Thresholds

Jordan talks to Katie Kitamura about the process of writing, the challenge of calling yourself a writer, and being a slow-moving creature in a world that wants to go fast.Katie Kitamura’s most recent novel is Intimacies. It was recently named one of the New York Times' Top 10 Books of 2021 and it was also longlisted for the 2021 National Book Award and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and was a Barack Obama Summer Reading selection. Her third novel, A Separation, was a finalist for the Premio von Rezzori and a New York Times Notable Book. She is also the author of Gone To The Forest and The Longshot, both finalists for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award. Her work has been translated into nineteen languages and is being adapted for film and television. A recipient of fellowships from the Lannan Foundation and Santa Maddalena, Katie has written for publications including The New York Times Book Review, The New York Times, The Guardian, Granta, BOMB, Triple Canopy, and Frieze. She teaches in the creative writing program at New York University.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 to James Han Mattson, author of Reprieve, about a trip to Korea to find his birth family and about harnessing messiness to create fiction that feels real.James Han Mattson was born in Seoul, Korea and raised in North Dakota. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he has received grants from the Copernicus Society of America and Humanities North Dakota. He has been a featured storyteller on The Moth, and has taught at the University of Iowa, the University of Cape Town, the University of Maryland, the George Washington University, Murray State University, and the University of California – Berkeley. In 2009, he moved to Korea and reunited with his birth family after 30 years of separation.He is the author of two novels: The Lost Prayers of Ricky Graves (Little A: 2017) and Reprieve (William Morrow/Harper Collins and BloomsburyUK: 2021), which was a Fall 2021 Book Pick by The New York Times, The L.A. Times, The Chicago Tribune, O Quarterly, Esquire, and Entertainment Weekly, among others, and was featured on the TODAY show. He is currently the fiction editor of Hyphen Magazine.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 Infrastructure Week on Thresholds! Kind of! Jordan talks with Aimee Bender, author of The Butterfly Lampshade, about how developing a structure can change your writing life, about the paralysis of options, and creating the character of Francie in her latest book.Aimee Bender is the author of six books: The Girl in the Flammable Skirt (1998) which was a NY Times Notable Book, An Invisible Sign of My Own (2000) which was an L.A. Times pick of the year, Willful Creatures (2005) which was nominated by The Believer as one of the best books of the year, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (2010) which won the SCIBA award for best fiction, and an Alex Award, The Color Master, a NY Times Notable book for 2013, and her latest novel, The Butterfly Lampshade, which came out in July 2020, and was longlisted for the PEN/Jean Stein Award. Her books have been translated into sixteen languages. Her short fiction has been published in Granta, GQ, Harper’s, Tin House, McSweeney’s, The Paris Review, and more, as well as heard on PRI’s “This American Life”and “Selected Shorts”. She lives in Los Angeles with her family, and teaches creative writing at USC.For more Thresholds, visit us at www.thisisthresholds.comBe sure to rate/review/subscribe on your favorite podcast platform!--------------------------------This episode is presented in collaboration with the 2021 Miami Book Fair. Saïd Sayrafiezadeh is just one of the many writers from around the world participating in the nation’s largest gathering of writers and readers of all ages. This year's Miami Book Fair takes place online and in person from November 14th to November 21st. Please visit miamibookfair.com for more information, or follow MBF at @miamibookfair Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jordan talks donuts, taking big leaps, and writing with/for/about pleasure with Ryka Aoki, author of Light from Uncommon Stars.Ryka Aoki is a poet, composer, and teacher and author of Seasonal Velocities, He Mele a Hilo (A Hilo Song), Why Dust Shall Never Settle Upon This Soul and The Great Space Adventure. Her latest novel, Light from Uncommon Stars, is out now from Tor Books. Ryka is also a former national judo champion and the founder of the International Transgender Martial Arts Alliance. She is also a professor of English at Santa Monica College, a half-decent pianist, and is starting to learn to play the violin.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 is joined by Pulitzer-winning poet and memoirist Gregory Pardlo — currently teaching at NYU in Abu Dhabi — to talk about sobriety, understanding the stories of one’s life, and answering the self-imposed question “What god are you serving, Pardlo, when you write X?”Gregory Pardlo was born in Philadelphia in 1968. He is the author of Air Traffic (Knopf, 2018), a memoir in essays, and the poetry collections Digest (Four Way Books, 2014), which received the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry and was shortlisted for the 2015 NAACP Image Award, and Totem (American Poetry Review), which was selected by Brenda Hillman for the American Poetry Review/Honickman Prize in 2007. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts, among others. He is the poetry editor of Virginia Quarterly Review and is currently teaching at NYU in Abu Dhabi. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi listeners – I just started a new miniseries from Wondery and Topic Studios called Operator, the untold true story of the phone sex line company that took over the world.Make sure to Follow “Operator” on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or you can listen early and ad-free by subscribing to Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts or the Wondery App. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jordan talks Susan Orlean (author of On Animals and The Library Book and The Orchid Thief and those hilarious tweets) about finding the right way to tell a story, taking risks in hopes an audience will come along, and starting out as a beat reporter writing about the drudgery of city government.Susan Orlean has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1992. She is the author of eight bestselling books, including The Library Book, Rin Tin Tin, Saturday Night, and The Orchid Thief, which was made into the Academy Award–winning film Adaptation. She lives with her family and her animals in Los Angeles and may be reached at SusanOrlean.com and Twitter.com/SusanOrleanFor 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 memoirist and fiction writer Saïd Sayrafiezadeh about growing up in the Socialist Workers Party, deprogramming from childhood, and how even in fiction, the memoirist doesn't fall far from the memoir.Saïd Sayrafiezadeh is the author, most recently, of the story collection American Estrangement. His memoir, When Skateboards Will Be Free, was called one of the 10 best books of the year by the New York Times and his story collection, Brief Encounters With the Enemy, was a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Fiction Prize. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Best American Short Stories, Granta, McSweeney’s, The New York Times, and New American Stories, among other publications. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award for nonfiction and a Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers’ fiction fellowship. Saïd lives in New York City with his wife, the artist Karen Mainenti, and serves on the board of directors for the New York Foundation for the Arts. He is a fellow at the New York Institute for the Humanities and he leads the Creative Nonfiction track in Hunter's MFA program. He also teaches creative writing at Columbia University and New York University, where he received an Outstanding Teaching Award.For more Thresholds, visit us at www.thisisthresholds.comBe sure to rate/review/subscribe!--------------------------------This episode is presented in collaboration with the 2021 Miami Book Fair. Saïd Sayrafiezadeh is just one of the many writers from around the world participating in the nation’s largest gathering of writers and readers of all ages. This year's Miami Book Fair takes place online and in person from November 14th to November 21st. Please visit miamibookfair.com for more information, or follow MBF at @miamibookfair Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jordan sits down to a wild, funny, moving conversation with violinist, composer, Bad Seed, and author of Nina Simone's Gum Warren Ellis. It's an honest examination of where Warren's new book came from, how he learned how to write it, and why the potato is the miracle of the tuber world.Warren Ellis is an Australian multi-instrumentalist and composer, most famous for his work as collaborator and bandmate of Nick Cave, in both the Bad Seeds and Grinderman. Both solo and alongside Nick he is also a multi-award-winning film composer whose soundtracks include The Proposition, The Road, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Mustang and most recently This Train I Ride. His own band Dirty Three have released eight studio albums since 1994 and he is an in-demand producer and writer, working with artists including Marianne Faithful, Jupiter and Okwess and Tinariwen.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 the incomparable Rita Dove about discovery, about taking a break from creating and publishing, and about re-learning to hold a pen again after her MS diagnosis.Rita Dove, Pulitzer Prize winner and former U.S. Poet Laureate, is the only poet honored with both the National Humanities Medal and the National Medal of Arts. Her recent works include Playlist for the Apocalypse, Sonata Mulattica, and the National Book Award–shortlisted Collected Poems: 1974–2004. In 2021 she was awarded the Gold Medal for Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Charlottesville, where she teaches creative writing at the University of Virginia.For more Thresholds, visit us at www.thisisthresholds.comBe sure to rate/review/subscribe!--------------------------------This episode is presented in collaboration with the 2021 Miami Book Fair. Rita Dove is just one of the many writers from around the world participating in the nation’s largest gathering of writers and readers of all ages. This year's Miami Book Fair takes place online and in person from November 14th to November 21st. Please visit miamibookfair.com for more information, or follow MBF at @miamibookfair Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.