1.) #616 — Tim O'Brien
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Tim O’Brien is one of the great writers of the Vietnam War, and this conversation has stayed with me for the depth and precision with which he talks about memory, storytelling, truth, and the moral weight of making art from lived experience. He is candid about the emotional costs of writing, the distance between what happened and what can be said about it, and the mysterious ways fiction can sometimes arrive at truths that fact alone cannot reach. It’s the kind of conversation I hoped Otherppl could make room for when I started the show.

2.) #791 — Elizabeth Strout
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Elizabeth Strout has an extraordinary ability to speak about writing with both simplicity and depth. In this conversation, she reflects on character, intuition, solitude, and the long process of learning to trust what a story is asking of you. What stays with me is the steadiness of her perspective: the sense that writing is less about mastery than attention, patience, and returning again and again to the work. It’s a conversation with one of our finest fiction writers about the quiet, difficult practice of making something true.

3.) #1025 — Namwali Serpell 
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Namwali Serpell’s On Morrison is a brilliant, deeply engaged study of Toni Morrison’s work—one that insists on approaching Morrison not simply as a cultural icon, but as an extraordinarily daring artist and technician. In this conversation, we talk about what makes Morrison’s fiction so formally radical, the demands she places on her readers, and the pleasures of returning closely to books that resist easy interpretation. Serpell is a formidable critic as well as a novelist, and I loved the precision, enthusiasm, and intellectual energy she brought to this conversation. 

4.) #865 — Karl Ove Knausgaard
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Karl Ove Knausgaard has spent his career pushing at the boundaries between fiction, autobiography, memory, and lived experience. In this conversation, occasioned by the publication of The Wolves of Eternity, we talk about his work and the strange, often mysterious process by which a novel takes shape. What I remember most is the seriousness and openness he brings to questions of art and creativity—the sense that writing remains, even after extraordinary success, an act of discovery. It was a privilege to have one of the defining writers of our time on the show.. 

5.) #532 — Ottessa Moshfegh 
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Ottessa Moshfegh has one of the most singular sensibilities in contemporary fiction, and this conversation, recorded around the publication of My Year of Rest and Relaxation, captures something essential about the fearlessness of her approach. We talk about creative ambition, mental anguish, substance use, and the strange, sometimes counterintuitive ways a writer finds a path into the work—including the unconventional method she used to write Eileen. What stays with me is her candor: she is funny, unsentimental, and unusually willing to talk about the darker, messier parts of making art.

6.) #687 — George Saunders 
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George Saunders has always seemed to me like one of those rare writers who can talk about craft with the same imagination and generosity he brings to fiction. In this conversation, recorded around the publication of A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, we talk about how stories create meaning, the relationship between realism and the fantastical, and the mysterious process by which a writer learns what a piece of fiction actually needs. What stays with me is Saunders’s insistence that even the strangest imaginative choices have to serve an emotional purpose. This was his second appearance on Otherppl, nearly nine years after his first, and it remains one of my favorite conversations about how fiction works.

7.) #426 — Jonathan Franzen
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Jonathan Franzen joined me in 2016, around the paperback publication of Purity, for a wide-ranging conversation about ambition, childhood, plot, birdwatching, and the long process of becoming a writer. What I remember most is how candid he was about the forces that shaped him—his early aspirations, the advice that changed his life, and the complicated relationship between artistic ambition and the person doing the aspiring. Franzen can be funny, contrarian, intensely serious, and unexpectedly vulnerable, sometimes all at once. This episode captures all of that, and remains one of the most memorable conversations in the archive.

8.) #836 — Samantha Irby
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Samantha Irby is one of the funniest writers working today, but what makes her work so good is everything happening underneath the jokes. In this conversation, recorded around the publication of Quietly Hostile, we talk about humor, anxiety, illness, relationships, television writing, and the strange indignities of everyday life. Irby has an extraordinary ability to take experiences that are uncomfortable, embarrassing, or genuinely painful and transform them into something hilarious without diminishing their seriousness. What stays with me is her candor and complete lack of pretense—the sense that comedy can be a way of looking directly at the things we might otherwise prefer not to see.

9.) #965 — Ocean Vuong
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Ocean Vuong joined me for a conversation about his novel The Emperor of Gladness, a book deeply concerned with work, class, loneliness, care, and the lives that tend to exist outside the center of the American story. What stays with me is the intensity and generosity of Vuong’s thinking—about language, art, history, and the responsibility a writer feels toward the people and places that enter the work. He has a remarkable ability to move between the intimate and the philosophical without losing sight of either. This was a wide-ranging conversation with a writer whose seriousness about literature is matched by an equally serious curiosity about how people live.

10.) #1029 — Ada Limón
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Ada Limón joined me shortly after completing her tenure as the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States, for a conversation occasioned by her book Against Breaking: On the Power of Poetry. We talk about poetry, talent, California, what it meant to serve as Poet Laureate, and the role poetry can play in helping us pay closer attention to the world around us. What stays with me is Limón’s warmth and clarity—the way she can speak about poetry without ever making it feel remote or rarefied. She has a gift for reminding us that poems belong to ordinary life, and that language, at its best, can bring us more fully into contact with being alive. 

11.) #549 — Andre Dubus III
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Andre Dubus III joined me in 2018, around the publication of his novel Gone So Long, for a candid conversation about writing, family, divorce, fear, poverty, and the experiences that shape both a life and a body of work. Dubus brings an unusual combination of toughness and vulnerability to the way he talks about being a writer, and what stays with me is his willingness to speak plainly about where the work comes from and what it costs. He is a deeply serious craftsman and a gifted storyteller, and this episode captures the intensity, openness, and hard-earned wisdom that make conversations with him so memorable. 

12.) #863 — Yiyun Li 
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Yiyun Li joined me in 2023, around the publication of her story collection Wednesday’s Child, for a deeply thoughtful conversation about grief, attention, reading, and the writing life. Li has an extraordinary ability to speak about the most difficult subjects with clarity and restraint, and what stays with me is the seriousness with which she approaches both literature and life. We talk about the value of deep reading, the discipline of paying attention, and the ways writing can help us remain in contact with experiences that resist easy explanation. It’s a quiet, searching conversation with one of our most precise and humane writers.

13.) #709 — Melissa Febos
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Melissa Febos joined me in 2021 for a conversation about Girlhood, her acclaimed essay collection about adolescence, consent, intimacy, power, and the stories women are taught to tell about their own lives. Febos is an unusually rigorous and fearless writer about personal experience, and what stays with me is the way she combines intellectual precision with emotional candor. We talk about memory, the body, the ethics of writing about other people, and the difficult work of examining experiences that can take years to fully understand. This was her third appearance on Otherppl, nearly a decade after she first joined me for Episode 2, and the conversation reflects both the evolution of her work and the depth of thought she brings to the essay form.

14.) #825 — Clancy Martin
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Clancy Martin joined me in 2023 to talk about How Not to Kill Yourself: A Portrait of the Suicidal Mind, a book drawn from his own long experience with suicidal ideation, addiction, and recovery. It is one of the most candid and affecting conversations in the archive. We talk about the relationship between suicidal thinking and addiction, the difficulty of describing experiences that are often hidden or misunderstood, and what it means to keep choosing life. What stays with me is Martin’s remarkable openness and lack of self-dramatization. He brings the perspective of a novelist and philosopher to an intensely personal subject, and the result is a conversation that feels unusually humane, searching, and alive.

15.) #956 — Lidia Yuknavitch
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Lidia Yuknavitch returned to the show in 2025 for a conversation about her memoir Reading the Waves. We talk about memory, the body, trauma, art, and the ways a writer can return to the past without pretending it can ever be recovered perfectly. Yuknavitch has always been one of the most fearless and generous people I’ve spoken with, and what stays with me here is her belief in writing as a way of transforming experience—not erasing what happened, but finding new forms for carrying it. This was her fourth appearance on Otherppl, and the conversation has the intimacy and openness that come from talking with someone across many years. 



Fifteen episodes can only represent a tiny fraction of fifteen years of conversations. I’m grateful to every writer who has joined me, and to everyone who has listened along the way. Thanks for being part of Otherppl.