Severance Radio: Episode 1
About the Event
Featuring Lisa Ko & Ling Ma
Severance Radio is an on-air book club dissecting Ling Ma’s satirical, dystopian novel Severance. The novel is a moving family story that explores loneliness, corporate monotony, and survival in the midst of a global health crisis.
Severance Radio airs on KUNV 91.5FM Sundays at 7 pm PST. Stream it live anywhere in the world at kunv.org/listen/.
Ways to Listen
Las Vegas: 7 PM at KUNV 91.5 FM | Stream it live: kunv.org/listen/
Reno: Noon at KWNK 97.7FM | Stream it live: kwnkradio.org/listen
About The Episode
In this episode, novelist Lisa Ko interviews Ling Ma, the author of Severance. Two masters of the novel discuss the significance of Severance in the time of COVID-19. As we listen to the audiobook, you can follow along on pages 3 – 23 of the Severance paperback.
DISCUSSED: 9/11, SARS, 2007 Recession, Hurricane Sandy, 2003 New York blackouts, 2011 Chicago “Snowmageddon”, You Are Not a Gadget by Jaron Lanier, Mad Men, Sopranos, X Files, Daria
Ling Ma is a writer of mostly fiction. Her novel Severance (FSG) received the Kirkus Prize, the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award, and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. It was a finalist for the Pen / Hemingway Award, and named a New York Times Notable Book. Her writings have appeared in Granta, Playboy, Vice, Ninth Letter, ACM and others. She holds an MFA from Cornell University, and an AB from the University of Chicago.
Lisa Ko is the author of The Leavers, which was a 2017 National Book Award for Fiction finalist, won the 2016 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, and was a finalist for the 2018 PEN/Hemingway Award and the 2017 Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Award. The Leavers was named a best book of the year by NPR, Entertainment Weekly, BuzzFeed, The Los Angeles Times, Electric Literature, and others. Her writing has appeared in Best American Short Stories 2016, The New York Times, The Believer, BuzzFeed, O. Magazine, and elsewhere. She has been awarded fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and the MacDowell Colony, among others. She is a Spring 2020 Shearing Fellow at the Beverly Rogers, Carol C. Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Born in Queens and raised in Jersey, she lives in Brooklyn.
Severance Radio: A Nevada Reads Book Club is jointly produced by Nevada Humanities and the Black Mountain Institute, and is part of Nevada Reads, a statewide program of Nevada Humanities. This program is made possible with the support of: Nevada Humanities, Black Mountain Institute, Nevada State library, Archives and Public Records, The Institute of Museum and Library Services, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Nevada Center for the Book. The Nevada Center for the Book is a program of Nevada Humanities and is the state affiliate of the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress.