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    <fireside:hostname>web02.fireside.fm</fireside:hostname>
    <fireside:genDate>Wed, 22 Apr 2026 16:54:21 -0500</fireside:genDate>
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    <title>Weird Era - Episodes Tagged with “2024books”</title>
    <link>https://snowy-dew-6832.fireside.fm/tags/2024books</link>
    <pubDate>Fri, 06 Dec 2024 09:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
    <description>Hosted by Sruti Islam and Alex Nierenhausen
Theme Songs by Gino Visconti and Michael Jaworski (@mikejaws)
Audio Production by Kyel Loadenthal
</description>
    <language>en-us</language>
    <itunes:type>episodic</itunes:type>
    <itunes:subtitle>Dedicated to asking authors the right questions.</itunes:subtitle>
    <itunes:author>Weird Era</itunes:author>
    <itunes:summary>Hosted by Sruti Islam and Alex Nierenhausen
Theme Songs by Gino Visconti and Michael Jaworski (@mikejaws)
Audio Production by Kyel Loadenthal
</itunes:summary>
    <itunes:image href="https://media24.fireside.fm/file/fireside-images-2024/podcasts/images/a/aa758402-506c-4cb6-90e5-34ca75cb33d2/cover.jpg?v=10"/>
    <itunes:explicit>yes</itunes:explicit>
    <itunes:keywords>Bookstore, Books, Fiction, Literature, Bookclub, Authors, Interviews, 2024books, Montreal, Montrealbookstore, Indiebooks, Indiebookstore, Bookish, MTL, PulBooks, PulpBooksandCafe, Weirdera, Weirderapod</itunes:keywords>
    <itunes:owner>
      <itunes:name>Weird Era</itunes:name>
      <itunes:email>sruti.islam@gmail.com</itunes:email>
    </itunes:owner>
<itunes:category text="Arts">
  <itunes:category text="Books"/>
</itunes:category>
<itunes:category text="Arts">
  <itunes:category text="Books"/>
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<itunes:category text="Fiction"/>
<item>
  <title>Episode 103: Weird Era feat. Lauren Elkin</title>
  <link>https://snowy-dew-6832.fireside.fm/103</link>
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  <pubDate>Fri, 06 Dec 2024 09:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
  <author>Weird Era</author>
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  <itunes:episodeType>full</itunes:episodeType>
  <itunes:season>1</itunes:season>
  <itunes:author>Weird Era</itunes:author>
  <itunes:subtitle>Sruti talks to Lauren Elkin about intimacy, the eternal haunting of physical spaces, psychoanalytic terms, how feminism can save men, and more.</itunes:subtitle>
  <itunes:duration>47:24</itunes:duration>
  <itunes:explicit>yes</itunes:explicit>
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  <description>About Lauren Elkin:
Lauren Elkin is the author of Art Monsters and Flâneuse, a New York Times Book Review notable book and a ﬁnalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, Le Monde, Frieze, and The Times Literary Supplement, among other publications. A native New Yorker, Elkin lived in Paris for twenty years and now resides in London.
About Scaffolding:
The debut novel by the acclaimed author of Flâneuse and Art Monsters, Lauren Elkin’s Scaffolding is a story of Paris, desire, love, psychoanalysis, and the turbulent affairs of two couples across time.
Paris, 2019. An apartment in Belleville. Following a miscarriage and a breakdown, Anna, a psychoanalyst, ﬁnds herself unable to return to work. Instead, she obsesses over a kitchen renovation and befriends a new neighbor—a younger woman called Clémentine who has just moved into the building and is part of a radical feminist collective.
Paris, 1972. The same apartment in Belleville. Florence and Henry are renovating their kitchen. She is ﬁnishing her degree in psychology, dropping into feminist activities, and devotedly attending the groundbreaking, infamous seminars held by the renowned analyst Jacques Lacan. She is hoping to conceive their ﬁrst child, though Henry isn’t sure he’s ready for fatherhood.
Two couples, ﬁfty years apart, face the challenges of marriage, ﬁdelity, and pregnancy. They inhabit this same small space in separate but similar times—times charged with political upheaval and intellectual controversy. A novel in the key of Éric Rohmer, Lauren Elkin’s Scaffolding is about the way our homes collect and hold our memories and our stories, about the bonds we create and the diﬃculty of ever fully severing them, about the ways all the people we’ve loved live on in us. 
</description>
  <itunes:keywords>Books, Fiction, Literature, Bookclub, Authors, Interviews, 2024books, Montreal, MTL, Weirdera, Weirderapod, LaurenElkin, Scaffolding</itunes:keywords>
  <content:encoded>
    <![CDATA[<p>About Lauren Elkin:<br>
Lauren Elkin is the author of Art Monsters and Flâneuse, a New York Times Book Review notable book and a ﬁnalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, Le Monde, Frieze, and The Times Literary Supplement, among other publications. A native New Yorker, Elkin lived in Paris for twenty years and now resides in London.</p>

<p>About Scaffolding:<br>
The debut novel by the acclaimed author of Flâneuse and Art Monsters, Lauren Elkin’s Scaffolding is a story of Paris, desire, love, psychoanalysis, and the turbulent affairs of two couples across time.</p>

<p>Paris, 2019. An apartment in Belleville. Following a miscarriage and a breakdown, Anna, a psychoanalyst, ﬁnds herself unable to return to work. Instead, she obsesses over a kitchen renovation and befriends a new neighbor—a younger woman called Clémentine who has just moved into the building and is part of a radical feminist collective.</p>

<p>Paris, 1972. The same apartment in Belleville. Florence and Henry are renovating their kitchen. She is ﬁnishing her degree in psychology, dropping into feminist activities, and devotedly attending the groundbreaking, infamous seminars held by the renowned analyst Jacques Lacan. She is hoping to conceive their ﬁrst child, though Henry isn’t sure he’s ready for fatherhood.</p>

<p>Two couples, ﬁfty years apart, face the challenges of marriage, ﬁdelity, and pregnancy. They inhabit this same small space in separate but similar times—times charged with political upheaval and intellectual controversy. A novel in the key of Éric Rohmer, Lauren Elkin’s Scaffolding is about the way our homes collect and hold our memories and our stories, about the bonds we create and the diﬃculty of ever fully severing them, about the ways all the people we’ve loved live on in us.</p>]]>
  </content:encoded>
  <itunes:summary>
    <![CDATA[<p>About Lauren Elkin:<br>
Lauren Elkin is the author of Art Monsters and Flâneuse, a New York Times Book Review notable book and a ﬁnalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, Le Monde, Frieze, and The Times Literary Supplement, among other publications. A native New Yorker, Elkin lived in Paris for twenty years and now resides in London.</p>

<p>About Scaffolding:<br>
The debut novel by the acclaimed author of Flâneuse and Art Monsters, Lauren Elkin’s Scaffolding is a story of Paris, desire, love, psychoanalysis, and the turbulent affairs of two couples across time.</p>

<p>Paris, 2019. An apartment in Belleville. Following a miscarriage and a breakdown, Anna, a psychoanalyst, ﬁnds herself unable to return to work. Instead, she obsesses over a kitchen renovation and befriends a new neighbor—a younger woman called Clémentine who has just moved into the building and is part of a radical feminist collective.</p>

<p>Paris, 1972. The same apartment in Belleville. Florence and Henry are renovating their kitchen. She is ﬁnishing her degree in psychology, dropping into feminist activities, and devotedly attending the groundbreaking, infamous seminars held by the renowned analyst Jacques Lacan. She is hoping to conceive their ﬁrst child, though Henry isn’t sure he’s ready for fatherhood.</p>

<p>Two couples, ﬁfty years apart, face the challenges of marriage, ﬁdelity, and pregnancy. They inhabit this same small space in separate but similar times—times charged with political upheaval and intellectual controversy. A novel in the key of Éric Rohmer, Lauren Elkin’s Scaffolding is about the way our homes collect and hold our memories and our stories, about the bonds we create and the diﬃculty of ever fully severing them, about the ways all the people we’ve loved live on in us.</p>]]>
  </itunes:summary>
</item>
<item>
  <title>Episode 81: Weird Era feat. Alexander Sammartino</title>
  <link>https://snowy-dew-6832.fireside.fm/81</link>
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  <pubDate>Fri, 05 Apr 2024 09:00:00 -0400</pubDate>
  <author>Weird Era</author>
  <enclosure url="https://aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/aa758402-506c-4cb6-90e5-34ca75cb33d2/ea5b6e04-c688-4aab-9c27-52cbec930f70.mp3" length="48024485" type="audio/mpeg"/>
  <itunes:episodeType>full</itunes:episodeType>
  <itunes:season>1</itunes:season>
  <itunes:author>Weird Era</itunes:author>
  <itunes:subtitle>Sruti talks to Alex about his debut novel Last Acts, if there is such a thing as a, "last act" in our lives, the American dream, commercialism, gun control and the opioid crisis, and somehow, it turns into one of the most uplifting conversations Sruti has had the privilege of sitting through, yet. </itunes:subtitle>
  <itunes:duration>50:01</itunes:duration>
  <itunes:explicit>yes</itunes:explicit>
  <itunes:image href="https://media24.fireside.fm/file/fireside-images-2024/podcasts/images/a/aa758402-506c-4cb6-90e5-34ca75cb33d2/episodes/e/ea5b6e04-c688-4aab-9c27-52cbec930f70/cover.jpg?v=1"/>
  <description>About Alexander Sammartino:
Alexander Sammartino lives in Brooklyn. He received his MFA from Syracuse University. Last Acts is his first novel.
About Last Acts:
Following a near-death experience, an entrepreneurial father-and-son duo wreak havoc and fend off bankruptcy in this unflinching portrayal of the absurdities of American life.
“Hilarious, exceptional.” —Dan Chaon, The New York Times Book Review • “Honest, highwire, virtuosic writing that summons up the world with all its charms and hazards.” —George Saunders
Even though his firearms store is failing, things are looking up for David Rizzo. His son, Nick, has just recovered after a near-fatal overdose, which means one thing: Rizzo can use Nick’s resurrection to create the most compelling television commercial for a gun emporium that the world has ever seen. After all, this is America, Rizzo tells himself. Surely anything is possible. But the relationship between father and son is fragile, mired in mutual disappointment. And when the pair embarks on their scheme to avoid bankruptcy, a high stakes crash of hijinks, hope, and disaster ensues.
Featuring a cast of unforgettable characters, this razor-sharp social satire lays bare both the gun and opioid crises. Fans of Don DeLillo and Stephen Markley will be thrilled by this smart, inventive debut. 
</description>
  <itunes:keywords>Books, Fiction, Literature, Bookclub, Authors, Interviews, 2024books, Montreal, MTL, Weirdera, Weirderapod, Alexander Sammartino, Last Acts</itunes:keywords>
  <content:encoded>
    <![CDATA[<p>About Alexander Sammartino:</p>

<p>Alexander Sammartino lives in Brooklyn. He received his MFA from Syracuse University. Last Acts is his first novel.</p>

<p>About Last Acts:</p>

<p>Following a near-death experience, an entrepreneurial father-and-son duo wreak havoc and fend off bankruptcy in this unflinching portrayal of the absurdities of American life.</p>

<p>“Hilarious, exceptional.” —Dan Chaon, The New York Times Book Review • “Honest, highwire, virtuosic writing that summons up the world with all its charms and hazards.” —George Saunders</p>

<p>Even though his firearms store is failing, things are looking up for David Rizzo. His son, Nick, has just recovered after a near-fatal overdose, which means one thing: Rizzo can use Nick’s resurrection to create the most compelling television commercial for a gun emporium that the world has ever seen. After all, this is America, Rizzo tells himself. Surely anything is possible. But the relationship between father and son is fragile, mired in mutual disappointment. And when the pair embarks on their scheme to avoid bankruptcy, a high stakes crash of hijinks, hope, and disaster ensues.</p>

<p>Featuring a cast of unforgettable characters, this razor-sharp social satire lays bare both the gun and opioid crises. Fans of Don DeLillo and Stephen Markley will be thrilled by this smart, inventive debut.</p>]]>
  </content:encoded>
  <itunes:summary>
    <![CDATA[<p>About Alexander Sammartino:</p>

<p>Alexander Sammartino lives in Brooklyn. He received his MFA from Syracuse University. Last Acts is his first novel.</p>

<p>About Last Acts:</p>

<p>Following a near-death experience, an entrepreneurial father-and-son duo wreak havoc and fend off bankruptcy in this unflinching portrayal of the absurdities of American life.</p>

<p>“Hilarious, exceptional.” —Dan Chaon, The New York Times Book Review • “Honest, highwire, virtuosic writing that summons up the world with all its charms and hazards.” —George Saunders</p>

<p>Even though his firearms store is failing, things are looking up for David Rizzo. His son, Nick, has just recovered after a near-fatal overdose, which means one thing: Rizzo can use Nick’s resurrection to create the most compelling television commercial for a gun emporium that the world has ever seen. After all, this is America, Rizzo tells himself. Surely anything is possible. But the relationship between father and son is fragile, mired in mutual disappointment. And when the pair embarks on their scheme to avoid bankruptcy, a high stakes crash of hijinks, hope, and disaster ensues.</p>

<p>Featuring a cast of unforgettable characters, this razor-sharp social satire lays bare both the gun and opioid crises. Fans of Don DeLillo and Stephen Markley will be thrilled by this smart, inventive debut.</p>]]>
  </itunes:summary>
</item>
<item>
  <title>Episode 80: Weird Era feat. Brontez Purnell</title>
  <link>https://snowy-dew-6832.fireside.fm/80</link>
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  <pubDate>Fri, 29 Mar 2024 09:00:00 -0400</pubDate>
  <author>Weird Era</author>
  <enclosure url="https://aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/aa758402-506c-4cb6-90e5-34ca75cb33d2/eea4cde1-95fb-4774-9f4f-edeac72544d1.mp3" length="39719508" type="audio/mpeg"/>
  <itunes:episodeType>full</itunes:episodeType>
  <itunes:season>1</itunes:season>
  <itunes:author>Weird Era</itunes:author>
  <itunes:subtitle>This week, Alex talks with returning Weird Era guest Brontez Purnell about his memoir in verse, Ten Bridges I've Burnt, twink death, Cowboy Carter, OnlyFans, how Black dialect has always been THE North American dialect, and so much more.</itunes:subtitle>
  <itunes:duration>41:22</itunes:duration>
  <itunes:explicit>yes</itunes:explicit>
  <itunes:image href="https://media24.fireside.fm/file/fireside-images-2024/podcasts/images/a/aa758402-506c-4cb6-90e5-34ca75cb33d2/episodes/e/eea4cde1-95fb-4774-9f4f-edeac72544d1/cover.jpg?v=1"/>
  <description>About Brontez Purnell:
Brontez Purnell is the author of several books, most recently 100 Boyfriends, which won the 2022 Lambda Literary Award in Gay Fiction, was longlisted for the 2022 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award and the 2021 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize, and was named an Editors' Choice by the New York Times Book Review. The recipient of a 2018 Whiting Writers' Award for Fiction and the 2022 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Robert Rauschenberg Award, he was named one of the thirty-two Black Male Writers of Our Time by T: The New York Times Style Magazine in 2018. Purnell is also the frontman for the band the Younger Lovers and a renowned dancer, performance artist, and zine-maker. Born in Triana, Alabama, he's lived in Oakland, California, for two decades.
About Ten Bridges I've Burnt:
In Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt, Brontez Purnell—the bard of the underloved and overlooked—turns his gaze inward. A storyteller with a musical eye for the absurdity of his own existence, he is peerless in his ability to find the levity within the stormiest of crises. Here, in his first collection of genre-defying verse, Purnell reflects on his peripatetic life, whose ups and downs have nothing on the turmoil within. “The most high-risk homosexual behavior I engage in,” Purnell writes, “is simply existing.”
The thirty-eight autobiographical pieces pulsing in Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt find Purnell at his no-holds-barred best. He remembers a vicious brawl he participated in at a poetry conference and reckons with packaging his trauma for TV writers’ rooms; wrestles with the curses, and gifts, passed down from generations of family members; and chronicles, with breathless verve, a list of hell-raising misadventures and sexcapades. Through it all, he muses on everything from love and loneliness to capitalism and Blackness to jogging and the ethics of art, always with unpredictable clarity and movement.
With the same balance of wit and wisdom that made 100 Boyfriends a sensation, Purnell unleashes another collection of boundary-pushing writing with Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt, a book as original and thrilling as the author himself.
</description>
  <itunes:keywords>Books, Fiction, Literature, Bookclub, Authors, Interviews, 2024books, Montreal, MTL, Weirdera, Weirderapod, Brontez Purnell, Ten Bridges, Cowboy Carter</itunes:keywords>
  <content:encoded>
    <![CDATA[<p>About Brontez Purnell:</p>

<p>Brontez Purnell is the author of several books, most recently 100 Boyfriends, which won the 2022 Lambda Literary Award in Gay Fiction, was longlisted for the 2022 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award and the 2021 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize, and was named an Editors&#39; Choice by the New York Times Book Review. The recipient of a 2018 Whiting Writers&#39; Award for Fiction and the 2022 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Robert Rauschenberg Award, he was named one of the thirty-two Black Male Writers of Our Time by T: The New York Times Style Magazine in 2018. Purnell is also the frontman for the band the Younger Lovers and a renowned dancer, performance artist, and zine-maker. Born in Triana, Alabama, he&#39;s lived in Oakland, California, for two decades.</p>

<p>About Ten Bridges I&#39;ve Burnt:</p>

<p>In Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt, Brontez Purnell—the bard of the underloved and overlooked—turns his gaze inward. A storyteller with a musical eye for the absurdity of his own existence, he is peerless in his ability to find the levity within the stormiest of crises. Here, in his first collection of genre-defying verse, Purnell reflects on his peripatetic life, whose ups and downs have nothing on the turmoil within. “The most high-risk homosexual behavior I engage in,” Purnell writes, “is simply existing.”</p>

<p>The thirty-eight autobiographical pieces pulsing in Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt find Purnell at his no-holds-barred best. He remembers a vicious brawl he participated in at a poetry conference and reckons with packaging his trauma for TV writers’ rooms; wrestles with the curses, and gifts, passed down from generations of family members; and chronicles, with breathless verve, a list of hell-raising misadventures and sexcapades. Through it all, he muses on everything from love and loneliness to capitalism and Blackness to jogging and the ethics of art, always with unpredictable clarity and movement.</p>

<p>With the same balance of wit and wisdom that made 100 Boyfriends a sensation, Purnell unleashes another collection of boundary-pushing writing with Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt, a book as original and thrilling as the author himself.</p>]]>
  </content:encoded>
  <itunes:summary>
    <![CDATA[<p>About Brontez Purnell:</p>

<p>Brontez Purnell is the author of several books, most recently 100 Boyfriends, which won the 2022 Lambda Literary Award in Gay Fiction, was longlisted for the 2022 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award and the 2021 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize, and was named an Editors&#39; Choice by the New York Times Book Review. The recipient of a 2018 Whiting Writers&#39; Award for Fiction and the 2022 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Robert Rauschenberg Award, he was named one of the thirty-two Black Male Writers of Our Time by T: The New York Times Style Magazine in 2018. Purnell is also the frontman for the band the Younger Lovers and a renowned dancer, performance artist, and zine-maker. Born in Triana, Alabama, he&#39;s lived in Oakland, California, for two decades.</p>

<p>About Ten Bridges I&#39;ve Burnt:</p>

<p>In Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt, Brontez Purnell—the bard of the underloved and overlooked—turns his gaze inward. A storyteller with a musical eye for the absurdity of his own existence, he is peerless in his ability to find the levity within the stormiest of crises. Here, in his first collection of genre-defying verse, Purnell reflects on his peripatetic life, whose ups and downs have nothing on the turmoil within. “The most high-risk homosexual behavior I engage in,” Purnell writes, “is simply existing.”</p>

<p>The thirty-eight autobiographical pieces pulsing in Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt find Purnell at his no-holds-barred best. He remembers a vicious brawl he participated in at a poetry conference and reckons with packaging his trauma for TV writers’ rooms; wrestles with the curses, and gifts, passed down from generations of family members; and chronicles, with breathless verve, a list of hell-raising misadventures and sexcapades. Through it all, he muses on everything from love and loneliness to capitalism and Blackness to jogging and the ethics of art, always with unpredictable clarity and movement.</p>

<p>With the same balance of wit and wisdom that made 100 Boyfriends a sensation, Purnell unleashes another collection of boundary-pushing writing with Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt, a book as original and thrilling as the author himself.</p>]]>
  </itunes:summary>
</item>
<item>
  <title>Episode 79: Weird Era feat. Eliza Barry Callahan</title>
  <link>https://snowy-dew-6832.fireside.fm/79</link>
  <guid isPermaLink="false">e5e2777a-de4f-4008-b3cb-fb99e604ab33</guid>
  <pubDate>Fri, 15 Mar 2024 09:00:00 -0400</pubDate>
  <author>Weird Era</author>
  <enclosure url="https://aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/aa758402-506c-4cb6-90e5-34ca75cb33d2/e5e2777a-de4f-4008-b3cb-fb99e604ab33.mp3" length="45757256" type="audio/mpeg"/>
  <itunes:episodeType>full</itunes:episodeType>
  <itunes:season>1</itunes:season>
  <itunes:author>Weird Era</itunes:author>
  <itunes:subtitle>Alex talks with Eliza Barry Callahan about her literary novel, The Hearing Test, writing autofiction, the language of "internet novels", and what dictates composure in the face of adversity.</itunes:subtitle>
  <itunes:duration>47:39</itunes:duration>
  <itunes:explicit>yes</itunes:explicit>
  <itunes:image href="https://media24.fireside.fm/file/fireside-images-2024/podcasts/images/a/aa758402-506c-4cb6-90e5-34ca75cb33d2/episodes/e/e5e2777a-de4f-4008-b3cb-fb99e604ab33/cover.jpg?v=1"/>
  <description>About Eliza Barry Callahan:
Eliza Barry Callahan is a writer and artist from New York, New York. Shortly after receiving her BA from Columbia, where she studied visual art, art history, and poetry, she returned to the university where she received her MFA in writing (2022). Her writing has been published in frieze, The Believer, The Brooklyn Rail, and BOMB. She also writes, performs, and releases music via Los Angeles-based label, ANTI- Records with a record forthcoming in 2023.
About The Hearing Test:
A young woman reorients her relationship to the world in the wake of sudden deafness in this mesmerizing debut novel for readers of Rachel Cusk, Clarice Lispector, and Fleur Jaeggy
When the narrator of The Hearing Test, an artist in her late twenties, awakens one morning to a deep drone in her right ear, she is diagnosed with Sudden Deafness, but is offered no explanation for its cause. As the specter of total deafness looms, she keeps a record of her year—a score of estrangement and enchantment, of luck and loneliness, of the chance occurrences to which she becomes attuned—while living alone in a New York City studio apartment with her dog.
Through a series of fleeting and often humorous encounters—with neighbors, an ex-lover, doctors, strangers, family members, faraway friends, and with the lives and works of artists, filmmakers, musicians, and philosophers—making meaning  becomes a form of consolation and curiosity, a form of survival. 
At once a rumination on silence and a novel on seeing, The Hearing Test is a work of vitalizing intellect and playfulness which marks the arrival of a major new literary writer with a rare command of form, compression, and intent. 
</description>
  <itunes:keywords>Books, Fiction, Literature, Bookclub, Authors, Interviews, 2024books, Montreal, MTL, Weirdera, Weirderapod, Eliza Barry Callahan, The Hearing Test</itunes:keywords>
  <content:encoded>
    <![CDATA[<p>About Eliza Barry Callahan:</p>

<p>Eliza Barry Callahan is a writer and artist from New York, New York. Shortly after receiving her BA from Columbia, where she studied visual art, art history, and poetry, she returned to the university where she received her MFA in writing (2022). Her writing has been published in frieze, The Believer, The Brooklyn Rail, and BOMB. She also writes, performs, and releases music via Los Angeles-based label, ANTI- Records with a record forthcoming in 2023.</p>

<p>About The Hearing Test:</p>

<p>A young woman reorients her relationship to the world in the wake of sudden deafness in this mesmerizing debut novel for readers of Rachel Cusk, Clarice Lispector, and Fleur Jaeggy</p>

<p>When the narrator of The Hearing Test, an artist in her late twenties, awakens one morning to a deep drone in her right ear, she is diagnosed with Sudden Deafness, but is offered no explanation for its cause. As the specter of total deafness looms, she keeps a record of her year—a score of estrangement and enchantment, of luck and loneliness, of the chance occurrences to which she becomes attuned—while living alone in a New York City studio apartment with her dog.</p>

<p>Through a series of fleeting and often humorous encounters—with neighbors, an ex-lover, doctors, strangers, family members, faraway friends, and with the lives and works of artists, filmmakers, musicians, and philosophers—making meaning  becomes a form of consolation and curiosity, a form of survival. </p>

<p>At once a rumination on silence and a novel on seeing, The Hearing Test is a work of vitalizing intellect and playfulness which marks the arrival of a major new literary writer with a rare command of form, compression, and intent.</p>]]>
  </content:encoded>
  <itunes:summary>
    <![CDATA[<p>About Eliza Barry Callahan:</p>

<p>Eliza Barry Callahan is a writer and artist from New York, New York. Shortly after receiving her BA from Columbia, where she studied visual art, art history, and poetry, she returned to the university where she received her MFA in writing (2022). Her writing has been published in frieze, The Believer, The Brooklyn Rail, and BOMB. She also writes, performs, and releases music via Los Angeles-based label, ANTI- Records with a record forthcoming in 2023.</p>

<p>About The Hearing Test:</p>

<p>A young woman reorients her relationship to the world in the wake of sudden deafness in this mesmerizing debut novel for readers of Rachel Cusk, Clarice Lispector, and Fleur Jaeggy</p>

<p>When the narrator of The Hearing Test, an artist in her late twenties, awakens one morning to a deep drone in her right ear, she is diagnosed with Sudden Deafness, but is offered no explanation for its cause. As the specter of total deafness looms, she keeps a record of her year—a score of estrangement and enchantment, of luck and loneliness, of the chance occurrences to which she becomes attuned—while living alone in a New York City studio apartment with her dog.</p>

<p>Through a series of fleeting and often humorous encounters—with neighbors, an ex-lover, doctors, strangers, family members, faraway friends, and with the lives and works of artists, filmmakers, musicians, and philosophers—making meaning  becomes a form of consolation and curiosity, a form of survival. </p>

<p>At once a rumination on silence and a novel on seeing, The Hearing Test is a work of vitalizing intellect and playfulness which marks the arrival of a major new literary writer with a rare command of form, compression, and intent.</p>]]>
  </itunes:summary>
</item>
<item>
  <title>Episode 78: Weird Era feat. Mariah Stovall</title>
  <link>https://snowy-dew-6832.fireside.fm/78</link>
  <guid isPermaLink="false">dc64fd6a-7ce5-4edf-9f30-6699e059eca9</guid>
  <pubDate>Thu, 07 Mar 2024 09:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
  <author>Weird Era</author>
  <enclosure url="https://aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/aa758402-506c-4cb6-90e5-34ca75cb33d2/dc64fd6a-7ce5-4edf-9f30-6699e059eca9.mp3" length="59380003" type="audio/mpeg"/>
  <itunes:episodeType>full</itunes:episodeType>
  <itunes:season>1</itunes:season>
  <itunes:author>Weird Era</itunes:author>
  <itunes:subtitle>Sruti talks to Mariah Stovall about her favourite Jawbreaker album, how music wants you, and how some of us can get love so wrong, even when intended with purity.</itunes:subtitle>
  <itunes:duration>59:39</itunes:duration>
  <itunes:explicit>yes</itunes:explicit>
  <itunes:image href="https://media24.fireside.fm/file/fireside-images-2024/podcasts/images/a/aa758402-506c-4cb6-90e5-34ca75cb33d2/episodes/d/dc64fd6a-7ce5-4edf-9f30-6699e059eca9/cover.jpg?v=1"/>
  <description>About Mariah Stovall:
Mariah Stovall has written fiction for the anthology Black Punk Now, and for Ninth Letter, Vol 1. Brooklyn, Hobart, the Minola Review, and Joyland; and nonfiction for The Los Angeles Review of Books, Full Stop, Hanif Abdurraqib’s 68to05, The Paris Review, Poets &amp;amp; Writers, and LitHub. I Love You So Much It’s Killing Us Both is her first novel and 24 Hour Revenge Therapy is her favorite Jawbreaker album. She lives in New Jersey.
About I Love You So Much It's Killing Us Both:
Set in the suburbs of Los Angeles and New York City, I Love You So Much It’s Killing Us Both is an immersive journey into the life and mind of Khaki Oliver, who’s perennially trying to disappear into something: a codependent friendship, an ill-advised boyfriend, the punk scene, or simply, the ether. These days it’s a meaningless job and a comfortingly empty apartment. Then, after a decade of estrangement, she receives a letter from her former best friend. Fiona’s throwing a party for her newly adopted daughter and wants Khaki to join the celebration.
Khaki is equal parts terrified and tempted to reconnect. Their platonic love was confusing, all-consuming, and encouraged their worst impulses. While stalling her RSVP, Khaki starts crafting the perfect mixtape—revisiting memories of formative shows, failed romances, and the ups and downs of desire and denial—while weighing the risks and rewards of saying yes to Fiona again.
One song at a time, from 1980s hardcore to 2010s emo, the shared and separate contours of each woman’s mind come into focus. Will listening to the same old songs on repeat doom Khaki to a lonely life of arrested development? Or will hindsight help her regain her sense of self and pave a healthy path for the future, with or without Fiona? 
</description>
  <itunes:keywords>Books, Fiction, Literature, Bookclub, Authors, Interviews, 2024books, Montreal, MTL, Weirdera, Weirderapod, Mariah Stovall, I love you so much</itunes:keywords>
  <content:encoded>
    <![CDATA[<p>About Mariah Stovall:</p>

<p>Mariah Stovall has written fiction for the anthology Black Punk Now, and for Ninth Letter, Vol 1. Brooklyn, Hobart, the Minola Review, and Joyland; and nonfiction for The Los Angeles Review of Books, Full Stop, Hanif Abdurraqib’s 68to05, The Paris Review, Poets &amp; Writers, and LitHub. I Love You So Much It’s Killing Us Both is her first novel and 24 Hour Revenge Therapy is her favorite Jawbreaker album. She lives in New Jersey.</p>

<p>About I Love You So Much It&#39;s Killing Us Both:</p>

<p>Set in the suburbs of Los Angeles and New York City, I Love You So Much It’s Killing Us Both is an immersive journey into the life and mind of Khaki Oliver, who’s perennially trying to disappear into something: a codependent friendship, an ill-advised boyfriend, the punk scene, or simply, the ether. These days it’s a meaningless job and a comfortingly empty apartment. Then, after a decade of estrangement, she receives a letter from her former best friend. Fiona’s throwing a party for her newly adopted daughter and wants Khaki to join the celebration.</p>

<p>Khaki is equal parts terrified and tempted to reconnect. Their platonic love was confusing, all-consuming, and encouraged their worst impulses. While stalling her RSVP, Khaki starts crafting the perfect mixtape—revisiting memories of formative shows, failed romances, and the ups and downs of desire and denial—while weighing the risks and rewards of saying yes to Fiona again.</p>

<p>One song at a time, from 1980s hardcore to 2010s emo, the shared and separate contours of each woman’s mind come into focus. Will listening to the same old songs on repeat doom Khaki to a lonely life of arrested development? Or will hindsight help her regain her sense of self and pave a healthy path for the future, with or without Fiona?</p>]]>
  </content:encoded>
  <itunes:summary>
    <![CDATA[<p>About Mariah Stovall:</p>

<p>Mariah Stovall has written fiction for the anthology Black Punk Now, and for Ninth Letter, Vol 1. Brooklyn, Hobart, the Minola Review, and Joyland; and nonfiction for The Los Angeles Review of Books, Full Stop, Hanif Abdurraqib’s 68to05, The Paris Review, Poets &amp; Writers, and LitHub. I Love You So Much It’s Killing Us Both is her first novel and 24 Hour Revenge Therapy is her favorite Jawbreaker album. She lives in New Jersey.</p>

<p>About I Love You So Much It&#39;s Killing Us Both:</p>

<p>Set in the suburbs of Los Angeles and New York City, I Love You So Much It’s Killing Us Both is an immersive journey into the life and mind of Khaki Oliver, who’s perennially trying to disappear into something: a codependent friendship, an ill-advised boyfriend, the punk scene, or simply, the ether. These days it’s a meaningless job and a comfortingly empty apartment. Then, after a decade of estrangement, she receives a letter from her former best friend. Fiona’s throwing a party for her newly adopted daughter and wants Khaki to join the celebration.</p>

<p>Khaki is equal parts terrified and tempted to reconnect. Their platonic love was confusing, all-consuming, and encouraged their worst impulses. While stalling her RSVP, Khaki starts crafting the perfect mixtape—revisiting memories of formative shows, failed romances, and the ups and downs of desire and denial—while weighing the risks and rewards of saying yes to Fiona again.</p>

<p>One song at a time, from 1980s hardcore to 2010s emo, the shared and separate contours of each woman’s mind come into focus. Will listening to the same old songs on repeat doom Khaki to a lonely life of arrested development? Or will hindsight help her regain her sense of self and pave a healthy path for the future, with or without Fiona?</p>]]>
  </itunes:summary>
</item>
<item>
  <title>Episode 77: Weird Era feat. Alexandra Tanner</title>
  <link>https://snowy-dew-6832.fireside.fm/77</link>
  <guid isPermaLink="false">739b74d5-9834-49b8-92d9-83163b9f3f98</guid>
  <pubDate>Fri, 01 Mar 2024 09:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
  <author>Weird Era</author>
  <enclosure url="https://aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/aa758402-506c-4cb6-90e5-34ca75cb33d2/739b74d5-9834-49b8-92d9-83163b9f3f98.mp3" length="43213969" type="audio/mpeg"/>
  <itunes:episodeType>full</itunes:episodeType>
  <itunes:season>1</itunes:season>
  <itunes:author>Weird Era</itunes:author>
  <itunes:subtitle>Sruti and Alexandra talk about her debut novel Worry, all about sisters (rivals? best friends? BOTH), what if we only communicated intended love, what a non-job is and how it's uniquely millennial, and much more.</itunes:subtitle>
  <itunes:duration>45:00</itunes:duration>
  <itunes:explicit>yes</itunes:explicit>
  <itunes:image href="https://media24.fireside.fm/file/fireside-images-2024/podcasts/images/a/aa758402-506c-4cb6-90e5-34ca75cb33d2/episodes/7/739b74d5-9834-49b8-92d9-83163b9f3f98/cover.jpg?v=1"/>
  <description>About Alexandra Tanner:
Alexandra Tanner is a Brooklyn-based writer and editor. She is a graduate of the MFA program at The New School and the recipient of fellowships from MacDowell and The Center for Fiction. Her writing appears in The New York Times Book Review, Gawker, and Jewish Currents, among other outlets. Worry is her first novel.
About Worry:
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2024 by Nylon, The Millions, and Debutiful!
Frances Ha meets No One Is Talking About This in a debut that follows two siblings-turned-roommates navigating an absurd world on the verge of calamity—a Seinfeldian novel of existentialism and sisterhood.
It’s March of 2019, and twenty-eight-year-old Jules Gold—anxious, artistically frustrated, and internet-obsessed—has been living alone in the apartment she once shared with the man she thought she’d marry when her younger sister Poppy comes to crash. Indefinitely. Poppy, a year and a half out from a suicide attempt only Jules knows about, searches for work and meaning in Brooklyn while Jules spends her days hate-scrolling the feeds of Mormon mommy bloggers and waiting for life to happen.
Then the hives that’ve plagued Poppy since childhood flare up. Jules’s uterus turns against her. Poppy brings home a maladjusted rescue dog named Amy Klobuchar. The girls’ mother, a newly devout Messianic Jew, starts falling for the same deep-state conspiracy theories as Jules’s online mommies. Jules, halfheartedly struggling to scrape her way to the source of her ennui, slowly and cruelly comes to blame Poppy for her own insufficiencies as a friend, a writer, and a sister. And Amy Klobuchar might have rabies. As the year shambles on and a new decade looms near, a disastrous trip home to Florida forces Jules and Poppy—comrades, competitors, constant fixtures in each other’s lives—to ask themselves what they want their futures to look like, and whether they’ll spend them together or apart.
Deadpan, dark, and brutally funny, Worry is a sharp portrait of two sisters enduring a dread-filled American moment from a nervy new voice in contemporary fiction. 
</description>
  <itunes:keywords>Books, Fiction, Literature, Bookclub, Authors, Interviews, 2024books, Montreal, MTL, Weirdera, Weirderapod, Alexandra Tanner, Worry</itunes:keywords>
  <content:encoded>
    <![CDATA[<p>About Alexandra Tanner:</p>

<p>Alexandra Tanner is a Brooklyn-based writer and editor. She is a graduate of the MFA program at The New School and the recipient of fellowships from MacDowell and The Center for Fiction. Her writing appears in The New York Times Book Review, Gawker, and Jewish Currents, among other outlets. Worry is her first novel.</p>

<p>About Worry:</p>

<p>Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2024 by Nylon, The Millions, and Debutiful!</p>

<p>Frances Ha meets No One Is Talking About This in a debut that follows two siblings-turned-roommates navigating an absurd world on the verge of calamity—a Seinfeldian novel of existentialism and sisterhood.</p>

<p>It’s March of 2019, and twenty-eight-year-old Jules Gold—anxious, artistically frustrated, and internet-obsessed—has been living alone in the apartment she once shared with the man she thought she’d marry when her younger sister Poppy comes to crash. Indefinitely. Poppy, a year and a half out from a suicide attempt only Jules knows about, searches for work and meaning in Brooklyn while Jules spends her days hate-scrolling the feeds of Mormon mommy bloggers and waiting for life to happen.</p>

<p>Then the hives that’ve plagued Poppy since childhood flare up. Jules’s uterus turns against her. Poppy brings home a maladjusted rescue dog named Amy Klobuchar. The girls’ mother, a newly devout Messianic Jew, starts falling for the same deep-state conspiracy theories as Jules’s online mommies. Jules, halfheartedly struggling to scrape her way to the source of her ennui, slowly and cruelly comes to blame Poppy for her own insufficiencies as a friend, a writer, and a sister. And Amy Klobuchar might have rabies. As the year shambles on and a new decade looms near, a disastrous trip home to Florida forces Jules and Poppy—comrades, competitors, constant fixtures in each other’s lives—to ask themselves what they want their futures to look like, and whether they’ll spend them together or apart.</p>

<p>Deadpan, dark, and brutally funny, Worry is a sharp portrait of two sisters enduring a dread-filled American moment from a nervy new voice in contemporary fiction.</p>]]>
  </content:encoded>
  <itunes:summary>
    <![CDATA[<p>About Alexandra Tanner:</p>

<p>Alexandra Tanner is a Brooklyn-based writer and editor. She is a graduate of the MFA program at The New School and the recipient of fellowships from MacDowell and The Center for Fiction. Her writing appears in The New York Times Book Review, Gawker, and Jewish Currents, among other outlets. Worry is her first novel.</p>

<p>About Worry:</p>

<p>Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2024 by Nylon, The Millions, and Debutiful!</p>

<p>Frances Ha meets No One Is Talking About This in a debut that follows two siblings-turned-roommates navigating an absurd world on the verge of calamity—a Seinfeldian novel of existentialism and sisterhood.</p>

<p>It’s March of 2019, and twenty-eight-year-old Jules Gold—anxious, artistically frustrated, and internet-obsessed—has been living alone in the apartment she once shared with the man she thought she’d marry when her younger sister Poppy comes to crash. Indefinitely. Poppy, a year and a half out from a suicide attempt only Jules knows about, searches for work and meaning in Brooklyn while Jules spends her days hate-scrolling the feeds of Mormon mommy bloggers and waiting for life to happen.</p>

<p>Then the hives that’ve plagued Poppy since childhood flare up. Jules’s uterus turns against her. Poppy brings home a maladjusted rescue dog named Amy Klobuchar. The girls’ mother, a newly devout Messianic Jew, starts falling for the same deep-state conspiracy theories as Jules’s online mommies. Jules, halfheartedly struggling to scrape her way to the source of her ennui, slowly and cruelly comes to blame Poppy for her own insufficiencies as a friend, a writer, and a sister. And Amy Klobuchar might have rabies. As the year shambles on and a new decade looms near, a disastrous trip home to Florida forces Jules and Poppy—comrades, competitors, constant fixtures in each other’s lives—to ask themselves what they want their futures to look like, and whether they’ll spend them together or apart.</p>

<p>Deadpan, dark, and brutally funny, Worry is a sharp portrait of two sisters enduring a dread-filled American moment from a nervy new voice in contemporary fiction.</p>]]>
  </itunes:summary>
</item>
<item>
  <title>Episode 75: Weird Era feat. Rebecca May Johnson</title>
  <link>https://snowy-dew-6832.fireside.fm/75</link>
  <guid isPermaLink="false">dc207418-b0cd-48e8-b38b-3ad41b65a122</guid>
  <pubDate>Fri, 16 Feb 2024 09:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
  <author>Weird Era</author>
  <enclosure url="https://aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/aa758402-506c-4cb6-90e5-34ca75cb33d2/dc207418-b0cd-48e8-b38b-3ad41b65a122.mp3" length="49783807" type="audio/mpeg"/>
  <itunes:episodeType>full</itunes:episodeType>
  <itunes:season>1</itunes:season>
  <itunes:author>Weird Era</itunes:author>
  <itunes:subtitle>Sruti and Rebecca discuss how sit down meals serve as the root of discourse, how cooking is gendered, how pleasure and a delight in living is revolutionary, and much more.</itunes:subtitle>
  <itunes:duration>51:51</itunes:duration>
  <itunes:explicit>yes</itunes:explicit>
  <itunes:image href="https://media24.fireside.fm/file/fireside-images-2024/podcasts/images/a/aa758402-506c-4cb6-90e5-34ca75cb33d2/episodes/d/dc207418-b0cd-48e8-b38b-3ad41b65a122/cover.jpg?v=1"/>
  <description>About Rebecca May Johnson:
Rebecca May Johnson has published essays, reviews and nonfiction with Granta, Times Literary Supplement and Daunt Books Publishing, among others, and is an editor at the trailblazing food publication Vittles. Small Fires is her first book.
About Small Fires:
Why do we cook? Is it just to feed ourselves and others? Or is there something more revolutionary going on?
In Small Fires, Rebecca May Johnson reinvents cooking -- that simple act of rolling up our sleeves, wielding a knife, spattering red hot sauce on our books -- as a way of experiencing ourselves and the world. Cooking is thinking: about the liberating constraint of tying apron strings; the transformative dynamics of shared meals; the meaning of appetite and bodily pleasure; the wild subversiveness of the recipe, beyond words or control.
Small Fires shows us the radical potential of the thing we do every day: the power of small fires burning everywhere.
The paperback edition includes a new afterword and recipes for Ten-Minute Tomatoes and Cream Pasta, Meatballs with Tomato and Tarragon Cream Sauce, plus other ideas for tomato and cream combinations and platings inspired by a visit to the archive of groundbreaking English food writer Elizabeth David. 
</description>
  <itunes:keywords>2024books, authors, bookclub, books, fiction, interviews, literature, montreal, mtl, rebecca may johnson, small fires, weirdera, weirderapod</itunes:keywords>
  <content:encoded>
    <![CDATA[<p>About Rebecca May Johnson:</p>

<p>Rebecca May Johnson has published essays, reviews and nonfiction with Granta, Times Literary Supplement and Daunt Books Publishing, among others, and is an editor at the trailblazing food publication Vittles. Small Fires is her first book.</p>

<p>About Small Fires:</p>

<p>Why do we cook? Is it just to feed ourselves and others? Or is there something more revolutionary going on?</p>

<p>In Small Fires, Rebecca May Johnson reinvents cooking -- that simple act of rolling up our sleeves, wielding a knife, spattering red hot sauce on our books -- as a way of experiencing ourselves and the world. Cooking is thinking: about the liberating constraint of tying apron strings; the transformative dynamics of shared meals; the meaning of appetite and bodily pleasure; the wild subversiveness of the recipe, beyond words or control.</p>

<p>Small Fires shows us the radical potential of the thing we do every day: the power of small fires burning everywhere.</p>

<p>The paperback edition includes a new afterword and recipes for Ten-Minute Tomatoes and Cream Pasta, Meatballs with Tomato and Tarragon Cream Sauce, plus other ideas for tomato and cream combinations and platings inspired by a visit to the archive of groundbreaking English food writer Elizabeth David.</p>]]>
  </content:encoded>
  <itunes:summary>
    <![CDATA[<p>About Rebecca May Johnson:</p>

<p>Rebecca May Johnson has published essays, reviews and nonfiction with Granta, Times Literary Supplement and Daunt Books Publishing, among others, and is an editor at the trailblazing food publication Vittles. Small Fires is her first book.</p>

<p>About Small Fires:</p>

<p>Why do we cook? Is it just to feed ourselves and others? Or is there something more revolutionary going on?</p>

<p>In Small Fires, Rebecca May Johnson reinvents cooking -- that simple act of rolling up our sleeves, wielding a knife, spattering red hot sauce on our books -- as a way of experiencing ourselves and the world. Cooking is thinking: about the liberating constraint of tying apron strings; the transformative dynamics of shared meals; the meaning of appetite and bodily pleasure; the wild subversiveness of the recipe, beyond words or control.</p>

<p>Small Fires shows us the radical potential of the thing we do every day: the power of small fires burning everywhere.</p>

<p>The paperback edition includes a new afterword and recipes for Ten-Minute Tomatoes and Cream Pasta, Meatballs with Tomato and Tarragon Cream Sauce, plus other ideas for tomato and cream combinations and platings inspired by a visit to the archive of groundbreaking English food writer Elizabeth David.</p>]]>
  </itunes:summary>
</item>
<item>
  <title>Episode 74: Weird Era feat. Katya Apekina</title>
  <link>https://snowy-dew-6832.fireside.fm/74</link>
  <guid isPermaLink="false">59709a1d-27f3-48ef-bd6a-43a7b870538d</guid>
  <pubDate>Fri, 09 Feb 2024 00:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
  <author>Weird Era</author>
  <enclosure url="https://aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/aa758402-506c-4cb6-90e5-34ca75cb33d2/59709a1d-27f3-48ef-bd6a-43a7b870538d.mp3" length="47231750" type="audio/mpeg"/>
  <itunes:episodeType>full</itunes:episodeType>
  <itunes:season>1</itunes:season>
  <itunes:author>Weird Era</itunes:author>
  <itunes:subtitle>Sruti talks to Katya Apekina about mean ethnic humour, if exclusively, "wanting" is the definition of purity, living as different versions of yourself in one lifetime, and the underrated joys of motherhood.</itunes:subtitle>
  <itunes:duration>46:28</itunes:duration>
  <itunes:explicit>yes</itunes:explicit>
  <itunes:image href="https://media24.fireside.fm/file/fireside-images-2024/podcasts/images/a/aa758402-506c-4cb6-90e5-34ca75cb33d2/episodes/5/59709a1d-27f3-48ef-bd6a-43a7b870538d/cover.jpg?v=2"/>
  <description>About Katya Apekin:
Katya Apekina is a novelist, screenwriter, and translator. Her debut novel, The Deeper the Water, the Uglier the Fish, was named a Best Book of 2018 by Kirkus, Buzzfeed, Lithub, and others, was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize, and has been translated into Spanish, Catalan, French, German, and Italian. She is the recipient of an Elizabeth George grant, an Olin Fellowship, the Alena Wilson prize, and a Third Year Fiction Fellowship from Washignton University in St. Louis, where she did her MFA. She has done residences at VCCA, Playa, Ucross, Art Omi: Writing, and Fondation Jan Michalski in Switzerland. Born in Moscow, she moved to the US when she was three years old and currently lives in Los Angeles. Mother Doll is her second nove
About Mother Doll:
Zhenia is adrift in Los Angeles, pregnant with a baby her husband doesn’t want, while her Russian grandmother and favorite person in the world is dying on the opposite coast. She’s deeply disconnected from herself and her desires when she gets a strange call from Paul, a psychic medium who usually specializes in channeling dead pets, with a message from the other side. Zhenia’s great-grandmother Irina, a Russian Revolutionary, has approached him from a cloud of ancestral grief, desperate to tell her story and receive absolution from Zhenia.
As Irina begins her confession with the help of a purgatorial chorus of grieving Russian ghosts, Zhenia awakens to aspects of herself she hadn’t been willing to confront. But does either woman have what the other needs to understand their predicament? Or will Irina be stuck in limbo, with Zhenia plagued by ancestral trauma, and her children after her?
Ferociously funny and deeply moving, Mother Doll forces us to look at how painful secrets stamp themselves from one generation to the next. Katya Apekina’s second novel is a family epic and a meditation on motherhood, immigration, identity, and war. 
</description>
  <itunes:keywords>Bookstore, Books, Fiction, Literature, Bookclub, Authors, Interviews, 2024books, Montreal, Bookish, Montreal, Weirdera, Weirderapod, Lit, Literature, Literary, Literarypodcast, Katya Apekin, Mother Doll</itunes:keywords>
  <content:encoded>
    <![CDATA[<p>About Katya Apekin:</p>

<p>Katya Apekina is a novelist, screenwriter, and translator. Her debut novel, The Deeper the Water, the Uglier the Fish, was named a Best Book of 2018 by Kirkus, Buzzfeed, Lithub, and others, was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize, and has been translated into Spanish, Catalan, French, German, and Italian. She is the recipient of an Elizabeth George grant, an Olin Fellowship, the Alena Wilson prize, and a Third Year Fiction Fellowship from Washignton University in St. Louis, where she did her MFA. She has done residences at VCCA, Playa, Ucross, Art Omi: Writing, and Fondation Jan Michalski in Switzerland. Born in Moscow, she moved to the US when she was three years old and currently lives in Los Angeles. Mother Doll is her second nove</p>

<p>About Mother Doll:</p>

<p>Zhenia is adrift in Los Angeles, pregnant with a baby her husband doesn’t want, while her Russian grandmother and favorite person in the world is dying on the opposite coast. She’s deeply disconnected from herself and her desires when she gets a strange call from Paul, a psychic medium who usually specializes in channeling dead pets, with a message from the other side. Zhenia’s great-grandmother Irina, a Russian Revolutionary, has approached him from a cloud of ancestral grief, desperate to tell her story and receive absolution from Zhenia.</p>

<p>As Irina begins her confession with the help of a purgatorial chorus of grieving Russian ghosts, Zhenia awakens to aspects of herself she hadn’t been willing to confront. But does either woman have what the other needs to understand their predicament? Or will Irina be stuck in limbo, with Zhenia plagued by ancestral trauma, and her children after her?</p>

<p>Ferociously funny and deeply moving, Mother Doll forces us to look at how painful secrets stamp themselves from one generation to the next. Katya Apekina’s second novel is a family epic and a meditation on motherhood, immigration, identity, and war.</p>]]>
  </content:encoded>
  <itunes:summary>
    <![CDATA[<p>About Katya Apekin:</p>

<p>Katya Apekina is a novelist, screenwriter, and translator. Her debut novel, The Deeper the Water, the Uglier the Fish, was named a Best Book of 2018 by Kirkus, Buzzfeed, Lithub, and others, was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize, and has been translated into Spanish, Catalan, French, German, and Italian. She is the recipient of an Elizabeth George grant, an Olin Fellowship, the Alena Wilson prize, and a Third Year Fiction Fellowship from Washignton University in St. Louis, where she did her MFA. She has done residences at VCCA, Playa, Ucross, Art Omi: Writing, and Fondation Jan Michalski in Switzerland. Born in Moscow, she moved to the US when she was three years old and currently lives in Los Angeles. Mother Doll is her second nove</p>

<p>About Mother Doll:</p>

<p>Zhenia is adrift in Los Angeles, pregnant with a baby her husband doesn’t want, while her Russian grandmother and favorite person in the world is dying on the opposite coast. She’s deeply disconnected from herself and her desires when she gets a strange call from Paul, a psychic medium who usually specializes in channeling dead pets, with a message from the other side. Zhenia’s great-grandmother Irina, a Russian Revolutionary, has approached him from a cloud of ancestral grief, desperate to tell her story and receive absolution from Zhenia.</p>

<p>As Irina begins her confession with the help of a purgatorial chorus of grieving Russian ghosts, Zhenia awakens to aspects of herself she hadn’t been willing to confront. But does either woman have what the other needs to understand their predicament? Or will Irina be stuck in limbo, with Zhenia plagued by ancestral trauma, and her children after her?</p>

<p>Ferociously funny and deeply moving, Mother Doll forces us to look at how painful secrets stamp themselves from one generation to the next. Katya Apekina’s second novel is a family epic and a meditation on motherhood, immigration, identity, and war.</p>]]>
  </itunes:summary>
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<item>
  <title>Episode 73: Weird Era feat. Marie-Helene Bertino</title>
  <link>https://snowy-dew-6832.fireside.fm/73</link>
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  <pubDate>Fri, 02 Feb 2024 07:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
  <author>Weird Era</author>
  <enclosure url="https://aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/aa758402-506c-4cb6-90e5-34ca75cb33d2/0fbae48c-0e94-481e-995f-3f4f2fe4914e.mp3" length="42043871" type="audio/mpeg"/>
  <itunes:episodeType>full</itunes:episodeType>
  <itunes:season>1</itunes:season>
  <itunes:author>Weird Era</itunes:author>
  <itunes:subtitle>Alex returns for season six of the pod with Marie-Helene Bertino in an episode about her novel Beautyland, where Alex asks big questions about the meaning of life, Marie recites an Edna St-Vincent Millay poem on the spot from memory, and both laugh about crying at the end of books. </itunes:subtitle>
  <itunes:duration>43:47</itunes:duration>
  <itunes:explicit>yes</itunes:explicit>
  <itunes:image href="https://media24.fireside.fm/file/fireside-images-2024/podcasts/images/a/aa758402-506c-4cb6-90e5-34ca75cb33d2/episodes/0/0fbae48c-0e94-481e-995f-3f4f2fe4914e/cover.jpg?v=1"/>
  <description>About Marie-Helene Bertino:
Marie-Helene Bertino is the author of Parakeet, 2 A.M. at The Cat’s Pajamas, and the story collection Safe as Houses. She was the 2017 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Fellow in Cork, Ireland. She has received the O. Henry Prize, the Pushcart Prize, the Iowa Short Fiction Award, the Mississippi Review Prize, and fellowships from MacDowell, Sewanee, and New York City’s Center for Fiction, and her work has twice been featured on NPR’s Selected Shorts. She teaches creative writing at New York University and Yale University and lives in Brooklyn.
About Beautyland:
From the acclaimed author of Parakeet, Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland is a wise, tender novel about a woman who doesn't feel at home on Earth.
At the moment when Voyager 1 is launched into space carrying its famous golden record, a baby of unusual perception is born to a single mother in Philadelphia. Adina Giorno is tiny and jaundiced, but she reaches for warmth and light. As a child, she recognizes that she is different: She possesses knowledge of a faraway planet. The arrival of a fax machine enables her to contact her extraterrestrial relatives, beings who have sent her to report on the oddities of Earthlings.
For years, as she moves through the world and makes a life for herself among humans, she dispatches transmissions on the terrors and surprising joys of their existence. Then, at a precarious moment, a beloved friend urges Adina to share her messages with the world. Is there a chance she is not alone?
Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland is a novel of startling originality about the fragility and resilience of life on our Earth and in our universe. It is a remarkable evocation of the feeling of being in exile at home, and it introduces a gentle, unforgettable alien for our times. 
</description>
  <itunes:keywords>Books, Fiction, Literature, Bookclub, Authors, Interviews, 2024books, Montreal, MTL, Weirdera, Weirderapod, MarieHeleneBertino, Beautyland</itunes:keywords>
  <content:encoded>
    <![CDATA[<p>About Marie-Helene Bertino:</p>

<p>Marie-Helene Bertino is the author of Parakeet, 2 A.M. at The Cat’s Pajamas, and the story collection Safe as Houses. She was the 2017 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Fellow in Cork, Ireland. She has received the O. Henry Prize, the Pushcart Prize, the Iowa Short Fiction Award, the Mississippi Review Prize, and fellowships from MacDowell, Sewanee, and New York City’s Center for Fiction, and her work has twice been featured on NPR’s Selected Shorts. She teaches creative writing at New York University and Yale University and lives in Brooklyn.</p>

<p>About Beautyland:</p>

<p>From the acclaimed author of Parakeet, Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland is a wise, tender novel about a woman who doesn&#39;t feel at home on Earth.</p>

<p>At the moment when Voyager 1 is launched into space carrying its famous golden record, a baby of unusual perception is born to a single mother in Philadelphia. Adina Giorno is tiny and jaundiced, but she reaches for warmth and light. As a child, she recognizes that she is different: She possesses knowledge of a faraway planet. The arrival of a fax machine enables her to contact her extraterrestrial relatives, beings who have sent her to report on the oddities of Earthlings.</p>

<p>For years, as she moves through the world and makes a life for herself among humans, she dispatches transmissions on the terrors and surprising joys of their existence. Then, at a precarious moment, a beloved friend urges Adina to share her messages with the world. Is there a chance she is not alone?</p>

<p>Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland is a novel of startling originality about the fragility and resilience of life on our Earth and in our universe. It is a remarkable evocation of the feeling of being in exile at home, and it introduces a gentle, unforgettable alien for our times.</p>]]>
  </content:encoded>
  <itunes:summary>
    <![CDATA[<p>About Marie-Helene Bertino:</p>

<p>Marie-Helene Bertino is the author of Parakeet, 2 A.M. at The Cat’s Pajamas, and the story collection Safe as Houses. She was the 2017 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Fellow in Cork, Ireland. She has received the O. Henry Prize, the Pushcart Prize, the Iowa Short Fiction Award, the Mississippi Review Prize, and fellowships from MacDowell, Sewanee, and New York City’s Center for Fiction, and her work has twice been featured on NPR’s Selected Shorts. She teaches creative writing at New York University and Yale University and lives in Brooklyn.</p>

<p>About Beautyland:</p>

<p>From the acclaimed author of Parakeet, Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland is a wise, tender novel about a woman who doesn&#39;t feel at home on Earth.</p>

<p>At the moment when Voyager 1 is launched into space carrying its famous golden record, a baby of unusual perception is born to a single mother in Philadelphia. Adina Giorno is tiny and jaundiced, but she reaches for warmth and light. As a child, she recognizes that she is different: She possesses knowledge of a faraway planet. The arrival of a fax machine enables her to contact her extraterrestrial relatives, beings who have sent her to report on the oddities of Earthlings.</p>

<p>For years, as she moves through the world and makes a life for herself among humans, she dispatches transmissions on the terrors and surprising joys of their existence. Then, at a precarious moment, a beloved friend urges Adina to share her messages with the world. Is there a chance she is not alone?</p>

<p>Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland is a novel of startling originality about the fragility and resilience of life on our Earth and in our universe. It is a remarkable evocation of the feeling of being in exile at home, and it introduces a gentle, unforgettable alien for our times.</p>]]>
  </itunes:summary>
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