https://www.tamupress.com/book/9781680032550/imagine-a-death/ In the face of a slow but impending apocalypse, what binds three seemingly divergent lives (a writer, a photographer, an old man), isn't the commonality of a perceived future death, but the layered and complex fabric of how loss, abuse, trauma, and death have shaped their pasts, and how these pasts continue to haunt their present moments, a moment in which time seems to be running out. JANICE LEE is a Korean-American writer, editor, publisher, and shamanic healer. She is the author of seven books of fiction, creative nonfiction & poetry. She is Founder & Executive Editor of Entropy, Co-Publisher at Civil Coping Mechanisms, Contributing Editor at Fanzine, and Co-Founder of The Accomplices LLC. She currently lives in Portland, OR where she is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Portland State University.

The Talking Book Podcast

Imagine a Death With Janice Lee

https://thetalkingbook.org/mira-corpora JEFF JACKSON is a novelist, playwright, visual artist, and songwriter. His second novel Destroy All Monsters was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in Fall 2018. It received advanced praise from Don DeLillo, Janet Fitch, Dana Spiotta, Ben Marcus, and Dennis Cooper. His novella Novi Sad was published as a limited edition art book and selected for “Best of 2016” lists in Vice, Lit Reactor, and Entropy. His first novel Mira Corpora, published in 2013, was a Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and featured on numerous "Best of the Year" lists, including Slate, Salon, The New Statesman, and Flavorwire. His short fiction has appeared in Guernica, Vice, New York Tyrant, and The Collagist and been performed in New York and Los Angeles by New River Dramatists.

White Zones w/ Jeff Jackson

A reading from Mallory Smart The Only Living Girl in Chicago Zoe Clark is back in Chicago, and she already wants to run. But she can never turn her back on her monstrous hometown again. Grief, technology, isolation, and emptiness keep her up at night. Or maybe it's the coffee. Her brain feels like a mosquito trapped in amber, ready to be found in 65 million years by an enterprising paleontologist. Full of anxiety, humor, philosophy, and grief, The Only Living Girl in Chicago is a stunning coming-of-age novel, a later bloomer's bible in constant, dizzying motion. https://www.tridentcafe.com/trident-press-titles/preorder-the-only-living-girl-in-chicago-by-mallory-smart

The Only Living Girl In Chicago w/ Mallory Smart

Featured story: The Mattress Sleepovers, the debut short story collection by Ashleigh Bryant Phillips, takes us to a forgotten corner of the rural South, full of cemeteries, soybean fields, fishing holes, and Duck Thru gas stations. We meet a runaway teen, a mattress salesman, feral kittens, an elderly bachelorette wearing a horsehair locket, and a little girl named after Shania Twain. GET THE FULL AUDIOBOOK AT THETALKINGBOOK.ORG Sleepovers, written and read by Ashleigh Bryant Phillips, was recorded and produced at The Talking Book Studio in Asheville, NC.

Sleepovers w/ Ashleigh Bryant Phillips

Duncan Birmingham is a writer and filmmaker in Los Angeles. He’s been a writer and producer on numerous shows including Maron (with Marc Maron) on IFC. His book of short stories, The Cult in My Garage comes out in August from Maudlin House. https://shop.maudlinhouse.net/

Cult in My Garage w/ Duncan Birmingham

Wes Tirey returns with his 10th record and label debut for Dear Life Records. It is a Midwestern Odyssey, borne from Tirey's childhood in Southern Ohio and from the literary traditions of Frank Stanford and Raymond Carver. Over the course of eighteen songs, Tirey explores through his characters themes of social and geographic isolation. He wanders through corn-laden and rust-covered wastelands, seeking refuge and connection in diners and dimly-lit barrooms. Tirey's poetry is elegant and unflinching, painting portraits of an American life that feel uncannily familiar. https://westirey.bandcamp.com/album/the-midwest-book-of-the-dead

The Midwest Book of the Dead by Wes Tirey

A very special reading by Bud Smith called Free Bird from his collection Double Bird, out now from Maudlin House. Vivd. Odd. Hurtful. Unloved. Wet with dew. Out of its mind with joy. Get this damn book: https://shop.maudlinhouse.net/#double-bird

Free Bird w/ Bud Smith

Amphibians invites further contemplation of female physicality--what it means to reside in a female form. An amphibious aircraft crashes in Maine, a young girl skinny-dips with her elders, a distraught cruise ship dancer boards a water taxi in Grenada, and travelers to Dubai and Abu Dhabi long for familiar oceans; back in New England, small-town artists try to smudge out their tedium with seaside transgressions. Amphibians celebrates home in a cross-cultural way, and the sensation of feeling not quite right in one's own skin, on land and near water, at home and abroad.

Amphibians w/Lara Tupper

The poems in Mik Grantham’s debut collection, HARDCORE, are deceptively simple, darkly funny, and as unforgettable as a nagging toothache. Grantham confronts grief in myriad forms; the loss of innocence coincides with the loss of a tooth; a relationship decays and is uprooted alongside ruminative dog walks and soul-crushing waitressing shifts. It is Mik Grantham’s refusal to wallow in the dour, her embrace of the grotesque and the unfortunate situations served up to her by life, that allow the underlying love and hope in these poems to shine through. https://www.hobartpulp.com/books/hardcore

HARDCORE w/ Mik Grantham

Squirting across the sunburned landscape of Southern California, Body High is a journey marked by misplaced lust, mistaken fathers, lost semen, and the kidnapping of a sperm bank daughter, whose untainted kidneys may hold the key to redemption or, perhaps, the realization of its impossibility. https://houseofvlad.bigcartel.com/product/body-high-a-novel-by-jon-lindsey Featured readers: Jon Lindsey & Allie Rowbottom Jon Lindsey lives in Los Angeles. Body High is his first book.

BODY HIGH w/ Jon Lindsey

The follow-up to his beloved debut collection Beauty Was the Case that They Gave Me, Mark Leidner's RETURNING THE SWORD TO THE STONE is simultaneously profound and irreverent, in the same way that the world is flat as we walk and round as we live. https://fonografeditions.com/catalog/f0no10-mark-leidner-returning-the-sword-to-the-stone-print-book/

Returning the Sword to the Stone w/ Mark Leidner

A reading by Shy Watson from her new collection HORROR VACUI, out now from HOUSE OF VLAD PRESS. https://houseofvlad.bigcartel.com/product/horror-vacui-poems-and-other-writings-by-shy-watson SHY WATSON wrote Cheap Yellow (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2018) & co-founded blush lit. Find more work at places like New York Tyrant, The Rumpus, & [PANK]. Follow @formermissNJ on Twitter for updates.

Horror Vacui w/ Shy Watson

Quero-Quero deals with emotional strife and survival, a story of two adolescent girls from Brazil during a time of political oppression in their country and nearby Argentina. Avital Gad-Cykman's book Life in, Life Out (Matter Press) came out in 2014, and her second book, Light Reflection Over Blues is forthcoming this year at Ravenna Press.

Quero-Quero with Avital Gad-Cykman

I Hate You, Please Read Me with Joshua Dalton

Sebastian Castillo is the author of 49 Venezuelan Novels (Bottlecap Press). You can find his writing in Queen Mob’s Tea House, Hobart, Peach Mag, X-R-A-Y Lit Magazine, and elsewhere. You can find him on Twitter @bartlebytaco. Go get Sebastian's book "NOT I" here: https://www.wordwest.co/online-store/not-i-p178428336

Not I & How Do You Pronounce Andy Warhol w/ Sebastian Castillo

The Talking Book Podcast is the official podcast of the nonprofit audiobook publisher The Talking Book. Every episode we talk to an author, and hear an excerpt from their audiobook. Plus we post live readings from new books on the reg. 