Marginalia

Although she grew up in landlocked St. Louis and now lives in landlocked Austin, Juli Berwald passion for marine science has always remained near the surface. After seeing disturbing headlines about unprecedented jellyfish blooms and the dangers of ocean acidification, Berwald decided to take a scientific journey to better understand jellyfish to better understand the damage we are inflicting on the climate and the oceans. I spoke with Juli Berwald recently about her new book, Spineless: The

If Jesmyn Ward’s name sounds familiar, it might be because she won the National Book Award for fiction in 2011 for Salvage the Bones . Or it might be because she was just named a 2017 MacArthur fellow, which means she was awarded a genius grant.

A conversation about his new legal thriller, title choices, and more...

A conversation about a collaboration with Mark Twain.

A conversation about Hmong traditions, the Secret War, voice, and The Latehomecomer, with Kao Kalia Yang.

A conversation about political cartoons, translation, Shakespeare, and Reputations... with Juan Gabriel Vásquez.

John Boyne is an Irish author who has been publishing his work for almost 20 years. He’s written 10 novels, 5 books for young readers--most notably, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas --he has 3 short story collections, and his books have been published in 51 languages.

Kamila Shamsie is the author of several novels and has been a finalist for the Orange Prize, twice, and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. And she has been named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Her latest book, Home Fire , was recently longlisted for the 2017 Man Booker Prize. It’s a contemporary retelling of the Sophocles play, Antigone. The book and the play were written roughly 2500 years apart… yet the retelling is remarkably timely. I recently spoke with Shamsie about

David Baron’s new book, American Eclipse: A Nation’s Epic Race to Catch the Shadow of the Moon and Win the Glory of the World , is about the history and the players involved in the total solar eclipse of 1878.

Although she spent years working as a journalist, Fiona Barton only recently became a novelist last year with the publication of the psychological thriller, The Widow . And a second thriller, The Child , was just published a few weeks ago.