In Jyotsna Hariharan's debut audio-original drama REBUTTAL, the author weaves her introverted upbringing as a literature geek into an radio drama about two high school students from imperfect homes and the debate team that brought them together. Listen as Jyotsna weaves her path from a marketing career in India to a being a published playwright in New York, and the process of having actors collaborate to bring her vision of REBUTTAL to life.

"Some showed courage throughout the whole of their political lives. Others sail with the wind until the decisive moment when their conscience and events propel them into the center of the storm." – John F. Kennedy

On the week of the most divisive presidential elections in modern times, we take a moment to contemplate the words of then Senator John F. Kennedy from his Pulitzer Prize winning book Profiles in Courage, and hear excerpts from the audiobook recording made by his children, John F. Kennedy, Jr. and Caroline Kennedy.

Who was the monster in middle school and who was the nerd? Beth Newell and Sarah Pappalardo, co-founders of the satirical website Reductress, talk about extending their online collaboration into the book format.

Mister Monkey, Francine Prose’s latest novel, is as humorous, poignant and spiritual as an onstage monkey with a halo slipping on a banana. The author tells us which autobiographical elements had to be disguised to protect the guilty.

Andrew Harwell, senior editor at HarperCollins Children’s Books, describes how the graphic novel NIMONA became a full cast audiobook. He also reveals what book he rereads every year, and what being an author taught him about being an editor.

Fourteen years after the New York Times bestselling anthology THE BITCH IN THE HOUSE ushered in an unfiltered voice for a generation of young women, Cathi Hanauer has returned with a more mature, wiser, and "less angry" follow-up in THE BITCH IS BACK.

Hanauer discusses her selection of this collection's 16 new contributors - ranging from a transgender middle-aged woman to one who was in an arranged marriage - and follows up with 9 authors from the first volume whose lives have changed dramatically in the generation between books.

Pen Oliviera is a badass gamer girl and a gender-nonconforming teen, stuck in a small town outside Toronto. Listen as M-E Girard, first-time author, reveals the one thing she refused to give up and the one thing she had to give up in order to have her young adult novel accepted by a major American publisher.

Danielle Trussoni, author of THE FORTRESS, tells us how a google search for “paradise” yielded her a fortress and how 25 rejections yielded her a bestseller.

Mark Manson, author of the recently published millennial self-help book THE SUBTLE ART OF NOT GIVING A F*CK, went from selling dating advice products online to helping people live a more meaningful life. How’d he do it? It’s “The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck.” Give it an effin’ listen.

(One of the books mentioned in this episode is COWS, PIGS, WARS, AND WITCHES: THE RIDDLES OF CULTURE by Marvin Harris)

Gilly Macmillan, bestselling author of WHAT SHE KNEW, joins us this week to chat about her upcoming thriller THE PERFECT GIRL. Listen in as Gilly tells us about writing one ending instead of three, the music genre equivalent of a thriller novel (you’ll never guess), and which novel she thinks about the most.