On this episode we bring you part 1 of our live show, recorded November 3rd, 2014, at Housing Works Bookstore Cafe in New York City. For part 1, we have Kevin Nguyen reading an essay about names, culture, and the internet, and Alan Hanson reads an amazing new set of poems. Plus: What is the best emoji? (And is the singular of "emoji" "emojo"? Can it be?)

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Time works in strange ways in both pieces on this episode. Shelly Oria reads a short story from her new collection, New York 1, Tel Aviv 0, about measuring love, distance, and loss, and Bijan Stephen reads an essay that tells the story of one night in fragments, but decades and centuries are tangled up in those moments.

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Today we've got two nonfiction pieces that show the power of sharing experience through writing and reading. Meaghan O'Connell (Longreads, The Billfold) reads from her honest, funny, and generous recounting of her son's birth, and Miranda K. Pennington (The Toast, The American Scholar) shares a glimpse of how her life has been changed by decades of reading and re-reading the Brontës.

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On today's episode, the perils and thrills of being a woman or girl navigating a world full of men's bodies. But maybe not quite how you expect. Elisabeth Geier reads an essay about art, music, love, and penises, and Marie-Helene Bertino reads a short story about a woman caught in a sort of deluge of the past.

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The Pleiades, love poems, lava tubes, and porn. Rome and dark-sky mountaintops. An essay, "We Never Looked at the Stars," from Ben Lillie and poems by Dorothea Lasky from her new book, Rome. 

Also announcing The Catapult: LIVE, 11/3 at Housing Works Bookstore in NYC. (And to be distributed by podcast thereafter.) More info here.

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Today we've got readings from two amazing short stories: Alice Sola Kim reads from "Mothers, Lock Up Your Daughters Because They Are Terrifying" and Dolan Morgan reads from "Infestation." Alice's story appears in the new issue of Tin House (#61) and the anthology, Monstrous Affections. Dolan's story is in his new collection, That's When the Knives Come Down. 

You could call this episode "Ghosts and Goats," but that's so dumb that I hid it here at the bottom.

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On this episode, we've got stories of children trying to make sense of the world... and adults trying to do the same. Figuring out the unspoken rules, trying to get the answers they want, a little lost, a little hopeful, a little strange. Julia Pierpont reads her short story, "Times For Us Alone," and Gabriel Roth reads from his novel, The Unknowns.

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Two stories of love and leaving home: Rebecca Worby reads an essay about falling in love with red rock country and the confusion of romance in a beloved place, and Justin Taylor reads a short story about leaving the city in love and continuing to leave and be left.

You may direct all correspondance, including angry letters about ungenerous assessments of beloved Joan Didion essays, to letters@catapultreads.com.

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From mermaids to the Midwest, we've got something for everyone today: poems from Matthea Harvey and fiction from Emily Gould. Also some musings on cat ownership and writing and how they're maybe the same thing, plus some ambient construction sounds from recording at Emily's apartment. Apologies for the buzzsaw; enjoy the rest.

Find more work by Matthea and Emily at CatapultReads.com, and follow us on twitter: @catapultreads. 

Today's episode features work from the new issue of Apogee Journal. (Today's episode also features the sound of several low-flying jets on their way to land at LaGuardia Airport.) Apogee publishes art and writing that engage with issues of identity politics, and today's readers, Morgan Parker (reading poems) and Stacy Parker Le Melle (with an essay), show just how gorgeous, compelling, funny, smart, thoughtful, and intriguing that work can be. For more info: CatapultReads.com and ApogeeJournal.org.