Best Saeed Jones Podcasts (2024)

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S3, Ep. 17: Squawkin' Sports with Timothy Bella (April 20, 2023) 1:02:35

1y ago1:02:35

1:02:35

Created and hosted by writers Patrick Sauer and David J. Roth, Squawkin’ Sports is an ongoing series featuring book chats with grown-up authors writing about grown-ups playing kiddie games. For this installment, Sauer and Roth chat with staff writer and editor at The Washington Post, Timothy Bella, about his new book Barkley: A Biography. Informed …

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S3, Ep. 16: Sarah Fawn Montgomery & James Tate Hill (April 13, 2023) 1:00:24

1y ago1:00:24

1:00:24

When she left a chaotic home at eighteen, author Sarah Fawn Montgomery chased restlessness, claiming places on the West Coast, Midwest, and East Coast, while determined never to settle. Now her family is ravaged by addiction, illness, and poverty; the country is increasingly divided; and the natural worlds in which she seeks solace are under siege …

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S3, Ep. 15: Ryan Lee Wong & Megha Majumdar (April 6, 2023) 47:47

1+ y ago47:47

47:47

How can we live with integrity and pleasure in this world of police brutality and racism? In author, activist, and our own Brooklyn neighbor Ryan Lee Wong's extraordinary debut novel, an Asian American activist is challenged by his mother to face this question amidst generational change, a mother’s secret, and an activist’s coming-of-age. As humoro…

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S3, Ep. 14: Saeed Jones & Adam Falkner (March 30, 2023) 1:03:10

1+ y ago1:03:10

1:03:10

Greenlight was thrilled to welcome award-winning author and long-time friend of the store Saeed Jones back to our store to celebrate the release of his new poetry collection, Alive at the End of the World. In haunted poems glinting with laughter, pierced by grief and charged with history, Jones explores the public and private betrayals of life as w…

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S3, Ep. 13: Chris Belcher & Chloé Cooper Jones (March 23, 2023) 55:16

1+ y ago55:16

55:16

In her utterly profound and thought-provoking debut memoir and companion to her viral 2018 Salon article “What a Dominatrix Knows about #MeToo,” writer, professor, and former sex worker Belcher retraces her journey from broke gender studies PhD student in Los Angeles who remakes herself as L.A.’s Renowned Lesbian Dominatrix, specializing in male cl…

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S3, Ep. 12: Laura Silverman & Marisa Kanter (March 16, 2023) 54:44

1+ y ago54:44

54:44

Hannah used to be all about focus, back before she shattered her ankle and her Olympic dreams in one bad soccer play. These days, she’s all about distraction. Enter Bonanza, the local entertainment multiplex and site of Hanna’s summer employment. Under the neon lights of Bonanza--with flirty co-workers, ex-best friends, and her brother's hot best f…

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S3, Ep. 11: Larissa Pham & Sally Wen Mao (March 9, 2023) 54:22

1+ y ago54:22

54:22

Like a song that feels written just for you, Pham's debut work of nonfiction captures the imagination and refuses to let go. Pop Song is a book about love and about falling in love—with a place, or a painting, or a person—and the joy and terror inherent in the experience of that love. Named a Best Book of the Year by Time, Electric Literature, and …

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S3, Ep. 10: Zakiya Dalila Harris & Andrea Bartz (January 26, 2022) 55:05

1+ y ago55:05

55:05

Greenlight welcomed Zakiya Dalila Harris in-person to our Fort Greene events stage to celebrate the paperback release of her New York Times-bestselling novel The Other Black Girl, a "dazzling, darkly humorous story" that explores the tension that unfurls when two young Black women meet against the starkly white backdrop of New York City book publis…

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S3, Ep. 9: Jessi Jezewska Stevens & Christian Lorentzen (January 19, 2022) 56:17

1+ y ago56:17

56:17

Jessi Jezewska Stevens graced our events stage to launch her brilliant new novel out from And Other Stories, one of the most forward-thinking independent publishers based in the UK. The Visitors is a mordantly funny tour through a world where not only civic infrastructure but our darkest desires (not to mention our novels) are vulnerable to malware…

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S3, Ep. 8: The Greenlight Poetry Salon: Renia White & Aracelis Girmay (January 12, 2022) 57:07

1+ y ago57:07

57:07

Created and hosted by poet and former Greenlight bookseller Angel Nafis, Greenlight’s Poetry Salon welcomes locally and nationally celebrated poets for a powerful and moving evening of poetry and performance. For our triumphant return to in-person Salons, we welcomed Renia White and her collection Casual Conversation, alongside esteemed poet Aracel…

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S3, Ep. 7: Geoff Dyer & Sam Lipsyte (October 27, 2022) 55:07

1+ y ago55:07

55:07

When artists and athletes age, what happens to their work? Does it ripen or rot? Achieve a new serenity or succumb to an escalating torment? Acclaimed author of Out of Sheer Rage and “one of our greatest living critics” (New York) Geoff Dyer considers these questions in his newest book, The Last Days of Roger Federer, an extended meditation on late…

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Kyung-Sook Shin & Anton Hur (October 13, 2022) 1:02:56

1+ y ago1:02:56

1:02:56

Greenlight welcomed celebrated Korean author and Man Asian Literary Prize winner Kyung-sook Shin (Please Look After Mom) and acclaimed translator Anton Hur, who called in live from Seoul, Korea to grace our virtual stage. Celebrating their joint achievement, Violets—written by Shin, translated by Hur, and published by Feminist Press—Hur both interv…

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S3, Ep. 5: Alyssa Songsiridej & Julia Phillips 46:38

2y ago46:38

46:38

When the unnamed narrator of Alyssa Songsiridej’s debut novel Little Rabbit first meets a choreographer at an artists' residency in Maine, it's not a match. But when they run into each other a few months later, their encounter sets off a summer of expanding her own body's boundaries—her body learns to obediently follow his, and his desires quickly …

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S3, Ep. 4: Alejandro Varela & Rumaan Alam 56:37

2y ago56:37

56:37

Greenlight welcomed author Alejandro Varela to celebrate his debut novel, The Town of Babylon--named a Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by Literary Hub, Electric Literature, Buzzfeed, Lambda Literary, and more. Varela probes the intertwining of community and self and renders an intimate portrait of queer, racial, and class identity in this moving, pol…

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S3, Ep. 3: The Octavia Project & N.K. Jemisin 48:37

2y ago48:37

48:37

As we continue to grapple with uncertainty in our world, how can writers and creators build community and make an imprint? Whose voices get heard and how can we use craft to shape a new blueprint for the future? MacArthur Fellow and author of The City We Became N. K. Jemisin joined us virtually for a night of discussion and community in support of …

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S3, Ep. 2: Roger Reeves & A. Van Jordan 59:11

2y ago59:11

59:11

Acclaimed, Whiting Award-winning poet Roger Reeves probes the apocalypses and raptures of humanity—climate change, anti-Black racism, familial and erotic love, ecstasy and loss—in his second collection of poems, Best Barbarian. Roaming across the literary and social landscape, visiting with Beowulf’s Grendel and the jazz musician Alice Coltrane, re…

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S3, Ep. 1: Elaine Hsieh Chou & Larissa Pham 54:47

2y ago54:47

54:47

The Greenlight Bookstore Podcast kicks off its third season—though we remain far from the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re out of quarantine! One of our first successes in this new age of author events was the standing-room-only launch for Elaine Hsieh Chou’s acclaimed debut, Disorientation—an uproarious and bighearted story of a Taiwanese Ameri…

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Ep. QS107: Yanyi & Sandra Lim 53:52

2y ago53:52

53:52

We bid farewell to our “Quarantine Season” of podcasts as we navigate our way back to in-person author events at Greenlight Bookstore! For our virtual season’s swan song, we reprise award-winning poet Yanyi’s virtual launch event for DREAM OF THE DIVIDED FIELD, a collection on heartbreak and transitions, written with a piercing lyric ferocity. How …

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Ep. QS106: NoViolet Bulawayo & Novuyo Tshuma 57:08

2y ago57:08

57:08

In a virtual event co-presented with our friends at Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley, MA, award-winning author NoViolet Bulawayo joined us to launch GLORY, her “manifoldly clever, brilliant... satire with sharper teeth” (The NYT Book Review). Inspired by the unexpected fall by coup in November 2017 of Robert G. Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s president of nearl…

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Ep. QS105: Rebecca Mead & Jia Tolentino (June 30, 2022) 59:43

2y ago59:43

59:43

Celebrated New Yorker staff writer and author Rebecca Mead joined us virtually from across the pond to discuss her topical new memoir, Home/Land--a moving reflection on the complicated nature of home and homeland, and the heartache and adventure of leaving an adopted country in order to return to your native land. In conversation with fellow New Yo…

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Ep. QS104: Hawa Allan & Anjuli Raza Kolb (June 23, 2022) 58:52

2y ago58:52

58:52

Greenlight welcomed lawyer and critic Hawa Allan to discuss her prescient and timely debut book of nonfiction, Insurrection, a deeply researched and felt history and critique of the paradoxical state of black citizenship in the United States. Tracing the origins of the Insurrection Act of 1807 to our current moment, Allan reveals how the Act empowe…

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Ep. QS103: Valerie Hsiung & Ginger Ko (June 16, 2022) 58:22

2y ago58:22

58:22

Acclaimed and prolific local poet Valerie Hsiung, whose work pushes past the limits of genre and grammar, joined us virtually to present her fourth full-length collection, winner of the Colorado State University Poetry Center’s 2019 Open Book Prize. An assemblage of verse, prose poems, scenes, and performance scores, outside voices, please lives in…

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Ep. QS102: Paul Tran & Yanyi (June 9, 2022) 59:58

2y ago59:58

59:58

Paul Tran joined us virtually from lush, violet-lit quarters in Oakland for the virtual launch of their scintillating debut collection of poems, All the Flowers Kneeling. In a conversation with award-winning poet and critic Yanyi that both dug deeply into craft and cast its sights on the farthest horizons of becoming, they delved into the work of t…

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Ep. QS101: Sarah Manguso & Elizabeth McCracken 1:00:11

2y ago1:00:11

1:00:11

Sarah Manguso--award-winning author and one of the most acclaimed and genre-defying prose stylists working today—joined us virtually for the launch of her debut novel. At once an ungilded portrait of girlhood at the crossroads of history and social class as well as a vital confrontation with an all-American whiteness where the ice of emotional rest…

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Ep. QS100: Marlon James + Isaac Fitzgerald (May 26, 2022) 1:05:53

2y ago1:05:53

1:05:53

For our one-hundredth(!) podcast episode, we’re releasing a very special conversation recorded at our first offsite book launch of 2022 celebrating the second volume of Moon Witch, Spider King, award-winning author Marlon James’s Dark Star trilogy, his “African Game of Thrones”. In the NYT-bestselling first volume, Black Leopard, Red Wolf, Sogolon …

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Ep. QS99: Andrew Lipstein + Cara Blue Adams (May 19, 2022) 55:32

2y ago55:32

55:32

For our first foray into livestreamed events and our first event held in-store since March 2020, Greenlight welcomed our Brooklyn neighbor Andrew Lipstein for the launch of his much-anticipated debut novel, Last Resort—which features a scene set in our own Fort Greene store! In a thrilling, metafictional story of fame, fortune, and impossible choic…

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Interview - Mariame Kaba 43:56

2y ago43:56

43:56

Season 2 Finale. Kidada speaks with activist and organizer Mariame Kaba about the ways many of us practice abolition without realizing it, how ordinary people have the power to collectively free themselves, and why safety can only be found through community. They discuss how the prison industrial complex and the systems it encompasses do more harm …

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Ep. QS98: Grace Lavery + Elif Batuman (May 12, 2022) 1:03:58

2y ago1:03:58

1:03:58

Greenlight welcomed author, scholar, and activist Grace Lavery to our (virtual) stage for the launch of Please Miss: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Penis—a “memoir” like nothing you’ve ever read before. Part literary theory, part musical theater parody, part feminist sci-fi reboot, Please Miss was hailed by author Torrey Peters (Detransition, B…

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Reframing the Narrative? 53:58

2y ago53:58

53:58

African Americans couldn’t seize much universal freedom as the brick-and-mortar of Jim Crow walled them off from their rights. Still, race men and women fought. Following the death of three friends, instigated by the white press, Ida B. Wells committed herself to investigating and reporting the evils of lynching across the south, starting a newspap…

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Ep. QS97: Rachel Krantz + Jen Winston (May 5, 2022) 1:01:24

2y ago1:01:24

1:01:24

When Rachel Krantz met and fell for Adam, he told her that he was looking for a committed partnership—just one that did not include exclusivity. In her nonfiction debut, Open: An Uncensored Memoir of Love, Liberation, and Non-Monogamy, Krantz explores these questions with an unflinching eye and page-turning storytelling, tracing her search to under…

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Interview - Julia Craven 36:38

2y ago36:38

36:38

Kidada speaks with health reporter Julia Craven about health and wellness for African Americans, both historically and in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. They explore how health outcomes are influenced by systemic forces and not purely the result of the personal decisions people make on a daily basis, as well as the responsibilities of indivi…

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Ep. QS96: Bernardine Evaristo + Rumaan Alam (April 27, 2022) 56:14

2y ago56:14

56:14

Booker Prize-winning author Bernardine Evaristo (Girl, Woman, Other) graced our virtual stage from London for the U.S. launch of her new memoir Manifesto: On Never Giving Up. Manifesto offers readers an intimate and inspirational account of Evaristo’s life and career as she rebelled against the mainstream and fought bring her creative work into the…

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Dethroning Disease 50:10

2y ago50:10

50:10

Attendees of the 1914 “Fifty Years of Negro Health Improvement in Preparation for Efficiency” conference, with speakers including Booker T. Washington, heard staggering information about the Black population’s “health”, which was in crisis. Life expectancy for African Americans at the time was about 35 years. African Americans rallied public health…

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Ep. QS95: Colette Brooks + Jennifer Egan (April 21, 2022) 56:54

2y ago56:54

56:54

Acclaimed authors, Greenlight neighbors, and longtime friends Colette Brooks and Jennifer Egan (Manhattan Beach) joined us for a virtual conversation and launch for Colette’s newest book of nonfiction, Trapped in the Present Tense. In a lyrical and inventive blend of history, memoir, and visual essays, Brooks explores the mechanics and malleability…

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Interview - Saeed Jones 38:17

2y ago38:17

38:17

Kidada speaks with writer, poet and social commentator Saeed Jones about the many facets of Black masculinity, how it has been shaped and reshaped over the years, and the challenges that have arisen around cultural expectations for the type of Black man you should be in order to be a credit to the race. They dig into the role of white supremacy in …

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Ep. QS94: Leanne Brown + Hawa Hassan (April 13, 2022) 54:44

2y ago54:44

54:44

Leanne Brown’s wildly popular and NYT bestselling cookbook Good and Cheap: Eat Well on $4/Day showed us that kitchen skill and resourcefulness—not budget—are the keys to great food. Brown returned (virtually) to Greenlight for the launch of her new cookbook, Good Enough: A Cookbook: Embracing the Joys of Imperfection and Practicing Self-Care in the…

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Inside Harlem's Speakeasies 39:41

2+ y ago39:41

39:41

Black workers were expected to take on “respectable” employment in the early twentieth century, essentially a racist dog whistle to keep them in the dirtiest, most dangerous and low-paying jobs. While some Black people had the means to reject these types of jobs, most couldn’t afford to. But power was there to be seized if you were willing to break…

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Ep. QS93: Cynthia Dewi Oka + Jenny Zhang (April 6, 2022) 57:59

2+ y ago57:59

57:59

For Greenlight’s first poetry event of 2022, we welcomed Indonesian American poet Cynthia Dewi Oka and acclaimed poet and fiction writer Jenny Zhang (Sour Heart) to share, discuss, and celebrate Oka’s third collection, Fire Is Not a Country. Oka’s poems track how the energies of migration, exploitation, patriarchal violation, and political repressi…

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Interview - Jamelle Bouie 35:59

2+ y ago35:59

35:59

Kidada speaks with New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie about the legacies of discriminatory housing policies in the United States and their impact, primarily on Black and other marginalized communities, from the beginning of the nation to today, as well as how they might be addressed in the future. They examine the differences in how that discri…

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Ep. QS92: Leah Konen + Andrea Bartz (March 31, 2022) 58:18

2+ y ago58:18

58:18

Acclaimed YA author Leah Konen’s second novel for adults, The Perfect Escape, is a pacey, suspenseful, unforgettable thriller about a girls’ weekend in the Catskills turned deadly. For Greenlight’s first virtual author event of 2022, Konen joined us for a scintillating book launch and conversation with bestselling author and NYT journalist Andrea B…

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The Land of Milk and Honey 47:56

2+ y ago47:56

47:56

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, several million African Americans left the South for the North and West. They wanted to raise their kids in a place where they could live and work undisturbed by violence and out from under a racist social order. And California was advertised as the land of milk and honey. But, contrary to what they had be…

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Recommended Listening: Home. Made. 23:29

2+ y ago23:29

23:29

Today we're sharing an episode of Home. Made., a podcast that explores the meaning of home and what it can teach us about ourselves and each other. --- When Michael Atkins applied for a job as a teacher’s aid, he was offered a position as a part-time custodian. But he took it, because of a promise he made to his daughter: To be the father he never …

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