This week we visit with Kevin Brockmeier in his hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas. 

In addition to his latest book, The Ghost Variations: One Hundred Stories, Kevin Brockmeier is the author of the novels The Illumination, The Brief History of the Dead, and The Truth About Celia; the story collections Things That Fall from the Sky and The View from the Seventh Layer; the children’s novels City of Names and Grooves: A Kind of Mystery; and a memoir of his seventh-grade year called A Few Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip. His work has been translated into eighteen languages. He has published his stories in such venues as The New Yorker, The Georgia Review, McSweeney’s, Zoetrope, Tin House, The Oxford American, The Best American Short Stories, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, and New Stories from the South. He has received the Borders Original Voices Award, three O. Henry Awards (one, a first prize), the PEN USA Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an NEA Grant. In 2007, he was named one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists. He teaches frequently at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he was raised.

For more on Kevin: kevinbrockmeier.com

Kevin's Books on the Bed:

The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino

The Cockroaches of Stay More by Donald Harington

The Man Who Fell to Earth by Walter Tevis

Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars by Daniel Pinkwater

Turtle Diary by Russell Hoban

Crash by J.G. Ballard

Matt's Gifts for Kevin:

That's How They Get You: An Unruly Anthology of Black American Humor by Damon Young

Little Worlds by Rob Amberg

Yoke & Feather by Jessie van Eerden

Graphic Design by Nathaniel Roy Design

Music by Eliza Edens from her album Time Away From Time (2020)

This week we visit with Jen Fawkes in her hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas. 

Jen Fawkes is the author of Daughters of Chaos, a literary alternate history in which a female Union spy discovers a secret society of magical women that spans millennia. Pulitzer Prize finalist Kelly Link called Daughters of Chaos "ferociously, radiantly compelling," and according to Publishers Weekly's starred review, the novel is a "dazzling historical fantasy . . . both the historical and fantastical elements come alive in Sylvie’s suspenseful narration, which is interwoven with the text of the imaginary play. Fawkes wows with this wildly original tale.”

Jen's first book, Mannequin and Wife, was a 2020 Shirley Jackson Award Nominee, the winner of the 2023 Phillip H. McMath Post-Publication Book Award, and a Foreword INDIES gold medalist. Her collection Tales the Devil Told Me was a ForewordINDIES silver medalist, one of Largehearted Boy’s Favorite Collections of 2021, and a finalist for the 2022 World Fantasy Award for Single-Author Story Collection.

Jen's short fiction has won numerous awards, including the 2021 Porter Fund Literary Prize, and has appeared in One Story, Lit Hub, the Iowa Review, swamp pink, Best Small Fictions, and many others. A two-time finalist for the Calvino Prize for fabulist fiction, Jen lives in Little Rock, Arkansas.

For more on Jen: jenfawkes.com

Jen's Books on the Bed:

Italian Folktales by Italo Calvino

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

Mrs. Caliban by Rachel Ingalls 

Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez

The Odyssey by Homer (Translated by Robert Fagles)

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

Matt's Gifts for Jen:

The Unseen by Roy Jacobsen (Translated by Don Barlett, Don Shaw)

Seawomen of Iceland: Survival on the Edge by Margaret Willson

Graphic Design by Nathaniel Roy Design

Music by Eliza Edens from her album Time Away From Time (2020)

This week we visit with Amy Le Ann Richardson in Carter County, Kentucky.

Amy Le Ann Richardson earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Spalding University (‘09) and is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Make Believe Worlds We Built Together (Bottlecap Press, 2023) and Who You Grow Into (Finishing Line Press, 2024), as well as a full collection, Out of Places (Pine Row Press, 2025). Her work has been featured in journals such as Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Kentucky Monthly, Untelling, and Still: The Journal. She currently lives and works on her family farm in Carter County, Kentucky, where she writes, grows food, and engages with her community through art and environmental advocacy.

You can find her artwork at www.chickenhousestudio.com and her farm at www.forgottenfoods.com. Also, see her Etsy store here: https://kymtnwriter.etsy.com

Amy's Books on the Bed:

The Book of Delights by Ross Gay

Where You Come from Is Gone by Annie Woodford

Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place by Neema Avashia

When Stars Rain Down by Angela Jackson-Brown

Strange As This Weather Has Been by Ann Pancake

Gay Poems for Red States by Willie Edward Taylor Carver, Jr. 

Matt's Gifts for Amy:

Glass Jaw by Raisa Tolchinsky

Thunder Song: Essays by Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe

This week we visit with Kristen Renee Miller in Louisville, Kentucky.

KRISTEN RENEE MILLER is the director and editor-in-chief at Sarabande Books. An award-winning poet and translator, she is a 2023 NEA Fellow and the translator of two books from the French by Ilnu Nation poet Marie-Andrée Gill. She is the recipient of honors from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, AIGA, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Gulf Coast Prize in Translation, and the American Literary Translators Association. Her work can be found widely, including in Poetry Magazine, The Nation, and Best New Poets. She lives in Louisville, Kentucky.

For more about Kristen: kristenreneemiller.com

Read Sarabande Books! sarabandebooks.org

Kristen's Books on the Bed:

Six Memos for the Next Millennium by Italo Calvino

Mots d'Heures: Gousses, Rames: The d'Antin Manuscript by Luis d'Antin van Rooten

Busman's honeymoon by Dorothy Sayers

No one belongs here more than you. Stories by Miranda July

Adverbs by Daniel Handler

Madeleine Is Sleeping by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum

Matt's Gifts for Kristen:

The Song Poet: A Memoir of My Father by Kao Kalia Yang

Daughters of Chaos by Jen Fawkes

Sequoyah: The Cherokee Man Who Gave His People Writing by James Rumford

This week we visit with Isa Arsén in San Antonio, Texas.

Isa Arsén is a certified bleeding heart based in South Texas, where she lives with her spouse and a comically small dog.

Her work has been featured in Stone of Madness Press, The McNeese Review, and several independent anthologies and audiovisual projects. Her novels include SHOOT THE MOON (Putnam, 2023), and THE UNBECOMING OF MARGARET WOLF (Putnam, 2025). When not wrangling prose, Isa is a dialogue engineer & writer for interactive media.

For more on Isa: inarsen.com

Isa's Books on the Bed:

H of H Playbook by Anne Carson

The Ring of the Nibelung by P. Craig Russell

The Charioteer by Mary Renault

The Study of Counterpoint: from Johann Joseph Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum (translated and edited) by Alfred Mann

The Art of Writing Nonfiction by Andre Fontaine and William A. Glavin, Jr. 

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy

Matt's Gifts for Isa:

The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather

Lolly Willowes : or the loving huntsman by Sylvia Townsend Warner

Moon Child (album) by Kelley Smith

This week we visit with Naomi Shihab Nye in San Antonio, Texas.

Naomi Shihab Nye describes herself as a “wandering poet.” She has spent more than 40 years traveling the country and the world to lead writing workshops and inspiring students of all ages. Nye was born to a Palestinian father and an American mother and grew up in St. Louis, Jerusalem, and San Antonio. Drawing on her Palestinian-American heritage, the cultural diversity of her home in Texas, and her experiences traveling in Asia, Europe, Canada, Mexico, and the Middle East, Nye uses her writing to attest to our shared humanity.

Naomi is the author and/or editor of more than 30 volumes of poetry, four novels, and an essay and short story collection.

Learn more about Naomi at the American Academy of Poets.

Naomi's Books on the Bed:

Garden Time by M.S. Merwin

Every War Has Two Losers by William Stafford

An Ordinary Woman by Lucille Clifton

Does the Land Remember Me? A Memoir of Palestine by Aziz Shihab

Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza by Mosab Abu Toha

The Year I Stopped to Notice by Miranda Keeling

Matt's Gifts for Naomi:

The Listening Skin by Glenis Redmond

George Masa: A Life Reimagined by Janet McCue and Paul Bonesteel

Ways of Being Home by Cecilia Sotelo Cornejo (film)

This week we visit with Elizabeth Crook in Austin, Texas. 

Elizabeth Crook is the author of six novels: The Raven’s Bride and Promised Lands, The Night Journal, Monday, Monday, The Which Way Tree, and The Madstone. In 2023 Elizabeth received the prestigious Texas Writer Award from the Texas Book Festival and in 2025 the Texas Medal of Arts in Literary Arts and the Texas Institute of Letters' prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award.

Elizabeth lived in Nacogdoches, Texas and then San Marcos, Texas with her parents and brother and sister until age seven when the family moved to Washington D.C., where her father was director of Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) for Lyndon Johnson. Two years later her father was appointed Ambassador to Australia and the family moved to Canberra. When they returned to Texas Elizabeth attended public schools in San Marcos, graduating from San Marcos High School. She attended Baylor University for two years and graduated from Rice University in 1982.

Elizabeth's Books on the Bed:

Silver Pennies (and More Silver Pennies) by Blanche Jennings Thompson 

Precious Bane by Mary Webb

A Tale of Two Cities and A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

True Grit by Charles Portis

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

Now You Hear My Horn: The Journal of James Wilson Nichols, 1820-1887 by James Wilson Nichols

Matt's Gifts for Elizabeth:

The House Is on Fire by Rachel Beanland

Gorilla by Lee Stockdale

Call It Horses by Jessie van Eerden

This week we visit with Henry Wise in Staunton, Virginia.

Henry is a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute and the University of Mississippi MFA program. A writer across multiple genres, his poetry has been published in Shenandoah, Radar Poetry, Clackamas, Nixes Mate Review, and elsewhere. His nonfiction and photography have appeared in Southern Cultures. "Holy City" is his first novel.

For more on Henry: henrywise.com

Henry's Books on the Bed: 

Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

My Antonia by Willa Cather

Legends of the Fall by Jim Harrison

Go Down, Moses by William Faulkner

West with the Night by Beryl Markham

Joe by Larry Brown

Matt's Gifts for Henry:

Shutter and Exposure by Ramona Emerson

Honeybee by Naomi Shihab Nye

This week we visit with Glenn Taylor in Morgantown, West Virginia.

Glenn Taylor’s fourth novel, "The Songs of Betty Baach" won the 2023 Juniper Prize in Fiction. His first novel, "The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart" was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award. Glenn’s work has appeared in such venues as the Oxford American, The Guardian, Gulf Coast, and Huizache. Born and raised in Huntington, West Virginia, he now resides with his family in Morgantown, where he is at work on a new novel.

For more on Glenn: glenntaylorbooks.org

Glenn's Books on the Bed:

The Milkweed Ladies by Louise McNeill

good woman: poems and a memoir by Lucille Clifton

Gringos by Charles Portis

Trampoline by Robert Gipe 

Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone by Eduardo Galeano

Road-side Dog by Czeslaw Milosz

Matt's Gifts for Glenn:

God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer by Joseph Earl Thomas

The Way the Moon by Holly Haworth

This week we visit with Ann Pancake in Reedsville, West Virginia. 

Ann Pancake grew up in Summersville and Romney, West Virginia and graduated from WVU with a Bachelor of Arts in English. After teaching English in Japan, American Samoa and Thailand, she earned a Masters degree in English from the University of North Carolina and a doctorate in English Literature from the University of Washington.

Pancake is—publicly and fervently—a West Virginia writer. She is the author of two story collections set in West Virginia: “Given Ground,” winner of the Bakeless Prize, and “Me and My Daddy Listen to Bob Marley,” a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. Her novel “Strange as This Weather Has Been” features a southern West Virginia family struggling with a mountaintop removal mine. It was named one of Kirkus Review’s Top Ten Fiction Books of the year, was a New York Times Editor’s Choice, won the 2007 Weatherford Prize and was a finalist for the 2008 Orion Book Award. “Strange as This Weather Has Been” is now cited and taught as a key piece of literature about Appalachian coal country.

Ann's Books on the Bed:

Braiding Sweetgrass and The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Deer Man: Seven Years of Living in the Wild by Geoffroy Delorme

The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Mind and Our World by Max Fisher

Country Queers: A Love Letter by Rae Garringer

The Chaneysville Incident by David Bradley

Bloodroot by Bill King

Matt's Gifts for Ann:

Groundglass by Kathryn Savage

Trinity by Zelda Lockhart