Jessica Soffer debut novel is "Tomorrow There Will be Apricots." She talks about the origin of the book's title, and about the two very different women at the center of the novel who are drawn together in an Iraqi-Jewish cooking class in New York City. She also discusses the influence of Roberto Bolaño and Flannery O'Connor on her writing. http://jessicasoffer.com/

For this week's Poem of the Week, Benjamin Alire Saenz reads one of his own poems - "The Fifth Dream: Bullets and Deserts and Borders" from the collection "Dreaming the End of War."

Daniel and Ben also talk about their summer reading plans and offer reflections on William Faulkner.