- 1 hour 32 minutesREPLAY: Susan Choi on the Pandemic, Winning the National Book Award, and the Lasting Effects of Childhood
Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 647, my first conversation with author Susan Choi. We were discussing her National Book Award-winning novel, Trust Excerise.
Air date: June 10, 2020.
Choi is the author of Trust Exercise, which received the National Book Award for fiction, as well as the novels The Foreign Student, American Woman, A Person of Interest, and My Education. She is a recipient of the Asian-American Literary Award for fiction, the PEN/W. G. Sebald Award, a Lambda Literary award, the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She teaches in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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10 May 2026, 8:08 am - 24 minutes 39 secondsExcerpt from 'I Am the Ghost Here,' by Kim Samek
Vol. 9 of Story Time, a new series on the program featuring an author reading aloud from his work. In this episode, Kim Samek reads the title story from her acclaimed debut collection, I Am the Ghost Here (The Dial Press).
Samek's fiction has won the O.Henry Prize, the Pushcart Prize, and has been cited as a distinguished story in Best American Short Stories. Her stories appear in Zyzzyva, The Threepenny Review, Story, Guernica, and elsewhere. She works as a TV writer and producer, with credits including WordGirl and Catfish, and her writing has been nominated for an Emmy Award. A native of Seattle, she studied Creative Writing and German Literature at Stanford University. She lives in Los Angeles.
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Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
This episode is sponsored by Ulysses. Go to ulys.app/writeabook to download Ulysses, and use the code OTHERPPL at checkout to get 25% off the first year of your yearly subscription."
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9 May 2026, 8:08 am - 1 hour 24 minutesWhat Does It Really Mean to ‘Make It’ As a Writer? On Leaving Corporate Publishing, Becoming a Hack, and Deciding to Self-Publish
Mira is out sick again this week, so instead of a new episode of Brad & Mira for the Culture, I am instead joined by Chris Stuck, who came to my attention recently when he published a very provocative and unusually candid essay on the online literary magazine Zona Motel. The essay is called ‘Chasing Wild Geese Through the Corporate Book World, or How I Became a Hack and Stated Self-Publishing My Fiction.'
Stuck is the author of Give My Love to the Savages, a debut story collection published in July 2021 by Amistad/HarperCollins. He was a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize and the Oregon Book Award, and is a Pushcart Prize winner.
His next story collection is called Baby, This is a High-Priced Country, and it will be the first title published on Chris’s very own imprint, called Black Heroics Books.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
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7 May 2026, 8:08 am - 1 hour 2 minutes1032. Kim Samek
Kim Samek is the author of the debut story collection I Am the Ghost Here, available from The Dial Press.
Samek's fiction has won the O. Henry Prize, the Pushcart Prize and has been cited as a distinguished story in Best American Short Stories. Her stories appear in Zyzzyva, The Threepenny Review, Story, Guernica, and elsewhere. She works as a TV writer and producer, with credits including WordGirl and Catfish, and her writing has been nominated for an Emmy Award. She lives in Los Angeles.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
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5 May 2026, 8:08 am - 1 hour 23 minutesREPLAY: Kimberly King Parsons on Texas, Despicable People, and Finding Complexity in the Darkness
Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 598, my first conversation with author Kimberly King Parsons. We were discussing her debut story collection, Black Light, which went on to be nominated for the National Book Award.
Air date: September 18, 2019.
Kimberly King Parsons is a National Book Award-nominee and the bestselling author of We Were the Universe, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, winner of the Oregon Book Award, a finalist for the LAMBDA Literary Award and the Texas Book Award, a Dakota Johnson Book Club pick ranked #2 on TIME Magazine's Best Books of 2024, and a best book of the year in Elle, Oprah Daily, Marie Claire, Marie Claire UK and others. Parsons’s debut collection, Black Light, was a finalist for the Edmund White Award, the Story Prize, and the Texas Institute of Letters Award. Parsons teaches at Pacific University and lives in Portland.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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3 May 2026, 8:08 am - 1 hour 6 minutesRussell Brand Bible Study
Volume 88 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...Samantha Irby, substitute podcaster...Mira is out this week with a herniated disc...the chaos reigns...Sam explains her love of Orc penises and monster smut...Brad obsesses over a children's hospital in Denmark...feels inferior to The Strokes...prepares for next week's colonoscopy...reluctantly processing the White House Correspondents Dinner...Klay Thompson betrays Megan Thee Stallion, gets crucified on social media...Zöe Kravitz and Harry Styles get engaged...will the elite gene pool be maintained???...Russell Brand's biblical meltdown on Piers Morgan...millionaire trophy hunter trampled by a herd of elephants...& more...
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
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30 April 2026, 8:08 am - 1 hour 5 minutes1031. Julian Zabalbeascoa
Julian Zabalbeascoa is the author of the debut novel called What We Tried to Bury Grows Here, available now in trade paperback from Two Dollar Radio. It was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
A dual citizen of Spain and the US, Julian Zabalbeascoa was born and raised in California’s Central Valley. He earned his MFA in Creative Writing in Madrid from the University of New Orleans and taught at various institutions throughout California before moving to Boston, where he now teaches in the Honors College at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, leading annual study abroad programs to Donostia-San Sebastian, Havana, Madrid, Paris, and Seville. Among other journals, his stories have appeared in American Short Fiction, Boulevard, The Common, Electric Literature, The Gettysburg Review, Glimmer Train, One Story, and Ploughshares. His interviews and reviews have been published in The Believer, Electric Literature, The Millions, and Salamander.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
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28 April 2026, 8:08 am - 1 hour 21 minutesREPLAY: Sarah Kendzior on Donald Trump and American Decline
Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 635, my conversation with Sarah Kendzior about her book entitled Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America (Flatiron Books).
Air date: April 5, 2020.
Kendzior is the bestselling author of The View from Flyover Country, Hiding in Plain Sight, They Knew, and The Last American Road Trip. She lives with her husband and children in St. Louis, Missouri.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
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26 April 2026, 8:08 am - 1 hour 32 minutesFederal Bureau of Inebriation
Volume 87 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...Mira on how her entire life is 4/20...and how her paraplegic dog had surgery....her new author photo is imminent...Brad continues true crime obsession, finishes watching The Jinx...the turkey croissant conundrum...Angry Adam's midlife crisis podcast recommendation...Kash Patel is not a sloppy drunk who wets the bed, his lawyer says...Katy Perry did not rub her vagina on another celebrity's face in a nightclub, her publicist says...Clavicular fails in his attempt at fentanylmaxxing...RFK Jr. dead raccoon penis saga...& more...
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
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23 April 2026, 8:08 am - 1 hour 1 minute1030. Willy Vlautin
Willy Vlautin is the author of the novel The Left and the Lucky, available from Harper. It is the official April pick of the Otherppl Book Club.
Born and raised in Reno, Nevada, Willy Vlautin is the author of seven novels and is the founder of the bands Richmond Fontaine and The Delines. Vlautin started writing stories and songs at the age of eleven after receiving his first guitar. Inspired by songwriters and novelists Paul Kelly, Willie Nelson, Tom Waits, William Kennedy, Raymond Carver, and John Steinbeck, Vlautin works diligently to tell working class stories in his novels and songs.
Vlautin has been the recipient of three Oregon Book Awards, The Nevada Silver Pen Award, and was inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame and the Oregon Music Hall of Fame. He was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and was shortlisted for the Impac Award (International Dublin Literary Award). In 2025 he won the prestigious Joyce Carol Oates Award. Three of his novels, The Motel Life, Lean on Pete, and The Night Always Comes have been adapted as films. His novels have been translated into eleven languages. Vlautin teaches at Pacific University’s MFA in Writing program.
Vlautin lives near Portland, Oregon with his wife, dog, and horses.***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter.
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21 April 2026, 8:08 am - 1 hour 49 minutesREPLAY: Kate Durbin on Poetry, Hoarders, and American Loneliness
Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 734, my conversation with Kate Durbin, author of the poetry collection Hoarders (Wave Books).
Air date: October 24, 2021.
Kate Durbin is a Los Angeles-based writer and artist. Her books of poetry include E! Entertainment, The Ravenous Audience, and ABRA, which won the 2017 international Turn On Literature Prize. Durbin was the Arts Queensland Poet-in-Residence in Brisbane, Australia in 2015. Her art and writing have been featured in The New York Times, Art in America, Art Forum, The Believer, BOMB, poets.org, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She has shown her artwork nationally and internationally at The Frye Museum in Seattle, The Pulse Art Fair in Miami, MOCA Los Angeles, The Spring Break Art Fair in Los Angeles, Peer to Space in Berlin, and more.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter.
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19 April 2026, 8:08 am - More Episodes? Get the App