Skylight Books Podcast Series

Claudia Dey, "HEARTBREAKER"

Pony Darlene Fontaine is 15 years old, on the phone with her best friend watching Teen Psychic when her mother, Billie Jean Fontaine, leaves her bedroom for the first time in months. Billie Jean walks out of the front door, gets in her truck, and vanishes. The Territory, population 400, is a settlement founded decades ago by a charismatic cult leader, and it has been cut off from the world ever since. The residents of this strange town think the year is 1985. They crimp their hair, wear shoulder pads, listen to Whitesnake on their Walkmans, and have no contact with anyone from the outside world. Except for Billie Jean, the first stranger they took in as their own. And now, Pony fears, Billie Jean has become the first resident to leave.

Heartbreaker is a novel about the deeply moving relationship between a mother and a daughter—and about the dark secrets they kept from one another. When Billie Jean disappears, Pony and her father frantically try to piece together memories from the months leading up to her disappearance and make sense of her actions. The search for Billie Jean takes us on a high-voltage ride through the complex impulses of the human heart.

Told through three unforgettable points of view––Billie Jean’s daughter, her killer dog, and her mysterious friend––Claudia Day's novel is as devastating as it is touching and funny. With electrifying prose, it gradually reveals a portrait of a woman who must keep secrets and reinvent herself in order to survive, and a daughter who will do whatever it takes to untangle those mysteries to find her beloved mother.

Elaine Mokhtefi, "THIRD WORLD CAPITAL"

Following the Algerian war for independence and the defeat of France in 1962, Algiers became the liberation capital of the Third World. Here, Elaine Mokhtefi, who as a young American woman had worked with leaders of the Algerian Revolution, including Frantz Fanon, found a home. As a journalist and translator, she lived among guerrillas, revolutionaries, exiles and visionaries and was even present in the making of the groundbreaking film The Battle of Algiers.

Mokhtefi crossed paths with some of the era’s brightest stars: Stokely Carmichael, Timothy Leary, Ahmed Ben Bella, Jomo Kenyatta and Eldridge Cleaver. She was instrumental in the establishment of the International Section of the Black Panther Party in Algiers and was close at hand as the group became involved in intrigue, murder and international hijackings. She traveled with the Panthers and organised Cleaver’s clandestine departure for France. Algiers, Third World Capital is an unforgettable story of an era of passion and promise. 

Leah Dieterich, "VANISHING TWINS"

 

“It’s like we’re the same person. We finish each other’s sentences. This is what we’ve been taught to desire and expect of love. But there’s a question underneath that’s never addressed: once you find someone to finish your sentences, do you stop finishing them for yourself?”

As long as she can remember, Leah Dieterich has had the mysterious feeling that she’s been searching for a twin—that she belongs as one of an intimate pair. It begins with friends, dance partners, and her own reflection in the mirror as she studies ballet growing up; continues with physical and emotional attractions to girlfriends in college; and leads her, finally, to Eric, whom she moves across the country for, and marries. But her steadfast, monogamous relationship leaves her with questions she can’t answer about her sexuality and her identity, so she and her husband decide to try an open marriage.

How does a young couple make room for their individual desires, their evolving selfhoods, and their artistic ambitions while building a life together? Can they pursue other sexual partners, even live in separate cities, and keep their original passionate bond alive? Vanishing Twins looks for answers in psychology, science, pop culture, art, architecture, Greek mythology, dance, and language to create a lucid, suspenseful portrait of a woman testing the limits and fluidities of love.

Dieterich is joined in conversation by Sarah Manguso, author of seven books, including 300 Arguments, Ongoingness, The Guardians, and The Two Kinds of Decay.

 

Ben Marcus, "NOTES FROM THE FOG"

With the thirteen transfixing stories of Notes From the Fog, Ben Marcus gives us timely dystopian visions of alienation in a modern world--cosmically and comically apt. Never has existential catastrophe been so much fun.

In "The Grow-Light Blues," a hapless, corporate drone finds love after being disfigured testing his employer's newest nutrition supplement--the enhanced glow from his computer monitor. A father finds himself outcast from his family when he starts to suspect that his son's precocity has turned sinister in the chilling "Cold Little Bird." In "Blueprints for St. Louis," two architects in a flailing marriage consider the ethics of artificially inciting emotion in mourners at their latest assignment--a memorial to a terrorist attack. 

In the bizarre but instantly recognizable universe of Ben Marcus's fiction, characters encounter both surreal new illnesses and equally surreal new cures. Marcus writes beautifully, hilariously, and obsessively, about sex and death, lust and shame, the indignities of the body, and the full parade of human folly. A heartbreaking collection of stories that showcases the author's compassion, tenderness, and mordant humor. Blistering, beautiful work from a modern master.

David Ulin, "THE LOST ART OF READING"

The new introduction and afterword bring fresh relevance to this insightful rumination on the act of reading--as a path to critical thinking, individual and political identity, civic engagement, and resistance.

Former LA Times book critic David Ulin expands his short book The Lost Art of Reading, rich in ideas, on the consequence of reading to include the considerations of fake news, siloed information, and the connections between critical thinking as the key component of engaged citizenship and resistance. Here is the case for reading as a political act in both public and private gestures, and for the ways it enlarges the world and our frames of reference, all the while keeping us engaged.

Thomas Page McBee, "AMATEUR" w/ Ann Friedman

In Amateur: A True Story About What Makes a Man, Thomas Page McBee, the first transgender man to ever box in Madison Square Garden, explores his relationship to violence as experienced in a man’s body, while wrestling with the larger issue of what healthy masculinity might look like in our society.

From every incident of gun violence, to every instance of publicized sexual harassment and assault, to the conversation around our most recent presidential election, it’s clear that we are at a potential turning point in our understanding of men’s roles in the world. In 2015, while training for a charity boxing match, McBee embarked on a mission to uncover how to live as a man while remaining conscious of his privilege, supportive of the women in his life, and aligned with his most authentic self. Interweaving research and analysis with the story of his training, McBee traces the relationship between masculinity and violence and explores how we can move, together, toward a healthier idea of what it means to be a man.

McBee is in conversation with Ann Friedman, a freelance journalist who writes about gender, media, technology, and culture. She also co-hosts a podcast, Call Your Girlfriend, with Aminatou Sow.

Adam Cayton-Holland, "TRAGEDY PLUS TIME"

From Adam Cayton-Holland, one of Variety’s “10 Comics to Watch,” comes a “heartfelt and brilliant” (Patton Oswalt) memoir—Tragedy Plus Time: A Tragi-Comic Memoir about the author’s beautiful, funny, and heartbreaking relationship with his younger sister and the depression that took her life.

Both a moving tribute to a lost sibling and an inspiring meditation on mental illness, grief, and recovery, Tragedy Plus Time is an unsentimental, unexpectedly funny, and incredibly honest love letter to every family that has ever felt messy, complicated, or (even momentarily) magnificent. In the tradition of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and Truth & Beauty, this memoir offers a tender look at the bonds that hold a family together and the difficult truth that you can’t always save the person you love.

Laura van den Berg, "THE THIRD HOTEL" w/ Aja Gabel

In Havana, Cuba, a widow tries to come to terms with her husband’s death—and the truth about their marriage—in Laura van den Berg’s surreal, mystifying story of psychological reflection and metaphysical mystery.

Shortly after Clare arrives in Havana, Cuba, to attend the annual Festival of New Latin American Cinema, she finds her husband, Richard, standing outside a museum. He’s wearing a white linen suit she’s never seen before, and he’s supposed to be dead. Grief-stricken and baffled, Clare tails Richard, a horror film scholar, through the newly tourist-filled streets of Havana, clocking his every move. As the distinction between reality and fantasy blurs, Clare finds grounding in memories of her childhood in Florida and of her marriage to Richard, revealing her role in his death and reappearance along the way. The Third Hotel is a propulsive, brilliantly shape-shifting novel from an inventive author at the height of her narrative powers.

Van den Berg is joined in conversation by Aja Gabel, whose writing has appeared in BOMB, The Kenyon Review, Glimmer Train, and elsewhere.

Katie Ford, "IF YOU HAVE TO GO"

The poems in Katie Ford’s fourth collection implore their audience—the divine and the human—for attention, for revelation, and, perhaps above all, for companionship. The extraordinary sequence at the heart of this book taps into the radical power of the sonnet form, bending it into a kind of metaphysical and psychological outcry. Beginning in the cramped space of selfhood—in the bedroom, cluttered with doubts, and in the throes of marital loss—these poems edge toward the clarity of “what I can know and admit to knowing.” In song and in silence, Ford inhabits the rooms of anguish and redemption with scouring exactness. This is poetry that “can break open, // it can break your life, it will break you // until you remain.” If You Have to Go is Ford’s most luminous and moving collection.

Lisa Hannawalt, "COYOTE DOGGIRL" w/ Molly Lambert

BoJack Horseman producer / production designer and award-winning cartoonist Lisa Hanawalt presents Coyote Doggirl. The graphic novel is a playful homage to and send-up of classic Westerns, presenting the story of the goofy, dramatic, and fiercely independent Coyote as she journeys through the desert on horseback. With Coyote Doggirl, Hanawalt documents the harsh realities of sexism, her insatiable admiration of horses, and the indispensability of a good crop top. Hanawalt will be in conversation with journalist Molly Lambert.

Hanawalt is in conversation with Molly Lambert, a writer in and from LA who has worked for websites like Grantland and MTV News.

Genevieve Hudson, "PRETEND WE LIVE HERE" w/ Henry Hoke and Myriam Gurba

Future Tense Books is thrilled to be publishing Pretend We Live Here by international writer Genevieve Hudson. In this debut collection of stories, Genevieve explores the idea of home and what it means to find one: in the body, in the world, in other people. Her characters are seekers, whose actions are influenced by their slippery identities and by the strange landscapes that surround them.

In “Boy Box,” a young woman yearns to test her luck with a wild punk girl crush. In “God Hospital,” a character journeys deep into the woods of Alabama in search of an infamous religious healer, hoping he can fix her teeth. In “Adorno,” someone in need of forgiveness crosses paths with a band of radical vegan activists and gets subsumed into their world. In “Dance!,” a recluse writes a breakthrough song for her pink dolphin, but the song’s success only drives her further away from society. Set in Amsterdam, the Pacific Northwest, and the Deep South, these stories hum with sexual tension, queerness, displacement, longing, humor, and dark nostalgia.

Hudson is joined in conversation by Henry Hoke (The Book of Endless Sleepovers) and Myriam Gurba, a writer, artist, and teacher based in Long Beach, California.

Fatimah Asghar, "IF THEY COME FOR US" w/ Morgan Parker and Sam Bailey

Orphaned as a child, Fatimah Asghar grapples with coming of age and navigating questions of sexuality and race without the guidance of a mother or father. These poems at once bear anguish, joy, vulnerability, and compassion, while also exploring the many facets of violence: how it persists within us, how it is inherited across generations, and how it manifests itself in our relationships. In experimental forms and language both lyrical and raw, Asghar seamlessly braids together marginalized people’s histories with her own understanding of identity, place, and belonging.

Fatimah is joined in conversation by Morgan Parker (There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé) and Sam Bailey, a writer and director from Chicago.

Virgie Tovar, "YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO REMAIN FAT" w/ Sarai Walker

A manifesto for the fat revolution: You Have the Right to Remain Fat.

Growing up as a fat girl, Virgie Tovar believed that her body was something to be fixed. But after two decades of dieting and constant guilt, she was over it—and gave herself the freedom to trust her own body again. Ever since, she’s been helping others to do the same.

Tovar is hungry for a world where bodies are valued equally, food is free from moral judgment, and you can jiggle through life with respect. In concise and candid language, she delves into unlearning fatphobia, dismantling sexist notions of fashion, and rejecting diet culture’s greatest lie: that fat people need to wait before beginning their best lives.

Tovar is joined in conversation by Sarai Walker, author of the novel Dietland.

Lisa Locascio, "OPEN ME" w/ Karolina Waclawiak

Roxana Olsen has always dreamed of going to Paris, and after high school graduation finally plans to travel there on a study abroad program—a welcome reprieve from the bruising fallout of her parents’ divorce. But a logistical mix-up brings Roxana to Copenhagen instead, where she’s picked up at the airport by Søren, a twenty-eight-year-old guide who is meant to be her steward. Instantly drawn to one another, Roxana and Søren’s relationship turns romantic, and when he asks Roxana to accompany him to a small town in the north of Denmark for the rest of the summer, she doesn’t hesitate to accept. There, Roxana’s world narrows and opens as she experiences fantasy, ritual, and the pleasures of her body, a thrilling realm of erotic and domestic bliss. She is so enamored by her cohabitation and intense connection with Søren that at first, she almost doesn’t notice that he does not give her a key to the apartment, leaving her locked in each day while he works in the library on his African-American
literature thesis.

As their relationship deepens, Søren’s temperament darkens, revealing his depression, anxiety and prejudices. Roxana finds herself increasingly drawn to a local outsider, in many ways Søren’s polar opposite, whom she learns is a Bosnian Muslim refugee from the Balkan War. When she decides to sneak out to find him her experiences open in a way she could never have imagined.

An erotic coming-of-age like no other, Lisa Locascio's Open Me is a daringly original and darkly compelling portrait of a young woman discovering her power, her sex, and her voice; and an incisive examination of xenophobia, migration, and what it means to belong.

Locascio is joined in conversation by Karolina Waclawiak, a screenwriter and author of two critically acclaimed novels, How to Get into the Twin Palms and The Invaders.

Joshua Mattson, "A SHORT FILM ABOUT DISAPPOINTMENT"

Set in a wildly imaginative and uncannily familiar world of nanny states and extreme rationing, Safe Zones and New Koreas, A Short Film About Disappointment is an uproarious story of trying to keep it together in turbulent times. Told in the form of 81 movie reviews, this is an ingenious novel about art and revenge, insisting on your dreams and hitting on your doctor, written by a Joshua Mattson, a debut novelist with a rotten wit and the imagination of a hyperactive child.