Paraphrase
16 episodes - English - Latest episode: 9 months ago - ★★★★★ - 69 ratingsParaphrase is a podcast all about literary beginnings, from the first words in novel to the first steps in a career. Host Stephen Fishbach asks novelists to discuss the craft and thematic decisions behind the beginnings of their books.
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Episodes
Johannes Lichtman on 'Calling Ukraine'
July 21, 2023 18:33 - 36 minutes - 66.1 MBJohannes Lichtman joins me to discuss his novel "Calling Ukraine." National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree and author of Such Good Work Johannes Lichtman returns with a novel that is strikingly relevant to our times—about an American who takes a job in Ukraine in 2018, only to find that his struggle to understand the customs and culture is eclipsed by a romantic entanglement with deadly consequences.
Lauren Oliver on 'Panic'
October 20, 2022 13:07 - 31 minutes - 29.6 MBLauren Oliver joins me to discuss her novel 'Panic.' Heather never thought she would compete in Panic, a legendary game played by graduating seniors, where the stakes are high and the payoff is even higher. She’d never thought of herself as fearless, the kind of person who would fight to stand out. But when she finds something, and someone, to fight for, she will discover that she is braver than she ever thought. Dodge has never been afraid of Panic. His secret will fuel him, and get hi...
Lincoln Michel on 'The Body Scout'
October 24, 2021 19:45 - 33 minutes - 20.9 MBLincoln Michel joins me to discuss his novel 'The Body Scout.' In the future you can have any body you want—as long as you can afford it. But in a New York ravaged by climate change and repeat pandemics, Kobo is barely scraping by. He scouts the latest in gene-edited talent for Big Pharma-owned baseball teams, but his own cybernetics are a decade out of date and twin sister loan sharks are banging down his door. Things couldn't get much worse. Then his brother—Monsanto Mets slugger J...
Teddy Wayne on 'Apartment'
October 05, 2020 22:52 - 27 minutes - 25.2 MBTeddy Wayne joins me to discuss his novel 'Apartment.' In 1996, the unnamed narrator of Teddy Wayne’s Apartment is attending the MFA writing program at Columbia on his father’s dime and living in an illegal sublet of a rent-stabilized apartment. Feeling guilty about his good fortune, he offers his spare bedroom--rent-free--to Billy, a talented, charismatic classmate from the Midwest eking out a hand-to-mouth existence in Manhattan. The narrator’s rapport with Billy develops into the fri...
Carmen Maria Machado on 'In the Dream House'
November 05, 2019 17:00 - 20 minutes - 27.5 MBCarmen Maria Machado joins me to discuss her memoir 'In the Dream House.' 'In the Dream House' is Machado’s wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad, and a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing relationship, Machado struggles to make sense of how what happened to her shaped the person she was becoming. That struggle gives the book its original structure: each chapter is driven by its own narr...
Ryan Chapman on 'Riots I Have Known'
June 18, 2019 15:35 - 28 minutes - 39.3 MBRyan Chapman joins me to discuss his debut novel 'Riots I Have Known.' An unnamed Sri Lankan inmate has barricaded himself inside a prison computer lab in Dutchess County, New York. A riot rages outside, incited by a poem published in The Holding Pen, the house literary journal. This, our narrator’s final Editor’s Letter, is his confession. An official accounting of events, as they happened.
Namwali Serpell on 'The Old Drift'
May 15, 2019 16:00 - 37 minutes - 51.5 MBNamwali Serpell joins me to discuss her debut novel 'The Old Drift.' 1904. On the banks of the Zambezi River, a few miles from the majestic Victoria Falls, there is a colonial settlement called The Old Drift. In a smoky room at the hotel across the river, an Old Drifter named Percy M. Clark, foggy with fever, makes a mistake that entangles the fates of an Italian hotelier and an African busboy. This sets off a cycle of unwitting retribution between three Zambian families as they collide an...
Nathan Englander on 'Kaddish.com'
April 03, 2019 16:59 - 28 minutes - 39 MBNathan Englander joins me to discuss his new novel 'Kaddish.com.' Larry is the secular son in a family of Orthodox Brooklyn Jews. When his father dies, it’s his responsibility to recite the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, every day for eleven months. To the horror and dismay of his sister, Larry refuses—imperiling the fate of his father’s soul. To appease her, Larry hatches an ingenious if cynical plan, hiring a stranger through a website called kaddish.com to recite the prayer ...
Sam Lipsyte on 'Hark'
March 12, 2019 16:00 - 23 minutes - 31.8 MBSam Lipsyte joins Stephen to discuss his new novel 'Hark.' In an America convulsed by political upheaval, cultural discord, environmental collapse, and spiritual confusion, many folks are searching for peace, salvation, and—perhaps most immediately—just a little damn focus. Enter Hark Morner, an unwitting guru whose technique of “Mental Archery”—a combination of mindfulness, mythology, fake history, yoga, and, well, archery—is set to captivate the masses and raise him to near-messiah status.
Lauren Wilkinson on 'American Spy'
February 26, 2019 17:00 - 24 minutes - 33.9 MBLauren Wilkinson joins Stephen to discuss her debut novel 'American Spy'. It’s 1986, the heart of the Cold War, and Marie Mitchell is an intelligence officer with the FBI. She's brilliant, but she's also a young black woman working in an old boys' club. Her career has stalled out, she’s overlooked for every high-profile squad, and her days are filled with monotonous paperwork. So when she’s given the opportunity to join a shadowy task force aimed at undermining Thomas Sankara, the charisma...
Garth Greenwell on 'What Belongs to You'
February 12, 2019 17:00 - 39 minutes - 53.7 MBGarth Greenwell joins Stephen to discuss his debut novel 'What Belongs to You. 'What Belongs to You' follows an American teacher who enters a public bathroom in Sofia, Bulgaria, where he meets the charismatic young hustler Mitko, and pays him for sex. He returns to Mitko again and again over the next few months, drawn by hunger and loneliness and risk, and finds himself ensnared in a relationship in which lust leads to mutual predation, and tenderness can transform into violence. 'What B...
Ling Ma on 'Severance'
February 01, 2019 17:00 - 29 minutes - 40.6 MBLing Ma joins host Stephen Fishbach to discuss her debut novel 'Severance.' 'Severance' follows Candace Chen, a 20 something New Yorker who works as a production coordinator at a Bible manufacturer - when the end of the world hits. Shen Fever makes people repeat their daily routines, until they die. Candace must join a group of survivors, led by the power-hungry IT tech Bob. 'Severance' won the 2018 Kirkus Prize, was a New York Times notable book, and was named as a best book of 2018 at...
Teddy Wayne on 'Loner'
January 18, 2019 17:00 - 26 minutes - 36.2 MBTeddy Wayne joins host Stephen Fishbach to discuss his novel 'Loner.' 'Loner' follows Harvard freshman David Federman, who becomes increasingly obsessed with his classmate Veronica. Published in September of 2016, 'Loner' now seems a prescient look at an angry, disaffected young man who demands more from his life. Loner was named a "Best Book of the Year" by NPR, Kirkus, New York post, and Bookish.
Jaclyn Gilbert on 'Late Air'
January 04, 2019 17:00 - 32 minutes - 44.4 MBJaclyn Gilbert joins host Stephen Fishbach to discuss her debut novel 'Late Air.' When Murray - a Yale college running coach - finds his star athlete crumpled and unresponsive during a routine practice on the campus golf course one morning, he is forced to reconcile with his repressed past and increasingly tenuous grip on life. Told from interlocking perspectives, 'Late Air' circles the story of a marriage shattered by a nameless tragedy.
Joshua Max Feldman on 'Start Without Me'
December 21, 2018 17:00 - 21 minutes - 30 MBJoshua Max Feldman joins host Stephen Fishbach to discuss his novel 'Start Without Me.' Joshua Max Feldman is a writer of fiction and theater. Start Without Me - his second novel - explores questions of love and choice, disappointment and hope in the lives of two strangers who meet by chance on Thanksgiving Day.
Jeff VanderMeer on 'Annihilation'
December 04, 2018 20:05 - 31 minutes - 42.8 MBIn the debut episode, author Jeff VanderMeer joins host Stephen Fishbach to discuss his novel 'Annihilation.' Jeff is the author dozens of novels, short stories, literary criticism, nonfiction, and basically anything else a person can write, including stellar tweets. He has been called "the Weird Thoreau" by the New Yorker. 'Annihilation,' the first book of his Southern Reach trilogy, won the Nebula and Shirley Jackson awards, and was adapted into a movie by director Alex Garland.