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
Peg Alford Pursell, "A Girl Goes into the Forest" (Dzanc Books, 2019)
The stories and fables in A Girl Goes into the Forest (Dzanc Books, 2019) twist and turn with the sorrows and challenges of family, lovers, growing up, and…
- New Books in Literature
Tim Frandy, "Inari Sami Folklore: Stories from Aanaar" (U Wisconsin Press, 2019)
Inari Sámi Folklore: Stories from Aanaar (University of Wisconsin Press, 2019) is rich multivoiced anthology of folktales, legends, joik songs, proverbs…
- New Books in Literature
Deborah L. Davitt, "The Gates of Never" (Finishing Line Press, 2018)
Drawing on the author’s deep knowledge of classical literature, Deborah L. Davitt’s book of poetry The Gates of Never (Finishing Line Press, 2018) explores the…
- New Books in Literature
Daphne Kalotay, "Blue Hours" (Triquarterly, 2019)
It’s 1991, and recent college graduate Mim wants to be a writer, but for now she is folding clothes at Benetton. She notices the trash-filled streets and…
- New Books in Literature
Gill Paul, "The Lost Daughter" (William Morrow, 2019)
Grand Duchess Maria Romanova arrives in Ekaterinburg in 1918 with her parents, the former Tsar Nicholas II and his wife, Alexandra. After months of house…
- New Books in Literature
Cadwell Turnbull, "The Lesson" (Blackstone Publishing, 2019)
In Cadwell Turnbull’s The Lesson (Blackstone Publishing, 2019), the U.S. Virgin Islands serve as Earth’s entry point for the Ynaa, beings from a far corner of…
- New Books in Literature
Chelene Knight, "Dear Current Occupant" (Book*hug, 2018)
Today, I’m talking with Chelene Knight. She’s written a new memoir called Dear Current Occupant (Book*hug, 2018). And as her title suggests, it’s a letter of…
- New Books in Literature
Jeffrey Saks, "Agnon Library of The Toby Press"
Shmuel Yosef Agnon (1888-1970) was born in Buczacz, Eastern Galicia (now part of Ukraine). Yiddish was the language of his home, and Hebrew the language of the…
- New Books in Literature
Melissa Albert, "The Hazel Wood" (Flatiron Books, 2018)
Melissa Albert's novel The Hazel Wood(Flatiron Books, 2018) is a shivery delight, like a dazzling vintage ball gown of paisley silk, slithering over your head…
- New Books in Literature
Rebecca Clarren, "Kickdown" (Arcade, 2018)
Two sisters are struggling to save their land when a gas well explodes on a neighboring ranch in western Colorado, setting off a disturbing chain of events…
- New Books in Literature
C.A. Fletcher, "A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World" (Orbit, 2019)
C.A. Fletcher’s new novel, A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World(Orbit, 2019), takes place several generations after a pandemic has turned humans into an…
- New Books in Literature
Linnea Hartsuyker, "The Golden Wolf" (Harper, 2019)
When I spoke with Linnea Hartsuyker back in 2017, her epic saga was just beginning. The first novel opens with her hero, Ragnvald, seeing a vision of a golden…
- New Books in Literature
Karen Hugg, "The Forgetting Flower" (Magnolia Press, 2019)
Planted in her mind while the author was working as a professional gardener, The Forgetting Flower (Magnolia Press, 2019) tells the story of Renia, a working-…
- New Books in Literature
G. P. Gottlieb, "Battered" (D. X. Varos, 2019)
It is not easy to interview a writer of murder mysteries without giving away too many details, but when an author not only manages to create a full and complex…
- New Books in Literature
Kate Braithwaite, "The Girl Puzzle" (Crooked Cat Books, 2019)
Nellie Bly is in some respects a household name, yet the passage of time has erased many of her accomplishments from popular memory. One of the first…
- New Books in Literature
Laury Silvers, “The Lover” (Kindle Direct Publishers, 2019)
Zaytuna just wants to be left alone to her ascetic practices and nurse her dark view of the world. But when an impoverished servant girl she barely knows comes…
- New Books in Literature
Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, "This is How You Lose the Time War" (Gallery, 2019)
For Blue and Red—arch enemies at the center of Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone’s epistolary novella, This is How You Lose the Time War (Gallery, 2019)—the…
- New Books in Literature
Eyal Kless, "The Lost Puzzler: The Tarakan Chronicles" (Harper Voyager, 2019)
A picaresque novel about a serious boy with special powers, The Lost Puzzler takes place in an impoverished, technologically backwards world. After the fall of…
- New Books in Literature
Rabeah Ghaffari, "To Keep the Sun Alive" (Catapult, 2019)
It’s 1979, and the Islamic Revolution is just around the corner, as is a massive solar eclipse. In this epic novel set in the small Iranian city of Naishapur…
- New Books in Literature
David Slucki, "My Funeral: A Memoir of Fathers and Sons" (Wayne State UP, 2019)
In Sing This at My Funeral: A Memoir of Fathers and Sons (Wayne State University Press, 2019), David Slucki, Assistant Professor in the Yaschik/Arnold Jewish…
- New Books in Literature
Lauren Willig, "The Summer Country" (William Morrow, 2019)
When Emily Dawson inherits a plantation in Barbados from her grandfather, Jonathan Fenty, in 1854, she is not quite sure what to make of the bequest. Emily, an…
- New Books in Literature
David Wellington, "The Last Astronaut" (Orbit, 2019)
In The Last Astronaut (Orbit, 2019), David Wellington turns his prolific imagination—which is more often associated with earthbound monsters like zombies…
- New Books in Literature
Sarah St. Vincent, "Ways to Hide in Winter" (Melville House, 2018)
After surviving a car crash that left her widowed at twenty-two, Kathleen has retreated to a remote corner of a state park, where she works flipping burgers…
- New Books in Literature
C. W. Gortner, "The Romanov Empress: A Novel of Tsarina Maria Feodorovna" (Ballentine Books, 2018)
101 years have passed since the murder of the Imperial Family of Russia at Yekaterinburg, but their appeal has not diminished. Indeed, interest in the Romanovs…
- New Books in Literature
Rachel Stolzman Gullo, "Practice Dying" (Bedazzled Ink, 2018)
Rachel Stolzman Gullo Practice Dying (Bedazzled Ink, 2018) is about twins, David and Jamila, who seek meaning and connection from opposite ends of the world…
- New Books in Literature
jayy dodd, "The Black Condition Ft. Narcissus" (Nightboat Books, 2019)
If the prompt is “respond to a myth of Narcissus using thoughtful, meditative poems,” then jayy dodd gave us a beautiful answer. In The Black Condition Ft…
- New Books in Literature
Sophia Shalmiyev, "Mother Winter: A Memoir" (Simon and Schuster, 2019)
The story of where we come from is such an important aspect of our personal sense of self, the forefront of many conversations about national identity…
- New Books in Literature
Miryam Sivan, "Make it Concrete" (Cuidono Press, 2019)
For twenty years, 47-year-old Isabel Toledo has been ghostwriting the stories of Holocaust survivors. It's the mid 1990's, Isabel is divorced from the father…
- New Books in Literature
Adrienne Celt, "Invitation to a Bonfire" (Bloomsbury, 2018)
Zoya Andropova—soon to be known in her adopted country as Zoë Andropov—didn’t ask to be rescued from her Soviet orphanage, even after the arrest of her father…
- New Books in Literature
Eliot Peper, "Breach" (47North, 2019)
The massive corporation at the center of Eliot Peper’s Analog trilogy, which he completed last month with the publication of Breach (47North, 2019) is…
- New Books in Literature
Sharon Shinn, "Echo in Onyx: Uncommon Echoes" (Audible Studios, 2019)
Brianna, our narrator, is the daughter of a country inn-keeper. Her quick thinking and compassion during a job interview earn her a coveted position as lady’s…
- New Books in Literature
Christopher Rea, "China's Chaplin: Comic Stories and Farces by Xu Zhuodai" (Cornell UP, 2019)
Hoaxes! Jokes! Farces and fun! Cristopher Rea's China’s Chaplin (Cornell University Press, 2019) introduces the imagination of Xu Zhuodai (1880–1958), a comic…
- New Books in Literature
Nina Boutsikaris, "I’m Trying to Tell You I’m Sorry: An Intimacy Triptych" (Black Lawrence Press, 2019)
Today, I’m talking with Nina Boutsikaris. Her new book is called I’m Trying to Tell You I’m Sorry: An Intimacy Triptych (Black Lawrence Press, 2019). And if…
- New Books in Literature
John Sibley Williams, "As One Fire Consumes Another" (Orison Books, 2019)
John Sibley Williams’ As One Fire Consumes Another (Orison Books, 2019) presents a familiar world full of burnings carried out on both the grand and intimate…
- New Books in Literature
Kate Harris, "Lands of Lost Borders: A Journey on the Silk Road" (Dey Street Books, 2019)
Kate Harris — writer, scientist, and extreme cyclist – talks about the trip she made with her friend Mel, tracing Marco Polo’s route across Central Asia and…
- New Books in Literature
Pauline W. Chen, "Final Exam: A Surgeon’s Reflections on Mortality" (Vintage, 2008)
Too often keeping patients alive gets in the way of helping them as they approach death. Dr. Pauline Chen shares her experiences as a medical student and…
- New Books in Literature
Reema Zaman, "I Am Yours: A Shared Memoir" (Amberjack, 2019)
Since its inception in 2017, the viral #MeToo movement has called more cultural attention to abusive behavior, creating a much-needed public space for women to…
- New Books in Literature
Vandana Singh, "Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories" (Small Beer Press, 2018)
Vandana Singh has made a career of studying both hard science and the far corners of creativity. It’s no surprise then that Ambiguity Machines and Other…
- New Books in Literature
Anne Cushman, "The Mama Sutra: A Story of Love, Loss, and the Path of Motherhood" (Shambala, 2019)
Sutra is the Sanskrit name for a short spiritual teaching, and it comes from the same root as the English word suture, or stitch. This story of motherhood as a…
- New Books in Literature
Tsering Döndrup, "The Handsome Monk and Other Stories" (Columbia UP, 2019)
A series of stories ranging from two-page narrative excerpts to 90+ page novellas, The Handsome Monk and Other Stories (Columbia University Press, 2019)…
- New Books in Literature
Ana Johns, "The Woman in the White Kimono" (Park Row Books, 2019)
Naoko Nakamura is only seventeen when she falls madly in love with an American navy man. It’s 1957, and the US occupation of Japan has ended just a few years…
- New Books in Literature
Ariela Freedman, "A Joy to Be Hidden" (Linda Leith Publishing, 2019)
It’s the late 1990’s and Alice Stein is a grad student in New York City. Her father died the previous year, leaving her mother with 8-year-old twins to raise…
- New Books in Literature
Audrey Schulman, "Theory of Bastards" (Europa Editions, 2018)
Audrey Schulman’s Theory of Bastards (Europa Editions, 2018) uses a scientist’s relationship with bonobos—and her struggle to keep them alive following a…
- New Books in Literature
Chelsea Biondolillo, "The Skinned Bird" (Kernpunkt Press, 2019)
If you’ve ever flipped a large rock over to see what was underneath and encountered dark sludge, the movement of insects, and the stirring of your own…
- New Books in Literature
R. F. Kuang, "The Poppy War" (Harper Voyager, 2019)
Rin, an orphan raised by a family that treats her badly, is no Harry Potter, despite the superficial similarities. No kindly wizards await her; there are no…
- New Books in Literature
Julie Zuckerman, "The Book of Jeremiah" (Press 53, 2019)
Julie Zuckerman’s moving and engrossing debut novel-in-stories, The Book of Jeremiah (Press 53, 2019), tells the story of awkward but endearing Jeremiah…
- New Books in Literature
Sally Wen Mao, "Oculus" (Graywolf Press, 2019)
In Oculus (Graywolf Press, 2019), Sally Wen Mao explores exile not just as a matter of distance and displacement, but as a migration through time and a…
- New Books in Literature
Hilary Plum, "Watchfire" (Rescue Press, 2016)
Today, I speak with Hilary Plum. She’s the author of Watchfires (Rescue Press, 2016), which isn’t so much a book as an exploratory biopsy of our body politic…
- New Books in Literature
Caitlin Starling, "The Luminous Dead" (Harper Voyager, 2019)
Caitlin Starling’s debut The Luminous Dead (Harper Voyager, 2019) takes readers along with her young protagonist, Gyre Price, to a place few would voluntarily…
- New Books in Literature
J Mase III, "And Then I Got Fired: One Transqueer’s Reflections on Grief, Unemployment, and Inappropriate Jokes About Death"
In his own description of his book, And Then I Got Fired: One Transqueer’s Reflections on Grief, Unemployment, & Inappropriate Jokes About Death, J Mase III…
- New Books in Literature
Ann Weisgarber, "The Glovemaker" (Skyhorse Publishing, 2019)
When a strange man knocks on Deborah Tyler’s door one January evening in 1888, she faces a difficult decision. She can guess that her visitor is a criminal…
- New Books in Literature
Meg Elison, "The Book of Flora" (47North, 2019)
Meg Elison’s The Book of Flora (47North, 2019) trilogy is as much about gender as it is about surviving the apocalypse. The first installment, the Philip K…
- New Books in Literature
Patricia Leavy, "Spark" (The Guilford Press, 2019)
In this episode, I talked with Patricia Leavy on her new book, Spark (The Guilford Press, 2019). The book is a highly original novel about an unexpected yet…
- New Books in Literature
Susan Smith Daniels, "The Genuine Stories" (New Rivers Press, 2018)
The Genuine Storiesis a linked collection centered around Genevieve “Genuine” Eriksson, a woman with an uncanny ability to heal people. Her gift begins to…
- New Books in Literature
Elsa Hart, "City of Ink" (Minotaur Books, 2018)
If there is one thing more fun than discovering a new (to oneself) author, it is discovering a new author with a series already well underway. In City of Ink…
- New Books in Literature
Frances Donovan, "Mad Quick Hand of the Seashore" (Reaching Press, 2018)
Grey Held writes of Frances Donovan's book, Mad Quick Hand of the Seashore (Reaching Press 2018 ), "there is hunting for love, there is basking in love, there…
- New Books in Literature
Jennifer Acker on the Importance of Food in Fiction (And Animals!)
Sunil Chandaria is struggling to write his PhD dissertation in philosophy at Harvard University. He feels his father’s disapproval because he didn’t become a…
- New Books in Literature
Anand Prahlad, "The Secret Life of a Black Aspie: A Memoir" (U Alaska Press, 2017)
Anand Prahlad was born on a former plantation in Virginia in 1954. This memoir, vividly internal, powerfully lyric, and brilliantly impressionistic, is his…
- New Books in Literature
Kelly J. Beard, "An Imperfect Rapture" (Zone 3 Press, 2018)
Many of you listening to this now probably recall growing up in a household of faith. You may have fond memories of the familiar rituals, the holidays, the…
- New Books in Literature
Stephen Hough, "The Final Retreat" (Sylph Editions, 2018)
The Final Retreat (Sylph Editions, 2018) is a debut novel of Stephen Hough, a world-renowned concert pianist and composer. The novel narrates a story of a…