30. Hannah Lillith Assadi

Hello everyone. Today’s guest is the brilliant Nada Alic. She has a new book out called Bad Thoughts (Vintage). It's her debut collection. Buy it wherever books are sold.  Selected Prose highly recommends Bad Thoughts. Nada is a refreshingly original writer. Her voice is unique, she's wise beyond her years, and she's hilarious. My favorite stories in here were The Intruder, Daddy's Girl, and Earth To Lydia. Some people have compared Nada Alic to Miranda July or Sally Rooney. I don’t really know what that means.  Nada Alic is Nada Alic. And she’s very good. This debut is quite an achievement. And I'm happy to have learned we can expect a novel from her in the near future... Enjoy!  As always, if you like this podcast, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or support on Patreon.

Patrick Doerksen reads his short story, ‘I Was Promised A Hot Dog,’ for the Selected Prose Reading Series. Patrick holds an MFA from NYU. His stories have appeared in Mysterion, Aurealis, and Penguin Canada's Journey Prize Anthology. He lives in Brooklyn. 

Our next guest is professor Brandon Gauthier. Brandon completed his doctorate in Modern History at Fordham University in 2016. He is the Director of Global Education at The Derryfield School and an Adjunct Professor of History for Fordham University. His first book, BEFORE EVIL: Young Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Mao, and Kim came out in April of 2022, from Tortoise Books. Here is a brief summary of this compelling examination of the lives of the 20th century's worst dictators: "Historian Brandon K. Gauthier has created a fascinating work—epic yet intimate, well-researched but immensely  readable, clear-eyed and empathetic—looking at the lives of these six  dictators, with a focus on their youths. We watch Lenin’s older brother executed at the hands of the Tsar’s police—an event that helped  radicalize this overachieving high-schooler. We observe Stalin grappling  with the death of his young, beautiful wife. We see Hitler’s mother  mourning the loss of three young children—and determined that her first  son to survive infancy would find his place in the world. The  purpose isn’t to excuse or simply explain these horrible men, but  rather to treat them with the empathy they themselves too often lacked.  We may prefer to hold such lives at arm’s length so as to demonize them  at will, but this book reminds us that these monstrous rulers were also  human beings—and perhaps more relatable than we’d like." *Content Warning* - We discuss online radicalism and mass murder.

Bud Smith is today's guest. His latest novel is called TEENAGER and its from Vintage Books. Make sure to follow Bud on twitter. Make sure to read the book and spread the good word on the internet. What Else?  I've been reading a wonderful little book of poems called OMG THE DAY by Theo Thimo. Big Recommend! What Else?  If you enjoy the show, please leave a review on APPLE PODCASTS and consider supporting the podcast on PATREON. Goodbye. ***INTRO MUSIC BY SIGHPILOT***

Ryan Napier is the author of Four Stories about the Human Face (Bull City Press). He lives in Massachusetts. More at ryannapier.net and @ryanlnapier on Twitter.

A short story from Sam Price titled The Sequel. Sam lives in Pennsylvania. 

Today's guest is Marlowe Granados! Marlowe is a writer living in Toronto. Happy Hour is her debut novel. Marlowe is also a filmmaker and hosts a podcast called The Mean Reds, a show highlighting women-led films. She has an advice column in The Baffler titled "Designs for Living." And as if all this wasn't impressive enough, Marlowe also works in fashion. **Thank you to Klankbeeld for the lovely sounds and SighPilot for the music

Brittney Uecker is a librarian, writer, and Scorpio living in rural Montana. Her work has been featured in HAD, Taco Bell Quarterly, Kalopsia, and others. She is a Best of the Net nominee for fiction and tweets (@bonesandbeer). This story originally appeared in Dark Entries Journal in October of 2021. 

Today's guest is the great Hannah Lillith Assadi. Her new novel, The Stars Are Not Yet Bells, was published by Riverhead in early January. It was named a Most Anticipated book of the year by The Washington Post, Good Morning America, Bustle, Lit Hub, Hey Alma, and The Millions. I recommend Stars, especially if you're fond of unreliable narrators, the slippery nature of memory, and the Great Mystery.  In this interview, we discuss creating and executing unreliable narrators, Faulkner, toying with time and chronology, the good and bad of publishing, Hannah's revision process, death and dying, the afterlife, and more. Not only is Hannah a brilliant writer, but she's also a professor of creative writing at Columbia's MFA program. You'll learn much from her, I have no doubt. *Support the podcast by recommending it to a friend or an enemy, leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, or subscribing to the Selected Prose Patreon*

A short story by Joanna Acevedo.   Joanna is the author of the poetry collection The Pathophysiology of Longing (Black Centipede Press, 2020) and the short story collection Unsaid Things (Flexible Press, 2021). She was a finalist for the Editor’s Chapbook Prize in Fiction from the Southern Humanities Review, and received her MFA in Fiction from New York University in 2021.