Other People with Brad Listi

Steve Roggenbuck is the guest. He is a traveling poet-slash-blogger whose latest poetry collection, CRUNK JUICE, is now available from Lief Books. He also hosts a weekly, web-based television show called THE ILLUMINATI POWER HOUR, which is available via Spreecast. Says HTML Giant: "The internet helped to make this possible. Roggenbuck now has readers/fans/online friends all over the U.S. and in countries around the world. Perhaps most notably, many have made direct personal contact with him via email or Facebook. The poet is present, interacting directly with people, and they are responding back directly." Topics of conversation include: Brooklyn, traveling, San Francisco, nomadic existence, Michigan, farming, winters, New York City, Lower Peninsula, Lake Huron, Harbor Beach, helium balloons, pooping in a bag, baseball, Donald Hall, BMX, death metal, MySpace, drumming, building community, bro friendships, veganism, the internet, blogging, poetry, flarf, MFA, dropping out, Chicago, making decisions, Buddha, Lil B, Walt Whitman, appreciating lief, Ralph Waldo Emerson, self-promotion, macros, collaging, search results, condescension, comments sections, shit-talking, active vs. passive, Facebook, Peter Orlovsky, Allen Ginsberg, e.e. cummings, LOLcats, jokes, misspelling, love, Tao Lin, truely, alt-lit, Hipster Runoff, Pop Serial, Stephen Tully Dierks, HTML Giant, Muumuu House, Frank Hinton, straight edge, drugs, videos, inspiration, improvisation, boosting, relationships, and girlfriends. Monologue topics: dinosaurs, sea creatures, birds, meteors, restaurants, marriage, the speed of life, the immediacy of death, dreams, salads.

Maria Semple is today's guest. For years she worked in television, writing for shows like Mad About You and Arrested Development. Then, in 2008, she published her debut novel, THIS ONE IS MINE. Her follow-up effort, a novel called WHERE'D YOU GO, BERNADETTE, has just been published by Little, Brown. [Official pub date: 08/14/12] It was the July selection for the TNB Book Club. Jonathan Franzen raves "The characters in WHERE'D YOU GO, BERNADETTE may be in real emotional pain, but Semple has the wit and perspective and imagination to make their story hilarious. I tore through this book with heedless pleasure." And Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, says "Semple pieces together a modern-day comic caper full of heart and ingenuity....a compelling composite of a woman's life-and the way she's viewed by the many people who share it. As expected from a writer who has written episodes of Arrested Development, the nuances of mundane interactions are brilliantly captured, and the overarching mystery deepens with each page, until the thoroughly satisfying dénouement." Topics of conversation include: Antarctica, seasickness, Drake Passage, National Geographic, Ernest Shackleton, icebreakers, Neil Armstrong, the moon, research, rare human experiences, South Pole, oxygen, Werner Herzog, Palmer Station, McMurdo, Seattle, isolation, intensity, caffeine, self-pity, not liking everyone, Los Angeles, television, weather, Arrested Development, Batman, satire, social anxiety, the annoying stuff of life, anger, epistolary fiction, Microsoft, ballet, TED Conference, 1980s, 90210, comedy, Saturday Night Live, Mad About You, Arrested Development, Ellen, joke writing, work ethic, pain, necessity, identity, and not forcing it. Monologue topics: averted crisis, TNB Book Club, iTunes, ratings, reviews, groveling.

Karl Taro Greenfeld is the guest. He's a journalist who has written for The Nation, Time magazine, and Sports Illustrated. And he's the author of six books, the most recent of which is a novel called TRIBURBIA, now available from Harper. Booklist, in a starred review, raves: "Compelling. . . . Greenfeld brilliantly illuminates the pecking order and power plays behind the smug façade of this fashionable urban fortress . . . A surprising, involving, and strikingly perceptive tale of social and personal metamorphoses." And Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, calls it "An absorbing first novel. . . . Greenfeld wields his critiques, humor, and observations to create a compelling little universe." Topics of conversation include: journalism, Tokyo, Japan, China, Asia, Time magazine, fiction, Stephen Glass, issues of state, the internet, Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, chronology, manipulation, blogosphere, standards of veracity, James Frey, memoir, autism, memory, truth, newspapers, Tokyo Journal, youth culture, criminals, pop culture, motorcycle gangs, porn stars, pitching, faxing, Yakuza, Goodfellas, embellishment, British magazines, MTV, profiles, ideas pieces, Hunter Thompson, Ryszard Kapuscinski, Bruce Chatwin, William Vollman, drugs, pharmacies, opiates, meth, rehab, Standard Deviations, priorities, subconscious, getting people to read, luck, obligation, guilt, New York City, Tribeca, networking, exposition, efficiency, entertaining, informing, pacing, showing vs. telling, independent presses, MFAs, The Paris Review, The Kenyon Review, New York Tyrant, Hobart, writer's block, failure of will, HTML Giant, and the culture of literary writing in America. Monologue topics: suspicious moles, dread, low-level panic, Googling disease, skin cancer, death.

Lidia Yuknavitch is today's guest. She's the author of several books, including the critically acclaimed memoir THE CHRONOLOGY OF WATER, and now she has published her debut novel, called DORA: A HEADCASE. Both titles are available from Hawthorne Books. Chuck Palahniuk raves "In DORA, [Lidia Yuknavitch] takes the most classic model of Thera-tainment, personal-crisis-as-content, and she re-imagines it wonderfully reversed. The world of Dora is not just possible, it’s inevitable. It’s revenge as the ultimate therapy." And Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, says "...equal parts acid-tongued coming-of-age story and feminist retelling of Freud’s most famous case study...Yuknavitch nails the whip-smart angst of a teenage girl trapped in a world both familiar and unique, and her ease with language makes her a prose stylist to envy." Topics of conversation include: dioramas, writing rooms, midnight blue, Portland Oregon, the fear that accompanies publication, books as children, motherhood, traditional feelings, appendages, drawing, swimming, eating paper, the psychosis of grief, journaling, gibberish, losing a child, alienation, going underwater, Carl Jung, logic, reason, addiction, weightlessness, tension relief, competition, the eye of the tiger, shaming, abuse, sleep, discipline, incessant thought, courage, honesty, The Algonquin Round Table of Portland Oregon, Chuck Palahniuk, Cheryl Strayed, Monica Drake, Chelsea Cain, Skull & Bones, Carl's Jr., birdwatching binoculars, workshop, editorial skill, drama, France, travel, life as a novel, the next thing, commercial publishers, indie presses, Gertrude Stein, sexual acronyms, and Joan of Arc. Monologue topics: movement, multitasking, listening, Segways, FDR, fireside chats, the age of radio, focused attention, mail from listeners, and sitting Indian-style.

Patrick Wensink is today's guest. His latest novel, BROKEN PIANO FOR PRESIDENT, is now available from Lazy Fascist Press. It recently incited an unusually kind cease-and-desist letter from Jack Daniel's, Inc. Publishers Weekly calls it "[A] psychedelic trip of a novel." And the Louisville Courier-Journal describes it as "A D.I.Y. Frankenstein's monster that uses parts pulled off Kurt Vonnegut and David Cronenberg, drunkenly stitched together while a Stooges bootleg plays at 110 decibels." Topics of conversation include: cease-and-desist letters, Jack Daniel's, law, trademark, copyright, publicity, Boing-Boing, Forbes, Esquire, NPR,Weekend Edition, Yahoo News, serendipity, Amazon rankings, bestsellers, 15 minutes of fame, Everything Was Great Until It Sucked, Christy Susman, Ohio, small town, Midwestern childhood boredom, creating your own fun, Guided by Voices, Dayton, football, Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Catholicism, climate change, humor, cutting shit out of your book, highbrow vs. lowbrow, Stephen King, education, music writing, journalism, hate reactions, Portland Oregon, Louisville Kentucky, cost of living, stay-at-home fatherhood, readings, improv, bombing, hip grandmas, tweeting at famous people, and Jenna Jameson's asshole. Monologue topics: publicity, marketing, accidents, tidal waves, and subtler forces operating somewhere beyond the level of human endeavor.

Sheila Heti is today's guest. She is the Interviews Editor at The Believer magazine, and her new novel, HOW SHOULD A PERSON BE?, is now available in the United States from Henry Holt. Miranda July raves: "A new kind of book and new kind of person. A book that risks everything—shatters every rule we women try to follow in order to be taken seriously—and thus is nothing less than groundbreaking: in form, sexually, relationally and as a major literary work. With this complex, artfully messy and hilarious novel, Heti has done the rare and generous thing of creating more room for the rest of us. This is how a person should be." And Margaret Atwood calls it "A seriously strange but funny plunge into the quest for authenticity." Topics of conversation include: style, meaning, the question why?, process, direction, narrative, uncertainty, money, Reality Hunger, self-help, addressing the reader's life directly, sex writing, fact vs. fiction, Internet porn, Henry Miller, Marquis de Sade, Lorin Stein, Ticknor, patience, Yaddo, revision, original drafts, over-tweaking, James Wood, The New Yorker, photo shoots, New York City, Gideon Lewis-Kraus, Ben Lerner, Leaving the Atocha Station, gender, reviews, Tennessee Williams, Who's Who?, Googling, rebuttals, The Hills, Andrew Perry, Los Angeles, Antonioni, Samuel Beckett, childbirth, Toronto, theater, acting, authority, questioning, embarrassment, hearing from readers, Stanley Kubrick, Paul Thomas Anderson, McSweeney's, working, book tour, and film and television. Monologue topics: the Olympics, world class athletes, foot speed, Usain Bolt, and sprinting through shopping malls.

Christopher Beha is the guest. He's an associate editor at Harper's magazine and the author of the debut novel WHAT HAPPENED TO SOPHIE WILDER, now available from Tin House Books. Raves Shelf Awareness: "Christopher Beha's short but intricately constructed first novel tells the story of two young writers struggling to discover their personal and professional identities, but it's not another excursion through the world of New York's literati. Instead, WHAT HAPPENED TO SOPHIE WILDER is a somber character study focused on the problem of human suffering, the nature of religious belief and the acceptance of moral responsibility." And William Giraldi, author of 'Busy Monsters,' says "WHAT HAPPENED TO SOPHIE WILDER is an imperishable gift of storytelling, a novel built sturdily of wisdom, beauty, and love. Christopher R. Beha writes with Jamesian sophistication about the enduring enigma of our inner lives, and the result is a title character who will dwell in you always." Topics of conversation include: breakfast, focus, hunger, dreams, isolation, writing longhand, email, Twitter, speed, e-readers, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, internal debates, the canon, reading, the Harvard Classics, The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, great books, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, new vs. old, Plato, knowledge, physics, Newton, Einstein, mystery, breakthroughs, humility, lymphoma, foxholes, Princeton, Lyme Disease, Catholicism, atheism, Bertrand Russell, God, dualism, Marilynne Robinson, memoir vs. fiction, suffering, perspective, discovery, New York writers, ego, mood swings, The Beats, Jack Kerouac, writing better than you are, Upper East Side, family, twins, cars, urban childhoods, Long Island, nostalgia, Brooklyn, Dharma Bums, chemotherapy, stoicism, plans, and Joyce Carol Oates. Monologue topics: attention, procrastination, frustration, concentrating like a laser on the task at hand, progress, creative output, and my dad.

Jess Walter is the guest. He's a National Book Award nominee and the author of several novels, the most recent of which is called BEAUTIFUL RUINS, now available from Harper. Helen Schulman, writing for the New York Times Book Review, calls it "A high-wire feat of bravura storytelling ... You’re going to love this book … The surprising and witty novel of social criticism that flows away from its lush, romantic opening offers so much more than just entertainment ... stirs the heart and amuses as it also rescues us from the all too human pain that is the motor of this complex and ever-evolving novel … Walter is a talented and original writer." And Steve Almond, writing for The Boston Globe, says "Weds the grand dramatic impulses of the cinematic blockbuster to the psychological interiority of high literary art. The result is a page-turner that doubles as an elegant meditation on fame, desire, duty, and fate ... Walter has planted himself firmly in the first rank of American authors. He has crafted a novel with pathos, piercing wit and, most important, the generous soul of a literary classic … BEAUTIFUL RUINS will endure." And Richard Russo, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, says "Why mince words? BEAUTIFUL RUINS is an absolute masterpiece." Topics of conversation include: Los Angeles, Hollywood, screenwriting, storytelling, movies, romance, brand management, profanity, Edgar Award, pigeonholing, Twitter, shame, fear, respect, Don DeLillo, music, neural pathways, Loverboy, David Bowie, National Book Award, reading, judging, great vs. good, simplicity, emotion, efficiency, Marilynne Robinson, Aleksandar Hemon, polar exploration, Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions, basketball, self-education, Anna Karenina, not finishing, Ruby Ridge, journalism, discipline, chops, ghostwriting, 9/11, Bernard Kerik, blue collar work ethic, confidence, external validation, reviews, concentration, dissolution, frustration, darkness, the popping of vanities, humor, Iraq War, Spokane, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, writing routines, topical fiction, McSweeney's, and generational poverty. Monologue topics: Carl Sagan, motes of dust, sunbeams, infinity, smallness, insignificance, and maintaining one's sense of humor.

Christopher Narozny is the guest. His debut novel, JONAH MAN, is now available from Ig Publishing. Raves Patrick DeWitt, author of The Sisters Brothers: "Jonah Man is a vivid and unsettling portrait of naked American ambition, and Chris Narozny is a nimble and unflinching writer." And Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, says "A classic whodunit ripe with spare, snappy prose and riddled with period language, this is one show-stopper that deserves a standing ovation." Topics of conversation include: Denver, Boulder, mountains, New York, Brooklyn, Queens, sports, eyesight, shyness, New Jersey, confidence, karate, France, French, male nannying, Paris, closed societies, corporate moves, PhDs, Syracuse, University of Denver, teaching, web classes, Brian Evenson, dynamic spaces, workshops, New Jersey, Marx Brothers, vaudeville, staying up late, comparing, despairing, class badasses, the canon, Harold Bloom, books you haven't read, Paul Bowles, James Baldwin, patience, empathy, judgment, readings, Q&As, Dashiell Hammett, attention span, dialogue, John Banville, Georges Simenon, speed, interiority, Max Frisch, and Javier Marías. Monologue topics: international listeners, 800 words, caffeine, advancing the process, lightly perspiring, songs about caffeine.

Scott McClanahan is the guest. He is the author of several books, the latest of which is called THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SCOTT MCCLANAHAN, VOL. 1, now available from Lazy Fascist Press. Volume I Brooklyn raves: "He might be one of the great southern storytellers of our time." And Donald Ray Pollock says "Scott McClanahan is a powerful, exceptional writer, and the overall effect of reading his deceptively simple stories is like getting hit in the head by a champion cage fighter cranked up on meth that was cooked in a trailer without running water in some Kentucky backwoods where people sing murder ballads to their children to put them to sleep." Topics of conversation include: West Virginia, Beckley, Rainelle, continental, double-wide, coal mining, New River, regional values, teaching, nursing, The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia, drugs, pharmaceutical, Mad Dog 40/40, accent, geography, Columbus Indiana, Fayette County, Scotch-Irish, moonshiners, Flynt Michigan, Kroger's, produce managers, Occupy Wall Street, unions, benefits, ex-convicts, Mother Jones, mortality, stupidity, apprentice years, compulsive writing, Finnegan's Wake, Merle Haggard, James Joyce, No One Here Gets Out Alive, The Doors, Louis Ferdinand Céline, Samuel Beckett, word games, James Ellroy, Nick Tosches, obscurity, unawareness, The Autobiography of Chuck Berry, Greil Marcus, low comedy, Setonius, The Diary of Samuel Pepys, only children, Mountain Dew, choking, family, John Waters, literary journals, the Internet, Civil War memoirs, Cormac McCarthy, Jane Austen, bourgeois art, radical life, Oscar Wilde, finding out about stuff, and publication schedules. Monologue topics: hangovers, fatigue, professional athletes and entertainers, ESPYs, comparing, despairing, and 2 percent body fat. This episode of Other People is brought to you by THE BEAUTIFUL ANTHOLOGY, edited by Elizabeth Collins, now available from TNB Books, the official independent press of The Nervous Breakdown. Get it wherever books are sold online.

Alexis Smith is today's guest. Her debut novel, GLACIERS, is now available from Tin House Books. Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, calls it "...lyrical and luminous..." And Karen Russell, bestselling author of SWAMPLANDIA!, raves "GLACIERS, Alexis Smith’s brilliant debut novel, is filled with kaleidoscopic pleasures. Using prose as clear as pure, cold air, Smith moves the narrative vertically as well as horizontally, each ticking minute yielding more insights into a young woman’s life revealed over one single day. The past, present, and imaginary future stream into beautifully unstable geometries: Isabel's childhood snows from her youth in Alaska are juxtaposed against her adult trip to a vintage thrift store; her hopes for an evening party push against the echoes of war that haunt a young soldier whom she loves. Line by line, in and out of time, this is a haunted, joyful, beautiful book--a true gift." Topics of conversation include: Portland Oregon, rent, smelting, China, St. John's, Williamsburg, parenthood, Powell's, food, hazelnuts, credit cards, Alaska, health benefits, sick leave, unions, single motherhood, divorce, risk, panic, bills, taxes, discipline, focus, guilt, legacy, nature, Sarah Palin, pollution, Kenai, Anchorage, Seattle, forests, moose, grizzly bears, body hair, riot girls, zines, pedicures, metrosexuality, Bikini Kill, grad school, Goddard College, rituals, creative immersion, and Tin House Books. Monologue topics: 100 episodes, life coaches, strategy, publicity, marketing, brands, brand revulsion, self-promotion, self-loathing. This episode of Other People is brought to you by NINE MONTHS, the debut novel by Paula Bomer, due out from Soho Press on August 21, 2012. Visit www.sohopress.com to learn more about the debut literary novel Susan Henderson calls quote "A page-turner that will tie your stomach in knots and stir up one hell of a debate."

Seth Greenland is the guest. He's the author of three novels, the most recent of which is THE ANGRY BUDDHIST, now available from Europa Editions. The New York Times calls it: '...a fine, high-end beach read for this election season...' And Larry David raves: 'THE ANGRY BUDDHIST is a great novel. It's satirical, it's political, it's sexual. All the things that I love dearly. Finally, something to come home to.' So great to have Seth on the program. Topics of conversation include: anger, Buddhism, age, mindfulness, meditation, loss, death, attachment, emotions, breathing, sitting, prayer, concentration, writing, the Internet, discipline, satire, luck, cancer, Zen, fear, fearlessness, perspective, friends, small talk, politics, America, cycles, children, Scarsdale, scars, underachievers, Connecticut College, NYU Film School, journalism, Jim Jarmusch, Spike Lee, Coen Brothers, Living in Oblivion, Tom DiCillo, 1970s, Lower East Side, CBGB, The Ramones, Matthew Brady, Permanent Vacation, Wallace Shawn, punk, New Wave, Paris, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, New York City, Roaring Twenties, The Basketball Diaries, talent, Tom Waits, screenwriting, television, Cheers, email, teaching, Larry David, blurbs, authenticity, and Nick Hornby. Monologue topics: plot issues, unresolved tension, Fourth of July, holidays, rhythms, gift opening, performance stress. This episode of Other People is brought to you by the UCLA Extension Writers' Program, the largest open-enrollment creative writing and screenwriting program in the nation. For more info, please visit www.uclaextension.edu/writers.

Elizabeth Collins is today's guest. She's the editor of THE BEAUTIFUL ANTHOLOGY, a collection of essays, stories, and poems from TNB Books, all of which are centered on the topic of beauty. She's also the author of a memoir called TOO COOL FOR SCHOOL, available later this year from HBH Press. Diana Spechler, author of WHO BY FIRE and SKINNY, has this to say about THE BEAUTIFUL ANTHOLOGY: "Subverting time-worn clichés about beauty, this book delivers a fresh exploration of everything from body art and big noses to musical 'perfection' and misguided parenting." And Marion Winik, author of THE GLEN ROCK BOOK OF THE DEAD, says THE BEAUTIFUL ANTHOLOGY is two dozen flowers pulled from a magician's hat. the magic is how each essayist and poet takes a big messy concept like beauty and combines it with the intimate materials of his or her life to make something lovely and new. Topics of conversation include: beauty, gender, supermodels, dimensions, plastic surgery, jowls, adolescence, bad breath, paranoia, self-consciousness, Kate Moss, George Clooney, self-concept, ranking your own beauty, honesty, brutality, time, aging, reality, Facebook, judgment, internal vs. external, Madison, New Jersey, New York City, publishing, reading, potential, teaching, tutoring, SATs, home, Philadelphia, Tina Fey, success, failure, only children, adoption, CIA, Iowa Writers Workshop, horses, snakes, finance, day-trading, investing, college applications, Sarah Lawrence, stress, Lynchburg, children, astrology, numerology, publishing, jobs, tone, blogging, competition, dismay, parental rage, wrongful termination, memoir, and learning. Monologue topics: The Beautiful Anthology, beauty, books, The Nervous Breakdown, and independent presses. This episode of Other People is brought to you by M.P. Publishing. Be sure to check out GROWING UP DEAD IN TEXAS, by Stephen Graham Jones, now available wherever books are sold. And then there's AMERICAN DECAMERON, by Mark Dunn, due out on October 16th. For more information, please be sure to visit mppublishingusa.com.

Joshua Henkin is the guest. He is the author of several books, the most recent of which is a novel called THE WORLD WITHOUT YOU, now available from Pantheon. Kirkus, in a starred review, raves: "When conventionalists claim, 'They don't write novels like that anymore,' this is the sort of novel they mean. Yet the very familiarity and durability of the setup suggests that the traditional novel remains very much alive and healthy as well, if the narrative momentum and depth of character here are proof of vitality. . . . A novel that satisfies all expectations." And Commentary magazine raves: "Few American novelists, living or dead, have ever been as good as Henkin at drawing people." Topics of conversation include: New York City, moving, Jerusalem, Boston, Berkeley, Ann Arbor, Brooklyn, teaching, Sarah Lawrence, Columbia, Morningside Heights, the Sixties, idealism, suburbs, Los Angeles, parenting, education, Orthodox Judaism, writing workshops, autobiography, invention, truth, stories, time, compression, character, discipline, work ethic, editing, analytical thinking, quality, will, loss, grief, divorce, family, politics in fiction, book clubs, likeable characters, war, luck, reviews, and pressing on. Monologue topics: my desk, work, the creative process, the Internet, distractions, Ralph Steadman, Google, Wittgenstein, unexpected insight and enjoyment. This episode of Other People is brought to you by the UCLA Extension Writers' Program, the largest open-enrollment creative writing and screenwriting program in the nation. For more info, please visit www.uclaextension.edu/writers.

Jürgen Fauth is today's guest. He's a co-founder of the popular online literary community Fictionaut.com, and his debut novel, KINO, is now available from Atticus Books. Levi Asher at LitKicks raves: "What glorious chaos! KINO by Jürgen Fauth is the most enjoyable book I’ve read this year. It’s a wild, caroming romp that crashes into German history, Nazi mind control, American pop culture decadence, and modern cinema snobbery. The crazy plot soars from beginning to end." And David Gutowski, aka Largehearted Boy, calls it "A masterfully and innovatively told literary thriller." Topics of conversation include: Wiesbaden Germany, Mainz, Mississippi College, New Orleans, translation, Dominican Republic, spa towns, MFAs, psychotherapy, Thomas Mann, transcendental meditation, David Lynch, Catching the Big Fish, natural stress relief, focus, discipline, Maharishi, writing everyday, Berlin, health care, paying taxes, small town vs. big town, Dostoyevsky, thermal baths, the Third Reich, German history, nationalism, sociopolitical awareness, patriotism, computer programming, Fictionaut, monetizing, Fritz Lang, German cinema, Billy Wilder, Weimar Republic, Nazis, subversion, propaganda, Leni Riefenstahl, operettas, Le Corbeau, Joseph Goebbels, Titanic, immigration, dual citizenship, the role of the artist, courage, and living with uncertainty. Monologue topics: expressiveness, control, relinquishing control, fear, the origins of the podcast, genuine human enthusiasm, and artists who are the least encumbered, with unconventional ambitions and a strangely unscripted quality. This episode of Other People is brought to you by Audible.com. And here's a special offer: Right now, listeners of this program can get a FREE audiobook download and a free 30-day trial. To get your free audiobook, please visit www.audiblepodcast.com/otherpeople.