Otherppl with Brad Listi

Sam Tallent is the guest. His debut novel, Running the Light, is available on Too Big To Fail Press. Known for whip-quick wit and rollicking improvisations, Sam Tallent is one of the sharpest, most original rising talents in comedy today. For the last 10 years, he has performed at least 45 weekends annually across America, Canada and France. Called "the absurd voice of a surreal generation" by the...

Courtney Zoffness is the author of Spilt Milk, a collection of memoirs available now from McSweeney's. It is the official May pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club. Zoffness writes fiction and nonfiction. She won the 2018 Sunday Times Short Story Award, the most valuable international prize for short fiction, amid entries from 38 countries. Other honors include an Emerging Writers Fellowship fro...

Elissa Washuta is the author of the essay collection White Magic, now available from Tin House. Washuta is a member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe and a nonfiction writer. Her other books are My Body Is a Book of Rules and Starvation Mode, and with Theresa Warburton, she is co-editor of the anthology Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers. She has received fellowships a...

This conversation first aired on June 17, 2015. It is being reposted in memory of Shanna Mahin, who died last week. She had been battling a particularly difficult case of Covid-19 this past year. The cause of death was suicide. Shanna's debut novel, Oh! You Pretty Things is available from Dutton. Heartfelt condolences to all of Shanna's family and friends. She will be missed. Learn more about your...

Gina Nutt is the author of the essay collection Night Rooms, available now from Two Dollar Radio. Nutt's other books include the poetry collection Wilderness Champion and two chapbooks—Here Is My Adventure I Call it Alone and Ars Herzogica (dancing girl press). Her writing has appeared in online and print journals, including Cosmonauts Avenue, Joyland, Ninth Letter, and Salt Hill. Poems have appea...

Mik Grantham is the author of the debut poetry collection Hardcore, available from Short Flight / Long Drive Books. Grantham is the founder and co-editor of Disorder Press which she runs with her brother. Her work has appeared in New World Writing, Hobart, Maudlin House, The Nervous Breakdown, and Fanzine. She currently lives in New Orleans. Hardcore is her first book. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi...

Patricia Engel is the author of the novel Infinite Country, available from Avid Reader Press. It is the official April pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club. Engel is the author of The Veins of the Ocean, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize; It's Not Love, It's Just Paris, winner of the International Latino Book Award; and Vida, a finalist for the Pen/Hemingway and Young Lions Fiction Awar...

Andrea Bajani is the author of the novel If You Kept a Record of Sins, available from Archipelago Books. It was translated from the Italian by Elizabeth Harris. Bajani is one of the most respected and award-winning novelists and poets of contemporary Italian literature. He is the author of four novels and two collections of poems. If You Kept a Record of Sins has brought him a great deal of attent...

Shannon McLeod is the author of the novella Whimsy, available from Long Day Press. McLeod is also the author of the essay chapbook Pathetic (University of Indianapolis Etchings Press). Her writing has appeared in Tin House Online, Wigleaf, Hobart, Joyland Magazine, Cosmonauts Avenue, and Prairie Schooner, among other publications. She teaches high school English in Virginia. *** Otherppl with Brad...

Gina Frangello is the author of the memoir Blow Your House Down, available from Counterpoint Press. This is Gina's second time on the program. She first appeared in Episode 16 on November 9, 2011. Frangello's other books include Every Kind of Wanting, A Life in Men, Slut Lullabies, and My Sister's Continent. Her short fiction, essays, book reviews, and journalism have been published in Ploughshare...

This episode first aired on March 27, 2013. It is being reposted in memory of Giancarlo DiTrapano (1974-2021), founder and publisher of Tyrant Books. He died unexpectedly on March 30 in New York City. No official cause of death has been reported as of yet. I didn't know Gian well, but I did know him a bit. He was always kind, always memorable. One of the few true originals out there, and certainly...

Hari Kunzru is the author of the novel Red Pill, available now from Knopf. This is Hari's second time on the program. He first appeared in Episode 57, on April 1, 2012. Born in London, he is the author of the novels The Impressionist, Transmission, My Revolutions, Gods Without Men, and White Tears, as well as a short story collection, Noise, and a novella, Memory Palace. He is an honorary fellow o...

Tod Goldberg is the guest. His critically acclaimed new story collection, The Low Desert, is available from Counterpoint. This is Tod's third time on the program. He first appeared in Episode 320 on October 12, 2014, and again in Episode 488, on October 18, 2017. Goldberg is the author of more than a dozen books, including Gangsterland, a finalist for the Hammett Prize; Gangster Nation; The House...

Yamen Manai is the author of the novel The Ardent Swarm, available now from Amazon Crossing. Winner of the Prix Comar d'Or and the Prix des Cinq Continents, it is the official March pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club. Manai was born in 1980 in Tunis and currently lives in Paris. Both a writer and an engineer, Manai explores the intersections of past and present, and tradition and technology,...

Vesna Maric is the author of the debut novel The President Shop (Sandorf Passage). Maric was born in Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina, in 1976. She left the country at sixteen as part of a convoy of refugees bound for the Lake District in England. She attended University College London and later went on to work for the BBC World Service. She now writes Lonely Planet travel guides, translates literary fi...

Melissa Broder is the guest. Her new novel, Milk Fed, is available from Scribner. This is Melissa's fourth time on the podcast. She first appeared in Episode 58 on April 4, 2012. Her second appearance was in Episode 404 on March 13, 2016. Her third appearance came in Episode 519, on May 9, 2018. Broder's other books include the novel The Pisces, the essay collection So Sad Today, and five poetry c...

David Tromblay is the guest. His new memoir, As You Were, is available from Dzanc Books. It is the official February pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club. Tromblay served in the U.S. Armed Forces for over a decade before attending the Institute of American Indian Arts for his MFA in Creative Writing. He's since written and published a memoir and three novels. His other books include The Essenti...

Candace Jane Opper is the author of the debut memoir Certain and Impossible Events. It was selected by Cheryl Strayed as the winner of the Kore Press Memoir Award. Opper is a writer, a mother, and an occasional visual artist. She grew up in the woods of Southern Connecticut. Her essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Longreads, Guernica, Creative Nonfiction, LitHub, Narratively, Brevity, and V...

Ahmed Naji is the guest. He is the author of three novels, including Using Life (University of Texas Press), which led to his imprisonment in Egypt—and then led to the writing of a new memoir, Rotten Evidence: Reading and Writing in Prison, currently excerpted in The Believer magazine. In 2016, Naji was sentenced to 2 years in prison after a reader complained that an excerpt of Using Life publishe...

Michael Bible is the guest. His new novel, The Ancient Hours, is available from Melville House. Support independent booksellers! Get your copy here. Bible's other books include Empire of Light and Sophia, also from Melville House. He is originally from North Carolina. His work has appeared in the Oxford American, The Paris Review Daily, Al-Jazeera America, ESPN The Magazine, and New York Tyrant Ma...

Te-Ping Chen is the guest. Her debut story collection, Land of Big Numbers, is available from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. It is the official January pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club. Chen's fiction has been published in The New Yorker, Granta and Tin House. She is a Wall Street Journal correspondent in Philadelphia who was previously based in Beijing and Hong Kong. She has reported on rice c...

Rob Doyle is the guest. His new book, Threshold, is available from Bloomsbury. Doyle's debut novel, Here Are the Young Men, was published in 2014 by Bloomsbury and the Lilliput Press. It was selected as one of Hot Press magazine’s ‘20 Greatest Irish Novels 1916-2016’, and has been made into a film starring Dean Charles Chapman and Anya Taylor Joy. This is the Ritual, a collection of short stories,...

Gil Adamson is the guest. Her new novel, The Ridgerunner, will be published in the United States by House of Anansi Press on February 2, 2021. Adamson is the critically acclaimed author of The Outlander, which won the Dashiell Hammett Prize for Literary Excellence in Crime Writing, the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, the ReLit Award, and the Drummer General’s Award. It was a finalist for the Commonwe...

George Saunders is the guest. His new book, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, is available from Random House. This is George's second time on the program. He first appeared in Episode 100, on August 29, 2012. Saunders is the author of eleven books, including Lincoln in the Bardo, which won the 2017 Man Booker Prize for best work of fiction in English, and was a finalist for the Golden Man Booker, in w...

In keeping with the tenets of 2020, this year's holiday episode unfolded online, not in a Zoom room but in a "Skype amphitheater." With guest appearances by Megan Boyle, Leland Cheuk, Richard Chiem, Rachel Bell de Navailles, Juliet Escoria, Joseph Grantham, Mik Grantham, Ben Loory, Gene Morgan, Timothy Willis Sanders, and Bud Smith. Special guest: Rich Ferguson. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a w...