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Explore every episode of the podcast Otherppl with Brad Listi: Books & Culture
Dive into the complete episode list for Otherppl with Brad Listi: Books & Culture. Each episode is cataloged with detailed descriptions, making it easy to find and explore specific topics. Keep track of all episodes from your favorite podcast and never miss a moment of insightful content.
| Title | Pub. Date | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| REPLAY: Heidi Julavits on Book Reviews, Psychics, & The Believer | 27 sept. 2026 | 01:11:37 | |
Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 62, my conversation with Heidi Julavits. We were talking about her novel The Vanishers (Doubleday), winner of the PEN New England Fiction Award.
Air date: April 18, 2012.
Heidi Julavits is the author of The Folded Clock: A Diary and four novels. She is an associate professor at Columbia University and the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. She lives in New York City and Maine.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
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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 | |||
| Excerpt from 'The Simp,' by Roshan Sethi | 26 sept. 2026 | 00:23:42 | |
Roshan Sethi reads from his debut novel The Simp, available from Simon & Schuster.
Sethi is a writer, director, and practicing oncologist. He is the cocreator of The Resident, which ran for six seasons on Fox. His directorial debut, 7 Days, won the Independent Spirit Award for best first feature. He subsequently directed World’s Best for Disney+ and cowrote the abortion drama Call Jane, which premiered at Sundance in 2022. His third film as a director, A Nice Indian Boy, recently premiered at SXSW to rave reviews. His next film, The Surgeon, starring Michelle Yeoh and Martin Freeman, is forthcoming. The Simp is his debut novel.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
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 | |||
| Angry Adam's Kafkaesque Prison | 24 sept. 2026 | 00:53:09 | |
Volume 106 of Brad & Mira For the Culture..Mira prepares for a return to the motherland...Mira's dad refuses to use soap...Brad's no good very bad terrible morning...Siri and Kaya weigh in on Spirit's penis...Ed Sheeran cries onstage...Orland Bloom and the Mara sisters have a threesome in the new Werner Herzog film...Is Channing Tatum running a burner account?...Detroit woman gets lost postmortem...Meryl Streep plays Jesus in Greta Gerwig's new Narnia movie... & more...
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
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 | |||
| 1055. Emily St. John Mandel | 22 sept. 2026 | 01:13:55 | |
Emily St. John Mandel is the author of the novel Exit Party, available from Knopf.
Mandel is the author of six novels, most recently Sea of Tranquility, which has been translated into 25 languages and was selected by President Barack Obama as one of his favorite books of 2022. Her previous novels include The Glass Hotel, which was also on Obama’s list, was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and has been translated into 26 languages; and Station Eleven, which was a finalist for a National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, won the 2015 Arthur C. Clarke Award among other honors, has been translated into 36 languages, and aired as a limited series on HBO Max. She lives in New York City and Los Angeles.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
Instagram
TikTok
Bluesky
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices | |||
| REPLAY: Margaret Malone on the Portland Writing Scene, Philosophy, Psychology, & Improv | 20 sept. 2026 | 01:09:55 | |
Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 396, my conversation with Margaret Malone. We were talking about her debut story collection, People Like You (Atelier 26 Books). It was a finalist for the PEN / Hemingway Award for First Fiction, and it won the 2016 Balcones Fiction Prize.
Air date: January 13, 2016.
A recent MacDowell Fellow, Margaret's writing has appeared or is forthcoming from BOMB, The Missouri Review, The Rumpus, Oregon Humanities, Paper Darts, The Masters Review, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of Randolph’s M.F.A. program (the best in the country in her opinion), and Humboldt State University where she received a B.A. in Philosophy. She lives with her husband filmmaker Brian Padian and two children in Portland, Oregon.
Margaret has been a volunteer facilitator with the non-profit Write Around Portland and a co-host of the artist and literary gathering SHARE. She is the recipient of grants and fellowships from the Ford Family Foundation, the MacDowell Foundation, Oregon Arts Commission, the Regional Arts & Culture Council, and Literary Arts.
She hosts the interview series & radio show Bust the Canon on XRAY.FM and teaches creative writing through Stanford’s Distinguished Careers Institute and in Portland at Literary Arts.She also works with people individually through The Blue Wolf Writers, mentoring both established and emerging writers on their projects in person and online.
And, oh yeah, she started a Substack, too.
A former member of the Dangerous Writers, in her heart she will always spend Thursday nights at the northeast corner of the table in Tom Spanbauer’s basement.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
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 | |||
| Ben Loory Reads 'The Poet' & 'The Squid Who Fell in Love with the Sun' | 19 sept. 2026 | 00:27:06 | |
Vol. 19 of Story Time, featuring an author reading aloud from his/her/their work. In this episode, Ben Loory reads two stories. The first story is called 'The Poet,' from his debut collection entitled Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day. And the second story is called 'The Squid Who Fell in Love with the Sun,' from his second collection, Tales of Falling and Flying. Both books are available from Penguin.
Loory’s fables and tales have appeared in over 100 magazines and journals, including The New Yorker, Tin House, The Sewanee Review, Electric Literature, BOMB Magazine, TriQuarterly, The Adroit Journal, The Kenyon Review, Fairy Tale Review, Wigleaf, and A Public Space. They have been heard on This American Life, Selected Shorts, and WORDTheatre, and been anthologized in Tiny Nightmares, The New Voices of Fantasy, xo Orpheus: 50 New Myths, andYear’s Best Weird Fiction Vol. 5. They have also been adapted to short film, live theater, chamber music, and dance, and been translated into many languages, including Arabic, Farsi, Japanese, Chinese, Turkish, Burmese, and Indonesian. Loory is also the author of a picture book for children, The Baseball Player and the Walrus (Dial Books for Young Readers 2015). He lives and teaches short story writing in Los Angeles.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
Instagram
TikTok
Bluesky
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices | |||
| The Least Alive a Non-Dead Person Has Ever Looked | 17 sept. 2026 | 01:04:52 | |
Volume 105 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...Mira's mother-in-law texts her about a bloody dog penis whose penis was bloody...the podcast celebrates 15 years of quality podcasting...Brad accuses Mira of not showing enough support...Siri and Kaya send word from Australia...Bob Mackie RIP...Mira envies Mitch McConnell's drug cocktail...recapping the Emmy Awards...Brad's Fashion Corner...Macklemore opposes mass-slaughter of civilians, is booted from Ed Sheeran tour...Harry and Meghan's UK disaster is underway...Lady Gaga is a mama....no more Pitt kids...Don Jr.'s Russian oligarch wedding...Florida Man under the bed...Catherine Zeta Jones is upset about the term 'nepo baby'...Sydney Sweeney gets nude and talks sports... & more...
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
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 | |||
| 1054. Salman Rushdie & Rachel Eliza Griffiths | 15 sept. 2026 | 01:05:41 | |
Salman Rushdie and Rachel Eliza Griffiths join me to talk about Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie, the new documentary directed by Academy Award–winning filmmaker Alex Gibney. Inspired by Rushdie’s 2024 memoir Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, the film revisits the August 2022 attack that nearly killed him and follows his physical and emotional recovery. At its center is intimate, never-before-seen footage shot by Griffiths—Rushdie’s wife—during the aftermath; she is also credited as a cinematographer on the film. We talk about their decision to document that experience, the process of working with Gibney, and the complicated intersections of violence, survival, love, memory, and art. Knife begins its theatrical rollout September 17. Rushdie’s memoir, a 2024 National Book Award finalist, is available now from Random House.
Volume 104 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...Mira weighs in on the death of Gloria Steinem...Florida weather in LA...Mira professes her love for M. Night Shyamalan...is Brad obsessed with Phish?....Mira telephones three different McDonald's restaurants...Brad prepares for the 15th anniversary of his podcasting career...gets huge on Instagram by not talking...Increasingly-Angry Craig from East Tennessee makes his podcast debut..Angry Adam returns...the terrifying trailer for the new Elizabeth Holmes documentary... Trump claims he was in the rubble on 9/11...the curious case of the man who was duct-taped to an airplane seat, mid-flight...death and mayhem at Burning Man...Miley drops the 'Cyrus'...& more...
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
Instagram
TikTok
Bluesky
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices | |||
| 15 Years of Otherppl: What 1,000+ Conversations with Writers Have Taught Me | 14 sept. 2026 | 00:38:56 | |
In this special anniversary episode, Brad reflects on 15 years of Otherppl, more than 1,000 conversations with writers, and what the experience has taught him about writing, publishing, ambition, failure, persistence, and the creative life. He also looks back at how the show began, what it has become, and why long-form conversation still matters.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter.
Join the Craftwork Library
Merch
Instagram
Bluesky
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices | |||
| REPLAY: Chuck Klosterman on Journalism, Expertise, & the Complexities of Progress | 13 sept. 2026 | 01:15:15 | |
Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 423, my conversation with Chuck Klosterman. We were talking about his book But What If We’re Wrong: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past (Blue Rider Press)
Air date: July 20, 2016
Klosterman is the bestselling author of nine nonfiction books (including Football; X; The Nineties; and Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs), two novels (Downtown Owl and The Visible Man), and the short story collection Raised in Captivity. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, GQ (London), Esquire, Spin, The Guardian (London), The Believer, and ESPN. Klosterman served as the Ethicist for The New York Times Magazine for three years and was an original founder of the website Grantland with Bill Simmons. He was raised in rural North Dakota and now lives in Portland, Oregon.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
Instagram
TikTok
Bluesky
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices | |||
| Poems from 'Elegy for Pangaea,' by Mark Leidner | 12 sept. 2026 | 00:28:29 | |
Vol. 18 of Story Time, featuring an author reading aloud from her work. In this episode, Mark Leidner reads from his new poetry collection, Elegy for Pangaea (Fonograf Editions).
Leidner's previous poetry collections are Returning the Sword to the Stone (Fonograf Editions, 2021), Beauty Was the Case that They Gave Me (Factory Hollow Press, 2011), and The Angel in the Dream of Our Hangover (Sator/Two Dollar Radio, 2011). He also wrote the story collection Under the Sea (Tyrant Books, 2018), called "virtuosic" by the New York Times. One of the stories from that collection, "21 Extremely Bad Breakups," won the 2015 Newfound Prose Prize and in 2018 was adapted for the stage by Amy Rummenie of the Walking Shadow Theatre Company in Minneapolis. Mark also wrote and produced the 2019 feature-length sci-fi thriller Empathy, Inc., which earned rave reviews in Variety, The AV Club, and The Verge and is available on streaming platforms. Mark is a graduate of the University of Georgia, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. He grew up in Tifton, GA and now lives in northern California.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
Instagram
TikTok
Bluesky
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices | |||
| Thanks for Not Talking | 10 sept. 2026 | 01:08:02 | |
Volume 104 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...Mira weighs in on the death of Gloria Steinem...Florida weather in LA...Mira professes her love for M. Night Shyamalan...is Brad obsessed with Phish?....Mira telephones three different McDonald's restaurants...Brad prepares for the 15th anniversary of his podcasting career...gets huge on Instagram by not talking...Increasingly-Angry Craig from East Tennessee makes his podcast debut..Angry Adam returns...the terrifying trailer for the new Elizabeth Holmes documentary... Trump claims he was in the rubble on 9/11...the curious case of the man who was duct-taped to an airplane seat, mid-flight...death and mayhem at Burning Man...Miley drops the 'Cyrus'...& more...
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
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 | |||
| 1053. Mark Leidner | 08 sept. 2026 | 01:13:23 | |
Mark Leidner is the author of the poetry collection Elegy for Pangaea, available from Fonograf Editions.
Leidner's previous poetry collections are Returning the Sword to the Stone (Fonograf Editions, 2021), Beauty Was the Case that They Gave Me (Factory Hollow Press, 2011), and The Angel in the Dream of Our Hangover (Sator/Two Dollar Radio, 2011). He also wrote the story collection Under the Sea (Tyrant Books, 2018), called "virtuosic" by the New York Times. One of the stories from that collection, "21 Extremely Bad Breakups," won the 2015 Newfound Prose Prize and in 2018 was adapted for the stage by Amy Rummenie of the Walking Shadow Theatre Company in Minneapolis. Mark also wrote and produced the 2019 feature-length sci-fi thriller Empathy, Inc., which earned rave reviews in Variety, The AV Club, and The Verge and is available on streaming platforms. Mark is a graduate of the University of Georgia, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. He grew up in Tifton, GA and now lives in northern California.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
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 | |||
| REPLAY: Jonathan Franzen on Fame, Techno-Optimism, and David Foster Wallace | 06 sept. 2026 | 01:12:02 | |
Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 426, my conversation with Jonathan Franzen. We were talking about his novel Purity, available in trade paperback from Picador.
Air date: August 10, 2016
Jonathan Franzen is the author of five novels, including The Corrections, Freedom, and Crossroads, and five works of nonfiction, including Farther Away and The End of the End of the Earth, all published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He lives in Santa Cruz, California.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
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 | |||
| Excerpt from 'All That Is Left of Life,' by Roberta Recchia | 05 sept. 2026 | 00:18:34 | |
Vol. 17 of Story Time, featuring an author reading aloud from her work. In this episode, Roberta Recchia reads from her bestselling debut novel All That Is Left of Life (Scribner).
Born in Rome in 1972, Roberta Rossella Recchia lived for a time in Lille, France, where she earned a master’s degree in international relations and cultures. She worked for ten years for a big company and then quit office work to devote herself to teaching. She currently teaches English in a high school in Rome. She is passionate about film and literature, especially Russian and French. She lives with her chihuahua, Claudio, in a small town on the coast of Lazio, Italy.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
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 | |||
| Is It Illegal to Smell Someone in California? | 03 sept. 2026 | 01:05:21 | |
Volume 103 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...Mira issues a correction after spreading misinformation about Johnny Carson and Porter Wagoner...Mira gets a new tattoo...the Otherppl podcast is about to turn 15....Brad lands a huge interview...Angry Adam is AWOL...the Tom Cruise nostalgia tour continues...Days of Thunder 2 is in the works...Anne Hathaway to co-star...Randy Quaid weighs in...Hunter Biden appears on yet another podcast...reports that Joe visited him in his crack den in the presidential motorcade...met a homeless crack addict named Bicycles...the serial Butt Sniffer of California strikes again...Mira begrudgingly absolves Bill Maher and Mel Gibson...Dolly Parton's 100th birthday song...& more...
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
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 | |||
| 1052. Marlon James | 01 sept. 2026 | 00:56:21 | |
Marlon James is the author of the novel The Disappearers, now available from Riverhead Books. It has been longlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize.
James is the Booker Prize-winning and New York Times bestselling author of A Brief History of Seven Killings; the bestselling and National Book Award finalist Black Leopard, Red Wolf; as well as the bestselling Moon Witch, Spider King; The Book of Night Women; and John Crow’s Devil. In addition to the Booker Prize, James’s novels have won the American Book Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, and the Los Angeles Times Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, and have been finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the NAACP Image Award. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and named in 2019 one of Time magazine’s one hundred most influential people in the world, James lives in New York City.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
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 | |||
| REPLAY: Terry Tempest Williams on Grief, Art, Absence, and Presence | 30 août 2026 | 01:14:24 | |
Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 149, my conversation with Terry Tempest Williams. We were talking about her book When Women Were Birds: Fifty-Four Variations on Voice, available from Picador.
Air date: February 17, 2013.
Terry Tempest Williams is the award-winning author of over twenty books of creative nonfiction, including the environmental classic, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place. Among her other books are Leap; Red; The Open Space of Democracy; Finding Beauty in a Broken World; The Hour of Land; and Erosion: Essays of Undoing. Her work has been translated and anthologized worldwide. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Lannan Literary Award, she is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Letters and is currently writer-in-residence at the Harvard Divinity School. She divides her time between Cambridge, Massachusetts and Southeastern Utah.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
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 | |||
| Excerpt from 'Earth 7,' by Deb Olin Unferth | 29 août 2026 | 00:20:39 | |
Vol. 16 of Story Time, featuring an author reading aloud from her work. In this episode, Deb Olin Unferth reads from her new novel, Earth 7, now available from Graywolf Press.
Deb is the author of six books, including Barn 8 and Wait Till You See Me Dance. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and three Pushcart Prizes, and was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. Her work has appeared in Granta, Harper’s, McSweeney’s, and The Paris Review.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
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 | |||
| Dolly Parton 4Ever | 27 août 2026 | 01:21:58 | |
Volume 102 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...Dolly Parton, our Lord & Savior, has shuffled off her mortal coil...Mira laments not being able to cancel the podcast for mental health reasons...Mira ridicules Brad for not marketing his podcast until year 15...Brad's Instagram following explodes...Angry Adam is furious again...does James Blunt have micro-penis?...Harry & Meghan heading back to the UK...Clavicular's security detail brawls with college kids in Ft. Lauderdale...Sydney Sweeney is the next Tom Cruise...the Iranian government puts a bounty on Barron...& more...
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
Instagram
TikTok
Bluesky
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
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| 1051. Roberta Recchia | 25 août 2026 | 01:12:19 | |
Roberta Recchia is the author of the debut novel All That is Left of Life, available from Scribner. Translated by Antonella Lettieri.
Born in Rome in 1972, Roberta Rossella Recchia lived for a time in Lille, France, where she earned a master’s degree in international relations and cultures. She worked for ten years for a big company and then quit office work to devote herself to teaching. She currently teaches English in a high school in Rome. She is passionate about film and literature, especially Russian and French. She lives with her chihuahua, Claudio, in a small town on the coast of Lazio, Italy.
Antonella Lettieri is a London-based translator with over ten years of experience working in English and Italian. She was the 2023 NCW Emerging Translator Mentee for Italian and was awarded first prize in the 2023 John Dryden Translation.
***
Today's episode is brought to you by Rula. Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that’s actually covered by insurance. Visit www.rula.com/otherppl to get started.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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| REPLAY: Madelaine Lucas on Love, Longing, and the Art of the Sad, Horny Novel | 23 août 2026 | 01:37:35 | |
Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 822, my conversation with Madelaine Lucas, author of the debut novel Thirst for Salt (Tin House).
Air date: March 19, 2023.
Lucas is formerly a senior editor of NOON, and she is a graduate of Columbia University. She lives in Australia.
***
Today's episode is brought to you by Rula. Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that’s actually covered by insurance. Visit www.rula.com/otherppl to get started.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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| 1050. Beowulf Sheehan | 22 août 2026 | 01:17:30 | |
Beowulf Sheehan is the author of The Father of the Man: The Last Author Portrait Sitting with Cormac McCarthy (Autofocus Books).
Sheehan is a photographer of figures in the arts and humanities. To date, he's photographed better than 1,000 writers from more than 60 countries. His work has been published in the likes of Elle, Esquire, L’Uomo Vogue, The New Yorker, People, Time, Vanity Fair, and Vogue and has been exhibited at institutions such as the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Dostoevsky Museum, International Center of Photography, Museum of the City of New York, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, and The Witliff Colelctions. Author: The Portraits of Beowulf Sheehan, a collection of portraits of 200 writers from 35 countries with a foreword by Salman Rushdie, was published in 2018. The Father of the Man: The Last Author Portrait Sitting with Cormac McCarthy is Sheehan's second monograph. Beowulf Sheehan is the proud son of an immigrant and translator, grandson of a poet and photographer, grandson of a copy editor, first cousin once removed from an editor, and cousin, first cousin once removed, and great-great-nephew of authors. Raised in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, he lives in New York City.
***
Today's episode is brought to you by Rula. Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that’s actually covered by insurance. Visit www.rula.com/otherppl to get started.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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| Escape from Statin Island | 20 août 2026 | 01:26:21 | |
Volume 101 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...Mira is late again...was watching a murder trial on her phone...meets her hero Angie K of RHOSC while shopping for underwear...gets a selfie...Brad becomes obsessed with Instagram 'heart doctors'...discovers eleven strange tennis balls in his front yard...Angry Adam drops the hammer...darkness reigns in the world of celebrity...Hayden Panettiere dies at 36 of a suspected overdose...Paris Jackson says she got electroconvulsive therapy as a teenager...former MAGA politician Nancy Mace gets nine tattoos, launches a new YouTube show...Kyrsten Sinema's illicit boyfriend allegedly puts his physician in a chokehold...AOC makes an unsolicited Instagram doc about freezing her eggs...Nick Reiner's questionable legal strategy...multiple soldiers almost leap to their deaths aboard the U.S.S. Lincoln...the latest on Perez Hilton's psychotic break...& more...
***
Today's episode is brought to you by Rula. Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that’s actually covered by insurance. Visit www.rula.com/otherppl to get started.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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| 1049. Deb Olin Unferth | 18 août 2026 | 01:17:04 | |
Deb Olin Unferth is the author of the novel Earth 7, available from Graywolf Press.
Unferth is the author of six books, including Barn 8 and Wait Till You See Me Dance. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and three Pushcart Prizes, and was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. Her work has appeared in Granta, Harper’s, McSweeney’s, and The Paris Review.
***
Today's episode is brought to you by Rula. Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that’s actually covered by insurance. Visit www.rula.com/otherppl to get started.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
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| REPLAY: Cara Blue Adams on Writing, Privilege, and Connected Stories | 16 août 2026 | 01:41:15 | |
Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 761, my conversation with Cara Blue Adams, author of the debut story collection You Never Get It Back (University of Iowa Press).
Air date: March 2, 2022.
Adams's fiction appears in Granta, the Kenyon Review, American Short Fiction, EPOCH, and Narrative. She is an assistant professor of creative writing at Seton Hall University and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
***
Today's episode is brought to you by Rula. Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that’s actually covered by insurance. Visit www.rula.com/otherppl to get started.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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| 100 Disgraceful Episodes | 13 août 2026 | 01:28:10 | |
Volume 100 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...Mira swims with otters, actually experiences joy...also meets her spirit animal, a sloth...Mira and Tyler confront their extremely loud Israeli neighbors...Brad vs. the frowning angry woman...Brad is now eating oatmeal for dinner...the Glen Hansard Instagram crisis...Angry Adam casually delivers his weekly dose of rage...Perez Hilton has a psychotic break on TikTok Live...Brad Pitt decides to improve his PR situation by drinking alcohol again...Tennessee Geoff checks in from the airport...Trump, paranoid and incontinent, hides in a catering truck...& more...
***
Today's episode is brought to you by Rula. Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that’s actually covered by insurance. Visit www.rula.com/otherppl to get started.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
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| 1048. Julie Buntin | 11 août 2026 | 01:11:23 | |
Julie Buntin is the author of the novel Famous Men, available from Random House.
Buntin's debut novel, Marlena, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, released in ten territories worldwide, and named a best book of the year by over a dozen outlets, including The Washington Post, NPR, and Kirkus Reviews. She is the co-editor of Notes to New Mothers, a collection of dispatches from postpartum life by sixty writers and artists. Other writing has appeared in Harper’s Magazine, The New York Times, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. She lives in Ann Arbor, where she is an assistant professor at the University of Michigan.
***
Today's episode is brought to you by Rula. Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that’s actually covered by insurance. Visit www.rula.com/otherppl to get started.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
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| REPLAY: Bill Clegg on Writing, Modern Publishing, and Being a Literary Agent | 09 août 2026 | 01:10:48 | |
Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 381, my conversation with Bill Clegg, esteemed literary agent and author of several books, including the debut novel Did You Ever Have a Family? (Scout Books).
Air date: September 23, 2015.
Bill Clegg is a literary agent in New York and the author of the bestselling memoirs Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man and Ninety Days, and another novel called The End of the Day. He has written for the New York Times, Lapham’s Quarterly, New York magazine, The Guardian, and Harper’s Bazaar.
***
Today's episode is brought to you by Rula. Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that’s actually covered by insurance. Visit www.rula.com/otherppl to get started.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
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| Excerpt from 'A Marriage at Sea,' by Sophie Elmhirst | 08 août 2026 | 00:18:55 | |
Vol. 15 of Story Time, featuring an author reading aloud from her work. In this episode, Sophie Elmhirst reads from her bestselling book, A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck, now available in trade paperback from Riverhead Books.
Sophie Elmhirst is an award-winning journalist who writes regularly for The Guardian Long Read and The Economist; her work has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, and Harper’s Bazaar, among other places. She’s the winner of the British Press Award for Feature Writer of the Year and a Foreign Press Award. She lives in London and A Marriage at Sea is her first book.
***
Today's episode is brought to you by Rula. Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that’s actually covered by insurance. Visit www.rula.com/otherppl to get started.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
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| Mira vs. Jonah Hill | 06 août 2026 | 01:40:28 | |
Volume 99 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...Brad and Mira see The Odyssey in IMAX 4DX...Mira buys front row tickets, doesn't tell Brad...Brad has a birthday...goes to baseball game...meets an alcoholic gambling addict...the odd American phenomenon of obsessing over the possibility of Trump shitting his pants in the Oval Office...the Angry Adam Blues...healing vibes to Ariana Grande..Jonah Hill, vicious martial artist, issues public threats...the passive aggressive abstract poetry of Tennessee Geoff...Pete Davidson, Amerca's community dick...& more...
***
Today's episode is brought to you by Rula. Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that’s actually covered by insurance. Visit www.rula.com/otherppl to get started.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
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| 1047. Sophie Elmhirst | 04 août 2026 | 01:12:19 | |
Sophie Elmhirst is the author of the bestselling book A Marriage at Sea, now available in trade paperback from Riverhead Books.
Elmhirst is an award-winning journalist who writes regularly for The Guardian Long Read and The Economist; her work has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, and Harper’s Bazaar, among other places. She’s the winner of the British Press Award for Feature Writer of the Year and a Foreign Press Award. She lives in London and A Marriage at Sea is her first book.
***
Today's episode is brought to you by Rula. Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that’s actually covered by insurance. Visit www.rula.com/otherppl to get started.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
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| REPLAY: Alexandra Kleeman on Hollywood, Climate Catastrophe, and the Ghosts of the Future | 02 août 2026 | 01:40:03 | |
Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 732, my conversation with Alexandra Kleeman, author of the novel Something New Under the Sun (Hogarth Press).
Air date: October 13, 2021.
Alexandra Kleeman's other books include the short story collection Intimations and the novel You Too Can Have A Body Like Mine, which was awarded the 2016 Bard Fiction Prize and was a New York Times Editor’s Choice. In 2020, she was awarded the Rome Prize and the Berlin Prize, and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Fiction in 2022.
Her fiction has been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Zoetrope, Conjunctions, and Guernica, among others, and 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, MacDowell, Djerassi, and the Headlands Center for the Arts. She is an Associate Professor at Cornell University and a Contributing Writer at the New York Times Magazine. She lives in Ithaca and Colorado with her husband, Alex Gilvarry.
***
Today's episode is brought to you by Rula. Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that’s actually covered by insurance. Visit www.rula.com/otherppl to get started.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
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Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices | |||
| Private Equity Hoes | 30 juil. 2026 | 01:20:44 | |
Volume 98 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...Mira moves into her new apartment...the movers stole her underwear?...she's now in debt to Erehwon...invites Brad to 4DX screening of The Odyssey...Brad's wife and daughter have Covid...he takes a trip to a dystopian CVS...despite all his rage, Angry Adam is still just a rat in a cage...Suri Cruise drops the 'Cruise'...Hollywood's hottest new trend: A-List women dating private equity fiance bros...Tennessee Geoff's delusions of grandeur...Rachel Cusk is going to publish a novel about Natalie Portman...Andrew Tate writes tender, ethereal poetry in his maximum security man cell...& more...
***
Today's episode is brought to you by Rula. Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that’s actually covered by insurance. Visit www.rula.com/otherppl to get started.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
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Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices | |||
| 1046. Claire Vaye Watkins | 28 juil. 2026 | 01:16:18 | |
Claire Vaye Watkins is the author of the novel Yellow Pine, available from Riverhead Books.
Her other books include the story collection Battleborn and the novels Gold Fame Citrus and I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness. She has received the Story Prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award, and the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. A National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree, Watkins is a professor at the University of California, Irvine.
***
Today's episode is brought to you by Rula. Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that’s actually covered by insurance. Visit www.rula.com/otherppl to get started.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
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Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices | |||
| How Meditation Can Help You Write | 26 juil. 2026 | 01:14:07 | |
A new Craftwork conversation with April Dávila, author of Sit Write Here: 6 Mindfulness Practices to Help You Write More and Suffer Less (St. Martin's Essentials).
April Dávila is an award-winning author, speaker, and writing coach. Publishers Weekly called her debut novel, 142 Ostriches, a "vivid, uplifting debut" and the book went on to win the WILLA Award for Women Writing the West. Writer's Digest listed her blog (at aprildavila.com) as one of the Best 101 Websites for Writers and she is the creator of the Sit Write Here writing coaching program, helping writers quiet their inner critics, overcome writer's block, and edit more effectively.
***
Today's episode is brought to you by Rula. Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that’s actually covered by insurance. Visit www.rula.com/otherppl to get started.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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| Excerpt from 'Freedom,' by Zinzi Clemmons | 25 juil. 2026 | 00:21:24 | |
Vol. 14 of Story Time, featuring an author reading aloud from her work. In this episode, Zinzi Clemmons reads from her new essay collection entitled Freedom (Viking Books).
Zinzi is the author of What We Lose, which was a finalist for the NBCC John Leonard First Book Prize and the Aspen Words Literary Prize. A National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” honoree, she was raised in Philadelphia by a South African mother and an American father. A cofounder of the literary journal Apogee, she lives in Northern California, where she serves as director of the creative writing program at the University of California, Davis.
***
Today's episode is brought to you by Rula. Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that’s actually covered by insurance. Visit www.rula.com/otherppl to get started.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
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Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices | |||
| Alpha Males in Kitten Heels | 23 juil. 2026 | 01:28:14 | |
Volume 97 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...Mira is moving again...has an emotional breakdown on the way to West Elm...her botox has officially kicked in...Mira sees The Odyssey...also watches the Ralph Fiennes version...lots of full frontal...Brad goes to Indiana...experiences small-town life...questions his entire existence...watches a documentary about a plane crash while on a plane...the Diarrhea Epidemic of 2026 is solved...Brad was right...Taylor Farms is the culprit...Andrew and Tristan Tate arrested in Miami...capri pants, kitten heels, and the ongoing psycho-sexual crisis of conservative men...Angry Adam is still very angry...he's our special boy...Trump embarrasses himself at the World Cup...not allowed to hold the trophy on his own...refuses to exit the stage...Geoff from Tennessee gets weird...& more...
***
Today's episode is brought to you by Rula. Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that’s actually covered by insurance. Visit www.rula.com/otherppl to get started.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
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Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices | |||
| 1045. Hal Ebbott | 21 juil. 2026 | 01:10:10 | |
Hal Ebbott is the author of the debut novel Among Friends, now available in trade paperback from Riverhead Books.
Ebbott is a writer living in New York.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
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Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices | |||
| Carmen Maria Machado on Early Success, Haunted Residencies, and the Joy of Video Games | 19 juil. 2026 | 01:20:14 | |
Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 491, my conversation with Carmen Maria Machado, author of the award-winning debut story collection Her Body and Other Parties.
Air date: November 8, 2017.
Carmen is also the author of the bestselling memoir In the Dream House and the graphic novel The Low, Low Woods. She has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the winner of the Bard Fiction Prize, the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction, the Brooklyn Public Library Literature Prize, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize. In 2018, the New York Times listed Her Body and Other Parties as a member of "The New Vanguard," one of "15 remarkable books by women that are shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st century."Her essays, fiction, poetry, and criticism have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Granta, Vogue, This American Life, Harper’s Bazaar, Tin House, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, The Believer, Guernica, Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the Guggenheim Foundation, The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. She is the former Abrams Artist-in-Residence at the University of Pennsylvania.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
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| Explosive Diarrhea in Trump's America | 16 juil. 2026 | 01:30:18 | |
Volume 96 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...Mira sleeps through her alarm by 2 hours...Mira wants Brad to be a drag queen...Mira gets botox....Brad gets the shingles vaccine...insane evangelicals on airplanes...the explosive diarrhea outbreak of 2026...Lindsey Graham dies...no more NDAs...Mitch McConnell relaxes in blue jeans in the ICU...Hunter Biden's invincible podcast era...almost comes to blows with Nick Fuentes...Mira confesses that she would join Hunter Biden Premium OnlyFans...Clavicular in Israel...another looksmaxxer bites the dust...farewell to the great Kiwi übermensch Sam Neill...& more...
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
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Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices | |||
| 1044. Scott McClanahan | 14 juil. 2026 | 01:16:14 | |
Scott McClanahan is the author of the novel Fights!, available from Rose Books.
His other books include Crapalachia, Hill William, and The Sarah Book. He lives in West Virginia.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter.
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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 | |||
| REPLAY: Candace Jane Opper on Suicide, Obsession, and Radical Unforgetting | 12 juil. 2026 | 01:38:06 | |
Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 693, my conversation with Candace Jane Opper, author of the debut memoir Certain and Impossible Events (Kore Press).
Air date: February 17, 2021.
Candace Jane Opper is a writer, a mother, and an occasional visual artist. She grew up in the woods of Southern Connecticut, in a house that alarmingly resembles the one from The Amityville Horror, where she learned to embrace the value of unconventionality. She holds an MFA in Nonfiction Writing from Portland State University and spent her undergraduate years in Providence studying Film History—a discipline her college advisor fondly described as the second most pointless major next to Art History, which she promptly declared as her minor. Opper's essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Longreads, Guernica, Creative Nonfiction, LitHub, Narratively, Brevity, and Vestoj, among others. She is a Creative Nonfiction Foundation Fellowship recipient and a member on the advisory council for Write Pittsburgh, a program collective that empowers writers to amplify their voices and strengthen their communities. Certain and Impossible Events is her first book.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter.
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Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices | |||
| Excerpt from 'The Radiant Dark,' by Alexandra Oliva | 11 juil. 2026 | 00:23:12 | |
Vol. 13 of Story Time, featuring an author reading aloud from her work. In this episode, Alexandra Oliva reads from her new novel, The Radiant Dark (SJP Lit). It is the official July pick of the Otherppl Book Club.
Oliva's other novels include Forget Me Not and The Last One, which was selected as a Best Book of 2016 by The Seattle Times and translated into twenty-five languages. She received her BA from Yale University and her MFA from The New School, and she now lives in the Pacific Northwest with her family.
***
Today's episode is brought to you by Rula. Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that’s actually covered by insurance. Visit www.rula.com/otherppl to get started.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
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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 | |||
| More Mira Mayhem | 09 juil. 2026 | 01:20:00 | |
Volume 95 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...Mira returns...two weeks of pure chaos...an airborne toxic event...a week of tending to a friend...convalescing in Vegas...getting her first (!!) massage...Brad's chipped tooth...annoyed on the 4th of July...Taylor Swift gets married to Travis Kelce...Graham Platner is very probably a sex pest...Olivia Nuzzi's new boyfriend...Mitch McConnell is brain dead, apparently...& more...
***
Today's episode is brought to you by Rula. Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that’s actually covered by insurance. Visit www.rula.com/otherppl to get started.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
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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 | |||
| 1043. Alexandra Oliva | 07 juil. 2026 | 01:12:56 | |
Alexandra Oliva is the author of the novel The Radiant Dark, available from SJP Lit. It is the official July pick of the Otherppl Book Club.
Oliva's other books include Forget Me Not and The Last One, which was selected as a Best Book of 2016 by The Seattle Times and translated into twenty-five languages. She grew up in a tiny town in New York's Adirondack Mountains and received her BA from Yale University and her MFA from The New School. She now lives in the Pacific Northwest with her family.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
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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 | |||
| REPLAY: Elizabeth Ellen on the Midwest, Indie Lit, and Being an Outsider | 05 juil. 2026 | 01:09:35 | |
Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 99, my conversation with Elizabeth Ellen, author of American Thighs, editor of Hobart, and publisher of SF/LD Books.
Air date: August 26, 2012.
Elizabeth Ellen’s stories have been published in American Short Fiction, HARPER'S Magazine, Muumuu House, Joyland, and numerous other magzines and journals. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize for her story "Teen Culture," and is the author of several books including the cult classics Fast Machine and Person/a.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
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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 | |||
| 1042. Zinzi Clemmons | 30 juin 2026 | 01:02:57 | |
Zinzi Clemmons is the author of the essay collection Freedom, available from Viking.
Clemmons is the author of What We Lose, which was a finalist for the NBCC John Leonard First Book Prize and the Aspen Words Literary Prize. A National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” honoree, she was raised in Philadelphia by a South African mother and an American father. A cofounder of the literary journal Apogee, she lives in Northern California, where she serves as director of the creative writing program at the University of California, Davis.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
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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 | |||
| REPLAY: Mike DeCapite on Midlife Romance in New York City | 28 juin 2026 | 01:30:47 | |
Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 740, my conversation with Mike DeCapite, author of the novel Jacket Weather (Soft Skull).
Air date: November 14, 2021.
DeCapite has published the novel Through the Windshield, the chapbook Creamsicle Blue, and the short-prose collection Radiant Fog under the banner of Sparkle Street Books. Cuz Editions published his story "Sitting Pretty," later anthologized in The Italian American Reader. DeCapite grew up in Cleveland and has lived in London and San Francisco, but has spent most of his time in New York City, where he now resides.
***
Today's episode is brought to you by Rula. Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that’s actually covered by insurance. Visit www.rula.com/otherppl to get started.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
Instagram
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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 | |||
| 1041. Erin Van Der Meer | 23 juin 2026 | 01:22:24 | |
Erin Van Der Meer is the author of the debut novel The Scoop, available from Grand Central Publishing.
Van Der Meer is a writer and former journalist whose work has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Daily Beast, and Elle. She was a Spruceton Inn Artist Resident in 2024. Born in Sydney, Australia, she now lives in Brooklyn.
***
Today's episode is brought to you by Rula. Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that’s actually covered by insurance. Visit www.rula.com/otherppl to get started.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
Merch
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 | |||
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