Skylight Books Podcast Series

SKYLIT: Ruha Benjamin, ”VIRAL JUSTICE” w/ Lance Morgan

Long before the pandemic, Ruha Benjamin was doing groundbreaking research on race, technology, and justice, focusing on big, structural changes. But the twin plagues of COVID-19 and anti-Black police violence inspired her to rethink the importance of small, individual actions. Part memoir, part manifesto, Viral Justice is a sweeping and deeply personal exploration of how we can transform society through the choices we make every day.

 

Join us for a conversation between Benjamin and Lance Morgan.

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Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

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

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: ”Death in the Mouth” Roundtable

Death in the Mouth is a collection of horror stories and art showcasing BIPOC and ethnically marginalized storytellers from around the world. You’ll read stories featuring grotesque manifestations of dread, the enveloping sludge of grief, and the insectoid itch of deep-seated fear. Embodiments of mania and displacements of faith. Harrowing ecstasy and debilitating hope. Transgressions of the body, the spirit, and the community. Unique and terrifying alien mythology from the future. Quiet, creeping absurdities. Weird urban legends from secondary worlds. In this anthology, Sloane Leong and Cassie Hart bring you an incredible range of stories and illustrations that celebrate the voices of those overlooked to show you the terrifying and exquisite scope of what horror can be.

Join us for this round-table conversation with contributors Leong, Hart, Beatrice Iker, K-Ming Chang, and Karin Lowachee.

The event is moderated by Halley, recorded live on our Crowdcast channel on Saturday, October 1.

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Produced by Nat Freeman, 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: Alexandra Lange, ”MEET ME BY THE FOUNTAIN”

Few places have been as nostalgized, or as maligned, as malls. Since their birth in the 1950s, they have loomed large as temples of commerce, the agora of the suburbs. In their prime, they proved a powerful draw for creative thinkers such as Joan Didion, Ray Bradbury, and George Romero, who understood the mall’s appeal as both critics and consumers. Yet today, amid the aftershocks of financial crises and a global pandemic, as well as the rise of online retail, the dystopian husk of an abandoned shopping center has become one of our era’s defining images. Conventional wisdom holds that the mall is dead. But what was the mall, really? And have rumors of its demise been greatly exaggerated?

In her acclaimed The Design of Childhood, Alexandra Lange uncovered the histories of toys, classrooms, and playgrounds. She now turns her sharp eye to another subject we only think we know. She chronicles postwar architects’ and merchants’ invention of the mall, revealing how the design of these marketplaces played an integral role in their cultural ascent. In Lange’s perceptive account, the mall becomes newly strange and rich with contradiction: Malls are environments of both freedom and exclusion--of consumerism, but also of community. Meet Me by the Fountain is a highly entertaining and evocative promenade through the mall’s story of rise, fall, and ongoing reinvention, for readers of any generation.

 

Join us for a conversation between Lange and Skylight's Tyler Austin.

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Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

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

SKYLIT: Vanessa A. Bee, ”HOME BOUND” w/ Lydia Kiesling

In Home Bound, a singular and intimate memoir of identity and discovery, Vanessa A. Bee explores the way we define “home” and “belonging” — from her birth in Yaoundé, Cameroon, to her adoption by her aunt and her aunt’s white French husband, to experiencing housing insecurity in Europe and her eventual immigration to the US. After her parents’ divorce, Vanessa traveled with her mother to Lyon and later to London, eventually settling in Reno, Nevada, as a teenager, right around the financial crisis and the collapse of the housing market. At twenty, still a practicing evangelical Christian and newly married, Vanessa applied to and was accepted by Harvard Law School, where she was one of the youngest members of her class. There, she forged a new belief system, divorced her husband, left the church, and, inspired by her tumultuous childhood, pursued a career in economic justice upon graduation.

Vanessa’s adoptive, multiracial, multilingual, multinational, and transcontinental upbringing has caused her to grapple for years with foundational questions such as: What is home? Is it the country we’re born in, the body we possess, or the name we were given and that identifies us? Is it the house we remember most fondly, the social status assigned to us, or the ideology we forge? What defines us and makes us uniquely who we are?

Organized unconventionally around her own dictionary-style definitions of the word “home,” Vanessa tackles these timeless questions thematically and unpacks the many layers that contribute to and condition our understanding of ourselves and of our place in the world.

 

Join us for a conversation between Bee and fellow writer, Lydia Kiesling. This episode is hosted by Tyler.

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Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

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

SKYLIT: Anne K. Yoder, ”THE ENHANCERS” w/ Amanda Goldblatt

The Enhancers is a polyvocal novel that follows three teenage friends coming of age in a technopharmaceutical society. Hannah is born and raised in a town whose industry revolves around Lumena Corp., maker of the supplement Valedictorian. When Hannah and her friends start taking Valedictorian, or V., a mandated mental augmentation, they start to witness its untoward effects--Celia is institutionalized after an accidental druginduced psychotic break, and not long after Hannah's mental stability begins to slip. When a factory fire halts production, it threatens to throw the entire town into withdrawal. The Enhancers questions who we are when defined by our ability to process information. With mental augmentation as a baseline: how do we know ourselves, and what does it take to break free from this alienation?

 

Join us for a conversation between author Anne K. Yoder and fellow writer/editor for The Enhancers, Amanda Goldblatt. This episode is hosted by Justin Remer.

 

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Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

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

Live On Crowdcast: Writing Bisexuality w/ Antonia Angress & Jen Winston

It’s Bi Visibility Week, and what better way to celebrate than to join novelist Antonia Angress and memoirist Jen Winston for this very bisexual chat! Topics include writing queer characters in fiction vs. nonfiction, capturing nuance, and reading other works that get bisexuality right.

 

Join us for this conversation with Angress and Winston, moderated by Nat Freeman, recorded live on our Crowdcast channel on Monday, September 19.

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Produced by Nat Freeman, 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: Beto O’Rourke, ”WE’VE GOT TO TRY”

In We’ve Got To Try, Beto O’Rourke shines a spotlight on the heroic life and work of Dr. Lawrence Aaron Nixon and the west Texas town where he made his stand. The son of an enslaved man, Nixon grew up in the Confederate stronghold of Marshall, Texas before moving to El Paso, becoming a civil rights leader, and helping to win one of the most significant civil and voting rights victories in American history: the defeat of the all-white primary. His fight for the ballot spanned 20 years and twice took him to the U.S. Supreme Court.

 

Join us as O'Rourke discusses Dr. Nixon and the current fight for democracy with Skylight's Lance Morgan, with a cameo appearance by longtime Skylighter and Beto's former bandmate Arlo Klahr, whose music soundtracks this podcast!

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Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

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

SKYLIT: Traci Thomas, ”THE STACKS”

It's a cross-pod extravaganza! Today we welcome Traci Thomas, host of The Stacks, to the Skylight Books Podcast Series. Traci and Skylight's own Lance Morgan talk about everything from Beyoncé to the art of book podcasting. You don't want to miss it!

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Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

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

SKYLIT: Andrew Sean Greer, ”LESS IS LOST”

For Arthur Less, life is going surprisingly well: he is a moderately accomplished novelist in a steady relationship with his partner, Freddy Pelu. But nothing lasts: the death of an old lover and a sudden financial crisis has Less running away from his problems yet again as he accepts a series of literary gigs that send him on a zigzagging adventure across the US.

Less roves across the “Mild Mild West,” through the South and to his mid-Atlantic birthplace, with an ever-changing posse of writerly characters and his trusty duo – a human-like black pug, Dolly, and a rusty camper van nicknamed Rosina. He grows a handlebar mustache, ditches his signature gray suit, and disguises himself in the bolero-and-cowboy-hat costume of a true “Unitedstatesian”... with varying levels of success, as he continues to be mistaken for either a Dutchman, the wrong writer, or, worst of all, a “bad gay.”

We cannot, however, escape ourselves—even across deserts, bayous, and coastlines. From his estranged father and strained relationship with Freddy, to the reckoning he experiences in confronting his privilege, Arthur Less must eventually face his personal demons. With all of the irrepressible wit and musicality that made Less a bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning, must-read breakout book, Less Is Lost is a profound and joyous novel about the enigma of life in America, the riddle of love, and the stories we tell along the way.

 

Join us for a wonderful conversation between award-winning author Andrew Sean Greer and Skylight's Lance Morgan.

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Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

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

Skylit: Amy Fusselman, ”THE MEAN$” w/ Sarah Afkami

Shelly Means, a wealthy stay-at-home mom and disgraced former PTA president, is poised to get the one thing in life she really wants: a beach house in the Hamptons. Who would have guessed that Shelly, the product of frugal Midwesterners, or her husband George, an unrepentant thrift shopper, would ever be living among such swells? But Shelly believes it’s possible. It might be a very small house, and it might be in the least-fancy part of the Hamptons. But Shelly has a vision board, an architect, and a plan.

But what should be a simple real estate transaction quickly goes awry as Shelly’s new neighbors disapprove of her proposed shipping container house at the same time that George’s lucrative work as a VoiceOver artist dries up. But Shelly is dogged. She knows how to go into beast mode. But will it ever be enough to realize her beach house dreams? 

 

Join us for a wonderful conversation between The Mean$ author Amy Fusselman and Sarah Afkami.

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Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

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

Skylit: Sandra Cisneros, ”WOMAN WITHOUT SHAME” w/ Elisa Garcia

It has been twenty-eight years since Sandra Cisneros published a book of poetry. With dozens of never-before-seen poems, Woman Without Shame is a moving collection of songs, elegies, and declarations that chronicle her pilgrimage toward rebirth and the recognition of her prerogative as a woman artist. These bluntly honest and often humorous meditations on memory, desire, and the essential nature of love blaze a path toward self-awareness. For Cisneros, Woman Without Shame is the culmination of her search for home—in the Mexico of her ancestors and in her own heart.

 

Join us for a wonderful conversation about womanhood, writing, and defying patriarchal expectations between Cisneros and Skylight's own Elisa Garcia.

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Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

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

SKYLIT: Meghan Gilliss, ”LUNGFISH” w/ Kendall Storey

Tuck is slow to understand the circumstances that have driven her family to an uninhabited island off the coast of Maine, the former home of her deceased grandmother where she once spent her childhood summers. Squatting there now, she must care for her spirited young daughter and scrape together enough money to leave before winter arrives—or before they are found out.

Relying on the island for sustenance and answers—bladderwrack, rosehips, tenacious little green crabs; smells held by the damp walls of the house, field guides and religious texts, a failed invention left behind by her missing father—Tuck lives moment-by-moment through the absurdity, beauty, paranoia, and hunger that shoots through her life, as her husband struggles to detox.

Exquisitely written and formally daring, Lungfish tells the story of a woman grappling through the lies she has been told—and those she has told herself—to arrive at the truth of who she is and where she must go. Meghan Gilliss’s debut is a brilliant and heartbreaking novel about addiction, doubt, marriage, motherhood, and learning to see in the dark.

 

Join us for a conversation between Gilliss and Kendall Storey.

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Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

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

SKYLIT: Ramzi Fawaz, ”QUEER FORMS” w/ Ryan Hatch

In Queer Forms, Ramzi Fawaz explores how the central values of 1970s movements for women's and gay liberation--including consciousness-raising, separatism, and coming out of the closet--were translated into a range of American popular culture forms. Throughout this period, feminist and gay activists fought social and political battles to expand, transform, or wholly explode definitions of so-called "normal" gender and sexuality. In doing so, they inspired artists, writers, and filmmakers to invent new ways of formally representing, or giving shape to, non-normative genders and sexualities. This included placing women, queers, and gender outlaws of all stripes into exhilarating new environments--from the streets of an increasingly gay San Francisco to a post-apocalyptic commune, from an Upper East Side New York City apartment to an all-female version of Earth--and finding new ways to formally render queer genders and sexualities by articulating them to figures, outlines, or icons that could be imagined in the mind's eye and interpreted by diverse publics.

 

Join us for a conversation between Fawaz and Ryan Hatch.

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Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

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

SKYLIT: Courtney DeNelle, ”IT’S NOT NOTHING”

Rosemary Candwell’s past has exploded into her present. Down-and-out and deteriorating, she drifts from anonymous beds and bars in Providence, to a homeless shelter hidden among the hedge-rowed avenues of Newport, and through the revolving door of service jobs and quick-fix psychiatric care, always grasping for hope, for a solution. She’s desperate to readjust back into a family and a world that has deemed her a crazy bitch living a choice they believe she could simply un-choose at any time. She endures flashbacks and panic attacks, migraines and nightmares. She can’t sleep or she sleeps for days; she lashes out at anyone and everyone, especially herself. She abuses over-the-counter cold medicine and guzzles down anything caffeinated just to feel less alone. What if her family is right? What if she is truly broken beyond repair? Drawn from the author’s experience of homelessness and trauma recovery, Courtney DeNelle's It’s Not Nothing is a collage of small moments, biting jokes, intrusive memories, and quiet epiphanies meant to reveal a greater truth: Resilience never looks the way we expect it to look.

 

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Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

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

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Mimi Zhu, ”BE NOT AFRAID OF LOVE” w/ Jonny Sun

In their early twenties, Mimi Zhu was a survivor of intimate-partner abuse. This left them broken, in search of healing and ways to re-learn love. This work is a testament to the strength and adaptability all humans possess, a tribute to love. Be Not Afraid of Love explores the intersections of love and fear in self-esteem, friendship, family dynamics, and romantic relationships, and extends out to its effects on society and the greater political realm. In sharing their own intimate encounters with oppression, healing, joy, and community, Mimi invites readers to reflect deeply on their own experiences as well, with the intention of acting as a guide to undoing the hurt or uncertainty within them. In this heartrending and revolutionary book, Mimi reminds us, be not afraid of love.

 

Join us for this conversation with Zhu and Jonny Sun, moderated by Halley Perry, recorded live on our Crowdcast channel on Wednesday, August 17.

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Produced by Nat Freeman, 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.