Otherppl with Brad Listi

Joyelle McSweeney is the guest. Her books include the poetry collection The Red Bird, and the novels Nylund, the Sarcographer and Flet. Recently, her play entitled Dead Youth, or, The Leaks won the inaugural Leslie Scalapino Award for Innovative Women Playwrights. She is also a co-editor of Action Books and the quarterly online literary journal Action Yes. Kate Bernheimer says "If Vladimir Nabokov wanted to seduce Nancy Drew, he'd read her Nylund, The Sarcographer one dark afternoon over teacups of whiskey. Welcome to fiction's new femme fatale, Joyelle McSweeney." And Michael Martone says "You thought you knew your own language. This book hands it back to you on a platter and includes the instructional manual for its further use." Monologue topics: Christmas, late capitalism, edginess, curmudgeonly behavior, my daughter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jonathan Miles is the guest. His new novel, Want Not, is now available from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Dave Eggers, writing for The New York Times Book Review, says "I loved this book…the work of a fluid, confident, and profoundly talented writer…it’s a joyous book, a very funny book, and an unpredictable book, and that’s because everyone in it is allowed to be fully human.” And Ben Fountain, author of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, says "In this powerful, blisteringly funny novel, Jonathan Miles makes a startling discovery: We are what we throw away. It’s in our castoff goods, edibles, chances and people that our authentic selves are revealed; or, as one of his many memorable characters puts it, 'garbage [is] the only truthful thing civilization produced.' Miles mines the depths of waste so artfully that by the end of this extraordinary novel, we’re left with the suspicion that redemption may well be no more, and no less, than an existential salvage operation." Monologue topics: New York City, feeling overprotective, my best books of 2013 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Karolina Waclawiak is the guest. Her debut novel, How to Get Into the Twin Palms, is now available from Two Dollar Radio. The New York Times Book Review says "Just as Anya reinvents herself, Waclawiak's novel (her first) reinvents the immigration story...At its most illuminating, How to Get Into the Twin Palms movingly portrays a protagonist intent on both creating and destroying herself, on burning brightly even as she goes up in smoke." And Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, calls it "A taut debut... [that] strikes with the creeping suddenness of a brush fire." Monologue topics: the dentist, cavities, flossing, contagions, demoralization, wheat, paranoia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Noah Cicero is the guest. His new novel is called Go to Work and Do Your Job. Care for Your Children. Pay Your Bills. Obey the Law. Buy Products., and it is available now from Lazy Fascist Press. Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket, says "I read Noah Cicero and remember that 'hysterical' can refer to something really funny and to a situation completely out of control. His work punches people in the face. Don't get in its way." Monologue topics: receiving visitors, gentlemen callers, courting, taking a knee, listicles, bullshit.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Colum McCann is the guest. In 2009, he won the National Book Award for his novel Let the Great World Spin and this year published a new novel called Transatlantic. He is also the curator of a new anthology called The Book of Men, available now from Picador.  The Book of Men is the official December selection of The TNB Book Club. From the publisher: To help launch the literary nonprofit Narrative 4, Esquire asked eighty of the world’s greatest writers to chip in with a story, all with the title, “How to Be a Man.”The result is The Book of Men, an unflinching investigation into the essence of masculinity. Monologue topics: the app, travel hell, TNB Book Club, kind mail, Narrative 4. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ben Brooks is the guest. His new novel, Lolito, is now available from Canongate Books. Nick Cave says "Lolito is the funniest, most horrible book I've read in years. I was blown away." And The Guardian says "Both warm and uncompromising, Lolito will be as entertaining for young adults as it is educational for older readers. And if some aspects of the world Brooks inhabits seem alarming, I can't think of a writer I would rather have as my guide." Monologue topics: coming through in the clutch, voicemail, prank calls, the word 'podcast' as a verb. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jamie Iredell is the guest. His new essay collection,  I Was a Fat Drunk Catholic School Insomniac, is now available from Future Tense. Scott McClanahan says “Jamie Iredell is one of the two or three best writers I know in this world. If you read him—you’ll say the same thing. If you don’t, that’s fine. Your grandchildren will say it one day.” Monologue topics: bookstores, trying to find 'the perfect book,' low-level panic, Ten Billion, wanting instructions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Claire Vaye Watkins is the guest. Her debut story collection, Battleborn, is now available in paperback from Riverhead. Antonya Nelson, writing for The New York Times Book Review, says “Although individual stories stand alone, together they tell the tale of a place, and of the population that thrives and perishes therein… The historical sits comfortably alongside the contemporary and the factual nicely supplements the fictional… Readers will share in the environs of the author and her characters, be taken into the hardship of a pitiless place and emerge on the other side—wiser, warier and weathered like the landscape.” And The Millions says “As if Watkins’ prose embodies the desert landscape of Nevada itself, the stories are stony, unkind, and harsh, though never unattractive… Beneath these confessions runs a spiritual undertow—that salvific beauty can arise when brutality is brought to light… All of her stories left me feeling purged and oddly cleansed, easily making Battleborn one of the strongest collections I’ve read in years.” Monologue topics: titles, titling, Dying Young, nakedly depressing titles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kevin Sampsell is the guest. His debut novel, This is Between Us, is now available from Tin House Books. Jess Walter, author of Beautiful Ruins, says "In This Is Between Us Kevin Sampsell writes with grace and intimacy about the toughest subject of all—love—and manages to capture a relationship in its natural state: wry and wistful, strange and sexy, humming with desire, quaking with vulnerability." And Patrick deWitt, author of The Sisters Brothers, says "This Is Between Us is an imperturbable, strange, melancholy (but never maudlin) piece of work. Kevin Sampsell straddles the line between candor and oversharing with an artful grace I found infectious." Monologue topics: mail, art vs. media, Tom Waits, LSD, the devil, doing the podcast live in front of people. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Daniel Alarcón is the guest. His new novel, At Night We Walk in Circles, is now available from Riverhead Books. The New York Times Book Review calls it "Wise and engaging...a provocative study of the way war culture ensnares both participant and observer, the warping fascination of violence, and the disfiguring consequences of the roles we play in public...[a] layered, gorgeously nuanced work…the ending is a quiet bomb, as satisfying as it is ambiguous." And The Daily Beast says "Alarcón is a young, talented writer who is on the cusp of a breakthrough, a state of mind perfectly captured by the compulsively energetic voice of At Night We Walk in Circles...a gripping story." Monologue topics: Conan, M.I.A., projected anxiety, kale, milk, mail, Chelsea Martin, alt-lit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices