Shows / New Books in Literature
New Books in Literature
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/…
Episodes
- New Books in Literature
Naomi Westerman, "Happy Death Club: Essays on Death, Grief, and Bereavement Across Cultures" (404 Inklings, 2024)
Playwright Naomi Westerman was an anthropology graduate student studying death rituals around the world when her whole family died, turning the end of lives…
- New Books in Literature
"Alaska Quarterly Review" Magazine: A Discussion with Ronald Spatz
Ronald Spatz is the editor-in-chief and co-founding editor of Alaska Quarterly Review. A formal National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, Mr. Spatz has been…
- New Books in Literature
Christian J. Collier, "Greater Ghost" (Four Way Books, 2024)
In Christian Collier's debut poetry collection, Greater Ghost (Four Way Books, 2024), this extraordinary Black Southern poet precisely stitches the sutures of…
- New Books in Literature
Kendra Sullivan, "Reps" (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2024)
Kendra Sullivan's latest book of poetry, Reps (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2024), cycles through a series of operational exercises that gradually enable her to…
- New Books in Literature
"Prairie Schooner" Magazine: A Discussion with John Kuligowski and Zainab Omaki
John Kuligowski is a Nonfiction Assistant Editor at Prairie Schooner and also currently a PhD student in English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He…
- New Books in Literature
Anthony Di Renzo, "Pasquinades: Essays from Rome's Famous Talking Statue" (Cayuga Lake Books, 2023)
Anthony Di Renzo's Pasquinades: Essays from Rome's Famous Talking Statue (Cayuga Lake Books, 2023) is the most audacious guide to Rome you will ever read…
- New Books in Literature
The "Massachusetts Review" Magazine: A Discussion with Jim Hicks and Shailja Patel
Jim Hicks is the Executive Editor of the Massachusetts Review, a Senior Lecturer in Comparative Literature at UMass Amherst, and a translator of literature…
- New Books in Literature
Eve J. Chung, "Daughters of Shandong" (Berkley Books, 2024)
Daughters of Shandong (Berkley Books, 2024), the author’s first and based on the life of her grandmother, follows the fortunes of a mother and three daughters…
- New Books in Literature
Alan Lightman, "Einstein's Dreams" (Vintage, 1992)
Einstein’s Dreams (Vintage, 1992) by Alan Lightman, set in Albert Einstein’s “miracle year” of 1905, is a novel about the cultural interconnection of time…
- New Books in Literature
Nat Reeve, "Nettleblack" (Cipher Press, 2022)
1893. Henry Nettleblack has to act fast or she’ll be married off by her elder sister. But leaving the safety of her wealthy life isn’t as simple as she…
- New Books in Literature
Iris Mwanza, "The Lions' Den" (Graydon House, 2024)
A missing boy. A corrupt system. A case that could change everything...When young queer dancer Wilbess "Bessy" Mulenga is arrested by corrupt police…
- New Books in Literature
Patrick Colm Hogan, "A People Without Shame" (Blackwater Press, 2024)
Somota is society divided by change, and by memories. When A. arrives in the protectorate shortly after the first world war, he is unsure of what to expect…
- New Books in Literature
Sorayya Khan, "We Take Our Cities with Us: A Memoir" (Ohio State UP, 2022)
Today’s book is: We Take Our Cities With Us (Ohio State UP, 2022), by Sorayya Khan. After her mother’s death, Sorayya Khan confronts her grief by revisiting…
- New Books in Literature
Graham McNeill, "Horus Heresy - False Gods" (Games Workshop, 2014)
For years, fans have been clamoring for novels about the Horus Heresy - the bloody civil war that set Space Marine against Space Marine and nearly spelled the…
- New Books in Literature
Molly Giles, "Life Span" (WTAW Press, 2024)
Molly Giles remembers when her father came back after WWII in 1945. Her memoir, Life Span (WTAW Press, 2024) opens when she is three years old, sitting in the…
- New Books in Literature
Dana Elmendorf, "In the Hour of Crows" (Mira Books, 2024)
Dana Elmendorf’s novel In The Hour of Crows (Mira Books, 2024) takes place in small town Appalachia and follows Weatherly Opal Wilder, a young woman with the…
- New Books in Literature
Emma Copley Eisenberg, "Housemates" (Hogarth, 2024)
Today I talked to Emma Copley Eisenberg's novel Housemates (Hogarth, 2024).After Bernie’s former photography professor, the renowned yet tarnished Daniel Dunn…
- New Books in Literature
Escape Velocity: Sarah Manguso in Conversation with Tess McNulty (EH)
What’s the truth and what’s a lie? What’s a memoir, what’s a novel, and what if both are just a series of “prose blocks”? This conversation between Sarah…
- New Books in Literature
Joanna Lowell, "A Shore Thing" (Berkley Books, 2024)
Joanna Lowell is known for her witty historical romances set in late Victorian England, a period both undergoing and resisting dramatic social change. Her…
- New Books in Literature
Rachel Khong, "Real Americans" (Knopf, 2024)
Real Americans (Knopf, 2024) begins on the precipice of Y2K in New York City, when twenty-two-year-old Lily Chen, an unpaid intern at a slick media company…
- New Books in Literature
C. J. Spataro, "More Strange Than True" (Sagging Meniscus Press, 2024)
Award winning author and short fiction writer, C. J. Spataro's debut novel, More Strange Than True (Sagging Meniscus Press, 2024) takes us in to a world of…
- New Books in Literature
"Conjunctions" Magazine: A Discussion with Bradford Morrow
Bradford Morrow is an American novelist, editor, essayist, poet, and children’s book author. A professor of literature and Bard Center Fellow at Bard College…
- New Books in Literature
Kimberly King Parsons, "We Were the Universe" (Knopf, 2024)
The trip was supposed to be fun. When Kit's best friend gets dumped by his boyfriend, he begs her to ditch her family responsibilities for an idyllic weekend…
- New Books in Literature
Jean Trounstine, "Motherlove: Stories" (Concord Free Press, 2024)
Motherlove (Concord Free Press, 2024) is the powerful short-story collection from Jean Trounstine, an acclaimed writer and social-justice activist with a deep…
- New Books in Literature
Katherine Mezzacappa, "The Maiden of Florence" (Fairlight Books, 2024)
Giulia is an orphan who has been cloistered since she was a baby. In 1584, the powerful Medici family demands a test of virility from the Grand Duke of Mantua…
- New Books in Literature
"Southern Humanities Review" magazine
Justin Gardiner is the author of two nonfiction books and a collection of poetry. His most recent title is the book-length lyric essay Small Altars, published…
- New Books in Literature
Machine, System, Code: Masande Ntshanga and Magalí Armillas-Tiseyra (EH)
Building parallels between technology and the human imagination, Masande Ntshanga’s conversation with Magalí Armillas-Tiseyra explains how cities are like…
- New Books in Literature
Joan Leegant, "Displaced Persons: Stories" (New American Press, 2024)
Joan Leegant’s new story collection, Displaced Persons (New American Press 2024) delves into human stories of living in the 21st century. Characters transform…
- New Books in Literature
Jennine Capó Crucet, "Say Hello to My Little Friend" (Simon and Schuster, 2024)
Failed Pitbull impersonator Ismael Reyes--you can call him Izzy--might not be the Scarface type, but why should that keep him from trying? Growing up in Miami…
- New Books in Literature
Jessica Leigh Kirkness, "The House with All the Lights on: Three Generations, One Roof, a Language of Light" (Allen & Unwin, 2023)
Emily Pacheco speaks with writer and researcher Jessica Kirkness about her memoir, The House with All the Lights on: Three Generations, One Roof, a Language of…
- New Books in Literature
Tahir Annour, “Symphony of the South," The Common magazine (2024)
Mayada Ibrahim speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her translation of “Symphony of the South,” a short story by Tahir Annour that appears in The…
- New Books in Literature
Yi-Han Lin, "Fang Si-Chi's First Love Paradise" (HarperVia, 2024)
In this episode, Jenna Tang shares with us her translation of Lin Yi-Han's Fang Si-Chi's First Love Paradise: A Novel (HarperVia, 2024), one of the most iconic…
- New Books in Literature
Gina Chung, "Green Frog: Stories" (Vintage, 2024)
From the author of Sea Change comes Green Frog: Stories (Vintage, 2024) a short story collection that explores Korean American womanhood, bodies, animals, and…
- New Books in Literature
Sasha Vasilyuk, "Your Presence Is Mandatory" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
In 2007 Ukraine, following the death of her husband, Yefim Shulman, Nina finds a letter he wrote to the KGB confessing the secret he’d kept for over 50 years…
- New Books in Literature
Alan Jenkins and Gan Golan, "1/6, The Graphic Novel: What if the Attack on the U.S. Capitol had Succeeded?" (Sun Print Solutions, 2023)
What if the January 6, 2021 Insurrection had been successful? A tale of what was, what could have been, and what still could be?1/6: The Graphic Novel (Sun…
- New Books in Literature
A. Engels, "A Fool for an Heir" (2024)
Few destinies are more challenging than life in the orbit of a man obsessed with expanding his power at all costs. Such is the fate endured by Ivan Ivanovich…
- New Books in Literature
Not Prophecy but Inversion: Omar El Akkad and Min Hyoung Song
Omar El Akkad joins critic Min Hyoung Song for a gripping conversation that interrogates fiction’s relationship to the real. Before he became a novelist, Omar…
- New Books in Literature
"Salmagundi" Magazine: A Discussion with Bob Boyers
Robert Boyers founded the quarterly Salmagundi in 1965 and has been its editor in chief ever since. He’s the author of 12 books, including most recently…
- New Books in Literature
The Translator's Daughter: A Discussion with Grace Loh Prasad
Today’s book is: The Translator’s Daughter: A Memoir (Mad Creek Books, 2024), by Grace Loh Prasad, which is a unique immigration story about the loneliness of…
- New Books in Literature
Anusha Rao and Suhas Mahesh, "How to Love in Sanskrit" (HarperCollins, 2024)
How to Love in Sanskrit (HarperCollins, 2024) is an invitation to Sanskrit love poetry, bringing together verses and short prose pieces by celebrated writers…
- New Books in Literature
David Corbett, "The Truth Against the World" (Square Tire Books, 2023)
The Truth Against the World (Square Tire Books, 2023) is a brilliant literary fantasy about a divided, dystopian America on the verge of war. Shane, a former…
- New Books in Literature
Hilary White, "Holes" (MA Bibliotheque, 2024)
Holes splices forms of fiction and nonfiction. The narrator, a researcher of limits at an unidentified university, figures her entanglement with an…
- New Books in Literature
Eliza Chan, "Fathomfolk" (Orbit, 2024)
Eliza Chan’s debut novel Fathomfolk (Orbit, 2024) takes place in the semi-submerged city of Tiankawi, where humans and fathomfolk - a collection of peoples…
- New Books in Literature
Andriy Sodomora, "The Tears and Smiles of Things: Stories, Sketches, Meditations" (Academic Studies Press, 2024)
Inspired by Virgil’s exquisitely ambivalent phrase “sunt lacrimae rerum” (there are tears of/for/in things), Andriy Sodomora, the Ukrainian “voice” of…
- New Books in Literature
Ryan Kenedy, "The Blameless" (U Wisconsin Press, 2023)
In Ryan Kenedy’s debut novel, The Blameless (University of Wisconsin Press 2023 ) we meet Virginia, an exhausted adjunct professor and divorced mother of an…
- New Books in Literature
Gretchen Felker-Martin, "Cuckoo" (Tor Nightfire, 2024)
Today I talked to Gretchen Felker-Martin about Cuckoo (Tor Nightfire, 2024).From Gretchen Felker-Martin, the acclaimed author of Manhunt, comes a vicious new…
- New Books in Literature
Hiromi Ito, "Tree Spirits Grass Spirits" (Nightboat Books, 2023)
A collected series of intertwined poetic essays written by acclaimed Japanese poet Hiromi Ito--part nature writing, part travelogue, part existential…
- New Books in Literature
Sasha Vasilyuk, "Your Presence Is Mandatory" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
Ukraine, 2007. Yefim Shulman, husband, grandfather and war veteran, was beloved by his family and his coworkers. But in the days after his death, his widow…
- New Books in Literature
"Oxford American" Magazine: A Discussion with Danielle Amir Jackson
Danielle Amir Jackson is a Memphis-born writer and critic, and the editor-in-chief of the Oxford American. Her work has appeared in the New York Times…
- New Books in Literature
Anthony Valerio, "Confessions of an Aspiring Pornographer" (Grailing Press, 2024)
Anthony Valerio's novel Confessions of an Aspiring Pornographer (Grailing Press, 2024) tells the story of Walter Michael Gregory. Call him Wally. Walter…
- New Books in Literature
You Write Because You Want to Feel Free: Katie Kitamura and Alexander Manshel (SW)
Although Katie Kitamura feels free when she writes—free from the “soup of everyday life,” from the political realities that weigh upon her, and even at times…
- New Books in Literature
"Akmaral" (Regal House, 2024): A Discussion with Judith Lindbergh
Inspired by the legends of Amazon women warriors told by ancient Greek historian Herodotus and evidenced by recent archaeological discoveries in Central Asia…
- New Books in Literature
Artem Chapeye, "The Ukraine" (Seven Stories Press, 2024)
A stunning debut collection of fiction and creative nonfiction-- irreverent and unglorified; loving and tender; uncomfortable and inconvenient--by a Ukrainian…
- New Books in Literature
Tarek El-Ariss, "Water on Fire: A Memoir of War" (Other Press, 2024)
In this evocative, insightful memoir, a leading voice in Middle Eastern Studies revisits his childhood in war-torn Lebanon and his family’s fascinating…
- New Books in Literature
Ruth Reichl, "The Paris Novel" (Random House, 2024)
Stella St. Vincent, a thirty-something copy editor in 1980s New York, has survived a relationship with her mother, Celia, so complicated that even the words…
- New Books in Literature
The Things We Didn't Know: A Conversation with Elba Iris Pérez
Today’s book is: The Things We Didn’t Know (Gallery Books, 2024), by Dr. Elba Iris Pérez’s. A cross-cultural coming-of-age story, The Things We Didn’t Know is…
- New Books in Literature
Greg Sarris, "The Forgetters" (Heyday Books, 2024)
In Greg Sarris' book The Forgetters (Heyday Books, 2024), Answer Woman, a crow, cannot come up with a story until she is asked by Question Woman, her sister…
- New Books in Literature
Ihsan Abdel Kouddous, "A Nose and Three Eyes" (Hoopoe, 2024)
Written by iconic Egyptian novelist Ihsan Abdel Kouddous, this classic of love, desire, and family breakdown smashed through taboos when first published in…
- New Books in Literature
On Monsters, Goddesses and Myths: A Discussion with Author Katherine Marsh
“We’re not monsters, Mom. We’re goddesses—smart, fearless, and beautiful.” That’s the voice of Ava, the superpowered protagonist of Katherine Marsh’s…
- New Books in Literature
Rachel Greenlaw, "Compass and Blade" (Inkyard Press, 2024)
Rachel Greenlaw's debut young adult romantasy, Compass and Blade (Inkyard Press, 2024) is filled with sirens and mysterious magic, swoony romance and cutthroat…