“And so, what was to me a relatively — at least in terms of storytelling — a tidy story of me collapsing and having my wife and my co-workers save my life and be getting up and getting out of the hospital and getting to write again, was a bit more involved than that.” In his new book, The Night the Lights Went Out , Defector columnist Drew Magary delivers a darkly comic and deeply honest story about his recovery from the traumatic brain injury that almost killed him. Drew joins us on the show to...
Oct 28, 2021•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast "And I had a great, great professor named Albert Guerard when I was starting out, and he said to me, 'Some people will tell you to write what you know. But I'm going to tell you write what you can imagine.' And that was such a gift." Words are magic (and truth and love and power) in Alice Hoffman's newest novel, The Book of Magic . It's the fourth in a series that started with Practical Magic in 1995, and features three generations of the fabulous (and sometimes prickly) Owens family, as it cuts...
Oct 26, 2021•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast “I love it, when, as a reader, I am surprised by the way people behave, you know that you're aghast and shocked and standing back a little bit. And I love it even more when I'm writing it, when I have tapped into a sense that I'm not in control of this guy, either.” We’ve been fans of Joshua Ferris since his very funny and acclaimed 2007 debut, Then We Came to the End — and he had us howling with laughter as we read his latest, A Calling for Charlie Barnes . Joshua joins us on the show to talk a...
Oct 21, 2021•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast “I'm so interested in people. I have been fascinated by people since I was just my first memory. I just think people are, for me, they are the most interesting things in the world.” No one captures the nuances of complicated lives quite like Elizabeth Strout, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author who likes to return to her characters and their communities in sometimes surprising ways, as she does in her new novel, Oh William! Elizabeth joins us on the show to talk about the world of Lucy Barton and ...
Oct 19, 2021•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast “Because for every kid who makes it out, there are thousands more who are just as capable, who don't. And I think we need to shift the conversation away from what was it that helped that one kid make it out to why are all these other kids not?” Andrea Elliott’s Invisible Child belongs on the shelf next to Evicted by Matthew Desmond and Alex Kotlowitz’s books There are No Children Here and An American Summer . She joins us on the show to talk about eleven-year-old Dasani and her family, how syste...
Oct 14, 2021•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast “I'm so grateful to be part of the world of books. And that's what makes me work so hard on them because it's possibly the greatest privilege I've been afforded.” Nick Offerman’s fifth book, Where the Deer and the Antelope Play , is charming, earnest and a little pointed, and, of course, very funny. It opens with Nick gallivanting in Glacier National Park with pals George Saunders and Jeff Tweedy, sees him repairing a stone wall and buying a livestock with his buddy James Rebanks, and roadtrippi...
Oct 12, 2021•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast America’s opioid crisis shows no signs of slowing down, and if you want to know how we got where we are, Beth Macy’s 2018 bestseller Dopesick is coming to Hulu as a limited series on October 13 th , produced by Danny Strong ( Game Change and Recall ), Warren Littlefield ( The Handmaid’s Tale ), director Barry Levinson, actor Michael Keaton and Beth herself, among others. Beth joins us on the show to talk about the screen adaptation of her powerful book—and what she learned writing for the screen...
Oct 09, 2021•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast “Suffragettes, but witches.” That was the three-word pitch that Alix E. Harrow used to sell her very fun and very smart second novel, The Once and Future Witches , our newest Monthly Speculative Fiction pick. Alix joins us on the show to talk about portal fantasy, our fascination with fairy tales (and why we keep returning to them), being a messy reader and more. Featured books: The Once and Future Witches, The Ten Thousand Doors of January and A Spindle Splintered, all by Alix Harrow, Ammonite ...
Oct 07, 2021•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast “One of the ways you make magic work is by believing it’s going to work.” Readers love Naomi Novik’s series set at the mysterious (and deadly) Scholomance. Volume two, The Last Graduate, has just landed, and our favorite prickly heroine Galadriel (El) is back, along with her gang of friends, and, of course, Orion Lake, who El might just hate a little less these days. Naomi Novik joins on the show for a spoiler-free conversation about worldbuilding, El’s evolution, Ursula Leguin’s story The Ones ...
Oct 05, 2021•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast “You never know what’s going to happen in a bookstore.” Wiley Cash joins us on the show to talk about the story about a too-big aircraft and a too-short runway that inspired his new novel, When Ghosts Come Home; tell us why he had to set the book in the 1980s; and how excited he is by the current rise of the Rural South in literary fiction. He also delivers a couple of reading lists you’ll want to add to your TBR pile now. Featured books: When Ghosts Come Home by Wiley Cash, Razorblade Tears and...
Oct 02, 2021•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast “I was honing my writing voice before anyone knew anything or cared about me as a writer.” Phoebe Robinson’s a force of nature with her standup shows, podcasts, TV shows and books. And now she’s adding publisher to her list of accomplishments with her new imprint, Tiny Reparations Books. Phoebe joins us on the show to talk about her newest book, Please Don’t Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes , her new imprint and the incredible debut authors she’s publishing, black hair, performative allyshi...
Sep 30, 2021•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast “But if you say today, I'm just working on this little monologue by this one character, you can trick yourself into making something bigger…” Anthony Doerr joins us on the show to talk about his epic new novel-about-everything, Cloud Cuckoo Land , his first since his Pulitzer Prize-winning All the Light We Cannot See . Featured books: Cloud Cuckoo Land , All the Light We Cannot See , and Memory Wall by Anthony Doerr, The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, Platero and I by Juan Ramón Jimén...
Sep 28, 2021•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast Ruth Ozeki’s new novel, The Book of Form and Emptiness , is a beautiful story about books and libraries, life and love. Ruth joins us on the show for a lively conversation about hearing voices, the connections between her last bestseller A Tale for the Time Being , and her latest, the relationship between her writing practice and her meditation practice, her very funny debut novel My Year of Meats, and more. Featured books: The Book of Form and Emptiness, A Tale for the Time Being, My Year of Me...
Sep 25, 2021•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast Brendan Kiely’s an award-winning author of YA fiction, including All-American Boys , which he co-wrote with Jason Reynolds. His fifth book is a bit of a departure for him; The Other Talk: Reckoning with Our White Privilege is a nonfiction book that asks us to consider where we are in the world today and how we start and sustain necessary conversations about race and whiteness with young people and ourselves. Brendan joins us on the show to talk about his own experience growing up white in a Bost...
Sep 23, 2021•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Richard Powers is the author of 13 novels, including The Overstory , winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. His new novel, Bewilderment, shortlisted for The Booker Prize and longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction, is an intimate story of two lost boys—father and son—and it’s a bit of a departure from his earlier books. Richard joins us on the show for a charming conversation about where the title came from, why he used a first-person narrative for this book, the connection between...
Sep 21, 2021•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast We've seen what death and dying do to the human body and we've investigated the afterlife thanks to Mary Roach. We've gone to space and to war with her. We've learned more than a little about taste and our digestive tracts, and, well, bonking--all thanks to Mary and her very, very funny books, her seventh book Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law has just landed. And as with all of her earlier books, we're pretty sure like us, you're going to feel smarter after you've read it. Mary joins us on the s...
Sep 16, 2021•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast Two Pulitzers, a National Book Award, and a MacArthur Genius Grant: Colson Whitehead is one of the greatest novelists working today. From The Intuitionist to The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys , his incredible body of work is driven by sharp insight and brilliant sentences. Harlem Shuffle is his newest novel, a character study, a caper flick, and an absolute thrill to read. Colson joins us on the show to talk about his love of 1970s heist flicks, walking aimlessly around Harlem, messy ...
Sep 14, 2021•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast Qian Julie Wang’s unforgettable memoir, Beautiful Country , belongs on the shelf next to modern classics like Educated by Tara Westover, When I Was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago, The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls and Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. Qian Julie joins us on the show to talk about capturing the universality of childhood (no matter how difficult the details), facing down shame in order to tell the truth and more. Featured books: Beautiful Country by Qian Julie Wang, I Know Why t...
Sep 12, 2021•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast “My ears were bent for stories.” Poet Warrior is the indelible new memoir by Joy Harjo, Poet Laureate of the United States. Joy joins us on the show to talk about her family’s stories, making music, Emily Dickinson’s poetry, how reading work out loud helps with the editing process, and more. Featured Books: Poet Warrior and An American Sunrise by Joy Harjo. Produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and engineered by Harry Liang. Folow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays....
Sep 09, 2021•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast A new book from Lauren Groff is always a hit with us, from her early novels, The Monsters of Templeton and Arcadia , to her massive 2015 bestseller, Fates and Furies , and her story collections, Delicate Edible Birds and Florida . We can’t get enough of her gorgeous sentences, evocative details, and the worlds she conjures. We’ll follow Lauren anywhere, and now that includes a 12th Century Abbey; her fabulous new novel, Matrix, is out today, and it’s our September Barnes & Noble Book Club select...
Sep 07, 2021•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast We love B.B. Alston and his Supernatural Investigation series—his debut novel for Middle Readers, Amari and the Night Brothers , is the Overall Winner of the Barnes & Noble Children’s and YA Book Awards—and the second book in the series is due in 2022. B.B. joins us on the show to talk about writing for children (and how to bring reluctant readers around to the sheer joy of books and reading); the writers who made him want to be a reader (and a writer); and more. Featured books: Amari and the Ni...
Sep 02, 2021•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast Love it or hate it (and there really seems to be no middle ground), The Great Gatsby still speaks volumes about us, our society, and the American Dream. Min Jin Lee, the acclaimed author of Pachinko and Free Food for Millionaires, has a written an introduction for this classic, and she joins us on the show to talk about Fitzgerald’s characters, what the novel means to her, and more. Featured books: The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald, with an introduction by Min Jin Lee, and Free Food for Mil...
Aug 31, 2021•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast A fun, spoiler-free conversation with Linden Lewis about her fabulous new novel The Second Rebel , the sequel to The First Sister , our first Speculative Fiction Monthly Pick. Linden joins us on the show to talk about Space Opera, world-building, scrapping full first drafts, giving yourself permission to write what you want to write, and more. Produced/Hosted by Miwa Messer and engineered by Harry Liang. Featured Books: The Second Rebel and The First Sister by Linden Lewis, Red Rising by Pierce ...
Aug 26, 2021•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast Grief, trauma and tragedy run through Kat Chow’s family tree, with everything coming together in 1980s Connecticut. Kat joins us on the show to talk about death and grief, ghosts and survival and debt, what it was like to report her own family’s story, taxidermy as metaphor, and more. Featured books: Seeing Ghosts by Kat Chow and Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala. Produced/Hosted by Miwa Messer and engineered by Harry Liang. Poured Over is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher. New episode...
Aug 24, 2021•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast If you were offered a life-changing do-over, would you take it? That’s the central question at the heart of Miranda Cowley Heller’s stunning debut novel, The Paper Palace . Miranda joins us on the show to talk about impossible choices, her love of Jane Austen, getting out of your own way, what poetry taught her about writing prose, and more. Featured books: The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller, Light Years by James Salter and 99 Stories of God by Joy Williams. Featured poets: Dorianne Laux,...
Aug 19, 2021•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast We stayed up impossibly late one night because we just had to know how Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s The Gods of Jade and Shadow ends. (Sleep is overrated when you need to know if a young woman can help the Mayan God of Death reclaim his throne in Jazz-era Mexico). We did it again with the creepy, unsettling Mexican Gothic , one of our favorite books last year, and again with The Beautiful Ones , our May 2021 Speculative Fiction Monthly Pick. Silvia joins us on the show to talk about her new noir, Velv...
Aug 17, 2021•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast Vianne and Isabelle, Leni, Elsa: Millions of readers have fallen head-over-heels for the heroines of Kristin Hannah’s most recent blockbusters, each one an unforgettable literary page-turner combining character, story and emotional payoff. Kristin joins us on the show to take readers behind the scenes of three of her biggest books, her evolution as a writer and more. Featured books: The Four Winds, The Great Alone and The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah; We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker (a B&...
Aug 12, 2021•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast Chicago, 1944. Aki Ito and her parents arrive in town, expecting to be met by Rose, their oldest daughter. But tragedy has struck, and now Aki Ito is determined to discover what happened to her sister in this historical thriller. Naomi Hirahara joins us on the show to discuss sisterhood and coming-of-age, Japanese-American Internment and the 100-442nd Infantry Battalion, and the influence Chester Himes, Walter Mosley and Barbara Neely had on her work — and more. Featured Books: Clark and Divisio...
Aug 10, 2021•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast Everyone has a secret to protect in a small Scottish Highlands town in Charlotte McConaghy’s new novel, Once There Were Wolves, the follow-up to her hit debut, Migrations (now in paperback). Charlotte joins us on the show to talk about writing literary fiction with crime elements, rewilding places and people, exploring empathy and hope through dark stories, and more. Featured books: Once There Were Wolves and Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy and The Overstory by Richard Powers. Produced/Hosted ...
Aug 05, 2021•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast Prepare to have your heart broken in all the best ways by Ash Davidson’s miraculous debut novel, Damnation Spring — our August Discover Pick. She joins us on the show to talk about starting with endings (and making big last-minute story changes); grounding her beautiful prose in real-life stories and first-person research; her love for her characters, and more. Featured Books: Damnation Spring by Ash Davidson, East of Eden by John Steinbeck, Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner, The Round House by...
Aug 03, 2021•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
