Hello everybody. How are you? Welcome to the program. This is the Other People's Show. I'm Brad Listy here in Los Angeles. It's good to be with you. I hope you're doing all right. Thank you for tuning in. I have a great episode for you today. Don't forget to subscribe to the show wherever

you listen. You can also subscribe on YouTube. Follow the other people podcast on social media,

TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and Blue Sky. My guest today is Ion Lee, author of a new story

collection entitled Wednesday's Child.

I'm not an external writer. I don't see my characters doing things all the time, but they think all the time.

I think it's easier to contradict yourself in thinking than in doing things, right? You know, if you're

walking west, all of a sudden you want to contradict yourself, you have to walk east. The

characters are sitting there. They're thinking this, no, that, but this. So that kind of scenario

just is attractive to me.

Okay, that was Ion Lee, author of the new story collection Wednesday's Child,

available now from Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux.

The stories in Wednesday's Child were written over a span of 14 years, a time frame during which Ion Lee suffered

some incredibly difficult and tragic losses. And notably, she has written about these losses,

written through this period of time and written into this subject matter. And as a result,

and due to her incredible artistry, she has become a source of comfort and solace and insight

for readers who are dealing with losses of their own. It is with this in mind that it occurs to me,

and I wish I would have said this to Iyun when we were talking,

but it occurs to me that she is a person and a writer of enormous strength.

She may contest that.

I don't know if she always feels super strong,

but the fact that she has been able to keep working and to keep writing

and to keep looking at these kinds of narratives.

...