Otherppl with Brad Listi

Patrick Hoffman is the guest. His debut novel The White Van is now available from Grove/Atlantic.  Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, says "A heist propels Hoffman’s outstanding first novel. Sophia, a Russian émigré, plans to rob a San Francisco branch of US Bank with some inside assistance from its manager, Rada Harkov, and the help of two people recruited (decidedly against their wills) for the job: “the Russian,” another émigré and a black-market trader who owes Sophia money; and Emily, a young woman coerced into helping with drugs and threats (“She had been made into a slave”). The robbery nets some $880,000, a powerful temptation for another major character, Elias, an officer with the SFPD Gang Task Force. An alcoholic, Elias is plagued by money worries. Beyond the engaging plot, the book focuses on people’s behavior in the face of impossible choices. Hoffman, who spent nine years working as a PI in San Francisco, writes with great authority about the city’s seamy side and the grim realities of life for its down-on-their-luck denizens." Monologue topics: Apple, technology fetishization, camping outside of stores, Ray Rice, public outrage.     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Amy Lawless is the guest. Her latest poetry collection, My Dead, is available now from Octopus Books. Janae Green says "Lawless writes poetry that itches; you have to bury your fingernails into your skin and bleed a little to remind yourself not to scratch it." And Interview magazine says "My Dead delves into the process of mourning loved ones with Lawless' calm, characteristically non-melodramatic poise. She cites videos of elephant mourning rituals seen on the Internet as a main source of inspiration. While humor might have been used to subvert heavier topics in the past, she chooses control and intimate dissection this time around." Monologue topics: unlived lives, mediocrity, fate, bifurcation, Joan Rivers.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

David Connerley Nahm is the guest. His debut novel, Ancient Oceans of Central Kentucky, is available now from Two Dollar Radio. Library Journal calls it "A powerful first novel, the kind that makes you want to stop people in the street to tell them about it." And NPR says "Ancient Oceans of Central Kentucky is far from a conventional novel...The pacing is perfect -- while this isn't a thriller, at least in any traditional sense of the word, it's deeply suspenseful...it's impossible to stop reading until you've gone through each beautiful line, a beauty that infuses the whole novel, even in its darkest moments." Monologue topics: dinosaurs, weirdness, weather, vacation, lethargy, rest, impatience.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Michael Earl Craig is the guest. His latest book, Talkativeness, is available now from Wave Books.  Publishers Weekly says "Craig renders unsettling dreams and quotidian clutter with sparse language and a quiet, distant voice to conjure poems brimming with the bizarre. His knack for the disturbing materializes in images from Dick Cheney being wheeled in á la Dr. Strangelove to President Obama's inauguration, to a husband and wife witnessing 'dark turkeys' encroaching on their property, to a speaker declaring his penchant for vocational talent: 'I have just very carefully cut/ my best friend's wife's bangs.' Even the lighter elements of the book seem a bit foul, such as the quick cameo of Death from Ingmar Bergman's Seventh Seal. This is the work of a writer who lives 'in an experimental town' where the 17 on-duty cops can only say, 'That's the way the cookie crumbles.' If it's the qualities of the macabre that lure the reader in, then it's our inability to look away from the grotesque that drive us to continue reading. That inability to turn back, much like the advice Craig offers about catching horses, is what remains at the end of this read: 'you can't fake looking away, horses/ know when you are doing this./ You have to really look away./ Some horsemen never come out of this.'" Monologue topics: re-reading, Hunter S. Thompson, The Razor's Edge, my bad memory, melatonin, nightmares, fear, superstition. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jim Ruland is the guest. His new novel, Forest of Fortune, is available now from Tyrus Books. It is the official August selection of The TNB Book Club. The Los Angeles Times calls it "[A] masterpiece of desperation, delusion and misdeeds.... Ruland...brilliantly taps the fundamental irony of casinos.... A satisfying read." And Jerry Stahl says "...[Forest of Fortune] captures the soul and voice of hard-luck, hard-living Americans in a way that conjures up earlier masters like Raymond Carver and Richard Ford. Jim Ruland has an uncanny ability to get inside his characters...." Monologue topics:  National Geographic, Going Deep, David Rees, Otherppl Premium, dive bars, disillusionment, fetishizing filth.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Joshua Wolf Shenk is the guest. His new book, Powers of Two, is now available from Eamon Dolan Books, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Andrew Solomon says "In this surprising, compelling, deeply felt book, Joshua Wolf Shenk banishes the idea of solitary genius by demonstrating that our richest art and science come from collaboration: we need one another not only for love, but also for thinking and imagining and growing and being." And Susan Orlean says "This is a book about magic; about the Beatles; about the chemistry between people; about neuroscience; and about the buddy system; it examines love and hate, harmony and dissonance, and everything in between. The result is wise, funny, surprising, and completely engrossing." Monologue: solitude, individualism, hubris, needing people.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cassandra Troyan is the guest. Her new book, Kill Manual, is available from Artifice Books in October 2014. Chris Kraus says "The sometime-narrator of Kill Manual anastasiasteele3577 haunts chat rooms and BDSM dating sites in search of oblivion. But oblivion hardly needs to be searched for: It’s already there. This disturbing and radical book reveals, among other things, the half-life left in the wake of ubiquitous, data-mined, robotically fabricated internet content. The world ends in exhaustion. Troyan’s piercingly felt, sampled text probes the immateriality of language. Her work is brilliant and brave." And Megan Milks says "This book beats with a steady intensity that is equal parts hot and terrifying; its words are sticky emissions, or fists in the flesh of the eyeball. With a voice both chillingly disembodied and viscerally corporeal, cut with mordant wit, Kill Manual moans, snarls, and laughs, harshly. Riveted by shame, refusing any boundary between pleasure and disgust, with these poems Cassandra Troyan orchestrates a fever march towards negation: 'You are not allowed to call this radical.'" Monologue topics: sleeplessness, My Little Pony, lying, unicorns. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Austin Kleon is the guest. He is the bestselling author of the books Steal Like an Artist and Show Your Work!. Both are available from Workman Publishing.  Publishers Weeklysays “Some people are natural self-promoters. For others, it’s painfully difficult to put their work out there. In this creatively designed pocket-sized book, Kleon offers the latter group effective strategies that allow them to share their work without leaving their comfort zone…. Kleon’s advice is sassy and spot-on.” And The Atlantic says "Austin Kleon is positively one of the most interesting people on the Internet... Kleon makes an articulate and compelling case for combinatorial creativity and the role of remix in the idea economy." Monologue topics:  creativity, block, doing the work, privilege, fun.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tim O'Connell is the guest. He is an editor at Vintage, Anchor, Knopf, and Pantheon. Monologue topics: death, the old man who died, DMT, Tao Lin, Terence McKenna, psychedelic crocodiles who want to rape me, machine elves, fear.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Steve Almond is the guest. His new book, Against Football: One Fan's Reluctant Manifesto, is due out from Melville House on August 26, 2014.  (Author photo:  Sharona Jacobs) Publishers Weekly calls it "Powerful… Almond is drawing on his own experiences as a fan to illustrate how difficult the problem, which provides the book with an engaging personal angle that will lure readers who are mature enough to hear him out whether they agree with his conclusions… An important read, even if as Almond concedes, it offers more questions than answers." And Kirkus Reviews says “A provocative, thoughtful examination of an ’astonishingly brutal’ sport… Comic, compassionate and thought-provoking.” Monologue topics: football, fandom, non-fans, football as a lens through which to view the wider culture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices