Culturetopia: All About The Sonic Edition from NPR: Culturetopia Podcast

This week on Culturetopia: Hitmaker Jerry Wonda on building platinum sound; author Danielle Evans on her new collection of short stories; the extraordinary existence of blues singer Robin Rogers; remembering jazzman James Moody.

Download the podcast of this show, here. NPR's All Things Considered also did a show, covering the set of short stories by Danielle Evans; the host introduced the author this way: Fiction writer Danielle Evans burst onto the literary scene in 2007 when her first short story was published in the Paris Review. At the time, she was just 23. Now she's released her debut book. It's a collection of short stories called "Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self."

Evans grew up moving from city to city with her mother. She writes about some of those places: New York, Tallahassee, northern Virginia, and about navigating those worlds from the perspectives of mixed race and African-American teenagers. The stories have a fly-on-the-wall quality, as if you're listening in on private conversations about race and gender and class. But when she stopped by our studios recently, Evans told me she doesn't want her characters to be defined by only those things.

Download that podcast here. Danielle Evans was also listed as an "Attention-Getter" of 2010 by the Washingtonian, which noted the author as the "American University professor published one of the year’s best short-story collections, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self." See that list of 40 folks that had "shaped 2010" here. By the way, we're not talking about American's Next Top Model, here; this isn't that kind of blog (though we get teased a lot for using Blogger.com; hey, Reich uses it; at least, he used to, quite regularly). And finally, cultural periodical, PopMatters writes this about one of the stories by Evans:

In “Wherever You Go, There You Are” a 20-something narrator takes a road trip from Delaware to Raleigh to visit her friend, Brian. She has unresolved feelings for Brian, but he’s recently engaged, and she will be meeting his fiancé. Complicating matters further is her 14-year old cousin, Chrissie, who comes with her at the last minute. Their car ride consists of a series of conversations about boys and sex that are both funny and sad. Chrissie is described as “the wrong kind of pretty, the kind that’s soft but not fragile, the kind that inspires the impulse to touch.” This is just one of several examples in the collection where Evans captures the confusion and vulnerability that young women face as they grow into adulthood.

Read that PopMatters articles here. See also: Color Me Butterfly: A Novel Inspired by One Family's Journey from Tragedy to Triumph, Some Sing, Some Cry: A Novel