Otherppl With Brad Listi

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 face. Don't get in its way." Monologue topics: receiving visitors, gentlemen callers, courting, taking a knee, listicles, bullshit.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 4, Esquire asked eighty of the world’s greatest writers to chip in with a story, all with the title, “How to Be a Man.”The result is The Book of Men, an unflinching investigation into the essence of masculinity. Monologue topics: the app, travel hell, TNB Book Club, kind mail, Narrative 4. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 think of a writer I would rather have as my guide." Monologue topics: coming through in the clutch, voicemail, prank calls, the word 'podcast' as a verb. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 perfect book,' low-level panic, Ten Billion, wanting instructions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 nicely supplements the fictional… Readers will share in the environs of the author and her characters, be taken into the hardship of a pitiless place and emerge on the other side—wiser, warier and weathered like the landscape.” And The Millions says “As if Watkins’ prose embodies the desert landscape of Nevada itself, the stories are stony, unkind, and harsh, though never unattractive… Beneath these confessions runs a spiritual undertow—that salvific beauty can arise when brutality is brought to light… All of her stories left me feeling purged and oddly cleansed, easily making Battleborn one of the strongest colle

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." And Patrick deWitt, author of The Sisters Brothers, says "This Is Between Us is an imperturbable, strange, melancholy (but never maudlin) piece of work. Kevin Sampsell straddles the line between candor and oversharing with an artful grace I found infectious." Monologue topics: mail, art vs. media, Tom Waits, LSD, the devil, doing the podcast live in front of people. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 ending is a quiet bomb, as satisfying as it is ambiguous." And The Daily Beast says "Alarcón is a young, talented writer who is on the cusp of a breakthrough, a state of mind perfectly captured by the compulsively energetic voice of At Night We Walk in Circles...a gripping story." Monologue topics: Conan, M.I.A., projected anxiety, kale, milk, mail, Chelsea Martin, alt-lit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 alternating the narratives of two young travelers partying and searching and losing themselves in the wild West — a Kerouac hitchhiker juxtaposed with the nihilistic, wanting, wandering Ruth and her toxic friendship with her prettier best friend. But this is what I want to tell you—this is what you need to know — Anne Marie Wirth Cauchon writes like a beast, brutal and ecstatic. You need to read this." Monologue topics:  celebrity sightings, Book Soup, voicemail, Elliott Holt, my thing, navelgazing Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 arranged along the themes of family secrets with noirish intrigue." And The New Inquiry says “Van den Berg excels at complexity, ec­centricity, maximalism of plot…Her emphases on elaborate plot and inten­tional loose ends are a refreshing departure from the contemporary taste for tidy, mini­mal plot paired with maximal voices.” Also this episode: a brief conversation with Victoria Patterson, whose new novel, The Peerless Four, is the official November selection of The TNB Book Club. Monologue topics:  congestion, logistics, obsession with logistics Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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] depiction of [the] city. This is not the twee wonderland of Portlandia…Drake combines [her characters’] lives in a quirky, knowing way, showing the complexities of modern-day female life, species Pacific Northwest native.” Monologue topics:  Sweden, responding to criticism, Google Translator, self-loathing, weakness, humiliation.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 ephemera (postcards, newspaper clippings, photos, letters) that flutter from the turning pages - and a dose of film-industrial chicanery in its cover claims as well..." Monologue topics:  Halloween, voicemail, Chelsea Martin, shyness, curiosity Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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, and its portraiture hits delightfully and necessarily close to home.” And Entertainment Weekly calls it “[A] gripping, gorgeously written novel . . . The emotional intelligence in Cartwheel is so sharp it’s almost ruthless—a tabloid tragedy elevated to high art." Monologue topics:  file sharing, Halloween, last minute costume ideas, Windblown Man.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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/adchoices

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/BOOKS trilogy of conceptual works by Schneiderman from Jaded Ibis Press. Other books in the trilogy are Blank (2011), and Ink (forthcoming). Monologue topics: Simple Kind of Life, Gwen Stefani, Chris de Burgh, Lady in Red, Louisiana, nostalgia, emotional breakdowns. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jesmyn Ward is the guest. She was the 2011 recipient of the National Book Award for her novel, Salvage the Bones, and her new memoir, Men We Reaped, is now available from Bloomsbury. The New York Times Book Review raves "[Ward] chronicles our American story in language that is raw, beautiful and dangerous… [Her] singular voice and her full embrace of her anger and sorrow set this work apart from those that have trodden similar ground… With loving and vivid recollection, she returns flesh to the bones of statistics and slows her ghosts to live again… [It’s a] complicated and courageous testimony." And The Los Angeles Times calls it "Heart-wrenching… A brilliant book about beauty and death… at once a coming-of-age story and a kind of mourning song… filled [with] intimate and familial moments, each described with the passion and precision of the polished novelist Ward has become… Ward is one of those rare writers who’s traveled across America’s deepening class rift with her sense of truth intact. What she gives

Chris L. Terry is the guest. His debut novel, Zero Fade, is now available from Curbside Splendor.  Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler's Wife, says "Chris Terry has bestowed Kevin, the hero of Zero Fade, with an especially acute case of teenage angst, and the results are sweet, painful, and very recognizable to anyone who has survived seventh grade. This is a wonderful book." And Lindsay Hunter says "Reading Chris Terry's Zero Fade offered me a glimpse into a cultural experience that isn't mine, but that I could recognize immediately. Vernacular as world. On the surface, it's just language. But this novel isn't surface. The characters speak in rhythms that reveal emotions not identifiable by just words, but I'll name them nonetheless: humor, sadness, confusion, joy, revelation. It's all here in Terry's first novel, a novel that is practically carbonated, how it sparkles and burns." Monologue topics: the story behind the story, being interviewed, rambling, HPV, cunnilingus, celebrity marital di

Lauren Grodstein is the guest. Her new novel, The Explanation for Everything, is now available from Algonquin Books. It is the official October selection of The TNB Book Club. Tom Perrotta calls it "Very smart and touching and unexpected.” And The Washington Post says “[Grodstein has] fashioned in her smart, assured third novel, The Explanation for Everything, . . . a gripping tale of a biologist who finds himself approaching midlife and suddenly finding faith . . . Grodstein’s real gift is her emotional precision . . . Finding or losing God proves to be an equally destabilizing tectonic shift, and this novel is full of them . . . Their cumulative force will leave you happily unsteady, and moved.” Monologue topics: psychic burden, fear, anxiety, Sisyphus, insomnia, failure, dying alone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ethel Rohan is the guest. Her new story collection, Goodnight Nobody, is now available from Queen's Ferry Press. Peter Orner raves “Ethel Rohan speaks in many voices, all of which need to be heard. She goes so deeply into the hearts and souls of her people. And she wounds, she heals, often in the same sentence. Plain and simple, Goodnight Nobody is a great and unique collection of stories.” And Roxane Gay says “Fans of Ethel Rohan’s writing will find, in her latest and outstanding collection, Goodnight Nobody, a writer who has never been more intelligent, more graceful, more moving. Whether it’s a young girl torn between a loving father and an abusive mother, or a photographer who is losing her eyesight while her husband bears witness, or a woman who wants nothing more than a sign from her husband that he sees her, Rohan writes about people searching for a place to belong or a place to breathe or simply, a place to be. In Rohan’s eminently capable hands and words, these stories give us that hope that these

Cari Luna is the guest. Her debut novel, The Revolution of Every Day, is now available from Tin House. Kirkus says "Luna creates an array of complex characters caught up in emotions, relationships and situations far from the ordinary as they examine their commitment to their merged family and explore their own ideals and expectations. Enlightening and marked by inventive subject matter, intense reflection and stark eloquence." And Bust magazine raves "The characters are superbly flawed, and Luna expertly leads us through their vastly different psyches and makes us understand them, even if we don't always sympathize. But just as much as it is a novel of characters, The Revolution of Every Day is the story of a city that's struggling with gentrification, as Cat puts it, 'All the way back to the Dutch and the Indians, yeah?'" Monologue topics: J.D. Salinger, WWII, weird life sandwiches. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jeff Jackson is the guest. His debut novel, Mira Corpora, is now available from Two Dollar Radio.  Don DeLillo says "It's fine work in its manic pacing and its summoning of certain cultural emblems. Present tense with a vengeance. I hope the book finds the serious readers who are out there waiting for this kind of fiction to hit them in the face." And Dennis Cooper says "Jeff Jackson is one of the most extraordinarily gifted young writers I've read in a very long time. His strangely serene yet gripping, unsettling, and beautifully rendered novel Mira Corpora has within it all the earmarks of an important new literary voice." Monologue topics:  BuzzFeed, lists, sensationalism, Room 32, D.R. Haney Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices