Otherppl with Brad Listi: Books & Culture

Latest Episodes:

Min Jin Lee on Writing Slowly, Confidence, Rejections, 19th Century Social Novels, Outlining, Big Frank, Despondency, Neurotic Lawyering, Cirrhosis, and Mortality Apr 12, 2024

Show notes

In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 455, my conversation with author Min Jin Lee. The episode first aired on January 9, 2019.

Min Jin Lee is the author of the novels Free Food for Millionaires and Pachinko, a finalist for the National Book Award, and runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. In 2022, Lee received the Manhae Grand Prize for Literature, the Bucheon Diaspora Literary Award, and the Samsung Happiness for Tomorrow Award for Creativity from South Korea. She is the recipient of fellowships in Fiction from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Lee is an inductee of the New York Foundation for the Arts Hall of Fame and the New York State Writers Hall of Fame. In 2023, Lee served as the Editor of Best American Short Stories. She is a Writer-in-Residence at Amherst College. She is at work on her third novel, American Hagwon and a nonfiction work, Name Recognition.

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Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.

Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.

Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.

Support the show on Patreon

Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com

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How to Write Good Stories Apr 10, 2024

Show notes

A new 'Craftwork' episode, about how to write good stories. My guest is Steve Almond, author of a new book on writing called Truth is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow, available from Zando.

Almond is the author of a dozen books of fiction and nonfiction, including All The Secrets of The World and the New York Times bestsellers Candyfreak and Against Football. His essays and reviews have been published in venues ranging from the New York Times Magazine to Ploughshares to Poets & Writers, and his short fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, Best American Mysteries, and Best American Erotica.Almond is the recipient of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and co-hosted the Dear Sugars podcast with Cheryl Strayed for four years. He teaches at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism, and lives outside Boston with his family, his debt, and his anxiety.

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Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.

Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.

Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.

Support the show on Patreon

Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com

The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

912. Lydia Millet Apr 07, 2024

Show notes

Lydia Millet is the author of We Loved It All: A Memory of Life, available from W.W. Norton & Co.

Millet is the author of A Children's Bible, shortlisted for the National Book Award and a New York Times Top 10 book of 2020. Her many other works of fiction have won awards from PEN Center USA and the American Academy of Arts and Letters; the story collection Love in Infant Monkeys was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. She holds a master's degree in environmental economics and works at the Center for Biological Diversity.

***

Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.

Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.

Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.

Support the show on Patreon

Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com

The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tommy Pico on Touring, Performing, Alter Egos, Tricking Yourself, Poetry, Voice, Longform, Improv, Daily Writing Practice, Beyonce, Bird Songs, Purpose, and Building Community Apr 05, 2024

Show notes

In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 559, my conversation with poet, artist, and television writer Tommy Pico. The episode first aired on January 9, 2019.

Pico is a poet, artist, and tv writer. He is author of the books IRL, Nature Poem, Junk, and Feed, and he has written on the television shows Reservation Dogs, Resident Alien and Crystal Lake. Originally from the Viejas Indian reservation of the Kumeyaay nation, he now lives in Los Angeles where he makes abstract portraits with various kinds of wax, acrylics, watercolors, food coloring and India ink.

***

Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.

Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.

Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.

Support the show on Patreon

Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com

The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How to Get Somewhat Better at Art Apr 03, 2024

Show notes

A new 'Craftwork' episode, about how to get (somewhat) better at art. My guest is Nicholson Baker, author of Finding a Likeness: How I Got Somewhat Better at Art, available from Penguin Press.

Nicholson Baker has written seventeen books, including The Mezzanine, Vox, Human Smoke, The Anthologist, and Baseless--also an art book, The World on Sunday, in collaboration with his wife, Margaret Brentano. Several of his books have been New York Times bestsellers, and he has won a National Book Critics Circle Award, a James Madison Freedom of Information Award, a Guggenheim fellowship, and the Hermann Hesse Prize. Baker has two grown children; he and his wife live on the Penobscot River in Maine.

***

Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.

Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.

Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.

Support the show on Patreon

Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com

The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

911. Alexandra Tanner Mar 31, 2024

Show notes

Alexandra Tanner is the author of the debut novel Worry, available from Scribner.

Tanner is a Brooklyn-based writer and editor. She is a graduate of the MFA program at The New School and the recipient of fellowships from MacDowell and The Center for Fiction. Her writing appears in The New York Times Book Review, Gawker, and Jewish Currents, among other outlets. Worry is her first novel.

***

Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.

Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.

Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.

Support the show on Patreon

Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com

The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

John Keene on Ghost Books, Song Cave, Publishing, Reading Poetry, Delayed Gratification, Language, Meaning, Youth, Freedom, Identity, Memories, Stories, History, and Punks Mar 29, 2024

Show notes

In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 762, my conversation with author John Keene about his poetry collection Punks, which won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2022. The episode first aired on March 9, 2022.

Keene is a writer, translator, professor, and artist who was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2018. In 1989, Keene joined the Dark Room Writers Collective, and is a Graduate Fellow of the Cave Canem Writers Workshops. He is the author of Annotations, and Counternarratives, both published by New Directions, as well as several other works, including the poetry collection Seismosis, with artist Christopher Stackhouse, and a translation of Brazilian author Hilda Hilst's novel Letters from a Seducer. Keene is the recipient of many awards and fellowships--including the Windham-Campbell Prize, the Whiting Foundation Prize, the Republic of Consciousness Prize, and the American Book Award. He teaches at Rutgers University-Newark.

***

Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.

Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.

Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.

Support the show on Patreon

Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com

The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

910. Catherine Lacey Mar 27, 2024

Show notes

Catherine Lacey is the author of the novel Biography of X, available in trade paperback from Picador.

Lacey is the author of the novels Nobody Is Ever Missing, The Answers, and Pew, and of the short-story collection Certain American States. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. She has been a finalist for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and was named one of Granta's Best of Young American Novelists. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, The New York Times, The Believer, and elsewhere. Born in Mississippi, she is based in Chicago, Illinois.

***

Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.

Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.

Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.

Support the show on Patreon

Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com

The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

909. Rowan Beaird Mar 24, 2024

Show notes

Rowan Beaird is the author of the debut novel The Divorcées, available from Flatiron Books.

Beaird is a writer whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, and The Common, among others. She is the recipient of the Ploughshares Emerging Writer Award, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart. She has received scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and StoryStudio. She currently works at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The Divorcees is her first novel.

***

Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.

Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.

Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.

Support the show on Patreon

Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com

The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Stephen Graham Jones on Stephen King, Slasher Movies, Fear, Writing Fast, Being Physical, the Mechanics of a Joke, Dilating the Moment, Imaginary Safe Places, Screenwriting, Caffeine, and the Perfect Horror Novel Mar 22, 2024

Show notes

In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 666, my conversation with author Stephen Graham Jones. It first aired on August 16, 2020.

Stephen Graham Jones is the bestselling author of The Only Good Indians and My Heart Is a Chainsaw, among others. He has been the recipient of several awards including the Ray Bradbury Award from the Los Angeles Times, the Bram Stoker Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, just to name a few. He is a Professor of English at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

***

Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.

Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.

Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.

Support the show on Patreon

Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com

The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices