Skylight Books Podcast Series

André Naffis-Sahely and Fred D'Aguiar, "A STRANGER"

Exile lies at the root of our earliest stories. Charting varied experiences of people forced to leave their homes from the ancient world to the present day, The Heart of a Stranger is an anthology of poetry, fiction and non-fiction that journeys through six continents, with over a hundred contributors drawn from twenty-four languages.

Highlights include the wisdom of the 5th century Desert Fathers and Mothers, The Flight of the Irish Earls, Madame de Staël’s thoughts on Napoleon’s tyranny, Emma Goldman’s travails in the wake of the First Red Scare, Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s tales of European colonial settlers in Kenya and the work of the contemporary Eritrean poet Ribka Sibhatu.

Edited by poet and translator André Naffis-Sahely, The Heart of a Stranger offers a uniquely varied look at a theme both ancient and urgently contemporary.

Naffis-Sahely is in conversation with Fred D'Aguiar, poet, novelist, playwright, born in London of Guyanese parents and raised in Guyana.

Tom Lutz, "BORN SLIPPY" w/ Steph Cha

Frank Baltimore is a bit of a loser, struggling by as a carpenter and handyman in rural New England when he gets his big break, building a mansion in the executive suburbs of Hartford. One of his workers is a charismatic eighteen-year-old kid from Liverpool, Dmitry, in the US in the summer before university. Dmitry is a charming sociopath, who develops a fascination with his autodidact philosopher boss, perhaps thinking that, if he could figure out what made Frank tick, he could be less of a pig. Dmitry heads to Asia and makes a neo-imperialist fortune, with a trail of corpses in his wake. When Dmitry’s office building in Taipei explodes in an enormous fireball, Frank heads to Asia, falls in love with Dmitry’s wife, and things go from bad to worse.

Combining the best elements of literary thriller, noir and political satire, Born Slippy is a darkly comic and honest meditation on modern life under global capitalism.

Author Tom Lutz is in conversation with Steph Cha, author of Follow Her Home, Beware Beware, Dead Soon Enough, and Your House Will Pay.

Amy Spalding, "WE USED TO BE FRIENDS"

At the start of their senior year in high school, James (a girl with a boy’s name) and Kat are inseparable, but by graduation, they’re no longer friends. James prepares to head off to college as she reflects on the dissolution of her friendship with Kat while, in alternating chapters, Kat thinks about being newly in love with her first girlfriend and having a future that feels wide open. Over the course of senior year, Kat wants nothing more than James to continue to be her steady rock, as James worries that everything she believes about love and her future is a lie when her high-school sweetheart parents announce they’re getting a divorce.

Amy Spalding delicately explores the breakup of childhood best friends. Told in dual timelines—half of the chapters moving forward in time and half moving backward—We Used to Be Friends is funny, honest and full of heart.

Alvin Orloff, "DISASTERAMA!" w/ Trebor Healy

In Disasterama!, Alvin Orloff recalls the delirious adventures of his youth—from San Francisco to Los Angeles to New York—where insane nights, deep friendships with the creatives of the underground, and thrilling bi-coastal living led to a free-spirited life of art, manic performance, high camp antics, and exotic sexual encounters. Orloff looks past the politics of AIDS to the people on the ground, friends of his who did not survive AIDS’ wrath—the boys in black leather jackets and cackling queens in tacky frocks—remembering them not as victims, but as people who loved life, loved fun, and who were a part of the insane jigsaw of his community. Includes more than 60 rare photos of the underground counterculture, club flyers, drag queens, and queer icons of era.

Orloff is in conversation with Trebor Healey, author of three novels, A Horse Named Sorrow, Faun and Through It Came Bright Colors

Jami Attenberg, "ALL THIS COULD BE YOURS" w/ Alissa Nutting

From critically acclaimed New York Times best-selling author Jami Attenberg comes a novel of family secrets: think the drama of Big Little Lies set in the heat of a New Orleans summer

"If I know why they are the way they are, then maybe I can learn why I am the way I am," says Alex Tuchman of her parents. Now that her father is on his deathbed, Alex--a strong-headed lawyer, devoted mother, and loving sister--feels she can finally unearth the secrets of who Victor is and what he did over the course of his life and career. (A power-hungry real estate developer, he is, by all accounts, a bad man.) She travels to New Orleans to be with her family, but mostly to interrogate her tightlipped mother, Barbra.

As Barbra fends off Alex's unrelenting questions, she reflects on her tumultuous life with Victor. Meanwhile Gary, Alex's brother, is incommunicado, trying to get his movie career off the ground in Los Angeles. And Gary's wife, Twyla, is having a nervous breakdown, buying up all the lipstick in drug stores around New Orleans and bursting into crying fits. Dysfunction is at its peak. As each family member grapples with Victor's history, they must figure out a way to move forward--with one another, for themselves, and for the sake of their children.

All This Could Be Yours is a timely, piercing exploration of what it means to be caught in the web of a toxic man who abused his power; it shows how those webs can tangle a family for generations and what it takes to--maybe, hopefully--break free.

Attenberg is in conversation with Alissa Nutting, assistant professor of English at Grinnell College.

Jung Young Moon, "SEVEN SAMURAI SWEPT AWAY IN A RIVER"

In his inimitable, recursive, meditative style that reads like a comedic zen koan but contains universes, Seven Samurai Swept Away in a River recounts Korean cult writer Jung Young Moon’s time spent at an artists’ and writers’ residency in small-town Texas. Jung embraces the rambling landscape of Texas, two-stepping, cowboy hats and cowboy churches, antique stores and their an- tique owners, and transmutes them into the even more expansive space of his mind. The author plucks at each surprisingly elucidating concept over pages of reflection – moving seamlessly from chili recipe etiquette (with beans or without?) to the origins of Texas itself – and muses on his outsider experiences in this most unique of places. All the while, the author is asking what a novel is and must be, while accompanied by an invented mental cast of seven samurai who the author carries with him, silent companions in a pantomime of existential theater. Jung blends fact with imagination, humor with reflection, and meaning with meaninglessness, as his meanderings become an absorbing, quintessential novel of ideas.

Liska Jacobs, "THE WORST KIND OF WANT" w/ Allie Rowbottom

To cool-headed, fastidious Pricilla Messing, Italy will be an escape, a brief glimpse of freedom from a life that's starting to feel like one long decline.

Rescued from the bedside of her difficult mother, forty-something Cilla finds herself called away to Rome to keep an eye on her wayward teenage niece, Hannah. But after years of caregiving, babysitting is the last thing Cilla wants to do. Instead she throws herself into Hannah's youthful, heedless world—drinking, dancing, smoking—relishing the heady atmosphere of the Italian summer. After years of feeling used up and overlooked, Cilla feels like she's coming back to life. But being so close to Hannah brings up complicated memories, making Cilla restless and increasingly reckless, and a dangerous flirtation with a teenage boy soon threatens to send her into a tailspin.

With the sharp-edged insight of Ottessa Moshfegh and the taut seduction of Patricia Highsmith, The Worst Kind of Want is a dark exploration of the inherent dangers of being a woman. In her unsettling follow-up to Catalina, Liska Jacobs again delivers hypnotic literary noir about a woman whose unruly desires and troubled past push her to the brink of disaster.

Jacobs is in conversation with Allie Rowbottom, author of Jell-O Girls.

Alex Dimitrov, "ASTRO POETS" w/ Melissa Broder

Critically-acclaimed poets Alex Dimitrov (Sagittarius) and Dorothea Lasky (Aries) met at a party nearly a decade ago. There a lengthy conversation about their mutual love for astrology first planted the seed that would become @poetastrologers, a Twitter account they started for their own amusement.  The Twitter went viral and now has almost 500,000 followers. These online phenoms now bring us the first great astrology primer of the 21st century, Astro Poets: Your Guides to the Zodiac.

With humor and insight, the Astro Poets are here to share astrology with everyone from the uninitiated to the firm believers, to help you see what's written in the stars and use it to navigate your friendships, your career, and your very complicated love life. The book opens with a general primer on astrology— which explains everything from what a rising sign actually is, to where each sign falls along the karmic wheel.  The rest of the book is devoted to each sign in turn and mixes classic components from the Linda Goodman playbook (“Pisces as a Lover”) with some fresher takes (“Texting with an Aquarius”). The references are equal parts high (Emily Dickinson) and low (Drake).  

If you’ve ever wondered why your Gemini friend won't let you get a word in edge-wise at drinks, you've come to the right place. When will that Scorpio texting “u up?” at 2AM finally take the next step in your relationship? (Hint: they won’t.) What makes Andy Warhol a textbook Leo, or Beyoncé the ultimate example of a Virgo? Start with the chapter on your own sun sign, then move on to the signs of your partner, your children, your co-workers, your mortal enemy. You’ll walk away understanding them, and yourself, a little better.

Dimitrov will be in conversation with Melissa Broder author of the essay collection So Sad Today and four poetry collections.

Jonathan Blum, "THE USUAL UNCERTAINTIES"

The Usual Uncertainties—Jonathan Blum's highly anticipated first collection—is storytelling at its finest. In precise, elegant prose, these stories follow characters and communities often consigned to the edge of the frame: a community college dropout, a geriatric care manager, a square dance bar mitzvah, a Scrabble club, an entrepreneurial Thai immigrant, and a South Florida country club. With echoes of Leonard Michaels, Mavis Gallant, and Lore Segal, Blum explores the ways our divergent histories tether us together and at times push us completely apart. The Usual Uncertainties revels in the persistent human struggle to love with abandon and marks a radiant voice in American short fiction. 

Mimi Lok, "LAST OF HER NAME" w/ Amelia Gray

Mimi Lok's Last of Her Name is an eye-opening story collection about the intimate, interconnected lives of diasporic women and the histories they are born into. Set in a wide range of time periods and locales, including '80s UK suburbia, WWII Hong Kong and contemporary urban California, the book features an eclectic cast of outsiders: among them, an elderly housebreaker, wounded lovers and kung-fu fighting teenage girls. Last of Her Name offers a meditation on female desire and resilience, family and the nature of memory.

Lok is in conversation with Amelia Gray, author of five books, most recently Isadora.

Liana Finck,"EXCUSE ME" w/ Charlie Hankin

If you’re one of the 310,000 people who follow author Liana Finck on Instagram, you’ve probably seen a few of the following comments before: “Freaking Perfect”; “this rings so true for me I can’t even describe it”; “I'm putting this one on my bathroom mirror”; “WHY IS THIS LITERALLY ME”; “Can I get this tattooed on my body 100 times?” No matter what topic she’s covering—love and intimacy, politics, art, social anxiety,  humanity—Liana’s work contains a precision and thoughtfulness that resonates deeply with those who encounter her work. This fall, Random House is thrilled to share a new book of over 500 of Liana’s most relatable and heartfelt drawings, EXCUSE ME: Cartoons, Complaints, and Notes to Self.

Liana’s thin-penned line drawings have an uncanny ability to communicate life’s absurdities, in a way that feels not only timely and sharp, but accessible and wondrously insightful. Her fans flock to her because they feel seen in her art—she never shies away from showing us life at its most hilarious, uncomfortable, and surreal. EXCUSE ME is divided into a series of distinctive chapters on: Love & Dating; Gender & Other Politics; Animals; Art & Myth-Making; Humanity; Time, Space, and How to Navigate Them; Strangeness, Shyness, Sadness; and Notes to Self. Each chapter is packed with Liana’s signature humor and wit, but also a deep sense of compassion and a profound curiosity in what it means to be a human in this world.

Finck is in conversation with Charlie Hankin, a writer/performer, cartoonist, and animator.

Nefertiti Austin, "MOTHERHOOD SO WHITE"

When Nefertiti Austin, a single African-American woman, decided she wanted to adopt a Black baby boy out of the foster care system, she was unprepared for the fact there is no place for Black women in the “mommy wars.” Austin set off on her path without the ability to seek guidance from others who looked like her or shared her experience. She soon realized that she would not only have to navigate skepticism from
the adoption community, who deal almost exclusively with white women, but surprisingly, from her own family and friends as well.

Motherhood So White is the story of Nefertiti’s fight to create the family she always knew she was meant to have and the story of motherhood that all American families need now. In this unflinching account of her parenting journey, Nefertiti examines the history of adoption in the African-American community, faces off against stereotypes of single, Black motherhood, and confronts the reality of raising children of color in racially charged, modern-day America.

R. Zamora Linmark, "THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING WILDE AT HEART"

From accomplished poet and author R. Zamora Linmark comes his debut YA novel, The Importance of Being Wilde At Heart (Delacorte Press / On sale August 13, 2019 / $17.99; Ages 12+), about a seventeen-year-old boy's journey through first love and first heartbreak, guided by his personal hero,
Oscar Wilde.

Words have always been more than enough for Ken Z, but when he meets Ran at the mall food court, everything changes. Beautiful, mysterious Ran opens the door to a number of firsts for Ken: first kiss, first love. But as quickly as he enters Ken's life, Ran disappears, and Ken Z is left wondering: Why love at all, if this is where it leads?

Letting it end there would be tragic. So with the help of his best friends, the comfort of his haikus and lists, and even strange, surreal appearances by his hero, Oscar Wilde, Ken will find that love is worth more than the price of heartbreak.

Jen Wang, "STARGAZING"

Moon is everything Christine isn't. She’s confident, impulsive, artistic . . . and though they both grew up in the same Chinese-American suburb, Moon is somehow unlike anyone Christine has ever known.

But after Moon moves in next door, these unlikely friends are soon best friends, sharing their favorite music videos and painting their toenails when Christine's strict parents aren't around. Moon even tells Christine her deepest secret: that she has visions, sometimes, of celestial beings who speak to her from the stars. Who reassure her that earth isn't where she really belongs.

Moon's visions have an all-too-earthly root, however, and soon Christine's best friend is in the hospital, fighting for her life. Can Christine be the friend Moon needs, now, when the sky is falling?

Jen Wang draws on her childhood to paint a deeply personal yet wholly relatable friendship story that’s at turns joyful, heart-wrenching, and full of hope.

DRAWING POWER Discussion

Today we find ourselves at the center of a new kind of sexual revolution, one that is focused on amplifying the voices of survivors of sexual assault who have been systematically dismissed, shamed, stifled, and victim-blamed. Motivated by the wave of women who have come forward to tell their stories in recent years and the public exposure of powerful predators, comics creator Diane Noomin (Twisted Sisters anthology) has curated a collection that gives female cartoonists a platform to speak about their own personal experiences with assault, harassment, and rape culture. The result is a truly revolutionary comics anthology: Drawing Power: Women’s Stories of Sexual Violence, Harassment, and Survival.

Edited by Noomin, Drawing Power includes sixty-three new and personal stories told through the powerful medium of comics. Featuring contributions from a wide-ranging group of international female cartoonists of many ages, sexual identities, and races, Drawing Power offers catharsis, social critique, humor, and disarming honesty about what it means to be a survivor. The comics in this anthology are a collective call for understanding, respect, and, most importantly, change.