Skylight Books Podcast Series

SKYLIT: Michael Schulman, ”OSCAR WARS” w/ Alex Ross

It's Oscar season! Join us for a deep dive into the Academy Awards as Michael Schulman discusses his new book, Oscar Wars, with fellow New Yorker writer Alex Ross. They discuss the Academy's dark history with union busting, its philosophical struggles in awarding spectacle vs. intimacy, and the lessons Michael learned while writing this book that he's excited to apply before this year's ceremony. This episode is well worth the listen before your Oscar party!

Produced by Mick Kowaleski

Order a signed copy of Oscar Wars here: https://www.skylightbooks.com/book/9780062859013

Better Than the Movie, Ep. 1: CABIN AT THE END OF THE WORLD/KNOCK AT THE CABIN

This episode contains spoilers of both Paul Tremblay's book The Cabin at the End of the World and its 2023 film adaptation, Knock at the Cabin. Proceed with caution!

Welcome to our first new Bookseller Special Series of 2023! Three of Skylight's biggest CinemaHeads, Justin, Tyler, and Allan, will get together once a month to discuss their favorite adaptations from page to screen. For the first episode, they're tackling Paul Tremblay's 2019 insta-classic horror novel Cabin at the End of the World, and M. Night Shyamalan's 2023 adaption, Knock at the Cabin. 

In this episode, they talk about the substantial philosophical and narrative differences in the two projects, the difficulties of communicating interiority on film, and the faithful commitment of Rupert Grint's Boston accent.

Produced and edited by Mick Kowaleski 

Music by Duck the Piano Wire

SKYLIT: Karen Han, ”Bong Joon Ho: Dissident Cinema”

We welcome the incomparable Karen Han to the podcast to chat with Justin Remer about her new book Bong Joon Ho: Dissident Cinema. She discusses how she examined the career of the South Korean writer/director and chats about coining "#BongHive" on Twitter. She's a delight and so is this ep!

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Produced and edited by Mick Kowaleski.

Music by Duck the Piano Wire

SKYLIT: Jessica Johns, ”Bad Cree”

It's our first episode in the New Year! Did you miss us? In our 2023 debut episode, Nat Freeman talks to Jessica Johns about her debut novel Bad Cree, hailed by Paul Tremblay as "a mystery and a horror story about grief, but one with defiant hope in its beating heart."

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Produced by Nat Freeman & Mick Kowaleski.

Music by Duck the Piano Wire

SKYLIT: Where Monsters Lurk & Magic Hides

Join us for the final Skylight episode of 2022! In this MONSTER of a finale, Skylight's Nat Freeman talks to the editors and contributors to Where Monsters Lurk & Magic Hides, an anthology of Latine/x genre fiction from both new and established young adult authors. The stories in this anthology span the genre categories of romance, sci-fi & fantasy, and gothic horror. They take place in this world, other worlds, or maybe somewhere in between. Most importantly, the characters on these pages are not stereotypical Latine characters. Rather, they are fleshed-out characters, embarking on amazing adventures, who are unabashedly Latine.

 

Joining Nat in readings and conversation is editor Lauren Davila and contributors K. Victoria Hernandez, Jarrard Raju, Ashley Jean Granillo, Taylor Ramage, and Kai Adia.

 

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Produced by Nat Freeman & Michael Kowaleski.

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

SKYLIT: Dr. Clarence Lusane, ”TWENTY DOLLARS AND CHANGE” w/ Janell Hobson

In Twenty Dollars and Change, political scientist Clarence Lusane, author of the acclaimed The Black History of the White House, writes from a basic premise: Racist historical narratives and pervasive social inequities are inextricably linked--changing one can transform the other. Taking up the debate over the future of the twenty-dollar bill, Lusane uses the question of Harriet Tubman vs. Andrew Jackson as a lens through which to view the current state of our nation's ongoing reckoning with the legacies of slavery and foundational white supremacy. He places the struggle to confront unjust social conditions in direct connection with the push to transform our public symbols, making it plain that any choice of whose life deserves to be remembered and honored is a direct reflection of whose basic rights are deemed worthy of protection, and whose are not.

Join us for a conversation on reparations and legacy with Dr. Lusane and Janell Hobson, hosted by Skylight's Tyler Austin.

SKYLIT: adrienne maree brown, ”FABLES AND SPELLS”

Fables and Spells is a vibrant selection of visionary works, both previously published and brand new. Included here is adrienne maree brown's most beloved story, "The River," as well as the two sequel tales of her Water Trio. The remaining sixty-seven pieces explore moments of beauty, conflict, and transformation that also weave deep, radical lessons. With narrative "fables" of speculative fiction and "spells" that play with the lines between poetry, instruction, song, and chant, Fables and Spells demonstrates how good writing can engage the present while providing expansive visions of the possible worlds humans can build.

 

Join us for a wonderful conversation between Brown and Skylight's Nat Freeman.

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Produced by Nat Freeman & Michael Kowaleski.

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

SKYLIT: Emil DeAndreis, ”TELL US WHEN TO GO” w/ Joseph Bien Kahn

The post-recession Bay Area is a land fertile for world-changers and dreamers. This is the setting for Emil DeAndreis's Tell Us When To Go, a millennial coming-of-age story, part Silicon Valley satire and part urgent glimpse into the darker sides of privilege, troll culture, and class disparity. It asks the question, what comes of a friendship, or a city, with so much splitting it apart? Can it be saved?

Cole Gallegos is the ace of his college pitching staff, projected to make millions in the big leagues. But a ruthless case of "yips" leads him to break down and drop out of college.

Cole's teammate Isaac Moss is a wallflower who lacks direction and independence, so he follows Cole to San Francisco, where they rent a dingy apartment and attempt adult lives.

Desperate for a job, Cole is hired by Seaside High to work one-on-one with foster youth Dizzy Benson, who is one strike from getting expelled. The two do not vibe, to say the least. Days are turbulent with standoffs and threats. But their disconnect is not without humor, and with time their grudges against the world clumsily unite them.

Meanwhile Isaac is hired as a temp at a growing startup in Silicon Valley, where he enjoys breakrooms with hammocks, and teambuilding beer-tastings. Through this, he begins to gel with this fast paced and vibrant workforce that's begun to sweep through San Francisco. For once, he feels confident, even cool.

With such different days and perspectives, Cole and Isaac begin to diverge, much like the city itself. Told across one semester, Tell Us When To Go explores a city amid change, and the people and friendships that are liable to change with it.

 

Join us for a conversation between DeAndreis and Joseph Bien Kahn, moderated by Skylight's Tyler Austin.

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Produced by Nat Freeman & Michael Kowaleski.

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

SKYLIT: Anna Moschovakis, ”PARTICIPATION” w/ Amina Cain

In the latest novel from Anna Moschovakis, two reading groups, unofficially called Love and Anti-Love, falter amidst political friction and signs of environmental collapse. Participation offers a prescient look at communication in a time of rupture: anonymous participants exchange fantasies and ruminations, and relationships develop and unravel. As the groups consider--or neglect--their syllabi, and connections between members deepen, a mentor disappears, a translator questions his role, a colleague known as "the capitalist" becomes a point of fixation, and "the news reports" filter through in fragments. With incisive prose and surprising structural shifts, Participation forms an alluring vision of community, and a love story like no other.

 

Join us for a conversation between Moschovakis and Amina Cain, moderated by Skylight's Halley Parry.

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Produced by Nat Freeman & Michael Kowaleski.

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

SKYLIT: Colette Sartor, Gerda Govine Ituarte, Cassandra Lane, & Carla Rachel Sameth

Join us for a tremendous conversation and group reading with LA-based writers and poets. 

 

Colette Sartor, Gerda Govine Ituarte, Cassandra Lane and Carla Rachel Sameth convene to read their works and discuss their admirations, fears, and perspectives on writing as women.

 

Moderated by Skylight's Tyler Austin.

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Produced by Nat Freeman & Michael Kowaleski.

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

SKYLIT: Danny Ramadan, ”THE FOGHORN ECHOES” w/ Lance Morgan

Hussam and Wassim are teenage boys living in Syria during America's 2003 invasion of Iraq. When a surprise discovery results in tragedy, their lives, and those of their families, are shattered. Wassim promises Hussam his protection, but ten years into the future, he has failed to keep his promise. Wassim is on the streets, seeking shelter from both the city and the civil war storming his country. Meanwhile Hussam, now on the other side of the world, remains haunted by his own ghosts, doing his utmost to drown them out with every vice imaginable.

Split between war-torn Damascus and Vancouver, The Foghorn Echoes is a tragic love story about coping with shared traumatic experience and devastating separation. As Hussam and Wassim come to terms with the past, they begin to realise the secret that haunts them is not the only secret that formed them.

 

Join us for a conversation between author Danny Ramadan and Skylight's Lance Morgan.

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Produced by Nat Freeman & Michael Kowaleski.

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

SKYLIT: Kyra Simone & Emmalea Russo

Kyra Simone, Palace of Rubble

 

A collection of stories composed primarily of single words culled each day from the New York Times, among other news sources. Written under constraint in the tradition of Oulipo, these hybrid works of prose are reconstructions that no longer resemble the original texts, yet draw from the same reservoir of vocabulary, conveying new images and ideas, while preserving some distant ember of the universe from which they were first generated.

 

Emmalea Russo, Confetti

 

By turns cinematic, cosmic, alchemical, and geometric, Confetti uses language to alter the boundaries between film and daily life. Against a backdrop of screens, personal relationships extend into a play of light to create a meditation on disposability and permanence. Confetti soaks up dirt, shimmers, and gets thrown up into the air, landing on the ground in strange piles.

 

Join Simone and Russo as they discuss their work with episode host Halley Perry.

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Produced by Nat Freeman & Michael Kowaleski.

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

SKYLIT: Emerson Whitney, ”HEAVEN” w/ Claire Boyle

At Heaven's center, Emerson Whitney seeks to understand their relationship to their mother and grandmother, those first windows into womanhood and all its consequences. Whitney retraces a roving youth in deeply observant, psychedelic prose-all the while folding in the work of thinkers like Judith Butler, Donna Haraway, and C. Riley Snorton-to engage transness and the breathing, morphing nature of selfhood.

 

Join Whitney for a conversation with Claire Boyle

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Produced by Nat Freeman & Michael Kowaleski.

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

SKYLIT: ”IT CAME FROM THE CLOSET”

Horror movies hold a complicated space in the hearts of the queer community: historically misogynist, and often homo- and transphobic, the genre has also been inadvertently feminist and open to subversive readings. Common tropes--such as the circumspect and resilient "final girl," body possession, costumed villains, secret identities, and things that lurk in the closet--spark moments of eerie familiarity and affective connection. Still, viewers often remain tasked with reading themselves into beloved films, seeking out characters and set pieces that speak to, mirror, and parallel the unique ways queerness encounters the world. It Came from the Closet features twenty-five essays by writers speaking to this relationship, through connections both empowering and oppressive.

 

Join us for a round-table conversation between editor Joe Vallese and contributors Carrow Narby, Grant Sutton, Laura Maw, Prince Shakur, Sachiko Ragosta, and Tucker Lieberman. It's the perfect queer spooky-conversation that ranges from each writer's initial foray into horror, who the most queer horror character is, and the minute differences between Basket Case and Brain Damage.

 

This conversation is moderated by Nat Freeman. 

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Produced by Nat Freeman & Michael Kowaleski.

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

SKYLIT: Ama Codjoe, ”BLUEST NUDE” w/ Aleshea Harris & Ashaki Jackson

Ama Codjoe's poems explore how the archetype of the artist complicates the typical expectations of women: be gazed upon, be silent, be selfless, reproduce. Dialoguing with and through art, Bluest Nude considers alternative ways of holding and constructing the self. From Lorna Simpson to Gwendolyn Brooks to Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, contemporary and ancestral artists populate Bluest Nude in a choreography of Codjoe's making. Precise and halting, this finely wrought, riveting collection is marked by an acute rendering of highly charged emotional spaces. Purposefully shifting between the role of artist and subject, seer and seen, Codjoe's poems ask what the act of looking does to a person--public looking, private looking, and that most intimate, singular spectacle of looking at one's self. What does it mean to see while being seen? 

 

Join us for a conversation with Codjoe and Aleshea Harris & Ashaki Jackson.

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Produced by Nat Freeman & Michael Kowaleski.

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