunch. Her first novel, Stay Up with Hugo Best was a Vogue Best Book of the Year in 2019. Her writing has appeared in the New Yorker, Paris Review, New York Times Book Review, New Republic, New York Magazine, Atlantic, Esquire, GQ, Best American Short Stories and many other publications. She has been the recipient of an Emerging Writer Fellowship from the NYC Centre for Fiction, a fellowship from the Millay Colony, and was a 2020 finalist for a National Magazine Award. She lives in New York's Hudson Valley with her family. Her new novel is The Ten Year Affair, which is available at https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-ten-year-affair-erin-somers/7940888?ean=9781837264568&next=t. The record Entrance Music by Okonski https://okonski.bandcamp.com/album/entrance-music The author Max Apple https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/books/review/Hodgman-t.html The film 101 Reykjavik https://www.theguardian.com/film/News_Story/Critic_Review/Observer_review/0,,501343,00.html This recording of October in the Railroad Earth by Jack Kerouac and Stephen Allen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hjPZpaXNsw The Codex Seriphinianus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Seraphinianus Colony Pizza in Fairfield County, Connecticut https://colonygrill.com/ This podcast is powered by ZenCast.fm
Erin Somers' new novel, The Ten Year Affair is a story about Millennial disillusionment (and extramarital sex). The New Yorker called it “intoxicating” and W praised the book for its “sometimes mocking examination of young middle age.” I wanted to speak with Erin because her characters reflect a sense of grown-up melancholy arising when goals like home ownership, careers, and parenthood don't provide the fulfillment that was expected of them. So what do we do, she asks implicitly, when we find ourselves in a life designed to have meaning but does not deliver on that promise? Her characters also embody the impossible and contradictory messages society has imposed on gender roles for her generation. For men: be sensitive, inclusive, do half the housework, but still make a lot of money. For women: go conquer the corporate world while simultaneously being a present, nurturing mother and a sensual, doting wife. To me, this issue—even more than the deliciously provocative infidelity—is what has me continuing to think about the book, weeks after I finished it. Erin's writing and reportage has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Esquire, GQ, The Nation, The New Republic, and elsewhere. Vogue named her first novel, Stay Up With Hugo Best, to their list of the Best Books of the Year for 2019. ✍️Please rate and review Reasonably Happy (DO IT!) ✍️ https://ratethispodcast.com/paulopod
Ocean Vuong, poet, essayist, novelist, educator, and photographer, joins PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf for an in-depth conversation about his solo photography exhibition Sõng and the accompanying photobook, presented at CPW. In this episode, Vuong reflects on storytelling across mediums, creative practice, and the discipline behind writing and photography. Drawing from his life experience, he speaks candidly about process, vulnerability, and the courage required to share work publicly. This episode offers grounded insight for artists who question their creative voice or the value of presenting their work. https://www.oceanvuong.com/ https://cpw.org/exhibition/song/ Writer, professor, and photographer Ocean Vuong is the author of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, winner of the American Book Award, The Mark Twain Award, and The New England Book Award. The novel debuted for six weeks on The New York Times bestseller list and has since sold more than a million copies in 41 languages. A nominee for the National Book Award and a recipient of a MacArthur "Genius" Grant, he is also the author of the poetry collections, Time is a Mother, a finalist for the Griffin prize, and Night Sky with Exit Wounds, a New York Times Top 10 Book, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Whiting Award, the Thom Gunn Award. Selected by Time magazine as one of its 100 Rising Cultural Influencers, Vuong's writings have been featured in The Atlantic, Granta, Harpers, The Nation, New Republic, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Paris Review, The Village Voice, and American Poetry Review, which awarded him the Stanley Kunitz Prize for Younger Poets. Born in Saigon, Vietnam and raised in Hartford, Connecticut in a working class family of nail salon and factory laborers, he was educated at nearby Manchester Community College before transferring to Pace University to study International Marketing. Without completing his first term, he dropped out and enrolled at Brooklyn College, where he graduated with a BA in Nineteenth Century American Literature. He subsequently received his MFA in Poetry from NYU. He currently splits his time between Western Massachusetts and New York City, where he serves as a Professor in Modern Poetry and Poetics in the MFA Program at NYU.
Today's guest Joanna Johnson, brilliant teacher otherwise known as Unlearn16, reminds us that the constitution only matters if people stand up for it, otherwise it's just a piece of paper. So get ready for chaos. Clearly our institutions aren't the guardrails we thought they were, but we, the people, are. As always, if you find worth in what we do, please consider SUBSCRIBING to PoliticsGirl Premium. You'll get this podcast ad free and it, and the the rants delivered directly to your inbox so even if we're shut out of social media, you'll still get access to the most highly researched, factual information available. Independent media needs your support now more than ever. Go to https://www.politicsgirl.com/premium and subscribe today!! Thank you so much! xoPG Guest social: https://unlearn16.com/ Paris Review article about Epstein: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2020/04/06/behind-the-mask-of-corruption/ As always, please RATE and SUBSCRIBE so we can grow the show, open the dialogue, and inspire change moving forward! All show links here!: https://linktr.ee/politicsgirl This episode is sponsored by… https://tovala.com/politicsgirl code: PoliticsGirl https://leesa.com code: politicsgirl https://Quince.com/politicsgirl iQBar: TEXT PG to 64000
Baldwin was key figure in the American civil rights movement of the last 1960s, and he is one of our most important American writers. Author of the novels If Beale Street Could Talk, Go Tell It on the Mountain, and Giovanni's Room, he was also an essayist, poet, and playwright. Baldwin's influence continues to grow, but even if you've never read a word James Baldwin has written – first, you should – you will find something to treasure in this conversation. Boggs's biography centers on the artistic and intimate relationships that informed Baldwin's life and work. Douglas Brinkley, author of Rosa Parks: A Life, said “Nicholas Boggs's meticulously researched and passionately written Baldwin is the crown jewel of the ongoing James Baldwin revival. … this epic biography captures Baldwin in full.” Our interviewer is Mitchell S. Jackson, author of The Residue Years, Survival Math, and a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. Jackson is one of the best interviewers — I genuinely think he should have his own talk show — and he brings so much care and curiosity to the conversation. We start with a passage from the audiobook, which is published by Macmillan Audio and read by Ron Butler. Nicholas Boggs is a writer and independent scholar, born and raised in Washington, DC, now living in Brooklyn, New York. He rediscovered and coedited a new edition of James Baldwin's out-of-print collaboration with the French artist Yoran Cazac, Little Man, Little Man: A Story of Childhood (2018), and his writing has been anthologized in The Cambridge Companion to James Baldwin. He received his BA in English from Yale, his MFA in creative writing from American University, and his PhD in English from Columbia. Baldwin: A Love Story is Nicholas Boggs’ debut novel. Mitchell S. Jackson is the winner of the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing and the 2021 National Magazine Award in Feature Writing. Jackson is the critically acclaimed author of The Residue Years, Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family, Fly: The Big Book of Basketball Fashion, and John of Watts (to be published soon). His writing has been featured on the cover of the New York Times Book Review, Time, Esquire, and Marie Claire, as well as in The New Yorker, Harpers, The New York Times, and elsewhere. Jackson's nonfiction book Survival Math was published in 2019 and named a best book of the year by fifteen publications, including NPR, Time, The Paris Review, The Root, Kirkus Reviews, and Buzzfeed. Jackson is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, covers race and culture as the first Black columnist in the history of Esquire, and serves as the John O. Whiteman Dean's Distinguished Professor in the English Department of Arizona State University.
“Here they come, marching into American sunlight.” In Episode 33, DDSWTNP follow Mao II from this opening line into a chilling view of a mass Moonie wedding at Yankee Stadium, and on into the story of reclusive novelist Bill Gray, whose work, maybe, has a chance of deprogramming the mind and language of Karen Janney, one of the participants in that wedding – but maybe not, given the totalizing dominance by images that this novel documents. Our conversation delves into the several rich dialogues Mao II is known for, especially that about (quoting Bill) the “curious knot that binds novelists and terrorists,” the differing attempts by writers and bomb-makers to “alter the inner life of the culture” and “make raids on human consciousness” that DeLillo juxtaposes in this novel, which follows the writer from his cloying “bunker” to London, Athens, and (almost) Lebanon, while also taking in scenes from Iran, China, and the homeless encampments of lower Manhattan. Throughout we discuss the many followers of and sequels to Mao and Maoism DeLillo analyzes, all the ways his characters foolishly seek, outside the values of deep reading and the novel, scenes of “total vision” and messianic “total being,” the “lightning-lit” language of information and the terrorist's mastery of “the language of being noticed.” We examine in detail as well the effects of Andy Warhol's work as DeLillo sees it; what it means that readers never learn much at all about the content of Bill's famous novels; the commonalities he has with Rushdie, Salinger, Pynchon, and DeLillo himself; and why terrorist go-between George Haddad loves word processors so much. We also have a lot to say about the ailing, injured body and spirit of Bill Gray, as well as the simplicity of spoons and what they might teach us about objects and art. Mao II is a book that, as we say in the episode, sums up much of the DeLillo that came before it, lays the groundwork for the masterpiece to come, and contains so many of what have come to seem over the years since 1991 (and over the run of our episodes) the foundational DeLillo ideas and questions, especially ones about politics, violence, and images. Hope you'll have a listen and, if moved, tell us what you think! Texts referred to in this episode: David Cowart, Don DeLillo: The Physics of Language. Athens: U. of Georgia P., 2002. “Mao II is a sort of rest-and-motion book, to invent a category. The first half of the book could have been called ‘The Book,' Bill Gray talking about his book, piling up manuscript pages, living in a house that operates as a kind of filing cabinet for his work and all the other work it engenders. And the second half of the book could have been called ‘The World.' Here, Bill escapes his book and enters the world. It turns out to be the world of political violence . . . I was nearly finished with the first half of the book before I realized how the second half ought to be shaped. I was writing blind . . .” –“Don DeLillo: The Art of Fiction CXXXV,” The Paris Review 128 (1993): 274-306. Interview by Adam Begley. “I called him Bill Gray just as a provisional name,” DeLillo says. “I used to say to friends, 'I want to change my name to Bill Gray and disappear.' I've been saying it for 10 years. But he began to fit himself into the name, and I decided to leave it.” –Vince Passaro, “Dangerous Don DeLillo,” New York Times Magazine, May 19, 1991 (https://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/19/magazine/dangerous-don-delillo.html) Mark Osteen, American Magic and Dread: Don DeLillo's Dialogue with Culture. Philadelphia: U. of Pennsylvania P., 2000. Sources of interlude clips from Warhol and Moon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vCKc7r8U8Ehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiCYKJc_VwI
In this Episode, Mark Hutchinson talks about his journey of translation and about the novel ‘ A leopard Skin hat' written by Anne Serre.Mark Hutchinson was born in London and lives in ParisAmong his many translations from the French are René Char's Hypnos: Notes from the French Resistance and The Inventors and Other Poems, and Emmanuel Hocquard's The Library at Trieste and The Gardens of Sallust. His work has appeared in Harper's Magazine, The Paris Review, The Times Literary Supplement and elsewhere. His translation of René Char‘s The Inventors was one of The Independent's Best Poetry Books of 2015, and his translation of Anne Serre's The Governesses was shortlisted for the 2020 Scott Moncrieff prize.His translation of A Leopard-Skin Hat by Anne Serre was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025.* For your Valuable feedback on this Episode - Please click the link below.https://tinyurl.com/4zbdhrwrHarshaneeyam on Spotify App –https://harshaneeyam.captivate.fm/onspotHarshaneeyam on Apple App – https://harshaneeyam.captivate.fm/onapple*Contact us - harshaneeyam@gmail.com***Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by Interviewees in interviews conducted by Harshaneeyam Podcast are those of the Interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Harshaneeyam Podcast. Any content provided by Interviewees is of their opinion and is not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual, or anyone or anything.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp
Writer and author Tarpley Hitt is a New York journalist and an editor and contributor at The Drift magazine. She has previously reported on culture and money for The Daily Beast and Gawker. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Bookforum, The Paris Review, The Guardian, Air Mail, Deseret Magazine, and Miami New Times. Her debut book is Barbieland, The Unauthorized History, just out from Simon & Schuster's One Signal imprint. The New York Times called it “rollicking.” Amazon named it a “Best Book of the Month” and an “Editors' Pick.” Her work is full of humor, joy and vibrant language, in no small part because of the eye she has developed. Listen in as we discuss that eye, and so much more. The QWERTY podcast is brought to you by the book The Memoir Project: A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text for Writing & Life. Read it, and begin your own journey to writing what you know. To learn more, join The Memoir Project free newsletter list and keep up to date on all our free webinars, instructive posts and online classes in how to write memoir, as well as our talented, available memoir editors and memoir coaches, podcast guests and more.
This author and scholar's latest book, Biography of a Dangerous Idea: A New History of Race from Louis XIV to Thomas Jefferson, will be published in February 2026 by Other Press. Curran, a distinguished humanities professor at Wesleyan University, has written or edited six books, including Who's Black and Why: A Hidden Chapter in the Eighteenth-Century Invention of Race. It was nominated for an NAACP Image Award, and it won the Association of American Publishers Prose Award. Curran's journalistic writing has appeared in the New York Review of Books, The New York Times, The Guardian, Time Magazine, Newsweek, The Paris Review, Il Pais, Folha de S. Paola and the Wall Street Journal. BIO member and BIO podcast producer Jenny Skoog interviewed Andrew Curran.
After their first time reading together, poet-pals Lynne and Patricia sit down with a seriously sleep-deprived Dion at the Dream Inn in Santa Cruz, California to read and discuss their poems as the sound of waves pulses in the background.Lynne Thompson was the 4th Poet Laureate for the City of Los Angeles. The daughter of Caribbean immigrants, her poetry collections include Beg No Pardon (2007), winner of the Perugia Press Prize and the Great Lakes Colleges Association's New Writers Award; Start With A Small Guitar (2013), from What Books Press; and Fretwork (2019), winner of the Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize. Thompson's honors include the Tucson Festival of Books Literary Award (poetry) and the Stephen Dunn Prize for Poetry as well as fellowships from the City of Los Angeles, Vermont Studio Center, and the Summer Literary Series in Kenya. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, Poetry, Poem-A-Day (Academy of American Poets), New England Review, Colorado Review, Pleiades, Ecotone, and Best American Poetry, to name a few.Patricia Smith is the author of ten books of poetry, including The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems (Scribner 2025), winner of the National Book Award for Poetry; Unshuttered; Incendiary Art, winner of the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, the 2017 Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the 2018 NAACP Image Award, and finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize; Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah, winner of the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets; Blood Dazzler, a National Book Award finalist; and Gotta Go, Gotta Flow, a collaboration with award-winning Chicago photographer Michael Abramson. Her other books include the poetry volumes Teahouse of the Almighty, Close to Death, Big Towns Big Talk, Life According to Motown; the children's book Janna and the Kings and the history Africans in America, a companion book to the award-winning PBS series. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The Paris Review, The Baffler, BOMB, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Tin House and in Best American Poetry and Best American Essays.Smith is a professor in the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University and a former Distinguished Professor for the City University of New York.
The work of Maria Janion, one of Eastern Europe's most profound intellectuals, who witnessed the rise of authoritarian nationalism in Poland, German occupation during World War II, Soviet control, and Poland's uneasy integration into the West, explores this fine line. Janion's writings have been gathered by Marta Figlerowicz into the recently published volume The Bad Child: A Maria Janion Reader, and Figlerowicz is joined here in conversation with Noah Feldman to talk about Janion's writing, which offers sharp insights into how societies develop and assert their identities and histories—often at the cost of the people. There are clear parallels here to current conditions and events. Please note that this episode was recorded in October 2025.Maria Janion (1926–2020) was the greatest Polish leftist intellectual of her generation. The author of twenty-three books and hundreds of articles and essays, she mentored and inspired several generations of Eastern European scholars and political activists. During her life, Janion held appointments at several Polish academic institutions, including the University of Gdańsk and the Institute of Literary Studies in Warsaw.Marta Figlerowicz is professor of comparative literature at Yale University. She is a Guggenheim Fellow and author of Flat Protagonists and Spaces of Feeling as well as more than a hundred articles, reviews, and essays. Her translations from Polish have appeared in PMLA and The Paris Review.Noah Feldman is the Arthur Kingsley Porter University Professor at Harvard University. Feldman is author of ten books, including To Be a Jew Today, and host of the podcast Deep Background with Noah Feldman.Episode references:Adam MickiewiczOlga TokarczukEdward SaidIsaiah BerlinPraise for the book:“Maria Janion's writing is foundational to so many currents of contemporary Central European thought—around nations and nationalism, gender and genre, everyday politics and the political writ large—that her invisibility in English has long struck those of us privileged to know her work as a tragedy, if not a crime. This book belongs on the shelf of every humanist.”—Benjamin Paloff, author of Worlds Apart“The remarkable creativity, energy, and erudition of Maria Janion shine forth in these essays.”—Sianne Ngai, University of ChicagoThe Bad Child: A Maria Janion Reader, edited by Marta Figlerowicz, available from University of Minnesota Press. Thank you for listening.
In this wide-ranging and deeply thoughtful conversation, writer Emily LaBarge speaks with host Adam Biles about Dog Days, her groundbreaking new work of nonfiction. Rooted in the 2009 hostage event she and her family survived while on holiday in the Caribbean, the book explores not the incident itself but the psychic “mark” it left—its shape, depth, and resistance to narrative. Emily discusses the instability of storytelling after trauma, the pressure to produce coherent versions for police, insurers, or therapists, and the unsettling sense that the world itself had changed in the aftermath. She reflects on the limits of therapy, the body's relationship to memory, and how literature, art, and cinema became “fellow travelers” in her attempt to understand the experience. Adam and Emily also consider genre, experiment, and the essay's capacity to hold fractured thought. Dog Days emerges as a radical, erudite, and emotionally exacting exploration of what it means to live on after rupture.Buy Dog Days: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/dog-days-13*Emily LaBarge is a Canadian writer based in London. Her essays and criticism have appeared in Granta, The London Review of Books, Artforum, Bookforum, Frieze, and The Paris Review, amongst others. She is a regular contributor to The New York Times and 4Columns. Dog Days is her first book.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company.Listen to Alex Freiman's latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Adam Morgan discusses his new biography, A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls: Margaret C. Anderson, Book Bans, and the Fight to Modernize Literature (Atria/One Signal Publishers, 2025). Morgan's book is the first biography solely devoted to Margaret C. Anderson, the founder of the avant-garde literary and arts magazine The Little Review, which she began publishing in Chicago in 1914. The influential Little Review showcased many famous writers of its time, including T.S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, Hart Crane, Sherwood Anderson and Hemingway. But it would become most celebrated—and notorious—for being the first publisher of James Joyce's towering modernist novel Ulysses. After putting out nearly two thirds of the novel in serial installments from 1918 through 1920, Margaret Anderson and her romantic partner and co-editor Jane Heap were charged and found guilty of obscenity under the Comstock Act for distributing Joyce's sexually frank passages through the mail. They were deemed "a danger to the minds of young girls." A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls tells a very compelling story of an iconoclastic woman who was determined to make a space for difficult and challenging art and whose efforts changed forever what could be addressed in literature and what could be considered beautiful. Adam Morgan is himself the founder of the indispensable Chicago Review of Books, and a great promoter of the literature of our city. We are especially thrilled to be having this conversation now, as we just began a six-month discussion group on Ulysses at our library. Listen to hear why Ulysses wouldn't exist without Chicago and how understanding Anderson's life helps reveal the true stakes, triumphs, and world-changing "dangers" of James Joyce's masterpiece. Adam Morgan is a culture journalist and critic who lives near Chapel Hill, North Carolina. His writing has appeared in Esquire, WIRED, Scientific American, Inverse, The Paris Review, Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. He writes a newsletter about forthcoming books called The Frontlist. He is the founding editor of the Chicago Review of Books, the Southern Review of Books, and the Chicago Literary Archive. You can check out A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls in our Podcast Collection, featuring books and other materials by past guests of the show. Find out more about Adam Morgan at his website. We hope you enjoy our 70th interview episode! Each month (or so), we release an episode featuring a conversation with an author, artist, or other notable guests from Chicagoland or around the world. Learn more about the podcast on our podcast page. You can listen to all of our episodes in the player below or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. We welcome your comments and feedback—please send to podcast@deerfieldlibrary.org.
2026 reading has started off strong. This week on You Are What You Read, we are thrilled to host Ben Markovitz with his novel, THE REST OF OUR LIVES, which has been one of the biggest novels this January. THE REST OF OUR LIVES was a finalist for the Booker Prize, a Barnes & Noble Book Club Pick, a Late Show Book Club Pick, and a national best seller. Ben Markovits is the author of eleven novels, including Fathers and Daughters, You Don't Have to Live Like This, and The Sidekick. He has also published essays, stories, poetry, and reviews in The Guardian, Granta, The Paris Review, and The New York Times, among others. THE REST OF OUR LIVES is all the buzz this winter, and we can't wait to talk about it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
EPISODE 660 - Gary Lippman - Author of immense vision, caustic wit, and wry compassion for the human experienceAbout Gary LippmanBorn and raised in New Jersey, Gary Lippman received a law degree from Northwestern University and has worked with New York's Innocence Project. Lippman's play Paradox Lust ran off-off-Broadway for a month in 2001 and his writing has been published in The New York Times, The Paris Review, VICE, Fodors, Upstate Diary, Open City, Sex And Design, and 8 By 8, while his visual art can be seen at apocalippy.com. Having lived in Illinois, Florida, California, and France, Lippman can now be found in what used to be called “Fun City” with his Hungarian wife Vera and his whenever-he's-inclined-to-visit adult son Gabriel.https://garylippmanofficial.com/Support the show___https://livingthenextchapter.com/podcast produced by: https://truemediasolutions.ca/Coffee Refills are always appreciated, refill Dave's cup here, and thanks!https://buymeacoffee.com/truemediaca
Practical ways to upgrade your narrative. Melissa Febos is the national bestselling author of five books, including Girlhood, Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative, and a new memoir, The Dry Season. She is the recipient of awards and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and others. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, The Best American Essays and others. She is a professor at the University of Iowa. In this episode we talk about: How to "audit" your personal narrative with simple questions Melissa's five-step method for rewriting unhelpful stories Why community, and vulnerability are required for real change; in other words, why it's harder to do this work alone Melissa's own experiences running this playbook with regard to her relationships and her addictions. Get the 10% with Dan Harris app here Sign up for Dan's free newsletter here Follow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTok Subscribe to our YouTube Channel To advertise on the show, contact sales@advertisecast.com or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris
Thanks for joining Jill Baughan today on Finding Joy ...No Matter What. Make a Joy Box for Someone You Care About: https://jillbaughan.com/joy-box/ Baughan, Jill. No Matter What: 90 Devotions for Experiencing Unexpected Joy in Tough Times. Our Daily Bread Publishers, 2025. https://www.amazon.com/Matter-What-Devotions-Experiencing-Unexpected/dp/1640703969/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_2?crid=2P84MZ9ZHR8GP&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.tntQJ9EM7blGaZoioVbqX6I_0yYOKo8tdykCW8iK-uAvkXQk9Ry0lpqv5B5AbILG2ukb9dFrb2IXoEgQqylefy1nbqk0864loTgd-KtpMP4.n3_3ScZp85susbWQjitYEXe9t2G22Lh_kSGcJ0-dWF8&dib_tag=se&keywords=jill+baughan+book&qid=1740769177&sprefix=jill+baughan%2Caps%2C119&sr=8-2-fkmr0 Bowler, Kate. Good Enough: 40ish Devotionals for a Life of Imperfection. Convergent Books, 2022. "Florence Foster Jenkins." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Foster_Jenkins Kinney, Alison. "Black Pearls Before Swine." The Paris Review, September 22, 2016. https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/09/22/black-pearls-swine/ "The Real Florence Foster Jenkins on Film." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hcs9yJjVecs Waxman, Olivia. "What It Was Like to Hear the Real Florence Foster Jenkins Sing, as Told in 1934." Time, August 11, 2016. https://time.com/4439621/florence-foster-jenkins-reviews/ Connect with Jill: Facebook ~ Instagram ~ Twitter ~ Website
It's New Year's Day and many of us will be at home, contemplating the year ahead. For New Year's every year, Lean Out brings you an episode that is lighter and more hopeful. This year, we set our sights on food and its ability to bring us together. Our guest on the program today has published a wonderful book about famous writers and their recipes, exploring the restorative power of home cooking.Valerie Stivers is an American writer and a senior editor at UnHerd. Her new book is The Writer's Table: Famous Authors and Their Favourite Recipes, inspired by her long-running column at The Paris Review.You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com
This week, I talk with author Lili Anolik about her book on two writers whose lives overlapped in ways that were both unlikely and (in retrospect) inevitable. One is Eve Babitz, the exuberant chronicler of 1970s Hollywood. The other is Joan Didion, whose notoriously "cool," exacting style defined a particular vision of Los Angeles and helped make her one of the most influential writers of the last century. The two writers are often framed as opposites, but in Didion & Babitz, Lili explores how they shared similar burdens of the times–burdens around creativity, ambition, and modern womanhood. If you enjoy literary gossip, this interview is for you. Our conversation includes some surprising and, at times, uncomfortable details about Didion's marriage, her relationship with her daughter, and her lingering feelings from an early romance with Noel Parmentel, a roguish figure who helped her start her career and introduced her to her husband, John Gregory Dunne. If you're among the devoted Didion faithful, you may hear things you didn't expect. If you're new to Eve Babitz, consider this your introduction to one of the great hidden figures of American literary life. Guest Bio: Lili Anolik is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and a writer at large for Air Mail. Her work has also appeared in Harper's, Esquire, and The Paris Review, among other publications. She is the creator of the podcast Once Upon a Time… at Bennington College. Her latest book is Didion & Babitz, published by Scribner.
The Author Events Series presents Miriam Toews | A Truce That Is Not Peace In Conversation with Katy Waldman ''Why do you write?'' the organizer of a literary event in Mexico City asks Miriam Toews. Each attempted answer from Toews-all of them unsatisfactory to the organizer-surfaces new layers of grief, guilt, and futility connected to her sister's suicide. She has been keeping up, she realizes, a decades-old internal correspondence, filling a silence she barely understands. And we, her readers, come to see that the question is as impossible to answer as deciding whether to live life as a comedy or a tragedy. Marking the first time Toews has written her own life in nonfiction, A Truce That Is Not Peace explores the uneasy pact a writer makes with memory. Wildly inventive yet masterfully controlled; slyly casual yet momentous; wrenching and joyful; hilarious and humane-this is Miriam Toews at her dazzling best, remaking her world and inventing an astonishing new literary form to contain it. Miriam Toews is the author of the bestselling novels Women Talking, Fight Night, All My Puny Sorrows, Summer of My Amazing Luck, A Boy of Good Breeding, A Complicated Kindness, The Flying Troutmans, and Irma Voth, and two works of nonfiction, A Truce That is Not Peace and Swing Low: A Life. She is winner of the Governor General's Award for Fiction, the Libris Award for Fiction Book of the Year, the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, and the Writers' Trust Engel/Findley Award. She lives in Toronto. Katy Waldman is a staff writer at The New Yorker, for which she writes about books, culture, and more. Previously, she was a staff writer at Slate and the host of the ''Slate's Audio Book Club'' podcast. She won the National Book Critics Circle's Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing in 2019 and the American Society of Magazine Editors's award for journalists under thirty in 2018; her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, New York magazine, the Paris Review, and elsewhere. She lives with her husband and dog in Washington, D.C. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation when you register for this event to ensure that this series continues to inspire Philadelphians. Books will be available for purchase at the library on event night! All tickets are non-refundable. (recorded 9/3/2025)
The United Nations has confirmed what residents of Kherson, and Zarina Zabrisky, revealed nearly a year ago: Russia's drone attacks on civilians were systematic, premeditated and intended to instil terror and forcibly displace the population. A deliberate war crime. ----------Zarina Zabrisky is an American writer based in the Bay Area, California. She is the author of the novel, We, Monsters, several collections of short stories, including Explosion, A Cute Tombstone and her debut work, Iron, and a book of collaborative poetry and art, Green Lions, co-written with Simon Rogghe. Zabrisky is currently based in Odesa, Ukraine. From the beginning of the 2022 full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, Zabrisky has been reporting on the war in Ukraine for Euromaidan Press, Byline Times and A Community Alliance, and has been published in The Paris Review and various other publications. ----------ARTICLE:https://bylinetimes.com/2025/09/08/a-serious-escalation-putin-launches-russias-largest-aerial-assault-on-ukraine-since-2022/https://bylinetimes.com/2025/05/29/un-confirms-russian-drone-attacks-on-kherson-are-crimes-against-humanity-and-war-crimes/LINKS:http://www.zarinazabrisky.com/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zarina_Zabriskyhttps://euromaidanpress.com/author/zarinazabrisky/https://kyivindependent.com/author/zarina-zabrisky/https://bylinetimes.com/author/zarinazabrisky/https://empr.media/discover-ukraine/movie/an-american-journalist-presented-the-film-kherson-human-safari/----------SUMMER FUNDRAISERSNAFO & Silicon Curtain community - Let's help help 5th SAB together https://www.help99.co/patches/nafo-silicon-curtain-communityWe are teaming up with NAFO 69th Sniffing Brigade to provide 2nd Assault Battalion of 5th SAB with a pickup truck that they need for their missions. With your donation, you're not just sending a truck — you're standing with Ukraine.https://www.help99.co/patches/nafo-silicon-curtain-communityWhy NAFO Trucks Matter:Ukrainian soldiers know the immense value of our NAFO trucks and buses. These vehicles are carefully selected, produced between 2010 and 2017, ensuring reliability for harsh frontline terrain. Each truck is capable of driving at least 20,000 km (12,500 miles) without major technical issues, making them a lifeline for soldiers in combat zones.In total we are looking to raise an initial 19 500 EUR in order to buy 1 x NAFO truck 2.0 Who is getting the aid? 5 SAB, 2 Assault Battalion, UAV operators.https://www.help99.co/patches/nafo-silicon-curtain-community----------Car for Ukraine has once again joined forces with a group of influencers, creators, and news observers during this summer. Sunshine here serves as a metaphor, the trucks are a sunshine for our warriors to bring them to where they need to be and out from the place they don't.https://car4ukraine.com/campaigns/summer-sunshine-silicon-curtainThis time, we focus on the 6th Detachment of HUR, 93rd Alcatraz, 3rd Assault Brigade, MLRS systems and more. https://car4ukraine.com/campaigns/summer-sunshine-silicon-curtain- bring soldiers to the positions- protect them with armor- deploy troops with drones to the positions----------SILICON CURTAIN FILM FUNDRAISERA project to make a documentary film in Ukraine, to raise awareness of Ukraine's struggle and in supporting a team running aid convoys to Ukraine's front-line towns.https://buymeacoffee.com/siliconcurtain/extras----------SUPPORT THE CHANNEL:https://www.buymeacoffee.com/siliconcurtainhttps://www.patreon.com/siliconcurtain----------TRUSTED CHARITIES ON THE GROUND:Save Ukrainehttps://www.saveukraineua.org/Superhumans - Hospital for war traumashttps://superhumans.com/en/UNBROKEN - Treatment. Prosthesis. Rehabilitation for Ukrainians in Ukrainehttps://unbroken.org.ua/----------
Today I am deeply honored to speak with journalist Fatemeh Jamalpour about her book, For the Sun After Long Nights, which she wrote with fellow journalist Nilo Tabrizy. In September 2022, the world learned of the murder of a young Kurdish woman in Iran, Mahsa Jina Amini. Her death, while a captive of the Iranian state, sparked the Woman, Life, Freedom protests. Fatemeh and Nilo's book frames those protests in the deep tradition of Iranian women leading political movements for rights and freedom, that date back at least a century. They also provide incredibly detailed and moving accounts of the everyday lives of people in Iran who are part of a collective movement under the most oppressive and violent conditions imaginable. Fatemeh talks about the significance of the many ethnic minorities in Iran, the unique role of Gen Z in the protests, and the many ways that women's bodies have become a powerful weapon on the fight for collective freedom, in places as diverse as prisons and illegal music concerts. Clearing up myths and lies about Iran and the resistance, this is an especially important episode of Speaking Out of Place.Fatemeh Jamalpour is a feminist journalist banned from working in Iran by the Ministry of Intelligence. Jamalpour has worked as a freelance reporter for outlets such as The Sunday Times, The Paris Review and the Los Angeles Times, and has also held positions at BBC World News in London and Shargh newspaper in Tehran. She has two master's degrees in journalism and communication from Northwestern University and Allameh Tabatabaei University in Tehran and was a 2024-25 Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan.
Notes and Links to Amber Sparks' Work Amber Sparks is the author of the short story collections And I Do Not Forgive You and The Unfinished World. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, Granta, Slate, and elsewhere. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband, daughter, and cats. Happy People Don't Live Here was published in October 2025. Buy Happy People Don't Live Here Amber's Website Kirkus Reviews of Happy People Don't Live Here At about 1:20, Amber describes the “weird” time about a month after the book's publication, an in-between time At about 2:25, Amber talks about the feedback she has received since the book was published, including surprising thoughts shared about the child narrator and the “other” narrator, Alice At about 5:25, Amber talks about her influences growing up, including fantasy and writers like Dean Koontz At about 7:40, Amber talks about her inclination to write a book featuring multiple genres, with the result being Happy People Don't Live Here At about 9:20, Amber responds to Pete asking about plot and allegory and their balance At about 11:35, Amber shouts out Kelly Link, Rion Amicar-Scott, Stephen Graham-Jones, and Matt Bell as a few of many contemporary writers she loves At about 14:35, Amber and Pete discuss the book's resonant epigraphs, and Amber talks about her interest in ghosts At about 18:00, Pete shouts out the classic story “Someone Has Been Disarranging these Roses” At about 19:15, Amber explains her chapters and the rationale in making the book “episodic” At about 20:50, The book's beginning and connections to real-life events is discussed At about 24:35, The two discuss one of the book's main character, Fern At about 27:10, Pete compliments the book's setting, and Amber provides background for the place At about 30:00, the two discuss the book's inciting incident, a body discovered by Fern, and Amber expands on the ways she went about populating the book At about 35:40, some key characters are discussed, including a possible love interest for Alice At about 36:40, Amber responds to Pete's question about Alice's ex-husband as a sort of flat character-she calls him a “cipher” At about 40:10, Amber reflects on Alice's ways of avoiding the past and running from this past, and Amber shouts out William H. Macy in Magnolia At about 43:50, the two discuss the “banal” ghost At about 47:00, parent-child relationships are discussed At about 51:20, Pete asks Amber about writing in second-person, as she does for part of her book-shout out to Lorrie Moore! At about 55:40, Amber talks about exciting new projects 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 Pete on IG, where he is @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where he is @chillsatwillpo1. You can watch other episodes on YouTube-watch and subscribe to The Chills at Will Podcast Channel. Please subscribe to both the YouTube Channel and the podcast while you're checking out this episode. Pete is very excited to have one or two podcast episodes per month featured on the website of Chicago Review of Books. The audio will be posted, along with a written interview culled from the audio. His conversation with Hannah Pittard, a recent guest, is up at Chicago Review. Sign up now for The Chills at Will Podcast Patreon: it can be found at patreon.com/chillsatwillpodcastpeterriehl Check out the page that describes the benefits of a Patreon membership, including cool swag and bonus episodes. Thanks in advance for supporting Pete's one-man show, DIY podcast and extensive reading, research, editing, and promoting to keep this independent podcast pumping out high-quality content! This month's Patreon bonus episode features an exploration of flawed characters, protagonists who are too real in their actions, and horror and noir as being where so much good and realistic writing takes place. Pete has added a $1 a month tier for “Well-Wishers” and Cheerleaders of the Show. This is a passion project, a DIY operation, and Pete would love for your help in promoting what he's 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 Episode 313 with Jackie Domenus, a queer writer from South Jersey and the author of NO OFFENSE: A MEMOIR IN ESSAYS (2025), published with ELJ Editions. A 2021 Tin House Winter Workshop graduate, Jackie's essays have appeared in The HuffPost, The Offing Mag, The Normal School, Pidgeonholes, Foglifter Journal, Variant Lit, Entropy, and many more. Their poetry has appeared in Hooligan Mag and Giving Room Mag. Her short story “Mirror Image” published in So To Speak, as well as her essay “Two Truths and a Lie” published in Identity Theory, were both nominated for a Pushcart Prize. The episode airs on December 2. Please go to ceasefiretoday.org, and/or https://act.uscpr.org/a/letaidin to call your congresspeople and demand an end to the forced famine and destruction of Gaza and the Gazan people.
Hailey Benton Gates is a model, actress, director, and journalist—her debut feature, Atropia, took the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance this year. We spoke with her from a hotel in Puerto Rico about pulling permits, being traumatized by Rachel Sennott's I Love LA, the scene report down Venezuela way, nicotine toothpicks, taking her braces out with a fork as a child, spitting and gleeking, using fetish to your advantage, the eyebrows tell all, Callum Turner's face, filming on a mock military base, breakfast meetings are for sex pests, the film Mash, the transition from working at The Paris Review to Vice, coconut water with pulp, and smuggling oil. instagram.com/haileybentongates twitter.com/donetodeath twitter.com/themjeans howlonggone.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Notes and Links to Kurt Baumeister's Work Kurt Baumeister's writing has appeared in Salon, Guernica, Electric Literature, Rain Taxi, The Brooklyn Rail, The Rumpus, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, The Nervous Breakdown, The Weeklings, and other outlets. An acquisitions editor with 7.13 Books, Baumeister holds an MFA in creative writing from Emerson College, and is a member of The National Book Critics Circle and The Authors Guild. Twilight of the Gods is his second novel. Buy Twilight of the Gods Kurt's Website Chicago Review of Books Interview Re: Twilight of the Gods At about 2:45, Kurt talks about the book's original publication date falling around the 2024 elections At about 6:15, Kurt reflects on the vagaries of publishing, and interesting and complimentary feedback from readers on the book At about 11:30, Pete shares a wonderful quote about Kurt's writing, and Kurt discusses Martin Amis and other influences on his writing At about 15:45, The two discuss the book's “Dramatis Personae” to start the book and some tongue-in-cheek descriptions of some Norse gods At about 17:30, Kurt responds to Pete's questions about Loki's historical and mythical evolutions At about 20:30, Kurt reflects on metafiction and gives background on why he names a main character in the book “Kurt” At about 23:50, Kurt talks about media representations of Loki in connection to his own At about 25:30, Kurt describes why he makes Loki as he is At about 28:20, Kurt gives background on the Norns, of which Sunshine/Sabrina from the book is a member At about 29:30, Pete compliments the ways the book traces human history, particularly with regard to Hitler's rise At about 34:15, Kurt responds to Pete's question about mixing fiction and fact At about 37:00, Kurt talks about history repeating itself and connecting disparate eras At about 39:55, Kurt responds to Pete's question about the subtleties and the nuances of the book, i.e, plot focus v. allegory focus At about 42:00, Kurt discusses his mindset in writing the ending(s) of the book At about 45:00, An intriguing question posed in the book about fate is probed At about 45:50, Pete cites the book's ending as highly successful, and Kurt shouts out a shared beloved movie, Training Day, with regard to slowly-creeping evil At about 47:50, a “reverence and pity” for artists is discussed, as mentioned in the book 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 Pete on IG, where he is @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where he is @chillsatwillpo1. You can watch other episodes on YouTube-watch and subscribe to The Chills at Will Podcast Channel. Please subscribe to both the YouTube Channel and the podcast while you're checking out this episode. Pete is very excited to have one or two podcast episodes per month featured on the website of Chicago Review of Books. The audio will be posted, along with a written interview culled from the audio. His conversation with Hannah Pittard, a recent guest, is up at Chicago Review. Sign up now for The Chills at Will Podcast Patreon: it can be found at patreon.com/chillsatwillpodcastpeterriehl Check out the page that describes the benefits of a Patreon membership, including cool swag and bonus episodes. Thanks in advance for supporting Pete's one-man show, DIY podcast and extensive reading, research, editing, and promoting to keep this independent podcast pumping out high-quality content! This month's Patreon bonus episode features an exploration of flawed characters, protagonists who are too real in their actions, and horror and noir as being where so much good and realistic writing takes place. Pete has added a $1 a month tier for “Well-Wishers” and Cheerleaders of the Show. This is a passion project, a DIY operation, and Pete would love for your help in promoting what he's 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 Episode 312 with Amber Sparks, the author of the short story collections And I Do Not Forgive You and The Unfinished World. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, Granta, Slate, and elsewhere. Her book, Happy People Don't Live Here, was published in October 2025. The episode drops on November 25, today. Please go to ceasefiretoday.org, and/or https://act.uscpr.org/a/letaidin to call your congresspeople and demand an end to the forced famine and destruction of Gaza and the Gazan people.
I've recorded hundreds of conversations with incredible people working on the front lines of the future. People who've asked the most important question: what can I do? Who found their answer and followed it. But for today's conversation, we're going back to the front lines of the past because the past can tell us a whole hell of a lot about today and how tomorrow might go.But only if we tell the full story of how we got here, about who got us here, about how my great-great-grandparents got here. And how my grandma got here fleeing the Nazis, and how millions of Africans were forcibly brought here, over 35,000 trips across the middle passage over almost 300 years. The full story of the choices we made then, which was not so long ago, and continue to make now about wars and heritage and bondage and family and land and more.And how, if we can break from the stories we've been told and continue to tell ourselves to choose history over nostalgia, to choose facts over memory and infinite disinformation on demand, we can make different choices. My guest today is Clint Smith. Clint is the number one New York Times bestselling author of How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America, he's the winner of the National Book Critic Circle Award for nonfiction, the Hillman Prize for book journalism, the Stowe Prize, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and was selected by the New York Times as one of the 10 best books of 2021.And now in 2025, the Young Reader's Edition has just come out and it is wonderful. Clint is also the author two books of poetry, the New York Times bestselling collection Above Ground, as well as Counting Dissent. Both poetry collections were winners of the Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association, and both were finalists for NAACP Image Awards.Clint is a staff writer at The Atlantic and he has received fellowships for the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, New America, the Emerson Collective, the Art for Justice Fund, Cave Canum, and the National Science Foundation. His essays, poems, and scholarly writing have been published in The New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, the New Republic, Poetry Magazine, the Paris Review, the Harvard Educational Review, and elsewhere. Clint is a former National Poetry Slam Champion, and the recipient of the Jerome Jay Shestack Prize from the American Poetry Review.-----------Have feedback or questions? Tweet us, or send a message to questions@importantnotimportant.comNew here? Get started with our fan favorite episodes at podcast.importantnotimportant.com.Take Action at www.whatcanido.earth-----------INI Book Club:How The Word Is Passed by Clint SmithHow The Word Is Passed Young Readers Edition by Clint Smith, Adapted by Sonja Cherry-PaulFind all of our guest recommendations at the INI Book Club:
Notes and Links to Jeff Pearlman's Work Jeff Pearlman is the New York Times bestselling author of ten books. His subjects include the '80s Los Angeles Lakers (Showtime), the 1986 New York Mets (The Bad Guys Won), the '90s Dallas Cowboys (Boys Will Be Boys), and NFL legends Walter Payton (Sweetness) and Brett Favre (Gunslinger). HBO adapted Showtime into the dramatic series Winning Time, produced and directed by Adam McKay. A former Sports Illustrated senior writer and ESPN.com columnist, Pearlman is the host of the Two Writers Slinging Yang podcast and blogs regularly at jeffpearlman.com. Buy Only God Can Judge Me: The Many Lives of Tupac Shakur Jeff's Website NPR Coverage of Only God Can Judge Me: The Many Lives of Tupac Shakur At about 3:15, Jeff talks about writing against hagiography and how he doesn't “bring bias” into his writing, whether about Tupac or sports At about 5:25, Pete compliments the structure of the book, as it examines each of the places that shaped Tupac's life At about 5:55, Rapid-fire questions! *Best Tupac collab? Best movie role? At about 8:45, A beautiful shout-out to friend Curtis Dorsey and Jeff's dad, Stan At about 10:20, Jeff shouts out some favorite lines from Tupac's songs At about 10:50, Pete and Jeff discuss Tupac's “layering songs” and wondrous laugh At about 12:55, Jeff responds to Pete's question about Jeff's “in”/entry point for writing about someone who has been written about so much At about 15:45, Jeff expands on writing his biography of Tupac as a type of "layering" and the importance of specificity At about 17:00, Jeff talks about how interviewing 652 people for his Tupac book is actually something that “[he] is supposed to do” At about 19:55, Jeff reflects a bit on book promotion and book release At about 21:25, Jeff shouts out Dusty Baker as “maybe the coolest human being who's ever walked the planet” At about 22:20, Pete asks Jeff about Set Shakur's quote that Tupac died “alone”; Jeff reflects on the “isolation” of fame At about 24:00, Jeff talks about Suge Knight and his indifference and his intriguing story At about 25:45, Jeff talks about Tupac's connection or lack thereof to the Mob Piru gang At about 26:45, Pete gives an incomplete and rambling answer to the best Tupac song At about 28:10, Davonn Hodge and his mother reuniting due to great work by Jeff Pearlman and Michelle Soulli is discussed, as Jeff gives the background on the reunification At about 30:20, Jeff gives background on Afeni Shakur's hometown, Lumberton, NC, and he gives a shoutout to Howard Bryant's book on Ricky Henderson At about 31:30, Jeff recounts a story about going to Lumberton to use the microfiche, but wound up seeing Tupac's grave At about 32:10, Jeff gives background on Afeni Shakur's amazing life and highlights her accomplishments and travails At about 33:30, Jeff and Pete discuss “Dear Mama” as aspirational and the sadness of Afeni's substance abuse and how Tupac dealt with this horrible disappointment and “trauma” At about 35:15, Jeff talks in awe of Afeni's defending herself in the “Panther 21” trial At about 36:20, Jeff discusses Tupac's name origins At about 37:45, Jeff responds to Pete's question about Tupac's dad Billy Garland and male role models At about 39:40, The two discuss horrible athletic performances in movies and Tupac's unfortunate basketball shooting motion At about 41:00, Jeff gives some background on Tupac's birth name At about 41:40, Jeff talks about the impression that New York made on Tupac, musically and personally At about 43:00, The two discuss Tupac's time in Baltimore and at the Baltimore School for the Arts, and Tupac as an actor and singer; Jeff calls Baltimore his “favorite Tupac era” At about 45:10, The two talk about Tupac's Baltimore time and struggles and how “shapeshifter” didn't quite fit him At about 47:10, Jeff traces the Shakurs' move to Marin City and connections to Geronimo Pratt and his family At about 48:15, Jeff shares a profound statement from Set Shakur about moving vs. “relocating” At about 48:50, Jeff talks about Marin City and recreating the Marin City of when Tupac lived there At about 50:50, Jeff expands on similarities between Tupac's time in the creative worlds of performing arts high schools in Baltimore and Marin City/ and his mother's downward spiral At about 51:55, The two discuss the significance of Marin City's Festival on the Green 1992 and further reporting on the tragedy as a “turning point” At about 55:50, Jeff responds to Pete's observation about Tupac's first albums not being highly-received and focuses on the changes that led to his second album being disappointing for Tupac At about 57:20, Jeff traces an almost parallel life for Tupac as a revolutionary leader in Atlanta At about 58:45, Jeff talks about the awkward time with Tupac working to become a community leader At about 1:00:20, Jeff responds to Pete's question about the reactions from people who were wowed by Tupac's raps in person At about 1:03:00, Jeff shares what he learned in his interviews about Tupac the actor At about 1:06:00, Jeff shares his thoughts on the alleged second sexual assault by Tupac At about 1:08:15, Pete and Jeff discuss the “fan[ning] of the hip hop media/media and Tupac's At about 1:09:35, Pete compliments the skillful ways in which the last hours and days (the “banal”) were rendered in the way At about 1:11:10, Pete asks Jeff about how much Death Row changed Tupac/brought out tendencies in him At about 1:12:55, Jeff shares information from the book on two or three parallel universes where Tupac almost avoided being in Las Vegas At about 1:13:55, Jeff reflects on Tupac as a 54 year old 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 Pete on IG, where he is @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where he is @chillsatwillpo1. You can watch other episodes on YouTube-watch and subscribe to The Chills at Will Podcast Channel. Please subscribe to both the YouTube Channel and the podcast while you're checking out this episode. Pete is very excited to have one or two podcast episodes per month featured on the website of Chicago Review of Books. The audio will be posted, along with a written interview culled from the audio. His conversation with Hannah Pittard, a recent guest, is up at Chicago Review. Sign up now for The Chills at Will Podcast Patreon: it can be found at patreon.com/chillsatwillpodcastpeterriehl Check out the page that describes the benefits of a Patreon membership, including cool swag and bonus episodes. Thanks in advance for supporting Pete's one-man show, DIY podcast and extensive reading, research, editing, and promoting to keep this independent podcast pumping out high-quality content! This month's Patreon bonus episode features an exploration of flawed characters, protagonists who are too real in their actions, and horror and noir as being where so much good and realistic writing takes place. Pete has added a $1 a month tier for “Well-Wishers” and Cheerleaders of the Show. This is a passion project, a DIY operation, and Pete would love for your help in promoting what he's 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 Episode 309 with Amber Sparks, the author of the short story collections And I Do Not Forgive You and The Unfinished World. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, Granta, Slate, and elsewhere. Her book Happy People Don't Live Here was published in October 2025. The episode drops on November 18. Please go to ceasefiretoday.org, and/or https://act.uscpr.org/a/letaidin to call your congresspeople and demand an end to the forced famine and destruction of Gaza and the Gazan people.
This is a preview — for the full episode, subscribe: https://patreon.com/newmodels https://newmodels.substack.com Olivia Kan-Sperling joins to talk about her recent work, "Little Pink Book: A Bad Bad Novel" (Archway Editions, 2025). "It's like girl, China, sex, postmodernism, conceptual romance—a book that sells itself to you over and over and over again as you read it,” she remarks. Published in parallel English/Chinese, the novel was originally written to accompany a piece by Diane Severin Nguyen show at the Rockbund Art Museum in Shanghai. It now circulates as a kind of Reena Spaulings (the novel) for the Exocapitalism era, testing the limits of what fiction now is and what content could be. Based in NYC, Olivia is the author of the Kendall Jenner x Lil Peep fanfic, Island Time (Expat Press, 2022) as well as an associate editor + regular contributor to The Paris Review. Her words have also appeared and been channeled through outlets such as Heavy Traffic, Viscose, Kaleidoscope, n+1, and Montez Press Radio, among others. For more: @dianadiagram https://oliviaks.page/ https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Little-Pink-Book/Olivia-Kan-Sperling/9781648230417 Also feat. Olivia: NM60: https://soundcloud.com/newmodels/code-couture-olivia-kan-sperling-nm60 Heavy Traffic x New Models: https://soundcloud.com/newmodels/heavy-traffic-olivia-kan-sperling-perfect-glove
"I have this desire to write as a novelist might write but write nonfiction," says Sasha Bonet, the author of The Waterbearers: A Memoir of Mothers and Daughters (Knopf).Today we have the brilliant writer, the brilliant mind, Sasha Bonet, author of The Waterbearers: A Memoir of Mothers and Daughters. This book is a masterpiece that chronicles the matriarchal lineage of Sasha's family, and the pain, and the struggle, and the triumph of will, of the slow, methodical, generational march forward and the residue of generational trauma, what we can outrun and we can never outrun. Damn, man, it's something of a family epic that brought to mind A Hundred Years of Solitude to me in its scope, in its sweep. I don't know. Maybe I have no clue what I'm talking about.Sasha is a writer, critic, and editor living in the socialist hellscape of New York City, woot, woot!Her essays have appeared in the Paris Review, Aperture, New York Magazine, Vogue, and BOMB, among others. She earned an MFA from Columbia University and teaches nonfiction writing at Columbia's School of the Arts and Barnard College. You can learn more about Sasha at sashabonet.com and follow her on the gram @sasha.bonet.This is a rich conversation about: Community The in-between place Not holding back Her influences Her writing practice And how jazz informs her writingShe's also good friends with G'Ra Asim, who appeared on these podcast airwaves way back on Ep. 256.Order The Front RunnerNewsletter: Rage Against the AlgorithmWelcome to Pitch ClubShow notes: brendanomeara.com
When Cora meets Sam at a baby group in their small town, the chemistry between them is undeniable. Both are happily married young parents with two kids, and neither sees themselves as the type to engage in an affair. Yet their connection grows stronger, and as their lives continue to intertwine, the romantic tension between them becomes all-consuming—until their worlds unravel into two parallel timelines. In one, they pursue their feelings. In the other, they resist.As reality splits, the everyday details of Cora's life—her depressing marketing job, her daughter's new fascination with the afterlife, her husband's obsession with podcasts about the history of rope—gain fresh perspective. The intersecting and diverging timelines blur the boundaries of reality and fantasy, questioning what might have been and what truly matters.The Ten Year Affair is a witty, emotionally-charged exploration of marriage, family life, and the roads not taken, that ultimately asks: do we really want our fantasies to come true? Erin Somers is a reporter and news editor at Publishers Lunch. Her first novel, Stay Up with Hugo Best was a Vogue Best Book of the Year in 2019. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The New York Times Book Review, The New Republic, New York Magazine, The Atlantic, Esquire, GQ, The Best American Short Stories, and many other publications. She lives in Beacon, New York, with her family. Recommended Books: Flesh, David Szlay Loved and Missed, Susie Boyt Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
When Cora meets Sam at a baby group in their small town, the chemistry between them is undeniable. Both are happily married young parents with two kids, and neither sees themselves as the type to engage in an affair. Yet their connection grows stronger, and as their lives continue to intertwine, the romantic tension between them becomes all-consuming—until their worlds unravel into two parallel timelines. In one, they pursue their feelings. In the other, they resist.As reality splits, the everyday details of Cora's life—her depressing marketing job, her daughter's new fascination with the afterlife, her husband's obsession with podcasts about the history of rope—gain fresh perspective. The intersecting and diverging timelines blur the boundaries of reality and fantasy, questioning what might have been and what truly matters.The Ten Year Affair is a witty, emotionally-charged exploration of marriage, family life, and the roads not taken, that ultimately asks: do we really want our fantasies to come true? Erin Somers is a reporter and news editor at Publishers Lunch. Her first novel, Stay Up with Hugo Best was a Vogue Best Book of the Year in 2019. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The New York Times Book Review, The New Republic, New York Magazine, The Atlantic, Esquire, GQ, The Best American Short Stories, and many other publications. She lives in Beacon, New York, with her family. Recommended Books: Flesh, David Szlay Loved and Missed, Susie Boyt Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. 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
Jonathan Lethem is the author of A Different Kind of Tension: New and Selected Stories, available from Ecco. It was the official October 2025 pick of the Otherppl Book Club. Lethem is the bestselling author of thirteen novels, including Brooklyn Crime Novel, The Feral Detective, and Motherless Brooklyn, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. His five story collections include Men and Cartoons and Lucky Alan, and his short fiction has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, and the Paris Review, among other publications, garnering a Pushcart Prize, a World Fantasy Award, and inclusion in The Best American Short Stories. The recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship, he lives in Los Angeles and Maine. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Today we are rehashing Younger Season 3, Episode 10: "Pigeons, Parrots, and Storks." Join us as we discuss The Paris Review party that ends in a brawl, Maggie's hair tie mix-up, Dianna being gifted a Parrot against her will, and so much more!
Francesca Wade is the author of the biography Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife, available from Scribner. Francesca Wade is the author of Square Haunting: Five Writers in London Between the Wars (2020). She has received fellowships from the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, the Leon Levy Center for Biography and the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, and her writing has appeared in The New York Review of Books, London Review of Books, Paris Review, Granta, and elsewhere. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Amber Sparks is the author of the debut novel Happy People Don't Live Here, available from Liveright Publishing. Sparks is the author of the short story collections And I Do Not Forgive You and The Unfinished World. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, Granta, Slate, and elsewhere. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband, daughter, and cats. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Peter Orner is the author of seven acclaimed books including Maggie Brown & Others, Love and Shame and Love, Esther Stories, finalist for the Pen/ Hemingway Award, and Am I Alone Here?, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, the Paris Review, Best American Stories, and been awarded four Pushcart Prizes. A former Guggenheim fellow and recipient of the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Orner is chair of the English and Creative Writing Department at Dartmouth College. He lives with his family in Vermont, where he's also a volunteer firefighter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Vincenzo Latronico is the author of the novel Perfection, available from New York Review Books. Translated by Sophie Hughes. Perfection was longlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature and is a finalist for the International Booker Prize. Born in Rome, Vincenzo Latronico studied philosophy at the University of Milan and has since published numerous books in Italian, including The Conspiracy of Doves and Gymnastics and Revolution. In addition to his own writing, he has also translated the work of many writers into Italian including work by George Orwell, Oscar Wilde, and Alexander Dumas. He lives in Milan. Sophie Hughes is a translator of Spanish and Italian literature. Her translation of The Remainder by Alia Trabucco Zerán was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2019, and her translation of Fernanda Melchor's Hurricane Season was shortlisted for the same prize. Her writing and translations have appeared in McSweeney's, The Guardian, The Paris Review, The White Review, Frieze and The New York Times. She lives in the United Kingdom. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Angela Flournoy is the author of the novel The Wilderness, available from Mariner Books. It was longlisted for the National Book Award and is a finalist for the Kirkus Prize. Flournoy's debut novel, The Turner House, was a finalist for the National Book Award, a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, an Indie Next pick, and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, and she has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Flournoy has taught at the University of Iowa, Princeton University, and UCLA. She lives in New York. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
We are at an all time high of mental illness diagnoses. Some argue the reason is better diagnostic methods, others because we are just increasing in mental un-health. The discussion in this episode is in regards to the prevalence of mental diagnoses and the impact on individuals. In Brene Brown's bestselling book, Atlas of the Heart, she outlines 87 different emotions that are in and of themselves, normal and healthy. But when do we go over the line from normal to abnormal? From feeling some depression to being clinically depressed? Having anxiety or an anxiety disorder? Do we need or want an official diagnosis so we can get needed help? Or do we want to deny and boycott any such limiting label? I've brought on an expert to discuss it. Sarah Fay is an author, educator, and activist on the issue and has a book titled, Pathological: The True Story of Six Misdiagnoses. Sarah from a young age displayed some unhealthy behaviors and was diagnosed, labeled, and treated. Over the next 30 years she went on to have multiple clinical diagnoses and labels for Anorexia, Major depressive disorder, Anxiety disorder, Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, Obsessive compulsive disorder, Bipolar disorder, and has also dealt with alcoholism, being a compulsive exerciser, and many bouts being suicidal. You name the drug, she's been prescribed it and taken it. Today…she is well, though still accepting of a couple diagnoses and medications, but has much to educate and warn us about regarding our current culture which has nearly half of all Americans being given an official, clinical diagnosis during their lifetime. Sarah Fay writes for many publications, including The New York Times, The Atlantic, Time, and The Paris Review. She is also on the faculty at Northwestern University. She's the founder of Pathological: The Movement, and you can her at sarahfay.org. Sign up for your $1/month trial period at shopify.com/kevin Go to shipstation.com and use code KEVIN to start your free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Laura Dickerman: Last Word (1 1/2 ounces gin, 3/4 ounce green chartreuse, 3/4 ounce maraschino liqueur, 1/2 ounce fresh lime juice, Luxardo cherry)Laura tells some George Plimpton stories from her days as an intern at the Paris Review that inspired, in part, her debut novel HOT DESK, discusses some of the important differences in the publishing world during the 1980s and present day, reveals that the idea for her novel was a sentence in an email from her editor/publisher brother, identifies her favorite books to teach her high school English classes, and shares 3 pieces of advice for anyone trying to write their debut novel. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Melissa Febos is the author of The Dry Season: A Memoir of Pleasure in a Year Without Sex, available from Knopf. Febos is the national bestselling author of five books, including Abandon Me, Girlhood—which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative, and, most recently, The Dry Season. Her awards and fellowships include those from the Guggenheim Foundation, LAMBDA Literary, the National Endowment for the Arts, The British Library, The Black Mountain Institute, MacDowell, the Bogliasco Foundation, The American Library in Paris, and others. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, The Sun, The New York Times Magazine, The Best American Essays, Vogue, The Best American Travel and Food Writing, and New York Review of Books. Febos is a Roy J. Carver Professor at the University of Iowa, where she teaches in the Nonfiction Writing Program. She lives in Iowa City with her wife, the poet Donika Kelly. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
My guest today is Jia Tolentino. Jia is the author of the essay collection Trick Mirror, which was named one of the best books of 2019 by The New York Times Book Review, NPR, The Paris Review, and more. She won a National Magazine Award for her work at the New Yorker, where she's been a staff writer since 2016. Her writing covers so many different topics, from Roe V. Wade to the internet to pop culture and music. And today, we're going to talk about the 1996 pop hit “I Love You Always Forever” by Donna Lewis. For more, visit songexploder.net/jia-tolentino.