Skylight Books Podcast Series

All Rob wanted was a normal life. She almost got it, too: a husband, two kids, a nice house in the suburbs. But Rob fears for her oldest daughter, Callie, who collects tiny bones and whispers to imaginary friends. Rob sees a darkness in Callie, one that reminds her too much of the family she left behind. She decides to take Callie back to her childhood home, to Sundial, deep in the Mojave Desert....

Join us for a conversation with artist Shala Miller, as she discusses her relationship with her father, her pursuit of her craft, and her new book, Tender Noted. _______________________________________________   Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski. Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang. Visit  https://www.skylightbooks.com/event  for future o...

Join us for a conversation with author Jarred McGinnis as he discusses disabled representation in literature, the seperation between auto fiction and memoir, and his new novel,  The Coward . _______________________________________________   Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski. Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang. Visit  https://www.skylight...

After a tragedy too painful to bear, former novelist Lily Albrecht has resigned herself to a dull, sexless life as a rare book dealer. Until she gets a lead on a book that just might turn everything around. The Book of the Most Precious Substance is a 17th century manual on sex magic, rumored to be the most powerful occult book ever written--if it really exists at all. And some of the wealthiest p...

Join us for a conversation with Kelly Barnhill, as she discusses the lasting importance of Christine Blasey Ford, how she turned joy into destruction, and her new novel,  When Women Were Dragons . _______________________________________________   Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski. Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang. Visit  https://www.sk...

Fresh off of May Day 2022, join us for a conversation with organizer and journalist Kim Kelly, as she discusses the feasibility of labor reform in her lifetime, the origins of Independent Workers' Day, and her new book,  Fight Like Hell. _______________________________________________   Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski. Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased de...

Lydia is hungry. She's always wanted to try Japanese food. Sashimi, ramen, onigiri with sour plum stuffed inside - the food her Japanese father liked to eat. And then there is bubble tea and iced-coffee, ice cream and cake, and foraged herbs and plants, and the vegetables grown by the other young artists at the London studio space she is secretly squatting in. But, Lydia can't eat any of these thi...

"She wasn't pretty but she was ours..." Sandwiched between seedy businesses in the scorching east LA suburb of Glendale, The Damned Lovely dive bar is as scarred as its regulars: ex-cops, misfits and loners. And for Sam Goss, it's a refuge from the promising life he's walked away from, a place to write and a hole to hide in. But when a beautiful and mysterious new patron to the bar turns up murder...

Inside a luxury housing complex, two misfit teenagers sneak around and get drunk. Franco Andrade, lonely, overweight, and addicted to porn, obsessively fantasizes about seducing his neighbor—an attractive married woman and mother—while Polo dreams about quitting his grueling job as a gardener within the gated community and fleeing his overbearing mother and their narco-controlled village. Each fac...

Reclaiming Two-Spirits decolonizes the history of gender and sexuality in Native North America. It honors the generations of Indigenous people who had the foresight to take essential aspects of their cultural life and spiritual beliefs underground in order to save them. Before 1492, hundreds of Indigenous communities across North America included people who identified as neither male nor female, b...

From the founder of the Fat Girls Hiking community comes an inclusive, inspiring call to the outdoors for people of all body types, sizes, and backgrounds. In a book brimming with heartfelt stories, practical advice, personal profiles of Fat Girls Hiking community members, and helpful trail reviews, Summer Michaud-Skog creates space for marginalized bodies with an insistent conviction that outdoor...

Join us for a conversation between activist Sanaa Seif and journalist Sharif abdel Kouddous, as they discuss  You Have Not Yet Been Defeated , a collection of works from Seif's brother, incarcerated political prisoner Alaa Abd el-Fattah. In this discussion, Seif talks about the circumstances of her brother's imprisonment, her own arrest, the limited agency provided to prisoners of the state, and w...

Antone Dolezal and Lara Shipley return to their home region of the Ozarks in the American Midwest, where locals persist in their search for a legendary floating orb of light that can only be seen from the Devil’s Promenade . It’s a lushly wooded road in an area where wanderers flock to seek possible redemption, or just to escape the boredom and darkness of ordinary rural life. Subtle but revealing...

Join us for a conversation with Alexander Monea as he discusses his first book,  The Digital Closet , along with ruminations on how queerness exists on the Internet, potential solutions to fixing the heteronormativity of our digital arenas, and the potential power of gay space communism. _______________________________________________   Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowalesk...

Join us for a conversation with author Oliver Milman, as he takes us inside the world of insects. In this episode, he highlights their importance to the world ecology and their alarmingly rapid decline as outlined in his new book,  The Insect Crisis. _______________________________________________   Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski. Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an...

Join us for a fun conversation between Adrian Shirk and Amanda Montell about the nature of cults and utopias, basing narratives in autobiographical perspective, and their respective books  Heaven is a Place on Earth  and  Cultish . _______________________________________________   Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski. Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by...

This is the story of a woman in search of herself, in every sense. When we first meet Ruby, a Métis woman in her thirties, her life is spinning out of control. She’s angling to sleep with her counselor while also rekindling an old relationship she knows will only bring more heartache. But as we soon learn, Ruby’s story is far more complex than even she can imagine. Given up for adoption as an infa...

Fresh off the heels of the first unionized Amazon warehouse, join us for a conversation about the tolls that fighting for fair labor can take.   On the Line  takes readers inside a bold five-year campaign to bring a union to the dangerous industrial laundry factories of Phoenix, Arizona. Workers here wash hospital, hotel, and restaurant linens and face harsh conditions: routine exposure to biohaza...

Join us for this special conversation with Lucy Yu, owner and founder of  Yu and Me Books in Manhattan's Chinatown, as she discusses being the first female Asian-American bookstore owner in NYC and the rise in anti-Asian hate. _______________________________________________   Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski. Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragi...

From the Arroyo Seco Parkway, which began construction during the Great Depression, to the Century Freeway, completed in 1993, author Paul Haddad provides an entertaining and thought-provoking history of the 527 miles of roadways that comprise the Los Angeles freeway system. Each of Los Angeles's twelve freeways receives its own chapter, and these are supplemented by "Off-Ramps"--sidebars that dis...

Reporter Vera Vixen is a relative newcomer to Shady Hollow . The fox has a nose for news, so when she catches wind that the death might be a murder, she resolves to get to the bottom of the case, no matter where it leads. As she stirs up still waters, the fox exposes more than one mystery, and discovers that additional lives are in jeopardy.   Vera finds more to this town than she ever suspected....

Join us for this Arts Annex Special, as Skylight's own Justin Remer talks to Rob Sevier about his journey into the art world, the moment he knows when he found something good, and Stay Cool, Madonna.   _______________________________________________   Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski. Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang. Visit  https://w...

In 1960, free-spirited Doreen is a recent high-school grad and waitress in a Chicago diner. She doesn't know Margie, sixteen and bookish, who lives a sheltered suburban life, but they soon meet when unplanned pregnancies send them to the Holy Family Home for the Wayward in rural Illinois. Assigned as roommates because their due dates line up, Margie and Doreen navigate Holy Family’s culture of sec...

When Neema Avashia tells people where she’s from, their response is nearly always a disbelieving “There are Indian people in West Virginia?” A queer Asian American teacher and writer, Avashia fits few Appalachian stereotypes. But the lessons she learned in childhood about race and class, gender and sexuality continue to inform the way she moves through the world today: how she loves, how she teach...

Join us for a conversation with singer-songwriter Jess Williamson about her experience selling books, her transition to Los Angeles from Texas, and her upcoming tour with Jose Gonzalez!   Listen to her music here: https://open.spotify.com/artist/784kOgkd1H6jU4KgPMYHi9?si=S-OZBkvdTgKQfg10hM0cVw _______________________________________________   Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Ko...