Skylight Books Podcast Series

SKYLIT: Melissa Colasanti, "CALL ME ELIZABETH LARK" w/ E. A. Barres

27 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Twenty years ago, Myra Barkley's daughter disappeared from the rocky beach across from the family inn, off the Oregon coast. Ever since, Myra has wait...

SKYLIT: Jana Larson, "REEL BAY" & Jazmina Barrera, "ON LIGHTHOUSES"

25 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Reel Bay:   What was Takako Konishi really doing in North Dakota, and why did she end up dead? Did she get lost and freeze to death, as the police co...

SKYLIT: Emma Hine, "Stay Safe" w/ Laura Creste

21 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

At the center of this stellar collection are three sisters and their imaginative fear of grief. Their great-uncle was bitten by a shark, their mother ...

Handsell, Ep. 18: Bookstaggramming w/ Lauren Fanella

19 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Skylight's own Lance Morgan talks to "book influencer" Lauren Fanella (@literarylauren_) about the intersection of literature and social media. ____...

Jonathan Ames, "A MAN NAMED DOLL"

17 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Happy Doll is a charming, if occasionally inexpert, private detective living just one sheer cliff drop beneath the Hollywood sign with his beloved hal...

SKYLIT: Sara Kamali, "HOMEGROWN HATE"

15 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Homegrown Hate is a groundbreaking and deeply researched work that directly compares White nationalists and militant Islamists in the United States. ...

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Sam Cohen, "SARAHLAND" w/ Nikki Darling

13 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In Sarahland, Sam Cohen brilliantly and often hilariously explores the ways in which traditional stories have failed us, both demanding and thrillingl...

SKYLIT: Jim Lewis, "GHOSTS OF NEW YORK" w/ Ruben Martinez

10 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Ghosts of New York is a novel in which the laws of time and space have been subtly suspended. It interweaves four strands: a photographer newly return...

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Jen Silverman, "WE PLAY OURSELVES" w/ Torrey Peters

07 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Not too long ago, Cass was a promising young playwright in New York, hailed as “a fierce new voice” and “queer, feminist, and ready to spill the...

SKYLIT: Peter Filkins, "WATER/MUSIC"

05 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Exploring the space between nature and culture, the poems of Peter Filkins' Water / Music anchor themselves in the timely and the timeless. Rich and...

SKYLIT: Beth Pickens, "MAKE YOUR ART NO MATTER WHAT"

03 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

If you are an artist, you need to make your art. That's not an overstatement—it's a fact; if you stop doing your creative work, your quality of life...

SKYLIT: Claire Cox, "SILVER BEACH" w/ Clare Needham

01 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

It’s been decades since Mara’s family was last together, decades since the day her sister Allison drowned at Silver Beach. After the family tra...

SKYLIT: Kim Addonizio, "NOW WE'RE GETTING SOMEWHERE" w/ Aya Cash

30 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Kim Addonizio’s sharp and irreverent eighth volume, Now We’re Getting Somewhere, is an essential companion to your practice of the Finnish art of...

SKYLIT: Michael Wilson Becerril, "RESISTING EXTRACTIVISM"

28 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Peru is classified as one of the deadliest countries in the world for environmental defenders, where activists face many forms of violence. Through an...

SKYLIT: Edward Melilo, "THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT"

26 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Insects might make us shudder in disgust, but they are also responsible for many of the things we take for granted in our daily lives. When we bite in...

SKYLIT: William Deverell, "KATHY FISCUS"

25 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Kathy Fiscus tells the story of the first live, breaking-news TV spectacle in American history. At dusk on a spring evening in 1949, a three-year old...

SKYLIT: Yaba Blay, "ONE DROP"

22 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the United States, a Black person has come to be defined as any person with any known Black ancestry. Statutorily referred to as “the rule of hyp...

SKYLIT: Celia Laskey, "UNDER THE RAINBOW" w/ Peter Kispert

19 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Big Burr, Kansas, is the kind of place where everyone seems to know everyone, and everyone shares the same values—or keeps their opinions to themsel...

SKYLIT: Ron Nyren, "THE BOOK OF LOST LIGHT" w/ Judy Juanita + Karen Kevorkian

18 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Joseph Kylander's childhood in early 20th century San Francisco has been shaped by his widowed father's obsessive photographic project and by his head...

SKYLIT: Sy Hoahwah, "ANCESTRAL DEMON OF A GRIEVING BRIDE"

17 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Fractured storytelling for a fractured world, Ancestral Demon of a Grieving Bride draws readers into a world that appears eerily familiar but unsett...

SKYLIT: Joshua Mohr, "MODEL CITIZEN" w/ Gina Frangello

16 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

After years of hard-won sobriety, while rebuilding a life with his wife and young daughter, thirty-five-year-old Joshua Mohr suffers a stroke—his th...

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Tod Goldberg, "THE LOW DESERT" w/ Mark Haskell Smith

13 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

With gimlet-eyed cool and razor-sharp wit, these spare, stylish stories from master of modern crime fiction Tod Goldberg assemble a world of gangste...

SKYLIT: Erika Moen & Matthew Nolan, "LET'S TALK ABOUT IT"

11 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Growing up is complicated. How do you find the answers to all the questions you have about yourself, about your identity, and about your body? Let...

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: "SPECULATIVE LOS ANGELES"

05 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

As an incubator of the future, Los Angeles has long mesmerized writers from Aldous Huxley to Octavia E. Butler. With its natural disasters, Hollywood...

SKYLIT: Dr. Mahmood Mamdani, "NEITHER SETTLER NOR NATIVE" w/ Dr. Gil Anidjar

05 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In this genealogy of political modernity, Mahmood Mamdani argues that the nation-state and the colonial state created each other. In case after case a...

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Lauren Oyler, "FAKE ACCOUNTS" w/ Naomi Fry

01 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

On the eve of Donald Trump's inauguration, a young woman snoops through her boyfriend's phone and makes a startling discovery: he's an anonymous inte...

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Melissa Broder, "MILK FED" w/ ryan o'connell

24 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Rachel is twenty-four, a lapsed Jew who has made calorie restriction her religion. By day, she maintains an illusion of existential control, by way of...

SKYLIT: Richard Thompson Ford, "DRESS CODES" w/ Lance Morgan

22 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Note: Due to a technical difficulty, this episode was recorded in two different sessions. The listener will note a change in audio quality partway thr...

SKYLIT: Clover Hope, "THE MOTHERLODE" w/ Nadeska Alexis

19 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Clover Hope is a writer and editor based in Brooklyn. Hope’s work has appeared in the pages of Vogue, Vibe, Billboard, the New York Times, WIR...

SKYLIT: Rebecca Morgan Frank, "OH YOU ROBOT SAINTS!" w/ Catherine Pierce

18 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Part bestiary, part litany, part elegy, Rebecca Morgan Frank’s Oh You Robot Saints! is populated by a strange menagerie of early automata and robo...

SKYLIT: Rich Ferguson, "EVERYTHING IS RADIANT BETWEEN THE HATES" w/ Special Guests

15 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Beloved Los Angeles poet/performer Rich Ferguson delivers a tender, complex collection in Everything is Radiant Between the Hates, whose 8 sections o...

SKYLIT: Amy Shira Teitel, "FIGHTING FOR SPACE"

13 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

When the space age dawned in the late 1950s, Jackie Cochran held more propeller and jet flying records than any pilot of the twentieth century—man o...

SKYLIT: Kay Gabriel & Andrea Abi-Karam, "WE WANT IT ALL"

10 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Editors Andrea Abi-Karam and Kay Gabriel offer We Want it All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics as an experiment into how far literature, written...

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Lynell George, "A HANDFUL OF EARTH, A HANDFUL OF SKY" w/ Louise Steinman

08 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky: The World of Octavia E. Butler offers a blueprint for a creative life from the perspective of award-winning scie...

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Megan Rosenbloom, "DARK ARCHIVES" w/ Caitlin Doughty

06 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

On bookshelves around the world, surrounded by ordinary books bound in paper and leather, rest other volumes of a distinctly strange and grisly sort: ...

SKYLIT: Catie Disabato, "U UP?"

04 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Eve has a carefully curated online life, works occasionally, and texts constantly with her best friend, Ezra. Basically, she is an archetypal L.A. mil...

SKYLIT: Kim Young, "TIGERS" w/ Sandra Hunter

01 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

TIGERS is an exploration of a series of mutigenerational landscapes of the feminine--female adolescence, womanhood, motherhood, and personal revelatio...

SKYLIT: Amelia Pang, "MADE IN CHINA" w/ Agnes Borinsky

31 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Trigger Warning: Contains descriptions of torture and sexual violence. In 2012, an Oregon mother named Julie Keith opened up a package of Halloween de...

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Eileen Myles, "FOR NOW" w/ Adam Fitzgerald

27 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In this raucous meditation, Eileen Myles offers an intimate glimpse into creativity’s immediacy. With erudition and wit, Myles recounts their early ...

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Sarah Faith Gottesdiener, "THE MOON BOOK" w/ Pam Grossman

25 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

We all know the moon. We all have a relationship with it. The earliest people obeyed her orbit, timed their months and holidays and celebrations and a...

SKYLIT: Betto Arcos, "MUSIC STORIES FROM THE COSMIC BARRIO"

23 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Music Stories from the Cosmic Barrios is a collection of 150 stories about music from all over Latin America, including music from Cuba, Mexico, Brazi...

SKYLIT: David Leo Rice, "A ROOM IN DODGE CITY, VOL. 2" w/ Brian Evenson

20 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The first book in the Room in Dodge City trilogy brought us a nameless drifter arriving in a bizarre Western town that might encompass all of reality...

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Chelsea G. Summers, "A CERTAIN ANGER" w/ Laurie Penny

15 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Food critic Dorothy Daniels loves what she does. Discerning, meticulous, and very, very smart, Dorothy's clear mastery of the culinary arts make it l...

SKYLIT: Bryan Washington, "MEMORIAL" w/ Lance Morgan

13 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Benson and Mike are two young guys who live together in Houston. Mike is a Japanese American chef at a Mexican restaurant and Benson's a Black day car...

SKYLIT: Jim Gauer, "NOVEL EXPLOSIVES" w/ Greg Gerke

11 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

It's an otherwise ordinary week in April, the week after Easter, 2009. Late in the week, a man wakes up in Guanajuato, Mexico, with his knowledge inta...

SKYLIT: Lory Bedikian, "THE BOOK OF LAMENTING" & Dorianne Laux, "ONLY AS THE DAY IS LONG"

11 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Lory Bedikian’s first collection The Book of Lamenting was awarded the 2010 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry. She earned an MFA in Poetry from the Uni...

SKYLIT: Mauro Gatti, "THE HAPPY BROADCAST" w/ Evan Spiridellis

06 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The Happy Broadcast: How to Stay Positive, Take Action & Make the World a Better Place is filled with stories of people doing good, as well as prompt...

SKYLIT: Mark de Silva, "POINTS OF ATTACK" w/ Rachel Allen

04 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In this collage of critical reflections, written in the tradition of the short essay running through Francis Bacon and Roland Barthes, the novelist, p...

SKYLIT: Rebecca Fishow, "THE TROUBLE WITH LANGUAGE" w/ John Colasacco

01 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Weaving together fabulist invention and gritty realism, Rebecca Fishow's debut collection, THE TROUBLE WITH LANGUAGE, unearths stories of men and wome...

SKYLIT: Nathan Elias, "THE REINCARNATIONS" w/ Alex Thurnher

30 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

These loosely connected stories are laced with the familiar and the uncanny, the real and the surreal, the ordinary and the fabulistic. A documentary ...

SKYLIT: Susan Buttenwieser, "WE WERE LUCKY WITH THE RAIN" w/ Lyman Clayborn

28 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Susan Buttenwieser’s writing has appeared in numerous publications. We Were Lucky with the Rain is her first book. She teaches creative writing in N...

SKYLIT: Abdellah Taïa, "A COUNTRY FOR DYING" w/ Colm Toíbín

21 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Paris, Summer 2010. Zahira is 40 years old, Moroccan, a prostitute, traumatized by her father's suicide decades prior, and in love with a man who n...

SKYLIT: Ruth Gilligan, "THE BUTCHERS' BLESSING" w/ Amber Starks

18 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Every year, Úna prepares for her father to leave her. He will wave goodbye early one morning, then disappear with seven other men to traverse the Iri...

SKYLIT: Sudeep Sen, "LITERATURES OF THE ATHROPOCENE" w/ Kiran Bhat

16 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Sudeep Sen is widely recognised as a major new generation voice in world literature and "one of the finest younger English-language poets in the inte...

SKYLIT: Rebecca Simon, "WHY WE LOVE PIRATES"

14 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

During his life and even after his death, Captain William Kidd's name was known around England and the American colonies. He was infamous for the very...

SKYLIT: Frances F. Denny, "MAJOR ARCANA" w/ Lisa Locascio

12 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Based on her critically acclaimed exhibition, Major Arcana collects the work of photographer Frances F. Denny, who traveled around the U.S. photograph...

SKYLIT: Michelle Gallen, "BIG GIRL, SMALL TOWN"

09 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Majella is happiest out of the spotlight, away from her neighbors’ stares and the gossips of the small town in Northern Ireland where she grew up ju...

SKYLIT: Jared Milrad & Jan West, "BELIEVE IN YOU"

07 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In Believe In You, an intimate and revealing conversation between a mother and son, Jared Milrad and Jan West take a fascinating look at the experien...

SKYLIT: Nana-Ama Danquah, "ACCRA NOIR" w/ Anniwaa Buachie

04 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies (launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir) with Accra Noir. Each book compri...

SKYLIT: Tauno Biltsted, "THE ANATOMIST'S TALE" & Caitlin Chung, "SHIP OF FATES"

02 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Tauno Biltsted Born into abject poverty in the British Empire, our narrator aspires to a better life as a ship’s surgeon—until a tyrannical captai...

SKYLIT: Farrah Alexander, "RAISING THE RESISTANCE"

02 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Acknowledging the dual role of mother and citizen, Scary Mommy writer and mom Farrah Alexander, provides empowerment and guidance for the modern progr...

SKYLIT: Daniel Brook, "THE ACCIDENT OF COLOR" w/ Erin Aubry Kaplan & Guenveur Smith

30 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In The Accident of Color, Daniel Brook journeys to nineteenth-century New Orleans and Charleston and introduces us to cosmopolitan residents who elude...

SKYLIT: Frederick Kaufman, "THE MONEY PLOT" w/ Indrani Sen

25 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Frederick Kaufman tackles the complex history of money, beginning with the earliest myths and wrapping up with Wall Street’s byzantine present-day d...

SKYLIT: Riva Lehrer, "GOLEM GIRL: A MEMOIR" w/ Terry Myers

23 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

What do we sacrifice in the pursuit of normalcy? And what becomes possible when we embrace monstrosity? Can we envision a world that sees impossible c...

SKYLIT: Matthew Medney and John Connelly, "BEYOND KUIPER: THE GALACTIC STAR ALLIANCE"

20 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In Beyond Kuiper: The Galactic Star Alliance, an illustrated novel co- created & written by Matthew Medney (Heavy Metal Magazine CEO & NYU adjunct pr...

SKYLIT: Unni Turrettini, "BETRAYING THE NOBEL" w/ Brian Keating

18 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The Nobel Prize, regardless of category, has always been surrounded by politics, intrigue, even scandal. But those pale in comparison to the Peace Pr...

SKYLIT: Mauro Javier Cárdenas, "APHASIA" w/ Jeremy M. Davies

17 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Antonio wants to avoid thinking about his sister—even though he knows he won’t be able to avoid thinking about his sister—because his sister is ...

SKYLIT: Carmen Boullosa, "LET'S TALK ABOUT YOUR WALL" w/ Juan Villoro

13 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Despite the extensive coverage in the U.S. media of the southern border and Donald Trump's proposed wall, most English speakers have had little access...

SKYLIT: Adam Goodman, "THE DEPORTATION MACHINE" w/ Romeo Guzmán

11 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Constant headlines about deportations, detention camps, and border walls drive urgent debates about immigration and what it means to be an American in...

SKYLIT: Emily Schultz, "LITTLE THREATS"

10 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In the summer of 1993, twin sisters Kennedy and Carter Wynn are embracing the grunge era and testing every limit in their privileged Richmond suburb. ...

SKYLIT: Stephanie LaCava, "THE SUPERRATIONALS" w/ Sasha Sagan

06 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Over the course of a few days in the fall of 2015, the sophisticated and awkward, wry and beautiful Mathilde upends her tidy world. She takes a short ...

SKYLIT: Kevin Mattson, "WE'RE NOT HERE TO ENTERTAIN" w/ Mike Foley

04 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Many remember the 1980s as the era of Ronald Reagan, a conservative decade populated by preppies and yuppies dancing to a soundtrack of electronic syn...

SKYLIT: Carol Hay, "THINK LIKE A FEMINIST" w/ Samia Hesni

02 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Think Like a Feminist is an irreverent yet rigorous primer that unpacks over two hundred years of feminist thought. In a time when the word feminism t...

SKYLIT: Johnny Ray Huston & Bradford Nordeen, "BECAUSE HORROR"

30 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

BECAUSE HORROR is a collection of 13 essays (incl. one poem) that mixes critical writing and memoir to explore horror movies and how they haunt memory...

SKYLIT: Jason Horton, "ABANDONED AND HISTORIC LOS ANGELES" w/ Rebecca Leib

28 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Somewhere between the Hollywood sign and the Pacific Ocean, underneath the palm trees and above the crowded highways, there they are. You may have see...

SKYLIT: Jennifer L. Knox, "CRUSHING IT" w/ Sarah Manguso

26 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The poems in Jennifer L. Knox's darkly imaginative collection, Crushing It, unearth epiphanies in an unbounded landscape of forms, voices and subjects...

SKYLIT: Hayley Gene Penner, "PEOPLE YOU FOLLOW" w/ Kathryn Borel

23 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Singer-songwriter Hayley Gene Penner's memoir takes a brutally honest yet humorous look at the dark, intimate truths we spend our lives running from. ...

SKYLIT: Roy A. Meals, "BONES" w/ Vernon Tolo

21 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

A lively, illustrated exploration of the 500-million-year history of bone, a touchstone for understanding vertebrate life and human culture.   Human ...

SKYLIT: Donna Miscolta, "LIVING COLOR" w/ Alex Espinoza

19 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

We first meet Angie Rubio at age five, being scolded by her kindergarten teacher for not knowing how to skip properly. Set in California in the 1960s ...

SKYLIT: Kaela Green, "SCOTTIE ON THE SPACE STATION"

16 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Ellie and her family love living on the space station With a mother who is an intergalactic doctor and a father who studies the stars, Ellie's life on...

SKYLIT: Kazim Ali, "THE VOICE OF SHEILA CHANDRA" w/ Kiki Petrosino

14 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Titled for the influential singer left almost voiceless by a terrible syndrome, The Voice of Sheila Chandra brings sweet melodies and rhythms as the v...

SKYLIT: Xialuo Guo, "A LOVER'S DISCOURSE"

14 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

A Chinese woman moves from Beijing to London for a doctoral program--and to begin a new life--just as the Brexit campaign reaches a fever pitch. Isola...

SKYLIT: Lawrence Rosenthal, "EMPIRE OF RESENTMENT" w/ Harry Levine

14 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Since Trump's victory and the UK's Brexit vote, much of the commentary on the populist epidemic has focused on the emergence of populism. But, Lawrenc...

Handsell, Ep. 17: "Dynasty Typewriter"

12 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Mick and Maddie have a spook szn reunion to talk about Halloween costumes and Skylight's new Indiegogo campaign with Punk Rock Martha's! Then, Maddie ...

SKYLIT: Jacquelyn Stolos, "EDENDALE" w/ Madeline Stevens

09 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

“Edendale is a sly and smart novel that contains multitudes—itʼs strange, funny, dark, violent, frightening, compelling, and mysterious. Jacquel...

SKYLIT: Ken Kwapis, "BUT WHAT I REALLY WANT TO DO IS DIRECT" w/ David Ulin

07 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

He is among the most respected directors in show business, but getting there wasn’t easy. He struggled just like everyone else. With each triumph ca...

SKYLIT: David Lazar, "CELESTE HOLM SYNDROME" w/ A.S. Hamrah

05 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In Celeste Holm Syndrome, David Lazar looks to our intimate relationships with characters, both well-known and lesser known, from Hollywood’s Golde...

Handsell, Ep. 16: "Kelsey Nolan"

03 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Former events manager Kelsey Nolan is back at Skylight Books, so we had her on the Handsell to celebrate her return! We hear about her journey into Sk...

SKYLIT: Mathieu Cailler, "HEAVEN AND OTHER ZIP CODES" w/ Laura Warrell

30 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Heaven and Other Zip Codes follows the complicated relationships between lonely, thirty-something-year-old mother Searcy, her awkward prepubescent son...

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Jacqueline Suskin, "THE EDGE OF THE CONTINENT: THE DESERT"

28 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The Edge of the Continent: The Desert is about California. Specifically, this third volume is about Joshua Tree—the dry, sparsely populated landsca...

HANDSELL, Ep. 15, "John Evans - Diesel Bookstore"

27 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

After Maddie and Mick catch up and talk about how nice it is to feel some semblance of the bookstore community, Maddie sits down with John Evans of th...

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Elisa Gabbert, "THE UNREALITY OF MEMORY" w/ Brandon Taylor

25 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

We stare at our phones. We keep multiple tabs open. Our chats and conversations are full of the phrase “Did you see?” The feeling that we’re liv...

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Mike Davis and Jon Winer, "SET THE NIGHT ON FIRE" w/ Erin Aubry Kaplan & Danny Widener

23 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Los Angeles in the sixties was a hotbed of political and social upheaval. The city was a launchpad for Black Power--where Malcolm X and Angela Davis f...

SKYLIT: Vanessa Díaz, "MANUFACTURING CELEBRITY" w/ Elizabeth Hinton

21 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In Manufacturing Celebrity, Vanessa Díaz traces the complex power dynamics of the reporting and paparazzi work that fuel contemporary Hollywood and A...

SKYLIT: Sumbul Ali-Karamali, "DEMYSTIFYING SHARIAH"

18 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Through scare tactics and deliberate misinformation campaigns, anti-Muslim propagandists insist wrongly that shariah is a draconian and oppressive Isl...

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Fariha Róisín, "LIKE A BIRD" w/ Tanaïs

16 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Taylia Chatterjee has never known love, and certainly has never felt it for herself. Growing up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, with her older si...

SKYLIT: Daniel Mendelsohn, "THREE RINGS"

14 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In this genre-defying book, best-selling memoirist and critic Daniel Mendelsohn explores the mysterious links between the randomness of the lives we l...

SKYLIT: Rory Waterman, "SWEET NOTHINGS" w/ Andre Naffis-Sahely

12 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Sweet Nothings is about absences, how they tempt us, and sometimes what they make us do. An absence is a conjuration, not palpably present in longing...

SKYLIT: Bett Williams, "THE WILD KINDNESS" w/ Michelle Tea

10 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The Wild Kindness: A Psilocybin Odyssey is the lyrical, unforgettable memoir of Bett Williams's relationship with psilocybin mushrooms, otherwise kn...

SKYLIT: Nancy Pearl & Jeff Schwager, "THE WRITER'S LIBRARY"

08 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In their ebullient new book, The Writer’s Library, America’s favorite librarian Nancy Pearl and noted playwright Jeff Schwager interview a diverse...