How to Write Good Stories

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

A new 'Craftwork' episode, about how to structure a novel. My guest is Mark Cecil, author of the debut novel Bunyan and Henry, available from Pantheon Books. Cecil is the host of The Thoughtful Bro podcast, for which he conducts interviews with an eclectic roster of award-winning and breakout storytellers. Formerly a journalist for Reuters, he is Head of Strategy for literary social media startup A Mighty Blaze and has taught writing at Grub Street in Boston. This is his first book. *** 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

Annell López is the author of the debut story collection I'll Give You a Reason, available from The Feminist Press. Winner of the Louise Meriwether First Book Prize. López is a Dominican immigrant. A 2022 Peter Taylor fellow, her work has received support from Tin House and the Kenyon Review Workshops and has appeared in American Short Fiction, Michigan Quarterly Review, Brooklyn Rail, and elsewhere. López is an Assistant Fiction Editor for New Orleans Review and just finished her MFA at the University of New Orleans. She is working on a 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 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 377, my conversation with author Karolina Waclawiak. The episode first aired on August 26, 2015. Waclawiak  is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Life Events, The Invaders, and How to Get Into the Twin Palms. She was most recently the Editor in Chief of Pulitzer Prize-winning BuzzFeed News. Previously, she was the Executive Editor of Culture for BuzzFeed News and Deputy Editor of The Believer magazine. Work she has edited has been nominated for two National Magazine Awards, received a number of prestigious awards, and been selected for the Best American Essays anthology series.  Karolina received her BFA in Screenwriting from USC and her MFA in Fiction from Columbia University. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, VQR, the Believer, Hazlitt, and other publications.   *** 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 how to build a rewarding creative life. My guest is Ben Tanzer, author of the novel The Missing, available from 7.13 Books. Tanzer is an Emmy winner. His work includes the short story collection Upstate, the science fiction novel Orphans and the essay collections Lost in Space and Be Cool. Ben is a storySouth and Pushcart nominee, a finalist for the Annual National Indie Excellence and Eric Hoffer Book Awards, a winner of the Devil's Kitchen Literary Festival Nonfiction Prose Award and a Midwest Book Award. He also received an Honorable Mention at the Chicago Writers Association Book Awards for Traditional Non-Fiction and a Bronze Medal from the Independent Publisher Book Awards. He's written for Hemispheres, Punk Planet, Men’s Health, and The Arrow, AARP’s GenX newsletter. He lives in Chicago with his 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, 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

José Vadi is the author of a memoir-in-essays called Chipped: Writing from a Skateboarder's Lens, available from Soft Skull Press. Vadi is also the author of an essay collection called Inter State. An award-winning essayist, poet, playwright and film producer, his work has been featured by the Paris Review, The Atlantic, the PBS NewsHour, Free Skate Magazine, Alta Journal of California, and the Yale Review. He lives and writes in Sacramento, 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, 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 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. *** 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 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. *** 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