Good afternoon and welcome to another editor of the Avid Reader. Today our guest is Anne Beattie, author of A Wonderful Stroke of Luck, the next in her series of many novels and short story collections. Published in April by Viking. Anne is incredibly prolific and after 40 years remains as relevant as she was in 1976. She’s had tons of short stories in The New Yorker, has won many awards including four O. Henrys, The PEN Malamud Award, been in Best American Short Stories and as I said, many othe...
Jun 12, 2019•59 sec
The Paper Wasp is about two women, one beautiful, one plain, one insecure and one quite confident (at different times). It’s about a rekindled relationship in which power shifts, spirituality is embraced or given lip service and plans are made, by both women, plans that sometimes work and sometimes don’t. My point, somehow made in an extremely disjointed fashion, is that it’s hard to know who’s successful, who’s a failure, who knows what their life is about and who doesn’t and then layered on th...
Jun 12, 2019•44 min
The Paper Wasp is about two women, one beautiful, one plain, one insecure and one quite confident (at different times). It’s about a rekindled relationship in which power shifts, spirituality is embraced or given lip service and plans are made, by both women, plans that sometimes work and sometimes don’t. My point, somehow made in an extremely disjointed fashion, is that it’s hard to know who’s successful, who’s a failure, who knows what their life is about and who doesn’t and then layered on th...
Jun 12, 2019•3 min
Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Damian Barr, author of You Will Be Safe Here, his first novel, published in May by Bloomsbury. Damian is an award winning writer and columnist. Maggie And Me, his memoir won several prestigious awards. Damian writes columns for BigIssue and High Life. He is the creator and host of his own Literary Salon that premieres work from established and emerging writers. I’d love to talk to him for hours about th...
May 22, 2019•1 min
Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Damian Barr, author of You Will Be Safe Here, his first novel, published in May by Bloomsbury. Damian is an award winning writer and columnist. Maggie And Me, his memoir won several prestigious awards. Damian writes columns for BigIssue and High Life. He is the creator and host of his own Literary Salon that premieres work from established and emerging writers. I’d love to talk to him for hours about th...
May 22, 2019•54 min
Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Namwali Serpell author of The Old Drift, her first novel, published in March by Hogarth. Namwali has won many prizes in literature. Her writing has appeared in the NYer, Tin House, McSweeneys, the Guardian and in numerous short story anthologies, including Best American Short Stories. Oh and her first book of literary criticism, Seven Modes of Uncertainty was published in 2014 by Harvard. We’ll come bac...
May 22, 2019•56 min
Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Namwali Serpell author of The Old Drift, her first novel, published in March by Hogarth. Namwali has won many prizes in literature. Her writing has appeared in the NYer, Tin House, McSweeneys, the Guardian and in numerous short story anthologies, including Best American Short Stories. Oh and her first book of literary criticism, Seven Modes of Uncertainty was published in 2014 by Harvard. We’ll come bac...
May 22, 2019•3 min
Good afternoon and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Janny Scott, author of The Beneficiary: Fortune, Misfortune, And The Story of My Father, published by Riverhead in April. Janny is a journalist and the author of A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mother. She was a reporter for the NYT and a member of the Times reporting team that won the Pulitzer Prize for the series “How Race Is Lived In America," and “Portraits of Grief” in the immediate aft...
May 22, 2019•49 min
Good afternoon and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Janny Scott, author of The Beneficiary: Fortune, Misfortune, And The Story of My Father, published by Riverhead in April. Janny is a journalist and the author of A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mother. She was a reporter for the NYT and a member of the Times reporting team that won the Pulitzer Prize for the series “How Race Is Lived In America," and “Portraits of Grief” in the immediate aft...
May 22, 2019•49 sec
Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of the Avid Reader. Today our guest is Bryce Andrews author of Down From The Mountain: The Life And Death Of A Grizzly Bear, published tomorrow April 16th by Houghton Mifflin. Bryce is the author of the memoir Badluck Way: A Year On The Ragged Edge Of The West. He has appeared on PBS and his essays and short work have been published in High Country News, Big Sky Journal and Backpacker. Bryce lives in Montana where he manages a conservation-o...
Apr 24, 2019•37 min
Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of the Avid Reader. Today our guest is Bryce Andrews author of Down From The Mountain: The Life And Death Of A Grizzly Bear, published tomorrow April 16th by Houghton Mifflin. Bryce is the author of the memoir Badluck Way: A Year On The Ragged Edge Of The West. He has appeared on PBS and his essays and short work have been published in High Country News, Big Sky Journal and Backpacker. Bryce lives in Montana where he manages a conservation-o...
Apr 24, 2019•1 min
Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Lucasta Miller, author of L.E.L.; The Lost Life And Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, The Celebrated “Female Byron”. Lucasta is a British critic, biographer and editor. She is the author of The Bronte Myth. Her articles have appeared in The Guardian, The Economist and The Independent. She was also a visiting scholar and fellow at Oxford University. L.E.L. was published in March by Knopf. The...
Apr 24, 2019•40 min
Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of the Avid Reader. Our guest today is Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman author of Sounds Like Titanic: A Memoir, published in February by Norton. Jessica has “performed” on PBS, QVC and at concert halls worldwide. Her writing has appeared in the NYTM, McSweeney’s, Brevity and Hippocampus. She teaches creative writing at Northern Kentucky University. Sounds Like Titanic is a book that at first seems as if it is born of the imagination of the autho...
Apr 24, 2019•41 min
Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of the Avid Reader. Our guest today is Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman author of Sounds Like Titanic: A Memoir, published in February by Norton. Jessica has “performed” on PBS, QVC and at concert halls worldwide. Her writing has appeared in the NYTM, McSweeney’s, Brevity and Hippocampus. She teaches creative writing at Northern Kentucky University. Sounds Like Titanic is a book that at first seems as if it is born of the imagination of the autho...
Apr 24, 2019•1 min
Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Lori Gottlieb, author of Maybe You Should Talk To Someone, published in April by Norton. Lori is a psychotherapist who writes the Dear Therapist advise column for The Atlantic. She also writes for the NYTM, and has appeared on The Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, CNN and NPR. Maybe You Should Talk To Someone is optioned for a TV series and it is perfectly structured for one. The book,...
Apr 24, 2019•27 min
Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Lori Gottlieb, author of Maybe You Should Talk To Someone, published in April by Norton. Lori is a psychotherapist who writes the Dear Therapist advise column for The Atlantic. She also writes for the NYTM, and has appeared on The Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, CNN and NPR. Maybe You Should Talk To Someone is optioned for a TV series and it is perfectly structured for one. The book,...
Apr 24, 2019•21 sec
Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Nathan Englander, Author of kaddish.com, published by Knopf, tomorrow the 26th. And also Nathan will be speaking and reading from kaddish.com at the free library on Wednesday, March 27 at 7:30 PM. You can visit the free library website to purchase tickets. Nathan is the author of Dinner At The Center Of The Earth, the collection What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, the best-selling story co...
Apr 09, 2019•57 min
Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Nathan Englander, Author of kaddish.com, published by Knopf, tomorrow the 26th. And also Nathan will be speaking and reading from kaddish.com at the free library on Wednesday, March 27 at 7:30 PM. You can visit the free library website to purchase tickets. Nathan is the author of Dinner At The Center Of The Earth, the collection What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, the best-selling story co...
Apr 09, 2019•3 min
Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of the Avid Reader . Today our guest is Mary Norris, author of this her second book Greek to Me: Adventures of the Comma Queen, published April 2 by Norton. Her first of course was Between You And Me: Confessions Of A Comma Queen back in 2015, the first time she and I spoke together. Mary began working at the New Yorker in 1978 (although we learn a lot about her life prior to that) and was a query proofreader at the magazine for 24 years. Sh...
Apr 09, 2019•49 min
Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of the Avid Reader . Today our guest is Mary Norris, author of this her second book Greek to Me: Adventures of the Comma Queen, published April 2 by Norton. Her first of course was Between You And Me: Confessions Of A Comma Queen back in 2015, the first time she and I spoke together. Mary began working at the New Yorker in 1978 (although we learn a lot about her life prior to that) and was a query proofreader at the magazine for 24 years. Sh...
Apr 09, 2019•1 min
Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Charlie Jane Anders, author of this, her new novel, The City In The Middle Of The Night. published in February by Tor. She’s the organizer of the Writers with Drinks series and was a founder of i09, a website about sci fi, science and futurism, Her stories have appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Lightspeed, Tin House and lots of anthologies. Her novel, S...
Mar 25, 2019•46 min
Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Charlie Jane Anders, author of this, her new novel, The City In The Middle Of The Night. published in February by Tor. She’s the organizer of the Writers with Drinks series and was a founder of i09, a website about sci fi, science and futurism, Her stories have appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Lightspeed, Tin House and lots of anthologies. Her novel, S...
Mar 25, 2019•2 min
Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Nathan Englander, Author of kaddish.com, published by Knopf, tomorrow the 26th. And also Nathan will be speaking and reading from kaddish.com at the free library on Wednesday, March 27 at 7:30 PM. You can visit the free library website to purchase tickets. Nathan is the author of Dinner At The Center Of The Earth, the collection What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, the best-selling story co...
Mar 17, 2019•59 min
Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Nathan Englander, Author of kaddish.com, published by Knopf, tomorrow the 26th. And also Nathan will be speaking and reading from kaddish.com at the free library on Wednesday, March 27 at 7:30 PM. You can visit the free library website to purchase tickets. Nathan is the author of Dinner At The Center Of The Earth, the collection What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, the best-selling story co...
Mar 17, 2019•39 min
Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Whitney Scharer, author of her first novel, The Age Of Light, Released in February by Little, Brown and Company. White holds a BA in English Literature form Wesleyan and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous journals. This, The Age Of Light, as I said, is her first novel. The Age Of Light gives us a unique and, for most of us, previously...
Mar 17, 2019•39 min
Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Whitney Scharer, author of her first novel, The Age Of Light, Released in February by Little, Brown and Company. White holds a BA in English Literature form Wesleyan and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous journals. This, The Age Of Light, as I said, is her first novel. The Age Of Light gives us a unique and, for most of us, previously...
Mar 17, 2019•1 min
Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Dr. H.W. Brands. Dr. Brands holds the Jack S. Blanton Sr.. Chair in history at The University of Texas. An incredibly prolific author of American history and its most evocative and important periods, Dr. Brand has written 25 books, edited at least five others and has published dozens of articles and scores of reviews. He has written for the NYT, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Atlantic...
Mar 17, 2019•42 min
Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Dr. H.W. Brands. Dr. Brands holds the Jack S. Blanton Sr.. Chair in history at The University of Texas. An incredibly prolific author of American history and its most evocative and important periods, Dr. Brand has written 25 books, edited at least five others and has published dozens of articles and scores of reviews. He has written for the NYT, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Atlantic...
Mar 17, 2019•21 sec
Lost Children Archive documents a cross country trip that is goal oriented for both a husband and wife whose marriage is disintegrating. Accompanying them are their two nameless children, one of whom becomes our narrator for a bit. As they travel, they document in many ways, their travel much as each of them have documented for much of their lives. The archive that is carried with them and accumulated anew as they journey gives the reader insight into both relationships and I guess I could say c...
Feb 22, 2019•38 min
Lost Children Archive documents a cross country trip that is goal oriented for both a husband and wife whose marriage is disintegrating. Accompanying them are their two nameless children, one of whom becomes our narrator for a bit. As they travel, they document in many ways, their travel much as each of them have documented for much of their lives. The archive that is carried with them and accumulated anew as they journey gives the reader insight into both relationships and I guess I could say c...
Feb 22, 2019•2 min
