Skylight Books Podcast Series

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.

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.

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.

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.

In the stark expanse of Northern Alberta, a queer Indigenous doctoral student steps away from his dissertation to write a novel, informed by a series of poignant encounters: a heart-to-heart with fellow doctoral student River over the mounting pressure placed on marginalized scholars; a meeting with Michael, a closeted man from his hometown whose vulnerability and loneliness punctuate the realities of queer life on the fringe. Woven throughout these conversations are memories of Jack, a cousin caught in the cycle of police violence, drugs, and survival. Jack’s life parallels the narrator’s own; the possibilities of escape and imprisonment are left to chance with colonialism stacking the odds. A Minor Chorus, Billy-Ray Belcourt's debut novel, introduces a dazzling new literary voice whose vision and fearlessness shine much-needed light on the realities of Indigenous survival.

 

The event is moderated by Nat Freeman, recorded live on our Crowdcast channel on October 13, 2022.

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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.

In powerful, formally inventive essays, The Visible Unseen disrupts the purported cultural divide between arts and science. As both a chemist and an award-winning author, Andrea Chapela zeros in on the literary metaphors buried in the facts and figures of her scientific observations. Through questioning scientific conundrums that lie beyond the limits of human perception, she winds up putting herself under the microscope as well.

While considering the technical definition of glass as a liquid or a solid, Chapela stumbles upon a framework for understanding the in-between-ness of her own life. Turning her focus toward mirrors, she finds metaphors for our cultural obsessions with self-image in the physics and chemistry of reflection. And as she compiles a history of the scientific study of light, she comes to her final conclusion: that the purpose of description--be it scientific or literary--can never be to define reality, only to confirm our perception of it. Lyrical, introspective, and methodical, The Visible Unseen constructs a startling new perspective from which to examine ourselves and the ways we create meaning.

 

Join us for a special bilingual reading and a conversation between Chapela and translator Kelsi Vanada.

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Produced by Nat Freeman & Michael Kowaleski.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.