Thresholds

Nicholson Baker sits down with Jordan to discuss writing about the unsung pleasures and details of the world-- things like the way your mother cuts up a banana, or the advertisements in your favorite magazine. Things that "live in this between area of noticing, they're part of the background of life."

Mentioned in the episode:

• Nicholson's book about WWII, Human Smoke
• "Sock (Object Lessons)" by Kim Adrian
• "The Lab Leak Hypothes...

Sarah Aziza sits down with Jordan to talk about the eating disorder that almost took her life in 2019, and the search into her family's history in Palestine that she undertook in a bid for her own survival.

Mentioned in the episode:

• the Nakba
• transgenerational trauma
• José Muñoz, Cruising Utopia
• ghurba

Sarah Aziza is a Palestinian American writer, translator, and artist with roots in ‘Ibdis and Deir al-Balah, Gaza. She is...

Lisa Ko sits down with Jordan to talk about the daily journaling practice that she started at age five, and the period of creative crisis between her first and second novels when she began methodically destroying every journal she'd ever kept.

Mentioned in the episode:

• Tehching Hsieh
• soft gaze
• Moleskin daily journals

Lisa Ko is the author of the new novel Memory Piece and the nationally bestselling novel...

Jordan sits down to talk with Sabrina Imbler, author of How Far the Light Reaches, about writing the non-human world, leaving the world of legacy media, and how they've learned from the deep sea --and from their colleagues-- about the power of collectivity.

Mentioned in the episode:

• how to write a book on top of a full-time job
• uncharismatic microfauna
• Sabrina's essay on salps and queer collectivity, from How Far the Light Reac...

This week, Jordan sits down to talk with Maya Binyam, author of the novel Hangman,about a near-drowning that changed her life.

Maya Binyam is the author of Hangman, which was named a 2024 National Book Foundation “5 under 35” honoree, received the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize, the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, ...

This week, we're sharing a live conversation between Jordan and Carvell Wallace, recorded last year at P&T Knitwear in New York. They talk about his new memoir, Another Word for Love, a moment of real peril from his childhood, and the long process that followed for him of learning to embrace vulnerability, connection, and his own writing voice.

Carvell Wallace is a writer and podcaster who has contributed to The New Yorker, ...

This week, Jordan sits down to talk with Lidia Yuknavitch about menopause, where stories lodge in our bodies, having a creative process that takes the shape of an ocean wave, and more.

Lidia Yuknavitch is the National Bestselling author of four novels: Thrust, The Book of Joan, Dora: A Headcase, and The Small Backs of Children, winner of the 2016 Oregon Book Awards Ken Kesey Award for Fiction as well as the OBA Reader's Choice ...

This week, we bring you a live interview with Garth Greenwell, conducted in October 2024 at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn. Garth talks about growing up in Kentucky assuming that he would die young, the teacher who gave him a path toward being an artist, and the doggedness with which he has pursued his aesthetic practices (in both music and literature) ever since.

Mentioned:

Garth's new novel, Small Rain (FSG 2024)

Frank Bidart

Benjam...

We're revisiting our 2021 interview with the poet Jericho Brown, who this week was named a MacArthur Fellow-- one of the highest honors in the arts and humanities. He and Jordan talk about the great mystery of why we desire the things we desire; about oration and the poets he read and memorized as part of his own becoming; mitigating our impulses toward violence with tenderness, and more.

Jericho Brown is author of the ...

This week, Jordan talks to the novelist Sigrid Nunez about her youthful preoccupation with mimicking the prose of Virginia Woolf, the step-by-step intuitive way she writes prose now, and the best way to make overnight oats.

Sigrid Nunez has published nine novels, including A Feather on the Breath of God, The Last of Her Kind, The Friend, What Are You Going Through, and, most recently, The Vulnerables. Nu...

Jordan chats with Sofia Samatar (The Practice, The Horizon, and the Chain and Opacities) about having two books out this year, doing everything twice (once in non-fiction, once in fiction), and her growing sense of an ongoing overarching project to her work.

MENTIONED:

• A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar
• Monster Portraits by Sofia Samatar and Del Samatar
• The White Mosque by Sofia Samatar
• Tender: Stories by Sofia Samatar
• Tone ...

Jordan chats with Emma Copley Eisenberg (Housemates) about a ghostly encounter that led to her new novel, the opposing worldviews of Grace Paley and Ottessa Moshfegh, and the choice to make art in difficult times.

MENTIONED:

• Jazz by Toni Morrison
• Fleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
• American Pastoral by Philip Roth
• Terrace Story by Hilary Leichter
• "Why I Write" by George Orwell

Emma Copley Eisenberg is the au...

Shades on, sleeves up—it's summertime and we're back! This week, Jordan talks with Amy Lin, author of Here After, about grief, the sudden loss of her husband, miracles, and her family's history with thin places.

Amy Lin lives in Calgary, Canada where there are two seasons: winter and road construction. She completed her MFA at Warren Wilson College and holds BAs in English Literature and Education. Her work has been publish...

This is a re-airing of our 2021 episode with the poet and bestselling essayist Aimee Nezhukumatathil. We're celebrating the release of her new collection, BITE BY BITE: NOURISHMENTS AND JAMBOREES. Come for the new intro about pizza on the beach, stay for Aimee's reflections on everything from champion trees to 80s-era Madonna to what society tells us about who "gets to" be comfortable in nature.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the auth...

Jordan chats with Dorothea Lasky (The Shining) about interpreting a horror classic in her latest poetry collection, her love for horror, and why playfulness and horror aren't incompatible—and might in fact be inextricably connected.

MENTIONED:

• The Shining by Stephen King
• The Shining (1980)
• Bernadette Mayer's "Memory" project

Dorothea Lasky is the author, most recently, of The Shining  (October 2023), and ...

Jordan talks with Vinson Cunningham (Great Expectations) about finding himself in the midst of history, discovering ways to hang onto moments, and why he turned to his real life for his debut novel.

MENTIONED:

• The Vanity Fair Diaries by Tina Brown
• Answered Prayers by Truman Capote
• "How Auto is Auto-fiction" by Christian Lorentzen
• "American Boy" by Estelle
• The Idiot by Elif Batuman
• Shadow and Act by Ralph Ellison

Vinson Cu...

Jordan chats with Meghan O'Rourke (The Invisible Kingdom) about hiding from herself, the death of her father, and the challenges of writing a book without knowing where it will go.

MENTIONED:

• The Riddles of the Sphinx by Anna Shechtman
• Walking and Talking (1996, written & directed by Nicole Holofcener)
• "The Teens Have Made Nirvana Preppy" by Sarah Stankorb

Meghan O’Rourke is the author of the New York Times be...

Jordan talks with Rumaan Alam (Leave the World Behind) about money, freedom, his recent period of creative fecundity, and the enduring power of art.

MENTIONED:

• The Golden Bowl by Henry James
• Appropriate by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
• Family Meal by Bryan Washington
• Zero K by Don DeLillo
• Agnes Martin

Rumaan Alam is the author of three novels: Rich and Pretty, That Kind of Mother, and Leave the World Behind. Other writing has ap...

Jordan talks with artist and writer Maira Kalman about the death of her husband Tibor Kalman, the process of grief, and her irrepressible creative spirit.

MENTIONED:

• Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren
• Sarah Berman's Closet
• The Diaries of Franz Kakfa by Franz Kafka, tr. by Ross Benjamin
• "Cheek to Cheek" by Irving Berlin, sung by Fred Astaire

Maira Kalman was born in Tel Aviv and moved to New York City with her fam...