Unreliable Narrators: Season 2, Episode 1

A literary podcast created by NOCCA Creative Writing students Magda Acuna, Nicholas Lavender, Kennedy Massey, Oliver O’Dwyer, Paul Reiger, Julia Sholl, and Ruby Whitaker with guidance from writer, podcaster, and NOCCA faculty member Anya Groner. Special thanks to Media Arts for help with the sound equipment.

In this season of the podcast, students interview New Orleans-based authors about their recently published writing collections.

Season 2, Episode 1:

“Monsters at Midnight”

In this episode, we encounter the bureaucracy of death, living air dancers (those inflatable things you see at car sales), and donated dolls in Adrian Van Young’s short story collection, Midnight Self.

Adrian Van Young is the recipient of the Black Lawrence Press’ 2011 St. Lawrence Book Award, Henfield Foundation Prize and two Pushcart Prize nominations. He received his B.A. in English from Vassar College, and his MFA in fiction from Columbia University. Currently, he teaches American Literature and Creative Writing at St. Martin’s Episcopal School in Metairie. He lives in New Orleans with his wife Darcy and his two sons, Sebastian and August. Midnight Self is his third book of fiction.

Midnight Self is a collection of haunting short fiction. It interrogates grief and fear with its surprising prose in a variety of forms and points of view. This chilling, uncanny collection is an enthralling Gothic read.