Skylight Books Podcast Series

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Mark Z. Danielewski, "THE LITTLE BLUE KITE" Nov 26, 2019

Show notes

We all have fears, but if we can’t face the small ones how will we face the big ones? Kai is afraid to fly a little blue kite. But Kai is also very, very brave, and overcoming this small fear will lead him on a great adventure. Remember: all great adventures start with one little moment. You know the one. It’s like a gentle breeze whispering in your ear what you already know by heart: not even the sky is the limit . . . The only other thing you might want to know about this book is that there are at least three ways to read it. The first way takes only a few minutes. Just follow the rainbow-colored words. The second takes only a little bit longer. Just follow the words haloed with blue and red and the rainbow words too. For the third way, just start at the beginning.

Addie Tsai, "DEAR TWIN" w/ C.B. Lee Nov 25, 2019

Show notes

Poppy wants to go to college like everyone else, but her father has other ideas. Ever since her mirror twin sister, Lola, mysteriously vanished, Poppy’s father has been depressed and forces her to stick around. She hopes she can convince Lola to come home, and perhaps also procure her freedom, by sending her twin a series of eighteen letters, one for each year of their lives. When not excavating childhood memories, Poppy is sneaking away with her girlfriend Juniper, the only person who understands her. But negotiating the complexities of queer love and childhood trauma are anything but simple. And as a twin? That’s a whole different story.

Dear Twin author Addie Tsai is in conversation with C.B. Lee, a Lambda Literary Award nominated writer of young adult science fiction and fantasy.

Jung Young Moon, "SEVEN SAMURAI SWEPT AWAY IN A RIVER" Nov 21, 2019

Show notes

In his inimitable, recursive, meditative style that reads like a comedic zen koan but contains universes, Seven Samurai Swept Away in a River recounts Korean cult writer Jung Young Moon’s time spent at an artists’ and writers’ residency in small-town Texas. Jung embraces the rambling landscape of Texas, two-stepping, cowboy hats and cowboy churches, antique stores and their an- tique owners, and transmutes them into the even more expansive space of his mind. The author plucks at each surprisingly elucidating concept over pages of reflection – moving seamlessly from chili recipe etiquette (with beans or without?) to the origins of Texas itself – and muses on his outsider experiences in this most unique of places. All the while, the author is asking what a novel is and must be, while accompanied by an invented mental cast of seven samurai who the author carries with him, silent companions in a pantomime of existential theater. Jung blends fact with imagination, humor with reflection, and meaning with meaninglessness, as his meanderings become an absorbing, quintessential novel of ideas.

Dan Goldman, "CHASING ECHOES" Nov 20, 2019

Show notes

Malka, the black sheep of her family, learns that her relatives are making a decades-in-the-planning pilgrimage to their grandfather's pre-Holocaust home in Poland...and she wasn't invited. After guilt-tripping herself a ticket as the self-appointed "Keeper of the Family Archives," it becomes clear that everyone's brought more baggage than just their suitcases.

Chasing Echoes is a heartfelt tale about dysfunctional family dynamics, the ghosts of war and what brings us back together.

Franny Howe, "LOVE AND I" w/ Martha Ronk Nov 19, 2019

Show notes

Set in transit even as they investigate the transitory, the cinematic poems in Love and I move like a handheld camera through the eternal, the minds of passengers, and the landscapes of Ireland and America. From this slight remove, Fanny Howe explores the edge of “pure seeing” and the worldly griefs she encounters there, cast in an otherworldly light. These poems layer pasture and tarmac, the skies above where airline passengers are compressed with their thoughts, and the ground where miseries accumulate, alongside comedies, in the figures of children in a park.

Love can do little but walk with the person and suddenly vanish, and that recurrent abandonment makes it necessary for these poems to find a balance between seeing and believing. For Howe, that balance is found in the Word, spoken in language, in music, in and on the wind, as invisible and continuous lyric thinking heard by the thinker alone. These are poems animated by belief and unbelief. Love and I fulfills Howe's philosophy of Bewilderment.

Howe is in conversation with Martha Ronk, author of 11 books of poetry and one book of short stories, Glass Grapes.

Liska Jacobs, "THE WORST KIND OF WANT" w/ Allie Rowbottom Nov 18, 2019

Show notes

To cool-headed, fastidious Pricilla Messing, Italy will be an escape, a brief glimpse of freedom from a life that's starting to feel like one long decline.

Rescued from the bedside of her difficult mother, forty-something Cilla finds herself called away to Rome to keep an eye on her wayward teenage niece, Hannah. But after years of caregiving, babysitting is the last thing Cilla wants to do. Instead she throws herself into Hannah's youthful, heedless world—drinking, dancing, smoking—relishing the heady atmosphere of the Italian summer. After years of feeling used up and overlooked, Cilla feels like she's coming back to life. But being so close to Hannah brings up complicated memories, making Cilla restless and increasingly reckless, and a dangerous flirtation with a teenage boy soon threatens to send her into a tailspin.

With the sharp-edged insight of Ottessa Moshfegh and the taut seduction of Patricia Highsmith, The Worst Kind of Want is a dark exploration of the inherent dangers of being a woman. In her unsettling follow-up to Catalina, Liska Jacobs again delivers hypnotic literary noir about a woman whose unruly desires and troubled past push her to the brink of disaster.

Jacobs is in conversation with Allie Rowbottom, author of Jell-O Girls.

THE SCIENCE OF POETRY: A READING Nov 14, 2019

Show notes

Six poets will read work that engages with scientific disciplines such as physics, mathematics, biology, and ecology. These readings will Involve the audience in a discussion of the embodied, material consequences of experimental engagements for both scientists and poets.

Josh Kun, "THE AUTOGRAPH BOOK OF L.A." Nov 13, 2019

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The autograph is the premise for a dream: maybe, just maybe, the autograph hunter will become the autograph hunted, maybe the autograph will double as a magical transfer of renown, and by receiving the signature, one day you will be signing your name when someone asks.

So surmises Josh Kun in the pages of The Autograph Book of L.A.: Improvements on the Page of the City, the third in his trilogy of books sponsored by the Library Foundation of Los Angeles and based on the Special Collections of the Los Angeles Public Library. But leave it to MacArthur Fellow and culture communicator par excellence Kun to take the concept of “autographs” beyond the mere signing of names in little forget-me-not books. He looks at Los Angeles, his hometown, and sees the stamp of other people who also call it home. Suddenly imagery, graffiti, and yes—hand-written names—become the signature of a new Los Angeles, far beyond the one envisioned by Charles Lummis, the city librarian who created the LAPL autograph collection by soliciting a cache of famous people’s signatures on the library’s own embossed stationery.

Alex Dimitrov, "ASTRO POETS" w/ Melissa Broder Nov 12, 2019

Show notes

Critically-acclaimed poets Alex Dimitrov (Sagittarius) and Dorothea Lasky (Aries) met at a party nearly a decade ago. There a lengthy conversation about their mutual love for astrology first planted the seed that would become @poetastrologers, a Twitter account they started for their own amusement. The Twitter went viral and now has almost 500,000 followers. These online phenoms now bring us the first great astrology primer of the 21st century, Astro Poets: Your Guides to the Zodiac.

With humor and insight, the Astro Poets are here to share astrology with everyone from the uninitiated to the firm believers, to help you see what's written in the stars and use it to navigate your friendships, your career, and your very complicated love life. The book opens with a general primer on astrology— which explains everything from what a rising sign actually is, to where each sign falls along the karmic wheel. The rest of the book is devoted to each sign in turn and mixes classic components from the Linda Goodman playbook (“Pisces as a Lover”) with some fresher takes (“Texting with an Aquarius”). The references are equal parts high (Emily Dickinson) and low (Drake).

If you’ve ever wondered why your Gemini friend won't let you get a word in edge-wise at drinks, you've come to the right place. When will that Scorpio texting “u up?” at 2AM finally take the next step in your relationship? (Hint: they won’t.) What makes Andy Warhol a textbook Leo, or Beyoncé the ultimate example of a Virgo? Start with the chapter on your own sun sign, then move on to the signs of your partner, your children, your co-workers, your mortal enemy. You’ll walk away understanding them, and yourself, a little better.

Dimitrov will be in conversation with Melissa Broder author of the essay collection So Sad Today and four poetry collections.

Jonathan Blum, "THE USUAL UNCERTAINTIES" Nov 11, 2019

Show notes

The Usual Uncertainties—Jonathan Blum's highly anticipated first collection—is storytelling at its finest. In precise, elegant prose, these stories follow characters and communities often consigned to the edge of the frame: a community college dropout, a geriatric care manager, a square dance bar mitzvah, a Scrabble club, an entrepreneurial Thai immigrant, and a South Florida country club. With echoes of Leonard Michaels, Mavis Gallant, and Lore Segal, Blum explores the ways our divergent histories tether us together and at times push us completely apart. The Usual Uncertainties revels in the persistent human struggle to love with abandon and marks a radiant voice in American short fiction.

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