Otherppl With Brad Listi

Christine Sneed is the guest. Her new novel, Little Known Facts, was featured on the cover of the New York Times Book Review last week. It is available now from Bloomsbury. Booklist, in a starred review, calls it "An ensnaring first novel that delves into the complex challenges and anguish of living with and in the shadow of celebrity. Sneed’s wit, curiosity, empathy, and ability to divine the perfect detail propel this psychologically exquisite, superbly realized novel of intriguing, caricature-transcending characters and predicaments…As Sneed illuminates each facet of her percussively choreographed plot via delectably slant disclosures—overheard conversations, snooping, tabloids, confessions under duress, and journal entries, among them—she spotlights ‘little known facts’ about the cost of fame, our erotic obsession with movie-star power, and where joy can be found." Also this episode: a conversation with Stephanie Barber, author of the new book Night Moves, available now from Publishing Genius Press.  Ke

Bernie Glassman is the guest. He is a pioneer in the American Zen Movement, an accomplished academic and businessman, and the founder of the Zen Peacemakers. His new book, co-authored by Jeff Bridges, is called The Dude and the Zenmaster. A New York Times bestseller, it is available now from Blue Rider Press. Sheila Heti, writing for the Financial Times, says “The Dude and the Zen Master [is] a wonderful book of conversations...about acting and Zen and the long, fond relationship between these men.” And The Dudespaper calls it “[A] good conversation between good friends...One of the unexpected treats of The Dude and the Zen Master is the insights into who Jeff Bridges is behind the Dude persona...touching remembrances of his parents, his reflections on life as a devoted family man, and his behind-the-scenes stories of movies he’s worked on [and] profound little Zen observations and insights sprinkled throughout the book.” Monologue topics: Zen, meditation, discipline and lack thereof, losing my shit, my d

Lesley Arfin is the guest. She was a staff writer on the first two seasons of the hit television show Girls, starring Lena Dunham, and she also writes on the MTV series Awkward.  Her book, Dear Diary, is based on a column of the same name that originally appeared in Vice magazine.  It was published by Vice Books/MTV Press in 2007. Sarah Silverman says “Here’s your chance to have all the benefits of a tortured adolescence without the shitty childhood. Congratulations!” And Chloe Sevigny says "What I love about Dear Diary is how strongly it resonates with all girls. We all went through a bitch phase that makes us cringe when we remember it. We tried being good; we tried being bad; we made other girls feel like shit before we knew what it felt like...It seems like the world is ending when you're 17 and in the middle of it, but looking back now I realize that's what adolescence is all about: making mistakes. And that's why I love Dear Diary." Monologue topics:  tweets, mail, alt-lit, Internet literature, Jord

A conversation with Megan Boyle, Mira Gonzalez, and a guy named Sam.  Recorded late at night on February 13th/14th, 2013.  Megan, Mira, and Sam were in Tao Lin's apartment in New York City.  (Tao was not there; he was out of the country at the time.) I was here in Los Angeles, in the home office.  Things got interesting.  Enjoy. -BL Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jordan Castro is the guest. He is the author of several books, and his latest is a poetry collection called Young Americans, available now from Civil Coping Mechanisms. Ben Brooks, author of Grow Up, says “I read these poems three times in one night, then put the duvet over my head and held my knees for a while. It’s good when something makes sense. I really really liked these poems.” And Chris Killen says “If you are a person who doesn’t really know what they are doing and you would like to read about another person who doesn’t really know what they are doing either, I recommend reading this poetry book. I enjoyed reading these poems. Or something.” Monologue topics:  Episode 150, premium bonus content, Megan Boyle, Mira Gonzalez, Sam, Skype, festive moods. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Terry Tempest Williams is the guest. She is the author of several books, including the environmental literature classic, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place. Her latest book is called When Women Were Birds: Fifty-Four Variations on Voice.  It was published in hardcover by Farrar, Straus, & Giroux in 2012, and the paperback edition is due out from Picador on February 26, 2013. Susan Salter Reynolds, writing for The Daily Beast, says "Williams is the kind of writer who makes a reader feel that [her] voice might also, one day, be heard….She cancels out isolation: Connections are woven as you sit in your chair reading---between you and the place you live, between you and other readers, you and the writer. Without knowing how it happened, your sense of home is deepened." And The San Francisco Chronicle raves "Williams displays a Whitmanesque embrace of the world and its contradictions....As the pages accumulate, her voice grows in majesty and power until it become a full-fledged aria." Monologue t

Michael Robbins is the guest. His debut poetry collection, Alien vs. Predator, was named one of the best books of 2012 by The New York Times, Slate, Commonweal, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and The Millions.  Dwight Garner of the The New York Times says "Mr. Robbins's heart is not lovely but beating a bit arrhythmically; not dark but lighted by a dangling disco ball; not deep but as shallow and alert as a tidal buoy facing down a tsunami. Yet it's a heart crammed full, like a goose's liver, with pagan grace. This man can write." And Sasha Frere-Jones says "You may notice the cultural references first -- Guns N' Roses, Eric B. & Rakim, Fleetwood Mac, M*A*S*H, Star Wars -- and be tempted to tie Robbins to these anchors. But there are as many contemporary references in Eliot and Pound and Horace as there are in Robbins: carbon-dating isn't what distinguishes these poems. Robbins works in traditional and nontraditional forms that pivot on the beat, which he turns around, seamlessly and ruthlessly. The thread here is a lon

Joyce Johnson is the guest. She is the author of several books, the most recent of which is called The Voice is All: The Lonely Victory of Jack Kerouac, available now from Viking.  Kirkus calls it “An exemplary biography of the Beat icon and his development as a writer…Johnson [turns] a laser-sharp focus on Kerouac’s evolving ideas about language, fiction vs. truth and the role of the writer in his time…there’s plenty of life in these pages to fascinate casual readers, and Johnson is a sensitive but admirably objective biographer.  A triumph of scholarship.” And Russell Banks says "This is quite simply the best book about Kerouac and one of the best accounts of any writer's apprenticeship that I have read. And it should generate a serious reconsideration of Kerouac as a classical, because hyphenated, American writer, one struggling to synthesize a doubled language, culture, and class. It's also a terrific read, a windstorm of a story."  Also in this episode:  Joshua Mohr, author of the novel Fight Song,

James Lasdun is the guest. He is the author of two novels, four collections of poetry, and two collections of short stories, including the collection The Siege, the title story of which was made into a film by Bernardo Bertolucci (Besieged). With Jonathan Nossiter he co-wrote the films Sunday, which won Best Feature and Best Screenplay awards at Sundance, and Signs and Wonders, starring Charlotte Rampling and Stellan Skarsgaard.  His new book, Give Me Everything You Have, is a memoir published by Farrar, Straus, & Giroux. J.M. Coetzee says “Give Me Everything You Have is a reminder, as if any were needed, of how easily, since the arrival of the Internet, our peace can be troubled and our good name besmirched.” And Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, says "Lasdun’s tale of being stalked is only part of the story—his disembodied, if mentally violent, encounters with 'Nasreen,' his stalker, lead him to reflect on topics as diverse as the seductive power of literature, like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Matthew Salesses is the guest. He is the author of two chapbooks, Our Island of Epidemics and We Will Take What We Can Get, and his new novel is called I'm Not Saying, I'm Just Saying, which is published by Civil Coping Mechanisms.  Matt Bell raves “In Matt Salesses’s smart novel-in-shorts, a newly-minted father flees telling his own story by any means necessary—by sarcasm, by denial, by playful and precise wordplay—rarely allowing space for his emerging feelings to linger. But the truth of who we might be is not so easily escaped, and it is in the accumulation of many such moments that our narrator, like us, is revealed: both the people we have been, and the better people we might be lucky enough to one day hope to become.” And Catherine Chung says “Matthew Salesses has written an extraordinary and startlingly original novel that explores connection and disconnection, the claims and limitations of the self, and the shifting terrain of truth. Poetic, unforgettable, shot through with fury and yearning, I’m

Andrea Seigel is the guest. She is the author of three novels: Like the Red Panda, To Feel Stuff, and The Kid Table. She's also an accomplished screenwriter. Chuck Klosterman says "If Helen Fielding had been born in 1979 and become a hyper-precocious Goth kid whose favorite book was Prozac Nation, she probably would have ended up writing exactly like Andrea Seigel.” And Bret Easton Ellis says "Andrea Seigel’s confidence— her intelligence and verve— lets her take risks that sweep the reader along.” Monologue topics: capturing the cultural moment, chasing clicks, whorishness, the Super Bowl, grief essays, trending, feeling sickened. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Teddy Wayne is the guest. He is the author of the novel Kapitoil (Harper Perennial), for which he was the winner of a 2011 Whiting Writers' Award. He has also been the recipient of a New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. His second novel, The Love Song of Jonny Valentine, is due out from Free Press on February 5, 2013. Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, calls it "Masterfully executed...the real accomplishment is the unforgettable voice of Jonny. If this impressive novel, both entertaining and tragically insightful, were a song, it would have a Michael Jackson beat with Morrissey lyrics." And Ben Fountain raves "The Love Song of Jonny Valentine takes us deep into the dark arts and even darker heart of mass-market celebrity, 21st-century version. In the near-pubescent hitmaker of the title, Teddy Wayne delivers a wild ride through the upper echelons of the entertainment machine as it ingests human beings at one end and spews out dollars at the other. Jonn

Richard Chiem is the guest. He is the author of You Private Person, a collection of short stories published by Scrambler Books. Blake Butler says "Richard Chiem's You Private Person is a bustling prism of a thing, full of passages that actually lead somewhere off of the paper. His words have brains that have bodies that wake you up in the way waking can be the best thing, like into a warm room full of good calm remembered things that feel both like relics and new inside the day. Here rings a wise and bravely sculpted book packed full of stunning thankful color." And Kate Zambreno says "Richard Chiem writes of all the weirdness and ooziness and tenderness of young love, with such lucid specificity. Like some beautiful film from the 70s, but also distinctly now. Because I also love how in this book he documents the tremors of contemporary existence, of living and working in a city, measuring days not in coffee spoons but in cigarettes and Simpsons episodes." Monologue topics: email, memes, Tony Danza. Learn

Kate Zambreno is the guest. She is the author of two novels, O Fallen Angel and Green Girl, and her latest book is a critical memoir called Heroines, now available from Semiotext(e).  The Paris Review raves "It should come as no surprise that her provocative new work, Heroines, published by Semiotext(e)'s Active Agents imprint... challenges easy categorization, this time by poetically swerving in and out of memoir, diary, fiction, literary history, criticism, and theory. With equal parts unabashed pathos and exceptional intelligence, Heroines foregrounds female subjectivity to produce an impressive and original work that examines the suppression of various female modernists in relation to Zambreno's own complicated position as a writer and a wife." And Bitch magazine calls it "A brave, enlightening, and brutally honest historical inquiry that will leave readers with an urgent desire to tell their own stories." Also in this episode:  A conversation with Ron Currie, Jr., whose new novel, Flimsy Little Plastic M

Rosie Schaap is the guest. She is a contributor to This American Life and npr.org, and she writes the monthly "Drink" column for The New York Times Magazine. Her memoir, Drinking With Men, will be published on January 24, 2013 by Riverhead Books. Kate Christensen raves "This book will be a classic. There is so much joy in this book! It’s a great, comforting, wonderful, funny, inspiring, moving memoir about community and belief and the immense redemptive powers of alcohol drunk properly." And Wendy McClure says "There are bar stories and there are coming-of-age stories. And then there is Rosie Schaap's thoughtful and funny chronicle that reminds us of all the drinks, dives, and deep conversations that helped make us who we are. This is a wise, engaging memoir." Monologue topics:  beautiful people, staring, Los Angeles, DNA masterpieces, hand signals, safety words.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

xTx is the guest. She is the author of the story collection Normally Special, and her new chapbook, Billie the Bull, has just been published by Nephew, an imprint of Mud Luscious Press. Says Dennis Cooper: “xTx is the complete young literary god. Billie the Bull is mind-bogglingly and intricately superb down to its tiniest punctuation marks. To me, she’s about as great as it can get. Seriously, I’m awestruck." Monologue topics:  my unit, my thing, this podcast, hybridized forms, navel-gazing, confusion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Panio Gianopoulos is the guest. He's the author of the novella A Familiar Beast, now available from Nouvella Books.  Jim Lynch, author of Truth Like the Sun, raves “A Familiar Beast is superb. Always engaging and often provocative, it follows the gut-tightening travails of a man hollowed by his own infidelities. With elegant prose, unforgettable scenes and Philip Roth-like psychological insights, Panio Gianopoulos’s debut novella marks the arrival of a bright and gifted writer.” And Adam Langer, author of The Thieves of Manhattan, says “Elegant, erudite and witty, this extremely well-observed and surprisingly suspenseful story offers more insights into love and human relationships than most authors manage in works three times as long.” Monologue topics:  mail, Facebook suicide, savage narcissism, Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Eli Horowitz is the guest. He was the managing editor and then publisher of McSweeney’s for eight years, where he worked closely with a variety of notable authors, including Michael Chabon, Joyce Carol Oates, and William Vollmann. His latest project is called The Silent History, a serialized novel designed for the iPad and iPhone. Wired magazine calls it "Entirely revolutionary." The New York Times calls it "One of the most talked-about new experiments [in publishing]." And The Los Angeles Times calls it “A landmark project that illuminates a possible future for e-book novels." Monologue topics: blood pressure, heart rate, Tweets. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Christine Schutt is today's guest.  She's the award-winning author of several books. Her first novel, Florida, was a National Book Award finalist, and her second novel, All Souls, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.  Her latest novel, Prosperous Friends, is now available from Grove Press. Sam Lipsyte raves "Prosperous Friends is masterful, a comic-tragic astonishment. Christine Schutt continues to write some of the most original and rewarding prose I've ever read." And Gary Lutz says “It is no longer a secret that Christine Schutt is the finest writer among us, and Prosperous Friends is her finest work yet. There isn't a corner in any of her sentences left ungraced by her lyrical genius, her heart-fathoming wisdom. A few pages in, you'll know you have a classic in your hands." Monologue topics:  New Year's resolutions, killing my Facebook account, purging, getting rid of things, newspapers, radios. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Brian Allen Carr is today's guest. He is the award-winning author of the story collection Short Bus, and his latest collection, Vampire Conditions, is now available from Holler Presents. Harrold Jaffe says "Vampire Conditions melds a precise Texas regional with gothic, recalling Flannery O'Connor, who wrote out of Georgia. But Carr's intricate narrative patterns, jump cuts and unanticipated segueshave a distinctly postmodern feel. Any way you cut it, Brian Allen Carr is a potently eccentric writer." And Robert Lopez raves "At turns dark and brutal and wickedly funny, Brian Allen Carr's Vampire Conditions will put you in mind of Hannah, Pancake, Powell. This book will grab you by the throat and knock the wind out of you, will make you want to drive south, raise hell, hide out, call home, tell your friends." Monologue topics:  dreams, childbirth, salad bars, fetuses, Christmas, doll houses, emasculation, 2012, passage of time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices