Skylight Books Podcast Series

SKYLIT: Emma Ramadan, "IN CONCRETE"

Garr ta's first novel in a decade, In Concrete, follows the mania that descends upon a family when the father finds himself in possession of a concrete mixer. As he seeks to modernize every aspect of their lives, disaster strikes when the younger sister is subsumed by concrete.

 

Through puns, wordplay, and dizzying verbal effect, Garr ta reinvents the novel form and blurs the line between spoken and written language in an attempt to confront the elasticity of communication.

 

Translator Emma Ramadan talks with Skylight's Mike Jeffrey about her experience translating Garr ta's work.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Claire Boyles, "SITE FIDELITY" w/ Zac Hug

Firmly rooted in the modern American West, Site Fidelity follows women and families who feel the instinctual, inexplicable pull of a home they must work to protect from the effects of economic inequity and climate catastrophe. A seventy-four-year-old nun turns to eco-sabotage to stop a fracking project. A woman delivers her own baby in a Nevada ghost town. A young farmer hides her chicken flock from the government during a bird flu epidemic. An ornithologist returns home to care for her rancher father and gets caught up trying to protect a breeding group of endangered Gunnison sage grouse.

In lean, lyrical prose, Claire Boyles evokes the bleakness and beauty of our threatened western landscapes. Spanning the decades from the 1970s to a plausible near future, this knockout debut introduces unforgettable characters who must confront the challenges of caregiving and loss alongside the very practical impacts of fracking, water rights law, and other agricultural policies. Site Fidelity is a vivid, intimate, and deeply human exploration of life on the shifting terrain of our changing planet.

Boyles is in conversation with Zac Hug.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Katie Love, "TWO TICKETS TO PARADISE"

Two Tickets to Paradise is a memoir about growing up Jehovah’s Witness , leaving religion and finding truth and healing through humor. Two Tickets to Paradise has been lauded by peers and early reviewers as, “hauntingly funny, heartbreaking, and bold.”

 

Author Katie Love discusses her book with Skylight's Christine Blackburn.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: WAYFINDING Poets

Wayfinding is a poetry anthology curated and edited by Amy Beth and Derek Wright, published by Finishing Line Press. More than 50 poets share moments of transformation and wonder that have been inspired by parks and public lands, alongside original photography by Derek Wright, and short essays by Amy Beth and Derek Wright. This is a striking color print book of poetry, and the perfect gift for outdoors enthusiasts and readers alike who enjoy the intersection of parks and poetry.

 

This episode features readings by Mary Ardery, Mike Good, Allyson Whipple, Kristin Bryant Rajan, and Pamela Hobart Carter.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: David Leo Rice, "DRIFTER" w/ Matthew Spellberg

Collecting a decade's worth of stories by acclaimed author David Leo Rice, Drifter is a wild trip through the occult and surreal undercurrents of contemporary life. Ever in pursuit of illumination and unholy opportunity, the characters in these stories roam from blighted Western settlements to eerie New England circuses, from the backwoods of Austria to the remotest reaches of Japan, and from seedy Caribbean islands to the shadow of the Swiss Alps.

 

Rice is in conversation with Matthew Spellberg

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

Handsell, Ep. 20: "Kelsey Norris/Libro.fm"

Join Skylight's Lance Morgan for a conversation with Libro.fm's Content Marketing Manager, Kelsey Norris. The conversation spans from Libro.fm's ongoing partnership with independent bookstores, to the role of audiobooks in lives of readers. You don't want to miss it!

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Laura LeMoon, "A THOUSAND LITTLE DEATHS"

A Thousand Little Deaths is a story molded from experience and thrown into verse. For many, poetry is a method of healing, a method of activism, a method of releasing all the pain you've held inside of you in a single burst. Laura LeMoon offers us this brief chapbook of her life in an attempt to share a journey not many are familiar with, taking on existential issues such as death and how absurd life can be when it throws the impossible at you. It's a test of endurance, throwing readers into a world most have probably only seen through television or stereotyped novels. It's a hard read. It's an essential read. And the moment you open up it's pages, LeMoon's words will go right for your gut, sending you spiraling as you move along with her journey.

 

SPONSORED EPISODE:

 

This episode is brought to you by Rare Bird Lit and Unstoppable by Joshua M. Greene.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Danielle Henderson, "THE UGLY CRY" w/ Ann Friedman

Abandoned at ten years old by a mother who chose her drug-addicted, abusive boyfriend, Danielle Henderson was raised by grandparents who thought their child-rearing days had ended in the 1960s. She grew up Black, weird, and overwhelmingly uncool in a mostly white neighborhood in upstate New York, which created its own identity crises. Under the eye-rolling, foul-mouthed, loving tutelage of her uncompromising grandmother—and the horror movies she obsessively watched—Danielle grew into a tall, awkward, Sassy-loving teenager who wore black eyeliner as lipstick and was struggling with the aftermath of her mother’s choices. But she also learned that she had the strength and smarts to save herself, her grandmother gifting her a faith in her own capabilities that the world would not have most Black girls possess.

With humor, wit, and deep insight, Danielle shares how she grew up and grew wise—and the lessons she’s carried from those days to these. In the process, she upends our conventional understanding of family and redefines its boundaries to include the millions of people who share her story.

 

Here, Danielle discusses her book The Ugly Cry with Ann Friedman.

 

SPONSORED EPISODE:

 

This episode is brought to you by Rare Bird Lit and Unstoppable by Joshua M. Greene.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Brittany Ackerman, "THE BRITTANYS"

They're not the most popular freshmen at their Florida prep school, but at least everyone knows their name(s). The Brittanys.

 

Brittany Rosenberg: drives her golf cart around her subdivision to meet boys. Brittany Gottlieb: insists you can't lose your virginity if you haven't gotten your period. (She heard it somewhere ) Brittany Tomassi: is from New York. Brittany Jensen: once threw her tampon into a stranger's swimming pool. A brash, bold, unapologetic tomboy. And the greatest person in the whole wide world.

 

At least as far as the fifth Brittany--our narrator--is concerned. Even within their friend group, she and Jensen are a duo: with their matching JanSport backpacks, Tiffany chokers, and Victoria's Secret push-up bras, they are unstoppable. And now that they're finally growing up, they're going to do everything: dye their hair, attend no-parent parties, try pot . . . maybe even lose their virginities. 2004 is totally going to be their year

 

Except Jensen's interests may be diverging from her friends'. And within our narrator's own family--in the lives of her exhausted mother and beloved, genius older brother--life-changing events may be taking shape. Events that only years later, looking back, she has the perspective to see.

 

Enjoy this conversation with The Brittanys author Brittany Ackerman.

 

SPONSORED EPISODE:

 

This episode is brought to you by Rare Bird Lit and Unstoppable by Joshua M. Greene.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Rosecrans Baldwin, "EVERYTHING NOW" w/ Charles Yu

America is obsessed with Los Angeles. And America has been thinking about Los Angeles all wrong, for decades, on repeat. Los Angeles is not just the place where the American dream hits the Pacific. (It has its own dreams.) Not just the vanishing point of America’s western drive. (It has its own compass.) Functionally, aesthetically, mythologically, even technologically, an independent territory, defined less by distinct borders than by an aura of autonomy and a sense of unfurling destiny―this is the city-state of Los Angeles.

Deeply reported and researched, provocatively argued, and eloquently written, Rosecrans Baldwin's Everything Now approaches the metropolis from unexpected angles, nimbly interleaving his own voice with a chorus of others, from canonical L.A. literature to everyday citizens. Here, Octavia E. Butler and Joan Didion are in conversation with activists and astronauts, vampires and veterans. Baldwin records the stories of countless Angelenos, discovering people both upended and reborn: by disasters natural and economic, following gospels of wealth or self-help or personal destiny. The result is a story of a kaleidoscopic, vibrant nation unto itself―vastly more than its many, many parts.

Baldwin is in conversation with Charles Yu.

SPONSORED EPISODE:

 

This episode is brought to you by Rare Bird Lit and Unstoppable by Joshua M. Greene.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Rupert Thomson, "BARCELONA DREAMING"

Barcelona Dreaming is narrated, in turn, by an English woman who runs a gift shop, an alcoholic jazz pianist, and a translator tormented by unrequited love, all of whose lives will be changed forever. Underpinning the novel, and casting a long shadow, is a crime committed against a young Moroccan immigrant.
 
Exploring themes of addiction, racism, celebrity, immigration, and self-delusion, and fueled by a longing for the unattainable and a nostalgia for what is about to be lost, Rupert Thomson's Barcelona Dreaming is a love letter to one of the world’s most beautiful cities and a powerful and poignant fable for our uncertain times.

 

SPONSORED EPISODE:

 

This episode is brought to you by Rare Bird Lit and Unstoppable by Joshua M. Greene.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Carissa Dorson, "CONVERSATIONS WITH DAD" w/ Aline Smithson

Today many young people still feel a gap between generations. Conversations With Dad is a beautiful story about a daughter and her father, and their relationship with each other. Los Angeles based photographer Carissa Dorson was trying to overcome her personal gap with her father by looking for something they have in common, which is photography. For two years they have been sending photos to each other, ping-pong-like from East Coast to West Coast. The photos themselves are beautiful, clever, and reveal more about them than words ever could. Their ongoing visual conversation has blossomed into a deeper relationship.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Ben Percy, "THE NINTH METAL"

At first, people gazed in wonder at the radiant tear in the sky. A year later, the celestial marvel became a planetary crisis when Earth spun through the comet’s debris field and the sky rained fire.

The town of Northfall, Minnesota will never be the same. Meteors cratered hardwood forests and annihilated homes, and among the wreckage a new metal was discovered. This “omnimetal” has properties that make it world-changing as an energy source…and a weapon.

John Frontier—the troubled scion of an iron-ore dynasty in Northfall—returns for his sister’s wedding to find his family embroiled in a cutthroat war to control mineral rights and mining operations. His father rightly suspects foreign leaders and competing corporations of sabotage, but the greatest threat to his legacy might be the US government. Physicist Victoria Lennon was recruited by the Department of Defense to research omnimetal, but she finds herself trapped in a laboratory of nightmares. And across town, a rookie cop is investigating a murder that puts her own life in the crosshairs. She will have to compromise her moral code to bring justice to this now lawless community.

In The Ninth Metal, the first in his Comet Cycle, Ben Percy lays bare how a modern-day goldrush has turned the middle of nowhere into the center of everything, and how one family—the Frontiers—hopes to control it all.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Grace Perry, "THE 2000S MADE ME GAY"

Today’s gay youth have dozens of queer peer heroes, both fictional and real, but former gay teenager Grace Perry did not have that luxury. Instead, she had to search for queerness in the (largely straight) teen cultural phenomena the aughts had to offer: in Lindsay Lohan’s fall from grace, Gossip Girl, Katy Perry’s “I Kissed A Girl,” country-era Taylor Swift, and Seth Cohen jumping on a coffee cart. And, for better or worse, these touch points shaped her adult identity. She came out on the other side like many millennials did: in her words, gay as hell.

 

Throw on your Von Dutch hats and join Grace on a journey back through the pop culture moments of the aughts in The 2000s Made Me Gay, before the cataclysmic shift in LGBTQ representation and acceptance—a time not so long ago, which many seem to forget.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Liz Brown, "TWILIGHT MAN" w/ Alex Ross

In the booming 1920s, William Andrews Clark Jr. was one of the richest, most respected men in Los Angeles. The son of the mining tycoon known as "The Copper King of Montana," Clark launched the Los Angeles Philharmonic and helped create the Hollywood Bowl. He was also a man with secrets, including a lover named Harrison Post. A former salesclerk, Post enjoyed a lavish existence among Hollywood elites, but the men's money--and their homosexuality--made them targets, for the district attorney, their employees and, in Post's case, his own family. When Clark died suddenly, Harrison Post inherited a substantial fortune--and a wealth of trouble. From Prohibition-era Hollywood to Nazi prison camps to Mexico City nightclubs, Twilight Man tells the story of an illicit love and the battle over a family estate that would destroy one man's life.

 

Author Liz Brown discusses her book with Alex Ross.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.