The Talking Book Podcast

New episode with Richard Chiem! Seven years after its most recent release, You Private Person now returns in a brand-new edition by With an X Books. Named one of Publisher's Weekly's 10 Essentials Books of the American West, these stories are sharp, romantic, and heartbreaking to the core. A beloved collection, a cult classic, and a perfect pop song, You Private Person is your favorite writer's favorite book. https://www.withanxbooks.com/youprivateperson

Did Vivienne Volker Kill Wilma Lang? This question has dogged Vivienne ever since Wilma jumped from a window to her death shortly after Volker stole her lover, the visionary artist Hans Bellmer, in the 1970s. Once a famous artist and fashion icon, Volker is now in her eighties and spends her days in religious contemplation in rural Pennsylvania alongside her daughter Velour Bellmer, her granddaughter Vesta Furio, her much younger boyfriend—a garbageman named Lou—and Franz, the family dog. Their quiet lives are disrupted when Vivienne’s work is selected for inclusion in a high-profile retrospective called "Forgotten Women Surrealists" at the prestigious NAT Museum. However, when rumors of her past misdeeds begin to circulate and she is dropped from the show, a gallery curator enters the picture hoping to capitalize on the buzz generated by the controversy, sending the family's tensions, hopes, and dreams to a dizzying peak. Set over the course of a fateful week, Vivienne deftly weaves surreal prose with a Greek chorus of internet comments and text messages, to ask the questions: what is the cost of vision, what is the price of art? What connects creation and procreation, a life and an afterlife? https://www.skyhorsepublishing.com/9781648210648/vivienne/

NDA is a collection of revealing poems and exchanges between Lily and their clients as they navigate the dark bohemia of NYC and LA as a nonbinary sex worker. Spiral upward, downward, and side to side. From the safe words of New York to the alleys of Los Angeles....and all the flights in between. https://www.farwestpress.com/far-west-books/p/nda-lily-lady

A new reading from Mallory Smart. Step into Stevie's world, a 26-year-old musician on the brink of fame. A tour offer catapults her into an existential voyage through life's intricate maze. Within this tense spiritual journey, Stevie confronts the age-old dilemma of fame versus the safety of a simpler existence, all while searching for her elusive tribe. https://www.withanxbooks.com/store/p/i-keep-my-visions-to-myself-by-mallory-smart

Kris chats with B.P. Sweany about his novel The Sword and the Sophomore, plus an excerpt read by Tami Stronach! About the book... Arlynn Rosemary Banson is an atypical sixteen-year-old—the cool, popular outsider, effortlessly straddling the line between divas and dorks. Her forever young mother, Jennifer, is dedicated to making her life awkward by trying to be her friend. Her father, Alan, is a workaholic history professor who barely acknowledges his family’s existence. Her boyfriend, Benz, the quarterback and homecoming king, has just broken up with her, while her best friend, Joslin, bears reluctant witness to Rosemary’s romantic drama. But nothing prepares any of them for a Welsh foreign exchange student named Emrys Balin. Emrys looks like a teenager, but he seems to act much, much older. Pre-order: https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Sword-and-the-Sophomore-Audiobook/B0CQQ6D3T7?qid=1718899369&sr=1-1&ref_pageloadid=not_applicable&ref=a_search_c3_lProduct_1_1&pf_rd_p=83218cca-c308-412f-bfcf-90198b687a2f&pf_rd_r=FP9G6FA2DWV1ZT6QSZ9H&pageLoadId=aZI6DhtOpZ6nRqc6&creativeId=0d6f6720-f41c-457e-a42b-8c8dceb62f2c

“In this winningly oblique, slender, and wise-hearted novel, Jack Houghteling puts his finger on febrilely metropolitan human nature as it expresses itself (cerebrally, athletically, familially) in the outer boroughs and in patinated suburbia--and he does so in fleet, uncannily vivid sentences that are summational masterstrokes. Jack Houghteling is a writer of dumbstriking originality and virtuosity, and Sunnyside, his second book, is a dazzlement.” -- Garielle Lutz, Author of Divorcer and Stories in the Worst Way GET THE BOOK https://www.amazon.com/Sunnyside-Jack-Houghteling/dp/B0C2RZDJ5R

In Fear Not!, critic Josh Larsen makes the case that monster movies, creature features, slashers, and other fright films artfully reflect our deep worries in a way that resonates with the Christian experience. Combining critical observation and theological reflection, Larsen devotes each chapter to a different horror subgenre, connecting that subgenre to a commonly shared fear. https://www.amazon.com/Fear-Not-Christian-Appreciation-Spirituality/dp/1666738522 https://www.filmspotting.net/ https://larsenonfilm.com/ Josh is the co-host of the radio show and podcast Filmspotting, author of Movies Are Prayers and Fear Not! A Christian Appreciation of Horror, as well as editor/producer for Think Christian, a website and podcast exploring faith and pop culture. He’s been writing and speaking about movies professionally since 1994.

Hal, an Afghan war veteran, begins to hear a voice telling him to go “home”—to a castle, in Scotland. But Hal has never been to Scotland. So whose voice is it? What does it want? And why is it calling Hal “home”? What follows is a surrealist road trip story, part Heart of Darkness and part bipolar Guardians of the Galaxy. In Farsickness, Joshua Mohr spins a picaresque, hallucinatory yarn like only he can, as Hal and the reader journey deep into the human soul. GET THE BOOK!!!! https://www.amazon.com/Farsickness-Novel-Joshua-Mohr/dp/B0C9SHFR1M/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=joshua+mohr+far+sickness&qid=1693021569&s=books&sr=1-1 “This book is like driving a Ferrari through a funhouse and then smashing through the windshield into another realm of existence. In other words, it’s what a book should be.” - BEN LOORY, author of Tales of Falling and Flying

New reading with Chase Griffin and Christina Quay. With music by M. Kilcullen... Between the pages of an ever-shifting eternal text known as the Patasphere, a coven of psychedelic fiction fanatics and a duo of agents working for a private intelligence firm known as The Geist, LLC navigate their ways simultaneously through a labyrinthian pilgrimage to the ole haunts of their favorite thoughtform, a cult classic weird fiction author named Rocco Atleby, who may or may not be both creator and destroyer of their world. Out now from Maudlin House. Get the book! https://shop.maudlinhouse.net/

Violent Candy is a collection of sixteen stories about the the depths we go to find love for ourselves and from others, the trauma we obtain in childhood and carry with us into adulthood, the desperation to find connection in a world determined to tear us all apart, and the self-inflicted violence we sometimes direct at other. There's a woman who loses her child to Disneyland fantasies, a man who learns a horribly destructive secret about his new stepdaughter, an elderly man in love with an ostrich, a wife whose husband might or might not be possessed by the devil, a man whose only cure for self-hate is drinking weed killer, and more. An emotional mix of poetic absurdity, backstabbing humor, and depressive surrealism. Lowbrow and vile, but refined. Devastating and bleak, but hopeful. GET THE BOOK>>>>>> https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CJD8B1NC

A visionary evocation of contemporary Appalachian life and labor. Gray draws upon his own experiences-specifically, the effects of the 2008 financial crisis upon his hometown of Jefferson, North Carolina-while also exploring Appalachian history, country music, and the politics of rural extraction. GET THE BOOK >>> https://www.garden-doorpress.com/store/thickets-swamped-in-fence-coated-briars

A woman wants to be caught stealing people's identities, but nobody is paying attention. A suburban father becomes convinced that he's transformed into a dinosaur-shaped chicken nugget. A hitman's target collapses before he can be killed. The novella and stories in Echo Chamber reverberate, wild and beautiful. GET THE BOOK >>>> https://www.tridentcafe.com/trident-press-titles/echo-chamber

Drew Buxton is a writer and social worker from Texas. His debut short story collection So Much Heart was released in July by With An X Books. His work has been featured in Joyland, The Drift, Electric Literature, Witch Craft, and Vice among other publications. Find him at drewbuxton.com. Get the book SO MUCH HEART: https://www.withanxbooks.com/store/p/so-much-heart-by-drew-buxton In a debut collection that is absurd yet grimy, brutal but tender, Drew Buxton announces himself as an audacious, if a bit unstable, new voice in fiction. So Much Heart is full of schemes, addiction, dead bodies, and intrusive thoughts, but somehow through it all runs a thread of deep compassion. With a wicked sense of humor, Buxton steers right into mental illness, masculinity, and American mythology. Long after you turn the final page, this book will leave you buzzing with life-affirming energy or hiding in your bedroom, alone, mumbling to yourself. Either way, you won’t forget this collection.

Had a blast with 103.3 FM's Wordplay hosted by Lockie Martin. Here's the spot. Readings from the studio by Claire Hopple and Ashleigh Bryant Phillips!

Adrian Shirk is the author of HEAVEN IS A PLACE ON EARTH (Counterpoint, 2022), a personal odyssey of American utopian experiments, and AND YOUR DAUGHTERS SHALL PROPHESY (Counterpoint, 2017), a hybrid-memoir exploring American women prophets and mystics, named an NPR ‘Best Book’ of 2017. Shirk was raised in Portland, Oregon, and has since lived in New York and Wyoming. She’s a frequent contributor to Catapult, and her essays have appeared in The Atlantic, Lit Hub, and Atlas Obscura, among others. She teaches in Pratt Institute’s BFA Creative Writing Program, and lives at The Mutual Aid Society in the Catskill mountains. GET THE AUDIOBOOK! https://www.audible.com/pd/Heaven-Is-a-Place-on-Earth-Audiobook/B0C6C7N82S?action_code=ASSGB149080119000H&share_location=pdp

A new reading from Alice Kaltman and her book Almost Deadly, Almost Good, out now from Word West press. Get the book! https://alicekaltman.com/almost-deadly-almost-good Alice Kaltman is the author of the story-collection STAGGERWING, the novels WAVEHOUSE, THE TANTALIZING TALE OF GRACE MINNAUGH, and DAWG TOWNE. Her new linked collection ALMOST DEADLY/ALMOST GOOD arrives November 2022. Alice’s stories appear in journals like Lost Balloon, The Pinch, Joyland, Hobart and BULL, and in numerous anthologies. She’s not thrilled by the sound of her own voice, but you might like it. If so, you can hear her read her work at Micro Podcasts, Elevator Stories, and No Contact. Alice splits her time between Brooklyn and Montauk, NY. where she lives with her husband and her dog Ollie.

Out May 15th! PURE COSMOS CLUB by Matthew Binder. https://www.stalkinghorsepress.com/product/pure-cosmos-club-pre-order-paperback/ In this biting satire, Matthew Binder takes surreal aim at the poses and pretensions of high art and fashion. With ruthless wit, Binder chronicles the struggles of Paul, an eccentric artist, and his companion dog, a disabled, quiche-obsessed terrier-mix named Blanche. Together they negotiate hilarious scenes of bad parties, bizarre couture, deranged friends, shady deals, unrequited love, sabotage, and inscrutable art. But there may be a way out for Paul when he meets James, a New Age guru and leader of a secretive cult: the Pure Cosmos Club. Yet, every time Paul believes he’s ready for the “Ultimate Level,” James raises the price of entry. Just how far will Paul go for love, for art, and to attain cosmic oneness? “Pure Cosmos Club is an inventive, antic picaresque with a satirical eye trained on spiritual and aesthetic hucksterism. Matthew Binder sets them up and knocks them down in this witty, energetic novel. Long live Blanche the dog!” Sam Lipsyte, author of The Ask.

From Joseph Fasano, the acclaimed author of 'The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing', comes 'The Swallows of Lunetto', the powerful story of a young couple's escape from Italian fascism at the end of the Second World War. GET THE BOOK! https://shop.maudlinhouse.net/#the-swallows-of-lunetto "As essential as Hannah Arendt in understanding history and the heart." —Pietro Federico

A conversation with Christy Alexander Hallberg. We talk about her new audiobook Searching For Jimmy Page, then listen to an excerpt narrated by Melissa Connell. https://www.christyalexanderhallberg.com/searchingforjimmypage "The unraveling of eighteen-year-old Luna Kane’s haunted past begins in the winter of 1988, when her dying great-grandfather, a self-proclaimed faith healer, claims he hears phantom owls crying in the night."

An excerpt from the debut novel by Allie Rowbottom. Propulsive, dark, and moving, Aesthetica is a Veronica for the age of “Instagram face,” delivering a fresh, nuanced examination of feminism, #MeToo, and mother-daughter relationships, all while confronting our collective addiction to followers, filters, and faux realities. “This brutal tale of a teenage Instagram model teases out the ugliness of influencer culture against our rather ancient tradition of performative femininity. Under Allie Rowbottom’s patiently literary hand, this novel’s true gem lies in its central mother-daughter relationship—a reminder that our obsession with youth is never too far removed from what binds us to our lineage.” —Vanity Fair https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/709304/aesthetica-by-allie-rowbottom/ https://allierowbottom.com/