Thresholds

Jordan sits down with Valeria Luiselli to talk about the U.S.-Mexico border, and in particular its origin point (or terminus) in the Pacific Ocean. They discuss Luiselli's forays into sound art with her new project "Echos from the Borderlands", her choice to set her next novel in Sicily, and the humor of whale song. Valeria Luiselli is the author of  Sidewalks  (2013),  Faces i...

In the penultimate episode of the series, Jordan sits down to talk with poet Aracelis Girmay about the way that reading --especially discovering the works of Toni Morrison as a teenager-- changed her life. Aracelis Girmay is a poet who makes works across genres. She is the author of the poetry collections GREEN OF ALL HEADS (BOA, 2025), the black maria (BOA, 2016), Kingdom Animalia (BOA, 2011), an...

Jordan sits down with author Jayson Greene during a live taping of Thresholds at the Beverly Theater in Las Vegas, Nevada. The two talk about Jayson's new novel, UnWorld, the uncanniness of grief, the instability of memory, and how presciently his novel anticipated the way AI is changing human intimacy. Jayson Greene  is an author, music critic and editor. He has served as a senior editor of...

Jordan sits down to talk with bestselling novelist Tayari Jones about the power and satisfaction of moving back home after decades away, and how her new novel, KIN, changed the scope of her work. Mentioned in the episode: Beaches Mighty Justice by Dovey Johnson Roundtree Tayari Jones is the author of four novels, including the international bestseller, AN AMERICAN MARRIAGE. Her new novel, out this...

Thresholds is happy to introduce "Borrowed & Returned," a new podcast from the Brooklyn Public Library about the books that have changed America. This episode was made in partnership between Borrowed & Returned and Thresholds. You can hear the whole interview with Ayana Elizabeth Johnson in our feed. Episode description: When Silent Spring came out in 1962, it was an instant best-sell...

Jordan sits down with marine biologist, writer, and climate advocate Ayana Johnson to talk about her mission to fight climate fatalism, her love of Rachel Carson, and her skepticism of the impulse to look for "hope" in the face of climate change -- as opposed to possibility, or joy. Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson is a marine biologist, policy expert, writer, and teacher working to help create the bes...

Jordan sits down with Claire Vaye Watkins to talk about how the grief over her mother's death diffused into a homesickness for the landscape of the Mojave Desert, where she grew up, and the way that that singular landscape then formed her own writing style, which the New Yorker dubbed "Nevada Gothic." They also talk about postpartum depression, Watkins' autofiction novel I Love You But I've Chosen...

This week, Jordan sits down with the "queen of Latin American gothic horror," Mariana Enriquez, to talk about the manuscript she burned and how it led her to search for a mode of horror writing that was drawn from her own lived experiences of terror. Mentioned: Jorge Luis Borges, Argentina's military dictatorship of 1976 to 1983, gravestones as monuments, Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave. Mariana...

Jordan sits down to talk with Miriam Toews about her new book,  A Truce That Is Not Peace , her first nonfiction book, and the events that inspired it: the death by suicide of her father and then, later, her sister. They talk about the long periods of silence her father and sister both went through when they were alive, and how Toews' own persistent need to "arrange sentences" pushes bac...

Jordan sits down with Renee Gladman to talk about prose architecture, Henry James, walking in cities, and mushrooms. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nicholson Baker sits down with Jordan to discuss writing about the unsung pleasures and details of the world-- things like the way your mother cuts up a banana, or the advertisements in your favorite magazine. Things that "live in this between area of noticing, they're part of the background of life." Mentioned in the episode: Nicholson's book about WWII, Human Smoke "Sock (Object Lessons)" by Kim...

Sarah Aziza sits down with Jordan to talk about the eating disorder that almost took her life in 2019, and the search into her family's history in Palestine that she undertook in a bid for her own survival. Mentioned in the episode: the Nakba transgenerational trauma José Muñoz, Cruising Utopia ghurba Sarah Aziza is a Palestinian American writer, translator, and artist with roots in ‘Ibdis and Dei...

Lisa Ko sits down with Jordan to talk about the daily journaling practice that she started at age five, and the period of creative crisis between her first and second novels when she began methodically destroying every journal she'd ever kept. Mentioned in the episode: Tehching Hsieh soft gaze Moleskin daily journals Lisa Ko  is the author of the new novel  Memory Piece  and the nat...

Jordan sits down to talk with Sabrina Imbler, author of How Far the Light Reaches, about writing the non-human world, leaving the world of legacy media, and how they've learned from the deep sea --and from their colleagues-- about the power of collectivity. Mentioned in the episode: how to write a book on top of a full-time job uncharismatic microfauna Sabrina's essay on salps and queer collectivi...

This week, Jordan sits down to talk with Maya Binyam, author of the novel  Hangman, about a near-drowning that changed her life. Maya Binyam is the author of  Hangman , which was named a 2024 National Book Foundation “5 under 35” honoree, received the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize, the Mark Twain...

This week, we're sharing a live conversation between Jordan and Carvell Wallace, recorded last year at P&T Knitwear in New York. They talk about his new memoir, Another Word for Love, a moment of real peril from his childhood, and the long process that followed for him of learning to embrace vulnerability, connection, and his own writing voice. Carvell Wallace is a writer and podcaster who has...

This week, Jordan sits down to talk with Lidia Yuknavitch about menopause, where stories lodge in our bodies, having a creative process that takes the shape of an ocean wave, and more. Lidia Yuknavitch is the National Bestselling author of four novels: Thrust, The Book of Joan, Dora: A Headcase, and The Small Backs of Children, winner of the 2016 Oregon Book Awards Ken Kesey Award for Fiction as w...

This week, we bring you a live interview with Garth Greenwell, conducted in October 2024 at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn. Garth talks about growing up in Kentucky assuming that he would die young, the teacher who gave him a path toward being an artist, and the doggedness with which he has pursued his aesthetic practices (in both music and literature) ever since. Mentioned: Garth's new novel, Small Ra...

We're revisiting our 2021 interview with the poet Jericho Brown, who this week was named a MacArthur Fellow-- one of the highest honors in the arts and humanities. He and Jordan talk about the great mystery of why we desire the things we desire; about oration and the poets he read and memorized as part of his own becoming; mitigating our impulses toward violence with tenderness, and more. Jericho...

This week, Jordan talks to the novelist Sigrid Nunez about her youthful preoccupation with mimicking the prose of Virginia Woolf, the step-by-step intuitive way she writes prose now, and the best way to make overnight oats. Sigrid Nunez has published nine novels, including  A Feather on the Breath of God, The Last of Her Kind, The Friend ,  What Are You Going Through , and, most rec...

Jordan chats with Sofia Samatar ( The Practice, The Horizon, and the Chain and Opacities ) about having two books out this year, doing everything twice (once in non-fiction, once in fiction), and her growing sense of an ongoing overarching project to her work. MENTIONED: A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar Monster Portraits by Sofia Samatar and Del Samatar The White Mosque by Sofia Samatar Ten...

Jordan chats with Emma Copley Eisenberg ( Housemates ) about a ghostly encounter that led to her new novel, the opposing worldviews of Grace Paley and Ottessa Moshfegh, and the choice to make art in difficult times. MENTIONED: Jazz by Toni Morrison Fleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner American Pastoral by Philip Roth Terrace Story by Hilary Leichter "Why I Write" by George Orwell Emma...

Shades on, sleeves up—it's summertime and we're back! This week, Jordan talks with Amy Lin, author of Here After , about grief, the sudden loss of her husband, miracles, and her family's history with thin places. Amy Lin lives in Calgary, Canada where there are two seasons: winter and road construction. She completed her MFA at Warren Wilson College and holds BAs in English Literature and Educatio...

This is a re-airing of our 2021 episode with the poet and bestselling essayist Aimee Nezhukumatathil. We're celebrating the release of her new collection, BITE BY BITE: NOURISHMENTS AND JAMBOREES. Come for the new intro about pizza on the beach, stay for Aimee's reflections on everything from champion trees to 80s-era Madonna to what society tells us about who "gets to" be comfortable in nature. A...

Jordan chats with Dorothea Lasky ( The Shining ) about interpreting a horror classic in her latest poetry collection, her love for horror, and why playfulness and horror aren't incompatible—and might in fact be inextricably connected. MENTIONED: The Shining by Stephen King The Shining (1980) Bernadette Mayer's "Memory" project Dorothea Lasky is the author, most recently, of  The Shining &nbsp...