Otherppl with Brad Listi

Mat Johnson is today's guest. His new novel Loving Day is available now from Spiegel & Grau. Very happy to have had the chance to talk with Mat, particularly at this moment in his career, with Loving Day just featured on the cover of the New York Times Book Review and enthusiasm for his work seeming to reach new heights after the big success of his previous novel, Pym. As I mentioned in a recent e...

Colin Winnette is the guest. His new novel, Haints Stay, is available now from Two Dollar Radio. Had a great time talking with Colin. He came over and sat down across from me and we got into all kinds of things, among them drugs, which seems to be a recurring topic of conversation on the podcast. I'm confused, I suppose, about drugs, which would explain the interest/recurrence, and in today's mono...

Kate Durbin is the guest. She is a writer, curator, and performance artist whose books include The Ravenous Audience and E! Entertainment. Kate also happens to be a huge fan of Disneyland.  We talk about that.  She grew up in Southern California.  Loves it.  Is unapologetic about loving it.  We talk about that, too.  What else?  We talk about our shared love of Gwen Stefani.  We talk about religio...

Amelia Gray is the guest. Her short story collection Gutshot is available now from FSG Originals. Gutshot is the official May selection of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club. What does it mean to be a working writer? What do you say when The New Yorker sends you an email? In this interview with Amelia Gray, we'll talk work, life, anxiety, and the strange worlds of Gray's short fiction. Learn more abo...

Sean H. Doyle is the guest. His new memoir is called This Must Be The Place, available now from Civil Coping Mechanisms. The Chicago Tribune says “Memoir depends on its teller for empathy and insight into its subject’s character. Angry, obliterated, yet, by turns, mournful and self-aware, Doyle lays himself bare. But he manages to do so without eliciting pity or scorn. In others’ hands, similar ma...

Sarah Tomlinson is the guest. Her new memoir, Good Girl, is available now from Gallery Books.  Jill Soloway says "Good Girl is a father-daughter story unlike any other I’ve read before. Tomlinson’s prose is vivid and compelling, bringing you right along with her as she travels from her rural hometown to the big city in search of fulfillment, clarity, and—hopefully—a sense of peace in her relations...

Janaka Stucky is the guest. His new poetry collection, The Truth is We Are Perfect, is available now from Third Man Books. Bill Knott says "Stucky’s verse has the power of the best East European poets—some of his poems seem to be perfect, magnificent, and instantly anthologizable. He is a forceful, cogent, incisive phrase-maker." And Phantasmaphile says "Stucky has catapulted into the firmament of...

Cate Dicharry is the guest. Her debut novel, The Fine Art of Fucking Up, is now available from Unnamed Press. Kirkus Reviews calls it "Funny and charmingly ridiculous."   And Jill Alexander Essbaum says   "Cate Dicharry’s comic timing is unimpeachable and though her characters are idiosyncratic and quirky, they are deeply dimensional and exceptionally real. A richly complicated and rewarding novel...

Erika Krouse is the guest. Her new novel, Contenders, is available now from Rare Bird Books. It is the official April pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club. Bookslut says "Krouse...writes with a pulse-pounding and engaging ferocity that grabs at the reader...Contenders is heart-racingly original." And Steve Almond says "Contenders is a knockout! I've never read anything like it. The marvelous Er...

Heidi Pitlor is the guest. She is the editor of the Best American Short Stories anthologies and the author of the new novel The Daylight Marriage, available now from Algonquin Books. Stephen King calls it "Hypnotically readable--I absolutely couldn't put it down. The structure is brilliant, and I turned the pages with increasing dread. This book is terrific.” And Booklist, in a starred review, say...

Sarah Nicole Prickett is the guest. She is the founder of Adult magazine and a contributing editor at The New Inquiry. Monologue topics: Ex Machina, artificial intelligence, hiking, nature, mountain lions.     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Monica McClure is the guest. Her debut poetry collection, Tender Data, is now available from Birds LLC. NPR says "McClure may be the poster-girl for a new generation of poets: irreverent, well-read, sexy, even dirty, snarky, but ultimately fighting an earnest battle against reductiveness and easy answers to the complex problems of the Internet age: 'Every citizen of this world is on trial/ I'm lea...

Michiko Kakutani is the guest. She is the chief book critic for the New York Times and a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize. Monologue topics: kicking, worrying, mail, bless you, all businesses are awful. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Daniel Handler is the guest. His new novel We Are Pirates is now available from Bloomsbury.  Booklist, in a starred review, says "Handler (aka children's author Lemony Snicket) has never been known for writing precisely happy novels, and his latest certainly doesn't deviate. What could easily have been a slightly silly, fantastical romp becomes, instead, in Handler's capable hands, a macabre, dark...

Will Chancellor is the guest. His debut novel, A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall, is now available from Harper. The Daily Beast says “To compare a debut novel to Infinite Jest is likely either too flippant or too generous, but consider the bona fides...Will Chancellor’s wonderful debut novel...more than merely promising, is one of the best of the year.” And Kirkus, in a starred review, calls it “Brac...

Adam Robinson is the guest. He is the founding editor of Publishing Genius Press. Monologue topics: LA, yoga, celebrity sneezes, God bless you.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Timothy Willis Sanders is the guest. His debut novel, Matt Meets Vik, is available now from Civil Coping Mechanisms.  Blake Butler says "I have no idea how Timothy Willis Sanders is able to accumulate so many small reflections into such a mesmerizing mass. Matt Meets Vik makes maybe the most stripped-down paragraphs I've ever seen somehow hold a hundred thousand colors, emotions, tones, like if th...

Stewart O'Nan is the guest. His new novel, West of Sunset, is available now from Viking. It is the official Februrary pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club. Maureen Corrigan, writing for The Washington Post, says “[The] grim yet undeniably fascinating last act of Fitzgerald’s life is the subject of Stewart O’Nan’s gorgeous new novel. . .West of Sunset is a pretty fine Hollywood novel, too, but i...

Halle Butler is the guest. Her debut novel, Jillian, is available now from Curbside Splendor.  Lindsay Hunter says "This book is incredible. The deadpan way it nails what it is to be a human who lies to herself and tells different lies to everyone else makes me want to laugh and scream. It is hilarious and weird, my two favorite qualities in a book." And Kirkus Reviews says "[Jillian] offers up it...

Porochista Khakpour is the guest. Her novel The Last Illusion is now available from Bloomsbury.  Claire Messud says “Utterly original and compelling, Porochista Khakpour's The Last Illusion weaves Iranian myth with very contemporary American neurosis to create a bittersweet poetry all its own. This ambitious, exciting literary adventure is at once grotesque, amusing, deeply sad—and wonderful, too....

Kitty is the guest. She is a rapper/musician whose latest EP, Frostbite, is now available. RollingStone says "Love is pain, and nobody understands that quite like this suburban teen-rap every-girl. Pryde went viral with ["Okay Cupid"]...a homemade mumblecore hit, in the voice of a bored kid from Florida. It's full of wit ("It's my party, couldn't cry if I wanted to") and mall-rat ambience, as she...

Tim Johnston is the guest. His new novel, Descent, is available now from Algonquin Books. It is the official January selection of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club. The Washington Post raves “I’ve read many variations on this theme, some quite good, but never one as powerful as Tim Johnston’s Descent . . . The story unfolds brilliantly, always surprisingly, but the glory of Descent lies not in its p...

Alexis Coe is the guest. She is the author of Alice + Freda Forever, available now from Pulp/Zest Books. Peter Orner says "Alexis Coe rescues a buried but extraordinarily telling episode from the 1890's that resonates in all sorts of ways with today. That in itself would be an accomplishment. But this is a book that is truly riveting, a narrative that gallops. Lizzy Borden eat your heart out. Here...

Cameron Pierce is the guest. He is the author of several books and the editor of Lazy Fascist Press. Vol. 1 Brooklyn says "Whether he's describing a grandmother who gets pulled into a watery grave by an almost mythological fish or telling the creepy story of a creature that wouldn't be out of place in an H.P. Lovecraft story, Pierce constantly pulls together concepts from the outmost edges of outr...

Chelsea Hodson is the guest. Her chapbook entitled Pity the Animal is available now in print from Future Tense Books at Powells.com, and electronically from Emily Books as a Kindle Single.  Tobias Carroll calls it “One of the best literary works I’ve encountered this year... much of its power comes from the way it juxtaposes seemingly unrelated elements: a retrospective of Marina Abramović’s art,...