Thresholds

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.

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.