Otherppl with Brad Listi: Books & Culture

Latest Episodes:

Joyce Johnson on Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, the Beat Generation, Ecstatic Writing, and Québécois Culture Sep 15, 2023

Show notes

In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 147, my conversation with Joyce Johnson, author of the biography The Voice is All: The Lonely Victory of Jack Kerouac (Viking). This episode first aired on February 10, 2013.

Johnson is the author of eight books, including the award-winning memoir Minor Characters, Missing Men, and Door Wide Open: A Beat Love Affair in Letters, 1957-1958 (with Jack Kerouac). She lives in New York City.

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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, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, 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.

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How to Write an Anti-Hero Sep 13, 2023

Show notes

A new 'Craftwork' episode, all about anti-heroes. My guest is Tod Goldberg, author of the novel Gangsters Don't Die, available from Counterpoint Press.

Goldberg is the author of more than a dozen books, including Gangsterland, a finalist for the Hammett Prize; Gangster Nation; and The Low Desert: Gangster Stories, named a Southwest Book of the Year and a finalist for several literary prizes. He lives in Indio, California, where he directs the low-residency MFA in creative writing and writing for the performing arts at the University of California, Riverside.

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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, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, 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

864. Lauren Groff Sep 10, 2023

Show notes

Lauren Groff is the bestselling author of the novel The Vaster Wilds, available from Riverhead Books.

Groff is a three-time National Book Award finalist and the New York Times bestselling author of the novels The Monsters of Templeton, Arcadia, Fates and Furies, and Matrix, and the short story collections Delicate Edible Birds and Florida. She has won the Story Prize and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Groff 's work regularly appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and elsewhere.

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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, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, 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

Matt Sumell on Writing, Self-Editing, Billy Joel, Long Island, Family, Drinking, and Anxiety Sep 08, 2023

Show notes

In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 374, my conversation with Matt Sumell, author of the novel-in-stories Making Nice (Picador). It first aired on August 5, 2015.

Sumell is a graduate of UC Irvine's MFA program, and his fiction has since appeared in Esquire, the Paris Review, Electric Literature, One Story, Noon, and elsewhere. He lives in Los Angeles, California.

***

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, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, 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

863. Yiyun Li Sep 06, 2023

Show notes

Yiyun Li is the author of the story collection Wednesday's Child, available from Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

Li is the author of several works of fiction--The Book of Goose, Must I Go, Where Reasons End, Kinder Than Solitude, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, The Vagrants, and Gold Boy, Emerald Girl--and the memoir Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life. She is the recipient of many awards, including a PEN/Malamud Award, a PEN/Hemingway Award, a PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, a MacArthur Fellowship, and a Windham-Campbell Prize. Her work has also appeared in The New Yorker, A Public Space, The Best American Short Stories, and The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, among other publications. She teaches at Princeton University and lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

***

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, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, 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

862. Myriam Gurba Sep 03, 2023

Show notes

Myriam Gurba is the author of the essay collection Creep: Accusations and Confessions, available from Avid Reader Press.

Gurba is a writer and artist. She is the author of the true-crime memoir Mean, a New York Times Editors' Choice. O, the Oprah Magazine, ranked Mean as one of the best LGBTQ books of all time. Publishers Weekly describes Gurba as having a voice like no other. Her essays and criticism have appeared in The Paris Review, TIME.com, and 4Columns. She has shown art in galleries, museums, and community centers. She lives in California.

***

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, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, 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

Laura van den Berg on Boxing, Anxiety, Attention, Astrology, Vanity, and Writing in a Notebook Sep 01, 2023

Show notes

In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 546, my conversation with Laura van den Berg, author of five works of fiction. It first aired on October 10, 2018.

Laura van den Berg was born and raised in Florida. Her books include The Third Hotel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018), a finalist for the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, and I Hold a Wolf by the Ears (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020), which was one of Time Magazine’s 10 Best Fiction Books of 2020. She is the recent recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Strauss Livings Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, and a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her next two novels, Florida Diary and Ring of Night, are forthcoming from FSG.

***

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, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, 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 Be a Travel Writer Aug 30, 2023

Show notes

Maggie Downs is an award-winning journalist, travel writer, and the author of the memoirBraver Than You Think:Around the World on the Trip of My (Mother’s) Lifetime (Counterpoint Press). Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Palm Springs Life, and McSweeney's and has been anthologized in The Lonely Planet Travel Anthology: True Stories from the World's Best Writers and Best Women's Travel Writing. She lives in Yucca Valley, California.

***

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, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, 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

861. Rebekah Bergman Aug 27, 2023

Show notes

Rebekah Bergman is the author of the debut novel The Museum of Human History, available from Tin House. It is the official August pick of the Otherppl Book Club.

Bergman's fiction has been published in Joyland, Tin House, The Masters Review anthology, and other journals. She lives in Rhode Island with her family.

***

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, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, 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

Remembering Tom Hansen, 1961-2023 Aug 26, 2023

Show notes

Today, a special episode remembering the life and work of Tom Hansen, who died this week of esophageal cancer. Hansen was born in Seattle and raised by adoptive parents in nearby Edmonds, Washington. A failed skateboarder, dishwasher, and punk rock guitarist, he turned to shooting and dealing smack. He later kicked his habit, returned to school, and eventually earned an MFA in writing from the University of British Columbia. His books include the memoir American Junkie (Soft Skull Press) and the retro noir thriller This Is What We Do.

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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, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, 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.