Best Alan Rodriguez Podcasts (2024)

1
Naomi Westerman, "Happy Death Club: Essays on Death, Grief, and Bereavement Across Cultures" (404 Inklings, 2024) 52:26

12m ago52:26

52:26

Playwright Naomi Westerman was an anthropology graduate student studying death rituals around the world when her whole family died, turning the end of lives from an academic pursuit into something deeply personal. She became fascinated by the concept of loss and grief, the multiple ways we experience it across cultures, history, and art. Happy Deat…

1
A. J. Rodriguez, "Papel Picado," The Common Magazine (2024) 47:45

15m ago47:45

47:45

A. J. Rodriguez speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about his story “Papel Picado,” which appears in The Common’s most recent issue. A.J. talks about the process of writing and revising this story, which explores a fraught moment in the life of a Latino high schooler struggling under the pressures of family, friendship, and expectation in Albuq…

1
"Alaska Quarterly Review" Magazine: A Discussion with Ronald Spatz 40:55

27m ago40:55

40:55

Ronald Spatz is the editor-in-chief and co-founding editor of Alaska Quarterly Review. A formal National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, Mr. Spatz has been recognized with Alaska State Governor’s Awards in Humanities and the Arts. He is currently a full professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, where he also s…

1
Episode 77: On Contemporary Christian Music w/Leah Payne & Gregory Alan Thornbury 47:40

2d ago47:40

47:40

Joel hosted a conversation with two first-time podcast guests all about 'CCM' or 'Contemporary Christian Music.' They explore various cultural aspects of 'CCM,' as well as the reality of profit-driven corporate influence. Larry Norman figures prominently in their discussion, and Joel reflects a bit on his experience as a 90s kid immersed in this in…

1
Christian J. Collier, "Greater Ghost" (Four Way Books, 2024) 1:01:16

44m ago1:01:16

1:01:16

In Christian Collier's debut poetry collection, Greater Ghost (Four Way Books, 2024), this extraordinary Black Southern poet precisely stitches the sutures of grief and gratitude together over our wounds. These pages move between elegies for private hauntings and public ones, the visceral bereavement of a miscarriage alongside the murder of a famil…

1
Kendra Sullivan, "Reps" (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2024) 57:29

2h ago57:29

57:29

Kendra Sullivan's latest book of poetry, Reps (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2024), cycles through a series of operational exercises that gradually enable her to narrate an attempted escape from the trappings of narrativity—plot, character, chronology, and the promise of a probable future issuing forth from a stable past. From deep within a narrowly constr…

1
Anthony Di Renzo, "Pasquinades: Essays from Rome's Famous Talking Statue" (Cayuga Lake Books, 2023) 43:21

4h ago43:21

43:21

Anthony Di Renzo's Pasquinades: Essays from Rome's Famous Talking Statue (Cayuga Lake Books, 2023) is the most audacious guide to Rome you will ever read. Pasquino, the city’s witty talking statue, will introduce you to the gallant heroes and grotesque villains, humble peddlers and flamboyant nobles, whores and saints and movie stars who have reign…

1
"Prairie Schooner" Magazine: A Discussion with John Kuligowski and Zainab Omaki 28:42

33m ago28:42

28:42

John Kuligowski is a Nonfiction Assistant Editor at Prairie Schooner and also currently a PhD student in English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He worked as an assistant editor for volumes 392 and 394 of the Dictionary of Literary Biography and has published in a number of venues both online and in print. Zainab Omaki is likewise a Nonficti…

1
The "Massachusetts Review" Magazine: A Discussion with Jim Hicks and Shailja Patel 34:51

17d ago34:51

34:51

Jim Hicks is the Executive Editor of the Massachusetts Review, a Senior Lecturer in Comparative Literature at UMass Amherst, and a translator of literature from Italian, French, Spanish, and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian. His latest book is Lessons from Sarajevo: A War Stories Primer. Shailja Patel is the Public Affairs Editor of the Massachusetts Revie…

1
Eve J. Chung, "Daughters of Shandong" (Berkley Books, 2024) 38:31

21d ago38:31

38:31

Daughters of Shandong (Berkley Books, 2024), the author’s first and based on the life of her grandmother, follows the fortunes of a mother and three daughters abandoned by their wealthy family in soon-to-be Communist China. It is 1948, and Chairman Mao’s forces have moved into Shandong Province, driving the Nationalist Army into retreat. Although t…

1
Alan Lightman, "Einstein's Dreams" (Vintage, 1992) 55:06

22d ago55:06

55:06

Einstein’s Dreams (Vintage, 1992) by Alan Lightman, set in Albert Einstein’s “miracle year” of 1905, is a novel about the cultural interconnection of time, relativity and life. As the young genius creates his theory of relativity, in a series of dreams, he imagines other worlds, each with a different conceptualization of time. In one, time is circu…

1
Nat Reeve, "Nettleblack" (Cipher Press, 2022) 49:33

24d ago49:33

49:33

1893. Henry Nettleblack has to act fast or she’ll be married off by her elder sister. But leaving the safety of her wealthy life isn’t as simple as she thought. Ambushed, robbed, and then saved by a mysterious organisation – part detective agency, part neighbourhood watch – a desperate Henry disguises herself and enlists. Sent out to investigate a …

1
Iris Mwanza, "The Lions' Den" (Graydon House, 2024) 40:21

25d ago40:21

40:21

A missing boy. A corrupt system. A case that could change everything... When young queer dancer Wilbess "Bessy" Mulenga is arrested by corrupt police, fresh-from-the-village rookie lawyer Grace Zulu takes up his cause in her first pro bono case. Presented with a freshly beaten client, Grace protests to the police and gets barred from accessing Bess…

1
Patrick Colm Hogan, "A People Without Shame" (Blackwater Press, 2024) 1:03:22

26d ago1:03:22

1:03:22

Somota is society divided by change, and by memories. When A. arrives in the protectorate shortly after the first world war, he is unsure of what to expect. Employed by the government as a linguistic anthropologist, he is tasked with documenting the benefits of the new order and reporting them to the Reverend G. But what are these benefits? In his …

1
Sorayya Khan, "We Take Our Cities with Us: A Memoir" (Ohio State UP, 2022) 58:12

1M ago58:12

58:12

Today’s book is: We Take Our Cities With Us (Ohio State UP, 2022), by Sorayya Khan. After her mother’s death, Sorayya Khan confronts her grief by revisiting their relationship, her parents’ lives, and her own Pakistani-Dutch heritage in a multicultural memoir that unfolds over seven cities and three continents. We Take Our Cities with Us ushers us …

1
Graham McNeill, "Horus Heresy - False Gods" (Games Workshop, 2014) 31:39

1M ago31:39

31:39

For years, fans have been clamoring for novels about the Horus Heresy - the bloody civil war that set Space Marine against Space Marine and nearly spelled the end of mankind at the hands of the traitor Horus. False Gods takes the epic story onwards as Horus struggles to keep his armies in line and the seeds of his downfall are sown. Join us as we s…

1
Molly Giles, "Life Span" (WTAW Press, 2024) 24:33

1M ago24:33

24:33

Molly Giles remembers when her father came back after WWII in 1945. Her memoir, Life Span (WTAW Press, 2024) opens when she is three years old, sitting in the front seat of a moving van as her father drives from San Francisco to their new home in Sausalito. Well-known editor and author of four story-collections and two novels, Giles referenced the …

1
Dana Elmendorf, "In the Hour of Crows" (Mira Books, 2024) 35:32

1M ago35:32

35:32

Dana Elmendorf’s novel In The Hour of Crows (Mira Books, 2024) takes place in small town Appalachia and follows Weatherly Opal Wilder, a young woman with the ability to talk death out of the dying. Our story begins shortly after the death of her cousin, Adaire, as Weatherly struggles to find justice for her cousin and to navigate small town politic…

1
Emma Copley Eisenberg, "Housemates" (Hogarth, 2024) 35:20

1M ago35:20

35:20

Today I talked to Emma Copley Eisenberg's novel Housemates (Hogarth, 2024). After Bernie’s former photography professor, the renowned yet tarnished Daniel Dunn, dies and leaves her a complicated inheritance, Leah volunteers to accompany Bernie to his home in rural Pennsylvania, turning the jaunt into a road trip with an ambitious mission: to docume…

1
Escape Velocity: Sarah Manguso in Conversation with Tess McNulty (EH) 50:01

1M ago50:01

50:01

What’s the truth and what’s a lie? What’s a memoir, what’s a novel, and what if both are just a series of “prose blocks”? This conversation between Sarah Manguso and Tess McNulty takes up questions of writing and veracity, trauma and memory. Sarah Manguso is the author of nine books, including three memoirs. Her first novel, Very Cold People, was n…

1
Joanna Lowell, "A Shore Thing" (Berkley Books, 2024) 45:57

1M ago45:57

45:57

Joanna Lowell is known for her witty historical romances set in late Victorian England, a period both undergoing and resisting dramatic social change. Her previous novels in this series pair a young artist from the East End with her tortured muse, a duke; a runaway duchess with an admirably calm young man convinced she is a plant lover like himself…

1
Rachel Khong, "Real Americans" (Knopf, 2024) 46:47

1M ago46:47

46:47

Real Americans (Knopf, 2024) begins on the precipice of Y2K in New York City, when twenty-two-year-old Lily Chen, an unpaid intern at a slick media company, meets Matthew. Matthew is everything Lily is not: easygoing and effortlessly attractive, a native East Coaster, and, most notably, heir to a vast pharmaceutical empire. Lily couldn't be more di…

1
C. J. Spataro, "More Strange Than True" (Sagging Meniscus Press, 2024) 42:00

1M ago42:00

42:00

Award winning author and short fiction writer, C. J. Spataro's debut novel, More Strange Than True (Sagging Meniscus Press, 2024) takes us in to a world of faeries and what happens when wishes do come true. After an epically shitty day, Jewell Jamieson unknowingly eats a magic-spiked meal and happens also to make a certain wish-and that's why she a…

1
"Conjunctions" Magazine: A Discussion with Bradford Morrow 35:32

2M ago35:32

35:32

Bradford Morrow is an American novelist, editor, essayist, poet, and children’s book author. A professor of literature and Bard Center Fellow at Bard College, he is the founding editor of Conjunctions literary magazine. In 2020, he published The Forger’s Daughter, which the New York Times named a “Ten Best Crime Novels of 2020 selection.” His tenth…

1
Kimberly King Parsons, "We Were the Universe" (Knopf, 2024) 37:33

2M ago37:33

37:33

The trip was supposed to be fun. When Kit's best friend gets dumped by his boyfriend, he begs her to ditch her family responsibilities for an idyllic weekend in the Montana mountains. They'll soak in hot springs, then sneak a vape into a dive bar and drink too much, like old times. Instead, their getaway only reminds Kit of everything she's lost la…

1
Katherine Mezzacappa, "The Maiden of Florence" (Fairlight Books, 2024) 26:15

2M ago26:15

26:15

Giulia is an orphan who has been cloistered since she was a baby. In 1584, the powerful Medici family demands a test of virility from the Grand Duke of Mantua before his marriage to Eleanora de Medici. Giulia, who knows nothing about the world of men, is offered a dowry and husband in exchange for one night with the prince. She doesn’t know what th…

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