Thresholds

Thresholds is happy to introduce "Borrowed & Returned," a new podcast from the Brooklyn Public Library about the books that have changed America. This episode was made in partnership between Borrowed & Returned and Thresholds. You can hear the whole interview with Ayana Elizabeth Johnson in our feed. Episode description: When Silent Spring came out in 1962, it was an instant best-seller and led to the establishment of the EPA, as well as the ban of harmful pesticides such as DDT. But Rachel Carson’s seminal work also shifted our way of thinking about nature. For the first time, the environment was not just something out there that could be tracked and measured, but something that lived inside all of us. Hear more of Borrowed & Returned at https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jordan sits down with marine biologist, writer, and climate advocate Ayana Johnson to talk about her mission to fight climate fatalism, her love of Rachel Carson, and her skepticism of the impulse to look for "hope" in the face of climate change -- as opposed to possibility, or joy. Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson is a marine biologist, policy expert, writer, and teacher working to help create the best possible climate future. She is co-founder of Urban Ocean Lab, a think tank for the future of coastal cities, and is the Roux Distinguished Scholar at Bowdoin College. She authored The New York Times bestseller What If We Get it Right?: Visions of Climate Futures. Previously, she co-edited the climate anthology All We Can Save, co-founded The All We Can Save Project, and co-created and co-hosted the Spotify/Gimlet climate solutions podcast How to Save a Planet. She also co-authored the Blue New Deal, a roadmap for including the ocean in climate policy. Previously, as executive director of the Waitt Institute, she co-founded the Blue Halo Initiative and led the Caribbean’s first successful island-wide ocean zoning effort. Early in her career, she developed U.S. federal ocean policy at the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jordan sits down with Claire Vaye Watkins to talk about how the grief over her mother's death diffused into a homesickness for the landscape of the Mojave Desert, where she grew up, and the way that that singular landscape then formed her own writing style, which the New Yorker dubbed "Nevada Gothic." They also talk about postpartum depression, Watkins' autofiction novel I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness, and hauntings. Claire Vaye Watkins was one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” and one of Granta's "Best Young American Novelists." She is the author of I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness, Gold Fame Citrus and Battleborn, which won the Story Prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize, New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award, the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Silver Pen Award from the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame. A Guggenheim Fellow, Watkins is also the co-director of the Mojave School, a free creative writing workshop for teenagers in rural Nevada. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, Jordan sits down with the "queen of Latin American gothic horror," Mariana Enriquez, to talk about the manuscript she burned and how it led her to search for a mode of horror writing that was drawn from her own lived experiences of terror. Mentioned: Jorge Luis Borges, Argentina's military dictatorship of 1976 to 1983, gravestones as monuments, Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave. Mariana Enriquez is a writer based in Buenos Aires. She has published in English the novel Our Share of Night and three story collections, A Sunny Place for Shady People, Things We Lost in the Fire, and The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, which was a finalist for the International Booker Prize, the Kirkus Prize, the Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Fiction. Her most recent book is a work of nonfiction: Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jordan sits down to talk with Miriam Toews about her new book, A Truce That Is Not Peace, her first nonfiction book, and the events that inspired it: the death by suicide of her father and then, later, her sister. They talk about the long periods of silence her father and sister both went through when they were alive, and how Toews' own persistent need to "arrange sentences" pushes back against their silences. Also discussed: grandkids, the whipsaw between horror and hilarity in her work, and the Mennonite community in which she was raised. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jordan sits down with Renee Gladman to talk about prose architecture, Henry James, walking in cities, and mushrooms. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nicholson Baker sits down with Jordan to discuss writing about the unsung pleasures and details of the world-- things like the way your mother cuts up a banana, or the advertisements in your favorite magazine. Things that "live in this between area of noticing, they're part of the background of life." Mentioned in the episode: Nicholson Baker has written seventeen books, including The Mezzanine, Vox, Human Smoke, The Anthologist, and Baseless—also an art book, The World on Sunday, in collaboration with his wife Margaret Brentano. Several of his books have been New York Times bestsellers, and he has won a National Book Critics Circle Award, a James Madison Freedom of Information Award, a Guggenheim fellowship, and the Herman Hesse Prize. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sarah Aziza sits down with Jordan to talk about the eating disorder that almost took her life in 2019, and the search into her family's history in Palestine that she undertook in a bid for her own survival. Mentioned in the episode: the Nakbatransgenerational traumaCruising Utopiaghurba Sarah Aziza is a Palestinian American writer, translator, and artist with roots in ‘Ibdis and Deir al-Balah, Gaza. She is the author of The Hollow Half, a genre-bending work of memoir, lyricism, and oral history exploring the intertwined legacies of diaspora, colonialism, and the American dream. Her award-winning journalism, poetry, essays, and experimental nonfiction have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Best American Essays, The Baffler, Harper’s Magazine, Mizna, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and The Nation, among other publications. Previously a Fulbright fellow in Jordan, she is the recipient of numerous Pulitzer Center grants for Crisis Reporting, a 2022 resident at Tin House Writer’s Workshop, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and a 2023 Margins Fellow at the Asian American Writers Workshop. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lisa Ko sits down with Jordan to talk about the daily journaling practice that she started at age five, and the period of creative crisis between her first and second novels when she began methodically destroying every journal she'd ever kept. Mentioned in the episode: Lisa Ko is the author of the new novel Memory Piece and the nationally bestselling novel The Leavers, which was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction and the PEN/Hemingway Award, and winner of the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction. Ko’s writing has appeared in Best American Short Stories, McSweeney’s, and The Believer. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jordan sits down to talk with Sabrina Imbler, author of How Far the Light Reaches, about writing the non-human world, leaving the world of legacy media, and how they've learned from the deep sea --and from their colleagues-- about the power of collectivity. Mentioned in the episode: uncharismatic microfaunaessay on salps and queer collectivity Sabrina Imbler is a staff writer at Defector, a worker-owned site, where they cover creatures and the natural world. Their first full-length book, How Far the Light Reaches, won a Los Angeles Times book prize in science and technology. Their chapbook Dyke (geology), was published by Black Lawrence Press, and was selected for the National Book Foundation Science + Literature Program. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, Jordan sits down to talk with Maya Binyam, author of the novel Hangman,about a near-drowning that changed her life. Maya Binyam is the author of Hangman, which was named a 2024 National Book Foundation “5 under 35” honoree, received the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize, the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, and the Dublin Literary Award. She is the recipient of the 2025 Bard Fiction Prize. Her work has appeared in the Paris Review, theNew Yorker,Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere. She is an advisory editor of theParis Review. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we're sharing a live conversation between Jordan and Carvell Wallace, recorded last year at P&T Knitwear in New York. They talk about his new memoir, Another Word for Love, a moment of real peril from his childhood, and the long process that followed for him of learning to embrace vulnerability, connection, and his own writing voice. Carvell Wallace is a writer and podcaster who has contributed to The New Yorker, GQ, New York Times Magazine, Pitchfork, MTV News, and Al Jazeera. His debut memoir, Another Word For Love (MCD, 2024), explores his life, identity, and love through stories of family, friendship, and culture and is a 2024 Kirkus Finalist in Nonfiction. He was a 2019 Peabody Award nominee, a 2022 National Magazine Award Finalist, a 2023 winner of the Mosaic Prize in Journalism, and a 2025 UCross Fellow. He lives in Oakland. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, Jordan sits down to talk with Lidia Yuknavitch about menopause, where stories lodge in our bodies, having a creative process that takes the shape of an ocean wave, and more. Lidia Yuknavitch is the National Bestselling author of four novels: Thrust, The Book of Joan, Dora: A Headcase, and The Small Backs of Children, winner of the 2016 Oregon Book Awards Ken Kesey Award for Fiction as well as the OBA Reader's Choice Award. She has also published a critical book on war and narrative, Allegories Of Violence (Routledge). The Misfit's Manifesto, a book based on her recent TED Talk, was published by TED Books in 2017. Verge, a collection of short fiction, was released in 2020. Her widely acclaimed memoir The Chronology of Water was a finalist for a PEN Center USA award for creative nonfiction and winner of a PNBA Award and the Oregon Book Award Reader's Choice. Her newest memoir, Reading the Waves, was published by Riverhead books in 2025. She is a very good swimmer. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we bring you a live interview with Garth Greenwell, conducted in October 2024 at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn. Garth talks about growing up in Kentucky assuming that he would die young, the teacher who gave him a path toward being an artist, and the doggedness with which he has pursued his aesthetic practices (in both music and literature) ever since. Mentioned: Garth's new novel, Small Rain (FSG 2024) Frank Bidart Benjamin Britten Così Fan Tutte The HIV/AIDS crisis Garth Greenwell is the author of What Belongs to You, which won the British Book Award for Debut of the Year, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was a finalist for six other awards, including the PEN/Faulkner Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His second book of fiction, Cleanness, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and Cleanness was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2020, a New York Times Critics Top 10 book of the year, and a Best Book of the year by the New Yorker, TIME, NPR, the BBC, and over thirty other publications. A new novel, Small Rain, is now out from FSG. He is the recipient of many honors for his work, including a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship and the 2021 Vursell Award for prose style from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has taught at the Iowa Writers Workshop, Grinnell College, the University of Mississippi, Princeton, and NYU. He writes regularly about literature, film, art and music for his Substack, To a Green Thought. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're revisiting our 2021 interview with the poet Jericho Brown, who this week was named a MacArthur Fellow-- one of the highest honors in the arts and humanities. He and Jordan talk about the great mystery of why we desire the things we desire; about oration and the poets he read and memorized as part of his own becoming; mitigating our impulses toward violence with tenderness, and more. Jericho Brown is author of the The Tradition (Copper Canyon 2019), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and he is the winner of the Whiting Award. Brown’s first book, Please (New Issues 2008), won the American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament (Copper Canyon 2014), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. His third collection, The Tradition won the Paterson Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. His poems have appeared in The Bennington Review, Buzzfeed, Fence, jubilat, The New Republic, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, TIME magazine, and several volumes of The Best American Poetry. He is the director of the Creative Writing Program and a professor at Emory University. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, Jordan talks to the novelist Sigrid Nunez about her youthful preoccupation with mimicking the prose of Virginia Woolf, the step-by-step intuitive way she writes prose now, and the best way to make overnight oats. Sigrid Nunez has published nine novels, including A Feather on the Breath of God, The Last of Her Kind, The Friend, What Are You Going Through, and, most recently, The Vulnerables. Nunez is also the author of Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag. The Friend, a New York Times bestseller, won the 2018 National Book Award and was a finalist for the 2019 Simpson/Joyce Carol Oates Prize. In 2024, The New York Times listed The Friend among the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. The Friend has been adapted for film by directors David Siegel and Scott McGehee (2024). What Are You Going Through has been adapted for a film directed by Pedro Almodóvar, The Room Next Door (2024). Nunez’s other honors and awards include a Whiting Award, a Berlin Prize Fellowship, the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award, the Rome Prize in Literature, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jordan chats with Sofia Samatar (The Practice, The Horizon, and the Chain and Opacities) about having two books out this year, doing everything twice (once in non-fiction, once in fiction), and her growing sense of an ongoing overarching project to her work. MENTIONED: A Stranger in OlondriaMonster PortraitsThe White MosqueTender: Stories ToneQuicksandSeasonal Associate Sofia Samatar is a writer of fiction and nonfiction, including the memoir The White Mosque, a PEN/Jean Stein Award finalist. Her works range from the award-winning epic fantasy A Stranger in Olondria to Opacities, a nonfiction book about writing, publishing, and friendship. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jordan chats with Emma Copley Eisenberg (Housemates) about a ghostly encounter that led to her new novel, the opposing worldviews of Grace Paley and Ottessa Moshfegh, and the choice to make art in difficult times. MENTIONED: Jazz Fleishman is in TroubleAmerican PastoralTerrace Story"Why I Write" Emma Copley Eisenberg is the author of the nationally bestselling novel Housemates and the narrative nonfiction book The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia, which was named a New York Times Notable Book and was nominated for an Edgar Award, a Lambda Literary Award, and an Anthony Award, among other honors. Her fiction has appeared in Granta, McSweeney’s, VQR, American Short Fiction, and other publications. Raised in New York City, she lives in Philadelphia, where she co-founded Blue Stoop, a community hub for the literary arts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Shades on, sleeves up—it's summertime and we're back! This week, Jordan talks with Amy Lin, author of Here After, about grief, the sudden loss of her husband, miracles, and her family's history with thin places. Amy Lin lives in Calgary, Canada where there are two seasons: winter and road construction. She completed her MFA at Warren Wilson College and holds BAs in English Literature and Education. Her work has been published in places such as Ploughshares and she has been awarded residencies from Yaddo and Casa Comala. She writes the Substack At The Bottom Of Everything where she wonders: how do we live with anything? Here After is her first book. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is a re-airing of our 2021 episode with the poet and bestselling essayist Aimee Nezhukumatathil. We're celebrating the release of her new collection, BITE BY BITE: NOURISHMENTS AND JAMBOREES. Come for the new intro about pizza on the beach, stay for Aimee's reflections on everything from champion trees to 80s-era Madonna to what society tells us about who "gets to" be comfortable in nature. Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of the New York Times best-selling illustrated collection of nature essays and Kirkus Prize finalist, WORLD OF WONDERS: IN PRAISE OF FIREFLIES, WHALE SHARKS, & OTHER ASTONISHMENTS (2020, Milkweed Editions), which was chosen as Barnes and Noble’s Book of the Year. She has four previous poetry collections: OCEANIC (Copper Canyon Press, 2018), LUCKY FISH (2011), AT THE DRIVE-IN VOLCANO (2007), and MIRACLE FRUIT (2003), the last three from Tupelo Press. Her most recent chapbook is LACE & PYRITE, a collaboration of epistolary garden poems with the poet Ross Gay. Honors include a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pushcart Prize, a Mississippi Arts Council grant, and being named a Guggenheim Fellow in poetry. She is professor of English and Creative Writing in the University of Mississippi’s MFA program. For more Thresholds, visit us at www.thisisthresholds.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.