Otherppl With Brad Listi

Peter Stenson is the guest. His new novel Thirty Seven is available from Dzanc Books. It is the official February pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club. Stenson received his MFA from Colorado State University in 2012. His first novel, Fiend, was an Amazon Best Book of the Month for July 2013. His stories and essays have been published in The Bellevue Literary Review, The Greensboro Review, Confrontation, Blue Mesa Review, and elsewhere. He lives with his wife and family in Denver, Colorado. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Brad Phillips is the guest. His new story collection, Essays and Fictions, is available from Tyrant Books. The late Anthony Bourdain calls it: "Searingly honest, brilliant and disturbing. Brad Phillips peels back the skin and bone and stares right into the human soul."  Born in 1974, Phillips is also an accomplished visual artist known for dark work that engages with themes of eroticism, depression, and mortality. His paintings display stylistic breadth, from text-based to photorealist, referring in many cases directly to his daily life. He lives in Toronto. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Duke Haney is the guest. His new essay collection, Death Valley Superstars, is available now from Delancey Street Press. Haney has spent most of his adult life working in the movie business, with twenty feature-film credits as an actor and twenty-two as a screenwriter. He used pseudonyms for some of the screenplays and went by “D. R. Haney” as the author of a novel, Banned for Life, and an essay collection, Subversia. After he was struck by a car in a crosswalk on Sunset Boulevard, a friend claimed he walked like John “Duke” Wayne and gave him the nickname by which most people know him and he has adopted belatedly as his pen name. He plans to follow Death Valley Superstars with a novel tentatively titled XXX. He lives in Los Angeles. This is Duke's second time on the podcast. He first appeared in Episode 36on January 18, 2012. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ingrid Rojas Contreras is the guest. Her debut novel, FRUIT OF THE DRUNKEN TREE (Doubleday), is a national bestseller, an Indie Next selection, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and a New York Times editor's choice. Born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia, Contreras' essays and short stories have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Buzzfeed, Nylon, and Guernica, among others. She is the book columnist for KQED, the Bay Area's NPR affiliate, teaches writing at the University of San Francisco, and works with immigrant high school students as part of a San Francisco Arts Commission initiative bringing writers into public schools. She is working on a family memoir about her grandfather, a curandero from Colombia who it was said had the power to move clouds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Thomas Kohnstamm is the guest. His debut novel, Lake City, is available from Counterpoint Press. It is the official January pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club. Kohnstamm is also the author of Do Travel Writers Go to Hell? (Crown). He was born in Seattle and lives there with his wife and two children. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is the guest. Her new novel SKETCHTASY is available from Arsenal Pulp Press. Described as "startlingly bold and provocative" by Howard Zinn, "a cross between Tinkerbell and a honky Malcolm X with a queer agenda” by the Austin Chronicle, and “a gender-fucking tower of pure pulsing purple fabulous” by The Stranger, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is the author of a memoir and three novels, and the editor of five nonfiction anthologies. Sycamore's memoir, The End of San Francisco(City Lights 2013), won a Lambda Literary Award, and her most recent anthology, Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots?: Flaming Challenges to Masculinity, Objectification, and the Desire to Conform (AK Press 2012), was an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book and a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. Mattilda's novels include So Many Ways to Sleep Badly (City Lights 2008) and Pulling Taffy (Suspect Thoughts 2003). She is the editor of four additional nonfiction anthologies, Nobody Passes: Rejecting th

Tommy Pico is the guest. A poet, performer, and screenwriter, he is the author of the poetry collections IRL (Birds, LLC), NATURE POEM, JUNK, and the forthcoming FEED (Tin House Books). A Whiting Award winner, Pico is originally from the Viejas Indian reservation of the Kumeyaay nation. He now divides his time between Los Angeles and Brooklyn, where he co-curates the reading series Poets With Attitude (PWA) with Morgan Parker at the Ace Hotel, co-hosts the podcast Food 4 Thot, and is a contributing editor at Literary Hub.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Morris Collinsis the guest. He is the author of the debut novel Horse Latitudes (Dzanc Books). It was the official December 2018 pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club. Collins' other fiction and poetry has recently appeared in Pleiades, Gulf Coast, The Chattahoochee Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Iron Horse Review, Nimrod, among others. He attended the University of Rochester where he studied English and Medieval Studies and received his MFA from Penn State University in 2008.  He is a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at the College of the Holy Cross. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Brittany Ackerman is the author of the debut memoir The Perpetual Motion Machine (Red Hen Press). Ackerman is a graduate of Florida Atlantic University's Master of Fine Arts program in Creative Writing. Since graduation, she has completed a residency at the Wellstone Center in the Redwoods, and has attended the Mont Blanc Workshop in Chamonix, France under the instruction of Alan Heathcock.  She recently attended the Writers by Writers Methow Valley Workshop in May of 2017 under the leadership of Ross Gay. She lives in Los Angeles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Katya Apekina is the guest. She is the author of the debut novel THE DEEPER THE WATER THE UGLIER THE FISH (Two Dollar Radio). Apekina's short stories have appeared in various literary magazines. She is the recipient of an Elizabeth George grant, an Olin Fellowship, the Alena Wilson prize and a 3rd Year Fiction Fellowship from Washington University in St. Louis where she did her MFA. She has done residencies at VCCA, Playa and Ucross. Her prose and poetry translations from Russian appeared in Night Wraps the Sky: Writings by and About Mayakovsky(FSG 2008), which was short-listed for the Best Translated Book Award. She co-wrote the script for the independent film New Orleans, Mon Amour (2008), directed by Michael Almereyda and starring Elisabeth Moss and Christopher Eccleston. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Anita Felicelli is the author of the debut story collection LOVE SONGS FOR A LOST CONTINENT (Stillhouse Press), winner of the 2016 Mary Roberts Rinehart Award. Felicelli's stories have appeared in The Normal School, Joyland, The Rumpus, Kweli Journal, Eckleburg, and elsewhere. Her essays, reviews, and criticism have appeared or are forthcoming in the New York Times (Modern Love), Slate, Salon, SF Chronicle, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Babble, Romper, and Electric Literature. She is a graduate of UC Berkeley and UC Berkeley School of Law, a member of the National Book Critics Circle, and a Voices of Our Nations alum. Her work has placed as a finalist in multiple Glimmer Train contests and received a Puffin Foundation grant, two Greater Bay Area Journalism awards, and Pushcart Prize nominations. She lives in the Bay Area with her family. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

John Wray is the guest. He is the author of the novel GODSEND (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux). His other novels include The Lost Time Accidents, Lowboy, Canaan's Tongue, and The Right Hand of Sleep. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, a Cullman Fellowship from the New York Public Library, and a Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fellowship from the American Academy in Berlin, he was named one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists in 2007. A citizen of the United States and Austria, he currently lives in Mexico City. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Christopher Zeischegg is the author of the memoir BODY TO JOB (Rare Bird Books). A writer, musician, and filmmaker, he spent eight years working in the adult industry as performer Danny Wylde. His other two books are Come to my Brother and The Wolves that Live in Skin and Space. He has also contributed to The Feminist Porn Book, Best Sex Writing, Coming Out Like a Porn Star, Split Lips, and a variety of digital publications, such as Somesuch and Nerve. His industrial metal band, Chiildren, released their second EP, The Circle Narrows, through Records Ad Nauseam in 2015. He became the face of Wyldefire Hot Sauce in 2016. Zeischegg lives in Los Angeles with his two cats, Victoria and Isis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Daniel Gumbiner is the author of the debut novel THE BOATBUILDER, available from McSweeney's. It was nominated for the National Book Award. Gumbiner is the managing editor of THE BELIEVER magazine. He was born and raised in Northern California, graduated from UC Berkeley in 2011, and now lives in Southern Nevada. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lydia Kiesling is the author of the debut novel THE GOLDEN STATE, available from MCD Books. Kiesling is a 2018 National Book Foundation “5 under 35” honoree, and her writing has appeared at outlets including The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker online, The Guardian, and Slate. She lives in San Francisco with her family. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Brad Listi talks with Leah Dieterich, author of the debut memoir VANISHING TWINS: A MARRIAGE (Soft Skull Press). Dietrich's essays and short fiction have been published by Lenny Letter, Buzzfeed, LitHub, and Bomb Magazine among others. She is also the author of a book of thank-you notes, entitled "thxthxthx: thank goodness for everything" (Andrews McMeel, 2011). She lives in Portland, Oregon and Los Angeles with her husband and daughter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Andre Dubus III is the bestselling author of the novel GONE SO LONG (W.W. Norton). His other book include "House of Sand and Fog," "The Garden of Last Days," and a memoir called "Townie." A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Magazine Award for Fiction, his books are published in over twenty-five languages, and he teaches full-time at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife, Fontaine, a modern dancer, and their three children. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Meghan O'Gieblyn is the author of the essay collection INTERIOR STATES (Anchor Books). It is the official October pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club. O'Gieblyn's essays have appeared in Harper's Magazine, n+1, the New York Times, The Guardian, Oxford American, Ploughshares, newyorker.com, The Point and Tin House, and have been included in the Pushcart Prize anthologies and in The Best American Essays 2017. She lives in Wisconsin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kristi Coulter is the author of the essay collection NOTHING GOOD CAN COME FROM THIS (MCD/FSG Originals). Coulter holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan. She is a former Ragdale Foundation resident and the recipient of a grant from the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, The Awl, Glamour, Vox, The Mississippi Review, Longreads, and elsewhere. She lives in Seattle, where she is working on her next book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Laura van den Berg is the author of the novel THE THIRD HOTEL (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux). Her other books include two collections of stories, The Isle of Youth (FSG, 2013) and What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us (Dzanc Books, 2009), and the novel Find Me (FSG, 2015). Laura van den Berg is a Briggs-Copeland Lecturer in Fiction at Harvard University and also teaches in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She lives in Cambridge, MA. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices