Thresholds

Now celebrating its fifth season, Storybound is a radio theater program designed for the podcast age. Hosted by 2021 KCRW Radio Race winner Jude Brewer, Storybound presents the voices of today’s best writers, like Mitchell S. Jackson, Tamara Winfrey-Harris, and Clint Smith, reading accomplished works of fiction and non-fiction. You’ll also hear original music specially composed for the respective text. Needless to say, it’s an immersive storytelling experience.The episode we’re sharing today features Danté Stewart reading from Shoutin’ In The Fire: An American Epistle — his stirring account of his religious experience and of his grappling with the racism endemic in history. It’s a story of difficult turning points and sometimes painful epiphanies that’s perfect for Thresholds listeners. If you enjoy what you hear, make sure to follow Storybound (for free) wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jordan talks with N. Scott Momaday about the Stanford fellowship that changed his life, the importance of taking the natural world into your heart, and the genius of Emily Dickinson.MENTIONED:The Stanford Creative Writing Fellowship (now the Stegner Fellowship)"My Cricket" by Emily DickinsonThe Pueblo of JemezN. Scott Momaday is an internationally renowned poet, novelist, artist, teacher, and storyteller whose works celebrate and preserve Native American heritage. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel House Made of Dawn and he is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Academy of American Poets Prize, the National Medal of Arts, the Ken Burns American Heritage Prize, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation's Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award, and the 2021 Frost Medal for distinguished lifetime achievement in poetry. A longtime professor of English and American literature, Momaday earned his PhD from Stanford University and retired as Regents Professor at the University of Arizona. He lives in New Mexico and his latest book is Dream Drawings.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.

Lulu Miller joins Jordan to talk about heartbreak and building back from it, about making writing the healthy choice, about relating to David Starr Jordan -- and a little bit about fish.MENTIONED:RadiolabThe 1906 San Francisco earthquakeLisa FrankLulu Miller is the cohost of Radiolab, cofounder of NPR’s Invisibilia, and a Peabody Award–winning science journalist. Her first book is Why Fish Don't Exist and her writing has been published in The New Yorker, VQR, Orion, Electric Literature, Catapult, and beyond. Her favorite spot on earth is Humpback Rocks.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.

adrienne maree brown joins Jordan to talk about the moment she learned what her style of leadership looked like, about the power of saying things aloud, and about her love of Octavia Butler and finding her way to writing fiction.MENTIONED:The League of Young Voters (or The League of Pissed-Off Voters)AK PressLeft Turn Magazine's 2010 issue "Other Worlds are Possible: Visionary Fiction, Culture, and Organizing" edited by Walidah ImarishaOctavia E. Butler's archive at the Huntington Library in Pasadenaadrienne maree brown is the writer-in-residence at the Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute, and author of Grievers (the first novella in a trilogy on the Black Dawn imprint), Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation, We Will Not Cancel Us and Other Dreams of Transformative Justice, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds and the co-editor of Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements and How to Get Stupid White Men Out of Office. She is the cohost of the How to Survive the End of the World, Octavia’s Parables and Emergent Strategy podcasts. adrienne is rooted in Detroit.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.

Allegra Hyde talks to Jordan about the peripatetic experience she had trying to find herself in utopian communities after college -- and a transformative near-miss with a mushroom that led her to where she is now.MENTIONED:Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carrollthe Rainbow Valley Community in New ZealandBrook FarmImportant Saftey Tip: never eat a raw mushroom or one you haven't safely identified as non-poisonous. We recommend this handy NYT guide on "How to Forage Mushrooms" as a place to start for the aspiring forager.Allegra Hyde is the author of ELEUTHERIA, as well as the short story collection, OF THIS NEW WORLD. A recipient of three Pushcart Prizes, Hyde's writing has also been anthologized in Best American Travel Writing, Best Women’s Travel Writing, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions. Her stories and essays have appeared in Tin House, American Short Fiction, Kenyon Review, New England Review, The Threepenny Review, and many other venues. She currently teaches at Oberlin College.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.

Ed Yong joins Jordan to tell the story of his pandemic puppy, Typo, and how introducing a new animal to his household deepened his understanding of the book he was working on. Plus, what it's like to take a break from covering the pandemic to write an entire book.MENTIONED:Our Dogs, Ourselves by Alexandra HorowitzThe Best American Science and Nature Writing 2021OUR PLANET (Netflix)Ed Yong is a Pulitzer Prize–winning science writer on the staff of The Atlantic, where he also won the George Polk Award for science reporting, among other honors. His next book, An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, is out in June 2022. His first book, I Contain Multitudes, was a New York Times bestseller and won numerous awards. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, National Geographic, Wired, The New York Times, Scientific American, and more. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Liz Neeley, and their corgi, Typo.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.

It’s the end of our ‘experimentation’ capsule of episodes and Jordan is joined in the studio by Thresholds producer Drew Broussard for a grab-bag of outtakes, audience questions, and more.MENTIONED:Sheila Heti asks Jordan a question she’s never been asked beforeAlexander Chee recommends some books, music, and more to get a person through stressful timesJordan tells Drew about a poem by Jericho Brown that knocked her overAdvice for what to do when the writing gets hardWe'll be back March 23rd!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.

Sheila Heti joins Jordan to talk about grief, god, the shape of her novel, and what it means to be rooting for the snail.Mentioned:"The Unknown Masterpiece" by Honoré de BalzacThe Masterpiece by Émile ZolaSarah RuhlCrime and Punishment by Fyodor DostoyevskyThe Remains of the Day by Kazuo IshiguroSheila Heti is the author of several books of fiction and nonfiction, including Motherhood and How Should a Person Be?, which New York magazine deemed one of the “New Classics of the 21st century.” She was named one of “the New Vanguard” by the New York Times book critics, who, along with a dozen other magazines and newspapers, chose Motherhood as a Best Book of 2018. Her novels have been translated into twenty-four languages. She is the former Interviews Editor of The Believer magazine. She lives in Toronto.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 to Dr. Carl Erik Fisher (The Urge: Our History of Addiction) about perceiving addiction as a spectrum, the historical evolution of addiction as a concept, and the psychotic break that led to his own sobriety.Mentioned:Addiction and Devotion in Early Modern England by Rebecca LemonThe Faust legendThe American temperance movementFranklin Evans; or, The Inebriate by Walt WhitmanCarl Erik Fisher is an addiction physician and bioethicist. He is an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University, where he works in the Division of Law, Ethics, and Psychiatry. He also maintains a private psychiatry practice focusing on complementary and integrative approaches to treating addiction. His writing has appeared in Nautilus, Slate, and Scientific American MIND, among other outlets. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his partner and sonFor 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.

Sarah Manguso talks to Jordan about thinking she'd never write a novel, processing the place you come from, and the cold silence of whiteness.Mentioned:* the four-minute mile* Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Raymond Carver, Wallace Stevens* Antoine Wilson's Mouth to Mouth* "A Boston Toast" by John Collins BossidySarah Manguso is the author of eight books of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, most recently the novel Very Cold People. Her nonfiction books are 300 Arguments, Ongoingness, The Guardians, and The Two Kinds of Decay, and her poetry collections are Siste Viator and The Captain Lands in Paradise. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Hodder Fellowship, and the Rome Prize. Born and raised in Massachusetts, she now lives in Los Angeles, where she teaches creative writing at Antioch University.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.