In June 2010, Justin Cronin visited the Lit Show to talk about The Passage–then in its dizzying, first-week climb up the bestseller charts. To celebrate the novel’s paperback release, Cronin will return to the program to discuss how his novel—and trilogy-in-progress—have altered his writing and career.

Listen to Cronin’s first appearance on The Lit Show on 6/15/2010.

Tune in on Friday June 10, at 10:30 CST—or listen online.

Maddy Taylor
New Jersey
An unexpected injury leaves a student watching on the sidelines.

Rebecca Deranian
New Hampshire
A student recollects her grandmother’s fleeing from Armenia during the Armenian Genocide.

Elena Hudacek
Boston, Massachussetts
An idiosyncratic aunt brings her niece to a bachlorette party.

Z Kuester
Manitowoc, Wisconsin
A student remembers the morning of September 11, 2001.

Zach Wendeln
Ohio
The father of an estranged friend dies suddenly, and the feelings that follow.

Bryan Erickson
Los Angeles, California
A student witnesses a crime in Buenos Aires.

Sam
Stanford, Connecticut
Embracing the difficulty of coming out.

Scarlett
Los Angeles
Struggling with an authority figure’s inappropriate conduct.

Parthiv Mohan
Saratoga, California
The history of an arranged marraige.

Maggie
Chicago, Illinois
In a San Francisco soup kitchen, a brilliant pianist.

Alex
Texas
A stalker, and a family’s terror.

Sophie
Southern California
An intruder?

Eric
Madison, Wisconsin
Heartbreak and the high school dance.

Andrew
Hayward, California
Coming of age when a friend is shot by a stranger.

Cameron
Houston, Texas
Watching an assault, and the guilt of doing nothing.

Emily
Taiwan
Torn between two estranged parents, while a grandmother is dying.

Shaj Mathew
Maryland
Looking for Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

Cypress
Buffalo, New York
A childhood hero dies in an act of protest.

Jesse Krebs
Doha, Qatar
Traveling through the Malaysian darkness.

Alison Macke
Chicago, Illinois
A group of families scans the horizon for their loved ones, who are returning by Navy ship.

Anna Hagen
New York, New York
On Halloween night, an odd pair on the the New York Subway.

George Liu
Pittsfield, New York
When loved ones are killed two continents away, a family tries to cope.

Nicholas Tonckens
Connecticut
Trespassing leads to a run-in with an enigmatic stranger.

Kathrine Baus
New Orleans, Louisiana
A student remembers fleeing New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, and returning to her devastated hometown.

Sara
Evergreen, Colorado
Close encounters with Colorado wildlife.

Owen Kaye-Kauderer
New York, NY
Remembering a father’s choice not to go to work on September 11, 2001.

Myles Buchanan, Portland Oregon
A late-night walk on a closed golf course leads to conflict.

Rachel
Minnesota
When a young man threatens to kill himself, his friend agonizes over whether or not to report him.

Elizabeth
Dallas, Texas
Financial considerations keep a student out of her dream colleges, and she struggles with the repercussions.

Mark
Los Altos, California
Life with an idiosyncratic friend.

Rashmika Nedungadi
Appleton, Wisconsin
The highs and lows of a family vacation to Belize.

Susanna Lustbader
Connecticut
Two friends take a summer trip to Paris and mislead a group of Iowan tourists about their identities.

From Brooklyn Courier News
By Joe Fassler
01/09/2007

When Park Slope musician Dock Oscar founded the Kings County Opry three years ago, he was determined to establish a new place for old-time music. At the time, Brooklyn offered no haven for country musicians, and the established country music showcases were located on the other side of the East River.

But when Manhattan’s renowned Alphabet City Opry closed, Oscar put his cowboy-booted foot down.

“I’m not going to wait for someone to do this anymore,” he recalls thinking. “I’m just going to do it myself.”

These days, the Kings County Opry—which showcases country, bluegrass, and folk artists from Brooklyn and beyond—is a thriving event with an ardent following. Oscar has proven himself an ideal master of ceremonies, a role he often shares with fellow Park Sloper Alex Battles. Together, the musicians select acts with impeccable taste, work the crowd easily between sets, and even perform with their own bands from time to time.

The Opry’s location is a key part of its success. Freddy’s Bar and Back Room occupies an unassuming corner on Dean Street in Prospect Heights, but it hosts some of Brooklyn’s most unique events. On Diva Night, professional opera singers perform jaw-dropping arias in a casual setting. Cringe Night, where mortified readers share their teenage poems and diary entries, was called “funniest night out in New York” by Spin Magazine. Yet even among these dynamic counterparts, The Kings County Opry stands out.

Anyone stepping into Freddy’s on the third Thursday of the month has found a lively bluegrass band, and, most likely, an enthusiastic audience singing, dancing, and shouting for favorite tunes. It’s easy to see how Opry-goers get so excited. There is no proper stage, so performers and audience members nearly intermingle. The Back Room has been lauded by performers and fans alike as one of the city’s best-sounding spaces for acoustic music. And the bands, often with as many as eight or nine musicians playing and singing at once, create an atmosphere of unbridled enthusiasm. Over time, Dock Oscar likes to say, the event has evolved into “a good-natured riot.”

The show begins with the Song Circle, a round robin of short sets featuring a variety of songwriters and performers. Then, at 9:30, KCO favorite Yarn takes the stage. The band’s textured, bluegrass-tinged country is at once accessible and affecting. Carroll Gardens frontman Blake Christiana’s singing voice is the aural equivalent of a broken-in pair of jeans—rugged, homey, and dependable. Among this bevy of top-notch bluegrass musicians, mandolinist Andrew Hendryx’s thoughtful, articulate playing emerges as a crucial part of the band’s sound. Though Yarn’s jam band roots are manifest at times, the instrumentation never preens or overpowers; Christiana’s masterful songwriting shines through in each song.

Alex Friedman closes at 10:30, with his backup band The Other Failures. The Prospect Heights songwriter’s work shifts effortlessly between wry country ballads, raucous talking blues, and tender, introspective vignettes. Friedman is also a painter and artist who has contributed to magazines like the New Yorker; it is no surprise, then, that his songs have painting-like qualities. His songs are prolonged meditations that delve into their subject matter in way an artist might labor to render the details of a landscape or the features of a human face.

The music simmers, sometimes boils over, with expressive gusto as lyrical flourishes pile up like brush strokes. Friedman is candid about his desire to write striking, powerful songs: “The things I’m singing about are totally mine and totally true,” he says. “And I’m convinced that when someone is totally true to themselves, that truthfulness becomes their instrument.” Though several of his songs explore themes of artistic honesty, he warns against “paintings that are just about the paint.”

At The Kings County Opry, nothing is less likely.

Freddy’s Bar and Backroom is located at 685 Dean Street, at the corner of 6th Avenue; you can learn more about the venue by visiting www.freddysbackroom.com or calling directly at 718-622-7035. Additionally, the Kings County Opry website, www.kingscountyopry.com, provides detailed information about the series’ schedule and performers.

This month’s event takes place Jan. 18 and is free and open to anyone over 21 with ID.

On this Lit Show, punk rock legend Joe Jack Talcum discusses his songwriting, solo work, and The Dead Milkmen–he also performs a classic tune from his catalog. With special guest Sam Locke-Ward of Samuel Locke-Ward and the Boo-Hoos.

His most recent album is Joe Jack Talcum: Live in the Studio, a live retrospective.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

This Lit Show features Siri Hustvedt, author of The Shaking Woman, or, A History of my Nerves. The book, a memoir, tells the story of the author’s experience with a strange, undiagnosable illness: from time to time, and mostly while speaking in public, Hustvedt has experienced fits of violent, uncontrollable shaking. These are not conventional seizures, however. When she shakes, the author remains fully conscious and cogent, able to address and engage entire auditoriums full of people—even as her limbs struggle to grip the podium. This uncanny divorcement between self and symptom—or, in the author’s language, between Siri Hustvedt and “the shaking woman”—catalyzed this book, which both is a scholarly attempt to reason the cause and implications of her condition, and an account of her relevant personal history. As Hustvedt seeks to define her experience in terms of current psychological, philosophical, and neurological literature, she undertakes a personal journey into the most perpetual human questions about identity, grief, trauma, and memory.