First Fifty Pages

In this episode of The First Fifty Pages, Jenn and Kelsey have a lively chat with Australian author Benjamin Stevenson about his latest book, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone. We dig into why fair play mysteries are seeing a resurgence in popularity and why Aussie crime writers are so good. Can you solve this one before the detective does?

Kelsey and Jenn talk with best-selling author Ali Hazelwood about her fan fiction roots, favorite romance tropes, background in academia, and the power of STEMinist love stories—where the heroines break barriers just as easily as they break hearts.

Kelsey and Jenn talk with award-winning author Kate Manning about finding threads to the past to uncover women's stories, the courage and resilience of the women in her novels, and her new book Gilded Mountain. Romance, drama, history, and fierce women—we're all in!

Textual Complexity: a conversation with E. Lockhart on heartbreak, reaching young readers, and our postmodern condition.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Stacy Schiff joins Jenn and Kelsey in this episode of The First Fifty Pages to discuss her revelatory new biography about one of our nation's least known but arguably most essential Founding Father, The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams.

Listen for a discussion about how war trauma becomes part of the tapestry of the immigrant experience across generations. And--some fun insight into Korean zombie movies--you won't be disappointed!

Making her thriller debut with The Fields, author Erin Young joins Kelsey and Jenn in this episode of The First Fifty Pages.

Author, actress, and brand-storyteller Gina Sorell joins Kelsey and Jenn in this episode of The First Fifty Pages. Gina talks about her latest novel, The Wise Women, and shares some thoughts on how memory, legacy, and perspective shape the stories we tell.

Emily St. John Mandel--the bestselling author behind the critically acclaimed novels Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel--joins Kelsey and Jenn on this episode of The First Fifty Pages. Emily talks about her love of Science Fiction, the un-romantic process of revision, and about how her latest novel, Sea of Tranquility, moves through time and space. (!) Spoiler -- the future is not a catastrophe...

Read for Joy! In this episode of The First Fifty Pages, Kelsey and Jenn chat with New York Times bestselling author Katherine Center about her essay "READ FOR JOY." Katherine shares what this means to her and why it is important to trust yourself to find the stories that you most need to hear.