Podcasts about sad young literary men

Jordan talks with Keith Gessen about his new memoir of fatherhood, Raising Raffi: The First Five Years, and the challenges -- and wonders -- of being a parent and a writer, and what he thinks Raffi will think of the book when he's older. MENTIONED:  Raising America by Ann Hulbert "Choosing a School for My Daughter in a Segregated City" by Nikole Hannah-Jones Emily Oster, economics professor and parenting advisor The Kazdin Method Keith Gessen is a founding editor of n+1 and a contributor to The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, and the London Review of Books. He is the editor of three nonfiction books and the translator or co-translator, from Russian, of a collection of short stories, a book of poems, and a work of oral history. He is also the author of two novels, “All the Sad Young Literary Men” and "A Terrible Country," as well as a book of essays, "Raising Raffi."  Gessen was born in Moscow and grew up outside of Boston. He graduated from Harvard with a B.A. in History and Literature in 1998, and subsequently received an M.F.A. in Creative Writing (Fiction) from Syracuse University. In 2014-2015 he was a Fellow at the Cullman Center for Writers and Scholars at the New York Public Library. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

December 11, 2018 at the LIC Reading Series at LIC Bar in Queens, NY Panel discussion from our event on December 11, 2018, featuring Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (FRIDAY BLACK), Hannah Lillith Assadi (SONORA), and Keith Gessen (A TERRIBLE COUNTRY). Find more details here: https://www.facebook.com/events/213310262886900/ About our readers: NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH has an MFA from Syracuse University. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous publications, including Esquire, Guernica, Printer’s Row, and the Breakwater Review, where ZZ Packer awarded him the Breakwater Review Fiction Prize. He was selected by Colson Whitehead for the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35.” He lives in Syracuse. FRIDAY BLACK is his first book.   HANNAH LILLITH ASSADI was raised in Arizona and now lives in Brooklyn. She received her MFA in fiction from the Columbia University School of the Arts. Her first novel SONORA (Soho 2017) received the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a finalist for the PEN/ Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction. In 2018, she was named a National Book Foundation 5 under 35 honoree. Her second novel THE STARS ARE NOT YET BELLS is forthcoming from Riverhead.   KEITH GESSEN was born in Moscow and grew up outside of Boston. He is a founding editor of n+1 and a contributor to the London Review of Books and the New Yorker. He has translated Svetlana Alexievich and Ludmilla Petrushevskaya from Russian and is the author of the novels All the Sad Young Literary Men and A Terrible Country. - - - This event was made possible in part by the Queens Council on the Arts, with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Thank you to our local sponsors: LIC Bar, Astoria Bookshop, Sweetleaf Coffee, Gantry Bar LIC, and LIC Corner Cafe. Learn more at licreadingseries.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

December 11, 2018 at the LIC Reading Series at LIC Bar in Queens, NY Readings from our event on December 11, 2018, featuring Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (FRIDAY BLACK), Hannah Lillith Assadi (SONORA), and Keith Gessen (A TERRIBLE COUNTRY). Find more details here: https://www.facebook.com/events/213310262886900/ About our readers: NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH has an MFA from Syracuse University. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous publications, including Esquire, Guernica, Printer’s Row, and the Breakwater Review, where ZZ Packer awarded him the Breakwater Review Fiction Prize. He was selected by Colson Whitehead for the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35.” He lives in Syracuse. FRIDAY BLACK is his first book.   HANNAH LILLITH ASSADI was raised in Arizona and now lives in Brooklyn. She received her MFA in fiction from the Columbia University School of the Arts. Her first novel SONORA (Soho 2017) received the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a finalist for the PEN/ Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction. In 2018, she was named a National Book Foundation 5 under 35 honoree. Her second novel THE STARS ARE NOT YET BELLS is forthcoming from Riverhead.   KEITH GESSEN was born in Moscow and grew up outside of Boston. He is a founding editor of n+1 and a contributor to the London Review of Books and the New Yorker. He has translated Svetlana Alexievich and Ludmilla Petrushevskaya from Russian and is the author of the novels All the Sad Young Literary Men and A Terrible Country. - - - This event was made possible in part by the Queens Council on the Arts, with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Thank you to our local sponsors: LIC Bar, Astoria Bookshop, Sweetleaf Coffee, Gantry Bar LIC, and LIC Corner Cafe. Learn more at licreadingseries.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sigrid Nunez won the 2018 National Book Award for The Friend, ''a penetrating, moving meditation on loss, comfort, memory'' (NPR) in which a woman is forced to adopt her deceased best friend's Great Dane. The recipient of a Berlin Prize, the Rome Prize in Literature, and a Whiting Award, Nunez is also the author of Salvation City, The Last of Her Kind, A Feather on the Breath of God, and Sempre Susan, a memoir about her friend and mentor Susan Sontag. A founding editor of the popular online magazine n+1, Russian-born polymath Keith Gessen is the author of the novel All the Sad Young Literary Men and the editor of three nonfiction books. A journalism professor at Columbia University, he has written for a wide variety of publications, including The New Yorker, The London Review of Books, and The Atlantic. Gessen's new novel tells the story of a New York émigré's return to Putin's Moscow to take care of his sick grandmother. ''[T]his earnest and wistful but serious book gets good, and then it gets very good... [and] is a gift for those who wish to receive it'' (The New York Times). (recorded 2/26/2019)

The only job Andrei Kaplan has been able to find since completing his doctorate, is teaching an online, poorly-paid course. So, he agrees to fly to Moscow when his brother promises him a round-trip ticket, hockey games, and his old bedroom with free WiFi in exchange for taking care of their aging grandmother. Andrei imagines the scholarly article he’ll write based on his grandmother’s stories of Soviet intrigue. He imagines himself protesting the Putin regime in the morning, playing hockey in the afternoon, and keeping his grandmother company in the evening. But his Russian is rusty, finding a place to play hockey is difficult, and the grandmother has dementia. As Keith Gessen explains in his wonderful novel A Terrible Country (Viking, 2018), Russia turns out to be something different than he expected. Keith Gessen is the founding editor of the literary journal n+1 and author of All the Sad Young Literary Men. He is also the editor of three nonfiction books and the translator, from Russian, of a collection of short stories, a book of poems, and Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich’s oral history, Voices from Chernobyl. A contributor to The New Yorker and The London Review of Books, Gessen teaches journalism at Columbia and lives in New York with his wife and sons. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The only job Andrei Kaplan has been able to find since completing his doctorate, is teaching an online, poorly-paid course. So, he agrees to fly to Moscow when his brother promises him a round-trip ticket, hockey games, and his old bedroom with free WiFi in exchange for taking care of their aging grandmother. Andrei imagines the scholarly article he’ll write based on his grandmother’s stories of Soviet intrigue. He imagines himself protesting the Putin regime in the morning, playing hockey in the afternoon, and keeping his grandmother company in the evening. But his Russian is rusty, finding a place to play hockey is difficult, and the grandmother has dementia. As Keith Gessen explains in his wonderful novel A Terrible Country (Viking, 2018), Russia turns out to be something different than he expected. Keith Gessen is the founding editor of the literary journal n+1 and author of All the Sad Young Literary Men. He is also the editor of three nonfiction books and the translator, from Russian, of a collection of short stories, a book of poems, and Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich’s oral history, Voices from Chernobyl. A contributor to The New Yorker and The London Review of Books, Gessen teaches journalism at Columbia and lives in New York with his wife and sons. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Keith Gessen reads his story “How Did We Come to Know You?,” from the April 16, 2018, issue of the magazine. Gessen’s first novel, “All the Sad Young Literary Men,” came out in 2008. His second novel, “A Terrible Country,” from which this story was adapted, will be published in July. Gessen is also a translator and a journalist, who has contributed many nonfiction pieces to The New Yorker.

All the Sad Young Literary Men (Viking)Keith Gessen, one of the founding editors of the hip, intellectual journal n+1, has written his first novel. It's about the struggles of young people to break into the world of their aspirations, in this case, the literary intelligentsia of New York City...