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
Mark Ernest Pothier, "Outer Sunset" (U Iowa Press, 2023)
Jim Finley--a recently retired English teacher living alone on the shifting edge of San Francisco--has been set, unwittingly, on the back porch of life. Trying…
- New Books in Literature
Cynthia Marie Hoffman, "Exploding Head" (Persea Books, 2024)
Exploding Head (Persea Books, 2024) chronicles a woman’s childhood onset and adult journey through obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), which manifests in…
- New Books in Literature
Rebecca Turkewitz, "Here in the Night" (Black Lawrence Press, 2023)
The thirteen stories in Rebecca Turkewitz's debut collection, Here in the Night (Black Lawrence Press, 2023), are engrossing, strange, eerie, and emotionally…
- New Books in Literature
Kyle Dillon Hertz, "The Lookback Window" (Simon and Schuster, 2023)
Growing up in suburban New York, Dylan lived through the unfathomable: three years as a victim of sex trafficking at the hands of Vincent, a troubled young man…
- New Books in Literature
Vanessa R. Sasson, "The Gathering: A Story of the First Buddhist Women" (Equinox, 2023)
After the Buddha’s enlightenment, his aunt and adoptive mother, Mahapajapati Gotami, asks him to ordain women and welcome them into his new monastic community…
- New Books in Literature
Lexi Freiman, "The Book of Ayn" (Catapult, 2023)
An original and hilarious satire of both our political culture and those who rage against it, The Book of Ayn (Catapult, 2023) follows a writer from New York…
- New Books in Literature
Vix Gutierrez, "Don’t Step Off the Path" (The Common magazine, 2023)
Vix Gutierrez speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her essay “Don’t Step Off the Path,” which appears in The Common’s most recent issue. Vix talks…
- New Books in Literature
Adi Wolfson, "I Am Your Father" (Pardes Press, 2023)
The poems in the book I Am Your Father (Pardes Press, 2019) were written during a period of great confusion and pain, culminating in the moment when the poet…
- New Books in Literature
Ran Oron, "He Could See a Bird Outside if He Looked Through His Window" (Persimmon Books, 2023)
From his home in Connecticut, Ran Oron observed and drew a pair of ospreys, a couple of birds of prey that return each year to the same nest. With a delicate…
- New Books in Literature
Eliza Minot. "In the Orchard" (Knopf, 2023)
A novel about womanhood, modern family, and the interior landscape of maternal life, as seen through the life of a young wife and mother on a single day. At…
- New Books in Literature
Martin Clark, "The Plinko Bounce" (Rare Bird Books, 2023)
For seventeen years, small-town public defender Andy Hughes has been underpaid to look after the poor, the addicted, and the unfortunate souls who constantly…
- New Books in Literature
Mary Kay Zuravleff, "American Ending" (Blair, 2023)
It’s the early 1900s in an Appalachian town filled with immigrants, and Yelena is the first American born to her Old Believer Russian Orthodox parents. She can…
- New Books in Literature
Booksellers' Best Books of 2023
Every year one of my absolute favorite episodes is the Booksellers Best-Of episode for which I get to interview independent bookstore managers, owners, and…
- New Books in Literature
Jarret Keene, "Hammer of the Dogs" (U Nevada Press, 2023)
Set in the wasteland of post-apocalyptic Las Vegas, Jarret Keene's, Hammer of the Dogs (University of Nevada Press, 2023), is a literary dystopian adventure…
- New Books in Literature
Karina Shor, "Silence, Full Stop" (Street Noise Books, 2023)
Alina Gorban is an illustrator of 22 children's books, a cartoonist, and a teaching artist. In our interview we celebrate her new graphic novel entitled…
- New Books in Literature
Boria Sax, "Enchanted Forests: The Poetic Construction of a World Before Time" (Reaktion Books, 2023)
Linking literature, philosophy, art, and personal experience, a moving exploration of the wooded landscape’s power. In 1985 Boria Sax inherited an area of…
- New Books in Literature
Bryan Washington, "Family Meal" (Riverhead Books, 2023)
From the bestselling, award-winning author of Memorial and Lot, an irresistible, intimate novel about two young men, once best friends, whose lives collide…
- New Books in Literature
Olena Stiazhkina, "Cecil the Lion Had to Die" (HURI, 2023)
In 1986 Soviet Ukraine, two boys and two girls are welcomed into the world in a Donetsk maternity ward. Following a Soviet tradition of naming things after…
- New Books in Literature
Overtaken by Awe: Sheila Heti speaks with Sunny Yudkoff
Sheila Heti sits down with Sunny Yudkoff and ND host John Plotz to discuss her incredibly varied oeuvre. She does it all: stories, novels, alphabetized diary…
- New Books in Literature
Sheldon Birnie, "Where the Pavement Turns to Sand" (Malarkey Books, 2023)
Where the Pavement Turns to Sand (Malarkey Books, 2023) is a collection of working class, everyday heartbreaks and bad decisions. In a refreshing rural…
- New Books in Literature
Katherine Vaz, "Above the Salt" (Flatiron Books, 2023)
Today I talked to Katherine Vaz about her new novel Above the Salt (Flatiron Books, 2023). In 1843-1846, on the Portuguese island of Madeira, five-year-old…
- New Books in Literature
Isa Arsén, "Shoot the Moon" (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2023)
Annie Fisk—an only child in Los Alamos, New Mexico—spends a lot of time investigating the treasure trove of objects at the back of her garden. Her father, with…
- New Books in Literature
Julie Schumacher, "The English Experience" (Doubleday, 2023)
Today I talked to Jule Schumacher about her new novel The English Experience (Doubleday, 2023). Jason Fitger may be the last faculty member the dean wants for…
- New Books in Literature
Alix Christie, "The Shining Mountains" (High Road Books, 2023)
Angus McDonald had to escape from Scotland or risk arrest. In 1838, he contracted with the Hudson Bay Company to trade in the Pacific Northwest. There he…
- New Books in Literature
Bradley P. Beaulieu, "The Dragons of Deepwood Fen" (Daw Books, 2023)
The Dragons of Deepwood Fen (Daw Books, 2023) is an immersive fantasy which takes you deep into a world of duality. There are two suns, one light and one dark…
- New Books in Literature
Douglas Weissman, "Life Between Seconds" (Addison & Highsmith, 2022)
In Life Between Seconds (Addison & Highsmith, 2022), Douglas Weissman explores found family and magic. After his mother dies, Peter Berry collects memories in…
- New Books in Literature
Elizabeth Hoover, "The Archive Is All in Present Tense" (Barrow Street Press, 2022)
The Archive Is All in Present Tense (Barrow Street Press, 2022) attempts to capture the feeling of archival research, which, despite being an attempt to access…
- New Books in Literature
Alexandra Chang, "Tomb Sweeping: Stories" (Ecco Press, 2023)
Compelling and perceptive, Tomb Sweeping (Ecco Press, 2023) probes the loyalties we hold: to relatives, to strangers, and to ourselves. In stories set across…
- New Books in Literature
Attention is Love: A Discussion with Lauren Groff and Laura McGrath (SW)
Just days before the release of her latest novel, The Vaster Wilds (Riverhead Books, 2023), three-time National Book Award Finalist and The New York…
- New Books in Literature
Lynn Miller, "The Lost Archive" (U Wisconsin Press, 2023)
The Lost Archive (U Wisconsin Press, 2023) is comprised of a cast of characters who are mostly dealing with, or in the aftermath of a crisis of some kind. Or…
- New Books in Literature
Alice Simpson, "The Winthrop Agreement: A Novel" (Harper Paperbacks, 2023)
Rivkah Milman is just one of the thousands of young women who fled their homes in Eastern Europe in the late nineteenth century, looking for better prospects…
- New Books in Literature
Andy Mozina, "Tandem" (Tortoise Books, 2023)
Today I talked to Andy Mozina about his new novel Tandem (Tortoise Books, 2023). An economics professor at a Michigan college is struggling through a bad…
- New Books in Literature
Kawika Guillermo, "Nimrods: A Fake-Punk Self-Hurt Anti-Memoir" (Duke UP, 2023)
Today I talked to Christopher Patterson about two books: the late Y-Dang Troeung's Landbridge [life in fragments] (Knopf Canada, 2023) and Christopher's own…
- New Books in Literature
Wole Talabi, "Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon" (Daw Books, 2023)
Wole Talabi’s debut novel Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon (Daw Books, 2023) follows Shigidi–a former nightmare god–and his partner, the succubus Nneoma…
- New Books in Literature
Proto-Science Fiction Classics: Joshua Glenn on MIT Press's "Radium Age Series"
Under the direction of founding editor Joshua Glenn, the MIT Press’s Radium Age series is reissuing notable proto–science fiction stories from the…
- New Books in Literature
Laura Sims, "How Can I Help You" (Putnam, 2023)
No one knows Margo's real name. Her colleagues and patrons at a small-town public library only know her middle-aged normalcy, congeniality, and charm. They…
- New Books in Literature
Ross Gay, "The Book of (More) Delights: Essays" (Algonquin Books, 2023)
In 2016, poet Ross Gay set out to document a delight each day for a year. After he published The Book of Delights, his friend asked him if he planned to…
- New Books in Literature
“We All Relate to Each Other’s Dystopias”
Shehan Karunatilaka’s The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (Norton, 2022), which won the Booker Prize in 2022, is a thriller that begins in the afterlife, an…
- New Books in Literature
Annie Dawid, "Paradise Undone: A Novel of Jonestown" (Inkspot, 2023)
Paradise Undone: A Novel of Jonestown by Annie Dawid, (Inkspot Publishing 2023), opens long after 917 people died by drinking cyanide or by lethal injection on…
- New Books in Literature
Mina Seçkin, "The Four Humors" (Catapult, 2022)
Mina Seçkin's novel The Four Humors (Catapult, 2022) follows a young Turkish-American woman who, rather than grieving her father's untimely death, seeks…
- New Books in Literature
Reese Hogan, "My Heart Is Human" (Space Wizard Science Fantasy, 2023)
Today we talked to Reese Hogan about his book My Heart Is Human (Space Wizard Science Fantasy, 2023). The body belongs to Joel Lodowick, a single parent and…
- New Books in Literature
Kim Taylor Blakemore, "The Good Time Girls Get Famous" (Sycamore Creek Press, 2023)
Today I talked to Kim Taylor Blakemore about her new book The Good Time Girls Get Famous (Sycamore Creek Press, 2023). Get ready for the latest rip-roaring…
- New Books in Literature
Angie Kim, "Happiness Falls" (Hogarth Press, 2023)
"We didn't call the police right away." Those are the electric first words of this extraordinary novel about a biracial Korean American family in Virginia…
- New Books in Literature
Narrative, Database, Archive: Tom Comitta and Deidre Lynch (AV)
12 tables; 300 novels, 1500 pages of nature description: This is how Tom Comitta created The Nature Book (Coffee House Press, 2023), a one-of-a-kind novel cut…
- New Books in Literature
Phyllis M. Skoy, "A Coup: The Turkish Trilogy #3" (Black Rose Writing, 2023)
A Coup, the third novel in Phyllis Skoy’s Turkish Trilogy (Black Rose Writing 2023) follows a young woman in Turkey. In the first book of the trilogy, Adalet…
- New Books in Literature
Valerie Werder, "Thieves: A Novel" (Fence Books, 2023)
Thieves (Fence Books, 2023) is an autofictional account of a gallery girl named Valerie – an art worker in the big city, a product of an American childhood in…
- New Books in Literature
Andrew Ridker, "Hope" (Viking, 2023)
The year is 2013 and the Greenspans are the envy of Brookline, Massachusetts, an idyllic (and idealistic) suburb west of Boston. Scott Greenspan is a…
- New Books in Literature
Sheldon Birnie, "Down in the Flood" (BookBaby, 2012)
Sheldon Birnie's novel Down in the Flood (BookBaby, 2012) is the story of a man who is rapidly becoming lost in a sea of women, whisky, and bad weather. Set in…
- New Books in Literature
Marjorie Hudson, "Indigo Field" (Regal House Publishing, 2023)
Marjorie Hudson's Indigo Field (Regal House Publishing, 2023) paints a sweeping picture of multigenerational family trauma, Native American and Black history…
- New Books in Literature
Robert Lashley, "I Never Dreamed You'd Leave in Summer" (Demersal, 2023)
Poet Robert Lashley's I Never Dreamed You'd Leave in Summer (Demersal, 2023) is a complex and compelling coming-apart-of-age story set in the Hilltop…
- New Books in Literature
Chris Stowers, "Bugis Nights" (Earnshaw Books, 2023)
In 1987, Chris Stowers ditches his dull job in the UK and embarks on a trip throughout the Asia-Pacific, following countless other adventurers traveling with…
- New Books in Literature
Stephanie Cowell, "The Boy in the Rain" (Regal House Publishing, 2023)
Robert Stillman, an eighteen-year-old Londoner, has few expectations when he travels to Nottingham to study with the Reverend George Langstaff. Life has not…
- New Books in Literature
What Would Undo the Maxim Gun? Magic: P. Djèlí Clark and andré carrington
Locus- and Nebula- award-winning author P. Djèlí Clark joins critic andré carrington (UC Riverside) and host Rebecca Ballard for a conversation about the…
- New Books in Literature
Suzanne Berne, "The Blue Window: A Novel" (Marysue Rucci Books, 2023)
Today I talked to Suzanne Berne about her novel The Blue Window (Marysue Rucci Books, 2023). Lorna is a clinical social worker, trained to talk to people, but…
- New Books in Literature
Hannah Michell, "Excavations: A Novel" (One World, 2023)
Sae, former journalist turned a young mother of two in 1992 Seoul, is waiting for her husband, an engineer for a small construction company. He’s late. A…
- New Books in Literature
Sherif M. Meleka, "Suleiman's Ring" (Hoopoe, 2023)
Today I talked to Sherif Meleka about his novel Suleiman’s Ring (Hoopoe, 2023) An enchanted ring brings good fortune to an Egyptian oud player in this…
- New Books in Literature
Caitlin Cowan, "Happy Everything" (Cornerstone Press, 2024)
Caitlin Cowan is the author of Happy Everything, forthcoming in February 2024 from Cornerstone Press. Caitlin holds a PhD in English from the University of…
- New Books in Literature
Jamila Ahmed, "Every Rising Sun: A Novel" (Henry Holt, 2023)
Jamila Ahmed's novel, Every Rising Sun (Henry Holt, 2023) is a clever take on One Thousand and One Nights. Traveling through lush courtyards, perilous deserts…
- New Books in Literature
Christopher Merrill, "On the Road to Lviv" (Arrowsmith Press, 2023)
Prismatic and polysemous, On the Road to Lviv (Arrowsmith Press, 2023) invites us on an odyssey across Ukraine in the hour of war. "This chronicle/ Took shape…
- New Books in Literature
Caroline O'Donoghue, "The Rachel Incident" (Knopf, 2023)
Rachel is a student working at a bookstore when she meets James, and it's love at first sight. Effervescent and insistently heterosexual, James soon invites…