Otherppl With Brad Listi

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 candor, and storytelling moxie.” And Emily Rapp says “Gina Frangello’s luminous novel is deeply human, darkly funny, seriously sexy; it brims with artistry and intelligence and heart...Frangello illuminates the ways in which life itself is an illusion, but a grand and beautiful and heartbreaking and brilliant one.” ***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.) You do that, you can listen to Gina's episode—plus you'll have access to the

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 sequential order to the collection--ideas, locations, incidents, and characters echo as the volume chugs forward--and the result is an often dazzling, emotional, funny, captivating puzzle."  And Kirkus, in a starred review, says “An award-winning short fiction author offers twelve stories so ripe with realism as to suggest a roman à clef. . . . This brilliant collection unfolds around a fractured narrative of faith and friends and family, loved and lost.” Monologue topics: mail, co-branding, the inevitability of co-branding, Katy Perry, Rihanna, the virtue of unskillful co-branding. Learn more about your ad choi

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 a book that produces an actual high when read. There's micro-attention paid to sweatpants material and the feel of artificial cheese powder on fingertips and the bouillon smell of nether regions. There is sadness. There is loneliness. There are riffs that make me wish an actor were there to read to me aloud, so I could cry from laughter without needing to clearly see the page. This book is an experience—it is a never-read-anything-like-it-before work of brainy, heartfelt joy." And Texas Monthly calls it "Funny and profane and more than slightly unhinged." Monologue topics: Super Bowl, barbarism, 1970s sitcoms, au

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 speaking that carried with it the suggestion of living on a distant frontier. Calfiornians of my daughter's generation speak of going 'Out' to New York, a meaningful shift in the perception of one's place in the world.' Specktor's American Dream Machine may be first literature I've read in which Los Angeles is assumed as London is assumed by Dickens and Paris by Proust and New York by a host of twentieth century American writers. There is nothing ironic, ambivalent, or apologetic about Specktor's relationship to Los Angeles—as it is and was, as myth and as a thriving capitol city. Los Angeles provides an animate pulse und

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 place in a David Lynch film. Seidlinger's weird new fight fiction suggests that perhaps the best place for boxing contests isn't in the ring but between the pages of a book." And Flavorwire raves "Michael J. Seidlinger has given us the boxing novel of the year. The Laughter of Strangers is a tough and gritty book that will challenge you page after page, but it is oh so worth it." Monologue topics: psychological paralysis after reading, chaos, illusion, confusion.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 book sci-fi adventure and persuaded Chagall to do the drawings. One of the freshest and mostly lively novels I have encountered for quite a while.”  Monologue topics: Paris, The Lost Generation, having A Moment, getting huge, Bob Dylan, hindsight, ego.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 a book, a dream, an enemy, a friend, and, yes, the read of the year." And John Jeremiah Sullivan says "Hilton Als’s White Girls...is a leap forward not merely for Als as a writer but for the peculiar American genre of culture-crit-as-autobiography. Its bravery lies in a set refusal to allow itself all sorts of illusions—about race, about sex, about American art—and the subtlety of its thinking is wedded maypole-fashion to a real confessional lyricism [...] Als taught me that I have a lot of white girl in me, too, and so does he. And so do you, is where it gets interesting. If you think that sounds like another blur

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.) You do that, you can listen to Gloria's episode—plus you'll have access to the podcast's complete archives. Every single show. You can listen online here, or else you can listen while on the go via the free, official Other People app, available now for your iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, or Android device. Okay? Okay. Thanks for listening, everybody. -BL Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 narrative about redemption, loss and hope.” And Esquire magazine calls it “A powerful debut and a haunting portrait of PTSD, and the effects of war on the psyches of the soldiers who fight and the extreme lengths they'll go to to find relief and heal."  Monologue topics: war, peace, humanity, pacifism, confusion.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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, searching voice, as she contemplates her parents, the trip, and their values, that lingers after Miller’s story has finished. In Jess, Miller has created a narrator worthy of comparison with those of contemporaries such as Karen Thompson Walker and of greats such as Carson McCullers.” And Alexis Smith says “The Last Days of California is the Sense and Sensibility of pre-Apocalypse America, and Jess and Elise may be my new favorite literary sisters: different as night and day, on a road trip to the Rapture with their Evangelical parents, they find they have nothing to lose but each other. Mary Miller is a ventriloquist of

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 Make Magazine says "Gabbert strikes a perfect balance between heart and head, between cleverness and earnestness, between language that demonstrates its own fallibility and language that is surprisingly, perfectly precise." Monologue topics: the insufferably stupid anti-sunglasses stance of my early twenties, squinting. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 "Ravi Mangla's delightingly tight, micro-chaptered Understudies is an unassumingly beautiful and moving debut. It's elegantly and hilariously precise about everything it touches, and it touches almost everything human." Monologue topics: repetition, rhyming, making beats, stuff, my annual purge. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 memorable debut novel.” Monologue topics: New Year's, mail, iTunes reviews. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

[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 is suicide, and its contents provide a learned, illuminating look at the history of what is perhaps the darkest secret in all of human behavior.” And Newsweek says "That it's not all a drag and you might as well get on with life's vagaries is the strikingly simple and convincing argument of Jennifer Michael Hecht's Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It. . . . While not insensitive to people who use suicide as a way to end the suffering of terminal illness, Hecht brands suicide an immoral act that robs society — and the self-killer — of a life that is certainly more valuable than what it may s

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 describe The End of San Francisco as a Joycean 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Queer' (although the book's intense stream of consciousness is reminiscent of the later, more experimental, Joyce) . . . but this is misleading. This journey of a life that begins in the professional upper-middle class (both parents are therapists) and the Ivy League and moves to hustling, drugs, activism -- Sycamore was active in ACT UP and Queer Nation -- and queer bohemian grunge, is profoundly American. At heart, Sycamore is writing about the need to escape control through flight or obliteration." Monologue topics: my awkwardne

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 in the writers' texts, and its reflection of the writers' struggle to shape—and escape—reality...A fine study of human frailty through the eyes of its most perceptive victims.” And Hilary Mantel, the Booker Prize-winning author of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, says “I’m sorry I’ve finished this wonderful book because I feel I’ve been talking to a wise friend. I’ve been trying to work out exactly how Olivia Laing drew me in, because I hardly drink myself and have no particular attachment to the group of writers whose trials she describes. I think the tone is beautifully modulated, knowledgeable yet intimate, and

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 wanted to seduce Nancy Drew, he'd read her Nylund, The Sarcographer one dark afternoon over teacups of whiskey. Welcome to fiction's new femme fatale, Joyelle McSweeney." And Michael Martone says "You thought you knew your own language. This book hands it back to you on a platter and includes the instructional manual for its further use." Monologue topics: Christmas, late capitalism, edginess, curmudgeonly behavior, my daughter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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, author of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, says "In this powerful, blisteringly funny novel, Jonathan Miles makes a startling discovery: We are what we throw away. It’s in our castoff goods, edibles, chances and people that our authentic selves are revealed; or, as one of his many memorable characters puts it, 'garbage [is] the only truthful thing civilization produced.' Miles mines the depths of waste so artfully that by the end of this extraordinary novel, we’re left with the suspicion that redemption may well be no more, and no less, than an existential salvage operation." Monologue topics: New York City, feeling

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 burning brightly even as she goes up in smoke." And Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, calls it "A taut debut... [that] strikes with the creeping suddenness of a brush fire." Monologue topics: the dentist, cavities, flossing, contagions, demoralization, wheat, paranoia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices