Emily St. John Mandel is the guest.  Her latest novel is called The Lola Quartet, and it is available now from Unbridled Books.

Library Journal, in a starred review, raves:

In this transcendent third novel, Emily St. John Mandel combines her most compelling characters with a breath-taking, tension-filled story as she examines again questions of identity, the surprising pull of family, the difficulties of being the person one wants to be, guilt, and the unforeseen ways in which a small and innocent action can have disastrous consequences. The Lola Quartet is a work that pays homage to literary noir and jazz, Django Reinhardt, economic collapse, love and loss, Florida’s exotic wildlife problem, crushing tropical heat, the leavening of the contemporary world, compulsive gambling, and the unreliability of memory.

Great to have Emily on the program.

Topics of conversation include:  British Columbia, citizenship, dual citizenship, Canada, Brooklyn, modern dance, Toronto, home schooling, Vancouver Island, Black Swan, steroids, Montreal, break-ups, auditions, octogenarian agents, New York City, Emily Jacobson, Curtis Brown, past lives, vintage fashion, fedoras, good manners, population density, formality, editing, publishing, perfectionism, discipline, part-time jobs, readings, self-promotion, gypsy jazz, Django Reinhardt, Florida, reptiles, Zone One, Colson Whitehead, The Sisters Brothers, Patrick DeWitt, and Last Night in Montreal.

Monologue topics: airports, hunger, bad food, travel, fatigue.

This episode of Other People is sponsored by MP Publishing.  Be sure to check out Johnny Future, the new novel by Steve Abee, and Growing Up Dead in Texas, by Stephen Graham Jones.

Please remember to subscribe to the show over at iTunes, or at Stitcher. It’s free.

Or just push PLAY below.

Many thanks, everybody. Enjoy the show…

-BL

PS. Like the podcast? Please take a moment to rate and review it on iTunes. Thank you!

Etgar Keret is the guest.  He’s the author of several books, the most recent of which is called Suddenly, a Knock on the Door, now available from Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.

Jonathan Safran Foer calls it

Keret’s greatest book yet—the most funny, dark, and poignant. It’s tempting to say these stories are his most Kafkaesque, but in fact they are his most Keretesque.

And Ira Glass, host and producer of This American Life, says:

Etgar Keret’s stories are funny, with tons of feeling, driving towards destinations you never see coming. They’re written in the most unpretentious, chatty voice possible, but they’re also weirdly poetic. They stick in your gut. You think about them for days.

So pleased to have Etgar on the program.

Topics of conversation include:  stuff, materialism, grandfather clocks, Warsaw ghetto, Holocaust, books, Poland, bedtime stories, whores, drunks, the British, holes, Jews, Nazis, geniuses, adolescence, orthodox Judaism, religion, agnosticism, activism, truancy, the military, science, math, computers, philosophy, writing, not wanting to be a writer, asthma, guns, the Middle East, Israel, optimism, pessimism, government, Hamas, Arab Spring, fundamentalism, tyranny, opportunity, education, cinema, Jellyfish, Cannes, Camera d’Or, mango juice, work ethic, forcing oneself to make art, and the dangers of self-obsession.

Monologue topics: road trips, punctuality, barfing, nuclear reactors, children, microorganisms, and the dark art of concealment.

This episode of Other People is brought to you by the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program, the largest open-enrollment creative writing and screenwriting program in the nation.

Please remember to subscribe to the show over at iTunes, or at Stitcher. It’s free.

Or just push PLAY below.

Many thanks, everybody. Enjoy the show…

-BL

PS. Like the podcast? Please take a moment to rate and review it on iTunes. Thank you!

David Rees is the guest.  He’s the author of How to Sharpen Pencils, a practical and theoretical treatise on the artisanal craft of pencil sharpening, for writers, artists, contractors, flange turners, anglesmiths, and civil servants, with illustrations showing current practice, now available from Melville House. He is also the creator of the comic strip Get Your War On, which has appeared in the pages of Rolling Stone magazine.

Amy Sedaris on How to Sharpen Pencils:

Of all the great artisanal crafts, hat blocking, cobbling, and trolloping, I think I was most disheartened to see pencil sharpening relegated to the dusty bin of history.  That is why I am so thrilled David Rees is picking up the reins of the forgotten art of manual graphite-encased-in-wood point-crafting.  I love my pencil!

A thrill and an honor to have Mr. Rees on the program.

Topics of conversation include:  Hollywood Boulevard, Roosevelt Hotel, celebrity mummies, pitch meetings, Facebook, Scrabble, the visual beauty of phone numbers, Chapel Hill, Wisconsin, Manitowoc, cranes, America Club, Sheboygan, Porsche posters, Lamborghini Countach, bullying, Transformers 3, Michael Bay, American doom, Oberlin, Jesus and Mary Chain, physics class, pencils, social cohesion theory, learning your limits, feigning indifference, philosophy, Norman Care, Wittgenstein, how to live a good life, how to be a good person, how to honor the advantages you’ve been given by making sacrifices for the betterment of other people, losing religion, ethics, Kant, Minutemen, punk rock, Reagan, progressive Christianity, mastery, simplicity, complexity, Get Your War On, clip art, 9/11, George W. Bush, Soft Skull Press, the census, pencil sharpening, and the golden age of pencil use.

Monologue topics:  dreams, intruders, locking the door, bad sleep, prank calls, subconscious thought, and inescapable neurotic obsessions.

This episode of Other People is brought to you by Luminarium, the critically acclaimed novel by Alex Shakar, now available from SoHo Press in hardcover, paperback, and ebook formats.  Recently, the book was awarded the LA Times Book Prize for Fiction.  Dave Eggers calls it “Dizzingly smart and provocative…. Shakar is committed throughout with trying, relentlessly, to flat-out explain the meaning of life.”   To see the full list of reviews, and to get your copy of the novel, please visit www.sohopress.com.
Otherwise…

Please remember to subscribe to this podcast over at iTunes, or at Stitcher. It’s free.

Or just push PLAY below.

Many thanks, everybody. Enjoy the show…

-BL

PS. Like what you hear? Please take a moment to rate and review it on iTunes. Thank you!

Chloe Caldwell is today’s guest.  She’s the author of a debut essay collection called Legs Get Led Astray, now available from Future Tense Books.

Raves Cheryl Strayed:

Chloe Caldwell’s Legs Get Led Astray is a scorching hot glitter box of youthful despair and dark delight. Tender and sharp, wide-eyed and searching, these essays have a reckless beauty that feels to me like magic.

Nice to have Chloe on the program.

Topics of conversation include:  living with your parents, music stores, bilingualism, voice lessons, Gwen Stefani, Shakira, George Michael, Hudson, marijuana, singing, dancing, fear of dancing, bongo lessons, memoir, New York City, distractions, alcohol, The Strand, writing workshops, secrets, perspective, productivity, assimilation, hippie culture, selling jewelry, Seattle, alienation, passivity, raising children in big cities, Cheryl Strayed, cat-sitting, writing for cash, keeping it enjoyable, the depression of publication, stunt memoirs, mediating one’s experience, hiking, yoga, hangover recovery, Kripalu, moving to Portland, and the womb of goodness.

Monologue topics:  spankings, riding crops, Burning Man, the Santa Claus dominatrix, participation, pain, and mediating one’s own experience.

This episode of Other People is brought to you by the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program, the largest open-enrollment creative writing and screenwriting program in the nation.

Please remember to subscribe to the show over at iTunes, or at Stitcher. It’s free.

Or just push PLAY below.

Many thanks, everybody. Enjoy the show…

-BL

PS. Like the podcast? Please take a moment to rate and review it on iTunes. Thank you!

Kris D’Agostino is the guest.  He’s the author of the debut novel The Sleepy Hollow Family Almanac (Algonquin), which was the March selection for the TNB Book Club.

Raves Brock Clarke, author of Exley:

A singularly funny, bitter, bold book about what it’s like to resemble people you want badly to be better than. This is a remarkable book about a remarkable family with disturbingly familiar problems.

Great to have Kris on the program.

Topics of conversation include:  film school, New York, The Hunger Games, reading, Boston University, loneliness, Boogie Nights, Dirk Diggler, Paul Thomas Anderson, failure, Dungeons & Dragons, J.R.R. Tolkien, living at home, anxiety, mothers, therapy, break-ups, routines, music, band practice, New School, pre-school, energy, relaxation, Woody Allen, A Separation, cinematic literature, acting, class comics, Italian, public transportation, testing, Children of Men, Never Let Me Go, organ harvesting, coming of age stories, and realist science fiction.

Monologue topics:  coffee shops, coffee meetings, Larry Charles, social awkwardness, forgiveness, Jesus, and birthday parties.

Please remember to subscribe to the show over at iTunes, or at Stitcher. It’s free.

Or just push PLAY below.

Many thanks, everybody. Enjoy the show…

-BL

PS. Like the podcast? Please take a moment to rate and review it on iTunes. Thank you!

Matt Bell is the guest.  He’s the author of several chapbooks, a fiction collection called How They Were Found, and his most recent book is a novella called Cataclysm Baby, now available from Mud Luscious Press.

Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia!, raves:

In extraordinary language, with deep feeling, Matt Bell has crafted a baby name book for the apocalypse, a gorgeous, brilliant, often darkly hilarious and always moving novella. Written with an ingenuity and joy that call to mind Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, each chapter is a treasure: Here are beast of burden children, larval girls, subterranean daughters and choirs of sirens, combustible baby boys. I loved this book and want to recommend it to every human parent and child I know; if trees, rocks, and stars were literate, I would recommend it to them, too. ‘Where do babies come from?’ children ask their parents, and Cataclysm Baby has an alphabet of answers as beautiful and mysterious as that ancient question, while always posing its haunting corollary: ‘Where do they go?

Wonderful to have Matt on the program.

Topics of conversation include: dissertating, Michigan, kids, parenthood, the Great White North, Canada, family, boredom, storytelling, Lord of the Rings, Bill Murray, repetition, Meatballs, Denis Johnson, Jesus’ Son, Louis Ferdinand Celine, groupthink, individualism, time, isolation, travel, Jim Morrison, An American Prayer, bad poetry, midlife crises, exercise, real experience vs. mediated experience, empathy, pregnancy fears, Dzanc, The Collagist, violence, The Man with Two Brains, nudity, Stephen King, The Shining, adolescence, writing rituals, stamina, self-doubt, long periods of uncertainty, validation, learning from the slush pile, and genre vs. literary.

Monologue topics:  dinner with a friend, leaving the car running, The TNB Literary Experience, and an excerpt from my novel-in-progress.

This episode of Other People is brought to you by the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program, the largest open-enrollment creative writing and screenwriting program in the nation.

Please remember to subscribe to the show over at iTunes, or at Stitcher. It’s free.

Or just push PLAY below.

Many thanks, everybody. Enjoy the show…

-BL

PS. Like the podcast? Please take a moment to rate and review it on iTunes. Thank you!

Noah Hawley is the guest.  He’s the author of several books, the most recent of which is a novel called The Good Father, now available from Doubleday.  He’s also an accomplished writer and producer in film and television.  He wrote and produced the television show Bones, and created the shows The Unusuals and My Generation.  He also wrote the screenplay for the feature film Lies and Alibis.

Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, has this to say about The Good Father:

The father of a man who assassinates a presidential candidate tries to make sense of his son’s crime in Hawley’s gripping new novel…With great skill, Hawley renders Dr. Allen’s treacherous emotional geography, from his shock and guilt to his growing sense that he knows far less about his son than he thought…Hawley’s complicated protagonist is a fully fathomed and beautifully realized character whose emotional growth never slows a narrative that races toward a satisfying and touching conclusion.

Great to have Noah on the program.

Topics of conversation include:  San Francisco, screenwriting, pitch meetings, getting to yes, speakerphones, being good in a room, sales, storytelling, segues, humor, efficiency, character, universality, commercial fiction, Mark Leyner, Hollywood, New York, My Generation, cancellation, adversity, fear, risk, conformity, bitterness, industriousness, Austin, ABC, BBC, studios, networks, notes, collaboration, show runners, Mississippi, specificity, break-ins, Stripes, anti-heroes, Bill Murray, age, teaching, exit strategies, fickleness, and selling fruit on the side of the road.

Monologue topics:  neurotic thinking, second-guessing, elevators, conversation, and micro-expressions of pain.

This episode of Other People is brought to you by the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program, the largest open-enrollment creative writing and screenwriting program in the nation.

Please remember to subscribe to the show over at iTunes, or at Stitcher. It’s free.

Or just push PLAY below.

Many thanks, everybody. Enjoy the show…

-BL

PS. Like the podcast? Please take a moment to rate and review it on iTunes. Thank you!

James Bernard Frost is the guest.  He’s the author of the novel A Very Minor Prophet, now available from Hawthorne Books.

Raves Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club:

To date only Gus Van Sant has depicted the grim, dim, greasy, cramped world of Portland, Oregon. Now James Bernard Frost has given us the best novel, ever, about this strange underground world of misfits and heroes.

Raves Tom Robbins, author of Another Roadside Attraction:

Bucking a headwind of despair, Frost pedals his verbal bicycle into the belly of the Beast, only to return bearing a brand-new Gospel illuminated with Voodoo cream and composed in the edgy vernacular of Portland’s thriving freak scene.

A pleasure to have Jim on the show—he’s been a contributor at The Nervous Breakdown for the past several years, so it’s especially nice to see a book of his make its way into the world.

Topics of conversation include:  Portland, Oregon, perseverance, George W. Bush, failure, agents, unorthodoxy, zines, hybrids, political outrage, Ayn Rand, self-righteousness, religion, shame, lectures, Catholicism, agnosticism, serendipity, awfulness, creative pain, discipline, perspective, outlining, structure, expertise, readings, quantifying success, marketing, the accuracy of social media, guidebooks, vegetarians, rental cars, dot com boom, food criticism, the impossibility of not writing, fantasy fiction, facilitating, time management, adaptability, screenwriting, and the quest.

Monologue topics:  Coachella, festivals, public nudity, the 1960s, Woodstock, and Segway bubbles.

This episode of Other People is brought to you by the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program, the largest open-enrollment creative writing and screenwriting program in the nation.

Please remember to subscribe to the show over at iTunes, or at Stitcher. It’s free.

Or just push PLAY below.

Many thanks, everybody. Enjoy the show…

-BL

PS. Like the podcast? Please take a moment to rate and review it on iTunes. Thank you!

Heidi Julavits is today’s guest.  She’s the author of four books, the most recent of which is a novel called The Vanishers, now available from Doubleday. And she’s also the co-editor of The Believer magazine.

Here’s what The New York Times Book Review has to say about The Vanishers:

Darkly comic….sharp-eyed, sardonic, hilarious….Julavits is at her acrobatically linguistic best here. Nearly every page contains a showstopping description or insight…narrative voice is superb. Funny, self-deprecating, exquisitely attuned… Vivid… Remarkable… Heartbreaking.

So great to have Heidi on the program.

Topics of conversation include:  Los Angeles, road trips, Boulder, Dartmouth, ex-boyfriends, balding tires, Choate, fraternities, The Ivy League, Columbia, feminism, children, body image, Harvard, editing, literary power couples, Ben Marcus, reality television, Susan Faludi, Vendela Vida, Dave Eggers, The Believer, emails, womby-watery women’s writing, Hillary Clinton, Yoko Ono, lazy-mindedness, women and their mothers, female relationships, psychic attacks, random discovery, the pain of writing novels, when a novel doesn’t work, and learning to savor the good moments.

Monologue topics:  psychic experiences, earthquakes, uteruses, and streetlights.

Please remember to subscribe to the show over at iTunes, or at Stitcher. It’s free.

Or just push PLAY below.

Many thanks, everybody. Enjoy the show…

-BL

PS. Like the podcast? Please take a moment to rate and review it on iTunes. Thank you!

Rosecrans Baldwin is the guest.  He’s a co-founder of The Morning News and the author of a new memoir called Paris, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down, available on April 24th from Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.

Kirkus, in a starred review, calls it “great fun and surprisingly touching.”

Very excited to have Rosecrans on the program.

Topics of conversation include:  girls with boy names, boys with girl names, the Mayflower, Paris, French military might, French films, Eagle Scouts, books, movies, identity, escape, advertising, Sofia Coppola, Louis Vuitton, fashion crises, OCD, trench coats, hoodies, Bonobos pants, Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, Good Omens, Colby, Frank O’Hara, poetry, despair, the Internet, The Morning News, good cheer, novels, consciousness, blogging, zines, book tour, golf shirts, and indie situations.

Monologue topics:  Paris Hilton, Paris, idiocy, George Whitman, Shakespeare & Company, pigeons, bird shit, luck.

This episode of Other People is brought to you by the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program, the largest open-enrollment creative writing and screenwriting program in the nation.

Please remember to subscribe to the show over at iTunes, or at Stitcher. It’s free.

Or just push PLAY below.

Many thanks, everybody. Enjoy the program…

-BL

PS. Like the podcast? Please take a moment to rate and review it on iTunes. Thank you!

Kris Saknussemm is the guest.  His latest novel, Reverend America, is now available from Dark Coast Press.  And the soundtrack to the book is now available at iTunes.

From Booklist:

Once upon a time, Mathias Gaspenny was a child preacher and faith healer who captivated audiences across the country. Now, much older and wiser, he’s come home to Joplin, Missouri, hoping to live out the remainder of his life in quiet reflection. But a chance meeting with a teenage prostitute sets him on a new and unexpected road, and, as he searches for salvation, he replays his life in memory. Reverend America is almost pure character study, the story of Casper, a man we come to know gradually, as the events of his past life constantly change our perceptions of him. At various times funny, bittersweet, tragic, and terrifying, the book and its central character are sympathetic and memorable.

And Shelf Awareness, in a starred review, raves:

A picaresque tale of a prodigy albino orphan crisscrossing the country to heal a big tent of weird but heart-warming losers. The best road trip is enlightening and redemptive. Reverend America gives us a damn good one.

Great to have Kris on the show.

Topics of conversation include: mysteries, strangeness, Black Mountain Institute, Las Vegas, bail bonds, hookers, Seattle, Berkeley, preachers, abuse, trauma, gambling, evangelism, Boston W. Smith, 10th Mountain Division, violin, hand injuries, Oberlin College, 1960s California, hippies, counterculture, Esalen, Big Sur, neglect, drugs, alcohol, grand theft auto, breaking and entering, sports, embalming fluid, PCP, Dartmouth, New England, medicine, psychiatric hospitals, house-sitting, parties, badminton, arts grants, scams, manic psychotic breakdowns, sex with strangers, Melbourne, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, divorce, cocaine, advertising, repatriation, Eric Wyatt, and avant-garde theater.

Monologue topics:  tequila, grocery-shopping, The Flaming Lips, biker chicks, shopping sprees, hydration, and Bank of America.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the show over at iTunes, or at Stitcher. It’s free.

Or just push PLAY below.

Many thanks, everybody. Enjoy the program…

-BL

PS. Like the podcast? Please take a moment to rate and review it on iTunes. Thank you!

Amelia Gray is the guest.  She’s the author of three works of fiction, the most recent of which is a novel called Threats, now available from Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.

Doug Dorst, author of The Surf Guru, has this to say about Amelia’s work:

The first time I encountered Amelia Gray’s fiction, it slugged me in the jaw. The second time too, and the third. Said jaw-slugging has ensued nearly every time I’ve read something of hers, except for when instead it whispered sad and surprising but undeniable truths about the difficulty of intimacy and sense in the wretched blastoscape of modern life. And then it made me a grilled cheese sandwich to prove that the world can be a kind place, and it waited until I had sated myself and wiped away the crumbs before slugging me in the jaw again.

Very pleased to have her on the program.

Topics of conversation include:  social discomfort, small groups, loud bars, scorpions, Tucson, javelinas, North Carolina, Arizona State, palo verde trees, sitting Indian-style, kid games, Nazis, orphans, violin, taking cures, long distance relationships, bathing at the houses of strange men, Greyhound buses, Presbyterianism, superstition, Mandarin, seclusion, Dungeons & Dragons, weightlifting, broken noses, impulsiveness, bad jokes, anal sex, meeting people on the Internet, knife-throwing, social media, Cindy Sheehan, Austin, philosophy, Tempe, Texas State, competitive spirit, writing in public, and creative faces.

Monologue topics include:  Mega Millions, Warren Buffett, Gandhi, charity, morality, and giving money away stupidly.

Please remember to subscribe to the show over at iTunes, or at Stitcher. It’s free.

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Many thanks, everybody. Enjoy the program…

-BL

PS. Like the podcast? Please take a moment to rate and review it on iTunes. Thank you!

Good news!  Brooklyn Based has listed Other People among its 10 Best Podcasts for Writers, calling it “a fantastic interview show and probably the best-curated book-centric talk show out there.”  (Subscribe for free at iTunes.)

Huge thanks to Jon Reiss and the folks at Brooklyn Based for the kind support.

Here’s the full write-up:

In one of the early episodes of Other People, Nervous Breakdown founder Brad Listi articulates a kind of mission statement for his podcast, something to the tune if him wanting to chat with other writers in order to figure out why on earth they’d want to get into this harrowing and often soul-crushing line of work (see advice from my college professor, above). In practice, Other People is a fantastic interview show and probably the best-curated book-centric talk show out there. Listi interviews some non-fiction writers like Inside Scientology author Janet Reitman, but focuses mainly on the most interesting fiction writers in today’s literary climate—often the more, edgy, dark and esoteric of the bunch, such as Dennis Cooper, Blake Butler, Vanessa Vesekla and Joshua Mohr. In short, Listi has really good taste and an earnest interviewing style that feels more accessible than an interview from, say, The New Yorker Fiction Podcast.

Melissa Broder is the guest.  Her new poetry collection, entitled Meat Heart, is now available from Publishing Genius Press.  And by day she is the publicity manager for Penguin Group.

Says Publishers Weekly:

Broder’s second collection cranks up the weird by mining the grotesqueries of her speakers’ relationships with men, god, the self, and food. That these elements often become indistinguishable–as in “Ciao Manhattan,” where “It is so god/ When the voice is like wheat// Spooned wheat/ In whole milk”–is evidence of Broder’s talent for showing us our contemporary conflict: god is both a haven from the grotesque and the name we rail against when we aren’t safe from it. But Broder is smarter than to suggest that there are only two sides to this dilemma. Out to “crucify boredom,” her poems show us how any relationship with the divine is no less at risk of engendering grotesque lust. “Yesterday the worship rattled like an engine,” she writes, and “God keeps unfurling me/ with god’s gigantic helium.” What makes Broder such a pleasure on the page is her insistence that these dramas play out on a workaday stage infused with surreal Pop and imaginative muscle. “When the last Beatle dies,” she tells us in “Ringo,” “the president hits a kill switch/ and all our possessions/ drift like eyelashes/ through a crack in the sky.” In Broder’s hands, it’s good to kiss them good-bye.

Great to have Melissa on the show.

Topics of conversation include:  stalking, public relations, poetry, self-identification, nose-picking, oversensitivity, rhyming, Rolling Harvey Down the Hill, publication, insecurity, social media, Legos, non-reality based Tweeting, workaholism, style, Bryn Mawr, addiction, Philadelphia, all-girls schools, puberty, Are You There God?  It’s Me, Margaret, self-piercing, shrooming, virginity, Pink Floyd laser light shows, darkness, excesses, mentoring, adrenaline, public speaking, panic, Jack Kerouac, Boulder, San Francisco, and the commodification of New Age spirituality.

Please remember to subscribe to the show over at iTunes, or at Stitcher. It’s free.

Or just push PLAY below.

Many thanks, everybody. Enjoy the program…

-BL

PS. Like the podcast? Please take a moment to rate and review it on iTunes. Thank you!

Hari Kunzru is the guest.  He’s the author of four books, the most recent of which is a novel called Gods Without Men, now available from Knopf.

David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas, calls it a “beautifully written echo chamber of a novel.”

Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, calls it “a pitch-perfect masterwork.”

Kirkus calls it “an astonishing tour de force.”

And Marie Arana, writing for the Washington Post, raves:

Kunzru is wise beyond his years, [a] novelist in superb command of his craft. . . . In his dazzling new novel, a desert is the setting, hero and villain. . . . Here is where the walking wounded come to pray to Yahweh, Allah, Vishnu, Coyote, the Brothers of Light. Here are cynical veterans from WWII, hard-bitten GIs fresh from Iraq, randy communards, washed-up bankers, wasted groupies. Here is death, sex, and rock-and-roll.

So pleased to have Hari on the program.

Topics of conversation include:  9/11, the desert, Los Angeles, research, Motel 6, road trips, mirages, nuclear weapons, aliens, skepticism, UFOs, religion, spirituality, ethics, the unknown, meaning, atheism, family, structure, organization, failure, fellowships, New York City, Martin Amis, London, Brooklyn, reviews, nerves, and early success.

Monologue topics include:  National Geographic, predators, wolves, crocodiles, gazelles, the law of the jungle, dreams, dogs, and the movie idea about the dead man and the dead dog.

Please remember to subscribe to the show over at iTunes, or at Stitcher. It’s free.

Or just push PLAY below.

Many thanks, everybody. Enjoy the program…

-BL

PS. Like the podcast? Please take a moment to rate and review it on iTunes. Thank you!

Jessica Keener is today’s guest.  Her debut novel, Night Swim, is now available from Fiction Studio Books.

Pulitzer Prize-winner Jennifer Egan says:

Jessica Keener steps boldly into the terrain of Eugene O’Neill, conjuring up the pathologies and quirks of a besieged Boston family in stark, quivering detail that never entirely distracts us from the looming sense of crisis. This gripping first novel announces the arrival of a strong, distinct and fully evolved new voice.

A super-interesting and unexpected conversation.  Jessica is delightful.

Topics include:  Purim, Esther, Haman, Hamantashen, International Women’s Day, Russians, Brookline, Boston, bone marrow, aplastic anemia, Karmu, white light, love at first sight, The South, Atlanta, Flannery O’Connor, books, Brown, New York, manners, Emory, self-hypnosis, fear, death, gay nightclubs, wealth, spirituality, the afterlife, writing, out-of-body experiences, Time-Life books, hippies, Woodstock, writing speed, goals and satisfaction.

Monologue topics:  Walter, raisins, wailing children, veterinarians, medicine, mushrooms, and Queen Latifah.

Please remember to subscribe to the show over at iTunes, or at Stitcher. It’s free.

Or just push PLAY below.

Many thanks, everybody. Enjoy the program…

-BL

PS. Like the podcast? Please take a moment to rate and review it on iTunes. Thank you!

Catherine Chung is the guest.  Her debut novel, Forgotten Country, is now available from Riverhead Books.

Booklist, in a starred review, raves:

Chung’s superb debut examines the twin hearts of cruelty and compassion between sisters in particular and family in general…. This elegantly written, stunningly powerful, simply masterful first novel should earn Chung many fans.

And Publishers Weekly, in another starred review, has this to say:

A beautiful debut novel…woven with tender reflections, sharp renderings of isolation, and beautiful prose….Chung simultaneously shines light on the violence of Korean history, the chill of American xenophobia, and the impossibility of home in either country.

Very pleased to have Catherine on the program.

Topics of conversation include:  math, computer science, books, clarity, precision, outlining, drafts, finishing, structure, theme, sisters, estrogen, Korea, separation, family, the Korean War, kidnapping, civil war, tragedy, disconnection, immigrant experience, panic, loss, motivation, parents, understanding, Michigan, libraries, academia, Christianity, Buddhism, cruelty, trust, Marilynne Robinson, conversation, childhood, bad things happening, 8th grade, think-tanks, the sales process, and wanting to break your arm.

Monologue topics:  bullwhips, dancing, Las Vegas, Indiana Jones, Halloween, casinos, writing, misery, multiple-vision POV, TNB’s Facebook page, and recurring nightmares.

Please remember to subscribe to the show over at iTunes, or at Stitcher. It’s free.

Or just push PLAY below.

Many thanks, everybody. Enjoy the program…

-BL

PS. Like the podcast? Please take a moment to rate and review it on iTunes. Thank you!

Jeff Ragsdale is the guest.  He’s the co-author, along with David Shields and Michael Logan, of Jeff, One Lonely Guy.

Here’s what Bret Easton Ellis, author of American Psycho, has to say about it:

You can either make fun of Jeff, One Lonely Guy (it would be very easy to parody) and reject its self-help earnestness or you can respond as I did: transported by a healing work of art despite (or because of) the enormous amount of pain surging through it. The symphony of voices here is an overwhelming reading experience. This short book is also a verification of a legitimate new form of narrative; it’s the definitive document so far of where our medium is heading. I’ve never read anything like it.

A great conversation about a unique and powerful book.

Topics include:  loneliness, desperation, New York, kindness, the Internet, candor, chaos, Oprah, selfishness, cell phones, demons, Reddit, altruism, abuse, happiness, alcoholism, depression, relationships, suicide, psychology, dating, murder, tragedy, listening, absurdity, phone sex, Washington, responsibility, violence, college, divorce, death, impulse, critical thinking, stand-up comedy, Last Comic Standing, negative energy, Greg Giraldo, collaboration, David Shields, Michael Logan, the godless universe, and literary collage.

Monologue topics:  literary accidents, helium balloons, Donut Sunday, Alpena, Lake Michigan, DUIs, breathalyzers, web designers, TNB 4.0, mugshots, Richard Branson, and invisible fire.

Please remember to subscribe to the show over at iTunes, or at Stitcher. It’s free.

Or just push PLAY below.

Many thanks, everybody. Enjoy the program…

-BL

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Sarah Manguso is today’s guest.  She’s the author of the new book The Guardians: An Elegy, now available from Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.

Megan O’Grady, writing for Vogue, says:

Shortly after returning home from a fellowship year in Rome, poet and memoirist Sarah Manguso received word that her old college friend Harris had fled a psychiatric hospital and jumped in front of a train. In The Guardians: An Elegy, the writer explores, in prose that singes with precision and honesty, the many ambiguities surrounding the tragedy . . . A long friendship is a crucial orientation point, and Manguso captures with great delicacy the spinning compass of her grief, and its accompanying jumble of anger, disappointments, corrupted memories—and love.

Very pleased to have Sarah on the program to discuss her terrific new book.

Topics of conversation include:  grief, suicide, friendship, mystery, memory, artifacts, death, Italy, psychosis, therapy, reality, talking dogs, youth, mental illness, crystalline awareness, autoimmune disease, paralysis, funerals, good moods, self-protection, Manhattan, Chambers Street, Brooklyn, Harris’s penis, sex, Cambridge, Harvard, chemistry, composers, sex, kindness, temporal remove, attention span, truth, panic, time, and sentimentality.

Monologue topics:  compression, elevation, frustration, pulverization, tonal dissonance, Giroux, large corporate plushies, child fear, and awkward goodbyes.

Please remember to subscribe to the show over at iTunes, or at Stitcher. It’s free.

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Many thanks, everybody. Enjoy the program…

-BL

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Lysley Tenorio is the guest.  A winner of the Whiting Writer’s Award and a former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, he is the author of a debut story collection called Monstress, now available from Ecco.

Raves Chang-Rae Lee, New York Times bestselling author of The Surrender:

The stories in Monstress announce the debut of an electric literary talent. Brilliantly quirky, often moving, always gorgeously told, these are tales of big-hearted misfits who yearn for their authentic selves with extraordinary passion and grace. Bravo for this fabulous American fiction!

So pleased to have Lysley on the show.  A terrific conversation.

Topics include:  Philippines, Berkeley, immigrant experience, San Diego, identity, Tagalog, paper without lines, comics, sports, the meanness of kids, foot speed, iPads, technology, Wisconsin, Phillips Exeter, studiousness, college applications, camp, sincerity, pop culture, Ramona the Pest, Shel Silverstein, self-focused fiction, empathy, ethnocentric literature, history, The Horror of the Blood Monsters, science fiction, research, Stegner fellowship, Stanford, San Francisco, diversity, urban dwelling, the valor of hardship, goals, and grading essays.

Monologue topics include:  Rush Limbaugh, Jonathan Franzen, misogyny, Twitter, hatred, social media, apathy, dysfunction, and anger.

Please remember to subscribe to the show over at iTunes, or at Stitcher. It’s free.

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Many thanks, everybody. Enjoy the program…

-BL

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Lauren Groff is the guest.  She’s the author of the novel The Monsters of Templeton, the story collection Delicate Edible Birds, and most recently, a novel called Arcadia, which has received starred reviews from Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and Booklist. 

And Richard Russo raves:

Richly peopled and ambitious and oh, so lovely, Lauren Groff’s Arcadia is one of the most moving and satisfying novels I’ve read in a long time. It’s not possible to write any better without showing off.

An excellent conversation with one of our best young novelists.

Topics of conversation include:  bugs, Gainesville, treadmills, lizards, racoons, heat, cold, sweat lodges, painting, musicians, anxiety, kneading, photography, Modigliani, France, Amherst, David Foster Wallace, Stephen King, Jeffrey Eugenides, Marcel Proust, reading, classics, John Updike, Moby Dick, utopia, Ayn Rand, idealism, empathy, children, sleep disorders, Cooperstown, excruciating ordinariness, sports, gap years, Stanford, Lorrie Moore, Meryl Streep, perfectionism, depression, faith in humanity, and publication anxiety.

Monologue topics include:  Sarah Groff, Olympics 2012, sports, the ESPYs, being physically inconsequential, genetic freaks, the role of talent, Sylvester Stallone, Rocky II, accidental comedies, and Q Moonblood.

Please remember to subscribe to the show over at iTunes, or at Stitcher. It’s free.

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Many thanks, everybody. Enjoy the program…

-BL

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Maud Newton is the guest.  One of the web’s most influential book bloggers.  She also reviews books and is a former attorney who now works as an editor and writer for (a legal publishing division of) Thomson Reuters.

She has written about culture and the arts for numerous publications, including The New York Times, Bookforum, and The Paris Review, and she was the recipient of the 2009 Narrative Prize for “When the Flock Changed,” an excerpt from her novel-in-progress.

Pleased to have her on the program—the 50th episode!  Plenty to discuss.

Topics of conversation include:  blogging, books, Bookslut, Laila Lalami, Dennis Johnson, tax law, Florida, unhappy childhoods, reading, conservatism, liberalism, law school, religion, Brooklyn, Jennifer Howard, insularity, Mark Sarvas, George Murray, Lizzie Skurnick, The Chimerist, Laura Miller, The Millions, The Rumpus, HTML Giant, The Second Pass, John Williams, Tumblr, Twitter, timing, prostitutes, critics, memoirs vs. novels, revision, perfectionism, obsessiveness, absurdities, familial dysfunction, and religious extremism.

Monologue topics:  AWP 2012, Chicago, AutoZone, batteries, mentally disabled man, sushi, strip malls, air travel, nerves, George Harrison, neck pillows, and Darwinian writerly tension.

Please remember to subscribe to the show over at iTunes, or at Stitcher. It’s free.

Or just push PLAY below.

Many thanks, everybody. Enjoy the program…

-BL

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Joe Blair is the guest.  He’s the author of the memoir By the Iowa Sea, now available from Scribner.

Scott Spencer, author of Main in the Woods, raves:

An intimate, startling memoir that honors and elevates our quotidian existence. With his contagious curiosity as to what drives him and what holds him back, Blair writes fearlessly and beautifully about the family he loves and also betrays, the people he treasures and plots to escape from. By The Iowa Sea is funny and unsettling, painful and rock and roll romantic, and it has the invigorating ring of truth on every page.

A terrific conversation.

Topics include:  marriage, floods, kids, metaphors, infidelity, Iowa City, why, autism, tuberous sclerosis, Massachusetts, forgiveness, Jack Kerouac, workshops, money, sex, love, routine, pain, impermanence, rationality, editing, truth, Nevada, California, wanderlust, motorcycles, air conditioners, heart attacks, control, fear, reviews, special needs parents, divorce, and hope.

Monologue topics:  AWP, Chicago, gate-crashing, freedom, travel, celebrity fragrances, Sebastian Junger, Jonathan Safran-Foer, Drakkar Noir, Brad, Christiane Amanpour, and Caine from Kung Fu.

Please remember to subscribe to the show over at iTunes, or at Stitcher. It’s free.

Or just push PLAY below.

Many thanks, everybody. Enjoy the program…

-BL

PS. Like the podcast? Please take a moment to rate and review it on iTunes. Thank you!

Ramona Ausubel is the guest.  Her debut novel, No One is Here Except All of Us, is now available in hardcover from Riverhead Press.  And her short story “Atria” was published in the April 4, 2011 issue of The New Yorker.

Raves the San Francisco Chronicle:

No One Is Here Except All of Us contains so many achingly beautiful passages, it”s as if language itself is continually striving to be a refuge….If a book can be said to have a consciousness, the consciousness here is infinitely tender and soulful, magical and true. It’s the kind of God we wish for.

And the New York Times Book Review says:

Fantastical and ambitious…infused with faith in the power of storytelling…Light and tenderness persevere—in a shining moon, in a candle still aglow, in a mother’s embrace of her child.

A great conversation with a terrific new author.

Topics of conversation include:  babies, luck, The New Yorker, Cal-Irvine, short stories, Ron Carlson, Santa Fe, workshop, focus, family, Sardinia, POWs, pogroms, outlines, World War I, World War II, Nazis, Jews, history, fear, gay marriage, topaz, Georgia O’Keeffe, crystals, hippies, the mesa, Barbies, algebra, Ragdale, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Savannah, Forrest Gump, Titanic, Boulder, cooking, poetry, Berkeley, photography, Pitzer, elliptical trainers, making friends, Sky Mall, Doug Anderson, Amy Gerstler, Mexico, Thailand, around-the-world travel, Santa Barbara, children, bilingualism, and surfing.

Monologue topics:  writing, my novel, acne vulgaris, Bukowski, Ham on Rye, AWP, networking, team-building, synergizing, Walter, the park, shrieking four-year-olds, negligent parents, and my daughter.

Please remember to subscribe to the show over at iTunes, or at Stitcher. It’s free.

Or just push PLAY below.

Many thanks, everybody. Enjoy the program…

-BL

PS. Like the podcast? Please take a moment to rate and review it on iTunes. Thank you!

Ryan Boudinot is the guest.  He’s the author of the new novel, Blueprints of the Afterlife, now available from Grove Press.

John Schwartz, in a review for the New York Times, raves:

A fierce literary imagination, building the kinds of worlds that William Gibson used to write before he discovered the present; it is warmed by the kind of offbeat, riffing humor that has suffused the works of Neal Stephenson and Gary Shteyngart, with Chuck Palahniuk’s cartoonish gore and Neil Gaiman’s creepy otherworlds blended in. . . . Duct-tape yourself to the front of this roller coaster and enjoy the ride.

A fascinating conversation with a gifted young writer.

Topics of conversation:  bookshelves, Iceland, typewriters, Bjork, Sugar Cubes, Sigur Rós, Halldór Laxness, Hobart, Sjón, Dancer in the Dark, dreams, crying, reincarnation, longhand, Ferris Bueller, journalism, sports, precociousness, Evergreen State College, guitar, singing, decisions, maturity, goals, commitments, mentors, Dave Cornelius, Easton’s Books, Mt. Vernon, San Francisco, Kafka, sheep, pigs, chickens, revisions, “The Littlest Hitler,” Mississippi Review, P.J. Mark, Dave Eggers, and what one can control.

Monologue topics:  wallets, mall-walking, naked women, body shame, needless worries, public meltdowns, perseverance, death, cells, clouds, sublimation, and smells.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the show over at iTunes, or at Stitcher. It’s free.

Or just push PLAY below.

Many thanks, everybody.  Enjoy the program…

-BL

PS. Like the podcast? Please take a moment to rate and review it on iTunes. Thank you!