Thresholds

About Thresholds

This is Thresholds, a series of interviews with writers and artists you love about the transformative experiences (surprises, crises, existential freakouts, u-turns, breakthroughs) that have shaped their work. The life-wasn’t-the-same-after-that moments. Hosted by Jordan Kisner, author of the essay collection THIN PLACES. Thresholds is a co-production between Black Mountain Institute and Literary Hub. www.thisisthresholds.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.

Publisher

Jordan Kisner

Category

arts · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

7 Mar 2020

Latest episode

20 Mar 2026

Latest episodes

2 of 152 episodes have a transcript.

1. 

   20 Mar 2026

   Valeria Luiselli

   Jordan sits down with Valeria Luiselli to talk about the U.S.-Mexico border, and in particular its origin point (or terminus) in the Pacific Ocean. They discuss Luiselli's forays into sound art with her new project "Echos from the Borderlands", her choice to set her next novel in Sicily, and the humor of whale song. Valeria Luiselli is the author of Sidewalks (2013), Faces in the Crowd (2014), The Story of My Teeth (2015), Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions (2017) and Lost Children Archive (2019). She is the recipient of a 2019 MacArthur Fellowship and the winner of DUBLIN Literary Award, two Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, The Carnegie Medal, an American Book Award, and has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Kirkus Prize, and the Booker Prize. Her next book, a novel titled Beginning Middle End, will be published by Random House in July 2026. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.

2. 

   12 Mar 2026TRANSCRIPT

   Aracelis Girmay (& an announcement)

   In the penultimate episode of the series, Jordan sits down to talk with poet Aracelis Girmay about the way that reading --especially discovering the works of Toni Morrison as a teenager-- changed her life. Aracelis Girmay is a poet who makes works across genres. She is the author of the poetry collections GREEN OF ALL HEADS (BOA, 2025), the black maria (BOA, 2016), Kingdom Animalia (BOA, 2011), and Teeth (Curbstone, 2007). Girmay is the editor of How to Carry Water: Selected Poems of Lucille Clifton (BOA, 2020) and So We Can Know: Writers of Color on Pregnancy, Loss, Abortion, and Birth (Haymarket Books, 2023). She is the Knight Family Professor of Creative Writing at Stanford University. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.

3. 

   6 Mar 2026

   Jayson Greene (Live!)

   Jordan sits down with author Jayson Greene during a live taping of Thresholds at the Beverly Theater in Las Vegas, Nevada. The two talk about Jayson's new novel, UnWorld, the uncanniness of grief, the instability of memory, and how presciently his novel anticipated the way AI is changing human intimacy. Jayson Greene is an author, music critic and editor. He has served as a senior editor of Pitchfork and is the author of Once More We Saw Stars, a memoir about the death of his two-year-old daughter, in 2015. His novel, UnWorld, is out now from Random House. Special thanks to our partners at the Black Mountain Institute for hosting this conversation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.

Inside a recent episode

Aracelis Girmay (& an announcement)

Published 12 Mar 2026 · Transcript excerpt

[…] Um, and, um, When I was there that first year, my English teacher assigned different texts, but one of the early texts that I read when I was there was Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. And I just remember... feeling probably things that I would have felt coming across it for the first time, you know, anywhere. But there was something about feeling so far from so many languages that I cherished and the ways of speaking of so many people that I cherished. And I had grown up in multiple ways diverse spaces, but also a lot of private Black spaces that were very different from each other. My dad is Eritrean and was pretty deeply a part of an Eritrean community in Southern California, mostly LA. […]

Who has been a guest on Thresholds

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Renee Gladman
• Nicholson Baker
• Sarah Aziza
• Lisa Ko

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

4.8 / 5

78 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 51 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

64

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

97

Contact Thresholds

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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Questions about Thresholds