Katherine Damm talks about her story, "The Happiest Day of Your Life." First, be sure to read the story from The Iowa Review. There will be spoilers!

Deb Olin Unferth discusses her short story, "Wait Till You See Me Dance" with Kelly Fordon

I spoke with Ananda Lima about her story, Antropófaga! Make sure you read it before you listen.

Enjoy the rest of your summer, and happy listening!

Kelly

Ananda Lima is the author of Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil (Tor Books, 2024) and Mother/land (Black Lawrence Press, 2021), winner of the Hudson Prize. Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Poets.org, Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, and elsewhere, and is forthcoming in Ghosts of Where We Are From, an anthology of dark fiction by Latin American authors, edited by Cynthia Pelayo (Primer Sueño/Atria Books). She is a Contributing Editor at Poets & Writers and Program Curator at StoryStudio, Chicago. Lima was a mentor at the NYFA Immigrant Artist Program and the inaugural Latinx-in-Publishing WIP Fellow, sponsored by Macmillan Publishers. She has an MA in Linguistics (UCLA) and an MFA in Creative Writing (Rutgers-Newark). Craft, her fiction debut, was longlisted for the ALA Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and received starred reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and Library Journal. The New York Times describes it as “a remarkable debut that announces the arrival of a towering talent in speculative fiction.” Originally from Brazil, she lives in Chicago and New York. Purchase the book here.

Before listening to my interview with Christie Hodgen, please read her story, “Rich Strike,” because the interview is full of spoilers!

The story is available for free here on the Story website, thanks to Michael Nye. Please consider subscribing to Story and supporting great literature here.

Congratulations to Christie for winning a Pushcart Prize for this story as well.

If you would like to read my annotation of the story and some background on the books discussed during our interview, please consider becoming a paid subscriber and accessing my annotation in the archives here.

The interview is available for free here on Substack and Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I can’t wait to unpack this story with you!

Cheers,

Kelly

P.S.: I gave Christie Hodgen’s novel, Elegies for the Brokenhearted, to at least eight people one Christmas (I feel like it was more than that, but eight—at least—that I can track). It’s one of my all-time favorites. You can purchase a copy here.

Bio: Christie Hodgen’s most recent novel, Boy Meets Girl, won the 2020 AWP Prize for the Novel. Her other books include Elegies for the Brokenhearted, hailed by The New York Times Book Review as “the literary equivalent of a hand grenade,” as well as Hello, I Must Be Going and A Jeweler’s Eye for Flaw.

Hodgen has published short stories and essays in dozens of literary journals and anthologies. Her work has received several awards, including two Pushcart Prizes, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship. She lives in Kansas City and is the editor of New Letters magazine.

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I hope you enjoy this episode. If you do, please consider joining me as a yearly subscriber and/or helping to sponsor LDAS with a small donation. I would love to produce more content, but I need funds to do that. LDAS is entirely listener-supported, which allows us the freedom to create content of our choosing, and I hope to keep it that way.

**Thanks also to our audio engineer, Elliot Bancel!**

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On June 15th, I will be speaking with Eli Sparkman about his flash fiction (see the archive here for his stories.)

On July 1st, I’ll be speaking with Erika Krouse about her story, “Jude,” first published in The Colorado Review and later in her phenomenal short story collection, Save Me, Stranger. Caitlin Horrocks will join me for the interview, and after we discuss Jude, we will talk about Caitlin’s story, “Better Not Tell You Now,” from swamp pink.

My guest today is Desiree Cooper, the 2015 Kresge Artist Fellow. Cooper is a former attorney. She is also a Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist and much-beloved community activist. Originally from Virginia, she currently lives in Virginia. BUT she lived in Detroit for decades and will always be an honorary Detroiter!

She is much beloved here, and I am honored to call her my friend.

Today’s podcast includes four stories from her award-winning flash fiction collection, Know the Mother. Cooper’s fiction, poetry and essays have appeared in The New York Times, 2023 Flash Fiction America, The Best Small Fictions 2018, Callaloo, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Rumpus, River Teeth, and Best African American Fiction 2010, among other publications.

This podcast was recorded at Book Suey, a fabulous cooperatively owned bookstore in Hamtramck, Michigan. My fellow moderator was member-owner Eli Sparkman.

Eli is the Detroit Program and Volunteer Coordinator for 826michigan, a youth writing organization. He is a Teaching Artist for The Moth and a Memoir Reader for Split Lip Magazine. He graduated from Northern Michigan University’s MFA program, where he was a Flash Fiction Editor for Passages North.

And many many thanks to Vincent James Perrone, who edited this audio podcast—the first one I’ve hosted with a live audience. Vincent is also a writer from Detroit. He’s the author of the poetry collection, Starving Romantic. He is currently based in Charlottesville, VA, where he is pursuing an MFA at the University of Virginia.

I hope you enjoy this episode and if you do, please consider joining me as a yearly member of the Substack and/or helping to sponsor LDAS with a small donation. I would love to produce more content, but I need funds to do that. LDAS is entirely listener-supported, which allows us the freedom to create content of our choosing, and I hope to keep it that way.

I appreciate your support.

And now for the show!