fiction/non/fiction

Acclaimed novelist Gary Shteyngart joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss his new novel, Vera, or Faith, which explores American identity, politics, and immigrant experiences in the near future through the eyes of the eponymous 10-year-old protagonist. Shteyngart talks about the novel’s speculative “Five-Three” amendment, a proposal to give those who can trace their ancestry back to the American Revolution five-thirds of a vote, as long as their ancestors “were exceptional enough not to arrive in chains.” He reflects on how this echoes current rhetoric surrounding nationalism and exclusion. Shteyngart unpacks a scene in his novel featuring a “March of the Hated,” in which the Five-Three amendment, like the Trump administration, attracts both the privileged and those who will suffer under the policy. Shteyngart and the hosts examine the role of elite education, AI, and childhood in shaping Vera’s understanding of the world. He reads from Vera, or Faith.

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, Whitney Terrell, Hunter Murray, Janet Reed, and Moss Terrell.

Gary Shteyngart

Vera, or Faith

Our Country Friends

Lake Success

Little Failure: A Memoir

Super Sad True Love Story

Absurdistan

The Russian Debutante’s Handbook

Others:

“Tech billionaire Trump adviser Marc Andreessen says universities will ‘pay the price’ for DEI” | The Washington Post 

Choice by Neel Mukherjee

“The Little Man At Chehaw Station” by Ralph Ellison

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Pulitzer Prize finalist Ed Park joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss his debut short story collection, An Oral History of Atlantis. Park talks about writing the stories in the book over a period of about 25 years, during which he was frequently asked to read in New York and crafted work for specific venues, audiences, and events. He explains how this led to a wide-ranging and ultimately linked set of pieces in a variety of first-person voices. He considers why the short story form invites him to a greater degree of experimentation, to lean more heavily on humor, and to draft more quickly even as he took longer to assemble the whole volume. Park reads from “The Gift,” one of the stories in the collection.

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 episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf.

Ed Park

An Oral History of Atlantis

Same Bed Different Dreams

Personal Days

Weird Menace

Others:

Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 7, Episode 17: Ed Park on Korea’s Past, Real and Imagined

The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño 

Seven Men by Max Beerbohm

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Writer Raina Lipsitz joins co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to discuss Zohran Mamdani’s surprise win in the Democratic primary for New York City mayor. Lipsitz explains how Mamdani, a 33-year-old Muslim politician supported by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), appealed to a wide swath of voters to upset three-term governor Andrew Cuomo. She talks about volunteering for Mamdani’s campaign, the racist and Islamophobic attacks he faces, his advocacy for Palestine and for immigrants, and the powerful response he got from 18- to 29-year-old voters, as well as many people who voted for President Trump. Lipsitz considers the DSA’s rapid growth on college campuses as progressives seek to build community, and reads from her book The Rise of a New Left: How Young Radicals Are Shaping the Future of American Politics.  

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, Whitney Terrell, Hunter Murray, and Janet Reed.

Selected Readings:

Raina Lipsitz

The Rise of a New Left: How Young Radicals Are Shaping the Future of American Politics

“The Little Super PAC That Could (Stop Andrew Cuomo)” | The New Republic 

"Sheriffs Already Have Too Much Power. Who Will Stop Them Now?" | In These Times 

“Media Obscure Message of Oscar-Winning Documentary No Other Land” | FAIR

"Lefty Groups Making It Possible for Families to Do Politics" - The Nation 

Others

“Republican Tells Zohran Mamdani: 'Go Back to the Third World'” - Newsweek

“Mamdani: ‘So many of our victories’ were in Trump neighborhoods” - The Hill

"Trump Ramps Up Threats to Arrest Mamdani" - New York Magazine

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Prize-winning Iranian American author Dina Nayeri joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss the complicated reality of survival on the ground during Israel’s recent bombing of Iran. Nayeri talks about the destruction leveled on Ardestoon, where her father’s family lives; her memories of running for bomb shelters during the Iran-Iraq war; and the current situation for her family in Iran. Nayeri explains how desperately Iranians on the ground want the Islamic State overthrown and the complexities involved in who would take charge should the regime topple.  Nayeri considers the gap between the mainstream media narrative of Iran as a devout Muslim nation and recent surveys indicating rising secularism in the country. She reflects on forty-plus years of the Islamic State in power—a small slice of Iran’s history, but a phase that has irreparably disrupted both the lives of those who left and those who stayed behind.  

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, Whitney Terrell, Hunter Murray, and Janet Reed.

Selected Readings:

Dina Nayeri

Who Gets Believed?: When the Truth Isn’t Enough

The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You

Refuge

A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea

"Why Is Iran's Secular Shift So Hard to Believe?" New York Magazine 

"The True Nature of Iranian Values:  Rethinking a Country The West Thought It Understood" - The Globe and Mail

Others

Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 6, Episode 27: Manufacturing Lies: Dina Nayeri on How Our Cultural and Bureaucratic Norms Often Betray the Truth

Fiction/Non/Fiction, Season 6, Episode 4: Women Resisting Terror in Iran: Porochista Khakpour on the Historic Protests

Fiction/Non/Fiction, Season 1, Episode 23: Jasmin Darznik and Dina Nayeri on the 40th Anniversary of the Iranian Revolution

“Opinion | Between Bombs and the Regime, Iranians Face a Moral Paralysis,”  The New York Times 

The Daily Show - Iran: Weeks away from having nuclear weapons since 1995

"Visualizing 12 Days of the Israel-Iran Conflict" Al-Jazeera

“Iran Crackdown Deepens with Speedy Executions and Arrests,” ABC News

"Iran's 'Crown Prince' Calls for Supreme Leader to 'Face Justice,'" - USA Today

"Mapping the Israel-Iran Conflict," - The New York Times

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New York Times reporter Ernesto Londoño joins co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to discuss the recent murder of Minnesota state representative Melissa Hortman, which has made headlines as local politicians in the U.S. are rarely targeted for assassination. Londoño describes how a gunman posing as law enforcement went to the homes of several state politicians, killing Hortman and her husband Mark and gravely injuring Democratic state senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette. Londoño recounts how the No Kings Rally at the Minnesota capitol later that day honored the crime’s victims in addition to protesting President Trump. Londoño details the alleged attacker’s background and debunks conspiracy theories about possible motives. Comparing the current circumstances to his own childhood in Colombia, where political attacks on the local level were common, Londoño discusses how Trump “redrew the rules of acceptable political discourse,” and how increasing violence against lawmakers may impact who is willing to serve.

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, Whitney Terrell, Hunter Murray, and Janet Reed.

Selected Readings:

Ernesto Londoño

Suspect in Minnesota Attacks Was a Doomsday Prepper, Investigator Says 

Scenes From a Vigil for Victims of the Minnesota Shooting

What We Know About How the Minnesota Assassination Case May Unfold

Melissa Hortman, Minnesota Lawmaker Killed in Shooting, Is Remembered by Colleagues

Trippy: The Peril and Promise of Medicinal Psychedelics 

Others

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Writer Geoff Dyer joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss his new memoir Homework, which covers Dyer’s working-class youth in England during the 1960s and ’70s. He recollects his early passion for reading and film and reflects on writing about his parents, as well as the intensity of childhood play and collecting in the wake of the Second World War. He also explains what it meant for him to pass the 11-plus exam, a test given to British 11-year-olds to determine if they could go to grammar school—and the peculiar role that grammar schools played in the British educational system. Dyer talks about how this opportunity made his eventual admission at Oxford possible. He reads from Homework.

This podcast is produced by V.V. Ganeshananthan, Whitney Terrell, Hunter Murray, and Janet Reed.

Selected Readings:

Geoff Dyer

Homework: A Memoir

The Last Days of Roger Federer 

See/Saw: Looking at Photographs

"The Secret of Who She Was" |Harper's Magazine

"Best seat in the house: writer Geoff Dyer on why sitting in a corner is so satisfying” | The Guardian 

Others

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

An American Childhood by Annie Dillard

My Sky Blue Trades by Sven Birkerts

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Fiction writer Jess Walter joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss his new novel So Far Gone, in which a former environmental reporter living off the grid is jolted back onto it by the surprise arrival of his two grandchildren and news of his missing daughter. Walter talks about developing the character of his protagonist’s son-in-law, whose right-wing politics are one of the causes of the family’s fissure. He also reflects on what it means that conspiracy theorists, who were formerly at the fringes of American politics, are now at its center, and why it is important for writers to depict the interior lives of those with different political beliefs. Walter reads from So Far Gone.

Selected Readings:

Jess Walter

So Far Gone

Beautiful Ruins

The Cold Millions

We Live in Water

The Angel of Rome and Other Stories

The Financial Lives of the Poets

Citizen Vince

Ruby Ridge:  The Truth and Tragedy of the Randy Weaver Family

Over Tumbled Graves

Land of the Blind

Others

"America's 'Spot News' Novelist Takes on the Trump Era from Spokane" Washington Post

Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 1 Episode 6: "All the President's Shakespeare: Jess Walter and Kiki Petrosino" 

Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 4 Episode 4: “Life After Trump: Jess Walter and Jerald Walker on the Aftermath of Election 2020”

Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 8 Episode 5: Jess Walter on the Election ‹ Literary Hub

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Acclaimed fiction writer Susan Choi joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss her new novel, Flashlight. Choi talks about the opening incident, in which a girl goes for a walk on the beach in Japan with her father only for him to disappear, presumably drowned. Choi explains the novel’s relationship to a short story she published in The New Yorker in 2020 and how the father’s past emerged as she worked on the book. She reflects on his childhood as an ethnic Korean raised in Japan in the 1940s, the difficult choices Koreans in Japan faced as Japanese occupation ended and Korea split into North and South after World War II, and the state of affairs today, as South Korea transitions to new leadership. She reads from Flashlight. 

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, Whitney Terrell, and Hunter Murray.

Selected Readings:

Susan Choi

Flashlight

“Flashlight,” by Susan Choi | The New Yorker 

Trust Exercise 

My Education

A Person of Interest

American Woman

The Foreign Student

Others

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Nonfiction writer Paul Elie joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss his new book The Last Supper: Art, Faith, Sex, and Controversy in the 1980s and Pope Leo XIV. Elie compares the new pope to John Paul II, whose conservative views shaped the 1980s. He explains how and why ’80s artists like Andy Warhol, U2, and Bob Dylan produced art he considers “crypto-religious,” a term coined by poet Czesław Miłosz. He analyzes limbo and purgatory in the work of writers of the period, including Louise Erdrich and Toni Morrison, and recalls the culture wars, including iconic incidents like Sinéad O’Connor tearing up the pope’s picture on Saturday Night Live, as well as the controversy over Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ. He reads from The Last Supper.

Selected Readings:

Paul Elie

The Last Supper: Art, Faith, Sex, and Controversy in the 1980s

Reinventing Bach: The Search for Transcendence in Sound

The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage

The Down-to-Earth Pope: Pope Francis Has Died at Eighty-eight | The New Yorker 

Others

Madame Bovary

Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose 

Love Medicine

The Handmaid’s Tale

Striving Towards Being: The Letters of Thomas Merton and Czeslaw Milosz

U2 - Gloria 

“The Controversial Saturday Night Live Performance That Made Sinéad O'Connor an Icon,” Time Magazine, July 26, 2023

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Fiction writer Julia Elliott joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V Ganeshananthan to talk about why President Trump’s tariff policy appeals to voters in small towns in the Midwest and South, which have been economically devastated for the past couple of decades following the North American Free Trade Agreement. Elliott considers Democrats’ failure to articulate their own successes using tariffs to bring jobs back to the U.S. Elliott, who is from South Carolina, talks about conservatives who are hesitant to criticize Trump. She also reads from and discusses her new story collection, Hellions.

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, Whitney Terrell, and Hunter Murray.

Selected Readings:

Julia Elliott

●  Hellions

●  The Wilds

● The New and

Others

●  Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 5, Episode 2: Julia Elliott

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