Skylight Books Podcast Series

Joy Press, "STEALING THE SHOW"

In Stealing the Show: How Women are Revolutionizing Television, journalist and television critic Joy Press celebrates the women who broke through male-dominated Hollywood and helped change the face of television forever.

Drawing on scores of interviews with key participants in this revolution, Stealing the Show is a revelatory story about the women who changed not just what we see on television but the culture in which we live.

Wallace Shawn, "NIGHT THOUGHTS"

Writer and actor Wallace Shawn's probing, honest, and self-critical take on civilization and its discontents.

Although he is guided and inspired by the people he respects, and despite the insufficiency of his knowledge and experience—an insufficiency shared by most (or all) other humans, Wallace Shawn can’t see any real alternative to trying to figure out his own answers to the most essential questions about the world he lives in.

Having recently passed the age of seventy, before which he found it difficult to piece together more than a few fragments of understanding, Shawn would like to pass on anything he's learned before death or dementia close down the brief window available to him, but he may not be ready yet.

Elizabeth Flock, "THE HEART IS A SHIFTING SEA"

We may view India as a country steeped in, and perhaps constrained by, tradition, yet in the twenty-first century the pervasive influence of Western culture touches the lives of all ethnicities, classes, and religions. In her enveloping work of narrative nonfiction, The Heart is a Shifting Sea, journalist Elizabeth Flock, a reporter for PBS NewsHour, offers a penetrating look into three contemporary Mumbai marriages that reveals the surprising diversity and complexity of marital life in the largest metropolis of that evolving nation.

Alec Byrne, "LONDON ROCK"

What happened on the music scene in 1960s and 1970s London was nothing short of a cultural revolution. At the center of this heyday was photographer and teenager Alec Byrne, who, because of his talent and tenacity, landed a job capturing rock and roll’s greatest legends for various British media outlets. After ten years, Byrne packed up his archive and moved to Los Angeles where these photos remained in Byrne’s garage, sequestered from the public for close to forty years.

Now, Insight Editions will publish London Rock: The Unseen Archive, a striking compilation of Byrne’s never-before-seen images documenting an unprecedented time in music history. From The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and David Bowie to Jimi Hendrix, The Who and The Doors, Byrne’s unique portraits, rare concert performance shots, and intimate candids, offer a distinct perspective of rock stars celebrated and known around the world. With a signature style that fuses artistry and a documentarian’s eye, Byrne’s collection is a coveted back-stage pass to many rock stars’ rise to stardom. Containing more than 250 pages of untouched and uncompromised high-quality photos, this recently unearthed collection of rock and roll history brings the era into stunning focus, painting an evocative picture of an inimitable time and place.

Kim Purcell, "THIS IS NOT A LOVE LETTER"

This Is Not a Love Letter, by award-winning author Kim Purcell, is a both intimate and immediate love story examining race, loss, and mental health in small town America. 

Every Friday since they started dating, Chris has written Jessie a love letter. Then, days before graduation, popular, attractive, college-bound Chris vanishes. Now Jessie is writing Chris a letter of her own to tell him everything that’s happening while he’s gone. Jessie searches for answers. The police think he's run away, but she doesn't believe it. He disappeared while going for a run along the river—the same place where some boys beat him up just three weeks ago. Chris is one of the only black kids in a depressed paper mill town, and Jessie is terrified of what might have happened.

As the police investigate, Jessie and others speak up about the harassment Chris experienced and the danger he could be in. There are people in Jessie's town who are infuriated by the suggestion that a boy like Chris would be a target of violence. They threaten Jessie, and smear Chris’s character. As tensions escalate, Jessie must face her own fear and guilt. What really happened to Chris?

Tender and unflinching, This Is Not a Love Letter is an emotionally devastating examination of love, life, and the ties that bind, and what happens to those left behind when they break. 

"CULPRITS" Anthology Reading

A hard-bitten crew of professional thieves pull off the score of their lives, coming away with seven million in cash. Like any heist there are some unforeseen complications; a hitch or two and a couple of bodies drop. But despite this, they get away with the swag. Enough to change their lives, make new identities, start fresh. But that’s when the real trouble begins...In this unique, riveting, linked anthology, we follow each culprit as they go their separate ways after the heist, and watch as this perfect score ends up a perfect nightmare. Featuring stories penned by acclaimed writers Brett Battles, Gar Anthony Haywood, Zoë Sharp, Manuel Ramos, Jessica Kaye, Joe Clifford and David Corbett, Culprits shows that sometimes the end means things are just getting started...

Christopher Zeischegg, "BODY TO JOB"

Former porn star Christopher Zeischegg (aka Danny Wylde), gathers six years of writing into one definitive collection. A memoir of an adult film career from beginning to end and a life lived after, marked by post-porn dysphoria. Interspersed with select fiction, Zeischegg writes about youthful naivete, sex worker love, pro-porn activism, disenchantment, and violence. Body to Job is the ex-porn star's third book, and his most comprehensive to date—an explicit work of vulnerability, longing, terror, and life.  

Morgan Jerkins, "THIS WILL BE MY UNDOING"

As one of the fiercest and most powerful critics writing today, Morgan Jerkins is a rising star in the literary world. Praised by such icons as Roxane Gay and Alexander Chee, Jerkins establishes herself in This Will Be My Undoing as an insightful and brutally honest writer who isn’t afraid of tackling tough and controversial subjects. Not just a personal essay collection, Jerkins mines her own experience growing up black and female for moments that lead into bigger, more universal discussions about urgent issues facing black women today, such as the paradox of black female sexuality, dating men who say they “don’t see color”, and being objectified, silenced, and marginalized in ways that are rarely acknowledged in our country’s larger discussion about inequality.

Set against the backdrop of a divided nation under the Trump administration when racism and misogyny are on full public display, Jerkins masterfully tackles real issues about intersectionality, diversity, and privilege. Whether Jerkins is writing about the highly problematic Rachel Dolezal, “good hair,” being a black visitor in Russia, or her complex relationship with her own physical body, the portrait that emerges in This Will Be My Undoing is deeply intimate yet entirely universal.

Tavi Gevinson, "ROOKIE ON LOVE"

Tavi Gevinson returns to start the New Year off right with Rookie on Love, an anthology about the heart's most powerful emotion. Featuring exclusive, never-before-seen essays, poems, comics, and interviews from contributors like Jenny Zhang, Emma Straub, Hilton Als, Janet Mock, John Green, Rainbow Rowell, Gabourey Sidibe, and many more, this collection is the perfect reflection on love in its many forms.

Tee Franklin, "BINGO LOVE"

When Hazel Johnson and Mari McCray met at church bingo in 1963, it was love at first sight. Forced apart by their families and society, Hazel and Mari both married young men and had families. Decades later, now in their mid-’60s, Hazel and Mari reunite again at a church bingo hall. Realizing their love for each other is still alive, what these grandmothers do next takes absolute strength and courage. From Tee Franklin (Nailbiter’s The Outfit, Love is Love) and Jenn St-Onge (Jem & The Misfits), Bingo Love is a touching story of love, family, and resiliency that spans over 60 years.

Franklin is in conversation with award-winning television and comic book writer Amanda Deibert.

Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, "CALL ME ZEBRA"

National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” honoree Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi has been hailed as an author “on the verge of developing a whole new literature movement” (Bustle) and, now, her new novel, Call Me Zebra, affirms her “brilliant, demented” (Kirkus) genius as she explores the ways in which we cope with grief, our unresolved histories, and the tangled depths of love.

More than a decade after fleeing Iran during the height of the Iraq War, Zebra, now an orphan, must face life in exile alone, with literature as her only armor. To reconcile her past and uncertain future, Zebra embarks on a literary pilgrimage, leaving America to retrace her family’s dislocation. As she traverses the vast expanse of the Western Mediterranean, she’s guided by the sage words of Cervantes,Borges, Stendhal, and Dali. But her journey back to Iran quickly derails in Barcelona when Ludo, a stalwart realist mystified by her intensity, enters the picture and the two begin a sexy, if fraught, affair.

Joanna Angel, "NIGHT SHIFT"

From the sinfully delicious mind of Joanna Angel, founder of adult company BurningAngel and award-winning adult actress and director, comes Night Shift: A Choose-Your-Own Erotic Fantasy!

Your mission: In a sketchy and sexy world filled with tissues, gallons of lube, sex toys, tiger print, and swinger parties, help Taryn choose her way as she learns what happens in this small, unexpectedly kinky town. From butt plugs to cross-dressing truckers to being held-up at gunpoint over dildos, experience this fun and sexy journey along with Taryn, as she goes from shy and sweet to skilled and empowered—but how she gets there is up to you!

Dahlia Schweitzer, "GOING VIRAL"

In Going Viral, Dahlia Schweitzer probes outbreak narratives in film, television, and a variety of other media, putting them in conversation with rhetoric from government authorities and news organizations that have capitalized on public fears about our changing world. She identifies three distinct types of outbreak narrative, each corresponding to a specific contemporary anxiety: globalization, terrorism, and the end of civilization. Schweitzer considers how these fears, stoked by both fictional outbreak narratives and official sources, have influenced the ways Americans relate to their neighbors, perceive foreigners, and regard social institutions.

Deborah Reed, "THE DAYS WHEN BIRDS COME BACK"

n her latest novel, The Days When Birds Come Back, Deborah Reed weaves an unforgettable tale of redemption and perseverance that questions what it means to love in times of grief and sorrow. Still raw from her divorce and the recent loss of her beloved grandparents, June returns to the Oregon coast and the house that holds her dark memories. With plans to sell her grandparents’ historic bungalow, she hires Jameson, a stranger from out of town, to restore it over the summer. But upon meeting, June and Jameson realize they have much more to contend with than an old house.

Propelled by Reed’s “gorgeous and wise prose” (Cheryl Strayed), The Days When Birds Come Back follows June and Jameson as they confront their harrowing, intertwined pasts. As the walls of June’s  childhood home come down, long-buried secrets are exhumed. Jameson’s marriage is crumbling under the weight of a traumatic loss that took place years ago in June’s town, and June is grappling with the guilt of her troubled adolescence and father’s elusive death. Alone in the sweltering heat of the summer, their chemistry is undeniable. But can they find the forgiveness they need in time to build a future together? Scintillating and brimming with hope, Reed’s gripping story will keep readers on the edge of their seats. “An emotionally satisfying novel” (Publishers Weekly) set against the backdrop of Oregon’s charming, rustic coast, The Days When Birds Come Back is the perfect book to escape with this winter.

Tom Macher, "HALFWAY"

In his late teens Tom Macher rebelled against a world that seemed stacked against him. Raised in a broken family and estranged from an absentee father suffering with AIDS, Macher turned to alcohol to escape the painful loneliness of his reality.

Macher captures the trials of sobriety—suicide, death, recovery—and the unusual beauty that forms in the bonds of those who suffer. In visceral, striking prose, he introduces the unforgettable characters he meets along the way, from a former child actor, a young teen struggling with schizophrenia, a tough-love addiction counselor, a sex-addicted social worker, to Matt O, who became Macher’s loyal friend and wingman. Raw, disarming, frenetic, and subversive, Halfway is a brutally honest portrait of the world of down-and-out recovering alcoholics, and a story of how, in their darkest hour, these men create the bonds that form a family.