Writer and editor Dan Kois, who works at Slate, joins V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to discuss his debut novel, Vintage Contemporaries, which features a young woman who begins her career as an agent’s assistant in New York in the 1990s. He explains distinctive aspects of the era, including apartment building squatting and communal living. He also reflects on the pleasures of being an editor—a job he loves and that his protagonist eventually takes on. He reads an excerpt from the novel and compares his heroine’s prospects with the prospects of publishing staffers today, and comments on the HarperCollins strike.

To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/

This podcast is produced by Anne Kniggendorf.

Selected Readings:

Dan Kois

Others:

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Novelist Curtis Sittenfeld joins V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell as a special guest co-host to discuss Ganeshananthan’s newly released novel, Brotherless Night. Sittenfeld and Terrell ask Ganeshananthan about growing up in the Washington, D.C. metro area and how she came to write a book about a Tamil family living in Jaffna, Sri Lanka during the 1980s, the earliest years of the Sri Lankan civil war. Ganeshananthan reads an excerpt and talks about working on the novel for almost 20 years with help from many readers; how Terrell’s notes helped her with characterization; and how a comment from Sittenfeld altered the first line of the book and part of the plot. 

To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/

This podcast is produced by Anne Kniggendorf.

Selected Readings:

V.V. Ganeshananthan

Curtis Sittenfeld

Others:

A young woman's family is torn apart during the lengthy Sri Lankan civil war in this propulsive masterpiece by a Minnesota writer. |by May-lee Chai, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune 

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Author and Literary Hub Managing Editor Emily Temple and Lit Hub Associate Editor Katie Yee join hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to talk about Lit Hub’s 38 favorite books of the year as chosen by the staff. The list spans genres from historical to memoir to post-digital post-capitalist manifesto to lesbian Sasquatch novel. Each editor reads a selection from a favorite, Temple from St. Sebastian’s Abyss by Mark Haber and Yee from The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka.  

To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/

This podcast is produced by Anne Kniggendorf.

Selected Readings:

Emily Temple

• The Lightness



Katie Yee

Others:

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Poet, journalist, and novelist Dunya Mikhail joins hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to talk about the Yazidis, who are indigenous to Kurdistan and have been targeted by ISIS because of their religious beliefs. After ISIS slaughtered thousands of Yazidi men in northern Iraq in 2014—an event deemed an act of genocide by the U.N.—they kidnapped thousands of Yazidi women and children who were bought, sold, and traded as sexual slaves among ISIS fighters. Mikhail, who is Iraqi-American, previously wrote about the women in the National Book Award-nominated nonfiction book The Beekeeper. She discusses that book and its relationship to her new novel, The Bird Tattoo, which draws on some of the same histories. 

To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/

This podcast is produced by Anne Kniggendorf.

Selected Readings:

Dunya Mikhail



Others:

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Following Donald Trump's dinner at Mar-A-Lago with Ye (formerly Kanye West) and white supremacist Nick Fuentes, novelist Michael Knight joins hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to talk about the best and worst dinner parties in literature. They discuss the pressures of hosting, what makes someone a great guest, signature dishes, post-party regrets, and festive successes, as well as scenes in literature featuring all of these things. Knight also reads from a classic dinner party scene in his novella The Holiday Season.

To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/

This podcast is produced by Anne Kniggendorf.

Selected Readings:

Michael Knight

Others:

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We’re changing things up a bit today and bringing you a preview of a new podcast we’re enjoying and think you will, too. Where There’s a Will searches for the surprising places Shakespeare shows up outside the theater. Host Barry Edelstein, artistic director at one of the country’s leading Shakespeare theaters, and co-host writer and director Em Weinstein, ask what is it about Shakespeare that’s given him a continuous afterlife in all sorts of unexpected ways?

You’ll hear Shakespeare doing rehabilitative work in a maximum security prison, helping autistic kids to communicate, shaping religious observances, in the mouths of U.S. presidents, and even at the center of a deadly riot in New York City. Join Barry and Em as they uncover the ways Shakespeare endures in our modern society, and what that says about us. In this preview, Barry takes us into California’s Centinela State Prison for a one-of-a-kind production of Shakespeare’s English history plays performed by incarcerated individuals. Barry asks: What makes Shakespeare a force of transformation and transcendence behind bars?

Hear more from Where There’s a Will at https://podcasts.pushkin.fm/wtaw?sid=fnf.

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Novelist Erika T. Wurth joins hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to talk about the thousands of Indigenous women who go missing or are murdered in the U.S. every year. Wurth’s new literary-horror novel White Horse begins with the protagonist, a 35-year-old urban Native named Kari, receiving a bracelet that once belonged to her mother, who disappeared years ago. Wurth discusses what gets in the way of tracking the missing; how people talk about violence against Native women; intergenerational trauma; the real-life bracelet that led to the one in the book; why Kari loves Megadeth and Stephen King; and writing towards catharsis. She also reads from the opening of White Horse.

To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/

This podcast is produced by Anne Kniggendorf.

Selected Readings:

Erika T. Wurth

Others:

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Buki Papillon, inaugural winner of the Maya Angelou Book Award in fiction, joins hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to discuss African folklore’s impact on popular culture. They talk about how the newly released blockbuster Black Panther: Wakanda Forever draws on the myths, histories, and languages of many African nations, including the tradition of calling to ancestors for guidance. Papillon, who was born in Nigeria, also reads from her prize-winning debut novel, An Ordinary Wonder, and discusses how she included folklore, proverbs, and deities from the Yoruba pantheon in the story, which follows an intersex protagonist seeking to claim her identity. 

To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/

This podcast is produced by Anne Kniggendorf.

Selected Readings:

Buki Papillon

• An Ordinary Wonder

Others:

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Writer and editor Alexander Chee joins hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell live from the annual Writers for Readers gala in Kansas City to discuss editing Best American Essays 2022. Chee talks about what makes a strong essay and how he curated the volume, as well as how his training as a speed reader stood him in good stead as he made his selections. He also comments on specific pieces by Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, Kaitlyn Greenidge, Anthony Veasna So, Ryan Bradley, Vauhini Vara, Erika J. Simpson, and others. 

Writers for Readers is an ongoing partnership between the Kansas City Public Library and the University of Missouri’s MFA Program in Creative Writing. Funds raised support the Maya Angelou Book Award and enable graduate students to teach writing classes at the library. 

To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/

This podcast is produced by Anne Kniggendorf.

Selected Readings:

Alexander Chee

Others:

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See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Fiction writer Dan Chaon joins Fiction/Non/Fiction hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to discuss the fate of Twitter and social media in the aftermath of Elon Musk’s $44 billion purchase of the platform. Chaon says Twitter is not a “public square,” it’s a business, and talks about how much we really own our online identities in light of that. He also reads from and discusses his Atlantic article, “The Story of My Imposters,” about a fake website purporting to be his, as well as his latest novel, Sleepwalk, which features characters trying to stay off the grid—and to discern each other’s true identities.

To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/.

This podcast is produced by Anne Kniggendorf.

Selected Readings:

Dan Chaon

Others:

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See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.