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Nadia Hashimi made waves last year with the release of her fiction debut, The Pearl That Broke Its Shell – “a luminous tale of two women, destiny, and identity in Afghanistan,” according to Kirkus Reviews. Hashimi’s parents emigrated from their native Afghanistan in the 1970s, but a lifelong fascination with her cultural heritage led her to pen The Pearl That Broke Its Shell. The crisscrossing narrative follows two Afghan women, one in the present the other in the recent past, living as bacha posh —young women disguised as young men, a true Afghan practice. Hashimi, a pediatrician by training, received accolades for this “lyrical, heartbreaking account of silence lives” and is hard at work on a follow up centered around the experiences of Afghan refugees in Europe.

The post Club Book Episode 21 Nadia Hashimi first appeared on Club Book.

Amy Quan Barry is a Vietnamese-American author and poet. Her work has appeared in a wide range of literary publications, including The New Yorker and Ploughshares. Barry has written three poetry collections to date, Asylum (2001), Controvertibles (2004), and Water Puppets (2011). The last of these won the Donald Hall Poetry Prize from the Association of Writers & Writing Programs and was a finalist for the 2012 PEN/Open Book Prize. In her newest novel, She Weeps Each Time You’re Born, Barry draws from history and her personal experiences with her native country to “weave a chronicle of life in pre- and postwar Vietnam within the mystical and turbulent journey of the novel’s protagonist,” according to Booklist.

The post Club Book Episode 20 Amy Quan Barry first appeared on Club Book.

Before turning his attention to novels, literary fiction breakout Peter Heller made a name for himself as a contributor to and editor for such publications as National Geographic Adventure, Outside Magazine, and Men’s Journal. Heller traveled on assignment to all corners of the globe, and parlayed many of his larger-than-life experiences into four gripping works of adventure nonfiction. Heller’s fiction debut, The Dog Stars, was a dystopian thriller. It became a New York Times bestseller and a ‘Best Book of 2012′ selection from both Publishers Weekly and Amazon. His second novel, The Painter, centers around a reclusive artist trying to outrun his checkered past. The New York Times calls it “a stunning, savage novel of art and violence, love and grief.”

The post Club Book Episode 19 Peter Heller first appeared on Club Book.

Over a prolific career spanning five decades, activist and educator Nikki Giovanni has penned nearly twenty popular poetry collections including, more recently, Acolytes (2007), Bicycles: Love Poems (2009), and Chasing Utopia (2013). She is also the author or co-author of ten children’s books, including several profiling seminal moments from black history. Prominent among other awards and accolades, Giovanni is a five-time NAACP Image Award winner, holds the Langston Hughes Medal for Outstanding Poetry, and is the first-ever recipient of the Rosa Parks Woman of Courage Award. She is currently serving as a Distinguished Professor of English at Virginia Tech.

The post Club Book Episode 18 Nikki Giovanni first appeared on Club Book.

Literary fiction writer Rebecca Rasmussen garnered accolades in 2011 for The Bird Sisters, an “achingly authentic, almost completely character driven” novel chronicling the remarkable lives of two spinster sisters in rural Wisconsin according to Publisher’s Weekly. Rasmussen also pens short fiction; her stories have appeared in or won prizes from notable journals including The Mid-American Review, Narrative Magazine, and TriQuarterly. Rasmussen currently resides in California, where she teaches writing at UCLA, but her creative interests remain in her native Midwest. Her newest book, Evergreen, also centers around siblings, and plays out against the picturesque backdrop of Minnesota’s verdant northwoods.

The post Club Book Episode 17 Rebecca Rasmussen first appeared on Club Book.