This episode first aired on March 27, 2013.

It is being reposted in memory of Giancarlo DiTrapano (1974-2021), founder and publisher of Tyrant Books. He died unexpectedly on March 30 in New York City. No official cause of death has been reported as of yet.

I didn’t know Gian well, but I did know him a bit. He was always kind, always memorable. One of the few true originals out there, and certainly an original in the world of publishing. He did very good work and helped shepherd the publication of books that will far outlive him. He made a positive difference in the world.

My heartfelt condolences to his friends and family. He will be greatly missed.

-BL

Now playing on Otherppl, a conversation with Steve Anwyll. His debut novel, Welfare, is available from Tyrant Books.

Anwyll’s work has appeared in Hobart and Tyrant Magazine, among other places. He lives in Montreal.

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Now playing on Otherppl, a conversation with Brad Phillips. His new story collection, Essays and Fictions, is available from Tyrant Books.

The late Anthony Bourdain calls it: “Searingly honest, brilliant and disturbing. [Phillips] peels back the skin and bone and stares right into the human soul.”

Born in 1974, Phillips is also an accomplished visual artist  known for dark work that engages with themes of eroticism, depression, and mortality. His paintings display stylistic breadth, from text-based to photorealist, referring in many cases directly to his daily life. He lives in Toronto.

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Now playing on Otherppl, a conversation with Mark Leidner. His new story collection, Under the Sea, is available from Tyrant Books.

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Giancarlo DiTrapano is the guest. He’s the editor of NY Tyrant magazine and the publisher of Tyrant Books, an independent press based in New York City.

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Released in early 2012 from Tyrant Books–the brainchild that brought us Brian Evenson’s Baby Leg, Eugene Marten’s Firework, and Michael Kimball’s Us–Atticus Lish’s Life Is with People is a sketchbook drawn through a poetic gloryhole. It is a violent, raging, and brutal book, yet also houses subtle moments of massive and quiet weight. But what is Life Is with People? In a recent posting on Vice, Tyrant kingpin Giancarlo DiTrapano described it this way: