This week, instead of listening to me and Tom pontificate about literary matters far and wide, we decided to change things up a bit and find out what our summer interns have been up to. With Nathan Furl standing in for Tom, we talk to Taylor McCabe (left, drinking diet soda) and Lily Ye (right, carrying two backpacks filled with literary work) about what it’s like working at Open Letter and the projects they’ve been slaving away at all summer. (Spoiler: Taylor’s been working on the “Best of Three Percent” ebook, and Lily’s in charge of Read This Next.)

Both have interesting things to say and good jokes to make, so I think you’ll enjoy this as much—if not more so—that our usual fare.
Quick notes: As mentioned at the end of the podcast, we’d like to do a special “mailbag” episode in a couple weeks, so please send in any comments or questions you might have. And we can range far and wide on this, so anything you want us to talk about—translation fees, Spanish wine, women’s professional soccer (seriously, I’m a junky)—just let me know at chad.post[at]rochester.edu.
This week’s music is As Serious As Your Life by Four Tet. If it were up to me, we would have a podcast just featuring all my favorite Four Tet songs . . . “My Angel Rocks Back and Forth,” “Unspoken,” “Everything Is Alright,” “This Unfolds” . . .
When I was about two-thirds of the way through Neuman’s very ambitious, very engrossing novel, Bromance Will Evans asked me what I thought the purpose the rapist had in this book. Not who the rapist was—something that’s held in suspense. . .
“At night Amarâq is coated with a darkness as viscous as unmixed colors, neither the fjord nor the mountains, valleys, lakes, or the river exist, there is only a black mass, a void that spreads across the landscape sporadically, pressing. . .
If you’ve been following any of the recent Antoine Volodine talk going around Three Percent—both on the blog or on the podcasts—and have heard his fans wax obsessive over all his alter author-egos, you’re probably starting to feel some Volodine. . .
Muireann Maguire’s Red Spectres is a stunning and engaging collection of eleven Russian gothic tales written by various authors during the early Soviet Era, all but two stories of which are featured in English for the first time ever. These. . .
“The small stone plaza was floating in the midday heat. The Christ of Elqui, kneeling on the ground, his gaze thrown back on high, the part in his hair dark under the Atacaman sun—he felt himself falling into an ecstasy.. . .
This slender, uncanny volume—the second, best-selling collection of stories by Russian author Ludmilla Petrushevskaya to appear in the U.S.—has already received considerable, well-deserved praise from many critics and high profile publications. Its seventeen short tales, averaging ten pages each, are. . .
The Urdu word basti refers to any space, intimate to worldly, and is often translated as “common place” or “a gathering place.” This book by Intizar Husain, who is widely regarded as one of the most important living Pakistani writers,. . .
The Whispering Muse, one of three books by Icelandic writer Sjón just published in North America, is nothing if not inventive. Stories within stories, shifting narration, leaps in time, and characters who transform from men to birds and back again—you’ve. . .
Luis Negrón’s debut collection Mundo Cruel is a journey through Puerto Rico’s gay world. Published in 2010, the book is already in its fifth Spanish edition. Here in the U.S., the collection has been published by Seven Stories Press and. . .
“South”
To have watched from one of your patios
the ancient stars
from the bank of shadow to have watched
the scattered lights
my ignorance has learned no names for
nor their places in constellations
to have heard the ring of. . .