Otherppl with Brad Listi

Mary Miller is the guest. Her debut novel, The Last Days of California, is available from Liveright. Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, raves “Beyond the well-crafted coming-of-age narrative, Miller gets every little detail about the South—from the way the sky greens before a storm to gas stations where Hank Williams Jr.’s 'Family Tradition' blares—just right. But it’s Jess’s earnest, searchi...

Elisa Gabbert is the guest. Her new book, The Self Unstable, is now available from Black Ocean.  Teju Cole, writing for The New Yorker, says "I found Elisa Gabbert’s The Self Unstable a wonderful surprise. It was the most intelligent and most intriguing thing I’ve read in a while, moving between lyric poetry, aphorism, and memoir, and with thoughts worth stealing on just about every page.” And Mak...

Ravi Mangla is the guest. His new novella, Understudies, is now available from Outpost 19.  Laura van den Berg raves "Ravi Mangla's Understudies is a brilliant meditation on the private cost of celebrity, the longing to transcend the ordinary, and the seductive nature of performance. Darkly funny, sharply-observed, and terrifically moving, Understudies is an essential debut." And Gary Lutz says "R...

James Scott is the guest. His debut novel, The Kept, is available from Harper. Kirkus, in a starred review, says “Scott is both compassionate moralist and master storyteller in this outstanding debut.” And Tom Perrotta says “The Kept starts out as a straightforward revenge narrative, then slowly deepens into something much more mysterious and compelling. James Scott has written a riveting and memo...

[Note:  I've decided to make this episode available without subscription so that people can listen to it and share it as easily as possible. -BL] Jennifer Michael Hecht is the guest. Her new book is called Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It. It is available now from Yale University Press. Billy Collins says “The title of this book is an imperative against the departure that...

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is the guest. Her new memoir, The End of San Francisco, is now available from City Lights Books. Kirkus calls it "A blisteringly honest portrait of a young, fast and greatly misunderstood life. . . . An outspoken, gender-ambiguous author and activist reflects on her halcyon days as a wild child in San Francisco." And The San Francisco Chronicle says "It would be easy to...

Olivia Laing is the guest. Her new book The Trip to Echo Spring: On Writers and Drinking, is available from Picador. Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, says “The tortured relationship between literary lions and their liquor illuminates the obscure terrain of psychology and art in this searching biographical medidation....Laing's astute analysis of the pervasive presence and meaning of drink i...

This is my conversation with Ned, which first aired on December 16, 2012.  I wanted to make it available to those who love him and those who love his work. (Prior to today, it was only available via premium subscription, because it was in the deeper archives.) My heart goes out to all who feel this loss, especially his family.  -BL Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Joyelle McSweeney is the guest. Her books include the poetry collection The Red Bird, and the novels Nylund, the Sarcographer and Flet. Recently, her play entitled Dead Youth, or, The Leaks won the inaugural Leslie Scalapino Award for Innovative Women Playwrights. She is also a co-editor of Action Books and the quarterly online literary journal Action Yes. Kate Bernheimer says "If Vladimir Nabokov...

Jonathan Miles is the guest. His new novel, Want Not, is now available from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Dave Eggers, writing for The New York Times Book Review, says "I loved this book…the work of a fluid, confident, and profoundly talented writer…it’s a joyous book, a very funny book, and an unpredictable book, and that’s because everyone in it is allowed to be fully human.” And Ben Fountain, auth...

Karolina Waclawiak is the guest. Her debut novel, How to Get Into the Twin Palms, is now available from Two Dollar Radio. The New York Times Book Review says "Just as Anya reinvents herself, Waclawiak's novel (her first) reinvents the immigration story...At its most illuminating, How to Get Into the Twin Palms movingly portrays a protagonist intent on both creating and destroying herself, on burni...

Noah Cicero is the guest. His new novel is called Go to Work and Do Your Job. Care for Your Children. Pay Your Bills. Obey the Law. Buy Products., and it is available now from Lazy Fascist Press. Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket, says "I read Noah Cicero and remember that 'hysterical' can refer to something really funny and to a situation completely out of control. His work punches people in the...

Colum McCann is the guest. In 2009, he won the National Book Award for his novel Let the Great World Spin and this year published a new novel called Transatlantic. He is also the curator of a new anthology called The Book of Men, available now from Picador.  The Book of Men is the official December selection of The TNB Book Club. From the publisher: To help launch the literary nonprofit Narrative...

Ben Brooks is the guest. His new novel, Lolito, is now available from Canongate Books. Nick Cave says "Lolito is the funniest, most horrible book I've read in years. I was blown away." And The Guardian says "Both warm and uncompromising, Lolito will be as entertaining for young adults as it is educational for older readers. And if some aspects of the world Brooks inhabits seem alarming, I can't th...

Jamie Iredell is the guest. His new essay collection,  I Was a Fat Drunk Catholic School Insomniac, is now available from Future Tense. Scott McClanahan says “Jamie Iredell is one of the two or three best writers I know in this world. If you read him—you’ll say the same thing. If you don’t, that’s fine. Your grandchildren will say it one day.” Monologue topics: bookstores, trying to find 'the perf...

Claire Vaye Watkins is the guest. Her debut story collection, Battleborn, is now available in paperback from Riverhead. Antonya Nelson, writing for The New York Times Book Review, says “Although individual stories stand alone, together they tell the tale of a place, and of the population that thrives and perishes therein… The historical sits comfortably alongside the contemporary and the factual n...

Kevin Sampsell is the guest. His debut novel, This is Between Us, is now available from Tin House Books. Jess Walter, author of Beautiful Ruins, says "In This Is Between Us Kevin Sampsell writes with grace and intimacy about the toughest subject of all—love—and manages to capture a relationship in its natural state: wry and wistful, strange and sexy, humming with desire, quaking with vulnerability...

Daniel Alarcón is the guest. His new novel, At Night We Walk in Circles, is now available from Riverhead Books. The New York Times Book Review calls it "Wise and engaging...a provocative study of the way war culture ensnares both participant and observer, the warping fascination of violence, and the disfiguring consequences of the roles we play in public...[a] layered, gorgeously nuanced work…the...

Anne Marie Wirth Cauchon is the guest. Her debut novel, Nothing, is now available from Two Dollar Radio. Joy Williams calls it "A burning mean and darkly mysterious read." And Kate Zambreno says "I could tell you that Anne Marie Wirth Cauchon has written an utterly contemporary novel of our fragmented culture, a novel that I think might be the great American novel of the selfie, brilliantly altern...

Laura van den Berg is the guest. Her new story collection, The Isle of Youth, is now available from FSG Originals.  Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, raves "If ever there was a writer going places, it’s Laura van den Berg, who follows up her debut collection, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us, with the ambitious, modular The Isle of Youth, whose seven stories are arr...

Monica Drake is the guest. Her new novel, The Stud Book, is now available from Hogarth Press. Cheryl Strayed says “Monica Drake has written a take-your-breath-away good, blow-your-mind wise, crack-your-heart-open beauty of a novel. The Stud Book is a smart, sexy, comic, compassionate, absorbing, and necessary story of our times.” And Publishers Weekly says “What really stands out is [Drake's] depi...

Doug Dorst is the guest. His latest novel, co-authored with film director J.J. Abrams, is called S. (Mulholland Books).  USA Today calls it "...an intriguing and impressive experiment in storytelling that's full of paranoia, conspiracy theory, love and mystery..." And The Telegraph calls it "...a beautiful hardback carefully distressed to look like an old library book, stuffed with astonishing eph...

Jennifer duBois is the guest. Her new novel, Cartwheel, is now available from Random House. The New York Times Book Review calls it “Psychologically astute . . . Dubois hits [the] larger sadness just right and dispenses with all the salacious details you can readily find elsewhere. . . . The writing in Cartwheel is a pleasure—electric, fine-tuned, intelligent, conflicted. The novel is engrossing,...

Chelsea Martin is the guest. Her new book, Even Though I Don't Miss You, is due out from Short Flight / Long Drive Books on November 1, 2013.  Blake Butler says "Someone who should not die is Chelsea Martin." Monologue topics:  Mellow Pages Library, mail, suspending disbelief, my current reading taste, experimentalism, immersive reading Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoice...

Davis Schneiderman is the guest. His new novel, [SIC], is now available from Jaded Ibis Productions. [SIC] includes public domain works published under Davis Schneiderman's name, including everything from the prologue to The Canterbury Tales to Wikipedia pages to genetic codes, along with a transformation of the Jorge Luis Borges story "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote." [SIC] is part of DEAD/...