Jordan chats with Sofia Samatar (The Practice, The Horizon, and the Chain and Opacities) about having two books out this year, doing everything twice (once in non-fiction, once in fiction), and her growing sense of an ongoing overarching project to her work.

MENTIONED:

• A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar
• Monster Portraits by Sofia Samatar and Del Samatar
• The White Mosque by Sofia Samatar
• Tender: Stories by Sofia Samatar
• Tone by Sofia Samatar and Kate Zambreno
• Quicksand by Nella Larsen
• Seasonal Associate by Heike Geissler, tr. by Katy Derbyshire

Sofia Samatar is a writer of fiction and nonfiction, including the memoir The White Mosque, a PEN/Jean Stein Award finalist. Her works range from the award-winning epic fantasy A Stranger in Olondria to Opacities, a nonfiction book about writing, publishing, and friendship.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jordan chats with Emma Copley Eisenberg (Housemates) about a ghostly encounter that led to her new novel, the opposing worldviews of Grace Paley and Ottessa Moshfegh, and the choice to make art in difficult times.

MENTIONED:

• Jazz by Toni Morrison
• Fleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
• American Pastoral by Philip Roth
• Terrace Story by Hilary Leichter
• "Why I Write" by George Orwell

Emma Copley Eisenberg is the author of the nationally bestselling novel Housemates and the narrative nonfiction book The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia, which was named a New York Times Notable Book and was nominated for an Edgar Award, a Lambda Literary Award, and an Anthony Award, among other honors. Her fiction has appeared in Granta, McSweeney’s, VQR, American Short Fiction, and other publications. Raised in New York City, she lives in Philadelphia, where she co-founded Blue Stoop, a community hub for the literary arts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For her last guest as guest-host, Mira chats with former mentee Gina Chung about her debut novel Sea Change, writing about the honest messy stuff, and about learning to take better care of yourself (mind, body, and spirit) for the long-haul creative practice.

MENTIONED:

• The bats under Congress Bridge in Austin, TX
• “The Love Song of the Mexican Free-Tailed Bat” by Gina Chung (at F(r)iction)
• The Daniels accepting the Oscar for Best Picture for Everything Everywhere All At Once

Gina Chung is a Korean American writer. Born in Queens and raised in New Jersey, she is now based in Brooklyn, New York. She is the author of SEA CHANGE (2023 B&N Discover Pick for April; Vintage, March 28, 2023; out in the Commonwealth on April 13, 2023 and in the UK on August 10, 2023 from Picador) a novel about climate change, giant Pacific octopuses, and family, and GREEN FROG (Vintage, 2024; out in the UK/Commonwealth from Picador in 2024) a collection of short stories that explore themes of Korean American womanhood, bodies and animals. A recipient of the Pushcart Prize, she is a 2021-2022 Center for Fiction/Susan Kamil Emerging Writer Fellow and holds an MFA in fiction from The New School's Creative Writing Program and a BA in literary studies from Williams College. She is an alumnus of several workshops and/or craft intensives, including the Asian American Writers' Workshop, Sevilla Writers House, The Center for Fiction, Kweli, and Tin House. 

For more Thresholds, visit us at www.thisisthresholds.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil (neh-ZOO / KOO-mah / tah-TILL) is the author of the New York Times best-selling illustrated collection of nature essays and Kirkus Prize finalist, WORLD OF WONDERS: IN PRAISE OF FIREFLIES, WHALE SHARKS, & OTHER ASTONISHMENTS (2020, Milkweed Editions), which was chosen as Barnes and Noble’s Book of the Year. She has four previous poetry collections: OCEANIC (Copper Canyon Press, 2018), LUCKY FISH (2011), AT THE DRIVE-IN VOLCANO (2007), and MIRACLE FRUIT (2003), the last three from Tupelo Press. Her most recent chapbook is LACE & PYRITE, a collaboration of epistolary garden poems with the poet Ross Gay. Her writing appears twice in the Best American Poetry Series, The New York Times Magazine, ESPN, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, and Tin House.

Honors include a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pushcart Prize, a Mississippi Arts Council grant, and being named a Guggenheim Fellow in poetry. In 2021, she became the first-ever poetry editor for SIERRA magazine, the story-telling arm of The Sierra Club. She is professor of English and Creative Writing in the University of Mississippi’s MFA program.

For more Thresholds, visit us at www.thisisthresholds.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

To celebrate the paperback release of Thin Places, this special episode features Jordan in the interview seat in a conversation with returning guest Lydia Millet!

Jordan Kisner writes essays, features, and reviews for n+1, The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, The Believer, and others. She also writes a column for The Paris Review. Her first book, Thin Places, was one of NPR’s “best books of 2020.” She is also the host of Thresholds.

Lydia Millet has written more than a dozen novels and story collections, often about the ties between people and other animals and the crisis of extinction. Her latest novel A Children's Bible was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2020. She also writes essays, opinion pieces and other ephemera and has worked as an editor and staff writer at the Center for Biological Diversity since 1999.

For more Thresholds, visit us at www.thisisthresholds.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Fariha Róisín is an NYC based, Australian-Canadian multi-disciplinary artist with an interest in her wellness, Muslim identity, race, self-care pop culture. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, Vice, Village Voice and others. She writes a weekly newsletter here and is also the Deputy Editor of Violet Book.

She has published How To Cure A Ghost (Abrams, 2019), Being In Your Body (Abrams, 2019) and Like A Bird (Unnamed Press, 2020) which was named one of the Best Books of 2020 by NPR, Globe and Mail, Harper’s Bazaar, a must-read by Buzzfeed News and received a starred review by the Library Journal. Her first work of non-fiction is forthcoming and entitled Who Is Wellness For? On Radical Wellness (HarperWave, Spring 2022).

For more Thresholds, visit www.thisisthresholds.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Melissa Febos is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir, Whip Smart (St. Martin’s Press 2010), and the essay collection, Abandon Me (Bloomsbury 2017), which was a LAMBDA Literary Award finalist, a Publishing Triangle Award finalist, an Indie Next Pick, and was named a Best Book of 2017 by Esquire, Book Riot, The Cut, Electric Literature, Bustle, Medium, Refinery29, The Brooklyn Rail, Salon, The Rumpus, and others. Her second essay collection, Girlhood, was published by Bloomsbury on March 30, 2021. A craft book will be published by Catapult in 2022. The recipient of an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, she is an associate professor at the University of Iowa, where she teaches in the Nonfiction Writing Program.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Marie-Helene Bertino is the author of the novels PARAKEET (New York Times Editors’ Choice) and 2 A.M. AT THE CAT’S PAJAMAS (NPR Best Books 2014), and the story collection SAFE AS HOUSES (Iowa Short Fiction Award). Her fourth book, the novel BEAUTYLAND, is forthcoming from FSG.

Her work has been translated into eight languages, and has received The Frank O’Connor International Short Story Fellowship in Cork, Ireland, The O. Henry Prize, The Pushcart Prize and two special mentions, fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Hedgebrook Writers Colony, The Center For Fiction NYC, and Sewanee Writers Conference, where she was the Walter E. Dakin fellow. Her work has twice been featured on NPR’s “Selected Shorts” program. A former editor for One Story and Catapult, she teaches fiction in the MFA programs of NYU and The New School. In Spring 2020 she was the Distinguished Kittredge Visiting Writer in University of Montana’s MFA.

She has worked as a biographer for people living with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI).

For more Thresholds, visit www.thisisthresholds.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Esmé Weijun Wang is a novelist and essayist. She is the author of the New York Times-bestselling essay collection, The Collected Schizophrenias (2019), and a debut novel, The Border of Paradise, which was called a Best Book of 2016 by NPR. She was named by Granta as one of the “Best of Young American Novelists” in 2017 and won the Whiting Award in 2018. Born in the Midwest to Taiwanese parents, she is the founder of The Unexpected Shape Community for ambitious writers living with illness and disability. She can be found at esmewang.com and on Twitter @esmewang.

Find more Thresholds at www.thisisthresholds.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lynn Steger Strong’s most recent novel, Want, was one of Time Magazine's 100 Best Books of 2020. Her first novel, Hold Still, was released by Liveright/WW Norton in 2016. Her nonfiction has been published by Guernica, Los Angeles Review of Books, Elle.com, Catapult, Lit Hub, and others. She teaches both fiction and non-fiction writing at Columbia University, Fairfield University, and the Pratt Institute.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Born in Veracruz, Mexico, in 1982, Fernanda Melchor is widely recognized as one of the most exciting new voices of Mexican literature. Her novel Hurricane Season was a finalist for the 2020 Man Booker International Prize and was long-listed for the 2020 National Book Award for Translated Literature. A collection, This Is Not Miami, is forthcoming from New Directions.

Find more Thresholds at www.thisisthresholds.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lydia Millet has written more than a dozen novels and story collections, often about the ties between people and other animals and the crisis of extinction. Her latest novel A Children's Bible was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2020, her story collection Fight No More received an Award of Merit from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2019, and her collection Love in Infant Monkeys was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2010. She also writes essays, opinion pieces and other ephemera and has worked as an editor and staff writer at the Center for Biological Diversity since 1999. She lives in the desert outside Tucson with her children and boyfriend.

Find more from Thresholds at www.thisisthresholds.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ross Gay is the author of four books of poetry: Against Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; Be Holding; and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. His new poem, Be Holding, was released from the University of Pittsburgh Press in September of 2020. His collection of essays, The Book of Delights, was released by Algonquin Books in 2019.

Ross is also the co-author, with Aimee Nezhukumatathil, of the chapbook "Lace and Pyrite: Letters from Two Gardens," in addition to being co-author, with Rosechard Wehrenberg, of the chapbook, "River." Ross is a founding board member of the Bloomington Community Orchard, a non-profit, free-fruit-for-all food justice and joy project. He also works on The Tenderness Project with Shayla Lawson and Essence London. 

Visit Thresholds online at www.thisisthresholds.com. Thanks to Literati Kids for sponsoring this episode.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

J Wortham joins Mira to talk about the power of changes -- changing location, changing names, changing pronouns -- and the space that can open up as a result of them. Plus, some love for benevolent conspiracies!

MENTIONED:

• Alejandro's Run in LA
• Still Processing
• Kristy from The Babysitter's Club

J Wortham (they/them) is a sound healer,, reiki practitioner, herbalist, and community care worker oriented towards healing justice and liberation. J is also a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, and co-host of the podcast ‘Still Processing,’ They occasionally publish thoughts on culture, technology and wellness in a newsletter. J is the proud editor of the visual anthology “Black Futures,” a 2020 Editor's choice by The New York Times Book Review, along with Kimberly Drew, from One World. J is also currently working on a book about the body and dissociation for Penguin Press. J mostly lives and works on stolen Munsee Lenape land, now known as Brooklyn, New York, and is committed to decolonization as a way of life.

For more Thresholds, visit us at www.thisisthresholds.com

Be sure to leave a review on your preferred podcast platform!

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today, we revisit our 2020 conversation with Suleika Jaouad in celebration of her memoir, Between Two Kingdoms, which was released this week.

Suleika Jaouad is an Emmy Award-winning writer, speaker, cancer survivor, and activist. She served on Barack Obama's President's Cancer Panel, and her advocacy work, reporting, and speaking has been featured at the United Nations, on Capitol Hill, and on the TED Talk main stage. When she's not on the road with her 1972 Volkswagen camper van and her rescue dog Oscar, she lives in Brooklyn.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Eileen Myles came to New York from Boston in 1974 to be a poet, subsequently novelist, public talker and art journalist. A Sagittarius, their 22 books include For Now, evolution, Afterglow, I Must Be Living Twice/new & selected poems, and Chelsea Girls. Eileen is the recipient of a Guggenheim, a Warhol/Creative Capital Arts Writers grant, 4 Lambda Book Awards, the Shelley Prize, and a poetry award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. In 2016, they received a Creative Capital grant and the Clark Prize for excellence in art writing. In 2019 Myles received a poetry award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters. In 2020 they got the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Publishing Triangle. They live in New York and Marfa, TX.

Thank you to The House of Chanel for sponsoring this episode. Find out more at inside.Chanel.com.

Find more from Thresholds at www.thisisthresholds.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The winner of a Pulitzer Prize for criticism, Margo Jefferson previously served as book and arts critic for Newsweek and the New York Times. Her writing has appeared in, among other publications, Vogue, New York Magazine, The Nation, and Guernica. Her memoir, Negroland, received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography. She is also the author of On Michael Jackson and is a professor of writing at Columbia University School of the Arts.

Thank you to The House of Chanel for sponsoring this episode. Find out more at inside.Chanel.com.

Find more from Thresholds at www.thisisthresholds.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Catherine Lacey is the author of four works of fiction: Nobody Is Ever Missing, The Answers, Certain American States, and Pew. She's recently published work in The New Yorker, Harper's, and The Believer.

Her books have been translated into several languages​.​She is a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow, a recipient of the Whiting Award, and earned an artists' fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts. Granta Magazine named her one of their "Best of Young American Novelists" in 2017. She was nominated for the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award and has held residencies at the Omi International Arts Center.

Thank you to The House of Chanel for sponsoring this episode. Find out more at inside.Chanel.com.

Find more from Thresholds at www.thisisthresholds.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Raven Leilani's debut novel, Luster, was released in August 2020 and won the Kirkus Prize and the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Her work has been published in Granta, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Yale Review, Conjunctions, The Cut, and New England Review, among other publications. She completed her MFA at NYU.

Thank you to The House of Chanel for sponsoring this episode. Find out more at inside.Chanel.com.

Find more from Thresholds at www.thisisthresholds.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As we prepare for the 2021 season of Thresholds, we took a look back at some of our favorite conversations from 2020 including excerpts from interviews with Mira Jacob, Ocean Vuong, Natalie Diaz, Carmen Maria Machado, Alexander Chee, and Mychal Denzel Smith.

New episodes of Thresholds coming every Wednesday, starting 1/13/21!

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Natalie Diaz was born and raised in the Fort Mojave Indian Village in Needles, California, on the banks of the Colorado River. She is Mojave and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Tribe. Her first poetry collection, When My Brother Was an Aztec, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2012. Her most recent collection, Postcolonial Love Poem, was released this year and has been longlisted for the National Book Award. She is a 2018 MacArthur Foundation Fellow, a Lannan Literary Fellow and a Native Arts Council Foundation Artist Fellow. She was awarded a Bread Loaf Fellowship, the Holmes National Poetry Prize, a Hodder Fellowship, and a PEN/Civitella Ranieri Foundation Residency, as well as being awarded a US Artists Ford Fellowship. Diaz teaches at the Arizona State University Creative Writing MFA program.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Wayétu Moore is the author of The Dragons, The Giant, The Women, which was released in June 2020. Her debut novel, She Would Be King, was released in 2018 and named a best book of 2018 by Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Entertainment Weekly & BuzzFeed. The novel was a Sarah Jessica Parker Book Club selection, a BEA Buzz Panel Book, a #1 Indie Next Pick and a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Award. She is the recipient of the 2019 Lannan Literary Fellowship for Fiction.

Moore is also the founder of One Moore Book, a non-profit organization that creates and distributes culturally relevant books for underrepresented readers. Her first bookstore opened in Monrovia, Liberia in 2015. Her writing can be found in The New York Times, The Paris Review, Frieze Magazine, Guernica, The Atlantic Magazine and other publications. She has been featured in The Economist Magazine, NPR and Vogue Magazine, among others, for her work in advocacy for diverse children’s literature.

She’s a graduate of Howard University, University of Southern California and Columbia University. 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Cathy Park Hong’s book of creative nonfiction, Minor Feelings, was published this spring by One World/Random House (US) and Profile Books (UK). She is also the author of poetry collections Engine Empire, published in 2012 by W.W. Norton, Dance Dance Revolution, chosen by Adrienne Rich for the Barnard Women Poets Prize, and Translating Mo'um.  Hong is the recipient of the Windham-Campbell Prize, the Guggenheim Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Her poems have been published in Poetry, A Public Space, Paris Review, McSweeney's, Baffler, Yale Review, The Nation, and other journals. She is the poetry editor of the New Republic and is a professor at Rutgers-Newark University.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mychal Denzel Smith is the author of the just-released Stakes is High: Life After the American Dream as well as the 2016 New York Times bestseller Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching. His work has appeared, online and print, in the New York Times, Washington Post, Harper’s, Artforum, Oxford American, New Republic, GQ, Complex, Esquire, Playboy, Bleacher Report, The Nation, The Atlantic, Pitchfork, Bookforum, and a number of other publications. He has appeared on The Daily Show, PBS Newshour, Democracy NOW!, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, MSNBC, CNN, NPR, and more national and local radio/television programs. He is featured in and was a consulting producer for “Rest in Power: The Trayvon Martin Story." He was also a 2017 NAACP Image Award Nominee. He is a fellow at Type Media Center. You can follow him on Twitter at @mychalsmith.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Legendary cartoonist Barbara Brandon-Croft (Where I’m Coming From) joins Mira to talk about building a life out of odd jobs, the double-edged sword of being ‘the first,’ and how being a cartoonist was never on her mind until it happened.

MENTIONED:

• Brumsic Brandon, Jr. (Barbara’s father, creator of the comic Luther) 
• Marie Brown
• Jules Feiffer’s Village Voice strip
• Women’s Wear Daily

Barbara Brandon-Croft was born in Brooklyn and grew up on Long Island. After debuting her comic strip Where I’m Coming From in the Detroit Free Press in 1989, Brandon-Croft became the first Black woman cartoonist to be published nationally by a major syndicate. During its 15 year run, Where I’m Coming From appeared in over 65 newspapers across the USA and Canada, as well as Jamaica, South Africa, and Barbados. Her comics are in the permanent collection of the Library of Congress. Brandon-Croft lives in Queens.

For more Thresholds, visit us at www.thisisthresholds.com

Be sure to leave a review on your favorite podcast platform!

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Laura Kolbe is a writer as well as a physician and assistant professor of internal medicine at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. She studied English and American literature at Harvard and at Jesus College, University of Cambridge, before studying medicine at the University of Virginia and completing her medical residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

This spring, her clinical work and views on patient care during COVID-19 were highlighted in The New Yorker and The New York TImes and she co-created Weill Cornell Medical Center’s COVID Palliative Care and Hospice Unit, and its COVID Recovery Unit, both among the first of their kind in the United States. Her poems, essays, and stories have appeared in Poetry, American Poetry Review, Conjunctions, The New York Review of Books, The Washington Post, and The Yale Review.

This episode is brought to you by: Betterhelp. Get 10% off your first month by visiting betterhelp.com/thresholds; What Happens at Night by Peter Cameron, now available wherever you get books from Catapult; and, Luster by Raven Leilani, now available from FSG.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rachel Eliza Griffiths is the author of five poetry collections, including Seeing the Body (W. W. Norton, 2020) and Mule & Pear (New Issues Poetry & Prose, 2011), which was selected for the 2012 Inaugural Poetry Award by the Black Caucus American Library Association. She is also a visual artist and photographer, and the creator of Poets on Poetry (P.O.P). Her honors include fellowships from Cave Canem, The Millay Residency, the New York State Summer Writers Institute, the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, Soul Mountain, and Vermont Studio Center. Griffiths teaches creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College. She lives in New York City.

This episode is brought to you by: Betterhelp. Get 10% off your first month by visiting betterhelp.com/thresholds; What Happens at Night by Peter Cameron, now available wherever you get books from Catapult; and, Luster by Raven Leilani, now available from FSG.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kate Zambreno is the author of several acclaimed books including Screen Tests, Heroines, and Green Girl. Her latest novel, Drifts, was released in May 2020. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, VQR, and elsewhere. She teaches in the writing programs at Columbia University and Sarah Lawrence College.

This episode is brought to you by: Betterhelp. Get 10% off your first month by visiting betterhelp.com/thresholds; What Happens at Night by Peter Cameron, now available wherever you get books from Catapult; and, Luster by Raven Leilani, now available from FSG.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ocean Vuong is a Vietnamese American poet, essayist, and novelist. He is a recipient of a MacArthur "Genius" Grant, the 2014 Ruth Lilly/Sargent Rosenberg fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, a 2016 Whiting Award, and the 2017 T.S. Eliot Prize for his poetry. His New York Times-bestselling novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous was published in 2019 and his debut poetry collection Night Sky With Exit Wounds was an NYT Top Ten Book of 2016. He serves as an Assistant Professor in the MFA Program for Poets and Writers at UMass-Amherst.

This episode is brought to you by: Betterhelp. Get 10% off your first month by visiting betterhelp.com/thresholds; What Happens at Night by Peter Cameron, now available wherever you get books from Catapult; and, Luster by Raven Leilani, now available from FSG.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Eight new conversations, one new season. Thresholds is a series of conversations with writers about experiences that completely turned them upside down, disoriented them in their lives, changed them, and changed how and why they wanted to write. Hosted by Jordan Kisner, author of the new essay collection, Thin Places, and presented by Lit Hub Radio. Season 2 will begin publishing next Wednesday, August 12th. Learn more at www.thisisthresholds.com.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Leslie Jamison is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Recovering and The Empathy Exams, and the novel The Gin Closet. She is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, and her work has appeared in publications including The Atlantic, Harper's, the New York Times Book Review, the Oxford American, and the Virginia Quarterly Review. She directs the graduate nonfiction program at Columbia University and lives in Brooklyn with her family.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Carmen Maria Machado is the author of Her Body and Other Parties, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize. Her latest work includes the memoir In the Dream House and the comic In the Low Low Woods. She lives in Philadelphia with her wife.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Suleika Jaouad is an Emmy Award-winning writer, speaker, cancer survivor, and activist. She served on Barack Obama's President's Cancer Panel, and her advocacy work, reporting, and speaking has been featured at the United Nations, on Capitol Hill, and on the TED Talk main stage. When she's not on the road with her 1972 Volkswagen camper van and her rescue dog Oscar, she lives in Brooklyn.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tara Westover was born in Idaho in 1986. She received her BA from Brigham Young University in 2008 and was subsequently awarded a Gates Cambridge Scholarship. She earned an MPhil from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 2009, and in 2010 was a visiting fellow at Harvard University. She returned to Cambridge, where she was awarded a PhD in history in 2014. Educated is her first book.

Hosted by Jordan Kisner. Produced by Justin Alvarez and Drew Broussard. Music by Lora-Faye Åshuvud. Art by Kirstin Huber. Presented by Lit Hub Radio.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Wendy S. Walters' current projects address class and racial disquietude in the industrial Midwest; intersections between writing and design, and organic forms in the essay. She is the author of a book of prose, Multiply/Divide: On the American Real and Surreal (Sarabande Books, 2015), named a best book of the year by Buzzfeed, Flavorwire, Literary Hub, The Root, Huffington Post, and others. She is also the author of two books of poems, Troy, Michigan (Futurepoem, 2014) and Longer I Wait, More You Love Me. Walters is a 2020 Creative Capital Awardee in literary nonfiction. In 2018-19 she was artist-in-residence at BRIClab in Brooklyn, where she worked on developing the book for their opera, Golden Motors. Her work has been published in The Normal School, The Iowa Review, Fourth Genre, Full Bleed, Flavorwire, and Harper’s among many others. 

Hosted by Jordan Kisner. Produced by Justin Alvarez and Drew Broussard. Music by Lora-Faye Åshuvud. Art by Kirstin Huber. Presented by Lit Hub Radio.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Writer and organizer Sarah Thankam Mathews (All This Could Be Different) joins Mira to discuss a brush with mortality in a rip-tide off the California coast, discovering “the sourdough starter of ego death,” and the problems of being an artist under capitalism.

MENTIONED:

• Big Sur, California
• "How to Escape a Rip Current"
• What It Is by Lynda Barry
• I May Destroy You
• Michaela Coel's Emmy acceptance speech (video, transcript)

Sarah Thankam Mathews grew up between Oman and India, immigrating to the United States in her late teens. Her work has been published in Best American Short Stories and she is a recipient of fellowships from the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. In 2020, she founded the mutual aid group Bed-Stuy Strong. All This Could Be Different, Mathews’ debut novel, was named an NYT Editor’s Choice, chosen for multiple high-profile Best of 2022 lists, and shortlisted for the National Book Award.

For more Thresholds, visit us at www.thisisthresholds.com

Be sure to leave a review on your favorite podcast platform!

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alexander Chee is the author of the novels Edinburgh and The Queen of the Night, and the essay collection How To Write An Autobiographical Novel, all from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. He is a contributing editor at The New Republic, and an editor at large at VQR. His essays and stories have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, T Magazine, Tin House, Slate, and Guernica, among others. He is winner of a 2003 Whiting Award, a 2004 NEA Fellowship in prose and a 2010 MCCA Fellowship, and residency fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the VCCA, Civitella Ranieri and Amtrak. He is an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College.

Hosted by Jordan Kisner. Produced by Justin Alvarez and Drew Broussard. Music by Lora-Faye Åshuvud. Art by Kirstin Huber. Presented by Lit Hub Radio.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mira Jacob is a novelist, memoirist, illustrator, and cultural critic. Her graphic memoir Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award, longlisted for the PEN Open Book Award, named a New York Times Notable Book, as well as a best book of the year by Time, Esquire, Publisher’s Weekly, and Library Journal. It is currently in development as a television series with Film 44.

Hosted by Jordan Kisner. Produced by Justin Alvarez and Drew Broussard. Music by Lora-Faye Åshuvud. Art by Kirstin Huber. Presented by Lit Hub Radio.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is Thresholds, a series of conversations with writers about experiences that completely turned them upside down, disoriented them in their lives, changed them, and changed how and why they wanted to write. Hosted by Jordan Kisner, author of the new essay collection, Thin Places, and brought to you by Lit Hub Radio. Learn more at www.thepodglomerate.com/shows/storybound Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Poet Layli Long Soldier joins Mira to talk about her transformation during pregnancy, learning to open up to the possibilities of the world, and how she makes a space for ease in order to make a space for creativity.

MENTIONED:

• The Indigenous Language Institute
• The Real Housewives
• S.J. Res 14 (111th Congress)

Layli Long Soldier earned a BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts and an MFA with honors from Bard College. She is the author of the chapbook Chromosomory (2010) and the full-length collection Whereas (2017), which won the National Books Critics Circle award and was a finalist for the National Book Award. She has been a contributing editor to Drunken Boat and poetry editor at Kore Press; in 2012, her participatory installation, Whereas We Respond, was featured on the Pine Ridge Reservation. In 2015, Long Soldier was awarded a National Artist Fellowship from the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation and a Lannan Literary Fellowship for Poetry. She was awarded a Whiting Writer’s Award in 2016. Long Soldier is a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation and lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

For more Thresholds, visit us at www.thisisthresholds.com

Be sure to subscribe and to leave a review of the show on your favorite podcast platform!

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Comedian Hari Kondabolu joins Mira to talk about seeing space for himself on the screen, discovering an answer to the question of how to be in the world, the first joke he was really proud of, and the power that comes from alienating an audience on purpose. There's a lot of laughter in this one, y'all -- as you might expect.

MENTIONED:

• People Magazine's Sexiest Man Alive in 1992: Nick Nolte
• Apu
• Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal
• Hari's 'diamond' joke
• Race by Paul Mooney
• Stewart Lee

Also, a big announcement: Hari has a new comedy special coming to YouTube on April 18th -- "Vacation Baby"! Get excited; we sure are!!

Hari Kondabolu is a comedian, writer and podcaster based in Brooklyn, NY. He currently co-hosts the Netflix food competition show “Snack vs. Chef” with Megan Stalter. His 2018 Netflix special “Warn Your Relatives” was named one of the best of the year by Time, Paste Magazine, Cosmopolitan, E! Online, and Mashable. In 2017, his truTV documentary “The Problem with Apu” was released and created a global conversation about race and representation, and is now used in high school, college and grad school curriculums around the country. Hari has also released two comedy albums, “Waiting for 2042” & “Mainstream American Comic.” Additionally, he has performed on Conan, Jimmy Kimmel Live, The Late Show with David Letterman and among many others. He is also a former writer & correspondent on the much loved, Chris Rock produced FX show “Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell.” He’s a regular panelist on “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me” and a regular guest-host on “Midday” on WNYC. As a podcaster, he co-hosted the popular “Politically Reactive” with W. Kamau Bell. Additionally, he also co-hosts what he politely describes as a “pop up podcast,” The Untitled Kondabolu Brothers Podcast with his younger brother Ashok (“Dap” from HBO’s Chillin’ Island and rap group Das Racist.) Hari attended both Bowdoin College and Wesleyan University and earned a Masters in Human Rights from the London School of Economics in 2008.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mira chats with novelist Angie Cruz (How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water) about figuring out who you want to be, Angie's semi-secret history in fashion design and painting, the arrival of her character Cara Romero in her life, and questioning the truths of America in these most trying of times.

MENTIONED:

• FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology)
• Go Tell It On the Mountain by James Baldwin
• Just Above My Head by James Baldwin
• Jazz by Toni Morrison
• Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino

Angie Cruz is a novelist and editor. Her most recent novel is How Not To Drown in A Glass of Water (2022). Her novel, Dominicana was the inaugural book pick for GMA book club and shortlisted for The Women’s Prize, longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction, The Aspen Words Literary Prize, a RUSA Notable book and the winner of the ALA/YALSA Alex Award in fiction. It was named most anticipated/ best book in 2019 by Time, Newsweek, People, Oprah Magazine, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Esquire. Cruz is the author of two other novels, Soledad and Let It Rain Coffee and the recipient of numerous fellowships and residencies including the Lighthouse Fellowship, Siena Art Institute, and the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute Fellowship. She’s published shorter works in The Paris Review, VQR, Callaloo, Gulf Coast and other journals. She's the founder and Editor-in-chief of the award winning literary journal, Aster(ix) and is currently an Associate Professor at University of Pittsburgh. She divides her time between Pittsburgh, New York and Turin.

For more Thresholds, visit us at www.thisisthresholds.com

Please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, too!

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Guest-host Mira Jacob talks with astrologer and author Chani Nicholas about being the child at the party, how Chani found her voice, and the question of who heals the healers?

MENTIONED:

• Morning Pages (from Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way)
• FreeFrom
• therapy

CHANI NICHOLAS is a Los Angeles–based New York Times bestselling author of You Were Born For This and astrologer with a community of over one million monthly readers. She has been a counseling astrologer for more than twenty years, guiding people to discover and live out their life’s purpose through understanding their birth chart. Her app, CHANI, offers users a personalized, daily understanding of their birth chart. She has been featured in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and on Netflix.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Big News: novelist/memoirist/wonderful human Mira Jacob will be stepping into the host chair this spring! This week, she and Jordan sit down for a pass-the-baton chat -- kicking off with a flashback to the very first Thresholds episode (and interview) from February 2020.

MENTIONED:

• Mira's Thresholds interview
• "What You Might Not Know About 'Getting Roofied'" by Jordan Kisner
• Mira in conversation with Saeed Jones and Kiese Laymon for Bookable

Mira Jacob is a novelist, memoirist, illustrator, and cultural critic. Her graphic memoir Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award, longlisted for the PEN Open Book Award, named a New York Times Notable Book, as well as a best book of the year by Time, Esquire, Publisher’s Weekly, and Library Journal. It is currently in development as a television series with Film 44. Her novel The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing was a Barnes & Noble Discover New Writers pick, shortlisted for India’s Tata First Literature Award, longlisted for the Brooklyn Literary Eagles Prize and named one of the best books of 2014 by Kirkus Reviews, the Boston Globe, Goodreads, Bustle, and The Millions. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Electric Literature, Tin House, Literary Hub, Guernica, Vogue, and the Telegraph. She is currently the visiting professor at MFA Creative Writing program at The New School, and a founding faculty member of the MFA Program at Randolph College. She is the co-founder of Pete’s Reading Series in Brooklyn, where she spent 13 years bringing literary fiction, non-fiction, and poetry to Williamsburg. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, documentary filmmaker Jed Rothstein, and their son.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hafizah Geter (The Black Period) joins Jordan to discuss her family's influence on her work, the power of memory, being in conversation with the writers you love, and how all of us live in a mix of genres.

MENTIONED:

• Goya's Black Paintings
• "Fighting Erasure" by Parul Sehgal
• Toni Morrison's concept of rememory
• Fela Kuti, Yussef Lateef, Otis Redding

Hafizah Augustus Geter is a Nigerian American writer, poet, and literary agent born in Zaria, Nigeria, and raised in Akron, Ohio, and Columbia, South Carolina. She is the author of the poetry collection Un-American, an NAACP Image Award and PEN Open Book Award finalist. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Bomb, The Believer, The Paris Review, among many others. The poetry committee co-chair of the Brooklyn Literary Council, she is a Bread Loaf Katharine Bakeless nonfiction fellow, a Cave Canem poetry fellow, and a 92Y Women inPower Fellow and holds an MFA in nonfiction from New York University, where she was an Axinn Fellow. Hafizah lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Shades on, sleeves up—it's summertime and we're back! This week, Jordan talks with Amy Lin, author of Here After, about grief, the sudden loss of her husband, miracles, and her family's history with thin places.

Amy Lin lives in Calgary, Canada where there are two seasons: winter and road construction. She completed her MFA at Warren Wilson College and holds BAs in English Literature and Education. Her work has been published in places such as Ploughshares and she has been awarded residencies from Yaddo and Casa Comala. She writes the Substack At The Bottom Of Everything where she wonders: how do we live with anything? Here After is her first book.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sam Lipsyte (No One Left to Come Looking For You) joins Jordan to talk about giving up on punk rock, rediscovering a passion for writing, and the revelation that if you realize nobody cares, then you can do the thing that makes you happy.

MENTIONED:

• Dungbeetle
• Riverbank State Park
• John Cheever
• Galaxie 500

Sam Lipsyte's latest novel is No One Left to Come Looking For You. He is the author of the story collections Venus Drive and The Fun Parts and four novels: Hark, The Ask (a New York Times Notable Book), The Subject Steve, and Home Land, which was a New York Times Notable Book and received the Believer Book Award. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Best American Short Stories, among other places. The recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, he lives in New York City and teaches at Columbia University.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Heather Radke joins Jordan to talk about Butts: A Backstory, the playful invitation of the book's title, the general unruliness of bodies, and the joys of a JSTOR deep-dive.

MENTIONED:

• Jodie Foster's Coppertone ad
• "Baby Got Back," Sir Mix-a-lot
• Elizabeth Alexander's "The Venus Hottentot"
• The Normman & Norma Statues

Heather Radke is an essayist, journalist, and contributing editor and reporter at Radiolab, the Peabody Award­–winning program from WNYC. She has written for publications including The Believer, Longreads, and The Paris Review, and she teaches at Columbia University’s creative writing MFA Program. Before becoming a writer, Heather worked as a curator at the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum in Chicago.

For more Thresholds, visit us at www.thisisthresholds.com

Be sure to leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform!

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thresholds reaches its centenary episode with equal parts celebration and consideration. We reached out to old friends to leave us some voicemails, Jordan wrote a musing on this particular milestone, and we're doing a little giveaway to celebrate all of you who've helped bring us this far along the path.

Mentioned:

• "Notebook, 1981," by Eileen Myles
• The Isolation Journals by Suleika Jaouad

Thanks to all of our guests, to our team, and to you listeners! Here's to many more, in 2023 and beyond!

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's the end of our last full capsule for 2022 -- and what a joyful, life-affirming batch of conversations it was! First up, we've got Saeed Jones offering some writing advice (and an exercise, of sorts) -- then some alumni news and a call to pre-order several 2023 releases -- and finally, Chloé Cooper Jones and Jordan get into talking about revision and the life-affirming process of writing.

MENTIONED:

• The Best American Essays 2022, edited by Alexander Chee
• Biography of X by Catherine Lacey
• Terrace Story by Hilary Leichter
• The Last Catastrophe by Allegra Hyde

Stay tuned for some end-of-year surprises and celebrations, coming very shortly!

For more Thresholds, visit us at www.thisisthresholds.com

Be sure to leave us a review on Apple Podcasts!

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.