The Greenlight Bookstore Podcast

This virtual launch event for Joan Silber’s newest novel Secrets of Happiness drew a passionate crowd for her conversation with fellow novelist Margot Livesey about themes of money, love, travel, and spirituality.  Livesey and Silber talked about her desire to write “big and small at the same time” with closely observed interiority but wide scope in time and space, and how her works exist on a spectrum between novels and short stories, as well as literary influences and current favorites. (Recorded May 3, 2021)

Bestselling memoirist Stephanie Danler celebrates the paperback release of her most recent work Stray with author Kara Preiss and actor Emma Roberts, co-founders of the literary website Belletrist.  The trio talk about writing as a way to survive a troubled home life, the challenges, regrets, and requirements of memoir, and the fascinating taboos around money for artists and writers. (Recorded April 29, 2021)

Adam Mansbach, best known as creator of the parodic children’s book Go the F*ck to Sleep as well as several award-winning novels, opens up about his memoir of his brother’s suicide I Had a Brother Once in conversation with poet and memoirist Saeed Jones. Their moving and vulnerable conversation circles around the ways that grief runs up against cliches, taboos, and limted expressions of masculinity, and ways of grappling with it through poetry and paradox. (Recorded April 15, 2021)

Greenlight neighbor J. Nicole Jones discusses Low Country, her new memoir of her South Carolina family, with Allie Rowbottom, Allie Rowbottom (author of the memoir Jell-O Girls). The two talk about the writing process, the book's grounding in Southern storytelling traditions, and the act of reclaiming stories through the retelling, especially for women. (Recorded April 14, 2021)

Author (and indie bookstore owner!) Michaela Carter discusses her new book Leonora in the Morning Light, a novel of the real-life Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington, with fellow author Kate Christensen (The Great Man). The two novelists discuss the intersections of painting and writing, women artists as muses for each other, madness and dreams, and their shared love of writing about food. (Recorded April 12, 2021)

National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award and Man Booker finalist Rachel Kushner discusses her new collection of nonfiction, The Hard Crowd: Essays 2000-2020, with fellow author Hari Kunzru (author of Red Pill and White Tears). The two authors discuss self-examination vs. self-mythologizing in writing about one's own life, writing about other people without making them into "nostalgic baubles", and the many life experiences, inspirations, and artistic points of reference that informed this collection. (Recorded April 8, 2021)

Andrew Ridker (author of The Altruists) interviews his longtime friend Sanjena Sathian about her epic debut novel Gold Diggers, an Indian American family story with a magical twist.  Their conversation encompasses alchemy, the real and metaphorical meanings of gold, the Desi community in Atlanta, various writing workshop experiences, and bucking the trope of the model minority through writing flawed, human characters. (Recorded April 7, 2021)

Poets Victoria Chang and Vijay Seshradi join poet and editor Edward Hirsch to celebrate the publication of the anthology 100 Poems to Break Your Heart. Hirsch, whose exploratory essays accompany each poem in the book, discusses the craft of writing about grief, and each poet reads a poem (Stanley Kunitz's "Halley's Comet, Chang's "Blue Dress", and Seshadri's "Aphasia"), discussing the work of each piece in transforming overwhelming emotion into art. (Recorded April 5, 2021)

Dawnie Walton launches her debut novel, The Final Revival of Opal & Nev, a fictional oral history of a 1970s rock ’n’ roll duo, in conversation with fellow author Kiley Reid (author of Such a Fun Age).  The two women talk about the challenges of writing about music and juggling multiple voices, their overlapping experiences with the Iowa Writers Workshop, and creating characters they wished existed in reality. (Recorded March 30, 2021)

Craig Taylor's new book New Yorkers: A City and Its People in Our Time comes to life with local actors portraying  some of the 75 fascinating city residents featured in the book! Taylor introduces readings by Craig Geraghty, Maggie Hoffman, Aaron Landsman, Hubert Point-Du Jour, Scott Shepherd, Erika Chong Shuch, Jahmorei Snipes, and Ben Williams, for a love letter to a city and the NYC theater community. (Recorded March 23, 2021)