Otherppl with Brad Listi

Anne Marie Wirth Cauchon is the guest. Her debut novel, Nothing, is now available from Two Dollar Radio. Joy Williams calls it "A burning mean and darkly mysterious read." And Kate Zambreno says "I could tell you that Anne Marie Wirth Cauchon has written an utterly contemporary novel of our fragmented culture, a novel that I think might be the great American novel of the selfie, brilliantly alternating the narratives of two young travelers partying and searching and losing themselves in the wild West — a Kerouac hitchhiker juxtaposed with the nihilistic, wanting, wandering Ruth and her toxic friendship with her prettier best friend. But this is what I want to tell you—this is what you need to know — Anne Marie Wirth Cauchon writes like a beast, brutal and ecstatic. You need to read this." Monologue topics:  celebrity sightings, Book Soup, voicemail, Elliott Holt, my thing, navelgazing Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Laura van den Berg is the guest. Her new story collection, The Isle of Youth, is now available from FSG Originals.  Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, raves "If ever there was a writer going places, it’s Laura van den Berg, who follows up her debut collection, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us, with the ambitious, modular The Isle of Youth, whose seven stories are arranged along the themes of family secrets with noirish intrigue." And The New Inquiry says “Van den Berg excels at complexity, ec­centricity, maximalism of plot…Her emphases on elaborate plot and inten­tional loose ends are a refreshing departure from the contemporary taste for tidy, mini­mal plot paired with maximal voices.” Also this episode: a brief conversation with Victoria Patterson, whose new novel, The Peerless Four, is the official November selection of The TNB Book Club. Monologue topics:  congestion, logistics, obsession with logistics Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Monica Drake is the guest. Her new novel, The Stud Book, is now available from Hogarth Press. Cheryl Strayed says “Monica Drake has written a take-your-breath-away good, blow-your-mind wise, crack-your-heart-open beauty of a novel. The Stud Book is a smart, sexy, comic, compassionate, absorbing, and necessary story of our times.” And Publishers Weekly says “What really stands out is [Drake's] depiction of [the] city. This is not the twee wonderland of Portlandia…Drake combines [her characters’] lives in a quirky, knowing way, showing the complexities of modern-day female life, species Pacific Northwest native.” Monologue topics:  Sweden, responding to criticism, Google Translator, self-loathing, weakness, humiliation.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Doug Dorst is the guest. His latest novel, co-authored with film director J.J. Abrams, is called S. (Mulholland Books).  USA Today calls it "...an intriguing and impressive experiment in storytelling that's full of paranoia, conspiracy theory, love and mystery..." And The Telegraph calls it "...a beautiful hardback carefully distressed to look like an old library book, stuffed with astonishing ephemera (postcards, newspaper clippings, photos, letters) that flutter from the turning pages - and a dose of film-industrial chicanery in its cover claims as well..." Monologue topics:  Halloween, voicemail, Chelsea Martin, shyness, curiosity Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jennifer duBois is the guest. Her new novel, Cartwheel, is now available from Random House. The New York Times Book Review calls it “Psychologically astute . . . Dubois hits [the] larger sadness just right and dispenses with all the salacious details you can readily find elsewhere. . . . The writing in Cartwheel is a pleasure—electric, fine-tuned, intelligent, conflicted. The novel is engrossing, and its portraiture hits delightfully and necessarily close to home.” And Entertainment Weekly calls it “[A] gripping, gorgeously written novel . . . The emotional intelligence in Cartwheel is so sharp it’s almost ruthless—a tabloid tragedy elevated to high art." Monologue topics:  file sharing, Halloween, last minute costume ideas, Windblown Man.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chelsea Martin is the guest. Her new book, Even Though I Don't Miss You, is due out from Short Flight / Long Drive Books on November 1, 2013.  Blake Butler says "Someone who should not die is Chelsea Martin." Monologue topics:  Mellow Pages Library, mail, suspending disbelief, my current reading taste, experimentalism, immersive reading Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Davis Schneiderman is the guest. His new novel, [SIC], is now available from Jaded Ibis Productions. [SIC] includes public domain works published under Davis Schneiderman's name, including everything from the prologue to The Canterbury Tales to Wikipedia pages to genetic codes, along with a transformation of the Jorge Luis Borges story "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote." [SIC] is part of DEAD/BOOKS trilogy of conceptual works by Schneiderman from Jaded Ibis Press. Other books in the trilogy are Blank (2011), and Ink (forthcoming). Monologue topics: Simple Kind of Life, Gwen Stefani, Chris de Burgh, Lady in Red, Louisiana, nostalgia, emotional breakdowns. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jesmyn Ward is the guest. She was the 2011 recipient of the National Book Award for her novel, Salvage the Bones, and her new memoir, Men We Reaped, is now available from Bloomsbury. The New York Times Book Review raves "[Ward] chronicles our American story in language that is raw, beautiful and dangerous… [Her] singular voice and her full embrace of her anger and sorrow set this work apart from those that have trodden similar ground… With loving and vivid recollection, she returns flesh to the bones of statistics and slows her ghosts to live again… [It’s a] complicated and courageous testimony." And The Los Angeles Times calls it "Heart-wrenching… A brilliant book about beauty and death… at once a coming-of-age story and a kind of mourning song… filled [with] intimate and familial moments, each described with the passion and precision of the polished novelist Ward has become… Ward is one of those rare writers who’s traveled across America’s deepening class rift with her sense of truth intact. What she gives back to her community is the hurtful honesty of the best literary art." Monologue topics: awards, Alice Munro, The Nobel Prize, Trey Parker, Matt Stone, LSD, Bret Easton Ellis Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chris L. Terry is the guest. His debut novel, Zero Fade, is now available from Curbside Splendor.  Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler's Wife, says "Chris Terry has bestowed Kevin, the hero of Zero Fade, with an especially acute case of teenage angst, and the results are sweet, painful, and very recognizable to anyone who has survived seventh grade. This is a wonderful book." And Lindsay Hunter says "Reading Chris Terry's Zero Fade offered me a glimpse into a cultural experience that isn't mine, but that I could recognize immediately. Vernacular as world. On the surface, it's just language. But this novel isn't surface. The characters speak in rhythms that reveal emotions not identifiable by just words, but I'll name them nonetheless: humor, sadness, confusion, joy, revelation. It's all here in Terry's first novel, a novel that is practically carbonated, how it sparkles and burns." Monologue topics: the story behind the story, being interviewed, rambling, HPV, cunnilingus, celebrity marital discord Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lauren Grodstein is the guest. Her new novel, The Explanation for Everything, is now available from Algonquin Books. It is the official October selection of The TNB Book Club. Tom Perrotta calls it "Very smart and touching and unexpected.” And The Washington Post says “[Grodstein has] fashioned in her smart, assured third novel, The Explanation for Everything, . . . a gripping tale of a biologist who finds himself approaching midlife and suddenly finding faith . . . Grodstein’s real gift is her emotional precision . . . Finding or losing God proves to be an equally destabilizing tectonic shift, and this novel is full of them . . . Their cumulative force will leave you happily unsteady, and moved.” Monologue topics: psychic burden, fear, anxiety, Sisyphus, insomnia, failure, dying alone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices