In their new novels, authors Lori Gold and Austin Kelley draw from personal experiences in the publishing and magazine industries. First, Gold's Romantic Friction follows Sofie Wilde, a popular fantasy romance author and self-proclaimed outcast. At a book event, she finds out about a new author who's billed herself as "the next Sofie Wilde" – and is using AI to write books pulled directly from Sofie's. In today's episode, Gold speaks with Here & Now's Tiziana Dearing about the author's feelings ...
May 09, 2025•19 min
Mary Ziegler is a law professor at UC Davis and a leading scholar on the abortion debate. In her new book Personhood , she argues that the anti-abortion movement's ultimate goal is fetal personhood, which would give fetuses and embryos the rights of people under the Constitution. Ziegler's book makes the case that the history of this movement is crucial to our understanding of where the abortion fight is headed next. In today's episode, Ziegler talks with Here & Now's Tiziana Dearing about the l...
May 08, 2025•11 min
In the new novel Fair Play , Abigail is hosting a murder mystery party at an Irish country house on New Year's Eve. She's also in deep mourning for her brother. The story's opening reads as a typical setup for a crime novel. But Irish author Louise Hegarty's debut novel honors the golden age of detective fiction while simultaneously turning the genre on its head. In today's episode, Hegarty joins NPR's Ayesha Rascoe for a conversation that touches on Fair Play 's meta elements, as well as its at...
May 07, 2025•8 min
Parenting young children can be extremely taxing, but also beautiful – and hilarious. That nuance is at the core of Loryn Brantz's new poetry collection, Poems of Parenting . The illustrated poems are based on Brantz's popular series of Instagram posts that give parents permission to laugh. In today's episode, the artist and author shares a selection of poems with Here & Now's Deepa Fernandes. They also discuss Brantz's creative pivot from children to adults, the phrase "mom brain" and Brantz's ...
May 06, 2025•12 min
Tina Knowles intended to write a behind-the-scenes look at her career in the music business. But she says that when she began writing, her own story flowed onto the page instead. In her new memoir Matriarch , the entrepreneur and mother of Beyoncé Knowles-Carter and Solange Knowles shares the story of how she helped her daughters become cultural icons. In today's episode, Tina Knowles speaks with NPR's Michel Martin about fighting to allow her girls to express their style, a memorable moment on ...
May 05, 2025•8 min
Two new cookbooks take different approaches – one modern and one more traditional – to Korean cuisine. First, Roy Choi is the co-founder of Los Angeles' Kogi BBQ food trucks, which put Korean-Mexican fusion on the map. He rose to fame cooking meat, but his first full cookbook The Choi of Cooking focuses on vegetables. In today's episode, Choi speaks – and cooks – with NPR's Ailsa Chang. Over breakfast burritos, they discuss the chef's quest to elevate vegetables and break what Choi calls an addi...
May 02, 2025•19 min
Jennifer Haigh's latest novel Rabbit Moon opens with a hit and run accident in pre-dawn Shanghai. The victim is a 22-year-old American woman named Lindsey. Her parents immediately fly into Shanghai while Lindsey's sister awaits news from a New England summer camp – and the accident scars an already-fractured family. In today's episode, Haigh speaks with Here & Now's Scott Tong about their impressions of Shanghai, her interest in turning the idea of studying abroad on its head, and how she approa...
May 01, 2025•10 min
For more than 20 years, Lucian Kim covered Russia and Ukraine as a journalist. Now, the former NPR reporter is out with a new book that aims to explain the confluence of personal and geopolitical motivations that led to Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Putin's Revenge identifies key moments in the decades leading up to the invasion, including the 2004 Orange Revolution, George W. Bush's support of NATO membership for Ukraine, and Russia's 2014 seizure of Crimea. In today's episode, ...
Apr 30, 2025•12 min
In a Manhattan restaurant, the narrator of Audition meets a young man for lunch. Everyone has a different understanding of the pair's relationship, including the narrator herself. Katie Kitamura says she got the idea for the story after coming across a headline that said, "a stranger told me he was my son." That headline turned into the premise for her latest novel, which experiments with the idea of contradictions to destabilizing effect. In today's episode, Kitamura joins NPR's Ari Shapiro for...
Apr 29, 2025•9 min
Known for books like Beach Read and People We Meet on Vacation , Emily Henry is the patron saint of millennial romance. But for her latest novel, the author says she wanted to challenge herself in a new way. Great Big Beautiful Life is a story within a story about two journalists who are competing to write the biography of a fictional media heiress. There's romance at the center of the novel, but the story also follows a century-long family drama. In today's episode, Henry speaks with NPR's Mile...
Apr 28, 2025•9 min
Zadie Smith's White Teeth marked its 25th anniversary in January. The now canonical novel tells the story of an unlikely friendship between a shy Englishman named Archie Jones and his friend Samad Iqbal, a devout Bengali Muslim. Both men are trying to pass on their religious and moral beliefs to their children. In today's episode, we revisit a conversation between Smith and NPR's Liane Hansen that aired shortly after White Teeth 's release. Then, we'll hear some of Smith's conversation last mont...
Apr 25, 2025•15 min
When Nikki travels to visit her grandmother in western North Carolina, she expects answers about her family's history. But instead, she uncovers her connection to the Kingdom of the Happy Land, a community of formerly enslaved people. Dolen Perkins-Valdez's new novel Happy Land follows Nikki as she delves deeper into family secrets. The author says she was inspired by the true story of an autonomous Black community that once lived in the mountains of Appalachia. In today's episode, Perkins-Valde...
Apr 24, 2025•8 min
Three years ago, trans content creator and actor Dylan Mulvaney posted a video on TikTok documenting her first day of girlhood. Though she didn't expect to turn the post into a series, Mulvaney says the videos became a way to track both her journey and her experience of trans joy. Now, she's out with a memoir called Paper Doll: Notes from a Late Bloomer , which continues to document her transition, as well as her rise to social media stardom. In today's episode, Mulvaney speaks with NPR's Juana ...
Apr 23, 2025•9 min
Pope Francis died Monday, leaving behind a legacy as "Pope of the People" and a change agent within the Catholic Church. Austen Ivereigh's The Great Reformer was published just a year into Pope Francis's papacy. But already, the biography argues, the pope had solidified his position as a radical reformer, both in his approach to hot-button issues and his interactions with regular people. In today's episode, we revisit a conversation between Ivereigh and NPR's Eric Westervelt. They discuss Pope F...
Apr 22, 2025•7 min
Journalist Clay Risen is out with a new narrative history of the Red Scare, based in part on newly declassified sources. In Red Scare , Risen depicts McCarthyism as a cultural witch hunt against all kinds of people, not just potential communist spies. And he argues that the Red Scare was part of a broader cultural backlash against New Deal progressivism and an increasing sense of cosmopolitanism in the United States. In today's episode, Risen joins NPR's Steve Inskeep for a conversation about Se...
Apr 21, 2025•8 min
Two new picture books explore how the outside world can transform our relationships with our communities and ourselves. First, Kiese Laymon is out with a children's book about three Black boys who connect during a transformative summer in the South. With City Summer, Country Summer , Laymon says he wanted to explore the experience of getting lost as a kind of experimentation. In today's episode, the author speaks with NPR's Michel Martin about his wish to write a book about the emotional tendern...
Apr 18, 2025•16 min
Asma Khan grew up in India, where late summer means monsoon season. But it wasn't until she moved to England in the '90s that she learned how to cook. At 45, after earning a PhD in constitutional law, she opened Darjeeling Express. The London restaurant made her into a celebrity chef and an authority on Indian food. Now, Khan is out with a new cookbook called Monsoon , which celebrates a seasonal approach to cooking. In today's episode, Khan speaks with NPR's Asma Khalid about making a big caree...
Apr 17, 2025•9 min
Seventeen-year-old Benny is studying hard and working as a busboy, hoping to attend college. Meanwhile, his childhood best friend, Lawson, is on a different path, dealing drugs – and is always in need of a ride. Rex Ogle's When We Ride is a novel-in-verse about their relationship, which becomes strained as differences between the two young men come into focus. In today's episode, Ogle joins NPR's Ayesha Rascoe for a conversation about the book. They discuss friendship breakups, what we owe our o...
Apr 16, 2025•9 min
Elaine Sciolino has one mantra: "Never go to the Louvre on an empty stomach or with a full bladder." The former Paris bureau chief of The New York Times has written a guide filled with her best advice for enjoying the world's most-visited museum. Her new book, Adventures in the Louvre, is part journalism, part memoir and part art history. In today's episode, Sciolino speaks with NPR's Mary Louise Kelly about the contested origins of the museum's name, the staff's love-hate relationship with the ...
Apr 15, 2025•9 min
John Kenney's I See You've Called in Dead is about an obituary writer named Bud Stanely. One late night after a particularly bad date and too many glasses of Scotch, Bud drunkenly writes his own remembrance – and hits publish. The newspaper where he works wants to fire him, but can't legally terminate a dead person. But the error sets off a change in Bud's life as he begins to attend the funerals of strangers. In today's episode, Kenney joins NPR's Scott Simon for a conversation about the colleg...
Apr 14, 2025•9 min
Two new novels explore technology's increasing access to our most intimate thoughts. First, the protagonist in The Mechanics of Memory can't remember her last year. Hope has found herself in a too-perfect mental health facility where she participates in questionable treatment, some involving virtual reality. Audrey Lee's novel follows Hope as she slowly starts to recall pieces of her life and questions what to believe. In today's episode, Lee joins Here & Now's Scott Tong for a conversation abou...
Apr 11, 2025•19 min
Lollapalooza is a popular music festival that takes place in Chicago's Grant Park each year. But it was conceived as a farewell tour for the band Jane's Addiction, kicking off with a series of chaotic performances across the United States in the summer of 1991. Lollapalooza , a new oral history by Richard Bienstock and Tom Beaujour, documents the wild early days of the festival through interviews with bands like Jane's Addiction, Nine Inch Nails and Green Day. In today's episode, the book's auth...
Apr 10, 2025•8 min
Annie is 37 weeks pregnant. She's shopping at IKEA in Portland, Oregon, when everything around her begins to shake. It's an earthquake – the big one. Unable to get in touch with her husband or anyone else, she starts to walk. This is the setup for Emma Pattee's new novel Tilt , which the author says was inspired by the major earthquake predicted to hit the Pacific Northwest in the next 50 years. In today's episode, Pattee talks with NPR's Mary Louise Kelly about millennial disappointment, strivi...
Apr 09, 2025•9 min
In 2013, Amanda Nguyen was a Harvard senior interested in pursuing a career at NASA or the CIA. But she says those plans were temporarily derailed when she was raped just a few months before graduation. Nguyen went on to become an advocate for survivors of sexual assault – and her advocacy resulted in federal legislation that changed the way law enforcement handles rape kits. Now, she's out with a book about her experience called Saving Five: A Memoir of Hope . In today's episode, Nguyen speaks ...
Apr 08, 2025•9 min
Tuberculosis is one of the oldest diseases in human history – and it still kills more than a million people every year. In a new book, The Fault in Our Stars author John Green argues the infection persists only because we allow it to. Everything Is Tuberculosis takes on the history of the human response to and treatment of tuberculosis. The book, Green says, was partially inspired by a young boy named Henry whom the author met at a hospital in Sierra Leone. In today's episode, Green joins Here &...
Apr 07, 2025•12 min
Today on the show, we hear from authors who were inspired by history in wildly different ways. First, when Emma Donoghue encountered a famous photo of the 1895 Montparnasse derailment, she says she couldn't believe no one had written a novel about it. Donoghue's The Paris Express imagines what life was like for passengers on the old-fashioned steam locomotive. In today's episode, she talks with NPR's Steve Inskeep about the extensive historical research she conducted in order to write the book. ...
Apr 04, 2025•17 min
Three years ago, Scaachi Koul went through a divorce, a process that she says was "disorienting." But divorce, the Slate writer says, also offered a framework for rethinking everything: her relationship with men, family, conflict, and herself. Her new book of essays Sucker Punch works through this personal evolution. In today's episode, Koul speaks with NPR's Leila Fadel about one of the primary relationships in these essays: the writer's relationship with her mother. They also discuss Koul's sh...
Apr 03, 2025•7 min
NPR reporter Emily Feng lived in, and reported from, Beijing for years. But in 2022, the Chinese government told Feng, who was born in the United States to Chinese parents, that she couldn't return to the country. The experience prompted her to ask: What does it mean to be Chinese under Xi Jinping's government? Her new book Let Only Red Flowers Bloom explores this question through the lens of individuals who don't fit the government's ideal. In today's episode, Feng joins NPR's Ailsa Chang for a...
Apr 02, 2025•9 min
At the beginning of Long Island , an Irish-American woman named Eilis opens the front door of her New York home and is greeted by news of her husband's affair. The other woman is pregnant – and Eilis must decide what to do next. Author Colm Tóibín says this scene convinced him to write the novel, an unplanned sequel to Brooklyn . Long Island picks up 25 years after Brooklyn left off, following Eilis as she returns to the Irish town where she grew up. In today's episode, Tóibín talks with NPR's M...
Apr 01, 2025•9 min
The satirical news magazine The Onion has been putting out ironic and often absurd headlines for more than 40 years. Christine Wenc was part of the paper's original staff, dating back to its origins as an alt weekly in Madison, Wisconsin. Now, Wenc has written a book Funny Because It's True: How the Onion Created Modern News Satire that traces the history of the magazine's influence. In today's episode, she joins NPR's Scott Detrow for a conversation about the cheap living conditions that allowe...
Mar 31, 2025•8 min
