fiction/non/fiction

Houston-based poet Lupe Mendez joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and Jennifer Maritza McCauley to discuss ICE raids, the killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, and the political climate in Texas heading into the midterms. Mendez details the last few minutes of Araujo’s life and talks about the government’s altered story of Araujo’s death. Mendez also explains why he decided to write about the Mexican community’s boycott of racist integration practices in Houston during the 1970s and his compulsion to write poetry in Spanish and English. Inspired by Ebony Stewart, Mendez talks about how his “artivism” intersected with his role as Texas Poet Laureate. Mendez reads from We Exist in the Whisper: Huelga School Verses and Prayer Holding Night: New & Selected Works.

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 Jennifer Maritza McCauley and Whitney Terrell.

Lupe Mendez

• We Exist in the Whisper: Huelga School Verses
• Prayer Holding Night: New & Selected Works
• Why I Am Like Tequila

Others

• Ebony Stewart 
• Jasminne Mendez 
• Librotraficante 
• Tintero Projects
• Lorenzo Salgado Araujo Chased the American Dream for 35 Years

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Artist and writer Molly Crabapple joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about the Jewish Labor Bund and its socialist, secular, anti-Zionist principles. Crabapple, whose artist great-grandfather Sam Rothbort was part of the organization, discusses researching and writing her New York Times bestselling book, Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund, which chronicles the Bund’s roots, founding in 1897, and development in the 20th century. Crabapple explains the Bund’s relationship to the idea of Hereness and their belief that diaspora was home and that they belonged where they lived; the Bund’s relationship to the Russian empire and to Jewish identity; and the fate of its leaders in the Holocaust. She also reflects on how she structured and shaped the Bund’s massive history following a random encounter with a fallen book on the street. She reads from Here Where We Live Is Our Country.

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 V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell.

Molly Crabapple

• Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund
• Brothers of the Gun A Memoir of the Syrian War by Marwan Hisham and Molly Crabapple  
• Drawing Blood
• My Great-Grandfather the Bundist | The New York Review of Books

Others

• Zinky Boys Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War by Svetlana Alexievich,  translated by Andrew Bromfield  
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
• U.S.A. The Complete Trilogy [The 42nd Parallel, 1919, and The Big Money] by John Dos Passos 

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MLS commentator Nate Bukaty joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about Kansas City’s influence on American soccer and how the city came to host the World Cup. Bukaty is the co-author of Perfect Pitch: How Kansas City Became the Heart of American Soccer and Landed the World Cup along with the writer Rustin Dodd. He discusses how immigration and local leaders like Lamar Hunt turned a Midwestern “flyover” city into an unexpected soccer powerhouse. Terrell and Bukaty reflect on their youth playing the sport in Kansas City and describe what it felt like for their hometown to become a focal point of this year’s World Cup and a destination for teams and fans from all over the world. Bukaty considers the U.S. men’s team’s loss to Belgium in the round of 16 and compares the most recent roster to the 2014 lineup. He reads from Perfect Pitch.

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 V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell.

Nate Bukaty

• Perfect Pitch: How Kansas City Became the Heart of American Soccer and Landed the World Cup

Others

• Kansas City, the Smallest World Cup Host, Has the World at Its Feet The New York Times
• Trump Asked FIFA to Review U.S. Player’s Suspension. Now He’s Eligible to Play. The New York Times
• Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 6, Episode 21, Kingdom Quarterback: Mark Dent and Rustin Dodd on Race, Kansas City Football, and Super Bowl MVP Patrick Mahomes

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Acclaimed nonfiction writer Peter Hessler joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about his new memoir, Other Rivers: A Chinese Education. Hessler, a New Yorker staff writer who first went to China as a teacher in the 1990s, explains how education there shifted between that era and 2019, when he returned to Sichuan Province with his wife and daughters to teach English again. He discusses the impact of his students’ shift from rural to urban lives, unpacks the differences between his twins’ schooling in Colorado and in China, and the relationship, in both places, to memorization, creativity, and authority. He also talks about keeping in touch with his students from the 1990s, many of whom became teachers, over decades. Hessler reads from Other Rivers.

This podcast is produced by V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell.

Peter Hessler

• Other Rivers: A Chinese Education
• The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution
• Strange Stones: Dispatches from East and West
• Country Driving: A Chinese Road Trip
• Oracle Bones: A Journey Through Time in China
• River Town
• Peter Hessler Latest Articles | The New Yorker
• A Teacher in China Learns the Limits of Free Expression 
• The Double Education of My Twins’ Chinese School
• China’s Shifting Relationship to the Countryside
• China’s Reform Generation Adapts to Life in the Middle Class

Others

• Stoner by John Williams
• Gossip Girl
• John McPhee
• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
• East of Eden by John Steinbeck
• Karoline Leavitt: This is a full-blown communist revolution
• Factory Girls by Leslie T. Chang

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Young adult novelist Soman Chainani joins co-hosts Christian Barter and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss the impact of age on politics. Chainani, the author of a new novel called Young World that features a teenage everyman’s unlikely rise to the presidency, explains trying to make his premise as plausible as possible using devices like a Supreme Court decision, a split Electoral College, and realistic images. He talks about smuggling civics lessons into the plot, getting young people excited to vote and run for office, and taking his story beyond the U.S. to imagine a global youth revolution and a fictional G-8 of teen leaders. Chainani also reflects on the impact of aging politicians’ unwillingness to relinquish power, particularly as life expectancies continue to rise. He reads from Young World.

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 V.V. Ganeshananthan and Christian Barter.

Soman Chainani

• Young World
• Coven
• The School for Good and Evil series

Others

• The President’s Daughter by Ellen Emerson White
• Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 7, Episode 51: Ellen Emerson White on the First Woman President, Real and Imagined
• 1776
• Richie Rich
• Scandal

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Journalist Matthew Wolfe joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss his new book Fires in the Night: The Earth Liberation Front, the FBI, and a Secret History of Eco-Sabotage. Wolfe talks about the history of environmental activism, including its rarely discussed bipartisan past, and explains how industry made climate change a Democratic and progressive issue. He reflects on the impact of the Earth Liberation Front, which originated in England and developed another home in Oregon. He also unpacks their three guiding principles, including preventing harm to people, and considers law enforcement’s reaction to the radical group’s arson tactics. Wolfe analyzes the post-9/11 shift in environmental activism and the significance of the term “eco-terrorism,” which moved from describing harm done to the environment to those taking radical actions in the planet’s defense. He reads from Fires in the Night.

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 V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell.

Matthew Wolfe

• Fires in the Night: The Earth Liberation Front, the FBI, and a Secret History of Eco-Sabotage

Others

• Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

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Writer Deb Olin Unferth joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and Christian Barter to discuss the enduring power of apocalyptic narratives and her new novel Earth 7. The novel follows the life of Dylan, the daughter of a researcher, cast adrift on an earth that has been depopulated by war and environmental collapse. As Dylan’s mother tries to replicate and preserve the DNA of the earth’s now extinct flora and fauna, Unferth examines how proposed scientific solutions to global warming–like carbon capture, building artificial reefs, or shooting precious metals and sulfur into the sky–may exacerbate the problems they are meant to solve. She talks about the role apocalyptic narrative plays in a world that is, in many ways, already experiencing the apocalypse. She also reflects on her decision to “lean in” to the possibility of love and hope in the last third of the novel and explains how her optimism stems from the amazing beauty of the earth that we are living on now, even as we destroy it. She reads from Earth 7.

Subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). 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 Christian Barter and Whitney Terrell.

Deb Olin Unferth

• Earth 7
• Barn 8
• Wait Till You See Me Dance
• I, Parrot

Others

• “The Second Coming”|William Butler Yeats
• “September 1, 1939” |W. H. Auden
• “Waking Early Sunday Morning” |Robert Lowell

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Novelist Ben Fountain joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss his new book, Rasputin Swims the Potomac. Fountain's satire, set in the not-to-distant future, describes the furor, scandal, and hysterical “weeping sickness” that arrives in the wake of the fictional President’s decision to seek an unprecedented third term. Fountain talks about the technical choices he has made to fictionalize Trump, including the decision to redact his name. He also reflects on the roles of the other characters in the novel, including Clarence Thomas Jr., a Black reporter unrelated to the Supreme Court Judge; Faith Spack, the President’s loyal aide; and Rasputin, a professional wrestler who can cure the “weeping sickness” and begins to rival the President in popularity. Fountain explains how the political times of the original Rasputin increasingly mirror our own and reads from Rasputin Swims the Potomac.

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 Christian Barter and Whitney Terrell.

Ben Fountain

• Rasputin Swims the Potomac
• Devil Makes Three
• Beautiful Country Burn Again: Democracy, Rebellion, and Revolution
• Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
• Brief Encounters with Che Guevara: Stories

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Historian Sarah Pearsall joins co-hosts Jennifer Maritza McCauley and Whitney Terrell to discuss her new book, Freedom Round the Globe: a World History of the American Revolution. As we approach the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Pearsall talks about how she chose to write about the global context of the American Revolution. She explains how the hanging of an indigenous woman in Detroit, ordered by British colonizers of the area, led to protests that prefigured the American Revolution. She outlines how tax protests in St. Kitts and the East India Company’s actions in South Asia influenced the thinking of revolutionary leaders in the thirteen colonies. She also discusses the role that war crimes played in the public relations battle of the war and reads a passage from Freedom Round the Globe.

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 Jennifer Maritza McCauley and Whitney Terrell.

Sarah Pearsall

• Freedom Round the Globe: a World History of the American Revolution

Others

• The Declaration of Independence
• “What we know about the UFC fight at the White House”|CNN, June 1, 2026
• “These 6 Acts Dropped Out of the Freedom 250 Concert. Here's Why”|People, June 3, 2026

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Music critic Barry Walters joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and Christian Barter to discuss his new book, Mighty Real: A History of LGBTQ Music 1969-2000. Walters talks about how he chose the artists that he includes in his book and explains how musicians like David Bowie, Lou Reed, Grace Jones, and Sylvester saved his life. He explores how social repression shaped and complicated work from LGBTQ bands, how queer acts like Queen were pigeonholed by music critics, and how mainstream groups like Nirvana spoke to the LGBTQ experience.  He talks about his personal connection to Madonna’s work and reads from Mighty Real.

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 Christian Barter and Whitney Terrell.

Barry Walters

• Mighty Real: A History of LGBTQ Music 1969-2000
• “George Michael’s ‘Father Figure’: When Love Meets Crime”|Billboard, Oct. 26, 2017
• “Madonna’s ‘Erotica,’ ‘Sex’: Why Musical Masterpiece, Defiant Book Still Matter”| Rolling Stone, Oct. 19, 2017
• “As Much As I Can, As Black As I Am: The Queer History of Grace Jones”|Pitchfork, August 25, 2015
• “Sylvester: Staying Alive”|The Village Voice, Nov. 8, 1988

Others

• City Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960s and '70s by Edmund White

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