Jessamyn Hope reads from her novel, Safekeeping, and Alexis Coe reads from her nonfiction book, Alice + Freda Forever: A Murder in Memphis. Plus: What do you read when you're writing? Sometimes (blasphemy!) do you need to read nothing at all?

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Today's readings come from books that might be the perfect summer reading: engrossing, devourable novels that, even if they're not fluffy feel-goods, feel amazing to read. Emily Schultz reads from The Blondes and Jami Attenberg reads from Saint Mazie. Both books are on sale now.

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Part two of The Catapult's live show at HiFi in April, with new readings from Jaime Green (hi) and Mira Jacob (The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing).

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Recorded live at HiFi, Isaac Oliver and Morgan Parker read new work as part of the Catapult-curated edition of the HiFi Reading Series. Morgan's book, Other People's Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night, is out now. Isaac's book, Intimacy Idiot, comes out June 2nd.

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Discussed: cats, fame, feminist spiritual preparation for marriage, independent bookstores, small towns, sudden disappearance, and a coming storm.

Elisabeth Donnelly reads her essay, "How to Befriend a Cat," and Catie Disabato reads from her novel, The Ghost Network, out May 5 from Melville House.

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Readings from two novels, about love and love gone awry, about the small things that add up to love and the things that try and fail to mimic love's shape. Anna North reads from The Life and Death of Sophie Stark (out May 19) and Will Chancellor reads from A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall, in bookstores now.

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On this episode, two pieces about the ways war can impact our lives across great distance—in time or space—and the ways conflict can change and challenge who we are. Jessica Pearce Rotondi reads from her book-in-progress, What We Inherit, and Saïd Sayrafiezadeh reads his essay, "War and Duane Reade."

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We've got readings from two new novels for you today: Lance Rubin reads from Denton Little's Deathdate (April 14th), about a world where everyone knows in advance the day they're going to die, and Kathleen Alcott reads from Infinite Home (August 4th), which is about how the eclectic tenants of a Brooklyn brownstone come together in the face of threats to their home.

ALSO: NYC locals, on April 1st we're curating the HiFi Reading Series. Featuring past Catapult readers Mira Jacob, Morgan Parker, and Isaac Oliver, and, both hosting and reading, too, Jaime. April 1, 8pm, HiFi Bar. More info here: HiFi + The Catapult.

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From family to frontiers, the familiar and foreign, today's episode brings you sisters and snow-covered glaciers and plains: Jazmine Hughes reads an essay called "Sisters, Ranked," and Jynne Dilling Martin reads poems from her new book, We Mammals in Hospitable Times, inspired by her time in Antarctica. 

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On this episode, Madeline Felix reads from the smart, big-hearted book she is writing, Ways to Get Lost, about teaching in Vietnam, and Tobias Carroll reads two short pieces that exist in the overlaps of quotidian and surreal, comical and mournful.

Two notes on the opening:

• I realize that wanting nice clogs & $90 t-shirts is not a particularly nichey expression of consumer desire. I’m not even sure I want clogs. They seem heavy. 
• When I said “self-effacing,” I meant “self-deprecating.” Because self-deprecation is, at its heart, the opposite of the shying-away-from-attention that’s part of self-effacement.

Okay, glad we got that out of the way.

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