Podcasts: July 2008 Archives

Meghan O'Rourke is a poetry editor at The Paris Review, and a culture critic and advisory editor at Slate. This recording from our 2008 Seminar captures O'Rourke's crisp and elegant reading of several poems from her first collection, Halflife (2007), including "Peep-Show," "Sleep," "Descent," "Spectacular," "Inventing a Horse," "Halflife," "Troy," and "Hunt;" and two newer poems, "Ariadne" and "Grief."

From KWLS 2008: New Voices. (15:44) / 7.2 MB

To download, right-click here (Mac users: ctrl+click) and choose 'save as'

This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2008 Meghan O'Rourke. Used with generous permission from Meghan O'Rourke.

Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Díaz reads "Boyfriend," a short story from his 1997 collection, Drown.

I should've been careful with the weed. Most people it just fucks up. Me, it makes me sleepwalk. And wouldn't you know I woke up in the hallway of our building feeling my head had been been stepped on by my high school marching band. My ass would've been there all night if the folks in the apartment below hadn't been having themselves a big old fight at three in the morning. I was too fried to move, at least right away. Boyfriend was trying to snake girlfriend, saying he needed space, and she was like, "Motherfucker, I will give you all the space you need."

From KWLS 2008: New Voices. (9:14) / 4.23 MB

To download, right-click here (Mac users: ctrl+click) and choose 'save as'

This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2008 Junot Díaz. Used with generous permission from Junot Díaz.

Uzodinma Iweala reads from his critically acclaimed debut novel Beasts of No Nation, which tells the story of Agu, a child soldier fighting in a civil war in an unnamed west African country. In this section we are introduced to Agu, his friend Strika, Luftenant, and Commandante, as Agu kills for the first time.

Luftenant is saying don't think. Just let it happen. He is saying that the second you are stopping to think about it, your head is turning to the inside of rotten fruit. Commandante is saying it is like falling in love. You cannot be thinking about it. You are just having to do it, he is saying, and I am believing him. What else can I be doing?

From KWLS 2008: New Voices. (17:42) / 8.1 MB

To download, right-click here (Mac users: ctrl+click) and choose 'save as'

This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2008 Uzodinma Iweala. Used with generous permission from Uzodinma Iweala.

Kristen-Paige Madonia was the recipient of our inaugural Marianne Russo Scholarship, and will be a Writer in Residence at The Studios of Key West this October. In this recording from 2008, she reads her short story, "Cheap Red Meat," originally published in Pearl.

Every other Tuesday I buy groceries from the woman my husband is sleeping with. This is a new thing– knowing that he's doing the grocery checkout girl. But every week I cut along the printed dotted lines of the coupon advertisements, and paper-clip them to my shopping list on Tuesday, because Tuesday is the big red meat sale at Stuff Your Sack.

From KWLS 2008: New Voices. (11:40) / 5.1 MB

To download, right-click here (Mac users: ctrl+click) and choose 'save as'

This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2008 Kristen-Paige Madonia. Used with generous permission from Kristen-Paige Madonia.