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Otherppl with Brad Listi

810. Kevin Maloney

Otherppl with Brad Listi

Brad Listi

Arts, Society & Culture, Books

4.8 • 554 Ratings

🗓️ 22 January 2023

⏱️ 85 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Kevin Maloney is the author of the novel The Red-Headed Pilgrim, available from Two Dollar Radio. Maloney is the author of Cult of Loretta and the forthcoming story collection Horse Girl Fever. At times a TJ Maxx associate, grocery clerk, outdoor school instructor, organic farmer, electrician, high school English teacher, and teddy bear salesman, he currently works as a web developer and writer. His short stories have appeared in Hobart, Barrelhouse, Green Mountains Review, and a number of other journals and anthologies. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife Aubrey. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc. Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch @otherppl Instagram  YouTube TikTok Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello, hey, everybody, what's going on out there? This is the Other People podcast. I hope you're

0:13.2

doing all right. My name's Brad Listy, and today on the program, my guest is Kevin Maloney,

0:20.1

author of a novel called The Red-Headed Pilgrim.

0:23.4

My goal as a writer is to take this voice I found, which is funny and zany and weird,

0:29.2

and a lot of the stories I've written have been about drugs, but I'm like, can I push that voice

0:33.3

into the realm of like, yeah, being married, having a child at 25, like the struggles of being a new

0:40.5

parents. And what would that look like? So I think in a way, the redheaded pilgrim, the first half

0:47.0

works as momentum, both for me as a writer to like build up to that moment, but also for the reader,

0:51.4

hopefully, where they're like, okay, here's this innocent guy traveling around trying to find the meaning of life and kind of being an idiot.

0:56.9

What happens when that person is suddenly apparent and that, like, life is real?

1:02.5

Okay, that was Kevin Maloney.

1:05.7

His new novel, The Redheaded Pilgrim, is available now from $2.00 Radio.

1:12.6

The Redheaded Pilgrim is available now from $2 radio. The Red-Headed Pilgrim is a work of auto-fiction, written in a comedic mode.

1:20.6

But it's one of these books that in many respects has the heavy things on its mind.

1:29.3

It's concerned with big questions.

1:33.6

It's a spiritual book.

1:36.3

It's about a spiritual journey of a kind.

1:42.8

Kevin Maloney in this novel is writing about,

1:50.2

among other things, his transition into adulthood and his confrontations with his own existential dread, his own failures of insight and imagination, his limitations

1:57.3

as a man, his aspirations, as an artist, and as someone who is trying to grapple

2:06.1

openly with his own confusion.

2:11.1

And then at every step of the way throughout this novel, there are jokes. This is a funny book and a funny writer and not a writer who takes

...

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