Today's pieces come together on the topic of trying to be the person you want to be, dancing around the line between finding yourself and trying too hard. Rosie Schaap reads an excerpt from her book, Drinking With Men, and Isaac Oliver gets us cozy with "How To Build a Gay Fire In 30 Easy Steps."

After an intro riff on hard books, rough patches, and some thoughts on novels read ten or so years ago, Rebecca Schiff reads a short story about romance with a down-on-his-luck pot grower, and Leslie Jamison reads an essay from her new book, The Empathy Exams. Read more at catapultreads.com and follow us on twitter at @CatapultReads.

Colleen Kinder's essay takes us under cover in Cairo. Ryan Chang reads a short story about shame, a dog, and an institutional purgatory.

Read more at catapultreads.com, and follow us on twitter at @CatapultReads.

On this, our inaugural episode, Isaac Butler reads an essay about love on the proto-internet, we have gorgeous and strange poems from Nicole Steinberg, and Ryan Britt's short story takes us to an Applebee's, perhaps an especially nice one.