Thresholds

Esmé Weijun Wang is a novelist and essayist. She is the author of the New York Times-bestselling essay collection, The Collected Schizophrenias (2019), and a debut novel, The Border of Paradise, which was called a Best Book of 2016 by NPR. She was named by Granta as one of the “Best of Young American Novelists” in 2017 and won the Whiting Award in 2018. Born in the Midwest to Taiwanese parents, sh...

Lynn Steger Strong’s most recent novel, Want , was one of Time Magazine's 100 Best Books of 2020. Her first novel, Hold Still , was released by Liveright/WW Norton in 2016. Her nonfiction has been published by Guernica , Los Angeles Review of Books , Elle.com, Catapult, Lit Hub, and others. She teaches both fiction and non-fiction writing at Columbia University, Fairfield University, and the Pratt...

Born in Veracruz, Mexico, in 1982, Fernanda Melchor is widely recognized as one of the most exciting new voices of Mexican literature. Her novel Hurricane Season was a finalist for the 2020 Man Booker International Prize and was long-listed for the 2020 National Book Award for Translated Literature. A collection, This Is Not Miami , is forthcoming from New Directions. Find more Thresholds at www.t...

Lydia Millet has written more than a dozen novels and story collections, often about the ties between people and other animals and the crisis of extinction. Her latest novel A Children's Bible was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2020, her story collection Fight No More received an Award of Merit from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2019, and her collection Love in Infant Monk...

Ross Gay is the author of four books of poetry:  Against Which ;  Bringing the Shovel Down ; Be Holding ; and  Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude , winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. His new poem,  Be Holding , was released from the University of Pittsburgh Press in September of 2020. His collection of essays, The Book of Delights , was rele...

Today, we revisit our 2020 conversation with Suleika Jaouad in celebration of her memoir, Between Two Kingdoms , which was released this week. Suleika Jaouad  is an Emmy Award-winning writer, speaker, cancer survivor, and activist. She served on Barack Obama's President's Cancer Panel, and her advocacy work, reporting, and speaking has been featured at the United Nations, on Capitol Hill, and on t...

Eileen Myles came to New York from Boston in 1974 to be a poet, subsequently novelist, public talker and art journalist. A Sagittarius, their 22 books include For Now, evolution, Afterglow, I Must Be Living Twice/new & selected poems , and Chelsea Girls. Eileen is the recipient of a Guggenheim, a Warhol/Creative Capital Arts Writers grant, 4 Lambda Book Awards, the Shelley Prize, and a poetry...

The winner of a Pulitzer Prize for criticism,  Margo Jefferson  previously served as book and arts critic for  Newsweek  and the  New York Times . Her writing has appeared in, among other publications,  Vogue ,  New York Magazine ,  The Nation , and  Guernica . Her memoir,  Negroland , received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography. She is also the author of  On Michael Jackson...

Catherine Lacey is the author of four works of fiction: Nobody Is Ever Missing, The Answers, Certain American States, and Pew . She's recently published work in The New Yorker, Harper's, and The Believer . Her books have been translated into several languages​.​She is a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow, a recipient of the Whiting Award, and earned an artists' fellowship from the New York Foundation for the...

Raven Leilani's debut novel, Luster , was released in August 2020 and won the Kirkus Prize and the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Her work has been published in Granta, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Yale Review, Conjunctions, The Cut, and New England Review, among other publications. She completed her MFA at NYU. Thank you to The House of Chanel for sponsoring this episode. Find out more a...

As we prepare for the 2021 season of Thresholds, we took a look back at some of our favorite conversations from 2020 including excerpts from interviews with Mira Jacob, Ocean Vuong, Natalie Diaz, Carmen Maria Machado, Alexander Chee, and Mychal Denzel Smith. New episodes of Thresholds coming every Wednesday, starting 1/13/21! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Hosted on...

Natalie Diaz was born and raised in the Fort Mojave Indian Village in Needles, California, on the banks of the Colorado River. She is Mojave and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Tribe. Her first poetry collection, When My Brother Was an Aztec , was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2012. Her most recent collection, Postcolonial Love Poem , was released this year and has been longliste...

Wayétu Moore is the author of  The Dragons, The Giant, The Women, which was released in June 2020. Her debut novel, She Would Be King , was released in 2018 and named a best book of 2018 by Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Entertainment Weekly & BuzzFeed. The novel was a Sarah Jessica Parker Book Club selection, a BEA Buzz Panel Book, a #1 Indie Next Pick and a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Awar...

Cathy Park Hong’s book of creative nonfiction, Minor Feelings , was published this spring by One World/Random House (US) and Profile Books (UK). She is also the author of poetry collections  Engine Empire , published in 2012 by W.W. Norton, Dance Dance Revolution , chosen by Adrienne Rich for the Barnard Women Poets Prize, and Translating Mo'um.   Hong is the recipient of the Windham-Campbell Priz...

Mychal Denzel Smith is the author of the just-released Stakes is High: Life After the American Dream as well as the 2016 New York Times bestseller Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching . His work has appeared, online and print, in the New York Times , Washington Post, Harper’s , Artforum, Oxford American, New Republic , GQ , Complex, Esquire , Playboy , Bleacher Report, The Nation , The Atla...

Laura Kolbe is a writer as well as a physician and assistant professor of internal medicine at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. She studied English and American literature at Harvard and at Jesus College, University of Cambridge, before studying medicine at the University of Virginia and completing her medical residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. This spring, her...

Rachel Eliza Griffiths is the author of five poetry collections, including  Seeing the Body  (W. W. Norton, 2020) and  Mule & Pear (New Issues Poetry & Prose, 2011), which was selected for the 2012 Inaugural Poetry Award by the Black Caucus American Library Association. She is also a visual artist and photographer, and the creator of Poets on Poetry (P.O.P) . Her honors include fellowships...

Kate Zambreno is the author of several acclaimed books including Screen Tests , Heroines, and Green Girl . Her latest novel, Drifts , was released in May 2020. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, VQR, and elsewhere. She teaches in the writing programs at Columbia University and Sarah Lawrence College. This episode is brought to you by: Betterhelp. Get 10% off your first month by visiting...

Ocean Vuong is a Vietnamese American poet, essayist, and novelist. He is a recipient of a MacArthur "Genius" Grant, the 2014 Ruth Lilly/Sargent Rosenberg fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, a 2016 Whiting Award, and the 2017 T.S. Eliot Prize for his poetry. His New York Times -bestselling novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous was published in 2019 and his debut poetry collection Night Sky With...

Eight new conversations, one new season. Thresholds is a series of conversations with writers about experiences that completely turned them upside down, disoriented them in their lives, changed them, and changed how and why they wanted to write. Hosted by Jordan Kisner, author of the new essay collection,  Thin Places , and presented by Lit Hub Radio. Season 2 will begin publishing next Wednesday,...

Leslie Jamison  is the author of the  New York Times  bestsellers  The Recovering  and  The Empathy Exams , and the novel  The Gin Closet . She is a contributing writer for the  New York Times Magazine , and her work has appeared in publications including  The Atlantic ,  Harper's , the  New York Times Book Review , the  Oxford American , and the  Virginia Quarterly Review . She directs the gradua...

Carmen Maria Machado  is the author of  Her Body and Other Parties , which was a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize. Her latest work includes the memoir In the Dream House and the comic In the Low Low Woods . She lives in Philadelphia with her wife. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Hosted on Acast....

Suleika Jaouad  is an Emmy Award-winning writer, speaker, cancer survivor, and activist. She served on Barack Obama's President's Cancer Panel, and her advocacy work, reporting, and speaking has been featured at the United Nations, on Capitol Hill, and on the TED Talk main stage. When she's not on the road with her 1972 Volkswagen camper van and her rescue dog Oscar, she lives in Brooklyn. Learn m...

Tara Westover was born in Idaho in 1986. She received her BA from Brigham Young University in 2008 and was subsequently awarded a Gates Cambridge Scholarship. She earned an MPhil from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 2009, and in 2010 was a visiting fellow at Harvard University. She returned to Cambridge, where she was awarded a PhD in history in 2014. Educated is her first book. Hosted by Jordan Ki...

Wendy S. Walters' current projects address class and racial disquietude in the industrial Midwest; intersections between writing and design, and organic forms in the essay. She is the author of a book of prose, Multiply/Divide: On the American Real and Surreal (Sarabande Books, 2015), named a best book of the year by  Buzzfeed, Flavorwire, Literary Hub, The Root,   Huffington Post,  and others. Sh...