All right, everybody. How you doing? This is Brad Listy. This is the Other People podcast. I'm here in Los Angeles. Hope you're doing okay. Today, I'm going to try something new. It's Friday. It's the end of the week. And I thought I would offer up a flashback from the other people archives. I figure after, you know, what is it, almost 12 years of doing

the show nearly 850 episodes at this point, it's as good a time as any to start going back

through the archives on a weekly basis, assuming I can manage the work schedule. That's the one

caveat. I'm going to see if I can do this. I'm going to go back through the archives and try to share with you on a weekly basis some

flashbacks from episodes past. These flashback episodes will be short form. That's how I'm imagining

it like five to 15 minutes somewhere in there, seven to 20 minutes,

something like that. And I'm going to start out doing it on Fridays, dropping highlights

from past conversations into the feed, bits of insight, bits of instruction, commiseration,

and revelation. So today, in this inaugural Friday flashback, you're going to hear me in conversation with best-selling author,

Otessa Mosheg. Her debut novel, Eileen, was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the

Man Booker Prize, and it won the Penn Hemingway Award for debut fiction. Otesse's other novels

include My Year of Rest and Relaxation, which you're going to hear us talk about, another novel

called Death in Her Hands, and a novel called La Vona. She is also the author

of the short story collection, Hom Sick for Another World, as well as a novella entitled

McGlew. I spoke with Otessa Moshfeg in episode 532. This, what you're about to hear is the two of us talking

about a variety of things, including her approach to her work, the impact of sobriety on her fiction,

and her feelings about the tension between darkness and lightness in a work of art, among other things.

So this episode first aired on July 11th, 2018.

Here I am in conversation with Otessa Moshvig.

Did you know the end when you start?

Is that a common thread from book to book? Like do you have to have some sort of like finish line in mind in order to get started and feel like you have a real like, uh, sense of direction? Yeah. Not from not from the first line, but when I'm in, in it, like once I understand, I'm like, okay, I've developed the story to a certain point.

I get the premise.

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