Selected Prose

This week, I sit down with novelist, musician, and counter-terrorism expert Andy Oppenheimer. His novels include Fields of Orion: An Odyssey, and Fields of Orion II: The Mission. In early April, Andy will publish The Hunter’s Story, part three of the trilogy, which we discuss at length. 

Andy’s musical projects include Oppenheimer Analysis, Touching the Void, and Oppenheimer MkII, among other collaborations.

Find him on twitter @AOppenheimer235 and learn more about him and his life's work at www.andyoppenheimer.com.

Unity reads Angel for the Selected Prose Reading Series. Unity is a writer and artist who lives in upstate New York with many feral cats and alter egos.

Primo Updoo by Justin Brooks is a hilarious and alarming journey through an imminent future of Instagram faces, made-to-order cosmetic surgeries, and meme-based social status. 

Justin Brooks is a writer and artist from Brooklyn, NY. Find this story at Waxing and Waning, and his artwork @justinbrooks_art on Instagram. 

*Episode artwork by Yaroslav Danylchenko

Timi Sanni is an award-winning writer, poet, literary prodigy, and biochemistry student from Lagos, Nigeria. His work has appeared in X-R-A-Y, Palette, Fitrah Review, and elsewhere. 

Enjoy the episode. And if you enjoy our podcast, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts and tell us all your thoughts and dirty secrets. 

Timi Sanni reads a work of flash fiction titled Like Foreign Things That Take The Name Of Love. This piece was originally published by Art Most Terrific. The story is posted below:

Mama tucks me between her skinny legs as she plaits my hair. She pulls the cutting comb through my hair and parts it with both hands. Then she begins to weave. Her hands are so adept at weaving beautiful, intricate patterns that the villagers wonder why she hasn’t yet woven a rainbow of our lives.

Mama doesn’t read the bible but as her thin fingers move through my hair working their magic, she says by the way of a soliloquy, “A kiss doesn’t always translate to love, Judas taught this lesson so well.”

I scrunch my nose in disagreement, because this is what a kiss reminds me of: the bell, closing hours in the village primary school, the tree behind our classroom, a boy that had magic for dimples and glory for lips, stolen moments under the watch of a distant sky, the lub-dub of two hearts like bass drums, the music that plays in the silence as two bodies meet and fill the void between, joy, bliss, unrefined ecstasy.

But here is mama saying a kiss doesn’t always translate to love. I douse the fire raging within me, the urge to scream, to tell her of Joshua, to tell her what she doesn’t know of love and sit still as her hands weave through my hair.

But then, there’s a nagging feeling that mother might be right.

I mean, like papa who suddenly disappeared from the village one night, eight years ago, Joshua too gave his body to Lagos and hasn’t been home in eight months. Like papa who before his disappearance, found courage within a gin bottle one night and unleashed his fury on all his troubles (mistaking them for me and mama), Joshua too betrayed his softness one night and struck me across the face when I laughed and refused to walk him to the river, because mama was waiting for me at home and because I knew what the boys did with the girls at the river at night.

Maybe in some ways, Joshua is like papa but unlike papa there are things he knows of love. Like the time I fell and hurt my leg at school and he carried on his back all the way home. Like the night before he left when we hugged under the moonlight and he gave me a beautiful, blue seashell promising to be back before long.

In the day, I wear this shell as a pendant and at night, my dreams find the shell beneath my pillow as I rumple the bedsheet, calling to Joshua.

Mama yanks a tassel of my hair and I yelp. She tucks me tighter between her legs. “A kiss doesn’t always translate to love,” I think. “But Joshua is not Judas, is he?”

Hello, everyone.

It’s February 16, 2021, we’re still inside, still listening to podcasts to help pass the time.

We're thrilled about this episode. Jon and Liz interview author Avner Landes. His upcoming book, Meiselman: The Lean Years, is really something special. Hilarious, heartwarming, beautifully written. It’s something any of us writers dream of creating.

Meiselman is due in March, and it’s from Tortoise Books. 

As for Avner, he earned his M.F.A. from Columbia University and works as a ghostwriter. He lives near Tel Aviv with his wife and kids. Meiselman is his debut novel.

Enjoy the episode. And if you enjoy our podcast, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts and tell us all your thoughts (+ dirty secrets).

(***Music by Doctor Dreamchip***)

David Leo Rice reads his short story Sanity House, originally published in Ligeia Magazine. David's upcoming story collection, Drifter Stories, will be published by 11:11 Press in June 2021. David's latest novel, A Room In Dodge City: Vol 2, was recently published by Alternating Current Press. Brian Evenson calls it: "The Künstlerroman on acid, a heady investigation of creation, originality, and collapse.” 

Listen to our interview with David here.

In this episode, I chat with Delicious Tacos (delicioustacos.com / twitter: @delicious_tacos). He's the author of the outstanding novel Finally, Some Good News, as well as story collections The Pussy, Savage Spear of the Unicorn, and Hot Naked Kittens. He's also working on his second novel, titled True Love, which we discuss in the episode.  Other topics include: translating from Greek and Latin the gospels, Sappho, and some Catullus, Bumble and Hinge during COVID and otherwise, writing/existing in quarantine, Yukio Mishima, Sam Pink, self-publishing, alt-birdwatching, writers from New York who write about New York, attempting to enter ISIS-held territory, God, clearing Gavin Newsom's name, Michel Houllebecq, Bukowski, Joan Didion,  Kurt Vonnegut, and a hell of a lot more.  If you enjoy the episode, please buy some Delicious Tacos books from his Amazon store (Holiday Sale! 60% off!) and leave us a review on iTunes.  Happy holidays everyone. 

Jon and Liz sit down with Sam Pink to discuss his new book Ice Cream Man and Other Stories, and his other books, which are all awesome. We also discuss how everyone needs some rat in them, character development and finding the singular quality in others, the pros and cons of self publishing, working in restaurants, Mary Robison's Why Did I Ever, comedy and how to write funny, writers who complain about writing, Sam's approach to revision, why calling books nihilistic is dumb, and a hell of a lot more.  

This week, Selected Prose welcomes a new co-host, Liz Ayre. Liz is a talented fiction writer from LA and an MFA student in the Creative Writing Program at NYU. Thrilled to have her on board!

Jon and Liz talk at length with author Elle Nash. Elle is the author of the novel Animals Eat Each Other (Dzanc Books), which was featured in the The Oprah Magazine and received wide acclaim. In 2021,  Elle will release a short story collection titled Nudes. Her stories and essays have appeared in Guernica, The Nervous Breakdown, Literary Hub, The Fanzine, Volume 1 Brooklyn, New York Tyrant and elsewhere. She is a founding editor of Witch Craft Magazine and a fiction editor at Hobart Pulp.

Elle zoomed in from Colorado Springs to discuss her novel, her experiences teaching writing workshops, transgressive fiction, Dennis Cooper, including the internet in your fiction, Satanism, the internet before social media, Salad Fingers, excising laziness from your work, writing what you feel, and a hell of a lot more.

***Elle will be teaching a writing/editing workshop from December 1 - December 12. It's called Knife Party. Go to www.ellenash.net or click the hyperlink and ENROLL NOW!***