Louise Erdrich is the author of the novel The Sentence, available from Harper.

 
One of America’s most celebrated authors, Erdrich was awarded the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Night Watchman. In 2012, she won the National Book Award for her novel The Round House, and twice she has been awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award, first for her debut novel Love Medicine in 1984, and again for her novel LaRose in 2016.

Erdrich is a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. She is the author of many novels as well as volumes of poetry, children’s books, and a memoir of early motherhood. She lives in Minnesota with her daughters and is the owner of Birchbark Books, a small independent bookstore. A ghost lives in her creaky old house.

***

Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today’s leading writers.

Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc.

Support the show on Patreon

Merch

www.otherppl.com

@otherppl

Instagram

YouTube

Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com

The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.

Now playing on Otherppl, a conversation with Michael Schumacher. He is the editor of The Fall of America Journals, 1965-1971, by the late Allen Ginsberg, available now from the University of Minnesota Press.

Schumacher is also the author of the acclaimed Ginsberg biography Dharma Lion (Minnesota, 2016). Along with Ginsberg’s Iron Curtain Journals and South American Journals and Conversations with Allen Ginsberg (all from Minnesota), he has edited Family Business, selected correspondence between Allen and Louis Ginsberg, and The Essential Ginsberg, a reader of Ginsberg’s best work. He lives in Wisconsin.

Get Otherppl gear.

Get the free Otherppl app.

Support the show at Patreon or via PayPal.

Now playing on Otherppl, a conversation with Susan Choi. Her latest novel, Trust Exercise, is available in trade paperback from Henry Holt. It is the winner of the 2019 National Book Award for Fiction.

 
Choi’s first novel, The Foreign Student, won the Asian-American Literary Award for fiction. Her second novel, American Woman, was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize. Her third novel, A Person of Interest, was a finalist for the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award. In 2010 she was named the inaugural recipient of the PEN/W.G. Sebald Award. Her fourth novel, My Education, received a 2014 Lammy Award. Her first book for children, Camp Tiger, was published in 2019.  A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, she teaches fiction writing at Yale and lives in Brooklyn.

Get the free Otherppl app.

Support the show at Patreon or via PayPal.

Now playing on Otherppl, a conversation with Tim O’Brien. He is the author of The Things They Carried, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award. And he is the recipient of the 1979 National Book Award for Fiction for his novel Going After Cacciato. His latest book, a memoir, is called Dad’s Maybe Book, available now from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

O’Brien was born in 1946 in Austin, Minnesota, and spent most of his youth in the small town of Worthington, Minnesota. He graduated summa cum laude from Macalester College in 1968. From February 1969 to March 1970 he served as infantryman with the U.S. Army in Vietnam, after which he pursued graduate studies in government at Harvard University. He worked as a national affairs reporter for The Washington Post from 1973 to 1974.

His short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper’s, The Atlantic, Playboy, and Ploughshares, and in several editions of The Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Prize Stories. In 1987, O’Brien received the National Magazine Award for the short story, “The Things They Carried,” and in 1999 it was selected for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories of the Century, edited by John Updike. O’Brien is the recipient of literary awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has been elected to both the Society of American Historians and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. O’Brien currently holds the University Endowed Chair in Creative Writing at Texas State University. He lives with his wife and children in Austin, Texas.

Get the free Otherppl app.

Support the show at Patreon or via PayPal.

Now playing on Otherppl, a conversation with Daniel Gumbiner. He is the managing editor of The Believer magazine, and his debut novel The Boatbuilder (McSweeney’s) was nominated for the National Book Award.

Get the free Otherppl app.

Support the show at Patreon or via PayPal.

Now playing on the Otherppl podcast, a conversation with Carmen Maria Machado. Her debut story collection, Her Body and Other Parties, is available from Graywolf Press. It is a finalist for both the 2017 National Book Award and the Kirkus Prize, and is the winner of the Bard Fiction Prize.

Get the free Otherppl app.

Listen via iTunes.

Support the show at Patreon or via PayPal.

Edan Lepucki’s characters in her debut novel California are living during a time of duress. When I met the author, so was I. Cal and Frida coexist alone in the woods after the collapse of civilization. When Frida gets pregnant they go in search of others, but the community they encounter is full of secrets and peril. My catastrophe occurred when my writing mentor committed suicide. Personally, I was devastated, and professionally, I was lost, until a friend led me to Edan. She gave me a safe place to write again. I signed up for classes with Writing Workshops LA, the company Edan founded and runs from her home in Berkeley. A staff writer at The Millions, she previously published the novella If You’re Not Yet Like Me and her stories have appeared in magazines like Narrative and McSweeney’s. While being smart, witty and outgoing, she is kind and generous to emerging writers. I promised Brad Listi this interview would entail “two blonds talking about death and destruction,” since California takes place in a post-apocalyptic world. He was all for it. Don’t tell him, but when Edan came over to my place for Brown Butter Peach Bars (like Frida, I like to impress people with my baking skills), the conversation never grew dark. In fact, we hardly quit laughing. This is that interview.

You don’t have to read Jack Driscoll’s author’s blurb to know he’s a poet. Open The World of a Few Minutes Ago to any story—any sentence—and savor the rich language and rhythms, the words that sing on the page.

Driscoll is the author of four novels, four poetry books, and the short story collection he is probably best known for: Wanting Only To Be Heard. Best-selling author Brady Udall echoes the words of many writers I know when he says, “Jack Driscoll has long been one of this country’s best short story writers.” Despite Driscoll’s impressive critical acclaim–including the AWP Short Fiction Award, PEN/Nelson Algren Fiction Award, the Pushcart Editors’ Book Award, and multiple Pushcarts and Best American Short Story citations–he is not as famous as he should be.

I bet it’s hard for some people not to be jealous of Madison Smartt Bell.  He published his first novel, The Washington Square Ensemble, in 1983 when he was only 25.  Since then he has published 20 more books and has been named a finalist for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award for All Souls Rising. Additionally, in 2008, Madison was awarded the Strauss Living Writer Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.  Aside from all the awards, Madison has a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, he plays guitar, and he sings like a cross between John Lee Hooker and Johnny Cash.  And let us not forget that  Richard Avedon took a very cool photo of him once for The New Yorker!