In this episode, meet writer and translator Randa Jarrar, author of Love is an Ex-Country, acclaimed actor and director Ethan Hawke, author of A Bright Ray of Darkness, and comedian and actress Catherine Cohen, author of God I Feel Modern Tonight. Enter the studio and listen in as each of these authors—a memoirist, a novelist, and a poet—shares what it was like to record their audiobooks.
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Listen to clips from the audiobooks mentioned in this episode:
Queer. Muslim. Arab American. A proudly Fat woman. Randa Jarrar is all of these things. In Love is an Ex-Country, her provocative memoir of a cross-country road trip, Jarrar explores how to claim joy in an unraveling and hostile America. On the way, she schools a rest-stop racist, destroys Confederate flags in the desert, and visits the Chicago neighborhood where her immigrant parents first lived.
A Bright Ray of Darkness, Hawke’s first novel in nearly twenty years, is the blistering story of a young man making his Broadway debut in Henry IV just as his marriage implodes—an utterly transfixing book about art and love, fame and heartbreak, from the acclaimed actor/writer/director. Read by Hawke, this is a novel steeped in rage and sex, longing and despair; and a passionate love letter to the world of theater.
In God I Feel Modern Tonight, Catherine Cohen reads her poems of heartbreak, self-critique, urban adventures, and love on the road. In these short, captivating lyrics, this one-woman stand-up chanteuse ponders guys who call you “dude” after sex, true love during the pandemic, and English-major dreams.
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