916. Helen Tworkov

In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 708, my conversation with author and comedian Sam Tallent. It first aired on May 26, 2021. Tallent is a comedian, novelist and host of the Chubby Behemoth Podcast. For the last decade, he has performed more than 45 weekends per year in North America, Asia, Australia and Europe. His writing has appeared in Birdy Magazine and on VICE.com and he’s told jokes on Comedy Central, TruTV and VICELAND. His acclaimed debut novel, Running the Light, heralded as the definitive book on standup comedy, is soon to be a major motion picture (Doug Stanhope: “the best fictional representation of comedy in any medium ever,” Marc Maron: “a beautiful rendering of a dark reality”). His novella, ATTABOY, was published as an Audible Original. "Waiting for Death to Claim Us," his comedy special, is available on Amazon Prime. He lives in Colorado. *** 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 Merch @otherppl Instagram  TikTok 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

Carvell Wallace is the author of the debut memoir Another Word for Love, available from MCD Books. Wallace grew up between Southwestern PA, Washington DC, and Los Angeles. He attended Tisch School for the Arts and worked as a stage actor before spending fifteen years in direct service youth non-profits. He has covered arts, entertainment, music, culture, race, sports, and parenting for The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Slate, GQ, Pitchfork, MTV News and others. As a podcast host, he has been nominated for a Peabody and won a Kaleidoscope Award and was the Slate parenting advice columnist. He is the co-author of the New York Times best-selling basketball memoir The Sixth Man with Andre Iguodala. He lives in Oakland and has two adult children, a comfortable couch, and a lot of plants. *** 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 Merch Twitter Instagram  TikTok Bluesky 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

A new 'Craftwork' episode entitled 'The Life of a Bookseller.' My guest is Paul Yamazaki, principal book buyer for City Lights Bookstore. His new book is called Reading the Room: A Bookseller's Tale, available from Ode Books. Yamazaki has been the principal buyer at City Lights Booksellers, the legendary San Francisco bookstore and publisher founded by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter Martin, for more than fifty years. A champion for national and global literature, writers, publishers, and independent bookstores, Yamazaki was the recipient of the National Book Foundation's 2023 Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community. He has mentored generations of booksellers across America. Rick Simonsonhas worked at Seattle's Elliott Bay Book Company, one of the US's leading independent bookstores, since 1976. He is Elliott Bay's senior buyer and founded their internationally renowned author reading program forty years ago. He presently serves on the governing boards of Copper Canyon Press, the University of Washington Press, and UNESCO Seattle City of Literature. *** 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 Merch Twitter Instagram  TikTok Bluesky 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

In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 626, my conversation with author Garth Greenwell. The episode first aired on February 26, 2020. Greenwell is the author of What Belongs to You, which won the British Book Award for Debut of the Year, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was a finalist for six other awards, including the PEN/Faulkner Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, it was named a Best Book of 2016 by over fifty publications in nine countries, and is being translated into fourteen languages. His second book of fiction, Cleanness, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and was longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize, the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, the L.D. and LaVerne Harrell Clark Fiction Prize, and France’s Prix Sade (Deuxième sélection). Cleanness was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2020, a New York Times Critics Top 10 book of the year, and a Best Book of the year by the New Yorker, TIME, NPR, the BBC, and over thirty other publications. It is being translated into eight languages. A new novel, Small Rain, is forthcoming from FSG in 2024. Greenwell is also the co-editor, with R.O. Kwon, of the anthology KINK, which appeared in February 2021, was named a New York Times Notable Book, won the inaugural Joy Award from the #MarginsBookstore Collective, and became a national bestseller. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, A Public Space, and VICE, and he has written nonfiction for The New Yorker, the London Review of Books, and Harper’s, among others. He writes regularly about literature, film, art and music for his Substack, To a Green Thought. He is the recipient of many honors for his work, including a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship and the 2021 Vursell Award for prose style from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has taught at the Iowa Writers Workshop, Grinnell College, the University of Mississippi, and Princeton. Greenwell currently lives in New York, where he is a Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at NYU. *** 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 Merch @otherppl Instagram  TikTok 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

Hanif Abdurraqib is the bestselling author of the memoir There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension, available from Random House. Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio, and the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation "Genius" grant. His most recent book, A Little Devil in America, was the winner of the Carnegie Medal and the Gordon Burns Prize and a finalist for the National Book Award. His first collection of essays, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, was named one of the books of the year by NPR, Esquire, BuzzFeed, O: The Oprah Magazine, Pitchfork, and Chicago Tribune, among others. Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest was a New York Times bestseller and a National Book Critics Circle Award and Kirkus Prize finalist and was longlisted for the National Book Award. He is a graduate of Beechcroft High School. *** 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 Merch Twitter Instagram  TikTok Bluesky 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

Helen Tworkov is the author of the debut memoir Lotus Girl, available from St. Martin's Essentials. Tworkov is founding editor of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, the first and only independent Buddhist magazine, and author of Zen in America: Profiles of Five Teachers (North Point Press; 1989). She first encountered Buddhism in Asia in the 1960s and has studied in both the Zen and Tibetan traditions. Since 2006 she has been a student of the Kagyu and Nyingma Tibetan master Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, and has assisted him in the writing of In Love With The World: A Monk's Journey Through the Bardos of Living and Dying (Spiegel and Grau; 2019) and Turning Confusion into Clarity: A Guide to the Foundation Practices of Tibetan Buddhism (Shambhala Publications; 2014). *** 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 Merch Twitter Instagram  TikTok Bluesky 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

In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 732, my conversation with author Alexandra Kleeman. The episode first aired on October 13, 2021. Kleeman is the author of the novel Something New Under the Sun (Hogarth Press). Her other books include the story collection Intimations and the debutnovel You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine, which was a New York Times Editor's Choice. Her fiction has been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Zoetrope, Conjunctions, and Guernica, among other publications, and her other writing has appeared in Harper's, The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, Tin House, n+1, and The Guardian. Her work has received fellowships and support from Bread Loaf, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Headlands Center for the Arts. She is the winner of the Berlin Prize and the Bard Fiction Prize, and was a Rome Prize Literature Fellow at the American Academy in Rome. She lives in Staten Island and teaches at the New School. *** 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 Merch @otherppl Instagram  TikTok 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

A new 'Craftwork' episode, about the power of names in writing and real life. My guest is Ethel Rohan, author of the novel Sing, I, available from Triquarterly Books. Rohan is an award-winning essayist, novelist, and short story writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Irish Times, PEN America, and Tin House. Her previous books include The Weight of Him and In the Event of Contact. *** 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 Merch Twitter Instagram  TikTok Bluesky 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

Alejandro Zambra is the author of the story collection My Documents, available from Penguin Books. Official April pick of the Otherppl Book Club. Megan McDowell is the book's translator. Zambra is the author of ten books, most recently Chilean Poet and Multiple Choice. The recipient of numerous literary prizes, as well as a New York Public Library Cullman Center fellowship, he has published fiction and essays in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, and Harper's Magazine, among other publications. He lives in Mexico City. McDowell  is the winner of the 2022 National Book Award for Translation and the recipient of a 2020 Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, among other awards. She has been nominated four times for the International Booker Prize. *** 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 Merch Twitter Instagram  TikTok Bluesky 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

In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 373, my conversation with author Bud Smith. The episode first aired on July 29, 2015. Bud Smith works heavy construction and lives in Jersey City, NJ. He is the author of Teenager (Vintage), Double Bird (Maudlin House, 2018), Dust Bunny City (Disorder Press, 2017), among others. His fiction has been published in The Paris Review, The Believer, The Baffler, and The Nervous Breakdown, and many others (collected below). He is also a creative writing teacher and editor. *** 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 Merch @otherppl Instagram  TikTok 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