Otherppl with Brad Listi

Jacinda Townsend is the guest. Her new novel Saint Monkey is now available from W.W. Norton & Co. Roxane Gay says “Saint Monkey is an absolute marvel of a book. Jacinda Townsend is dazzling as she transports the reader to a different time and place—the 1950s, rural Kentucky, and Harlem at the height of the jazz era. Two young girls, Audrey and Caroline, fight for a place in the world and, though t...

D. Foy is the guest. His debut novel, Made to Break, is now available from Two Dollar Radio. Anthony Swofford says "Reading D. Foy's prose is like watching Robert Stone and Wallace Stevens drag race across a frozen lake at midnight." And Matthew Specktor says “D. Foy’s writing is so rich, so saturated in both life and literature, that one is tempted to strain for comparison, to find whatever madca...

Mary Beth Keane is the guest. Her latest novel, Fever, is now available from Scribner. The New York Times Book Review calls it “[A] tender, detailed portrayal of willed ignorance collapsing in the face of truth…A fine novel.” And USA Today says “[Keane] is a talented storyteller, her style plain and steady, not unlike Mary’s demeanor. What’s most remarkable about this novel is its brilliantly visc...

Antonia Crane is the guest. Her new memoir, Spent, is now available from Rare Bird Lit / A Barnacle Book.  Kirkus calls it "...revelatory, [an] unapologetic life story of a San Francisco stripper and sex worker. A raw, searing self-portrait." And Stephen Elliott says “Antonia Crane is a gift. Her writing will change how you look at the world.” Monologue topics: new website, re-branding, Mira Gonza...

Heather Christle is the guest. She was the recipient of the 2012 Believer Magazine Poetry Award for her collection entitled The Trees, The Trees (Octopus Books). Her other collections include The Difficult Farm and What is Amazing (Wesleyan University Press). John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats says "If you’re thinking about a new tattoo, may I recommend dropping your finger onto any random phras...

Catherine Lacey is the guest. Her debut novel, Nobody Is Ever Missing, is due out from FSG Originals in July 2014.  David Shields says "At the center of this artfully recursive narrative is an unspeakable abyss, from which the narrator has been unable to turn since her sister’s suicide. Elyria is astounded that other people can conduct their lives as though this abyss isn’t there; she’s wavering o...

Willy Vlautin is the guest. His new novel The Free is now available from Harper Perennial. It is the official March selection of The TNB Book Club. Cheryl Strayed says “Willy Vlautin writes novels about people all alone in the wind. His prose is direct and complex in its simplicity, and his stories are sturdy and bighearted and full of lives so shattered they shimmer.” And George Pelecanos says “T...

Natalie Baszile is the guest. Her debut novel, Queen Sugar, is now available from Pamela Dorman Books.  O Magazine says “In Queen Sugar, two bulwarks of American literature—Southern fiction and the transformational journey—are given a fresh take by talented first time novelist Natalie Baszile . . . [the novel] is a sensory experience, a tableau vivant that Baszile skillfully paints in a palette si...

Adrianne Harun is the guest. Her new novel, A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain, is now available from Penguin. Jess Walter calls it “Mythical, magical, and chillingly real…Adrianne Harun’s writing can hold you breathless.” And Library Journal raves “Harun’s mastery clearly lies in establishing atmosphere and mood. Much as it does to the novel’s characters, the gothic ambiance wraps around th...

This special episode of the podcast was recorded spur-of-the-moment on the afternoon of February 28, 2014.  I had the chance to talk with some folks at The HTMLGIANT House who are up in Seattle for AWP.  (The 'house' in question is the house that HTMLGIANT rented for the festivities.) Mira Gonzalez. Spencer Madsen. Gene Morgan.  Some guys named Gabe and Patrick who were sitting in a hot tub. Hear...

Kelcey Parker is the guest. Her new novella, Liliane's Balcony: A Novella of Fallingwater, is now available from Rose Metal Press. Booklist says "The latest from Parker is an inventive novella hybrid, a mix of prose and poetry, past and present, heartbreak and humor. At the core is Liliane Kaufmann, the wife and first cousin of the philandering Edgar Kaufmann, who commissioned architect Frank Lloy...

Randa Jarrar is the guest. Her debut novel, A Map of Home, is now available from Penguin. Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, raves Jarrar's sparkling debut about an audacious Muslim girl growing up in Kuwait, Egypt and Texas is intimate, perceptive and very, very funny. Nidali Ammar is born in Boston to a Greek-Egyptian mother and a Palestinian father, and moves to Kuwait at a very young age,...

Spencer Madsen is the guest. He is the founder of Sorry House, an independent press based in Brooklyn, and his new book of poetry, You Can Make Anything Sad, is due out from Publishing Genius Press in April.  Dennis Cooper raves "When I read Spencer Madsen’s poetry, I not only feel awe because he’s so good, one of the best, but I also think about how everything in the world is happening at the sam...

Nina McConigley is the guest. Her debut story collection, Cowboys and East Indians, is now available from FiveChapters Books.  Antonya Nelson says “What I love about this collection of stories is its wit and warmth. McConigley’s characters are “the wrong kind of Indians living in Wyoming,” and their struggles as exoticized and denigrated community members could be, in a less interesting writer’s h...

Aubrey Hirsch is the guest. Her story collection, Why We Never Talk About Sugar, is now available from Braddock Avenue Books. Matt Bell says "In Why We Never Talk About Sugar, Aubrey Hirsch posits an uncertain world, offering us her characters at their most confused, frightened, obsessed. As protection against their troubles, these men and women cling often to science, and also to story and if the...

Chris Parris-Lamb is the guest. He is a literary agent at The Gernert Company in New York City. His clients include Chad Harbach (The Art of Fielding) and Garth Risk Hallberg (City on Fire).  The New York Observer says "Mr. Parris-Lamb has managed over the past year to sell a tall stack of books by first-time authors, some of them for money that would please even the most seasoned veterans." Also...

Gina Frangello is the guest. Her new novel, A Life in Men, is the official February selection of The TNB Book Club.  It is available now from Algonquin Books. Booklist raves “In this bravura performance, a quantum creative leap...Frangello astutely dissects the quandaries of female sexuality, adoption, terminal illness, and compound heartbreak in a torrent of tough-minded observations, audacious c...

Kyle Minor is the guest. His new story collection, Praying Drunk, is now available from Sarabande Books. Publishers Weekly raves "Similar to a great magic trick, the 13 stories in Minor's latest lure reader investment with strong visuals while simultaneously pulling the rug out from underfoot with clever, literary sleights-of-hand. Though not necessarily linked in the traditional sense, there is a...

Bill Cotter is the guest. His new novel, The Parallel Apartments, is now available from McSweeney's.  Heidi Julavits says "Reading Bill Cotter's The Parallel Apartments is like taking some kind of word drug, but a new one, synthesized in a desert lab from molecules of Lipsyte, Dickens, Pynchon, Williams, Chabon, DeWitt, and Joyce, and then spun together with Cotter's own unique particles to yield...

Matthew Specktor is the guest. His novel, American Dream Machine, is now available from Tin House. Mona Simpson says "Joan Didion prophesied this novel. In an essay called 'Los Angeles Days,' published in 1992 in After Henry, she wrote that 'Californians until recently spoke of the United States beyond Colorado as 'back east'. If they went to New York, they went 'back' to New York, a way of speaki...

Michael J. Seidlinger is the guest. He is the book reviews editor for Electric Literature and the founder of an independent press called Civil Coping Mechanisms. His latest novel is The Laughter of Strangers, and it is available now from Lazy Fascist Press. The Los Angeles Times says "The Laughter of Strangers delivers a combination of psychological horror and strangeness that would not be out of...

Rachel Cantor is the guest. Her debut novel, A Highly Unlikely Scenario, Or, A Neetsa Pizza Employee's Guide to Saving the World. Library Journal says "Cantor’s novel will be a great hit for fans of Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe. There’s a lot going on here, and all of it is amusing." And Jim Crace says “It’s as if Kurt Vonnegut and Italo Calvino collaborated to write a comic...

Hilton Als is the guest. His latest book, White Girls, is now available from McSweeney's—and it has just been nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. Junot Díaz raves "I read Als not only because he is utterly extraordinary, which he is, but for the reason one is often drawn to the best writers—because one has a sense that one’s life might depend on them. White Girls is...

Gloria Harrison is the guest. She is a writer and a longtime contributor to The Nervous Breakdown, and in May of 2013 she was featured on This American Life, Episode 494. ***Note: This is a Premium episode. It is available for Premium subscribers only. Please sign up for Premium. It costs $2. That's it. Two bucks a month. (Or else you can pay $4.99 for six months of access, or $8.99 for a year.) Y...

Jennifer Percy is the guest. Her new book, Demon Camp, is available from Scribner.  It is the official January selection of The TNB Book Club. Dexter Filkins, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, calls it “...a tale so extraordinary that at times it seems conjured from a dream; as it unfolds it’s not just Caleb Daniels that comes into focus, but America, too. Jennifer Percy has orchestrated a great narra...