About Ocean Vuong: Ocean Vuong is the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collections Night Sky with Exit Wounds and Time Is a Mother, as well as the New York Times bestselling novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. A recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and the American Book Award, he used to work as a fast-food server, which inspired The E…

About Curtis McRae: Curtis John McRae is editor-in-chief at Yolk Literary Journal. His fiction has appeared in The New Quarterly, Prairie Fire, Chronicling the Days anthology (Guernica Editions, 2021), and others. Quietly, Loving Everyone is his debut short story collection. About Quietly, Loving Everyone: A striking debut collection by one of Mont…

About Adelaide Faith: Adelaide Faith worked as an editor in the Schools Department of Channel 4 before training to be a veterinary nurse at Battersea Cats and Dogs Home, after which she worked as a nurse at the RSPCA and the PDSA. Her short fiction has appeared in Forever Magazine, Hobart, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Maudlin House, Farewell Transmission, ExPa…

About Adam Ross: ADAM ROSS is the author of Mr. Peanut, which was selected as one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Economist. He has been a fellow in fiction at the American Academy in Berlin and a Hodder Fellow for Fiction at Princeton University. He is editor of The Sewanee Review. Born and raised in Ne…

About Amanda Leduc: AMANDA LEDUC is a disabled writer whose most recent novel, The Centaur's Wife, is "an exquisite magical world, perfectly rendered, for [a] dark and wonderful story about the dream life of outsiders and the disabled" (Heather O'Neill). Her non-fiction book Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space was nominated for…

About Katie Kitamura: Katie Kitamura is the author of four previous novels, most recently A Separation and Intimacies, which was longlisted for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award and was a finalist for a Joyce Carol Oates Prize. She is a recipient of the Rome Prize in Literature, a Lannan fellowship, and many other honors, and her w…

About Kevin Nguyen: Kevin Nguyen is the author of the novel New Waves. He is the features editor at The Verge and was previously a senior editor at GQ. He lives in Brooklyn. About My Documents: Ursula, Alvin, Jen, and Duncan grew up as cousins in the sprawling Nguyen family. As young adults, they’re on the precipice of new ventures: Ursula as a bud…

About Laurie Woolever: Laurie Woolever is a writer and editor. She spent nearly a decade assisting Anthony Bourdain, with whom she coauthored the cookbook Appetites and World Travel. She’s written about food and travel for the New York Times, GQ, Food & Wine, Lucky Peach, Saveur, Dissent, Roads & Kingdoms, and others, and has worked as an editor at…

About Andrew Lipstein: Andrew Lipstein is the author of Last Resort (2022), The Vegan (2023), and Something Rotten (2025). He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and three sons. About Something Rotten: In his provocative, crackling new novel, Andrew Lipstein spins a wicked web through the heart of Copenhagen. You'll question everyone and eve…

About Haley Mlotek: HALEY MLOTEK is a writer, editor, and organizer whose work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Nation, T Magazine, ELLE, Harper’s Bazaar, Hazlitt, and n+1, among others. She is a founding member of the Freelance Solidarity Project, a distinct division for digital media workers within the National Wri…

About Torrey Peters: Torrey Peters is the bestselling author of the novel Detransition, Baby, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel and was named one of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century by The New York Times. It was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, a finalist for the Brooklyn Public Librar…

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, El…

About Fawn Parker: FAWN PARKER is the author of the novels What We Both Know, longlisted for the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize, Set-Point, and Dumb-Show, and the poetry collection Soft Inheritance, winner of the Fiddlehead Poetry Book Prize and the J. M. Abraham Atlantic Poetry Award. Her story “Feed Machine” was longlisted for the 2020 Writers’ Tru…

About Sofia Ajram: Sofia Ajram (he/she) is a metalsmith and literary horror writer who specializes in feverish stories of anomalous architecture and gay pining. He is the editor of the forthcoming Bury Your Gays: An Anthology of Tragic Queer Horror. She has also given lectures on contemporary horror films at Monstrum Montreal and serves as a modera…

In celebration of our 100th episode, Alex and Sruti reflect on just a few of their favourite conversations throughout the years, including conversations with Elif Batuman, Sean Thor Conroe, Lillian Fishman, Isle McElroy, Ottessa Moshfegh, Larissa Pham, and Marie-Helene Bertino.By Weird Era

About Nora Lange: Nora Lange's writing has appeared or is forthcoming in BOMB , Hazlitt , Joyland , American Short Fiction , Denver Quarterly , HTMLGiant , LIT , The Fairy Tale Review, and elsewhere. Her project Dailyness was longlisted for the 2014 Leslie Scalapino Award for Innovative Women Performance Writers. She received her MFA from Brown Uni…

About Kevin Lambert: Born in 1992, Kevin Lambert grew up in Chicoutimi, Quebec. May Our Joy Endure won the Prix Médicis, Prix Décembre, and Prix Ringuet, and was a finalist for the Prix Goncourt. His second novel, Querelle de Roberval, was acclaimed in Quebec, where it was nominated for four literary prizes; in France, where it was a finalist for t…

About Kristen Felicetti: Kristen Felicetti is a writer based in Rochester, NY. For over a decade, she edited the literary magazine The Bushwick Review. Log Off is her debut novel. About Log Off: In the early 2000s, from a dial-up connection in a Western New York suburb, sixteen-year-old Ellora Gao logs on to the Internet to start a secret LiveJourn…

About Jeff VanderMeer: Jeff VanderMeer is the author of Hummingbird Salamander, the Borne novels (Borne, The Strange Bird, and Dead Astronauts), and The Southern Reach Trilogy (Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance), the first volume of which won the Nebula Award and the Shirley Jackson Award and was adapted into a movie by Alex Garland. He speak…

About Kenzie Allen: Kenzie Allen is a Haudenosaunee poet and multimodal artist. A finalist for the National Poetry Series, her work has appeared in Poetry magazine, Boston Review, Narrative, The Paris Review’s The Daily, Best New Poets, Poets.org, and other venues. Born in West Texas, she now shares time between Toronto, Ontario; Stavanger, Norway;…

About Charlotte Shane: Charlotte Shane is a nonfiction author and essayist. She is the author of Prostitute Laundry and N.B., both published by TigerBee Press, which she cofounded in 2015. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, Bookforum, Harper’s, Sports Illustrated, and elsewhere. About An Honest …

About Danzy Senna: Danzy Senna is the author of four previous works of fiction, including the bestselling Caucasia and, most recently, New People, as well as a memoir. The recipient of numerous awards and honors, she teaches writing at the University of Southern California. About Colored Television: A brilliant take on love and ambition, failure an…

About Rumaan Alam: Rumaan Alam is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel Leave the World Behind, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and adapted into a major motion picture, as well as two other novels. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. He lives in Brookl…

About Monica Datta: Monica Datta received degrees in architecture and urban design from the City University of New York, the London School of Economics, and the Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL), as well as an MFA in creative writing from Washington University in St. Louis, from which she received a Divided City/Mellon Foundation Graduate Resea…

About Heather O'Neill: Heather O’Neill is a novelist, short-story writer and essayist. Her most recent novel, When We Lost Our Heads, was a #1 national bestseller and a finalist for the Grand Prix du Livre de Montréal. Her previous works include The Lonely Hearts Hotel, which won the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and was longlisted fo…

About Tony Tulathimutte: Tony Tulathimutte is the author of Private Citizens and Rejection. His work has appeared in The Paris Review, n +1, The Nation, The New Republic, and The New York Times. The recipient of an O. Henry Award and a Whiting Award, he runs the writing class CRIT in Brooklyn. About Rejection: From the Whiting and O. Henry–winning …

About Yasmin Zaher: Yasmin Zaher is a Palestinian journalist and writer born in 1991 in Jerusalem. The Coin is her first novel. About The Coin: A bold and unabashed novel about a young Palestinian woman's unraveling as she teaches at a New York City middle school, gets caught up in a scheme reselling Birkin bags, and strives to gain control over he…

About Domenica Martinello: About Good Want: Exploring the value and shame ascribed to our desires both silly and serious – artistic, superficial, spiritual, relational – these poems grapple with deeply rooted questions: How can there be a relationship between goodness and godliness, if god is a character with shifting allegiances and priorities? Is…

About Walter Scott: Walter Scott is an interdisciplinary artist working in comics, drawing, video, performance, and sculpture. His graphic novel series Wendy chronicles the continuing misadventures of a young artist in a satirical imagining of the contemporary art world. Scott's eponymous party girl has previously been featured in three graphic nov…

About Billy-Ray Belcourt: BILLY-RAY BELCOURT (he/him) is a writer from the Driftpile Cree Nation. His debut novel, A Minor Chorus, won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and was longlisted for the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize. His bestselling memoir, A History of My Brief Body, won the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize and was a finalist for the Lambda Li…

This week, Alex talks to Myriam Lacroix about her novel, How It Works Out, queer fiction, the Canadian literary landscape, love as hunger, and parallel worlds. About Myriam Lacroix: MYRIAM LACROIX was born in Montreal to a Québécois mother and a Moroccan father, and currently lives in Vancouver. She has a BFA in Creative Writing from the University…

About Lauren Oyler: Lauren Oyler's essays on books and culture appear regularly in The New Yorker, the New York Times, the London Review of Books, Harper's, and other publications. Her debut novel, Fake Accounts, was published in 2021. She lives in Berlin. About No Judgement: From the national bestselling novelist and essayist, a groundbreaking col…

About Cameron Russell: Cameron Russell has spent the last twenty years working as a model for clients including Prada, Calvin Klein, Victoria’s Secret, H&M, Vogue, and Elle. With over forty million views, her TED talk on the power of image is one of the most popular of all time. She is the co-founder of Model Mafia, a collective of hundreds of fash…

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, e…

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 Revie…

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, …

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 & Writers, and LitHub. I Love You So Much It’s Killing Us Both is …

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 Wo…

About Sarah Mintz: Sarah Mintz is a graduate of the English MA program at the University of Regina. Her work has been published with Book*Hug Press, JackPine Press, Radiant Press, Apocalypse Confidential, The Sea & Cedar Literary Magazine, and Agnes and True . Find out more at https://smintz.carrd.co/. About Norma: Widowhood and weirdos, online and…

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 t…

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…

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 …

About Lexi Freiman: LEXI FREIMAN is an Australian writer and editor who graduated from Columbia's MFA program in 2012. Her first novel, Inappropriation, was longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and the Miles Franklin Award. She also writes for television. About The Book of Ayn: An original and hilarious satire of both our polit…

About Anna Biller: Anna Biller is a filmmaker and a writer known for her feminist point of view, and for her meticulously crafted visual design. The New York Times called her cult film The Love Witch “a hothouse filled with deadly and seductive blooms,” and Indiewire called her debut feature Viva “a pitch perfect resurrection of the Valley of the D…

About Melissa Broder: Melissa Broder is the author of the novels Milk Fed, The Pisces, and Death Valley, the essay collection So Sad Today, and five poetry collections, including Superdoom. She has written for The New York Times, Elle, and New York magazine’s The Cut. She lives in Los Angeles. Follow her on Twitter @SoSadToday and @MelissaBroder an…

About Chris Oliveros: Chris Oliveros was born in 1966 in Montreal and grew up in the nearby suburb of Chomedey, Laval. He founded Drawn & Quarterly in 1989 and was the publisher for the following twenty-five years. Oliveros stepped down from D+Q in 2015 to work on Are You Willing to Die for the Cause? About Are You Willing to Die for the Cause? A d…

About Isle McElroy: Isle McElroy (they/them) is a non-binary author based in New York. Their writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic, New York Times Magazine, The Cut, GQ, The Guardian, Vogue, Bon Appétit, and other publications. They have received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Tin House Summer Workshop, …

About Paolo Ferrante: Paola Ferrante is a writer living with depression. Her debut poetry collection, What to Wear When Surviving a Lion Attack (2019), was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Prize. She has won Grain Magazine's Short Grain Contest for Poetry, The New Quarterly's Peter Hinchcliffe Short Fiction Award, Room Magazine's Fiction…

About Sean Michaels: SEAN MICHAELS is the author of the novels Us Conductors and The Wagers, and his non-fiction has appeared in The Globe and Mail, The Guardian, Pitchfork and The New Yorker. He is a recipient of the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the QWF Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize and the Prix Nouvelles Écritures, and he founded the pioneering mus…

About Jessica Campbell: Jessica Campbell is a Canadian artist originally from Victoria, British Columbia. Her fine art has been exhibited across North America, and in 2019 she had a solo exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. An educator of comics art and history, Campbell has taught at a variety of institutions, including the School…