Thresholds

It's the end of a 'Family' capsule of episodes and the last before our summer break, so we really pulled out all the stops this time.FEATURED:an outtake of Crystal Hana Kim talking about her next novela voicemail from Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore about how she does AugustThreshold alum highlights (like a bunch of them)summer reading recommendations from Jordan & DrewSee you in September, with fresh pencils and notebooks and interviews!For more Thresholds, visit us at www.thisisthresholds.comBe sure to rate/review/subscribe! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jordan talks with Michelle Tea about her new memoir (Knocking Myself Up), making the decision to get pregnant, her tarot practice, and creating a queer family.MENTIONED:The Rider-Waite TarotValencia by Michelle TeaXOJane.comBuddhismMichelle Tea is the author of over a dozen books, including the cult-classic Valencia, the essay collection Against Memoir, and the speculative memoir Black Wave. She is the recipient of awards from the Guggenheim, Lambda Literary, and Rona Jaffe Foundations, PEN/America, and other institutions. Knocking Myself Up is her latest memoir.Tea's cultural interventions include brainstorming the international phenomenon Drag Queen Story Hour, co-creating the Sister Spit queer literary performance tours, and occupying the role of Founding Director at RADAR Productions, a Bay Area literary organization, for over a decade. She also helmed the imprints Sister Spit Books at City Lights Publishers, and Amethyst Editions at The Feminist Press. She produces and hosts the Your Magic podcast, wherein which she reads tarot cards for Roxane Gay, Alexander Chee, Phoebe Bridgers and other artists, as well as the live tarot show Ask the Tarot on Spotify Greenroom.For more Thresholds, visit us at www.thisisthresholds.comBe sure to rate review and subscribe on your fav platform! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jordan talks with Keith Gessen about his new memoir of fatherhood, Raising Raffi: The First Five Years, and the challenges -- and wonders -- of being a parent and a writer, and what he thinks Raffi will think of the book when he's older.MENTIONED: Raising America by Ann Hulbert"Choosing a School for My Daughter in a Segregated City" by Nikole Hannah-JonesEmily Oster, economics professor and parenting advisorThe Kazdin MethodKeith Gessen is a founding editor of n+1 and a contributor to The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, and the London Review of Books. He is the editor of three nonfiction books and the translator or co-translator, from Russian, of a collection of short stories, a book of poems, and a work of oral history. He is also the author of two novels, “All the Sad Young Literary Men” and "A Terrible Country," as well as a book of essays, "Raising Raffi."  Gessen was born in Moscow and grew up outside of Boston. He graduated from Harvard with a B.A. in History and Literature in 1998, and subsequently received an M.F.A. in Creative Writing (Fiction) from Syracuse University. In 2014-2015 he was a Fellow at the Cullman Center for Writers and Scholars at the New York Public Library. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jordan talks with Crystal Hana Kim (If You Leave Me) about the ultimate unknowability of another person's story, about motherhood as a writer, and about how a friend's validation and encouragement helped her get serious about her craft.MENTIONED:The Korean WarPost-partum depressionReproductive justiceCeramics classCrystal Hana Kim is the author of If You Leave Me, which was a Booklist Editor’s Choice title and named a best book of 2018 by over a dozen publications. Kim is the recipient of the 2022 National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 Award and is a 2017 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize winner. Currently, she is the Visiting Assistant Professor at Queens College and a contributing editor at Apogee Journal. Her second novel, The Stone Home, is forthcoming from William Morrow / HarperCollins. She lives in Brooklyn, New York with her family.For more Thresholds, visit us at www.thisisthresholds.comBe sure to rate/review/subscribe! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jordan talks with Lydia Conklin about bucking the conventions of queer storytelling, how a childhood Oregon Trail reenactment led to one of the most memorable stories in Rainbow Rainbow, and the excitement of making big moves in life and art.MENTIONED:* The Oregon Trail (play here)* Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates* Intimacies by Katie KitamuraLydia Conklin is an Assistant Professor of Fiction at Vanderbilt University. Previously they were the Helen Zell Visiting Professor in Fiction at the University of Michigan. They’ve received a Stegner Fellowship in Fiction at Stanford University, a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award, three Pushcart Prizes, a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation, a Creative & Performing Arts Fulbright to Poland, work-study and tuition scholarships from Bread Loaf, and fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, Djerassi, Hedgebrook, the James Merrill House, the Vermont Studio Center, VCCA, Millay, Jentel, Lighthouse Works, Brush Creek, the Santa Fe Art Institute, Caldera, the Sitka Center, and Harvard University, among others. They were the 2015-2017 Creative Writing Fellow in fiction at Emory University. Their fiction has appeared in Tin House, American Short Fiction, The Southern Review, The Gettysburg Review, and elsewhere, and is forthcoming from The Paris Review. They have drawn graphic fiction for Lenny Letter, Drunken Boat, and the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago and cartoons for The New Yorker and Narrative Magazine. Their story collection, Rainbow Rainbow, was published in June 2022 by Catapult in the US and Scribner in the UK.For more Thresholds, visit us at www.thisisthresholds.comBe sure to rate/review/subscribe 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.

Jordan talks with Ashley C. Ford (author of the memoir Somebody's Daughter) about how writing made her into more of herself, about the systems that we live under, and about finding joy in new community.MENTIONED:Dr. Jill Christman, professor at Ball Statepaying off lunch debts (check out All for Lunch!)Onsite Workshops in TennesseeAshley C. Ford is a writer, host, and educator who lives in Indianapolis, Indiana with her husband, poet and fiction writer Kelly Stacy, and their chocolate lab Astro Renegade Ford-Stacy. Ford is the former host of The Chronicles of Now podcast, co-host of The HBO companion podcast Lovecraft Country Radio, seasons one & three of MasterCard’s Fortune Favors The Bold, as well as the video interview series PROFILE by BuzzFeed News, and Brooklyn-based news & culture TV show, 112BK.She was also the host of the first season of Audible's literary interview series, Authorized. She has been named among Forbes Magazine's 30 Under 30 in Media (2017), Brooklyn Magazine's Brooklyn 100 (2016), Time Out New York's New Yorkers of The Year (2017), and Variety’s New Power of New York (2019)For more Thresholds, visit us at www.thisisthresholds.comBe sure to rate/review/subscribe 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.

It’s the end of our ‘Inheritance' capsule of episodes!MENTIONED:Marie-Helene Bertino shares her summer reading plans (hint: they involve Ursula K. Le Guin)Jordan and Drew answer some more listener questions, and Jordan describes the horror of hearing her own voice over and over againupdates about cool Thresholds alums like Ryka Aoki, Ed Yong, Fernanda Melchor, Sarah Manguso, and Fariha Roisina flashback to Jordan's conversation with Ocean VuongWe'll be back with our next capsule starting in July!For more Thresholds, visit us at www.thisisthresholds.comBe sure to rate/review/subscribe! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jordan talks with Jhumpa Lahiri about her new collection of essays (Translating Myself and Others), how Ovid helped her navigate her mother’s death, and how translating her own new story collection is an exciting way to edit.MENTIONED:the Roman god Janusthe novels of Domenico Starnone (translated by Jhumpa Lahiri)Ovid's Metamorphoses "je est un autre" -- Arthur RimbaudJhumpa Lahiri is the author of Translating Myself and Others as well as four works of fiction including the Pulitzer-Prize-winning Interpreter of Maladies, The Namesake, Unaccustomed Earth, and The Lowland; and another work of nonfiction, In Other Words. She has received numerous awards, including the PEN/Hemingway Award; the PEN/Malamud Award; the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award; the Premio Gregor von Rezzori; the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature; a 2014 National Humanities Medal, awarded by President Barack Obama; and the Premio Internazionale Viareggio-Versilia. She is the editor of The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories and has translated three novels by Domenico Starnone into English. She teaches creative writing and literary translation at Princeton University, where she is director of the Program in Creative Writing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jordan talks with Elissa Washuta (White Magic) about the transformative nature of narrative, avoiding vs. thinking about painful things, why she takes more notes, and the power of a good video game.MENTIONED:Twin Peaks and Twin Peaks: The ReturnDorrie the Little Witch by Patricia CoombsThe CraftRed Dead Redemption 2Elissa Washuta is a member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe and a nonfiction writer. She is the author of White Magic, My Body Is a Book of Rules, and Starvation Mode. With Theresa Warburton, she is co-editor of the anthology Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers. She has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Creative Capital, Artist Trust, 4Culture, and Potlatch Fund. Elissa is an assistant professor of creative writing at the Ohio State University.be sure to rate/review/subscribe!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.

Jordan talks with Jessamine Chan about the ways having a kid changed her writing, about the difficulties mothers face in America, and about the one very good day of writing that led to The School for Good Mothers.MENTIONED:"Where is Your Mother?" by Rachel Aviv (The New Yorker)Cost of Living by Emily MaloneySCOTUS draft decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health OrganizationThe Ragdale FoundationJessamine Chan's debut novel is The School for Good Mothers, an instant New York Times bestseller. Her short stories have appeared in Tin House and Epoch. A former reviews editor at Publishers Weekly, she holds an MFA from Columbia University and a BA from Brown University. Her work has received support from the Elizabeth George Foundation, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Wurlitzer Foundation, Jentel, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, the Anderson Center, VCCA, and Ragdale. She lives in Chicago with her husband and daughter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.