Podcast appearances and mentions of Yiyun Li

Notes and Links to Alexander Chee's Work          Alexander Chee is the bestselling author of the novels Edinburgh and The Queen of the Night, and the essay collection How To Write An Autobiographical Novel, all from Mariner Books. A contributing editor at The New Republic and an editor at large at VQR, his essays and stories have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, T Magazine, The Sewanee Review, and the 2016 and 2019 Best American Essays. He was guest-editor for The Best American Essays of 2022.    He is a 2021 United States Artists Fellow, a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow in Nonfiction, and the recipient of a Whiting Award, a NEA Fellowship, an MCCA Fellowship, the Randy Shilts Prize in gay nonfiction, the Paul Engle Prize, the Lambda Editor's Choice Prize, and residency fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the VCCA, Leidig House, Civitella Ranieri and Amtrak.    He is a full professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College and lives in Vermont. Buy How To Write an Autobiographical Novel   Alexander's Website   Book Review for How To Write an Autobiographical Novel from The New York Times   At about 2:00, Alexander details his Amtrak residency, later written about in The New Yorker At about 6:00, Alexander outlines some interesting characters that he met during his Amtrak residency  At about 12:00, Alexander reflects on a book project inspired by an interesting encounter with a former detective and British and American sensibilities  At about 16:30, Pete shares his own Amtrak story, possible fodder for essays and short stories, as Alexander remarks on “immediate friendship”  At about 18:50, Alexander talks about upcoming novel and short story projects and the process of picking a title; he recounts how he arrived at his essay collection's title, through a Buzzfeed publication  At about 26:30, Alexander highlights Kirkus Review naming How to Write an Autobiographical Novel one  At about 27:35, Alexander gives background on his essay collection's cover photo At about 34:10, Alexander talks about the composition of the previous essay collection and his upcoming one, with regards to placement and focuses on his “rose garden”- “The Rosary”-essay's development At about 39:00, Alexander responds to Pete's questions about the order of the essays in the collections and any throughlines-Garnette Cadogan and Naomi Gibbs are shouted out At about 43:40, Alexander talks about a manuscript that he has been working At about 44:45, Pete is complimentary of Alexander's “The Rosary” essay, and Alexander tells a story of an interested and poignant conversation with   At about 48:00, Pete shouts  At about 49:00, Pete and Alexander talk about the essay collection's first piece, and Alexander talks about being “Alejandro from Oaxaca” for a short time-he references Yiyun Li's powerful essay, “To Speak is to Blunder” At about 55:10, Pete compliments Alexander's powerful advocacy work and asks him about perspective and time, and how Alexander looks back at the essays from the collection so many years later (for some of the essays) At about 1:02:00, In talking about modern protest and activist culture, mutual aid, etc., Alexander shouts out Sarah Thankam Mathews' powerful All This Could Be Different At about 1:04:30, Alexander discusses a dynamic class that he has mentored at Dartmouth At about 1:05:30, Alexander responds to Pete's questions about what fiction allows him to do with his writing At about 1:06:30, Alexander reflects on ideas of catharsis in his writing      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 Episode 270 guest Jason De León is up on the website this week. A big thanks to Rachel León and Michael Welch 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, his DIY podcast and his extensive reading, research, editing, and promoting to keep this independent podcast pumping out high-quality content!    This month's Patreon bonus episode will feature an exploration of the wonderful poetry of Khalil Gibran. 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 282 with Emely Rumble, a licensed clinical social worker, school social worker, and seasoned biblio/psychotherapist who specializes in bibliotherapy, the use of literature and expressive writing to heal. Pub Day and episode air day are April 29 for her wonderful book, Bibliotherapy in The Bronx.

Yiyun Li reads her story, “Techniques and Idiosyncrasies,” from the March 17, 2025, issue of the magazine. Li is the author of eight books of fiction, including the novels “Must I Go” and “The Book of Goose,” and the story collection “Wednesday's Child,” which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2024. A new nonfiction book, “Things in Nature Merely Grow,” will be published in May. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Metrograph recently unveiled a new biannual print publication for cinephiles and cultural connoisseurs which features contributions from novelist Yiyun Li, cartoonist Daniel Clowes, filmmaker Ari Aster, and actors Steve Martin and Simon Rex alongside others. Editors Annabel Brady-Brown and Kelli Weston discuss the publication, and take calls from listeners about their own moviegoing experiences.

E mais uma vez nos reunimos aqui para apresentar as nossas melhores e piores leituras de 2024, onde houve espaço para livros memoráveis e outros que nos fizeram questionar muita coisa. Partilhem connosco as vossas listas, também! Livros mencionados neste episódio: - Holiday Romance (Romance de Férias), Catherine Walsh (05:31) - Não Fossem as Sílabas do Sábado, Mariana Salomão Carrara (06:33) - A Cicatriz, Maria Francisca Gama (09:02) - Stoner, John Williams (09:21) - Revolução, Hugo Gonçalves (09:45) - Clytemnestra, Costanza Casati (10:01) - Dear Edward (Querido Edward), Ann Napolitano (10:38) - Torto Arado, Itamar Vieira Júnior (10:52) - Corte & Costura: As Maiores Fofocas da Nossa Realeza, Márcia Gil Pedroso (11:06) - Coisas de Loucos, Catarina Gomes (12:21) - Blue Sisters (Irmãs Blue), Coco Mellors (13:22) - In Memoriam, Alice Winn (14:55) - The Dutch House (A Casa Holandesa), Ann Patchett (16:06) - Funny Story (Uma Boa História), Emily Henry (17:40) - True Biz, Sara Nović (18:38) - The Seven Year Slip, Ashley Boston (21:11) - Boys Don't Cry, Fíona Scarlett (22:44) - How to End a Love Story (Como Acabar uma História de Amor), Yulin Kuang (25:12) - For the Love of Men: A New Vision for Mindful Masculinity, Liz Plank (29:27) - Grief is for People, Sloane Crowley (32:06) - Soldier Sailor, Claire Kilroy (34:44) - The Bee Sting (A Picada de Abelha), Paul Murray (37:22) - Small Worlds (Pequenos Mundos), Caleb Azumah Nelson (39:33) - Just Last Night, Mhairi McFarlane (42:08) - A Malnascida, Beatrice Salvioni (44:22) - Intermezzo, Sally Rooney (46:20) - Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (Conduz o Teu Arado Sobre os Ossos dos Mortos), Olga Tokarczuk (47:16 & 01:09:11) - There Are Rivers in the Sky, Elif Shafak (49:08) - Stay True (Lealdade), Hua Hsu (53:55) - The List, Yomi Adegoke (54:52) - White Nights (Noites Brancas), Fyodor Dostoevsky (56:02) - Britt-Marie was Here (Britt-Marie Esteve Aqui), Fredrik Backman (57:48) - The Perfect Find (O Achado Perfeito), Tia Williams(58:36) - Silver Nitrate, Silvia Moreno-Garcia (59:50) - The End of the Moment We Had, Toshiba Okada (01:00:41) - Mile High, Liz Tomforde (01:02:06) - Savor it (Quando o Verão Terminar), Tarah DeWitt (01:02:48) - Night Shift, Annie Crown (01:03:53) - Argyle, Elly Conway (01:04:31) - I Have Some Questions for You, Rebecca Makkai (01:06:46) - By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, Elizabeth Smart (01:08:20) - Must I Go, Yiyun Li (01:09:58) - The Burnout (O Burnout), Sophie Kinsella (01:11:07) - The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry, Gabrielle Zevin (01:11:44) - Western Lane, Chetna Maroo (01:13:48) - Lear Wife, J. R. Thorp (01:15:08) - The Co-Op, Tarah DeWitt (01:16:35) - A Maldição de Rosas, Diana Pinguicha (01:17:11) ________________ Enviem as vossas questões ou sugestões para livratepodcast@gmail.com. Encontrem-nos nas redes sociais: www.instagram.com/julesdsilva www.instagram.com/ritadanova twitter.com/julesxdasilva twitter.com/ritadanova Identidade visual do podcast: da autoria da talentosa Mariana Cardoso, que podem encontrar em marianarfpcardoso@hotmail.com. Genérico do podcast: criado pelo incrível Vitor Carraca Teixeira, que podem encontrar em www.instagram.com/oputovitor.

Writing has the power to transport us to the depths of the human experience – to illuminate the joys, sorrows and complexities that make us who we are. In this captivating final episode of Learning Through Experience Season Three, Amy Bloom and I explore the transformative power of the written word. Amy, an acclaimed writer and psychotherapist, shares a poignant reading from her memoir "In Love," which provides a deeply personal window into her journey with her late husband's early-onset Alzheimer's. The conversation takes us into the nuanced relationship between writing for oneself and writing for an audience, as Amy offers her thought-provoking perspective on the importance of reading diverse perspectives to enrich one's creative voice. Join us as we ponder the art of revision, strategies for creating a safe and supportive environment for student writers, and all the profound ways in which reflective writing can shape our understanding of ourselves and the human experience.  Watch this episode on YouTube.   Key Topics 4:16 Reading Aloud: “In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss” Amy reads a powerful excerpt from her memoir "In Love" about her husband's early-onset Alzheimer's. 9:21 The Importance of Reading Diverse Perspectives Amy discusses how reading widely, beyond one's own experiences, has shaped her as a writer, and emphasizes the value of understanding complex human emotions and motivations to create compelling characters. 13:18 Writing for Yourself vs. Writing for Others Amy draws from insights on her process of transitioning from private writing to crafting an engaging narrative for readers.  17:36 The Art of Revision and Refinement Amy describes her approach to the writing process, including the importance of starting with a vivid moment and building from there. She also emphasizes the need for constant revision and refinement to make the writing more compelling and accessible for readers. 24:53 Creating a Safe Space for Student Writers Writing can be a struggle and failure is inherent. Amy shares her experience teaching writing and the strategies she uses to foster a supportive, yet provocative, environment for students. 32:28 The Transformative Power of Reflective Writing There can be many sides, or perspectives, to any individual story. Amy explores the value of engaging deeply with one's own stories and examining stories from multiple perspectives, while not shying away from the less heroic or pretty aspects of personal narratives. Additional Resources  Darien Library discussion on YouTube: Amy turns the lens inwards in In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss, a courageous memoir that challenges: what are you willing to do for the one you love? And what is our own right to die? When Her Husband Said He Wanted to Die, Amy Bloom Listened - NY Times  NY Times - How to Raise a ‘Warrior Queen': For 12 years, Yiyun Li taught her writing students a story by Amy Bloom about the power, and limitations, of love. Confronting unbearable grief, she returned to it.

Yiyun Li reads her story “The Particles of Order,” from the September 2, 2024, issue of the magazine. Li is the author of eight books of fiction, including the novels “Must I Go” and “The Book of Goose,” and the story collection “Wednesday's Child,” which was a finalist for this year's Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. A new nonfiction book, “Things in Nature Merely Grow,” will be published next year.

Notes and Links to Annie Liontas' Work        For Episode 244, Pete welcomes Annie Liontas, and the two discuss, among other topics, their childhood love of books after early years of learning English as a second language, their teaching life, formative and transformative books and writers, the hot literary scene in Philly, and salient themes and issues in her memoir like writing emotionally-charged material, “invisible disability,” traumatic brain injuries and their personal history, as well as larger narratives about TBI in the carceral system, NFL, and beyond.      Annie Liontas is the genderqueer author of the memoir Sex with a Brain Injury: On Concussion and Recovery, which was featured on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross and selected as SELF Magazine's Book of the Month. Their debut novel, Let Me Explain You, was selected as New York Times Editors Choice. They co-edited the anthology A Manner of Being: Writers on their Mentors, and their work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Gay Magazine, NPR, Electric Literature, BOMB, Lithub, The Believer, Guernica, McSweeney's, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. A graduate of Syracuse University's MFA program, they are a professor of writing at George Washington University. Annie has served as a mentor for Pen City's incarcerated writers and helped secure a Mellon Foundation grant on Disability Justice to bring storytelling to communities in the criminal justice system. They co-host the literary podcast LitFriends and live in Philadelphia.   Buy Sex with a Brain Injury   Annie's George Washington University Bio   NPR's Fresh Air Interview with Annie   Emma Copley Eisenberg Writes about Sex with a Brain Injury for Electric Lit   LitFriends Podcast with Annie and Lito Velazquez   At about 1:40, Annie talks about their experience with the legendary Terri Gross At about 3:45, Annie talks about their upbringing and Greek family lineage At about 5:20, Annie homes in on their early days in frustration in transmitting ideas in English  At about 6:20, Annie responds to Pete's questions about how Greek affects their English writing and reading  At about 8:30, Annie discusses their early love of reading At about 11:30, Annie and Pete discuss pleasurable reading and the idea of “favorite books” At about 12:15, Annie and Pete nerd out over Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Pete recommends “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” At about 13:40, Annie speaks to ideas of representation in what they have read  At about 15:20, Annie talks about “wonderful” professors in their time at Syracuse At about 16:20, Annie highlights Justin Torres, Yiyun Li, and other writers whose work is favorited by their students At about 17:50, Annie highlights Philadelphia's huge amount of talent-writers like Marie Helene Bertino, Emma Eisenberg, and Liz Moore At about 20:15, Pete and Annie talks about Annie's memoir's exposition and opening lines; Annie expounds upon seeds for the book At about 23:00, Pete shouts out Ingrid Rojas Contreras' The Man Who Could Move Clouds At about 23:50, The two discuss the ways in which Annie uses second person and tropes about concussions in the memoir At about 26:40, Pete wonders about Annie's decisions in summarizing three main injuries and compliments the draw of the structure; Annie talks about suspense and withholding and shares a resonant quote from George Saunders At about 29:30, Annie discusses “the longitudinal experience” that goes into “I will have my life” that ends the second chapter At about 31:05, Annie responds to Pete's questions about writing emotionally-charged material about beloved people At about 33:05, Annie talks about people doubting the severity of their injuries and a “five-year plan” At about 36:10, Annie shares interesting history about the rail industry and its “bonkers” track record-pun intended-in connection to injuries and “faking” At about 38:30, Pete asks Annie about effects of the brain injury At about 41:05, Pete's got jokes! and Annie talks about the physical effects of their brain injuries At about 42:25, Henry VIII's possible brain traumas are discussed, as are Harriet Tubman's At about 45:15, “Lying as a social act” is discussed in context of Annie's injury and subsequent ill effects At about 48:20, Annie discusses their mother's life and connections between addiction and brain trauma, including Marchell Taylor's moving fight for better care for TBI victims in the carceral system  At about 54:00, Pete highlights a resonant excerpt from the book, Page 67, revolving around queerness At about 57:15, Pete and Annie cite examples from the sporting world and the ways in which women's health concerns are not treated equally  At about 58:30, the NFL and concussions are discussed  At about 1:01:55, Pete and Annie discuss Q&A's with Annie's wife, and Pete wonders about the choice to use redacted parts  At about 1:04:30, Annie juxtaposes the different ways in which Tig Notaro and Ernest Shackleton dealt with trauma At about 1:08:50, Annie highlights the greatness of and beautiful relationship with Ursula von Ridingsvard At about 1:12:00, Annie shouts out their publisher and places to buy the book, as well as how to contact them and find them online; they give background information on her podcast        You can now subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and leave me a five-star review. You can also ask for the podcast by name using Alexa, and find the pod on Stitcher, Spotify, and on Amazon Music. Follow me on IG, where I'm @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where I'm @chillsatwillpo1. You can watch this and other episodes on YouTube-watch and subscribe to The Chills at Will Podcast Channel. Please subscribe to both my YouTube Channel and my podcast while you're checking out this episode.    I am very excited about having 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. A big thanks to Rachel León and Michael Welch at Chicago Review-I'm looking forward to the partnership!     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 my one-man show, my DIY podcast and my extensive reading, research, editing, and promoting to keep this independent podcast pumping out high-quality content!       This is a passion project of mine, a DIY operation, and I'd love for your help in promoting what I'm convinced is a unique and spirited look at an often-ignored art form.    The intro song for The Chills at Will Podcast is “Wind Down” (Instrumental Version), and the other song played on this episode was “Hoops” (Instrumental)” by Matt Weidauer, and both songs are used through ArchesAudio.com.     Please tune in for Episode 245 with Shannon Sanders, who is a Black writer, attorney, and author of the linked story collection Company, which was winner of the 2023 LA Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Additionally, her short fiction was the recipient of a 2020 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers.     The episode will go live on July 31.     Lastly, please go to https://ceasefiretoday.com/, which features 10+ actions to help bring about Ceasefire in Gaza.  

Join co-hosts Annie Liontas and Lito Velázquez in conversation with Yiyun Li & Edmund White about their book club of two, having three imaginary friends, the political vs the artistic, and loving each other all day long. Season Two is coming this fall!   Links Libsyn Blog https://www.barclayagency.com/speakers/yiyun-li https://www.nationalbook.org/people/edmund-white/ www.annieliontas.com www.litovelazquez.com LitFriends LinkTree LitFriends Insta LitFriends Facebook

Os primeiros quatro meses do ano passaram a velocidade relâmpago, tão rápido quanto as reviews que vos trazemos hoje. É o nosso habitual comprar, (ler no) kobo/kindle ou cagar. E estamos muito curiosas com a lista do vosso lado. Partilham connosco? Livros mencionados neste episódio: - The Perfect Find, Tia Williams (1:43) - A Corrente, Filipa Amorim (2:34) - Medusa, Jessie Burton (5:35) - Você nunca mais vai ficar sozinha, Tati Bernardi (6:02) - Yellowface, R. F. Kuang (6:11) - Divine Rivals, Rebeca Ross (6:33) - The Dutch House, Ann Patchett (6:47 & 10:41) - Britt-Marie Was Here, Fredrik Backman (7:20) - I Who Have Never Known Men, Jacqueline Harpman (7:42) - Friendaholic - Viciada em Amizade, Elizabeth Day (7:58) - A Cicatriz, Maria Francisca Gama (8:39) - Pardalita, Joana Estrela (8:55) - The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse, Charlie Mackesy (8:57) - Maybe in Another Life, Taylor Jenkins Reid (10:00) - Craigslist Confessional, Helena Dea Bala (10:21) - Good Material, Dolly Alderton (10:43) - The Love Wager, Lynn Painter (11:10) - Lei da Gravidade, Gabriela Ruivo (11:28) - So Late in the Day, Claire Keegan (12:05) - Coisas de Loucos, Catarina Gomes (12:42) - Early Morning Riser, Katherine Heiny (12:51) - Love in the Big City, Sang Young Park (13:15) - Tudo Pode Ser Roubado, Giovana Madalosso (13:43) - Mayflies, Andrew O'Hagan (13:58) - Monopolove, Mia Heintzelman (14:11) - Trivialized Pursuit, Mia Heintzelman (14:21) - The Fair Botanists, Sara Sheridan (14:27) - Anatomy, Dana Schwartz (14:45 & 15:19) - Stoner, John Williams (14:46 & 15:17) - All my Friends are Superheroes, Andrew Kaufman (14:49) - Lisboa, Chão Sagrado, Ana Bárbara Pedrosa (15:22) - Silver Nitrate, Silvia Moreno-Garcia (15:40) - Argylle, Elly Conway (16:14) - True Biz, Sara Novic (16:25) - In Memoriam, Alice Winn (16:37) - The House With the Golden Door, Elodie Harper (16:57) - Sinais de Fumo, Alex Couto (18:06) - A Natureza da Mordida, Carla Madeira (18:24) - A Maldição de Rosas, Diana Pinguicha (18:55) - Boys Don't Cry, Fíona Scarlett (19:33) - Babel, R.F. Kuang (19:40) - Six Days in Rome, Francesca Giacco (20:10) - Intimacies, Katie Kitamura (20:30) - Funny Story, Emily Henry (21:16) - Antarctica, Claire Keegan (21:56) - The Seven-Year Slip, Ashley Poston (22:32) - By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, Elizabeth Smart (23:29) - The Death of Murat Idrissi, Tommy Wieringa (23:53) - Corte & Costura, Márcia Pedroso (24:02) - The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry, Gabrielle Zevin (24:10) - Expiration Dates, Rebecca Serle (24:19) - Must I Go, Yiyun Li (24:53) - Pod, Laline Paull (25:01) - Da Meia-Noite às Seis, Patrícia Reis (25:07) - After Sappho, Selby Wynn Schwartz (25:19) - The Pachinko Parlour, Elisa Shua Dusapin (25:45) - Primeiro Eu Tive de Morrer, Lorena Portela (25:56) - Dancer From the Dance, Andrew Holleran (26:01) - Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro (27:00) - Revolução, Hugo Gonçalves (27:36) - For the Love of Men, Liz Plank (27:48) - Filhos da Chuva, Álvaro Curia (28:26) - História da Bela Fria, Teresa Veiga (28:40) ________________ Enviem as vossas questões ou sugestões para livratepodcast@gmail.com. Encontrem-nos nas redes sociais: www.instagram.com/julesdsilva www.instagram.com/ritadanova twitter.com/julesxdasilva twitter.com/ritadanova Identidade visual do podcast: da autoria da talentosa Mariana Cardoso, que podem encontrar em marianarfpcardoso@hotmail.com. Genérico do podcast: criado pelo incrível Vitor Carraca Teixeira, que podem encontrar em www.instagram.com/oputovitor.

Yiyun Li (winner of a 2020 Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction) chats with Prize Director Michael Kelleher about French Catholic monarchist author Georges Bernanos's Mouchette, the joys of reading together, and why inarticulate characters often live the deepest lives. Reading list:  Mouchette by Georges Bernanos, tr. by J.C. Whitehouse • War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy • Tolstoy Together • Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie Yiyun Li is the author of several works of fiction—Wednesday's Child, The Book of Goose, Must I Go, Where Reasons End, Kinder Than Solitude, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, The Vagrants, and Gold Boy, Emerald Girl—and the memoir Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life as well as the book Tolstoy Together. She is the recipient of many awards, including the PEN/Malamud Award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, a MacArthur Fellowship, and a Windham-Campbell Prize. Her work has also appeared in The New Yorker, A Public Space, The Best American Short Stories, and The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, among other publications. She teaches at Princeton University. The Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast is a program of The Windham-Campbell Prizes, which are administered by Yale University Library's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Join co-hosts Annie Liontas and Lito Velázquez in conversation with LitFriends Melissa Febos & Donika Kelly about their grand statements, big revelations, sentential seduction, queering forms, the power of vulnerability, and love poems. We're taking a break and will be back for our next episode with guests Yiyun Li & Edmund White on January 16,  2024. Happy Holidays, LitFam!   LINKS Libsyn Blog www.annieliontas.com www.litovelazquez.com www.melissafebos.com www.donikakelly.com LitFriends LinkTree LitFriends Insta LitFriends Facebook TRANSCRIPT Annie: (00:00) This episode is dedicated to Chuck, a dog we have loved, and Donika and Melissa's sweet pup.   Annie & Lito: Welcome to LitFriends! Hey Lit Friends!   Annie: Welcome to the show.    Lito: Today, we're speaking with memoirist Melissa Febos and poet Donika Kelly, lit friends in marriage,   Annie: About seduction, big boss feelings, and sliding into DMs.   Lito: So grab your bestie,   Annie & Lito: And get ready to fall in love!   Annie: What I love about Melissa Febos, and you can feel this across all four of her books, is how she declares herself free. There's no ambiguity to this. This is her story, not your telling of it, not your telling of her. I meet her on the page as someone who's in an act of rebellion or an act of defiance. And I was not really surprised but delighted to find that, when I read Donika Kelly, I had sort of the same reaction, same impression. And I'm wondering if that's true for you, and, Lito, what your understanding of vulnerability and its relationship to power is.   Lito: The power for me in these conversations, and the power that the authors that we speak with possess, seems to me, in the ways that they have found how they are completely unique from each other. And more so than in our other conversations, Donika and Melissa, their work is so different. And yet, as you've pointed out, the overlap, and the fire, the energy, the defiance, the fierceness is so present. And it was present in our conversation. And so inspiring.   Annie: Yeah. I'm thinking even about Melissa Febos has this Ted Talk. (01:54) Where she says "telling your secrets will set you free." And it feels that not only is that true, but it's also very much an act of self reclamation and strength, right? Where we might read it as an act of weakness. It's actually in fact, a harnessing of the self.   Lito: Right, it's not that Melissa has a need to confess. It's that she really uses writing to find the truth about herself and how she feels about something, which that could not differ more from my writing practice.   Annie: How so?   Lito: I find that I sort of, I write out of an emotion or a need to discover something, but I already sort of am aware of where I am and who I am before I start. I find the plot and the characters as I go, but I know sort of how I feel.   Annie: Yeah, I think for me, I do feel like writing is an act of discovery where maybe I put something on the page, it's the initial conception, or yeah, like you coming out of a feeling. But as I start to ask questions, right, for me, it's this process of inquiry. I excavate to something maybe a little more surprising or partially hidden or unknown to myself.   Lito: That's true. There is a discovery of, and I think you're, I think you've pointed to exactly what it is. It's the process of inquiry, and I think both of them, and obviously us, we're doing that similar thing. This is about writing, about this, this is about asking questions and writing through them.   Annie: Yeah, and Donika Kelly, we feel that in her work, her poetry over and over, even when they have the same recurring, I would say haunting images or artifacts. Each time she's turning it over and asking almost unbearable questions.   Lito: Right.   Annie: And we're joining her on the page because she is brave enough and has an iron will and says, no, I will not not look this in the eye.    Lito: That's the feeling exactly that I get from both of them is the courage, the bravura of the unflinching.   Annie: I think something that seemed to resonate with you was (03:58) how they talk about writing outside of publishing right? Yeah.   Lito: Yeah, I love I love that they talk about writing as a practice regardless, they're separated from The need to produce a work that's gonna sell in a commercial world in a capitalist society. It's more about the daily practice, and how that is a lifestyle and even what you said about the TED talk, that's just her. She's just talking about herself. Like that she's just telling an absolute truth that people don't typically talk about.   Annie: Right. And it's a conscious, active way to live inside one's life. It's a form of reflection, meditation, and rather than just moving through life, a way to make meaning of the experience.   Lito: I love that you use the word meditation because when you talk about meditation, you think of someone in a lotus position quietly being, but the meditations that both of them do, these are not quiet.   Annie: No. And of course we have to talk about how cute they are as married literary besties.   Lito: Oh my god, cute and like, they're hot for each other.   Annie: Oh my god.   Lito: It's palpable.   Annie: So palpable, sliding into DMs, chatting each other up over email.   Lito: They romanced each other, and I hope—no—I know they're gonna romance you, listener.   Annie: We'll be right back.   Lito: (05:40) Back to the show.   Annie: Melissa Febos is the author of four books, including the best-selling essay collection Girlhood, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, was a Lambda finalist, and was named a notable book by NPR, Time Magazine, the Washington Post, and others. Her craft book Body Work is a national bestseller and an Indie's Next Pick. Her forthcoming novel The Dry Season is a work of mixed form nonfiction that explores celibacy as liberatory practice. Melissa lives in Iowa City with her wife, the poet Donika Kelly, and is a professor in the English department at the University of Iowa, where she teaches creative writing.   Lito: Donika Kelly is the author of The Renunciations, winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in poetry and Bestiary, the winner of the 2015 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, a Hurston Wright Legacy Award for poetry, and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Donika has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Publishing Triangle Awards, the Lambda Literary Awards, and was long listed for the National Book Award. (06:00) Donika lives in Iowa City with her wife, the writer Melissa Febos, and is an assistant professor in the English department at the University of Iowa, where she teaches creative writing.   Annie: Well, thank you for joining us for LitFriends to talk about the ultimate lit friendship. It does seem like you've won at the game of lit friends a little bit, having married your lit friend. I think of you both as writers who are in the constant act of subversion and resisting erasure. And that's the kind of work that Lito and I are drawn to, and that we're trying to do ourselves. And your work really shows us how to inhabit our bravest and most complex selves on the page. So we're really grateful for that.   Melissa: Thanks.   Annie: Yeah, of course. I mean, Donika, I think about poems of yours that my friends and I revisit constantly because we're haunted by them in the best way. They've taken residence inside of us. And you talk about what it means to have to do that work. And you've said, "to admit need and pain, desire and trauma and claim my humanity was often daunting. But the book demanded I claim my personhood."   And Melissa, I think you know how much your work means to me. I mean, as someone who is raised as a girl in this country and writing creative nonfiction, Body Work should not be as revelatory as it is. Yet what I see is that you're shaping an entire generation of nonfiction writers, many of them women. So, you know, also very grateful for that. And you've talked about that in Body Work. You've said "the risk of honest self-appraisal requires bravery to place our flawed selves in the context of this magnificent broken world is the opposite of narcissism, which is building a self-image that pleases you." So we'll talk more in a bit about courage and vulnerability and how you all do the impossible things you do, but let's dive into your lit friendship.   Melissa: Thank you, Annie, for that beautiful introduction.   Donika: Yeah, thank you so much. I'm excited to talk about our friendship.   Lito: We're so excited to have you here.   Melissa: Talk about our special friendship.   Annie: Very special friendship. Friendship with benefits.   Lito: So tell us about your lit friend, Melissa, tell us about Donika.   Melissa: (09:07) Tell us about her. Okay, she's fucking hilarious, like very, very funny and covers a broad spectrum of humor from like, there's a lot of like punning that goes on in our house, a lot of like silly wordplay, bathroom humor, and then like high level, like, literary academic sort of witticism that's also making fun of itself a lot. And we've sort of operated in all of those registers since like the day we met.   She is my favorite poet. There's like those artists that whose work you really appreciate, right? Sometimes because it's so different from your own. And then there are those artists whose work registers in like a very deep sort of recognition where they feel like creative kin, right? And that has always been my experience of Donika's work. That there is a kind of creative intelligence and emotionality that just feels like so profoundly familiar to me and was before I knew anything about her as a human being.   Okay, we also like almost all the same candy and have extremely opposite work habits. She's very hot. She only likes to watch like TVs and movies that she's seen many times before, which is both like very comforting and very annoying.   Lito: Well, I'm gonna have to follow that up now. What are some of the top hits?   Melissa: Oh, for sure, Golden Girls is at the very top. I mean…   Annie: No one's mad at that.   Lito: We can do the interview right now. Perfect. All we need to know. A++!   Melissa: She's probably like 50% of the time that she's sleeping, she falls asleep to the soundtrack of the Golden Girls or Xena, maybe. But we've also watched the more recent James Bond franchise, The Matrices, (11:00) and Mission Impossible, never franchises I ever thought I would watch once, let alone multiple times at some point.   Annie: I mean, Donika, your queerness is showing with that list.   Lito: Yeah.   Donika: I feel seen. I feel represented accurately by that list. She's not wrong. She's not wrong at all. But I've also introduced to her the pleasure of revisiting work.   Melissa: That's right.   Donika: And that was not a thing that Melissa was doing before we met, which feels confusing to me. Because I am a person who really likes to revisit. She was buying more books when we met, and now she uses the library more, and that feels like really exciting. That feels like a triumph on my part. I'm like…   Annie: That is a victory. Yeah.   Donika: …with the public services.   Melissa; Both of these examples really allude to like this deep, fundamental sort of capitalistic set of habits that I have, where I… like there's like this weird implicit desire to try to read as many books as possible before I perish, and also to hoard them, I guess. And I'm very happy to have been influenced out of that.   Annie: Well it's hard not to think—I think about that tweet like once a week that's like you have an imaginary bookshelf, and there are a limited amount of books on that you can read before you die, and that like troubles me every day.   Melissa: Yeah it's so fucked up. (12:22) I don't want that. It's already in my head. I feel like I was born with that in my head, and I'm trying to get free.   Lito: Same. Serious book FOMO, like…   Donika: There are so many books y'all.   Lito: I know. It's not possible.   Donika: And, it's like, there are more and more every year.   Annie: Well, uh Donika tell us about Melissa.   Donika: Oh Melissa As she has already explained we have a lot of fun It's a funny household. She's hilarious. Um, and also she's a writer of great integrity, which you know I'm sitting on the couch reading Nora Roberts, and she's like in her office hammering away at essays, and I don't know what's going on in there. I'm very nosy. I'm a deeply nosy person. Like, I just I want to know like what's going on. I want to know the whole history, and it's really amazing to be with someone who is like here it is.   Annie: How did you all meet?   Donika: (13:20) mere moments after Trump was elected in 2016. I was in great despair. I was living in Western New York. I was teaching at a small Catholic university. Western New York is very conservative. It's very red. And I was in this place and I was like, this place is not my place. This place is not for me. And I was feeling very alone. And Melissa had written an essay that came out shortly after about teaching creative writing at a private institution in a red county. And I was like, oh, she gets it, she understands.   I started, I just like looked for everything. I looked for like everything that she had written. I read it, I watched the TED talk. I don't know if y'all know about the TED talk. There was a TED talk. I watched the TED talk. I was like, she's cute. I read Whip Smart. I followed her on Twitter. I developed a crush, and I did nothing else. So this is where I pass the baton. So I did all of that.   Melissa: I loved Bestiaries, and I love the cover. The cover of her book is from this medieval bestiary. And so I just bought it, and I read it. And I just had that experience that I described before where I was just like, "Oh, fuck. Like this writer and I have something very deep in common." And I wrote her. I DMed her on Twitter.   Sometimes I obscure this part of the story because I want it to appear like I sent her a letter by raven or something. But actually, I slid into her DMs, and I just was like, "hey, I loved your book. If you ever come to New York and want help setting up a reading, like I curate lots of events, da da da." And I put my email in. And not five minutes later, refreshed my Gmail inbox, and there was an email from Donika, and…   Donika: I was like, "Hi. Hello. It's me."   Annie: So you agree with this timeline, Donika, right? Like, it was within five minutes.   Donika: Yeah, it was very fast. And I think if I hadn't read everything that I could get my hands on that Melissa had written, I may have been a little bit slower off the mark. It wasn't romantic. Like the connection, I wasn't like, oh, this is someone who like I want to (15:41) strike up a romantic relationship with, it really was the work. Like I just respected the work so much.   I mean, I did have a crush, like that was real, but I have crushes on lots of people, like that sort of flows in and out, but that often is a signifier of like, oh, this person will be my friend. And I was still married at the time and trying to figure out, like that relationship was ending. It was coming to a quick close that felt slow. Like it was dragging a little bit for lots of reasons.   But then once it was clear to me that I was getting divorced, Melissa and I continued writing to each other like for the next few months. Yeah. And then I was like, oh, I'm getting divorced. I was like, I'm getting divorced. And then suddenly the emails were very different. From both of us. It wasn't different.   Melissa: There had been no romantic strategy or intent, you know, and I think which, which was a really great way to, we really started from a friendship.   Annie: And sounds like a courtship really. I mean, it kind of is an old fashion.   Melissa: Yeah, in some way, it became that. I think it became that. But I think it was, I mean, the best kind of courtship begins as a, as a friendly courtship, you know what I mean? Where it was about sort of mutual artistic respect and curiosity and just interest. And it wasn't defined yet, like, what sort of mood that interest would take for a while, you know?   Lito: So how do you seduce each other on and off the page?   Donika: That's a great question.   Melissa: That is a great question.   Donika: I am not good at seduction. So that is not a skill set that is available to me. It has never been available.   Lito: I do not believe that.   Annie: I know. I'm also in disbelief out here, really.   Melissa: No one believes it, but she insists.   Annie: I feel like that's part of the game, is my feeling, but it is not.   Melissa: It's not. Here's the thing I will say is that like Donika, I've thought a lot about this and we've talked a lot about this because I balked at that statement as well. It's like Donika is seductive. Like there are qualities about her that are very seductive, but she does not seduce people. You know what I mean? Like she doesn't like turn on the charisma and shine it at you like a hypnotist. Like that's not… (18:08) that's not her form of seduction, but I will say…   I can answer that question in terms of like, I think in terms of the work, since we've been talking about that, like in a literary way, both in her own work, like the quality, like just someone who's really good at what they do is fucking sexy, you know? Like when I was looking for like a little passage before this interview, I was just like, "ah, this is so good." Like it's so attractive when someone is really, really good at their craft. right? Especially when it's a crop that you share.   Donika: So Melissa does have the ability to turn on what she has written about, which I think is really funny. Like she like she has like, she has a very strong gaze. It's very potent. And one of my gifts is to disrupt that and be like, what are you doing with your eyes? And so like, when I think about that in the work, when I'm reading her work, and I'm in like its deepest thrall, it is that intensity of focus that really like pulls me in and keeps me in. She's so good at making a grand statement.   Melissa: I was just gonna bring that up.   Donika: Oh, I think she and I like often get to, we arrive at sort of similar places, but she gets there from the grand statement, and I get there from the granular statement, like it's a very narrow sort of path. And then Melissa's like, "every love is a destroyer." I was like, whoa, every one? And there's something really compelling about that mode of— because it's earnest, and it's backed up by the work that she's written. I would never think to say that.   Melissa: I have a question for you, lit friend. Do you think you would be less into me if I weren't? Because I think for a nonfiction writer, I'm pretty obsessed with sentences. It's writing sentences that makes, that's the thing I love most about writing. It's like where the pleasure is for me. So I'm a pretty poetically inclined nonfiction writer. If I were less so, do you think that would be less seductive to you as a reader or a lit friend?   Donika: I mean, that's like asking me to imagine like, "so, what if… (20:30) water wasn't wet?" I just like, I can't like, I can't imagine. I do think the pleasure of the sentence is so intrinsic to like, I think there's something in the, in your impulse at the sentence level. That means that you're just careful. You're not rushing. You're not rushing us through an experience or keeping us in there and focused. And it's just it's tricky to imagine, or almost impossible to imagine what your work would look like if that weren't the impulse.   Lito: Yeah, I think that's an essential part of your style in some ways, that you're taking that time.   Melissa: Mm-hmm.    Annie: And how you see the world. Like I don't even think you would get to those big revelations Donika's talking about without it.   Melissa: Yeah. Right. I don't, yeah, I don't think I would either. We'll be right back.   Lito (21:19) Hey Lit Fam, Lit Friends is taking a break for the holiday. We hope you'll join us for our next episode with our guests, Ian Lee and Edmund White on January 16th. Till then, may your holiday be lit, your presents be numerous, and your 2024 be filled with joy and peace. If you'd like to show us some love, please take a moment now to follow, subscribe, rate, and review the LitFriends Podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Just a few moments of your time will help us so much. Big hugs to you and yours. Thank you for listening. And thank you for making season one a big success!   Annie: (22:05) Welcome back.   Lito: I've noticed that both of you, you know, you have your genres that you work in, but within that you're experimenting a lot with form and structure. Does anything of that come from being queer? I guess it's a question about queering forms of literature, and what that has to do also with the kinds of friendships that queer people have, and if that's different, maybe. So I guess I'm asking to connect form with queerness and friendship.   Melissa: That's a beautiful question. I think, and I'm starting with thinking about my relationship to form, which has been one of inheriting some scripts for forms. This is what an essay should look like. This is what plot structure looks like. This is how you construct a narrative. And sort of taking those for granted a little bit, and then pretty early on, understanding the limitations of those structures and the ways that they require that I contort myself and my content such that it feels like a perversion or betrayal of sort of what I'm dealing with, right? And so the way I characterize my trajectory, the trajectory of my relationship to form has been sort of becoming conscious of those inherited forms, and then pushing the boundaries of them and modifying them and distorting them and adding things to them and figuring out, letting my work sort of teach me what form it rests most easily in and is most transparent in. And I suspect that my relationship to friendship and particularly queer friendship mimics that.   Donika: Yeah, that sounds right to me. And I'm reminded of Denise Levertov has this essay titled "On the Function of the Line." And in it, she presents an argument that closed forms, received forms, are based on a kind of assumption of resolution, and that free verse or open design, like in a poem, it shows evidence of the speaker's thinking.   (24:24) Right? So that where the line breaks, the speaker is pausing, right? To gather their thoughts or like a turn might happen that's unexpected that mimics the turns in thinking. And I really love that essay. Like that essay is one of my favorites. So when I think about my approach to form, I'm like, what is the shape that this poem is asking for? What is the shape that will do, that will help the poem do its best work? And not even like to be good, but just like to be true.   I really love the sonnet shape. Like it's one of my favorite shapes. And it's so interesting and exciting to use a shape that is based on like argumentative structure or a sense of resolution, to explore. Like to use that as an exploratory space, it feels like queering our, like my expectations of what the sonnet does. Like there's something about the box. If I bounce around inside that box, there's gonna be something that comes out of that, that I wouldn't necessarily have gotten otherwise, but it's not resolution. Like the point is not resolution.   And when I think about my relationships and my chosen family, in particular, and to some degree actually my given family, part of what I'm thinking about is how can I show up and care and what does care look like in this relationship and how can I make room to be cared for? And that's so hard, like being cared for is so much more alien to me than, like, as a concept, like I feel like very anxious about it. I'm like, "am I asking for too much?" And like over and over again, my chosen family is like, "no, it's not too much. Like we, we got each other."   Melissa: I think particularly for queer people, we understand that it doesn't preclude romance or healthy kinds of dependency or unhealthy kinds of dependency, you know, that all of the things that happen in a very deep love relationship happen inside of friendship, where I think sort of like straight people and dominant culture have been like, "oh, no, like friendship isn't the site of like great romance or painful divorce or abuse." And queer people understand that all of those things happen within relationships that we call friendships.   Annie: (26:46) Yeah, I mean, I'm hearing you both talk about kind of queer survival and joy and even, Donika, what you were saying about having to adjust to being cared for as a kind of, you know, that's a sort of, to me, it's a sort of like a survivor's stance in the world. One of the things that I love about my kinship with Lito as, you know, my queer lit friend and, you know, brother from another mother is that he holds that space for me and I, you know, vice versa.   Even thinking about vulnerability, I think you both wield vulnerability as a tool of subversion too, right? And again, Lito and I are both creating projects right now that require a kind of rawness on the page. I'm about to publish a memoir called Sex with a Brain Injury, so I'm very consciously thinking about how we define vulnerability, what kind of work it does to reshape consciousness in the collective. And the ways that you each write about trauma helps us understand it as an act of reclamation, you know, power rather than powerlessness. So maybe you could talk a little bit about what is or what can be transformative about the confessional and maybe even more to the point, what does your lit friend teach you about vulnerability?   Melissa: (28:06) Oh, God, what doesn't she teach me about vulnerability? It's interesting because like you're correct that vulnerability is like very central to my work and to the like lifelong project of my work, and also like there's literally nothing on earth I would like to avoid more. And I don't think that is visible in my work, right? Because my work is the product of counteracting that set of instincts, which I must do to survive because the part of me that wants to avoid vulnerability, its end point is like literally death for me.   It is writing for me often starts from like kind of a pragmatic practice. I don't start like feeling my feelings. I write to get to my feelings and sometimes that doesn't happen until like after a book is published sometimes. You know like it's really interesting lately I've been confronting some feelings in like a really deep way that I think I have gotten access to from writing Girlhood, which came out in 2021. And it's like I had to sort of lay it all out, understand what happened, redefine my role in it and everyone else's. And I definitely had feelings while I was writing it. But like the feelings that Donika refers to as the big boss, like the deepest feelings about it. Like I, I feel like I'm only really getting. to it now.   My relationship to vulnerability, it's just like, it's a longitudinal process, you know? And there's no one who's taught me about that and how to be sort of like gentle and patient within that and to show up for it than Donika.   And I'm just thinking of like, you know, starting from pretty early in our relationship, she was working on the poems in The Renunciations, and over the years of our early, the early years of our relationship, she was confronting some childhood, some really profound childhood trauma. And she was doing that in therapy. And then there were like pieces of that work that she had to do in the poems. And I just watched her not force it. And when it was time, she like created the space to do the work. And like, I wasn't (30:35) there for that. I don't think anyone else really could have been there for that. And just like showing up for that work.   And then like the long tail of like publishing a book and having conversations with people and the way that it changes one's relationship and like the act of the vulnerability—achieved feels like the wrong word—but the vulnerability like expressed or found in the writing process, how that is just like a series of doorways and a hallway that maybe it never terminates. Maybe it doesn't even turn into death. I don't know. You know, but I've just seen her show up for that process with like a patience and a tenderness for herself at every age that I find incredibly challenging. And it's been super instructive for me.   Donika: Ooh. I, I'm, it makes me really happy to know that's your experience of like being like in like shared artistic space together. I think I go to poetry to understand, to help myself understand what it is that I'm holding and what it is that I wanna put down. Like that's what the poems are for. You know, like the act of writing helps me sort out what I need and what I wanna put down because narrative is so powerful. It feels like the one place where I can say things that are really hard, often because I've already said them in therapy.   Right? So then it's like, I can then explore what having said those hard things means in my life or how it sits in my life. And what Melissa shows me is that one can revise. I know I've said this like a few times, but that one can have a narrative. Like I think about reading Whipsmart and the story that she has about herself as a child in Whipsmart, and then how that begins to change a bit in Abandon Me. And then in Girlhood, it's really disrupted. And there is so much more tenderness there, I think. It looks really hard. Like, honestly, that joint looks hard because I might be in a poem, but I'm in it for like, like we're in it, like if I were to read it out loud for like a minute and a half.   Melissa: (33:50) It's interesting hearing you talk. I wonder if this is true. I think I'm hearing that it is true. And I think that's where it's with my experience that you often get to the feelings like in therapy or wherever, and then write the poems as more of a sort of emotional, but like also cognitive and kind of systemic and like a way of like making sense of it or putting it in context. And I think very much I, there'll be like deeply submerged feelings that emerge only as like impulses or something, you know, but I experience writing— I don't that often feel intense emotion while I'm writing. I think it's why that is writing is almost always the first place that I encounter my own vulnerability or that I say the like unspeakable thing or the thing that I have been unable to say. I often write it and then I can talk to my therapist about it or then I can talk to Donika about it.   And I think I can't. I'm too afraid or it feels like too much to feel the feelings while I'm writing. So I sort of experience it as a cognitive or like intellectual and creative exercise. And then once I understand it, sometime in the next five years, I feel the feelings.   Annie: Do you feel like it's a kind of talking to yourself or like talking outside of the world? Like what is it in that space that does that for you?   Melissa: Yeah, I do. I mean, it's like. Talking outside the world makes more sense to me than talking to myself. I mean, it is talking to myself, right? It's a conversation with myself, but it's removed from the context of me in my daily life. That's why it's possible. Within my daily life, I'm too connected to other people and my own internal pressures and just like the busy, superficial part of me that's like driving a lot of my days. I have to get away from her in order to do that work.   And so the writing really happens in a kind of separate space and feels like it is not, it has a kind of privacy that I don't experience in any other way in my life, where I really have built or found a space where I am never thinking about what other people think of me, and I'm not imagining a skeptical reader. (35:18) It is really like this weird spiritual, emotional, creative, intellectual space that is just separate from all of that, where I can sort of think and be curious freely.   And I think I created that space or found it really early on because I was, even as a kid, I was a person who was like so concerned with the people around me, with the adults around me, with what performances were expected of me. And being a person who was like very deeply thinking and feeling, I was like, well, there's no room for that here. So I need to like find somewhere else to do it. And so I think writing became that for me way before I thought about being a writer.   Lito: That's so fascinating to me. I think that's so different than how I work or Donika works or a lot of people I know. We'll be right back.   Lito: (36:26) Back to the show.   So this question is for both of you really, but it just makes me wonder then like, what is the role for emotion, but in particular anger? How does that like, when things get us angry, sometimes that motivates us to do something, right? So if you're not being inspired by an emotion to write, you're writing and then finding it, how does anger work as not only a tool for survival, but maybe a path towards personhood and freedom?   Donika: Oh, I was just thinking, I can't write out of that space, the space of anger. It took me a long time to get in touch with anger as a feeling. That took a really long time because in my family, in my given family, the way that people expressed anger was so dangerous that I felt that I didn't want to occupy those spaces. I didn't want to move emotionally into that, into that space if that was what it looked like. And it took me a long time to figure out how to be angry. And I'm still not sure that I'm great at it. Because I think often I'm moving quickly to like what's under that feeling. And often what's under my feelings of being angry, often, not always, is being hurt, feeling hurt. And I can… write into exploring what that hurt is, because I know how to do that with some tenderness and some care.   Melissa: I feel similarly, which is interesting, because we've never talked about this, I don't think. But anger is also a feeling that I think, for very different reasons, when I was growing up… I mean, I think just like baseline being socialized as a girl dissuaded me from expressing anger or even from feeling it, because where would that go?   But I also think in the particular environment that I was in, I understood pretty early that my expressions of anger would be like highly injurious to the people around me and that it would be better if I found another way to express those things. I think my compulsive inclinations have been really useful in that way. And it's taken me a lot of my adult life to sort of… (38:44) take my anger or as Donika said, you know, like anger for me almost always factors down to something that is largely powerlessness, you know, to sort of not take the terror and fury of powerlessness and express it through like ultimately self harming means.   Writing can be a way for me to arrive at like justifiable anger and to sort of feel that and let that move through me or to be like, oh, that was unjust. I was powerless in that situation. You know? Yeah, it has helped me in that way. But like, if I'm really being honest, I think I exhaust myself with exercise. And that's how I mostly deal with my feelings of anger.   Annie: Girl.   Melissa: Yeah, there's also a way I will say that like, I do think it actually comes out in my work in some ways. Like there is like a very direct, not people-pleasing vibe and tone in my work that is genuine, but that I almost never have in my life. Like maybe a little bit as a professor, but like    When Donika met me, she was like, "Oh… like you're just like this little gremlin puppy person. You're not like this intense convicted former dominatrix." You know, which is, I express it in my writing because it is a space where I'm not worried about placating or pleasing really. It's a space where I'm, I am almost solely interested in what I actually think.   Donika: I was just thinking about like the beginning of, I think it's "Wild America," when you talk about like not cleaning your room, Melissa. Because you didn't, like when you were a kid, right? It was like you cleaned your room when you wanted to appear good, but that didn't matter to you when you were alone in your room. Like you could get lost in a book or you could, you know, like just be inside yourself alone when you were alone in your room. And that's one of my favorite passages that you read. Like I'm always sort of like mouthing along, like it's a song.   Melissa: (40:57) I'm just interested and I really love the sort of conception of like a girl's room as a potential space that sort of maps on to the way I described the writing space where it's just like a space where other, where the gaze of others, or the gaze that we're taught to please like can be kept out to some extent. And just like, you know, that isn't true, obviously for like lots and lots and lots of girls, but just that there is an impetus for us to create or invent or designate a space where that is true.   Lito: Yeah, I think that's what she's up to in "A Room of One's Own."   Annie: It makes me think of like girls' rooms as like kind of also these reductive spaces, like they all have to have pink or whatever, but then you like carve out a secret space for yourself in that room, which I think is what you're talking about with your writing.   Donika: Oh, I was just thinking about what happens when you don't have a room like that, cause I didn't, like I absolutely did not have a room that was… inviolable in some way or that like really felt like I could close the door. But writing became a place where that work could happen and where those explorations could happen and where I could do whatever I want and I had control over so many aspects of the work. And I hesitated because I was saying I didn't have that much control over the content.   Like I might think, oh, I'm gonna write a poem about this or a poem about that. And as is true with most writing, the poems are so much smarter and reveal so much more than I might have intended, but I could like shape the box. There are just like so many places to have control in a poem, like there's so many mechanisms to consider where like when Melissa was first sharing like early work with me, I would get so nervous because I would wanna move a comma.   Because in a poem, like that's a big deal, moving somebody's commas around, changing the punctuation. And she was like, "it doesn't matter."   Melissa: I would get nervous because she would be like, "well, I just have one note, but it's like, kind of big." And I would be like, "oh, fuck, I failed." And she would be like,    Donika: "What's going on with these semicolons?"   Melissa: She'd be like, "I just, these semicolons."   Annie: You know, hearing you both talk about (43:20) how you show up for one another as readers, right? In addition to like romantic partners. I mean, we do have the sense, and this can be true of all marriages, queer or otherwise, where like we as readers have a pretty superficial understanding of what you kind of each bring to the table or how you create this protective space or really see one another. I imagine that you've saved yourselves, but I'm curious about to what extent this relationship may have also been a way to save you or subvert relationships that have come before. And yet at the same time, we've asked this question of other lit friends too, which is, you know, what about competition between lit friends? And what does that look like in a marriage? What is a good day versus a bad day?   Donika: I mean, we could be here for years talking about that first question. And so I'm gonna turn to the second part to talk about competition, which is much easier to handle.   I feel genuinely and earnestly so excited at the recognition that Melissa has received. Part of what was really exciting for me about the beginning of our relationship that continues to be exciting is that, is getting to watch someone be truly mid-career and navigate that with integrity. It feels like such a good model, for how to be a writer.   I mean, she's much more forward-facing than I would ever want to be. But I think in terms of just thinking about like, what is the work? How, like, where is the integrity? Like, it's just, it's always so, so forward and it feels really grounding for me and us in the house, so it's always big cheers in here. It helps that we write in different genres. I think that's super helpful.   Melissa: I think it's absolutely key. Yeah.   Donika: It's not, I mean, I think, and that we have very different measures of ambition. I think those two things together are really, really helpful.   But I've read everything that Melissa has written, I think. (45:38) There might be like a few little, I mean, I've read short story, like that short, there was like a short story from like shortly, I think after you, like before you were in your MFA program, maybe.   Melissa: Oh my God. What short story?   Donika: I can't, I'll find it. And show it to you later.   Melissa: Is it about that little plant?   Donika: No, no, it might've been an essay. I'm not sure.   Annie: I love this. This is sort of hot breaking news on LitFriends.   Donika: It's like, I've just like, I did a deep Google dive. I was like, I want to read everything and it's, it feels really exciting.   Melissa: You know, I've dated writers before, and it was a different situation. And I think even if I hadn't, even before I ever did, I thought, that seems unlikely to work. Because even though there are lots of like obvious ways that it could be great, the competition just seemed like such a poison dart that it would be really hard to avoid because writers are competitive, and I'm competitive. And maybe it would have been harder if we were younger or something.   And certainly if we were in the same genre, I think actually, who knows? Maybe it would be possible if we were in the same genre, but it would require a little more care. Even if for some reason we would never publish again, we would keep writing. It just like it functions in our lives in similar ways. And it's like a practice that we came to, you know, I have a more hungry ambition or have historically. And I think our relationship is something that helps me keep the practice at the center because we're constantly talking about it. And I'm constantly observing Donika's relationship to her work. So it really hasn't felt very relevant. Like it's kind of shocking to me how, how little impact competition or comparing has in our relationship. It's really like not even close to one of the top notes of things that might create conflict for us, you know, and I'm so grateful for that. And so happy to have like underestimated what's possible when you have a certain level of intimacy and respect and sort of compatibility with someone.   Lito: We'll be right back.   Annie: (47:57) Welcome back. Well, then I'm wondering, you know, you both have had some like incredible successes in the last few years. And I'm wondering if conversely, you've been able to show up for one another in moments of high pressure or exposure, or, you know, having to confront the world, having been vulnerable on the page in the ways you have been.   Melissa: Donika was not planning on having a book launch for The Renunciations.   Donika: What's a book launch? Like, why do people do that?   Annie: Listen, mine's going to be a dance party, Donika. So…   Melissa: And I made, meanwhile, like when I published Abandon Me, I had a giant dance party that I had like several costume changes for during. But I remember feeling pretty confident about making a strong case multiple times for her to have a book launch for The Renunciations. And also like having a lot of respect and like tenderness watching her navigate what it meant to take work that vulnerable and figure out how to like speak for it and talk about it and like present it to the world. Parts of her would have preferred to just let the book completely speak for itself out there.    Donika: But you were right it was a good time.   Melissa: I was right.   Donika: Because like when Melissa's so when Girlhood came out it was like, that was still the time of like so many virtual events. And it was just like, I think that first week there was like something every day that week, like there was an event every day that week. And now, now like, again, I had to be talked into having a book launch. So I own this. Um, but I was like, Ooh, why, why would you do that? Oh, yeah. Four?   Melissa: This is definitely one of the ways that she and I are like diametrically opposed, and therefore I think, helpful to each other in sort of like creating a kind of tension that can be uncomfortable but is mostly good for both of us to be sort of pulled closer to the middle.   Donika: But my favorite part of that is then hearing you give advice to your friends who are very similar and be like, "whoa, you did too much. You put too many things on the calendar."     Melissa: (50:15) You know, some people would say that that's hypocrisy, but I actually think, I have a real dubious like position and thinking about hypocrisy because I am an expert in overdoing things. And so I think I speak from, I am like the voice of Christmas future. You know what I mean? I'm like, let me speak to you from the potential future that you are currently planning with your publicist. And like, it's not pretty and it doesn't feel good. And it's not, it has not delivered the feeling that you're imagining when you're scheduling all those events.   Annie: I can appreciate this. And I appreciate Donika's kind of role, this particular role in a relationship, because sometimes I just have to go see Leto and literally just lay on Lito and be like, stop me from doing anymore.   Melissa: I know, I know.   Lito: You and Sara are like super overachievers. I have to be like, "can you calm down?"   Annie: We do too much.   Lito: Way too much. What would you like to see your lit friend make or create next?   Donika: I got two answers to this. The first one is the Cape Cod lesbian mystery. I'm ready. You know, we got, I've offered so much assistance as a person who will never write prose. Um, but I got notes and ideas. The second one is, uh, a micro essay collection titled Dogs I Have Loved. Cause I think it would be a New York Times bestseller.   Lito: Oh, I love that.   Donika: I know.   Lito: Speaking of, who's the little gremlin puppy there?   Donika: Oh, yeah, that's Chuck. Chuck is a 15-year-old chihuahua. I've had him since he was a puppy.   Annie: Is Chuck like a nickname, or is that just, it's just Chuck?   Donika: It's just Chuck.   Lito: I love that.   Melissa: His nickname is Charles sometimes. One of his nicknames is Charles, but his full name is Chuck.   Melissa: OK, so I would say, I mean, my first thought at this question was like, I want Donika to keep doing exactly what she's been doing? As far as I can tell, she doesn't have a lot of other voices getting in the way of that process. My second thought is that I'm really interested. I've never heard her talk. She has no interest in writing prose of any kind. She is like deeply wedded to poetry. But I have heard her talk more recently about potential collaborations with (52:40) other artists, visual artists and other writers. And I would, I'm really excited to see what comes out of that space.   Lito: Would you all ever collaborate beyond your marriage?   Annie: I could see you all doing a craft book together.   Melissa: I feel like we could make like a chapbook that had prose and poems in it that were responding to a shared theme. I could definitely see that.   Donika: I really thought you were gonna say Love Poems for Melissa Febos, that's what you wanted to see next.   Melissa: I mean, I already know that that's on deck, so I don't... I mean, it's in, it's on the docket. It's on deck. Yeah. So…   Lito: Those sonnets, get to work on the sonnets.   Donika: Such a mess.   Melissa: This is real, you think, this is not, like, a conversation of the moment. This is…   Annie: Oh no, we can, this is history.   Donika: "Where's my century of sonnets?" she says.   Lito (53:33) What is your first memory?   Donika: Dancing?   Melissa: Donika telling me I'm pretty.   Annie (54:15.594) Who or what broke your heart first?   Melissa: Maddie, our dog.   Donika: Kerri Strug, 1996 Olympics. Vault.   Lito: Atlanta.   Donika: The Vault final. Yeah. Heartbreaking.   Lito: Who would you want to be lit friends with from any time in history, living or dead?   Donika: I just thought Gwendolyn Brooks. I'm gonna go with that.   Lito: I love Gwendolyn Brooks.   Donika: Oh yeah.   Melissa: My first thought is Baldwin.   Donika: It's a great party. We're at a great party.   Melissa: I just feel like I would be like, "No, James!" all the time.   Melissa: (54:30) Or like Truman Capote.   Lito: It'd be wild.   Donika: Messy. So messy.   Annie: What's your favorite piece of music?   Melissa: Oh my god, these questions are crazy! "Hallelujah"?   Donika: Oh god, there's an aria from Diana Damraus' first CD. She's a Soprano. And it's a Mozart aria, and I don't know where it's from, and I can't tell you the name because it's in Italian and I don't speak Italian, but that joint is exceptional. So that's what I'm gonna go with. Oh God, just crying in the car.   Lito: If you could give any gift to your lit friend without limitations, what would you give them?   Donika: Just like gold chains. So many gold chains. Yeah! If I could have a gold chain budget, it'd be a lot.   Annie: (55:23) Donika, we can do this.   Lito: Achievable.   Donika: I mean, yeah. Yeah.   Lito: Bling budget.   Donika: That's the first thing I thought.   Annie: Love it.   Donika: Just like gold, just thin gold chains, thick gold chains.   Melissa: I'm going to go with that, then, and say an infinite sneaker budget.   Lito: Yes. Oh, I want a shoe room. (55:50) That'd be awesome.   Melissa: We need two shoe rooms in this house, or like one. Or we just need to have a whole living room that's just for shoes.   Donika: I just like there's just like one closet that's just like for shoes. Like that's what we need.   Lito: That's great.   Donika: Yeah, but it's actually a room. Yes. With like a sorting system, it's like computer coded.   Annie: Soft lighting. That's our show.   Annie & Lito: Thanks for listening.   Lito: We'll be back next week with our guests Yiyun Li and Edmund White.   Annie: Find us on all your socials @LitFriendsPodcast.   Lito: Don't forget to reach out and tell us about the love affair of you and your LitFriend.   Annie: I'm Annie Liontas.   Lito: And I'm Lito Velázquez. Thank you to our production squad. Our show is edited by Justin Hamilton.   Annie: Our logo was designed by Sam Schlenker.   Lito: Lizette Saldana is our marketing director.   Annie: Our theme song was written and produced by Robert Maresca.   Lito: And special thanks to our show producer, Toula Nuñez.   Annie: This was LitFriends, Episode Three.    

Join co-hosts Annie Liontas and Lito Velázquez in conversation with LitFriends Lucy Corin & Deb Olin Unferth about their travels in the Sahara, ancient chickens, disappointments, true love, and why great books are so necessary. Our next episode will feature Melissa Febos & Donika Kelly, out December 22, 2023.   Links Libsyn Blog www.annieliontas.com www.litovelazquez.com https://www.lucycorin.com https://debolinunferth.com LitFriends LinkTree LitFriends Insta LitFriends Facebook   Transcript Annie Lito (00:00.118) Welcome to Lit Friends! Hey Lit Friends!   Lito: Welcome to the show.    Annie: Today we're speaking with Lucy Corin and Deb Olin Unferth, great writers, thinkers, and LitFriend besties.    Lito:  About chickens, the Sahara, and bad reviews.    Annie: So grab your bestie   Annie & Lito: And get ready to get lit!   Lito: You know those like stones that you can get when you're on like a trip to like Tennessee somewhere or something, they're like worry stones? Like people used to like worry them with their thumb or something whenever they had a problem and it would like supposedly calm you down. Well, it's not quite the same thing, but I love how Deb describes her and Lucy's relationship is like, “worry a problem with me.” Like let's, let's cut this gem from all the angles and really like rub it down to its essential context and meaning and understanding. And I think essentially that's what like writers, great writers, offer the world. They've worked through a problem and they have answers. There's not one answer, there's not a resolution to it, but the answers that lead to better, more better questions.    Annie: Yeah, and there's something so special about them because they're, worry tends to be something we do in isolation, almost kind of worrying ourselves into the ground.   Lito: Right. Annie: But they're doing it together in collaboration.    Lito: It's a collaborative worry. Yes, I love that.    Annie: A less lonely worrying.    Lito: It's a less lonely place to think through these things. And the intimacy between them is so special. The way I think they just weave in and out of their lives with each other, even though they're far away from each other.   I think there's a romantic notion that you're tuned into about Lucy and Deb's trip to the desert. Do you want to say something about that? There's a metaphor in it that you really love, right?    Annie: (1:52) Yeah. Well, so I remember when we first talked about doing this podcast and invited them, we were at a bar at AWP, the writer's conference. And they were like, oh, this is perfect. We just went to the Sahara together. And I was like, what? You writers just decided to take a trip together through the desert? And they said, yeah, it was perfect. And they have adorable photos, which we of course are going to share with the world. Um, but it felt like such a, I mean, the fact that they would go on that kind of adventure together and didn't really plan ahead, I think it was just Deb saying, I really want to go to the desert. And Lucy saying, sure, let's go. Which feels very much a kind of metonym of their friendship in some ways.    Lito: Absolutely.    Annie: (2:42) Yeah. That they wandered these spaces together. They come back to art, right? Art is a way for them to recreate themselves and recreate their friendship. And they're doing such different things on the page.    Lito:  Oh yeah, no, they're very different writers but they do share a curiosity that's unique I think in their friendship, then unique to them.    Annie: Yeah and a kind of rigorousness and a love for the word.    Lito: (3:10) Oh and a love for thinking and reading the world in every capacity.    Annie: Tell me about your friendship with Lucy because you're quite close.   Lito: I was at UC Davis before it was an MFA program. It was just a Master's. After undergrad, I went to the master's program because I wasn't sure if I wanted to be an academic or do the studio option and get an MFA. I loved how Lucy and the other professors there, Pam Houston, Yiyun Li, showed us the different ways to be a writer. They couldn't be more different, the three of them. And, I particularly was drawn to Lucy because of her sense of art and play and how those things interact.    Lito: (03:59) And here was someone that was extremely cerebral, extremely intelligent, thinking through every aspect of existence. And yet it was all done through the idea of play and experimentation, but not experimentation in that sort of like negative way that we think of experimentation, which is to say writing that doesn't work, but experimentation in the sense of innovation. And. Lucy brought out my sense of play. I got it right away, what she was going for, that there is an intellectual pleasure to the work of reading and writing that people in the world respond to, but don't often articulate. Lucy's able to articulate it, and I admire her forever for that.    Lito: (4:52) And perhaps I'm not speaking about our friendship, but it comes from a place of deep admiration for the work that she does and the way she approaches life. You have a special relationship with Deb. I would love to hear more about that.    Annie: (5:04) Yeah, I think I've been fangirling over Deb for years. Deb is such a special person. I mean, she's incredibly innovative and has this agility on the page, like almost no other writer I know. Also quite playful, but I love most her humanity. Deb is a vegan who, in Barn 8, brings such life to chickens in a way that we as humans rarely consider. There's an amazing scene which she's like with a chicken 2000 years into the future. Also, I know Deb through my work with Pen City, her writing workshop with incarcerated writers at the Connally Unit, a maximum security penitentiary in Southern Texas.   Lito: How does that work? Is it all by letter or do you go there?    Annie: (5:58) Well, the primary program, you know, the workshop that Deb teaches is on site, and it's certified. So students are getting, the incarcerated writers, are getting now college credit because it's an accredited program. So Deb will be on site and work with them directly. And those of us who volunteer as mentors, the program has evolved a little bit since then, (06:22) but it's kind of a pen pal situation. So I had a chance to work with a number of writers, some who had been there for years and years. And a lot of folks are writing auto-fiction or fiction that's deeply inspired by the places they've lived and their experiences. It's such a special program, it's such a special experience. And what I saw from Deb was just this absolute fierceness. You know, like Deb can appear to be fragile in some ways (06:53.216), and it's her humanity, but actually there's this solid steel core to Deb, and it's about fortitude and a kind of moral alignment that says, we need to do better.    Lito: We have this weird connotation with the word fragile that it's somehow bad, but actually, what it means is that someone's vulnerable. And to me, there is no greater superpower than vulnerability, especially with art, and especially in artwork that is like what she does at the penitentiary. But, can I ask a question?    Annie:  Sure.   Lito: Why is it so special working with incarcerated folks?    Annie: (7:27) Oh, that's a great question. I mean, we need its own podcast to answer it.   Lito: Of course, but just sort of the...    Annie:  I think my personal experience with it is that so many incarcerated writers have been disenfranchised on all levels of identity and experience. Voting rights, decent food, accommodations, mental health, physical, you know, physical well-being. And we can't solve all those problems necessarily, at least all at once, and it's an up, it's a constant battle. But nothing to me offers or recognizes a person's humanity like saying, "tell us your story. Tell us what's on your mind. We are here to hear you and listen."  And those stories and they do come out, you know, there have been other programs that have done this kind of work, they get out in the world and there's, we're bridging this gap of people we have almost entirely forgotten out of absolute choice.  (8:27) And Deb is doing that work, really, I mean she's been doing that work for a long time and finally got some recognition for it, but Deb does it because she's committed.   Lito: That is really powerful. Tell us your story. Tell us your story, Lit Fam. Tell us your story. Find us in all your social media @LitFriendsPodcast or email us at LitFriendsPodcast@gmail.com   Annie: We will read all your stories. We'll be right back with Lucy and   Deb.   Lito: (09:00) And now, our interview with Lucy Corrin and Deb. Lucy Corin is the author of two short story collections, 100 Apocalypses and Other Apocalypses and The Entire Predicament, and two novels, Everyday Psychokillers and The Swank Hotel. In addition to winning the Rome Prize, Lucy was awarded a fellowship in literature from the NEA. She is a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow and a professor of English in the MFA program at UC Davis.    Annie:  Deb Olin-Unferth is the author of six books, including Barn 8, and her memoir, Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Deb is an associate professor in creative writing at the University of Texas at Austin. She founded and runs Pen City Writers, a two-year creative writing certificate program at Connally, a maximum security prison in southern Texas. For this work, she was awarded the 2017 Texas Governor's Criminal Justice Service Award.   Lito: (09:58) Annie and I thought this up a year ago, and we were talking about what is special about literary friendships and how writing gets made, not as we all think, totally solitary in our rooms alone, but we have conversations, at least I think this way. They're part of long conversations with our friends, our literary friends and living and dead, and you know, all times, in all times of history.   But the idea here is that we get to talk to our literary friends and people we admire and writers who are close friends with each other and friendships in which literature plays a large role.   Annie: (10:37) Yeah, and I'll just add that when we first floated the idea of this podcast, you know, your names came up immediately. We're so in awe of you as people and practitioners and literary citizens, and we love your literary friendship. I mean, I really hold it dear as one of the best that I know of personally.    Lucy, I think of you as, you know, this craftsperson of invention who's always trying to undo what's been done and who's such an amazing mentor to emerging writers. And Deb, you know, I'm always returning to your work to see the world in a new way, to see something I might have missed. And I just, I'm so moved by your generosity in your work and in your life's work with Penn City and elsewhere, which I'm sure we'll have a chance to talk more about.   Annie: (11:30) But I think I recall the first day I realized how close the two of you were when Deb told me that you all were taking a trip to the Sahara. And I was like, oh, of course, like, of course, they're going to have desert adventures together. Like, this makes so much sense. So I hope we'll, you know, we'll talk more about that too.    Annie (11:53) But we're so grateful to have you here and to have you in our lives. And we're going to ask you some questions to get to know a little bit more about you.    Deb:  Sounds great.    Lucy: Thanks.    Deb: It's great to be here. It's really great to see everybody.    Lito: Thank you so much for being here. Deb, will you tell us about Lucy?   Deb: (12:16) I mean, Lucy's just one of my very favorite people. And I feel like our friendship just started really slowly and just kind of grew over a period of many years. And some of the things that I love about Lucy is she is, well, of course, she's a brilliant genius writer. Like, I mean, no one writes weird like Lucy writes weird and no one writes like more emotionally, and more inventively and some of her books are some of my favorite books that have ever been written. Especially her last two books I think have just been such just major literary accomplishments and I just hold them so dear.    (13:05) And as a friend some things that I really love about her is that she will worry a problem with me that's just bugging me about like literary culture or about writing or about, you know, just it could be anything about aesthetics at all. And then she'll literally talk to me about it for like five or six days straight without stopping. Like we'll just constantly, dinner after dinner, like, you know, if we're on a trip together, just like all day, like I'll wake up in the morning and I'll be like, here's another piece of that pie. And then she'll say, oh, and I was thinking, and then we'll like go off and work and then we'll come back at lunch and be like, "and furthermore," you know? And by the end, I remember at one point we were doing this and she said, this is a very interesting essay you're writing. And of course, like it wasn't an essay at all, but it was just like a way of thinking about the way that we were talking.   (14:06) And then she is hilarious and delightful and just like so warm. I don't know, I just love her to pieces. She's just one of my favorite people in the whole world. I could say more, but I'll stop right there for a minute.    Annie: Lucy, tell us about Deb.    Lucy: (14:24) Yeah, I mean, Deb, I mean, the first thing, I mean, the first thing you'll notice is that Deb is sort of effortlessly enthusiastic about the things that she cares about. And that's at the core of the way that she moves through the world and the way that she encounters people and the way that she encounters books.   (14:44) I'm more reserved, so I'll just preface what I'm going to say by saying that like, my tone might not betray my true enthusiasms, but I'll try to list some of the things that I think are special and extraordinary about my friend Deb.   One is that there's this conversation that never stops between the way that she's thinking about her own work and the way that she's thinking about the state of the world and the way that she's thinking about the very specific encounters that she's having in daily life. And so like moving through a conversation with Deb or moving through a period of time with Deb in the world, those things are always in flux and in conversation. So it's a really wonderful mind space to be in, to be in her presence.   (15:35) The other thing is that she's like the most truly ethical person that I am close to and in the sense that like she thinks really hard about every move she makes.   The comparison I would make is like you know Deb is like at the core like, the first thing you might notice about Deb's work is that she's a stylist, that she works sentence by sentence and that she always does. But then the other thing she does is that she's always thinking hard about the world and the work, that it never stays purely a love of the sentence. The love of the sentence is part of the love of trying to understand the relationship between words and the world.    (16:15) And, and they're both an ethics. I think it's an ethics of aesthetics and an ethics of trying to be alive in as decent way as you can manage. And so those things feed into the friendship where she's one of the people who I know will tell me what she really thinks about something because we can have a baseline of trust where then you can talk about things that are either dangerous or you might have different ideas about things or you may have conflict.    (16:47) But because of my sense of who she is as a person, and also who she is with me, we can have challenging conversations about what's right about how to behave and what's right about how to write. And that also means that when the other parts of friendship, which are just like outside of literature, but always connected, which, you know, about your own, you know, your other friendships, your, the rest of your life, your job, your family, things like that, that you wanna talk about with your friends. Yeah, I don't know anybody better to sort through those things than Deb.    And it's in part because we're writers, and you can't separate out the questions that you're having about the other parts of your life from who you're trying to be as a writer. And that's always built into the conversation.   Annie: (17:40) I knew we asked you here for a reason.   Lito: We'll be right back.    Lito (17:58) Back to the show.    Annie: I'm hearing you, you know, you're both, you're sort of really seeing one another, which is really lovely. You know, you're, Deb, you're talking about Lucy wearing a problem with you, which I think conveys a kind of strength and... Of course, like I'm quite familiar with Deb's like strong moral anchors. I think we all are and truly respect, but I'm just wondering, what do you most admire about your friend? What do you think they give to the world in light of this portrait that you've given us?   Deb: (18:28) Lucy is a very careful thinker, and she's incredibly fair. And I've just seen her act, just behave that way and write that way for so many years and it just the quality of it always surprises me.  Like I mean, there was a writer, most recently there was a writer who's been cancelled, who we have spent an enormous amount of time talking about and trying to figure out just exactly what was going on there. And I felt like Lucy had insights into what had happened and what it was like on his end and what about his culture could have influenced what happened. Just all of these things that were.   (19:36.202) It was so insightful and I felt like there's no way that I could have moved that moved forward that many steps in my understanding of what had happened. And in my own like how I was going to approach what had happened. Like there's no way I could have done that without that just constant just really careful thought and really fair thought. Just like trying to deeply understand. Like Lucy has an emotional intelligence that is just completely unparalleled. That's one thing I really love about her.    Another thing is that she's like up for anything. Like when I asked her to go to the Sahara with me, I mean, she said yes in like, it was like not even 12 seconds. It was like 3 seconds, I think, that she was like, yeah.   Annie: You need a friend who is just gonna go to the Sahara.    Lucy: Deb, I don't even know if you actually invited me. The way I remember it is that you said something like, Lucy, no one will go to the Sahara with me. And I said, I would go to the Sahara with you.   Lito: That is lovely.   Lucy: (20:53) It's in Africa, right?    Lito:  Was there something specific about the Sahara that you need to go over for?   Deb:  Yeah, I mean, there was. It's a book I'm still working on, hopefully finishing soon. But it's mostly it's like...I just always wanted to go to the Sahara. My whole life, I wanted to go to Morocco, I wanted to go to the Sahara, I wanted to be surrounded by just sand and one line. You look in 360 degrees and you just see one line. I just wanted to see what that was like so badly, stripping everything out, coming down to just that one element of blue and beige. I just wanted that so much. And I wanted to know that it just went on and on and on and on.   (21:48) Yeah, and you know, people talk a big talk, but most people would not go. And so at one point I was just kind of rallying, asking everyone. And then Lucy happened to be in town and I just mentioned to her that this is happening. And then she said, yeah, and then we went for like a long time. Like we went to Morocco for like over three weeks. Like we went for like a month.    Lucy:  A month.    Deb: Yeah, crazy. But she's always like that. Like whatever I want to do, she's just up for it. I mean, and she called me up and she's like, hey, we want to come to Austin and like, go to this place that's two hours from Austin where you can see five million bats, right? Five million bats? Or was it more? Was it like 20 million?    Lucy:  That's right.    Deb: It was like 20 million bats and a lot of them are baby bats. It's like mama bats and baby bats.     Lucy: Yeah, like it's more when there's the babies.   Deb: (22:46) And yeah, and you were like, I want to come with them as the babies. Yeah, we like went and she just like came and Andrea came, and it was just absolutely beautiful.    Lucy: Well, you were just right for that adventure. I knew you would want to see some bats.    Lucy: Well, I could I could say a couple of more things about what Deb gives the world.    Annie: Sure. Love it.    Lucy: So some of the things that Deb gives the world and though when I listen to you talking about me, I realized why these things are so important to me, is that you have a very steady sense of who you are and a kind of confidence in your instincts. That I know that some of the ways that I worry things through are really productive and some of them are just an ability to see why I could be wrong all the time, and that can stymie me.    (23:48) And one of the things that I love about you and the model that you provide for me in my life is an ability to understand what your truth is and not be afraid to hold onto it while you're thinking about other people's perspectives, that you're able to really tell the difference between the way that other people think about things and the way that you do.   And it doesn't mean that you don't rethink things, you constantly are, but when you have a conviction, you don't have a problem with having a conviction. And I admire it enormously. And I think it allows you to have a kind of openness to the world and an openness to people who are various and different and will challenge you and will show you new things because you have that sense that you're not gonna lose yourself in the wind.    Deb: Mmm. That's really nice.   Lito: I am in awe of everything you've said about each other. And it makes me think about how you first met each other. Can you tell us that story? And why did you keep coming back? What was the person like when you first met? And why did you keep coming back to each other? Do you want to tell Lucy?     Lucy: Yeah, I'll start and you can add what I'm missing and... (25:06) tell a different origin story if you want. But I think that what we might've come to for our origin story is that it was one of the, one of the early &Now Festivals. And the &Now Festival is really great.   Lito: Could you say what that is? Yeah, say a little bit about what that is.   Luch: Oh, it's a literary conference that was started to focus on small press and more innovative—is the term that they used at the time anyhow—innovative writing as a kind of response to the market-driven culture of AWP and to try to get people who are working more experimentally or more like on the edge of literary culture less mainstream and give them a place to come together and have conversations about writing and share their work.   So it was one of the early ones of those. But I think it was, I think we figured out that there were like, yeah, there were three women. It was me, you, and Shelley Jackson. But it was, there were not that many women at this conference at the time. And we were, and I think we were noting, noting our solidarity. Yeah. And that, that's what. That's like some of the first images.   But I knew we were like aware of each other because in some ways we have tended to be up for the same jobs—Deb gets them—up for the same prizes—Deb gets them first, I'll get them later. And so I see her as somebody who's traveling through the literary world in ways that are... I mean, we're very different writers, but as people... You know what I mean? But I still... We still actually...come from a lot of the same literary roots. And so it makes sense that there's something of each other in the work that makes us appeal to overlapping parts of the literary world.   Deb: Yeah, I definitely think that there was in our origins, not only do we come from the same sort of influences, and just things that we admired and stuff, but I also feel like (27:28.018) a lot of our early work would have appealed more easily to the exact same people. As we've gotten older, our work isn't quite as similar. We're a little more different than we used to be. But there's still enough there that, you know, you can see a lot of the same people admiring or liking it.   But I was remembering that first time that we met, you playing pool. And we were, so we were like at a bar and you were like, and you were playing pool, and you had like just had a book out with FSG, I think, or something. I don't know if I even had—   Lucy: FC2. Very different.   Deb: FC2. That's right. FC2. And the FC2 editor was there. And I don't think I even had a book out. I don't remember what year this was. But I don't think I had any kind of book out. All I had was I had nothing, you know. And I was just so in awe of FC2 and the editor there, and you there, and like you could play pool, and I can't play pool at all. And it was just, it was—   Annie: Lucy's so cool. Yeah, she was cool. She was cool. And Shelly Jackson was cool. And it was like all the cool people were there and I got to be there, and it was great.   And then, yeah, and then I think how it continued, I don't know how it continued, we just kind of kept running into each other and just slowly it built up into a really deep friendship. Like at some point you would come through town and stay with me.   (29:25.782) And we moved, we both moved around a lot. So for a while there, so we kind of kept running into each other in different places. We've never lived in the same place.   Lucy: No, never.   Lito: How have you managed that then? Is it always phone or is it texting, phone calls?   Lucy: Well, we'll go through a spate of  texting.   Deb: Yeah, we do both. I think I like to talk on the phone.   Lucy: Yeah, I will talk on the phone for Deb.   Annie: The mark of a true friendship.   Lito: (30:01) Time for a break.   Annie Lito (30:12.43) We're talking with Lucy Corin and Deb Olin Unferth.   Lito: How has literature shaped your friendship then? Despite being cool. What kind of books, movies, art do you love to discuss? You can name names. What do you love talking about?   Deb: Well, I remember the moment with Donald Barthelme.   Lucy: That was what I was gonna say.   Deb: No, you go ahead.   Lucy: Well, why don't?   Deb: Oh, okay, you can tell it.   Lucy: I mean, I'll tell part and then you can tell part. It's not that elaborate, but we were, one of the things that Deb and I do is find a pretty place, rent a space, and go work together. And one time we were doing that in Mendocino and Deb was in the late stages of drafting Barn 8 and really thinking about the ancient chickens and the chickens in an ancient space. And we went for a walk in one of those very ferny forests, and Deb was thinking about the chickens and among the giant ferns. And I don't know how it happened, but Deb said something with a rhythm. And we both said to each other the exact line from Donald Barthelme's "The School" that has that rhythm.   (31:34) Is that how you remember it though? You have to tell me if that's how you remember it.   Deb: That's exactly how I remember it. Yeah. And then we like said a few more lines. Like we knew even...    Lito: You remember the line now?   Lucy: I mean, I don't... You do. If you said it, I could do it. I'm just... I was thinking before this, I'm like, oh God, I should go look up the line because I'm not going to get it right, like under pressure. It was just in the moment. It came so naturally.   Deb: It was one of those lines that goes... (32:03) Da da da-da da, da da da-da-da. There's a little parenthetical, it's not really in parentheses in the story, but it might be a little dash mark. But it has, it's something like, "I told them that they should not be afraid, although I am often afraid." I think it was that one.   Deb: I am often afraid. Yeah. And then it was like, we just both remembered a whole bunch of lines like from the end, because the ending of that story is so amazing. And it's, so the fact that we had both unconsciously memorized it and could just like.   And it was something about just like walking under those giant trees and having this weekend together. And like we're like marching along, like calling out lines from Donald Barthelme. And it just felt really like pure and deep.   Annie: It's I mean, I can't imagine anything sounding more like true love than spontaneously reciting a line in unison from Barthelme. And, you know, you both are talking about how your work really converged at the start and that there are some new divergences and I think of you both as so distinct you know on and off the page. There's like the ferociousness of the pros and an eye towards cultural criticism and I always think of you as writing ahead of your time. So I'm just wondering how would you describe your lit friends work to someone, and is there something even after all this time that surprises you about their writing or their voice?   Lucy: I mean, what surprised me recently about Deb's voice is its elasticity. I came to love the work through the short stories and the micros. And those have such a distinct, wry kind of distance. They sort of float a little separate from the world, and they float a little separate from the page.   (34:10) And they have a kind of, they have a very distinct attitude and tone, even if the pieces are different from each other, like as a unit. And that's just really different than the voice that you get in a book like Barn 8 that moves through a lot of different narrators, but that also has just a softer relationship with the world. Like it's a little more blends with the world as you know, it doesn't stay as distant. And I didn't know that until later.   Vacation is also really stark and sort of like has that distinctiveness from the world. And so watching Deb move into, you know, in some ways like just more realistic, more realistic writing that's still voice-centered and that still is music centered was a recent surprising thing for me.   But I'm also really excited about what I've read in the book that in the new book because I think that new book is sort of the pieces that the bits that I've read from it are they're marking a territory that's sort of right down the middle of the aesthetic poles that Deb's work has already hit I mean the other thing is that you know Deb does all the genres. All of the prose genres. Every book sort of is taking on it is taking on a genre And the next one is doing that too, but with content in a way that others have been taking on new genres and form. And so...    Lito: I love that. And I like that it's related to the music of the pros and sound. I feel like musicians do that a lot, right? There's some musicians that every album is a new genre or totally different sound. And then there's artists who do the same thing over and over again. We love both those things. Sorry, so Deb...   Deb: So I love how complicated Lucy can get with just an image or an idea. I just feel like no one can do it the way that she can do it. And my like her last in her last book, which I love so much, we're just brought through all these different places and each one is sort of (36:31.29) dragging behind it, everything that came before, so that you can just feel all of this like, pressure of like the past and of the situations and like even like a word will resonate. Like you'll bring like, there's like a word on maybe page like 82 that you encountered on like page 20 that like the word meant so much on page 20 that it like really, you can really feel its power when it comes on page 80.   And you feel the constant like shifting of meaning and just like the way that the prose is bringing so much more and like it's like reinterpreting that word again and again and again, just like the deeper that you go, like whatever the word is be it you know house or home or stair or um you know sex, whatever it is, it's like constantly shifting. (37:40.952) And that's just part of like who Lucy is, is this like worrying of a problem or worrying of a word and like carrying it forward. And so yeah, so like in that last book, it just was such a big accomplishment. And I felt like it was like her best work yet.   Lucy: So I will say, try and say something a little bit more specific, then. (38:09) Like I guess in the sort of 10 stories that I teach as often as possible in part because I get bored so easily that I need to teach stories that I can return to that often and still feel like I'm reading something that is new to me is the title story from Wait Till You See Me Dance and that story is a really amazing combination of methodical in its execution, which sounds really dull.   But what it does is sort of toss one ball in the air and then toss another ball in the air and then toss another ball in the air. And then, you know, the balls move, but you know, the balls are brightly colored and they're handled by a master juggler. So it's methodical, but it's joyful and hilarious. And then, and then, and you don't   And the other thing is that Deb's narrators are wicked and like they're wicked in the way that like… They are, they're willing to do and say the things that you secretly wish somebody would do and say. That's the same way that like, you know, in the great existential novels, you love and also worry about the protagonists, right? They're troubled, but their trouble allows them to speak truthfully because they can't help it. Or they can't help it when they're in the space of the short story. It's that like, you know, the stories are able to access—a story like this one and like many of Deb's—are able to access that really special space of narrator, of narration, where you get to speak, you get to speak in a whisper.   Annie: You get to speak in a whisper. That's beautiful, Lucy. You get to speak in a whisper.   Lito: We'll be right back.   Lito: (40:15) Welcome back.   Annie: I'm wondering about what this means, you know, how this crosses over to your own personal lives, right? Because of course, literary friendships, we're thinking about the work all of the time. But we're also, you know, when I think of my literary friendship with Lito, I think of him as like a compatriot and somebody who's really carrying me through the world sometimes. I'm wondering if there was for either of you, a hard time that you went through personally, professionally, you know, whether it's about publishing or just getting words on the page or something, you know, um, you know, family related or whatever, where you, um, you know, what it meant to have a literary friend nearby at that time.   Lucy: I mean that's the heart of it.   Deb: Yeah, I mean for sure.   Lucy: One happened last week and I'm sort of still in the middle of it where you know my literary mentor is aging and struggling and so that's painful for me and who gets that? Deb gets that.   The other one, the other big one for me was that the release of my last novel was really complicated. And it brought up a lot of, it intersected with a lot of the things going on in my family that are challenging and a lot of things that are going on in the literary world that are challenging. There were parts of that release that were really satisfying and joyful, and there were parts of it that were just devastatingly painful for me.   And, you know, Deb really helped me find my way through that. And it was a lot, like it was a lot of emotional contact and a lot of thinking through things really hard and a lot of being like, "wait, why do we do this? But remember, why do we do this?" And Deb was the person who could say, "no, you're a novelist." Like things that like I was doubting, Deb could tell me. And the other thing is that I would come closer to being able to believe those things because she could tell them to me.   Annie: Lucy, can you talk a little more about that? Like what did that? (42:27.126) What did that look like, right? Like you talked about resistance to phone calls, and you're not in the same place.   Lucy: It was phone. Right, it would be phone or it would be Zoom or it would be texting. And then, you know, when we would see each other that would be, we would reflect on those times in person even though that wasn't those immediate moments of support and coaching and, you know, wisdom.   Annie:  And that requires a kind of vulnerability, I think, that is hard to do in this industry, right? And I'm just wondering if that was new for you or if that was special to this friendship, right? Or like what allowed for that kind of openness on your part to be able to connect with Deb in that way?   Lucy: I mean, I think I was just really lucky that we've had, like even though we have really, I think, only noticed that we were close since that Morocco trip. Like that was a little bit of a leap of faith. Like, "oh my gosh, how well do I know this person and we're gonna travel together in like circumstances, and do we really know each other this way?" But the combination of the years that we've known each other in more of a warm acquaintance, occasional, great conversation kind of way towards being somebody that you, that you trust and believe and that you have that stuff built in.   And, you know, that over the years you've seen the choices that they've made in the literary world, the choices they've made in their career, when they, you know, everything from, you know, supporting, you know, being a small, being small press identified and championing certain kinds of books over other kinds of books. And like those, just like watching a person make choices for art that you think are in line with the writer that, watching her make choices in art that are in line with the writer that I wanna be in the world makes it so that when you come to something that is frightening, that's the kind of person you wanna talk to because she's done that thinking.   Deb: Yeah, I mean, I feel like there are like so many things that I could say about that. Like one thing is that the kind of time that I spend with Lucy is really different from the kind of time that I spend with most people. Like most people, (44:51) they come to town and I have dinner with them. Or I go to like AWP or whatever and we go out for dinner. Or maybe I spend like one night at their house like with their partner and kid or something, you know. But Lucy and I, we get together and we spend like four days or something all alone, just the two of us, you know, or a month or whatever. And we don't spend a ton of time with other people. And so there's, but then we also do that, but just like not very much.   And so there is something that just creates, like that's a really good mode for me. It's a, that's like the way that I make really deep friendships that are kind of like forever-people in my life. And I've always been like that. And so, but not a lot of people are willing to sort of do that with me. Like, I have so many acquaintances, I've got like a million, I feel like I could have dinner with someone just about any night, as long as it's only like once every few months or something, you know, but I don't have people who are willing to be this close to me, like spend that kind of time with me one-on-one. And the fact is like, they're not that many people that I really feel like doing that with.   And you know, every time Lucy and I do one of these, I just come away feeling like I thought about some really important things and I talked about some really important things and I saw some beautiful things because Lucy always makes sure that we're somewhere where we can see a lot of beauty. And so that just means so much to me. And it's like, and so for me it creates like a space where, Yeah, I can be honest and vulnerable, and I can also tell her, if I can tell her things that I don't tell other people, or I can be really honest with her if I feel like, if I'm giving her advice about something, I can just be honest about it. And so it's really, really nice.   (47:07) I mean, the other thing is like, we're so similar. Like we've made so many similar life choices. And we've talked about that. Lucy and I have talked about that. Like, you know, we both chose not to have kids. We live pretty, like we're both like kind of loners, even though we have partners. Like I think our partners are more like, they just kind of would, they would prefer that we.   I don't know, I shouldn't probably say anything, but I know that Matt would prefer if I was not quite as much of a loner as I am. Yeah, so I look at Lucy and I see the kind of person that I am, the kind of person I wanna be, so if I have a question, I mean, it happens.   Lucy mentioned a couple of things. I have... You know, she's had some pretty major, major things. I have like little things that happen all the time, and they just like bring me to tears.   Like there was this one moment during the pandemic when I was like driving across the country by myself. I was like in Marfa, and I was trying to get to California and I had like a toilet in the back seat. Remember when we were all doing that kind of thing?   Lucy: It was really amazing.   Deb: It was so crazy.   Lucy: But Deb, not everybody had a toilet in their back seat.   Annie: I know. I need that now.   Deb: It still comes in handy.   Annie: I'm sure.   Deb: (48:43) And I was in, and yeah, Lucy is amazing. She'll talk to me on the phone, but Lucy will do because I love to talk on the phone and I love to Zoom. Lucy does not. So she'll tell me in advance, okay, I will talk to you, but it's gonna be for like 20 minutes or I'm gonna have to get off like pretty soon.   But she Zoomed with me and Marfa and I just didn't realize how upset I was about this one rejection that I'd gotten. And it was a really small rejection, I don't know why it bothered me so much, but I just like started crying and like I was like way out in like so many miles from any so many hours from anyone I knew and you know the world was going to shit, and I'd gotten this like tiny rejection from a magazine like a little like I had it was the page was it was like a piece that was like a page long or something, and Lucy just like knew exactly why I I was so upset, and just was able to talk to me about what that meant to me. And just refocus me to like, "look, you don't have to write those. You don't have to be that writer. You don't have to do that." And it was so freeing to know that I didn't always have to be, I don't even know how to describe it, but it was meant a lot. And things like that happen all the time.   Annie: (50:15.265) That's such a wonderful model of mutual support.   Lucy: We'll be right back.   Annie: Hi Lit Fam. We hope you're enjoying our conversation with Lucy Corin and Deb Olin Unferth, and their love for the word, the world, and each other. If you love what we're doing here at LitFriends, please take a moment now  to follow, subscribe, rate, and review our podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Just a few minutes of your time will help us so much to continue to bring you great conversations like this week after week.  Thank you for listening. Back to a conversation with Lucy Corin and Deb Olin Unferth.     Annie: I'm also aware that we're working in an industry that's a zero-sum construct. And, you know, Lucy, you were sort of joking earlier about... Deb winning all of the awards that you later got. But I am curious, like, what about competition between literary friends when we're living in a world with basically shrinking resources?   Lucy: I feel competition, but I don't really feel it with my literary friends. Does that make sense? Like, I'll feel it with my idea of somebody that I don't really know except for their literary profile, right? But when someone like Deb gets something, it makes the world seem right and true, right? And so that's not hard to bear, right? That's just a sign of a good thing in a world that you're afraid isn't so good.   Deb: I guess I feel like if Lucy gets something, then that raises the chances that I'm gonna get something. I'm gonna get the same thing. Because if we're kind of in the same, like we both published with Grey Wolf, we both have the same editor, so we've multiple times that we've been on these trips, we've both been working on books that were supposed to come out with Graywolf with Ethan. (52:16.3) You know, so I feel like if Lucy gets something, then the chances go up.   Like there was just, something just happened recently where Lucy was telling me that she had a little, like a column coming out with The Believer. And I was like, "oh my God, I didn't even know that they were back." I'm like, "man, I really wanna be in The Believer. Like, I can't believe like, you know, they're back and I'm not in them. I gotta be in it. I said that to Lucy on the phone. And then, like the very next day, Rita wrote me and said, "Hey, do you want to write something?"   And so I wrote to Lucy immediately. I was like, did you write to Rita? And she was like, "no, I really didn't." So it's like, we're in the same— Did you, Lucy?   Lucy: No, I didn't! Rita did that all by herself.   Lito: You put it out into the universe, Deb.   Annie: Lucy did it. Hot cut, Lucy did it!   Deb:  So we're like, we're like in the same, I feel a lot of the time like we're kind of in the same lane and so that really helps because like, I do have writer friends who are not in the same lane as me and maybe. Like I'm not as close, but maybe that would be, but if I was as close, maybe that would cause me more confusion. Like I would be like, you know, "geez, how can I get that too? Or it's hopeless, I'll never get that, you know? So I just don't do that thing," or something. So that's really comforting.   Lito: What are your obsessions?   Lucy: Well, I mean-   Lito: How do they show up on the page?   Lucy: I feel like it's so obvious with Deb that like, you know, Deb got obsessed with chickens, and there was a whole bunch of stuff about chickens. First there was a really smart, brilliant Harper's essay where she learned her stuff. And then there was the novel where she, you know, imagined out the chickens (54:19) to touch on everything, right?   Annie: Then there was a chicken a thousand years in advance.   Lucy: Right, and then there's a beautiful chicken art in the house, and there's, you know. And I'm sure that she's gotten way more chicken gifts than she knows what to do with. But then the Sahara, like, you know, she was obsessed with the Sahara and you'll see it in the next book. It's gonna be— It's not gonna be in a literal way, right? But it'll be like, you'll feel the sand, you'll feel that landscape.   So I don't know, like I feel like the obsessions show up in the books. I mean, are there, I mean, this is a question like, Deb, do you think you have obsessions that don't show up in your work? We both have really cute little black dogs.   Deb: (55:07) Oh, not really. I mean, but I do get obsessed. Like I just get so, so like obsessed in an unhealthy way. And then I just have to wait it out. I just have to like wait until I'm not obsessed anymore. And it's like an ongoing just I'm like, OK, here it comes. It's like sleeping over me. Like how many years of my life is going to be are going to be gone as a result of this?   So I'm always like so relieved when I'm not in that space. Like Lucy's obsession comes down to that, with her language, that she's like exploring one idea, like she'll take an idea and she like worries that over the course of a whole book and that she'll just it's like almost like a cubist approach. She'll be like approaching it from so many different standpoints. And that is like, I mean, Lucy is so smart and the way that she does that is just so genius. And so I feel like that's the thing that really keeps drawing me to her obsessions, that keeps bringing me back to that page to read her work again and again. And yeah, and that's how she is in person too.   Lito: Why do you write? What does it do for the world, if anything?   Lucy: (56:37) I know I had a little tiny throat clear, but I think it was because I'm still trying to figure it out because I feel like the answer is different in this world order than it was in earlier world orders. Like when I first answered those questions for myself when I was deciding to make these big life choices and say, "you know, fuck everything except for writing," like I was answering, I was answering that question a different way than I would now, but I don't quite have it to spit out right now, except that I do think it has something to do with a place where the world can be saved. Like, writing now is a place of respite from the rest of the world where you can still have all of these things that I always assumed were widely valued, that feel more and more narrowly valued. And so I write to be able to have that in my life and to be able to connect with the other people who share those kinds of values that are about careful thinking, that are about the glory of the imagination, that are about the sanctity of people having made things.   Annie: Lucy, I need that on my wall. I just need to hear that every day.   Deb: I mean, I feel like if I can think about it in terms of my reading life, that like art changes my mind all the time. Like that's the thing that teaches me. Like I remember when I was a kid, and I lived right near the Art Institute of Chicago, and I remember going in, and they had the Jacob Lawrence immigration panels, migration panels up there that was like a traveling exhibition. And I had none of that information. I did not know about the Great Migration. I just didn't know any of that. So I just remember walking from panel to panel and reading and studying it, (58:47.952) reading it and studying it and just like getting like just getting just it was like a It was such a revelation and I just learned so much and like changed my mind about so many things just in that moment that it was like I'll never forget that.   And I feel like I, I totally agree with Lucy that the reasons that I write now and the reasons that I read now are very different than they were like before, say 2015, or something. But that, that maybe it has its roots in that sort of Jacob Lawrence moment where, you know, just I read these things and it's, I like, I love sinking deep into books that are really changing my mind and like teaching me about the world in ways that I never could have imagined, and I love that so much and I… I don't know if I have that to offer, but I really try hard, you know. Like I tried that with the chicken book. I'm kind of trying that, I hope, in this book that I'm trying to finish and— ha finish!—that I'm trying to get through. And so I think that that's why I think that art is so important.   I don't know if that's truly why I write though. I feel like why I write is that I've always written, and it's like I love it so much. Like I just, sometimes I hate it, sometimes I hate it for like a whole year or whatever, but it's just, it's so much a core of who I am. (01:00:39) And I just, I can't imagine my life any other way. It's just it's just absolutely urgent to me.   Annie: Yeah, urgent. Yeah. I think we all feel that in some way.   Annie:(01:01:04.374) Thank you both for talking to us a little bit about your friendship and getting to know a little bit more about how you started and where you're at now. We're going to move into the lightning round.   Lito: Ooooo Lightning round.   Annie: (01:01:16) Deb, who were you in seventh grade? Who was I in seventh grade? In one sentence, oh my God, the pressure is on. I was unpopular and looked, my hair was exactly the same as it is now. And I wore very similar clothes.   Lucy: (01:01:44) I was a peer counselor, and so I was like the Don who held everybody's secrets.   Lito: Beautiful. Lucy.   Lucy: It saved me. Otherwise, I wouldn't have had a place in that world.   Annie: Makes so much sense.   Lito: Wow. Who or what broke your heart first, deepest?   Lucy: I mean, I would just say my mom.   Deb: I guess, then I have to say my dad.   Annie: Okay, which book is a good lit friend to you?   Deb: Can I say two? The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein and The Known World by Edward P. Jones.   Annie: Excellent.   Lucy: My go-to is White Noise. Still. Sorry.   Lito: No need to apologize.   Lucy: Yep.   Annie Lito (01:02:27) Who would you want to be lit friends with from any point in history?   Lucy: For me it's Jane Bowles.   Deb: Oh, whoa. Good one. She would be maybe a little difficult. I was gonna say Gertrude Stein, then I was like, actually, she'd be a little difficult.   Lucy: What a jerk!   Deb: I think Zora Neale Hurston would be fun.   Lucy: Well, yeah, of course. For sure.   Annie: We were gonna ask who your lit frenemy from any time might be, but maybe you've already said.   Lucy: Oh, right. I accidentally said my lit frenemy instead of my lit friend.   Annie: Yeah.   Lucy: Mm-hmm.   Deb: (01:03:08) A frenemy from any time?   Annie: Any time. Yeah, it doesn't have to be Jonathan Franzen. I feel like most people will just be like Jonathan Franzen. But it could be any time in history.   Deb: I mean, if you're gonna go that route, then it would probably be, um, like...   Lito: Kierkegaard.   Deb: I don't know, maybe Nietzsche? If you're gonna go that route, if you're gonna go like, like existential philosophers.   Annie: (01:03:34) That's great.   Lito: That could be a podcast too.   Annie: Just like epic frenemy. The most epic frenemy.   Lito: (01:03:35)  Well, that's our show.   Annie & Lito: Thanks for listening.   Annie: We'll be back next week with our guests Melissa Febos and Donika Kelly.    Lito: Find us on all your socials @LitFriendspodcasts   Annie: And tell us about an adventure you've had with your Lit bestie. I'm Annie Liontas.   Lito: And I'm Lito Velazquez.   Annie: Thanks to our production squad. Our show was edited by Justin Hamilton.   Lito: Our logo was designed by Sam Schlenker.   Annie: Lisette Saldaña is our Marketing Director.   Lito: Our theme song was written and produced by Roberto Moresca.   Annie: And special thanks to our show producer Toula Nuñez.   Lito: This was Lit Friends, Episode 2.

Yiyun Li, writer and author most recently of a collection of short stories Wednesday's Child: Stories, talks about the beauty of storytelling and how she uses stories to explore the relationship between parents and their children - including mothers, like her, who suffer the loss of a child: “That's one thing that literature does well, is to examine losses in life.” In the 20 years since Li arrived in the US from China, Li has become  a prolific writer; publishing five novels, three short story collections, and a memoir. She's also currently director of Princeton University's creative writing program. While achieving professional success, Li has navigated private tragedy and loss. She shares how the garden and gardening have become both sanctuary and metaphor for life - “it's a place” - Li says, where “nothing works perfectly.” 

In the first episode of Season 1, co-hosts Annie Liontas and Lito Velázquez speak with LitFriends Angela Flournoy & Justin Torres about their enduring friendship, writing in a precarious world, and chosen family. Links https://sites.libsyn.com/494238 www.annieliontas.com www.litovelazquez.com https://linktr.ee/litfriendspodcast https://www.instagram.com/litfriendspodcast/ https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61553436475678 https://justin-torres.com/ https://www.angelaflournoy.com/ https://www.asalisolomon.com/ Transcript Annie & Lito (00:01) Welcome to LitFriends! Hey LitFriends! Annie: Welcome to the show. Lito: Today we're speaking with the great writers and LitFriends, Justin Torres and Angela Flournoy. Annie: About chosen family, the dreaded second novel, and failure and success. Lito: So grab your bestie and— 
 Both: Get ready to get lit! Lito: That's so cute. Annie: It's cute. It's cute. We're cute! Lito: Cute, cute… So you had a question? Annie (00:29) I do. I have a question for you, Lito. Are you a cat or an ox? Lito: I mean, I would hope that the answer is so obvious that it almost bears not asking the question. I'm a cat. Annie: Okay, so Asali Solomon at The Claw asked us all, are you an ox or a cat? Lito: That's a great question. Annie: And as a writer... You know, the oxen are the people who work every day in the field, clock in, clock out, pay themselves a quarter an hour. I'm literally talking about me. The cats are people who are playful, exploratory, when the mood strikes them… Lito: Why are you looking at me when you say that? Annie Lito (01:26) So are you an ox or a cat? Lito: I'm a cat. I think anyone who's ever met me would say I'm a cat. Annie: How does that show up in your writing? Lito: Well, I mean, play is so important to me—she'll be on the  podcast in a couple of episodes, but when I first...was studying with Lucy, that was one of the first things that she spoke about in our class, and it kind of blew up my whole world. I had been writing for a long time already, but I hadn't thought of it as play, or there was some permission I needed or something. So the idea of play is really central to what I do and love. You wouldn't necessarily know that from the novel that I'm writing, which is sort of a dark book. Um, but it did start out with a lot of play and, I'm also, as you could probably just hear, my cat is coming into the room. Annie: Your cat is like, yes, Lito is us. RiffRaff is like, "Lito is cat." Lito: My cat Riff Raff, yes. Smarty pants. Um, he needed to join in on this conversation. Anyways, I'm a cat. I, I'm fickle when it comes to my work. Um. I don't want to work on my novel all the time, which is great because life has found so many ways to prevent it from happening. So in the new year, in 2024, it will be 7 years since I've started writing this book, and it's still, it's going to take a few more months at least. And what about you? Annie:  (03:09) I'm four oxen pulling a cart carrying all of my ancestors. I am very much the immigrant who says, get up, go do the work, come back, go do the work. And believe it or not, for me, there is a lot of joy in that. It's a... It allows, you know, it's Csikszentmihalyi's Flow, actually. So it doesn't feel like drudgery, usually. It does feel like joy. And I'm actually curious for all you LitFriends out there, if you're an ox or a cat. Lito: Yes, that's such a great idea. Please email us at litfriendspodcast@gmail.com, and tell us if you're a cat or an oxen or share on all your socials. Annie: Yeah, maybe we should poll them. That would be fun. Lito: That's a good idea. #LitFriendsPodcast. Annie: The reason I'm asking is because, of course, both Justin and Angela, who we speak with today in this episode, talk about what it's like to go for 10 years between books. "A banger a decade," is what Angela says. Lito: It's so funny. Annie: And you, you know, part of that, they have this very rich conversation about how, when you put everything into the first book, it takes a lot to get to the second book. But I think also there's a lot of play, right? And there's a lot of understanding that writing appears in different forms. And it might be the second novel, but it might be something else. Lito: For sure. I really like how they talk about— that the practice of writing is actually a practice of reading. And I think that any serious writer spends most of their time reading. And not just reading books, but texts of all kinds, in the world, at museums, as Justin points out, art, television, even the trashiest TV show has so much to offer. Annie: (05:12) And there's such a generosity to the way they think of themselves as artists, and also generosity in how they show up for one another as friends, and acknowledging when they fail one another as we as we see in this episode. And I remember my introduction to Justin when I was a grad student at Syracuse. I read We the Animals and fell in love with it, asked him to come do a reading at Syracuse, which was wonderful. And my wife who, at that time was my Bey-ancé, she was turning 30. We had no money. I couldn't buy her anything. Not in grad school. So I asked Justin if he would autograph his story, "Reverting to a Wild State," which is about a breakup in reverse, for Sara. Lito: Oh, I love that story. Annie: And he did, and he thought it was so beautiful, and I was like, "let me send it to you." He's like, "no, I've got it." He just shipped it to me. He didn't know me. We didn't know each other. Lito: He knew you because of books. He knew you because he loved literature. Annie: Yeah. And I remember that in it. I held on to it at a time when that act really mattered. Lito: One of the things I love about our interview with Justin and Angela is how much all of us talk about generosity, and how Justin and Angela display it in their conversation with each other and with us. And I'm just curious, how do you see that coming through also in Angela's work? Annie: (07:00) You know, I remember her talking about how the idea for the book began with this image of people moving around a house at night. This is The Turner House. And she says this image opens up a lot of questions. And one of the things that really stays with me about that book is how masterful she is at shifting perspective, particularly between siblings, which I find to be such a challenge for writers, right? Like your siblings are the people who are closest to you and sometimes also the farthest away. And she gets that so intimately on the page. And of course, in our conversation with Angela and Justin, one of the things they talk about is being family, essentially being siblings. And that's one of the most powerful echoes of the conversation. They talk about being a chosen family and having to choose again and again and again. And that spirit of consciousness and connection, I feel that very much in Angela's work, and of course in Justin's too. Lito: Oh Annie, I choose you again and again, I choose you. Annie: Oh, I choo-choo-choose you! Lito: So stupid. Annie: (08:05) After the break, we'll be back with Justin and Angela. Annie: (08:24) And we're back. Lito: I just wanted to mention, too, that we spoke with Angela and Justin in October during the writer's strike in Hollywood, and just before Justin's new book, Blackouts, was released. And just last week, as you're hearing this podcast. Annie: Just last week. Lito: Just last week! He won the National Book Award for a book that took him 10 years to write. Annie: Absolutely. Annie: Justin Torres is the author of Blackouts, a novel about queer histories that are hidden, erased and re-imagined. Blackouts won the 2023 National Book Award for fiction. His debut novel, We the Animals, has been translated into 15 languages and was adapted into a feature film. He was named National Book Foundation's Five Under 35. His work appears in the New Yorker, Harper's, Granta, Tin House, Best American Essays, and elsewhere. He lives in Los Angeles and teaches at UCLA. Lito: Angela Flournoy is the author of The Turner House, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, won the VCU-Cabel First Novel Prize, and was also a finalist for both the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and an NAACP Image Award. Angela is a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine, and her nonfiction has appeared in The Nation, the Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. Angela is a faculty member in the low residency MFA program at Warren Wilson College. Lito: (10:36) I'm so grateful that you guys found time to meet with us today, and I've thought about you two as friends since I think this is like the first time you've done something like what you did in 2017, the "Proper Missive"—do you remember that—you published in Spook? And it stuck with me. I was like a big, nerding out, and I bought it and I have it still. And I thought about that. And Justin, you know that you're very personal— there's a personal connection with me because I found your book on my way to my first master's program. No one had said anything about it to me where I was coming from, and it was really great. And Angela, I first found your book. I was so amazed and moved by the talk you don't remember at Syracuse. Angela: I don't remember the lunch. I remember being at Syracuse, and there being a talk, yes. Lito: You inscribed your book, "Here's to Language," which I think is hilarious and also really sweet. And I think we must have said something about language at some point. But anyways, thank you so much both for being here. Justin: Thank you for having us. Angela: Very happy to be here. Lito: So let's start. Why don't you tell us about your friend in a few sentences? So Angela, you can go first. Tell us about Justin. Angela: (11:23) Justin is the first person that I met in Iowa City when I was visiting and deciding if I was going to go there, but was I really deciding no? I'll let you go there. But that I could like, deciding whether I would be miserable while I was there. And so Justin was the first person I met. And feel like Justin is five years older than me. It has to be said.  Justin: Does it? Angela: When I think about people, and I think about like mentors, I have other like amazing mentors, but like, I think that there's really something special about somebody who some people might think is your peer, but like, in a lot of ways you've been like looking up to them and, um, that has been me with Justin. I think of him as like a person who is not only, he's a Capricorn, and he has big Capricorn energy. I am an Aquarius. I do not want to be perceived— Justin: I don't agree with any of this. But I don't know. I don't follow any of this. Angela: But Justin is in the business of perceiving me and also gathering me up and helping me do better. My life is just always getting better because of it. I'm grateful for it. Annie: That is beautiful, all of that is beautiful. Justin, tell us about Angela. Justin: I can't follow that, that is so...  Angela: Acurate! Justin: You're so prepared! You're so sweet! I'm so touched! Angela: Only a Capricorn would be touched by somebody saying that you perceive them and gather them up and make them feel better. Ha ha ha! Justin: I like that, I do like that. Let's see, yeah. I mean, I think that when we met, I had already been in Iowa for a year, and within two seconds, I was like, oh, we're gonna be friends, and you don't know it yet. But I knew it intensely. And yeah, I think that one of the, I agree that I think we keep each other honest, I think. I think that one of the things that I just so appreciate about Angela is that, you know, yeah, you see my bullshit. You put up with it for like a certain amount of time, and then you're like, all right, we need to talk about the bullshit that you're pulling right now. And I love it, I love it, love it, love it, because I don't know, I think you really keep me grounded. I think that, yeah, it's been really (14:09) wonderful to have you in my life. And like, our lives really, really kind of pivoted towards one another. You know, like we've, it was not just like, oh, we were in grad school and then, you know, whatever, we have similar career paths, so we stayed friends or whatever. It's like, we became family. And, you know, every, every kind of major event in either of our lives is a major event, a shared major event, right? And that's like, yeah, I don't know. I can't imagine my life without you. I honestly can't. Angela: Likewise. I gave birth in Justin's home. Annie: Oh! Sweet! Justin: In my bathroom, over there. Right over there. Lito: Whoa, congratulations, and also scary(?)! Angela: It's in a book I'm writing, so I won't say so much about it, but it was a COVID home birth success story. And yeah, like family. Lito: Was that the plan or did that just happen? Angela: Well, It wasn't the plan and then it was the plan. Justin: Yeah, exactly. COVID wasn't the plan. Angela: No. Justin: The plan was Angela was gonna sublet my place with her husband and she was pregnant. And then, COVID happened Angela: There were a lot of pivots. But we did, it was like enough of a plan where we got his blessing to give birth in his home. Justin: It wasn't a surprise. Angela: It was a surprise that it was in the bathroom, but that's a different story. Annie: You blessed that bathroom is all I can say. Angela: Yeah. Lito: We'll be right back. Back to the show. Annie: (16:22) Well, I want to come back to what Lido was saying about proper missives. I love the intimacy. I mean, I know you weren't writing those to one another for kind of public consumption, but the intimacy and the connection, it's so moving. And I was thinking about, you know, Justin, you, you talk about Angela as kind of pointing the way to beauty and helping you see the world anew or differently. And Angela, you talked about how Justin encourages you to take up space as a political act. I'm just wondering what else you all have taught one another. What has your LitFriend taught you? Justin: Yeah, I mean, we did write that for public consumption. Angela: Yes, it was the editor-in-chief of Spook, Jason Parham. Spook is relaunching soon, so look out for it. He just told me that, like, the other day. And he's moving to L.A. So many things are happening. But he reached out to us and was really interested in—he's a big archives guy and like how—he thought it was valuable the way that writers of past generations, they have these documents of their letters to each other, to their editors, to their friends, to their enemies, and how this generation, because we're just texting through it, we don't really have that. And so that was really just the extent of the assignment, was to write letters to each other, which, of course, we still ended up using email to do. But we really tried to keep it in the spirit of a letter and not just something you kind of dash off. Justin: And we were not living in the same place at that time. Angela: No. Justin: So it was, it did feel kind of— Angela: I was in Provincetown, I think. Justin: Yeah, I remember I was on a train when I was, when I was doing— I can't remember where I was going or, but I remember a lot of it was— or a few of those correspondences— because it went over days, weeks. Lito: Yeah, you were going to Paris. Angela: Oh. Glamorous train. You were on the Eurostar. Justin: Wow. Annie: You basically said the same thing then, Angela. Call him out. Justin: (18:32) Yeah, and I think that what I was saying was that one of the things I loved about that was it really forced us to dive deeper, right? To kind of— Sometimes we can stay very much on the surface because we talk every day. And so it was really nice to see, not just what was kind of on your mind in the background, but also how you were processing it, how you kind of made language and meaning out of it. I was just like... I don't know, it's like, I know you're so deep, but then we also love to be shallow. And so it's so nice to be like, to connect from that deep place. Annie: One of the things that I'm so drawn to about both of your work is how you write about family, the way it shapes us, the way it wounds us, what it means to watch family members suffer. You talk about it as the question of the donut hole in "Proper Missive. Angela, I remember you were writing about your father. When you were writing about him, you talk about, "the assumption that a flawed person should be subject to anyone's definition." And Justin, I'm thinking quite broadly in terms of, you know, chosen or logical family. One of my favorite pieces that I teach in my creative non-fiction class is "Leashed," and you write there, "my friends, those tough women and queers were all too sharp and creative for their jobs. If I'm nostalgic, it's not because I was happy in those precarious years, but because I was deeply moved by our resourcefulness." I'm just wondering how you think about, you know, (20:09) family, logical family, and how your lit friendship fits into this? Justin: Who's going first? Angela: You. Justin: Let's see, I think that it's such a great question. I actually like, I use that little short kind of tiny little piece that you referenced. I use that in my book, in Blackouts, that's coming out. I think that, which is a book about chosen family as well, and lineages, and what do you do when you feel there's some kind of disruption, right? That like if you're estranged from your biological family or you know or you just need these connections, these kind of queer connections to and other ways of thinking about family that are not related to (21:06) bloodlines. Like we said earlier, we are family, and we've known that for quite a while. It was something that, I don't know. You know, it's like something that I don't think you ever really need to say. It's just you know who your people are. And I think that, and I think that it's a choice that you make and remake again and again and again. And that is something that is, I don't know, it's so exceptional, right? Compared to bloodlines and biological family, which can be hugely important and bring a lot of meaning to people. But that you're choosing this again and again. Like almost like the kind of past tense chosen family is like, it's like a little bit inaccurate, right? It's like the family you choose, and keep choosing, and you're choosing right now, you know? So I love that. Yeah. Angela: Just that the continuity of it, not in the sense that it's always going to be there, but that like you are, you're like an active, uh, engager like in it. In it, I just think about, I think about that, like, uh, at this point we know each other for 14 years. And the way that there's just necessarily we're not the same people but you have to keep, and you have to keep engaging, and you have to keep figuring out how to navigate different things and I think particularly as like LitFriends there's the huge thing you have to navigate which is especially if you're friends before that you're just like some kids who got into this program that people think are fancy, but you're just like, anything can happen, right? From there to being the capital— going from just like lowercase w, "writer," to capital A, "Author." And like what that, I mean, I've seen many a friendship where that is the rupture. And so particularly figuring out, like, how are you going to navigate that, and how are you going to still be in each other's lives. (23:16.33) Um, one thing I think about, as a person who thinks about family a lot is, with your family, sometimes you can like harm one another, and you'll just take some time off, or you'll just be like, that's how they are. But with the family that you continue to choose, you have to, ideally, you gotta do something about it. You have to actually have the engagement, and you have to figure out how to come out on the other side of it. And that is something that is harder and really in so many ways, all the more precious because of it. And it requires a kind of resilience and also just like a trust. And again, because Justin, you know, likes to gather me up, there's been a few times when I was like, "Oh, no, like, we've got beef, what's gonna happen?" And Justin is like, "we're family, what's gonna happen is we're gonna have to talk about this beef, and then move on." Justin: Yeah. And I think that I think that also you have, you're really good at reminding me to be responsible, right? That just because I've made this commitment, in my mind, right, Like we're committed forever. Like we're family. Like we can't, we can't break up, right? Like it's just like, that's just the way it is. It doesn't get me off the hook of showing up in other ways and being responsible and like, you know, that I can be quite flaky. Angela: I mean, that's just, you've been in L.A. long enough. It's just, you're just becoming native. Justin:  I think I always don't, I don't wanna disappoint you. I don't want you ever to feel like you were looking around for support, and I wasn't there. Angela: Do people cry on this podcast? Annie: We time it. Right at the half hour. Justin: There's been a few moments when I feel it, when I've felt (25:21) maybe that wasn't there enough, you know? And, you know, and if, you know, and like, I don't know, that's when you know it's the real stuff because it like keeps me up at night. You know, I'm just like, wow, you know, what does she need? What can I give? How can I be there? And yeah. Angela: Wow.  There you are. Justin: Here we are. Annie: Lito and I are also family, and it sort of feels never too late. But what you're saying about kind of the like renewing your vows, renewing your commitment over and over, it feels very, very true. Lito: Very true. Yeah yeah yeah. Annie: And life-saving, you know, like life affirming. Lito: It feels real. Justin: Yeah. Look at us. I'm proud of us. I'm proud of you guys too. Lito: It's a love fest over here. Angela: Thanks for having it. Annie: We'll be right back. Annie: (26:26) Welcome back. Angela: Also, particularly again, thinking about a lot of the friends that you have, they're not necessarily also sometimes colleagues. And I think that one thing that Justin really modeled, because I didn't have anything to be transparent about, was just transparency about things. Not just how much he's getting paid for things, but just like what was worth it, what's not worth it, like what is just the way something is and you can like take it or leave it. And I think that in the beginning it was more of me kind of taking that information because I didn't have anybody offering me anything. But now I feel like it's really an exchange of information. And I think that there are people who I love, like, in this industry, if you will, who that's just not our relationship. That doesn't mean we don't have great friendships, but like that is something that like if I'm broke, he knows I'm broke. I never feel the need to pretend and hide or like, you know, and likewise, like if he don't got it, I know he don't got it. It's not, it's just, it just, and I feel like that is something also that is a, it's, um, I think it's important. Especially because you write a book, you know, it does well. And then there are some years in between before you write another. Some of us in this room, maybe take a decade. All of us in this room, maybe take a decade. But yeah, so just really being able to be, to feel like you can still show up at any point in whatever you're doing creatively. Justin: (28:16) Because this is about literary friendships, I think that it's, yeah, there's those two sides, right? There's the business side, which can cause a lot of friction, especially if, you know, things go differently for different books and people have different trajectories. I mean, you're like, you know:  you've surpassed.  Angela: I don't know if that's true.  Justin: But there's that like business side of it. And then there's the literary side as well. And I think that sometimes if it just slides too much into talking about—it's like we could both be selling sprockets, right? There's so much minutiae. It's like we could talk about contracts and whatever and like gigs and da-da-da ad nauseam. And we have to remember to talk about literary side, the literature, the work, the sentences, what we're reading in order to kind of sustain the literary quality of a literary friendship, right?  Angela: One thing I remember you told me, I don't know, ages ago that I thought at the time like oh he's gassing me he's practicing things that he says his students tell me—but now I realize that it is also one of the reasons why our friendship has sustained is you were like ,you know, we can talk about whether a book is successful in 800 ways, but we have to try to remember to just be fans, to be fans of books, of literature, of people writing. And I think that is something that I not only try to practice, but that's something that I think is really foundational to relationship. Everyone can be a hater, and it can be fun sometimes, but like… (30:08) We really do like want to put each other on to the books that we're like excited about. Like I remember when you read or reread Seasons of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih, and I hadn't read it before.  I mean, it's like a, it's a seminal or really a really famous African text, but I had never read it. Or like Maryse Condé, like I hadn't read it as like a real adult and being able to just like talk about that and know that there's a person who's, you know, you could be in polite conversation with somebody who you think is really smart and then you're like you know what I decided I wanted to reread—I don't know—something a person might wanna reread and they're like, Oh, what are you gonna do next? You gonna read a Moby Dick? And you're like, Oh damn, they just shamed me. You know, they just shamed me for being a nerd. But that's not gonna happen here. Yeah, beautiful. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.  Annie: I do wanna go back to something you were alluding to. Angela, you were talking quite openly about it, too, which is shifting from writer to capital A author and the pressure that comes with that.  For the two of you, you had incredible well-deserved success early in your career, but I imagine that doesn't come without a lot of sleepless nights, right? I'm thinking about an interview I heard with Ta-Nehisi Coates where he talks about his friends not reaching out thinking, like, He's good, like, You blew up, you're good. And talking about actually what a lonely position that can be. I'm just wondering, you know, how you've both managed to take care of one another through those highs and lows, or being on that track alongside one another.  And even, you know, competition between lit friends. Justin: (32:13) Yeah, I mean, I think that we're just kind of, like our dispositions: we're very lucky in that I think we, before we met, it wasn't something that we like decided on. It was just before we met, I think we're just boosters, right. We're like, The people we love, their success is our success, right? And I think that's one of the reasons to where we are such good friends, it's because we share that, right? So that I think makes it slightly easier as far as like the competition side of things goes. I think that if it really does feel like you're a family and you're community and like you understand that this is a kind of shared win. I don't know, it's hard to talk about though because we both got really lucky.  Angela: Yeah.  Justin: You know, I mean, who wants to hear from people who got really lucky with their first books talking about how hard it is? You know what I mean?  We just, we didn't have, we didn't have any kind of that disparity between— Angela: Yeah, I'm sure, but—I would say even so—if we had different dispositions, we might be trying to split hairs about who got what. But I think for me—and Justin and I grew up very differently in some ways, but I think we grew up from a class background similarly, and we're both like, We're not supposed to be here, like, what can we get? Like, what can we get? And like, who has the information to help us get it? And so I've never been like, why is he in that room when I'm not in that room? I'm like, give me the intel about the room. That might be the closest I ever get to being in there, but I need to know like what's going on in there. And that has, I think, been the way that I just view any success of anybody that I know. that I feel like I can ask those questions to is like, not necessarily like, oh, can you put me on? Like now that you have something, can I have some of it? But just like, just information, just like, what's it like? And that to me is really useful. But also I think that one thing, when you have people, not just Justin, but like other friends and mentors of mine, when you have people who are honest and upfront about whatever kind of success they've had, you… you just realize that there's a lot of different ways to feel successful, right? Because I have friends who, to me, I'm like, they made it, but they're not convinced they have. And I have other friends that, like, to the outside world, they'd be like, wow, they have a little book, nobody cares. But they feel like they did it, you know? And so I realized it's so much about disposition also. Lito:   Do you feel that a lot about being each other's boosters? I mean, obviously it's about your personalities and who you are as people. I'm also curious how much of that, like Angela, you said you were a gatecrasher. You feel like a gatecrasher a lot. I don't know. What are your thoughts on intersectionality? How does it inform your work and your friendship? How does it affect how you boost each other? I'm also curious if there's something particular about lit friendships that intersect with intersectionality and those categories, especially for people who form intimate relationships with men.  Justin:   Wait, say more.  Like how do blowjobs come in?   Angela:  (36:01.171). I was like one thing we have in common is— Lito: More like, less blow jobs, more like having to deal with men and the various ways they, you know, respond to patriarchy.  Justin: Yeah, I think you kind of said it, right? I think that there's something about hustling and figuring out, like, how am I gonna find some stability in this world.  And I mean we have nominated each other for every single thing that there is. If either one of us gets a chance.  Angela: Till the end of time.  Justin:   Till the end of time, right? And it's just, and I think that, and we've shared all information about everything. There's no, and I think that that's kind of like that quote that you read before, right, about this nostalgia and feeling nostalgic, not for the precarity, but for the way that it bonds people, right? The way that the precarity, like you pull, you share resources, you pull resources, you come together and you talk shit and you don't let people get too down in the dumps and depressed. And you're like, no, we're going to do this. We're going to get ourselves out of this hole and we're going to pull each other up. And, and that I think is like, that's, that's the secret, I think.  Angela: Are you answering the question about men?  Justin:   Oh, men!  Angela: And dealing with men.  Justin: I love that I was just like, oh, you're talking about blow jobs. But no, you were talking about patriarchy.  Lito: Same thing, really.  Annie: In the room I'm in, we do not think there's a difference.  Justin: It's fascinating, right? Because when we were at Iowa together, I remember some of the critiques I got from some of the men, some of the straight men, some of the white straight men, was about a kind of provincialism to my writing, right? That what I was writing about was small and minor and just about particularities of identity and that it wasn't broad and expansive and it wasn't universal. That was expected. That was the kind of critique that was expected. The world has changed so much and so quickly in the last 15 years. It's hard for me to kind of wrap my mind around because that kind of thing, I wasn't, I didn't feel indignant. Maybe I felt a little.  Angela: Yeah, you just, but you just like knew you were going to ignore them. Like, you know, like, but no, but you didn't feel like you were going to, like it was worth, except there were some instances we're not going to get into details, but like, it didn't feel like it was worth spending, like unpacking it or trying to call them out. You just were like, Oh, boop, you're over here. Like, you're not.  Justin: Yeah, yeah. Like, I've been hearing this shit my whole life. Like, it wasn't like, there's no space for this kind of thing in the workshop. I was like, this is the world. This is unexpected. But now I don't think that would fly, right?  Angela:   No. I think maybe in like 70% of workshop spaces that I have been in. Well, I guess I've been running them. But like, I just don't, but like also just the disposition of the students is that they assume that somebody is going to like say something or push back on that. But also I guess maybe more broadly the idea of when you say intersectionality, what do you mean exactly? Lito: I think I wanted to keep it open on purpose. But I think I mean the ways that all of these different identities that we take up and that are imposed upon us, how they intersect with one another, race, class, et cetera. Yeah. Angela: I think one of the reasons why Justin and I gravitated toward each other probably in the beginning and why we ended up in Spook is because I think that—which maybe is also not happening 15 years from then—there is a way that back then, there was a way that even your identity could be flattened, right? Like you're Puerto Rican, which means that you are like a lot of things, right? One of those things like, one of it's like we're both diasporic people, right? But that's one of the things that I think a lot of people would not necessarily think is like a kinship between us, but like I've seen pictures of Justin's cousins. I know I'm giving Primo over here. Like I know what I'm doing. And like that's one way that I think that our relationship feels like, like we just felt like kin when we first met because of that. I think that there's just a lot of ways that in a lot of spaces in this country, you're just not allowed to like have all of those parts of you in the room because people just don't understand it or they do, but they just don't want you to be that also.  Justin: It's not convenient.  Angela: Right. Which is why I was like, of course, Jason would ask you and I to be in Spook, which is a magazine that's a black literary magazine. Cause Jason gets it. Shout out to Jason again.  Justin: I can't believe he's moving to L.A., that's so exciting.  Angela: Supposedly like any day now, he's just gonna arrive. There's just ways that when you find your people, you don't have to always separate these parts of you and you don't always have to keep reminding them also, they sort of understand. But also parts of you change obviously and the way that you feel about your identity changes and your people will embrace that and keep, you know, keep making space for that too. Justin: Making space.  Annie: We'll be back in a moment with Angela and Justin. Lito: (42:22) Hey Lit Fam, we hope you're enjoying our conversation with Justin and Angela. We are quite awed by their thoughtful discussion and moved by their deep love for each other and their art. If you love what we're doing, please take a moment now to follow, subscribe, rate, and review the LitFriends Podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you listen to podcasts. Just a few moments of your time will help us so much to continue bringing you great conversations like this week, after week. Thank you for listening. Annie: (42:59.178) Back to our interview with Justin Torres and Angela Flournoy.  Lito: Justin, you have your sophomore book. How do you feel about it? Are you going to write a sequel for We the Animals like you talked about at one point? Angela, same question. Are there sequels coming forth for you, Angela, to Turner House, or are you moving on to something else? Or you sort of briefly mentioned another book about, uh, I remember you mentioning at some point a book about friends, four female friends, if I remember correctly. Anyways, what's coming next?  Annie: Yeah, and I wanna know about the dreaded second novel because I feel like that's where I'm at. I feel like that's where a lot of writers get stuck. Jutin: Second novel's awful. I mean, you think the first one's bad. You think it takes everything that you have inside of you and then you're like, oh, I've gotta do it again. And yeah, I don't know. I really had a very hard time with it. And I mean, nobody knows better than Angela. I really, really didn't feel like I was up to the task. I knew that I wanted to do something different. I knew I wanted to kind of change the way I write and be a different kind of writer, but I just felt like I was falling on my face.  Even after it was done and out until like last week, I was just, I just felt anxiety about it, and I felt really neurotic and I was being really neurotic. And I remember the other night we were hanging out and drinking and maybe there was some mushroom chocolate involved. I was just, like I was just on my bullshit and Angela was just like stopped and she was just like, What is it gonna take to make you happy? Like what is it gonna take? Like look around. And it was like, it was a really good intervention. But then it also led to this conversation about happiness, right? And about like whether that is the goal, right? Like feeling kind of tortured and, and feeling like this gap between what you want for your book and your own capabilities. And that never goes away. You just live in this, in this torturous phase. And like, maybe it's about just coming to acceptance with that, rather than striving for happiness. I don't know. But it's still ringing in my ear. What is it gonna take?  Lito: It's a great question.  Angela:   Maybe some projection, I don't know, on my part.  I am still working on that novel. It's due at the end or at the beginning of next year. It's gonna come out in 2025. You know, God willing. And... similarly the second novel, I think it depends on your disposition, but I think both of us are very interested in and task ourselves with having real skin in the game with what we right. That means sometimes you got to figure out where you get that skin from.  Lito: There's only so much.  Angela: Like, if you played yourself for the first book, then it's gonna take a while. And when I think about, like, when I try to count for the years, I don't know I could have done it any quicker. Like, I just don't know. And I don't think that's gonna be the case for every book, but I do think between that first and that second, especially, were you 30? Where were you? I was 30, yeah. And then I was 30, too. I was 30 also when my book came out. You're just a baby.  You're just a baby.  Lito: Do you fall into the trap of comparing yourself to other people? Well, they wrote a book in two years and I— Justin:  (47:07) Yeah, sure. I mean, I also like compare myself to people who took longer like that feels good. That feels good.  Angela: Listen, I'm like Deborah Eisenberg. Just a banger every decade. That's it. That's all I owe the world. A banger a decade. Lito: A banger a decade. I like that. I like comparing myself to Amy Clampitt, who wrote her first collection of poetry, like in her 70s or something and had some success.  Justin: I generally wish people would slow down. I mean, I get that sometimes there's just like an economic imperative, right? But if you're lucky enough that, I don't know, you get a teaching job and you can slow down, why not slow down, right? Like, I don't know, sometimes I feel like there are a lot of books in this world. And the books that somebody spent a lot of time over, whether or not they are my tastes—I'm just so appreciative of the thoughtfulness that went in.  You can feel it, right? That somebody was really considering what they're building versus dashing it off. They should slow down, if they can.  Angela: But I also feel like we need both kinds. There are people who I appreciate their books, their kind of time capsules of just like, this is the two years, this is where I was. I think of Yiyun. We need an Yiyun Li and we need an Edward P. Jones. Edward P. Jones, you're gonna get those books when you get the books. And Yiyun Li, every couple years, you're gonna get something that, to me, I still, they still feel like really good books, but they're also just like, this is where she is right here, and I respect it and I appreciate it. Everybody can't be one or the other, you know?  Justin: You're right, you're right, you're right. It's much fairer.  Annie: She's someone who, I mean, you know, seems to have changed so much even within that time period. And we had her on a couple of episodes ago and yeah, she's just on fire. She's amazing.  Justin: (49:06) And people speed up as well, right? Because her first couple of books, there were big gaps. And then same thing with like Marilynne Robinson, right? She had massive gaps between books. And then suddenly it starts to speed up. And they're coming out every year, every two years. Yeah. Annie: It's the mortality.  Lito: Well, and life, well, I think lifestyle too, right? Like what you do, how busy you are and what you do out in the world. Like going out and meeting people and being gay in the world, that takes up time.  Annie: And your work has had other lives too. I mean, I'm thinking about how We the Animals was adapted to film in that beautiful, intimate portrait. And I know, you know, Angela, you've been working with HBO and some projects as well. I'm just, just wondering if you want to talk about your work in these other media, how it's been, and even thinking about the strikes, right? Like the WGA-SAG strikes and how that has been on the ground too.  Angela:  Very happy that the strike is over. Solidarity to our SAG-AFTRA brothers and sisters still out there. I passed them on the way here on Sunset. I did honk, wish I was out there today. But I think that for me, it's just like a bonus. Like I, especially now, there's a way that right now writers will say things that are a little snobby like, Oh, I could never be in a writer's room, the group project, man. But like when now that I know so many TV writers living here and I've met so many over the past 146 days on the line, I realized that it is, you just have to be so nimble and agile and you have to also be so not precious about story. But no less smart. A lot of things might end up on TV dumb, but I don't want to blame the writers for that. Now that I really have a real understanding of just how the sausage is made and just how big of like a game of telephone it is—and how much you have to relinquish control because at the end of the day it's like you're making this text, it's literary, but it's also like an instruction manual. It's a completely different way to think about writing. And I don't know how long I live in LA or how many like of those kind of projects I will do but I'm really grateful. And one reason I'm really grateful is because doing those projects and having those years where people thought I wasn't doing anything, but I was actually writing so much and like doing so many revisions.  It helped me realize that there is a way that I blame MFAs for making us like feel very siloed. And like, if you're supposed to be a fiction writer, that's the only thing that you do that's like an output that anyone cares about. But it's so new—like, how many screenplays did Joan Didion write? Like James Baldwin wrote screenplays. Before, it was just like, you're writing, you're writing. Like it's all, it all is the job. And I think every time a poet friend of mine like puts out a novel, sends it to me, read, sends it for me to read—first off, they usually are very good. But then also I'm just like, yes, fiction writers, I think, I don't know who did it. I blame graduate programs, but they have put themselves in this small box. Justin: But yeah, I mean, it's like the MFA, a lot of them feel like teacher training programs and that the next step is teaching. But if you don't want to teach the old models, definitely like you just write for TV. Angela: You write for film, you write for magazines, newspapers, you just do the thing. And that has felt very freeing to me, to just see meet more people who are doing that and also to allow myself to do that. Justin (52:49) Yeah, I mean, I really enjoyed the process of having my film—the book made into a film. I think I had an unusual experience with that. Like a lot of times the author is cut out or, you know, is not deferred to in any way, or nobody's inviting you in. I think because it was such a low budget film, and the director is just a really wonderful person who is incredibly collaborative.  He wanted me involved in every single part of it, and so I loved that. I think, I don't know, I think I might wanna adapt Blackouts for a play. I've been thinking about it lately. Angela: You should. I mean, in so many ways, it is kind of like a two-hander. Yeah. I could see it. Yeah.  Justin: A two-hander. Look at you ready to lingo. No, that's some biz lingo.  Lito: That's going to be the title of this podcast. It's a two-hander. How has art shaped your friendship? And I mean, art, like other genres, we've talked about getting out of the box of fiction, but what movies or art or music do you love to talk about or do you just talk about everything or anything that you're watching and how have other genres affected your work? Like, do you listen to music? Are you influenced by visual art?  Angela: You wanna talk about things you watch on television? You ready to come out in that manner?  Justin: No.  Lito: You watch lots of TV? No. Are you a Housewives person?  You're a Housewives watcher, aren't you?  Justin: Housewives is too highbrow for me. I have like a…I have a secret fetish that is mine. Angela: You have to keep some things for yourself. Justin: Yes. But it's just like, that's how I turn my brain off when my brain needs to be turned off.  Annie: I will wait another decade for that story. Justin: I also like culture and high art as well. You write about art a lot. You do profiles. Angela: I do. I wish I did it more. It's just everything, you know, takes time. I think for me, like when I think about—I just am learning different ways to make a life out of, you know, out of your mind and out of art. And one thing that I've learned when I talk to, like visual artists, particularly, is this idea—I think poets also have this—but fiction writers, a friend of mine actually, a poet, recently asked me, like, how does a fiction writer get a practice, like a practice of writing? Practicing their craft in a way that like a visual artist, you know, they go to the studio practice or poet might have a practice. And I don't believe necessarily that sitting down to write every, you know, three hours every day is the same thing. Because like if you don't know what you're writing, but I really do think that practice is more grounded in reading.  Justin: And reading, I think reading literature for sure, but also reading the world, right? And that's what you do when you go to an exhibit or you go to a museum or you go to a concert or whatever, right, you're like reading, you know, and you're reading the experience, you're reading for other things.  Lito: Is there anything you're both fans of that you both talk about a lot? Any artists or musicians or movies? Justin (56:26) You know, I think that we have some lowbrow sharing tastes. But I think that our highbrow, I don't know. We don't talk a lot about our pursuant— I think I'm into a lot of, like when I was looking at, when I was putting together Blackouts, I was looking at a lot of archival photos and like the photos of Carl Van Vechten, I just, I'm obsessed with…  I've been spending a lot of time with them, thinking about him and his practice. I think that, you know, I like all kinds of stuff. I'm like a whatever, what's that horrible term? Culture vulture?  Angela: I don't think that's what you wanna say. But I know what you mean, yeah.  Justin: Yeah, I am democratic in my tastes. I'm just like, I like everything. We don't have a lot of shared tastes, I don't think.  Angela: Um... No?  Justine: No.  Annie:  I sort of love that. I mean, it, um, the friendship, belies, that, you know, it's only a bonus in that way. I think Lito and I also have very different tastes. There's something kind of lovely about that. Lito: I remember Annie making fun of me for not being hardcore enough in my taste in hip-hop. Annie:    I guess we're putting our dirt out there too.  Lito:   We'll be right back with the Lightning Round. Annie:   Ooh, Lightning Round. Annie: (58:12) Thank you both for talking with us today. This was really wonderful. We really feel the honesty and warmth in your friendship and we're so appreciative that you're sharing that with us today and with all of our LitFriends. We're excited for both your books and we're so grateful you spent the last hour with us.  Angela: That was a pleasure.  Justin: Thank you. Lito: All right, we're gonna we— wrap up the podcast with a Lightning Round, just a few questions. We will ask the question and then I guess we'll do it this way. When I ask the question, Angela, you can answer. And when Annie asks the question, Justin, you answer first. Sorry, first answer first. You're both going to answer the question. What is your first memory?  Angela:  My sister roller skating through sprinklers and falling and hitting her head. Justin: I literally have no idea. I, yeah, I don't know. It's a blackout.  Angela: How many times have you said that?  Lito:  Very on brand.  Angela: You've had a long book tour. Justin: I'm practicing.  Annie: Who or what broke your heart first?  Angela: Is it too deep to say my daddy? I know.  Justin: I was going to say my daddy.  Angela: That's why we're friends.  Justin: I know. It's so sad.  Angela: (59:37) Daddy issues.  Lito: Who would you want to be lit friends with from any time in history?  Angela: Toni Morrison.   Justin: Yeah, maybe Manuel Puig. He seemed really cap and hilarious. And also a brilliant genius.  Angela: I need Toni Morrison to tell me how to raise my child. And to still write books. Someone help me. Annie: What would you like to see your lit friend make or create next, maybe something collaborative or something different or a story they haven't told yet?  Justin: I mean, I think I would love to see you actually write something kind of ekphrastic. Like I'd love to see you write about art. I love when you write about art. I love your thoughts about art and art makers. So maybe, like, a collection of essays about culture. I'd love that. Angela: Besides this two-handed, this play, which I would love for you to write. Maybe there's more, I mean, there's more voices in the book than two, though. So it doesn't have to be. Justin is a poet. I have said this since the beginning. I'm ready for this collection.  Justin: Never occurred to me in my life. Angela:   That is not true.  Justin:   Well, writing a collection. Angela:   Okay, well, I would love for you to write a collection of poetry.  Justin:   Maybe I will. Maybe you just gave me permission, as the children say.  Angela:   Mm-hmm. I know.  Lito: If you could give any gift to your LitFriend without limitations, what would you give them?  Angela: I would give him a house with a yard and a pool.  Justin: That's what I want.  Angela: In a city he wants to live in. That's the key.  Lito: That's the hard part. Justin:  (01:01:35) Um, I would give Angela time to be with her thoughts and her craft. I guess what does that involve?  Angela:   This is because I call myself a busy mom all the time.  Justin: You are a busy mom. Angela: (01:02:08) Thank you, that's a nice gift. Time is the best.  Justin: I mean, it's not as good as a house with a pool.  Angela: I know, because I can use my time as wisely as possible and yet—no pool. Lito: Well, that's our show. Annie & Lito: Happy Friendsgiving! Annie: Thanks for joining us, Lit Fam. Lito:   We'll be back next week with our guests, Lucy Corin and Deb Olin Unferth. Annie: Find us on all your socials @LitFriendsPodcast. Annie: I'm Annie Liontas.  Lito:   And I'm Lito Velázquez.  Annie:   Thank you to our production squad. Our show is edited by Justin Hamilton. Lito:   Our logo was designed by Sam Schlenker.  Annie:   Lizette Saldaña is our marketing director.  Lito:   Our theme song was written and produced by Robert Maresca.  Annie:   And special thanks to our show producer, Toula Nuñez. This was LitFriends, Episode One.

Yiyun Li returns to Little Atoms and talks to Neil Denny about her new collection of stories Wednesday's Child. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Yiyun Li is the author of the story collection Wednesday's Child, available from Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Li is the author of several works of fiction--The Book of Goose, Must I Go, Where Reasons End, Kinder Than Solitude, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, The Vagrants, and Gold Boy, Emerald Girl--and the memoir Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life. She is the recipient of many awards, including a PEN/Malamud Award, a PEN/Hemingway Award, a PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, a MacArthur Fellowship, and a Windham-Campbell Prize. Her work has also appeared in The New Yorker, A Public Space, The Best American Short Stories, and The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, among other publications. She teaches at Princeton University and lives in Princeton, New Jersey. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc. Subscribe to Brad Listi's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch @otherppl Instagram  YouTube TikTok 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

Our first book for September's prompt to Read a Book with an Animal in the Title is The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li. We loved reading about this obsessive, codependent relationships between two girls in post-war France.  Content warnings: mentions of violence and sexual assault (not graphically described) Our next book discussion will be on Gorilla, My Love by Toni Cade Bambara. Get it from your local library or bookstore and read along with us! If you want to read along with The Bookstore Challenge 2023, you can find Instagram graphics for your story or grid in this Google Drive folder. You can also join us on The StoryGraph to see what others are reading for each month and get ideas for your TBR: The Bookstore Challenge 2023. Get two audiobook credits for the price of one at Libro.fm when you sign up using the code BOOKSTOREPOD. Website | Patreon

For our last book in August, Corinne picked Crazy Brave by Joy Harjo. Content Warning: racism, abuse, alcoholism  Our next book discussion will be The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li. You can find it at your local bookstore or library and read along with us. If you want to read along with The Bookstore Challenge 2023, you can find Instagram graphics for your story or grid in this Google Drive folder. You can also join us on The StoryGraph to see what others are reading for each month and get ideas for your TBR: The Bookstore Challenge 2023. Get two audiobook credits for the price of one at Libro.fm when you sign up using the code BOOKSTOREPOD. Website | Patreon

Bookwaves/Artwaves is produced and hosted by Richard Wolinsky. Links to assorted local theater & book venues   Bookwaves David Grann, whose latest book is “The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder,” in conversation with Richard Wolinsky, recorded June 14, 2023 at Book Passage bookstore in Corte Madera, California. David Grann is a long-time staff writer for The New Yorker. Earlier books include Killers of the Flower Moon, soon to be a film directed by Martin Scorsese, The Devil and Sherlock Holmes, a collection of essays, and The Lost City of Z. The Wager tells the story of the HMS Wager, one of a handful of British ships sent around Cape Horn to harass the Spanish fleet in the Pacific, which went aground near the Strait of Magellan, and of the crew members who survived (and didn't) during the following year, and of the aftermath back in England. In the interview, David Grann also discusses the origins of Killers of the Flower Moon, and the relationship between all three of his books. Photos: Richard Wolinsky. Complete 37-minute Interview.   Bookwaves Yiyun Li discussing her first novel, “The Vagrants,” in conversation with host Richard Wolinsky, recorded in the KPFA studios, February 10, 2009. Yiyun Li is an award winning author of novels and short stories. Born in China in 1972, she earned a BA at Peking University before coming to the united States and getting a degree in Immunology from the University of Iowa, eventually moving on to a Master of fine Arts in creative fiction and non-fiction from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop. Her stories have appeared in the New Yorker and Paris Review, and two of the stories from her collection A Thousand Years of Good Prayers were adapted into films by Wayne Wang. She has also written five novels, the most recent The Book of Goose in 2022. This is the first of two interviews with Liyun Li. The second was recorded in 2014 for her novel, “Kinder than Solitude.” Complete 30-minute Interview   Book Interview/Events and Theatre Links Note: Shows may unexpectedly close early or be postponed due to actors' positive COVID tests. Check the venue for closures, ticket refunds, and vaccination and mask requirements before arrival. Dates are in-theater performances unless otherwise noted. Some venues operate Tuesday – Sunday; others Wednesday or Thursday through Sunday. All times Pacific Time. Closing dates are sometimes extended. Book Stores Bay Area Book Festival  Event calendar and links to previous events. Book Passage.  Monthly Calendar. Mix of on-line and in-store events. Books Inc.  Mix of on-line and in-store events. The Booksmith.   Monthly Calendar. On-line events only. Center for Literary Arts, San Jose. See website for Book Club guests in upcoming months. Green Apple Books. Events calendar. Kepler's Books  On-line Refresh the Page program listings. Live Theater Companies Actor's Reading Collective (ARC).  See website for past streams. Alter Theatre. See website for upcoming productions. Actor's Reading Collective (ARC).  See website for past streams. Alter Theatre. See website for upcoming productions. American Conservatory Theatre  The Hippest Trip: The Soul Train Musical,  August 25 – October 1, 2023. Aurora Theatre  Hurricane Diane by Madeleine George, June 16 – July 16. Streaming July 12 -16. Awesome Theatre Company. Check website for upcoming live shows and streaming. Berkeley Rep Out of Character, written and performed by Arfel Stachel, June 23 – July 30, Peets Theatre. Boxcar Theatre. See website for calendar listings. Brava Theatre Center: See website for events. BroadwaySF: Les Miserables, July 6 – 23, Orpheum. Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, August 1-27, 2023, Golden Gate. Broadway San Jose: Beetlejuice, August 1 – 6. California Shakespeare Theatre (Cal Shakes). No 2023 season scheduled. See website for events calendar. Center Rep: Crowns by Regina Taylor, September 9 – October 6, 2023. Central Works The Dignity Circle a new scheme by Lauren Smerkanich June 24 – July 23. Cinnabar Theatre. The Sound of Music, September 8 -24. Contra Costa Civic Theatre 2023-2024 season: Sondheim on Sondheim; Tintypes. Curran Theater: See website for upcoming events and streaming interview. Custom Made Theatre. Tiny Fires by Aimee Suzara, postponed to a later date in 2023. Cutting Ball Theatre. See website for upcoming season. 42nd Street Moon. See website for upcoming shows. Golden Thread  New Threads staged reading series, August 20 and August 27. Landmark Musical Theater.  My Unauthorized Hallmark Movie Musical, July 6 – July 30. Lorraine Hansberry Theatre. In The Evening By The Moonlight by Traci Tolmaire, co-created and directed by Margo Hall, June 15 – July 9, Young Performers Theatre, Fort Mason, San Francisco. Magic Theatre. Josephine's Feast by Star Finch, August 2 – 20, Campo Santo at the Magic. See website for other events at the Magic. Marin Theatre Company Odyssey written and directed by Lisa Peterson, August 31 – September 24. Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts Upcoming Events Page. New Conservatory Theatre Center (NCTC)  Drag Queen Storytime Gone Wild starring the Kinsey Sicks, July 5 -16. Oakland Theater Project.  Gary, a sequel to Titus Andronicus by Gaylor Mac, September 1 – 24. Pear Theater. Falsettos,  June 30 – July 23. PianoFight. Permanently closed as of March 18, 2023. Presidio Theatre. See website for upcoming productions Ray of Light:  Spring Awakening, streaming through July 30. Cruel Intentions: The '90s Musical, September 8 – October 1, Victoria Theatre. The Rocky Horror Show, Oasis Nightclub, October 6  – 31. See website for Spotlight Cabaret Series at Feinstein's at the Nikko. San Francisco Playhouse.  A Chorus Line runs through September 9, 2023. SFBATCO See website for upcoming streaming and in- theater shows. San Jose Stage Company:Sex with Strangers by Laura Eason, October 12 – 30. Shotgun Players. Summer Salon: Various artists, July 23 – August 19. Wolf Play by Hansol Jung, Performances start September 2, 2023. South Bay Musical Theatre: Rent, September 30 – October 21. The Breath Project. Streaming archive. The Marsh: Calendar listings for Berkeley, San Francisco and Marshstream. Theatre Rhino  Streaming: Essential Services Project, conceived and performed by John Fisher, all weekly performances now available on demand, New performances most Wednesdays. TheatreWorks Silicon Valley. New Works Festival, August 11 – 20, Lucie Stern Theatre, Palo Alto. Word for Word.  See schedule for  one-night readings and streaming performances. Misc. Listings: BAM/PFA: On View calendar for BAM/PFA. Berkeley Symphony: See website for listings. Chamber Music San Francisco: Calendar, 2023 Season. Dance Mission Theatre. On stage events calendar. Oregon Shakespeare Festival: Calendar listings and upcoming shows. San Francisco Opera. Calendar listings. San Francisco Symphony. Calendar listings. Filmed Live Musicals: Searchable database of all filmed live musicals, podcast, blog. If you'd like to add your bookstore or theater venue to this list, please write Richard@kpfa.org                                     The post Bookwaves/Artwaves – July 6, 2023: David Grann – Yiyun Li appeared first on KPFA.

Yiyun Li discussing her first novel, “The Vagrants,” in conversation with host Richard Wolinsky, recorded in the KPFA studios, February 10, 2009. Yiyun Li is an award winning author of novels and short stories. Born in China in 1972, she earned a BA at Peking University before coming to the united States and getting a degree in Immunology from the University of Iowa, eventually moving on to a Master of fine Arts in creative fiction and non-fiction from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop. Her stories have appeared in the New Yorker and Paris Review, and two of the stories from her collection A Thousand Years of Good Prayers were adapted into films by Wayne Wang. She has also written five novels, the most recent The Book of Goose in 2022. This is the first of two interviews with Liyun Li. The second was recorded in 2014 for her novel, “Kinder than Solitude.” The post Yiyun Li, “The Vagrants,” 2009 appeared first on KPFA.

继续回顾去年的阅读，本期聊一些女性作家的非虚构作品和与写作本身相关的写作，包括散文集、日记书信和传记回忆录。 Female writers writing about writing. :) 提到的书： Melissa Febos, Abandon Me (2:08) Virginia Woolf, A Writer's Diary (14:04) Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West, Love Letters: Vita and Virginia (22:47) Nigel Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage (26:25) Lydia Davis, Essay Two (30:50) Susan Sontag, Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963 (41:45) Ray Chow, Not Like a Native Speaker (46:48) Yiyun Li, Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life (48:47) --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/GFtherapy/message

Growing up in Communist China, Yiyun Li devoured any books she could find. But she never imagined that, on moving to the U.S., she'd become the author of prize-winning fiction in English, including such acclaimed works as A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, The Vagrants and Kinder than Solitude. Her latest novel, The Book of Goose, is a beguiling tale of two peasant girls in rural post-war France. Inspired by a real-life literary hoax, it's a moving meditation on friendship, imagination and truth in storytelling.

“I think the best writers always know the characters more than the characters know themselves,“ she says. The author of The Book of Goose talks about War and Peace, Wuthering Heights, the stories of William Trevor, and her old army buddies. Produced with A Public Space and Rizzoli Bookstores.  Music: Liz Hanley.

Paul Harding won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Tinkers, ''an astringent meditation on loss, family ties, and the presence of the past'' (The Guardian) in which a dying elderly man wanders through the rooms of his life's large and quiet moments. He is also the author of the novel Enon and is an accomplished musician. The director of the MFA in Creative Writing & Literature at Stony Brook University, Harding is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize. Based on the true story of one of the first integrated towns in the Northeast, This Other Eden tells the multigenerational story of an isolated island community off the coast of Maine. Referred to by Yiyun Li as ''one of the most unique voices in American literature,'' Hanna Pylväinen is the author of the Whiting Award-winning debut novel We Sinners, the story of a devout but fragmented Midwestern family. A faculty member of Warren Wilson College's MFA writing program, she has earned fellowships from Princeton University's Lewis Center for the Arts and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, among others. Her work has been published in numerous periodicals, including Harper's Magazine, The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and The Wall Street Journal. In The End of Drum-Time, Pylväinen weaves the love story of a reindeer herder and a minister's daughter on the remote 19th century Scandinavian tundra. (recorded 2/23/2023)

姗姗来迟的 2022 阅读回顾，因内容太多分为两期。本期的主题是「身体」和虚构文学。 另外插播一则广告，我俩翻译的《未死之身》（The Undying by Anne Boyer 简中版）现已出版，实体书和电子书均已在各大平台上架，欢迎阅读。 本期提到的书： Sarah Polley, Run Towards the Danger (1:40) Jia Talentino, Trick Mirror (specifically the essay "Always Be Optimizing") (20:45) Alison Bechdel, The Secret to Superhuman Strength (34:18) Yiyun Li, The Vagrants, Kinder than Solitude (41:12) Noor Naga, If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English (46:12) Nam Le, The Boat (specifically the story "Love and Honour and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice") (50:38) Sheila Heti, Pure Colour (53:24) 有声书推荐 lightning round (60:55) Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar, read by Maggie Gyllenhaal Bryan Washington, Memorial Ling Ma, Severance Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt Torrey Peters, Detransition, Baby Yoko Ogawa, The Memory Police, The Housekeeper and the Professor --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/GFtherapy/message

Simon, Nat and Daniel share their deep passion for allocated seating; Justin "Digga" Calverley explains the importance of pruning summer fruit trees and the joys of a free orchard; Book reviewer Fi Wright shares highlights from Yiyun Li's The Book of Goose; Anne Jacobs from Support Act explains the 'Support Act Supports Us All' campaign; Game enthusiast Dan Morganti explores turn-based online game Your Only Move is HUSTLE; Writer Keziah Warner chats about the Malthouse production of her adaption of Nosferatu; and Nat has a bone to pick with white boards. With presenters Simon Winkler, Daniel Burt & Nat Harris. Website: https://www.rrr.org.au/explore/programs/breakfasters/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Breakfasters3RRRFM/Twitter: https://twitter.com/breakfasters

Yiyun Li reads her story “Wednesday's Child,” which appeared in the January 23, 2023, issue of the magazine. Li is the author of two story collections and five novels, including “Must I Go” and “The Book of Goose,” which was published last year. She won the Windham Campbell Literature Prize in 2020. 

In this episode, Audra and Sadie discuss the entirety of The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/litandlibation/message

In our second annual “best books” episode, I invite my dear friend Carla Jean back to run down the best books of 2022, nonfiction and fiction—and what we're both looking forward to reading in 2023. Here are the books mentioned in the episode (there are a LOT of them!): Books Carla Jean Wrote: Muscle Shoals Sound Studio: How the Swampers Changed American Music by Carla Jean Whitley Birmingham Beer: A Heady History of Brewing in the Magic City by Carla Jean Whitley Balancing Act: Yoga Essays by Carla Jean Whitley Carla Jean's Best Nonfiction Books of 2022: Lost & Found by Kathryn Schulz (also mentioned—Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep) The Crane Wife by CJ Hauser (also mentioned by me—Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed and by Carla Jean—Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss by Margaret Renkl) In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss by Amy Bloom A late add Carla Jean forgot to mention on the show—Bomb Shelter: Love, Time, and Other Explosives by Mary Laura Philpott Carla Jean's Best Fiction Books of 2022: We All Want Impossible Things by Catherine Newman This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub Signal Fires by Dani Shapiro (also mentioned—Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love by the same author) My Fiction Pick of 2022: Meant to Be by Emily Giffin Books Carla Jean is Looking Forward to Reading in 2023 (Or Already Has Read and Recommends): The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li (fiction) Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (fiction) We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler (fiction) The Urgent Life: My Story of Love, Loss, and Survival by Bozoma Saint John (nonfiction) Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age by Katherine May (I cosign this, and also another book by the same author, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times—both nonfiction) Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano (fiction, and also Dear Edward by the same author) You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith (nonfiction) Midwest Shreds by Mandy Shunnarah (nonfiction) Losing Music by John Cotter (nonfiction) Books I Am Looking Forward to Reading in 2023 (Or Already Have Read and Recommend, All Nonfiction Naturally): And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle by Jon Meacham The Light We Carry by Michelle Obama Elizabeth Taylor: The Grit and Glamour of an Icon by Kate Andersen Brower Spare by Prince Harry and J.R. Moehringer 8 Rules of Love: How to Find It, Keep It, and Let It Go by Jay Shetty Whew! Happy reading! And happy new year!

This week, we learn why we love the music we love. Lilah speaks with Susan Rogers, who was a recording engineer for Prince on albums such as ‘Purple Rain'. Now she's a neuroscientist who has studied what music does to the brain. Her book, 'This Is What It Sounds Like', helps us make sense of our own musical preferences. Susan joins us to listen to some music and explain how it affects us. Why is Despacito one of the most listened to songs of all time? Why does one person love techno, and another just not care? Then, ahead of the FT's Books of the Year special, our literary editors Fred Studemann and Laura Battle come on to share their personal favourite fiction books from 2022. -------Tell us your cultural prediction for 2022! You can record a voice message here: https://sayhi.chat/jzdg3If you prefer, you can email us at ftweekendpodcast@ft.com. We're on Twitter @ftweekendpod, and Lilah is on Instagram and Twitter @lilahrap.-------Links and mentions from the episode:– Susan's book is called This Is What It Sounds Like: What The Music You Love Says About You: https://www.thisiswhatitsoundslike.com/ – Here's the Spotify playlist, which you should listen to while reading the book: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5FwghDk8f8jgJdGPIF1RNM– Fred is on Twitter @frederick65. Laura is on Twitter @battlelaura– The FT Books of the Year will be published across the FT on 26th November Books mentioned by Fred and Laura:– Trust by Hernan Diaz. FT review: https://on.ft.com/3GkYZOW– Iron Curtain by Vesna Goldsworthy. FT review: https://on.ft.com/3OfuYBT– The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li. FT review: https://on.ft.com/3tCvtg7– Punishment by Ferdinand von Schirach– Grand: Becoming My Mother's Daughter by Noelle McCarthy – A Sort of Life by Graham Greene, in Slightly Foxed Magazine– Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self by Andrea Wulf – An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong-------Special offers for FT Weekend listeners, from 50% off a digital subscription to a $1/£1/€1 trial can be found here: http://ft.com/weekendpodcast-------Original music by Metaphor Music. Mixing and sound design by Breen Turner and Sam Giovinco-------Clips courtesy of Universal Music, DFA/Virgin / Parlophone, and Warner Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When it comes to fiction, why are people so obsessed with authenticity and so appalled by literary deception? Does it matter who tells a story? And what do novels that confront these ideas have to tell us? Our guest this month is the writer Yiyun Li, whose latest novel The Book of Goose is about an intense friendship between two girls in rural postwar France. When Agnes and Fabienne write a book of stories together, a simple lie about the book's authorship sends Agnes' life in an unexpected direction. So in honour of their act of literary creation - and obfuscation - we wanted to devote our show to the idea of literary deception. Listen in for thoughts on authenticity, literary hoaxes, unreliable narrators and all the usual recommendations. Recommendations on the theme, Deception: Octavia: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee Carrie: The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante General recommendations: Octavia: Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez Yiyun: The Hero of This Book by Elizabeth McCracken Carrie: The Song of Achilles by Madeleine Miller Find a list of all recommended books at: https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/november-2022-deception-with-yiyun-li Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/litfriction Email us: litfriction@gmail.com Tweet us & find us on Instagram: @litfriction This episode is sponsored by Picador: https://www.panmacmillan.com/picador

Jamil Jan Kochai joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss “All Will Be Well,” by Yiyun Li, which was published in The New Yorker in 2019. Kochai is the author of two books, the novel “99 Nights in Logar,” which was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the story collection “The Haunting of Hajji Hotak,” which is a finalist for the National Book Award. He is currently a Hodder Fellow at Princeton.

Yiyun Li talks to Neil about her latest novel The Book of Goose. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Yiyun Li has garnered legions of fans with her unsparing prose, writing extensively about her own struggles with depression and suicidality.Her latest novel, “The Book of Goose,” is no different, sharing the same quality that has made Ms. Li something of a beacon to those suffering beneath unbearable emotional weight.Alexandra Kleeman, also a novelist, meets Ms. Li to discover the secrets of her charm, her experience of growing up in China and her writing process.This story was written by Alexandra Kleeman and recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.

Gail Pittaway reviews The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li, published by HarperCollins Publishers

Yiyun Li's ''remarkable'' (The Washington Post) debut fiction collection, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the Guardian First Book Award. Her other work includes the novel The Vagrants, the story collection Gold Boy, Emerald Girl, and the memoir Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life. The recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Windham-Campbell Prize, Li teaches writing at Princeton University and is a contributing editor for A Public Space. A story of obsession and friendship, her new novel follows a woman's mental journey back to the war-ravaged French village of her youth. Acclaimed for their ''moments of joy and pure magic'' (Los Angeles Times), Elizabeth McCracken's seven books include Bowlaway, The Giant's House, Thunderstruck & Other Stories, and The Souvenir Museum, a story collection that was longlisted for the National Book Award. A former faculty member at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and currently the James Michener Chair for Fiction at the University of Texas at Austin, McCracken has earned the PEN New England Award, three Pushcart Prizes, and an O. Henry Prize, among other honors. Her latest novel finds a woman wrestling with grief, history, and her craft as she takes a trip to her recently departed mother's favorite city. (recorded 10/6/2022)

Acclaimed fiction writer Elizabeth McCracken joins Fiction/Non/Fiction hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell for the show's fifth anniversary. She reads from her new novel, The Hero of This Book, which she wrote during the pandemic, shortly after her mother's death. She also discusses what's involved with tricking herself into writing a novel, particularly one that deals with difficult, almost autobiographical, subject matter.  To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/. This podcast is produced by Anne Kniggendorf. Selected Readings: Elizabeth McCracken The Hero of This Book The Souvenir Museum Bowlaway Thunderstruck & Other Stories The Giant's House Others: Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 4 Episode 12: WTF, Texas? Lacy M. Johnson and Natalia Sylvester on Surviving the Recent Storm and Unraveling the Whitewashed Myth of Texas Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 1 Episode 1: MFA vs. Everything: Four Writers Weigh in Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 5 Episode 42: Yiyun Li on Complicated Friendships Real and Imagined Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 4 Episode 25: Tolstoy Forever: Brigid Hughes and Yiyun Li on Retweeting a Russian Classic Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker  “Against Aboutness” by Yiyun Li, Harper's Magazine The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Andrew Sean Greer, author of six novels, including The Confessions, joins Eric Newman to talk about Less Is Lost, a sequel to his 2017 Pulitzer Prize winner, Less. This latest installment finds our beloved and bewildered eponymous gay novelist of minor repute dashing across the American Southwest, South, and East Coast as he scrambles to save, and in some ways clarify, his relationship with Freddy Pelu, as well as to pay back some monumental back rent on the charming San Francisco home left to him by his recently deceased lover, Robert Brownburn. As Less takes his fish-out-of-water act on the road, Andrew Sean Greer treats readers to a number of poignant insights into the nature of love, devotion, belonging, and the by turns miserable and, er, miserable condition of being a writer. Also, Yiyun Li, author of The Book of Goose, returns to recommend Charlotte Bronte's Villette.

The two books in today's episode point up how authors write and empathize with characters that aren't exactly likable. First we hear from Anthony Doerr who spoke to NPR correspondent Arun Rath about his Pulitzer-Prize winning novel All The Light We Cannot See. Doer talks about how we can better understand the moral choices people make by tuning into untold stories. Then, Scott Simon of NPR's Weekend Edition interviews author Yiyun Li about her new novel The Book of Goose. It's a story of two ruthless French girls who write a book that alters their lives.

Andrew Sean Greer, author of six novels, including The Confessions, joins Eric Newman to talk about Less Is Lost, a sequel to his 2017 Pulitzer Prize winner, Less. This latest installment finds our beloved and bewildered eponymous gay novelist of minor repute dashing across the American Southwest, South, and East Coast as he scrambles to save, and in some ways clarify, his relationship with Freddy Pelu, as well as to pay back some monumental back rent on the charming San Francisco home left to him by his recently deceased lover, Robert Brownburn. As Less takes his fish-out-of-water act on the road, Andrew Sean Greer treats readers to a number of poignant insights into the nature of love, devotion, belonging, and the by turns miserable and, er, miserable condition of being a writer. Also, Yiyun Li, author of The Book of Goose, returns to recommend Charlotte Bronte's Villette.

Kate Wolf speaks with celebrated author Yiyun Li about her latest novel, The Book of Goose. A tale of a passionate friendship between two adolescent girls, set in a rural village in postwar France, The Book of Goose is told from the perspective of its narrator, Agnès. Now living in America many years later, she recounts the devotion and creativity she shared with her best friend, Fabienne, when they were young. Together the two girls composed a book of stories, but at Fabienne's urging, Agnès posed as the sole author when the book was eventually published, setting the course of their lives in two very separate directions. An examination of friendship, poverty, feminine ambivalence, and death, Li's novel is most concerned with the nature of stories themselves: where they come from, how they function, and who they belong to. Also, Rachel Aviv, author of Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us, returns to recommend Madness and Modernism: Insanity in the Light of Modern Art, Literature, and Thought by Louis Sass.

Kate Wolf speaks with celebrated author Yiyun Li about her latest novel, The Book of Goose. A tale of a passionate friendship between two adolescent girls, set in a rural village in postwar France, The Book of Goose is told from the perspective of its narrator, Agnès. Now living in America many years later, she recounts the devotion and creativity she shared with her best friend, Fabienne, when they were young. Together the two girls composed a book of stories, but at Fabienne's urging, Agnès posed as the sole author when the book was eventually published, setting the course of their lives in two very separate directions. An examination of friendship, poverty, feminine ambivalence, and death, Li's novel is most concerned with the nature of stories themselves: where they come from, how they function, and who they belong to. Also, Rachel Aviv, author of Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us, returns to recommend Madness and Modernism: Insanity in the Light of Modern Art, Literature, and Thought by Louis Sass

Frenemies of the State: Yiyun Li on Complicated Friendships Real and Imagined Novelist and memoirist Yiyun Li joins Fiction/Non/Fiction hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to discuss frenemies in writing circles, in literature, and in politics (with a tip of the hat to Joe Manchin). Li explains how intention helps her to distinguish between friendship and frenemyship, talks about finding frenemies in literature more interesting than those in politics, and offers examples ranging from The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie to Sweet Days of Discipline. She also reads from her own new novel, The Book of Goose, and reflects on discovering the intense connection between her two central characters, Agnès and Fabienne, young girls growing up together in France. To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/. This podcast is produced by Anne Kniggendorf. Selected Readings: Yiyun Li The Book of Goose Must I Go Dear Friend, From My Life I Write to You in Your Life Where Reasons End Others: The Best Frenemies in Fiction ‹ CrimeReads The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante Sweet Days of Discipline by Fleur Jaeggy A Separate Peace by John Knowles “Harry Styles Has Entered the SpitGate Chat” by Adrienne Westenfeld (Esquire) Milan Kundera Chelsea Clinton Talks Candidly About Crumbling of Friendship with Ivanka Trump: 'She Went to the Dark Side' "'Checked Out': Trump rebukes Ivanka over Jan. 6 testimony" by Kelly Hooper (Politico) Column: Bill Barr is telling the truth about Trump. Too bad it's too little, too late by Jackie Calmes (Los Angeles Times) F/N/F Season 4 Episode 25: Tolstoy Forever: Brigid Hughes and Yiyun Li on Retweeting a Russian Classic Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Nicole and Gayle, return to bring you their short list of hand-picked books coming out this fall. As always you can find below the whole booklist they run through during the episode: French Braid by Anne Tyler | https://amzn.to/3qoKujN (Amazon) | https://bookshop.org/a/2143/9780593321096 (Bookshop) One's Company by Ashley Husted | https://amzn.to/3BCIvix (Amazon) | https://bookshop.org/a/2143/9780393866643 (Bookshop) The Measure by Nikki Erlich | https://amzn.to/3eHk2j2 (Amazon) | https://bookshop.org/a/2143/9780063204201 (Bookshop) When Were Bright and Beautiful by Jillian Medoff | https://amzn.to/3GJTDuT (Amazon) | https://bookshop.org/a/2143/9780063142022 (Bookshop) Home Stretch by Graham Norton | https://amzn.to/3xaRdls (Amazon) | https://bookshop.org/a/2143/9780063112094 (Bookshop) We Do What We Do In The Dark by Michelle Hart | https://amzn.to/3AW7Zpa (Amazon) | https://bookshop.org/a/2143/9780593329672 (Bookshop) Little Secrets by Jennifer Hillier | https://amzn.to/3Qvplz9 (Amazon) | https://bookshop.org/a/2143/9781250797087 (Bookshop) Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell | https://amzn.to/3DadIL1 (Amazon) | https://bookshop.org/books/the-marriage-portrait-9780593635322/9780593320624 (Bookshop) Tell Me I'm An Artist by Chelsea Martin | https://amzn.to/3B5hHpj (Amazon) | https://bookshop.org/a/2143/9781593767211 (Bookshop) Lessons by Ian McEwan | https://amzn.to/3DdcY7Z (Amazon) | https://bookshop.org/a/2143/9780593535202 (Bookshop) Runaway by Erin Keane | https://amzn.to/3xbyjdT (Amazon) | https://bookshop.org/a/2143/9781953368317 (Bookshop) How Not To Drown In A Glass of Water by Angie Cruz | https://amzn.to/3eHmciE (Amazon) | https://bookshop.org/a/2143/9781250208453 (Bookshop) The Old Place by Bobby Finger | https://amzn.to/3L4JWta (Amazon) | https://bookshop.org/a/2143/9780593422342 (Bookshop) Best of Friends by Kamila Shamsie | https://amzn.to/3TWSoyw (Amazon) | https://bookshop.org/a/2143/9780593421826 (Bookshop) Signal Fires by Dani Shapiro | https://amzn.to/3Dcm0lq (Amazon) | https://bookshop.org/a/2143/9780593534724 (Bookshop) If I Survive You by Jonathan Escofferyhttps://amzn.to/3L8QOpd (Amazon)https://bookshop.org/a/2143/9780374605988 (Bookshop) Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing by Matthew Perry | https://amzn.to/3x7m02b (Amazon) | https://bookshop.org/a/2143/9781250866448 (Bookshop) The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li | https://amzn.to/3TX9Kvb (Amazon) | https://bookshop.org/a/2143/9780374606343 (Bookshop) Meredith, Alone by Claire Alexanderhttps://amzn.to/3KYyu25 (Amazon)https://bookshop.org/a/2143/9781538709948 (Bookshop) Hester by Laurie Lico Albanese | https://amzn.to/3x6GUPd (Amazon) | https://bookshop.org/a/2143/9781250278555 (Bookshop) We All Want Impossible Things by Catherine Newman | https://amzn.to/3QwTq19 (Amazon) | https://bookshop.org/a/2143/9780063230897 (Bookshop)

The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li by Poets & Writers

Welcome to our third episode of Generations! Sophie just returned from a long journey to celebrate the wedding of a childhood friend and today we talk about how much weddings have changed over the years! We dig into the importance of nurturing the ties with old friends and discuss how crazy travel is these days. We also continue with our regular segments, "I thought of you when," "What's in your book tote?" and " what's in your earbud?" Sophie's “I thought of you when” was theparisreview.org We mentioned the Apple TV miniseries We Crashed, based on the history of We Work https://tv.apple.com/us/show/wecrashed/umc.cmc.6qw605uv2rwbzutk2p2fsgvq9 Sophie's “What's in your book tote” title was Women Artists by Linda Nochlin Deb's “What's in your book tote” title was The Book of Goose by YiYun Li (out 9/20) You can purchase both of these titles at Deb's Shop! https://bookshop.org/shop/lonestarwords Sophie's “What's in your earbud” was The DeBrief Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-debrief/id1617844496 Deb's “What's in your earbud” was The Novel Pairings Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/novel-pairings/id1500764291

Lauren W. will be co-hosting this non-fiction quarter of Reading Envy Russia. We share books we have already read and freely recommend, and also chat about the piles and shelves of books we are considering. Let us know your recommendations and where you hope to start in the comments, or join the conversation in Goodreads.Download or listen via this link: Reading Envy 244: 2nd Quarter - Russian Non-Fiction Subscribe to the podcast via this link: FeedburnerOr subscribe via Apple Podcasts by clicking: SubscribeOr listen through TuneIn Or listen on Google Play Or listen via StitcherOr listen through Spotify Or listen through Google Podcasts Books we can recommend: Memories from Moscow to the Black Sea by Teffi Tolstoy, Rasputin, Others, and Me: The Best of Teffi by TeffiSecondhand Timeby Svetlana AlexievichThe Unwomanly Face of Warby Svetlana AlexievichLast Witnesses by Svetlana Alexievich, translated by Pevear & VolokhonskyZinky Boysby Svetlana AlexievichVoices of Chernobyl (also titled Chernobyl Prayer) by Svetlana Alexievich, translated by Keith GessenOther Russias by Victoria Lomasko, translated by Thomas CampbellThe Future is History by Masha Gessen Never Rememberby Masha Gessen, photography by Misha FriedmanWhere the Jews Aren't by Masha Gessen Pushkin's Children by Tatyana Tolstaya The Slynx by Tatyana TolstayaImperium by Ryszard Kapucinski, translated by Klara GlowczewskaA Very Dangerous Woman: The Lives, Loves and Lies of Russia's Most Seductive Spy by Deborah McDonald and Jeremy DronfieldPutin Country by Anne GarrelsLetters: Summer 1926 by Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetaeva, and Rainer Maria Rilke Sovietistan by Erika Fatland The Commissar Vanishes by David King Gulag by Anne Applebaum The Iron Curtain by Anne Applebaum The Magical Chorus by Solomon Volkov, translated by Antonina Bouis  Shostaskovich and Stalin by Solomon Volkov The Tiger by John Vaillant Owls of the Eastern Ice by Jonathan Slaght How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog): Visionary Scientists and a Siberian Tale of Jump-Started Evolution by Lee Alan Dugatkin and Lyudmila Trut Please to the Table by Anya von Bremzen Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking by Anya von Bremzen Books we are considering: All Lara's Wars by Wojchiech Jagielski, translated by Antonia Lloyd-JonesGulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, translated by Eric Ericson (there is a unabridged 1800+ pg, and an author approved abridged version, 400-some pages) Journey into the Whirlwind by Eugenia Ginzburg, translated by Paul Stevenson, Max Hayward Kolyma Tales by Varlam Shalamov, translated by John GladRiot Days by Maria AlyokhinaSpeak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov The Life Written by Himself by Avvakum Petrov My Childhood by Maxim Gorky Teffi: A Life of Letters and Laughter by Edythe Haber Hope Against Hope by Nadezhda Mandelstam, tr. Max Hayward The Genius Under the Table: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain by Eugene Yelchin Putin's Russia: life in a failing democracy by Anna Politkovskaya ; translated by Arch Tait. A Russian diary: a journalist's final account of life, corruption, and death in Putin's Russia by Anna Politkovskaya Notes on Russian Literature by F.M. DostoevskyThe Sinner and the Saint: Dostoevsky and the Gentleman Murderer Who Inspired a Masterpiece by Kevin Birmingham The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce's Ulysses by Kevin BirminghamLess than One: Selected Essays by Joseph Brodsky Tolstoy Together by Yiyun Li The Border by Erika Fatland Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad by M.T. Anderson Red Plenty by Francis Spufford Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire by David Remnick Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder The Last Empire: Final Days of the Soviet Union by Serhii PlokhyThe Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine by Serhii PlokhyChernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe by Serhii PlokhyNuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis by Serhii PlokhyMan with the Poison Gun: a Cold War Spy Story by Serhii PlokhyBabi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel by Anatoly Kuznetsov, tr. David Floyd Manual for Survival: An Environmental History of the Chernobyl Disaster by Kate Brown Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters by Kate BrownA Biography of No Place: From Ethnic Borderland to Soviet Heartland by Kate BrownOctober: The Story of the Russian Revolution by China Mieville Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia by Peter Pomerantsev Across the Ussuri Kray by Vladimir Arsenyev, translated by Slaght An Armenian Sketchbook by Vasily Grossman, translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army by Vasily GrossmanThe Road by Vasily GrossmanStalking the Atomic City: Life Among the Decadent and Depraved of Chernobyl by Markiyan Kamysh Midnight in Siberia: A Train Journey into the Heart of Russia by David Greene Mamushka: Recipes from Ukraine & beyond by Olia HerculesRed Sands by Caroline EdenBlack Sea by Caroline Eden Tasting Georgia by Carla Capalbo  Other mentions:PEN list of writers against PutinNew Yorker article about Gessen siblings Thanksgivukkah 2013  League of Kitchens - Uzbek lessonLeague of Kitchens - Russian lessonMasha Gessen on Ezra Klein podcast, March 2022Related episodes:Episode 067 - Rain and Readability with Ruth(iella) Episode 084 - A Worthy Tangent with Bryan Alexander Episode 138 - Shared Landscape with Lauren Weinhold Episode 237 - Reading Goals 2022Episode 243 - Russian Novel Speed Date Stalk us online:Reading Envy Readers on Goodreads (home of Reading Envy Russia)Lauren at GoodreadsLauren is @end.notes on InstagramJenny at GoodreadsJenny on TwitterJenny is @readingenvy on Instagram and Litsy All links to books are through Bookshop.org, where I am an affiliate. I wanted more money to go to the actual publishers and authors. You can see the full collection for Reading Envy Russia 2022 on Bookshop.org.

When the first pandemic lockdowns began back in March 2020, acclaimed novelist Yiyun Li took to social media with a modest proposal: a communal reading of Leo Tolstoy's masterpiece War & Peace, complemented by daily reflections and live conversation on Twitter. Li's invitation met with a hearty response from readers around the world: hundreds participated in the online book club. Some of their comments, along with Li's reflections, were published earlier this fall in Tolstoy Together: 85 Days of War & Peace.   On this episode, Li joins Commonweal literary editor Anthony Domestico for a wide-ranging conversation about the project, the pleasures of reading together, and why Tolstoy still matters.   For further reading: ·      “2021 Books in Review,” Anthony Domestico ·      “Bracing for Impact,” Cassandra Nelson ·      “The Zen of Tolstoy,” Christopher Bram

Editor and publisher Brigid Hughes and writer Yiyun Li join co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about reading War and Peace over the course of 85 days with others around the world. The unusually broad and lively Twitter conversation, organized in 2020 by A Public Space and led by Li, is captured in the newly published volume Tolstoy Together. In this episode, Li discusses her love of Russian novels and describes what it was like reading War and Peace in sections at the ends of newspapers when she was growing up in Beijing. Hughes, who read the book for the first time during this project, explains how the community of readers who contributed to the online book club made the experience special. To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video excerpts from our interviews at LitHub's Virtual Book Channel and Fiction/Non/Fiction's YouTube Channel, and don't miss our brand-new website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/ This podcast is produced by Anne Kniggendorf. Selected readings: Yiyun Li Tolstoy Together Must I Go? Where Reasons End Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life Gold Boy, Emerald Girl A Thousand Years of Good Prayers Kinder Than Solitude The Vagrants   Brigid Hughes A Public Space   Others: The Translation Wars (The New Yorker) Her Private Space: On Brigid Hughes, Editor (LitHub) Everything You've Ever Wanted to Know About Lit Mags (and Likely More) (FnF episode) #APStogether : Events Infinite Happiness (originally published in A Public Space, by Jamel Brinkley) Cattle Haul (by Jesmyn Ward) War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky   The Raid and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy  Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky   Matt Gallagher Dewaine Farria Alexandra Schwartz ZZ Packer   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices