New Books in Literature

By Marshall Poe

Arts

What's New Books in Literature about?

Interviews with Writers about their New Books

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Download our free app to listen on your phone

New Books in Literature episodes:

04.19.2024
Ruth Reichl, "The Paris Novel" (Random House, 2024)
Stella St. Vincent, a thirty-something copy editor in 1980s New York, has survived a relationship with her mother, Celia, so complicated that even the words “my daughter” give Stella pause. Celia lived life to the fullest, reinventing herself and discarding...
04.18.2024
The Things We Didn't Know: A Conversation with Elba Iris Pérez
Today’s book is: The Things We Didn’t Know (Gallery Books, 2024), by Dr. Elba Iris Pérez’s. A cross-cultural coming-of-age story, The Things We Didn’t Know is inspired by the author’s own experiences growing up between Woronoco, Massachusetts, and Puerto Rico. It explores Andrea Rodríguez’s...
04.16.2024
Greg Sarris, "The Forgetters" (Heyday Books, 2024)
In Greg Sarris' book The Forgetters (Heyday Books, 2024), Answer Woman, a crow, cannot come up with a story until she is asked by Question Woman, her sister. But they both want to remember those who forgot the stories – because only by...
04.14.2024
Ihsan Abdel Kouddous, "A Nose and Three Eyes" (Hoopoe, 2024)
Written by iconic Egyptian novelist Ihsan Abdel Kouddous, this classic of love, desire, and family breakdown smashed through taboos when first published in Arabic and continues to captivate audiences today It is 1950s Cairo and 16-year-old Amina is engaged to a...
04.13.2024
On Monsters, Goddesses and Myths: A Discussion with Author Katherine Marsh
“We’re not monsters, Mom. We’re goddesses—smart, fearless, and beautiful.” That’s the voice of Ava, the superpowered protagonist of Katherine Marsh’s captivating novel for children, Medusa (Clarion Books, 2024). Our discussion focuses on Marsh’s feminist retelling of the Medusa myth—and on the wider...
04.12.2024
Zhang Ling, "Aftershock" (Amazon Crossing, 2024)
In the summer of 1976, an earthquake swallows up the city of Tangshan, China. Among the hundreds of thousands of people scrambling for survival is a mother who makes an agonising decision that irrevocably changes her life and the lives...
04.12.2024
Rachel Greenlaw, "Compass and Blade" (Inkyard Press, 2024)
Rachel Greenlaw's debut young adult romantasy, Compass and Blade (Inkyard Press, 2024) is filled with sirens and mysterious magic, swoony romance and cutthroat betrayal. This world of sea and storm runs deep with bargains and blood. On the remote isle of Rosevear, Mira, like...
04.09.2024
D. J. Green, "No More Empty Spaces" (She Writes Press, 2024)
No More Empty Spaces (She Writes Press, 2024) opens with Will Ross, an engineering geologist, who shares custody of his three children with his ex-wife, taking his 1953 Cessna up for a spin. It’s 1973, and he’s decided to take his...
04.07.2024
Wole Talabi, "Convergence Problems" (Astra Publishing House, 2024)
In his new story collection Convergence Problems (DAW Books, 2024), Wole Talabi investigates the rapidly changing role of technology and belief in our lives as we search for meaning, for knowledge, for justice; constantly converging on our future selves. In “An Arc of Electric...
04.04.2024
"Ploughshares" Magazine: A Discussion with Ladette Randolph
Ladette Randolph has served as editor-in-chief of Ploughshares literary journal since 2008, where she had acquired numerous notable essays and short stories. A publishing professional for 30 years, she is co-owner of the manuscript editing firm Randolph Lundine, and the author of...
04.02.2024
Nell Freudenberger, "The Limits" (Knopf, 2024)
The most thrilling work yet from the best-selling, prize-winning author of The Newlyweds and Lost and Wanted, a stunning new novel set in French Polynesia and New York City about three characters who undergo massive transformations over the course of a single year. From...
04.02.2024
Deborah Kalb, "Off to Join the Circus" (Apprentice House, 2023)
In Deborah Kalb’s debut adult novel Off to Join the Circus (Apprentice House Press 2023) it’s 2018, Howard Pinsky’s sister Adele, who ran away in 1954, as his parents said, “to join the circus,” is suddenly, 64 years later, in Bethesda wanting...
03.27.2024
Greg Wrenn, "Mothership: A Memoir of Wonder and Crisis" (Regalo Press, 2024)
A dazzling, evidence-based account of one man’s quest to heal from complex PTSD by turning to endangered coral reefs and psychedelic plants after traditional therapies failed—and his awakening to the need for us to heal the planet as well. Professor...
03.23.2024
Marie Mutsuki Mockett, "The Tree Doctor" (Graywolf Press, 2024)
When the unnamed narrator of Marie Mutsuki Mockett's stirring second novel returns to Carmel, California, to care for her mother, she finds herself stranded at the outset of the disease. With her husband and children back in Hong Kong, and...
03.22.2024
The Georgia Review: A Discussion with Gerald Maa and Maggie Su
Gerald Maa has been The Georgia Review’s director and editor since 2019. During his tenure there, the magazine has won the National Magazine Award for Best Fiction as well as Best New Poets, and the Robert Dau/PEN Prize. Prior to this role,...
03.22.2024
Jennifer Lang, "Places We Left Behind: A Memoir-in-miniature" (Vine Leaves Press, 2023)
Jennifer Lang's Places We Left Behind: A Memoir in Miniature (Vine Leaf Press, 2023) uses short chapterettes and experimental prose to examine he marriage, commitment and compromise, faith and family while moving between prose and poetry, playing with language and form, daring the reader...
03.20.2024
Herbert Gold and Ari Gold, "Father Verses Sons: A Correspondence in Poems" (Rare Bird Books, 2024)
Father Verses Sons: A Correspondence in Poems (Rare Bird, 2024). When the global pandemic forced his ninety-six-year-old father into isolation, filmmaker Ari Gold became concerned that loneliness would kill his father's spirits. As a prolific novelist who began writing in his twenties, Herbert Gold's incredible oeuvre...
03.19.2024
Céline Keating, "The Stark Beauty of Last Things" (She Writes Press, 2023)
The Stark Beauty of Last Things (She Writes Press, 2023) is set in Montauk, the far reaches of the famed Hamptons, an area under looming threat from a warming climate and overdevelopment. Now outsider Clancy, a thirty-six-year-old claims adjuster scarred by his...
03.19.2024
Robin Oliveira, "A Wild and Heavenly Place" (Putnam, 2024)
When Samuel Fiddes and Hailey MacIntyre meet by chance in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1878, their worlds appear to be far distant from each other. Samuel lives with his little sister, Alison, in a tenement—the two of them scrabbling to keep...
03.17.2024
Brenda Novak, "Tourist Season" (Mira Books, 2024)
In Brenda Novak's latest book, Tourist Season (Mira Books, 2024), Ismay Chalmers' plans to spend a relaxing summer at the beach are derailed when she discovers the wealthy family she is marrying into is hiding many scandals and secrets. Ismay is ready for a...
03.14.2024
Scott Alexander Howard, "The Other Valley" (Atria Books, 2024)
Sixteen-year-old Odile is an awkward, quiet girl vying for a coveted seat on the Conseil. If she earns the position, she'll decide who may cross her town's heavily guarded borders. On the other side, it's the same valley, the same...
03.14.2024
The Iowa Review: A Discussion with Lynne Nugent
Lynne Nugent is the editor of The Iowa Review and the author of a chapbook of essays, Nest, about motherhood and domesticity published by The Florida Review in 2020. She holds a MFA in nonfiction writing and a PhD in English from the University of Iowa. It’s...
03.12.2024
Millicent Borges Accardi, "Quarantine Highway" (Flowersong Press, 2022)
Millicent Borges Accardi, a Portuguese-American writer, is the author of four poetry collections, including Only More So (Salmon Poetry, Ireland), and Quarantine Highway (FlowerSong Press). Among her awards are fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), Fulbright, CantoMundo, Creative Capacity, the California...
03.05.2024
Parul Kapur, "Inside the Mirror" (U Nebraska Press, 2024)
Parul Kapur's novel Inside the Mirror (University of Nebraska Press, 2024) centers on twin sisters growing up in 1950s Bombay, who aspire to become artists. The family is still recovering from the Partition of India in 1947, especially the twins’ grandmother, who...
03.01.2024
Nayereh Doosti, “The Little One” The Common magazine (Nov, 2023)
Nayereh Doosti speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her story “The Little One,” which appears in The Common’s most recent issue. Nayereh talks about the many inspirations behind this story, which follows an older Iranian man coming to America, where he...
02.29.2024
John Wray, "Gone to the Wolves" (FSG, 2023)
Kip, Leslie, and Kira are outliers—even in the metal scene they love. In arch-conservative Gulf Coast Florida in the late 1980s, just listening to metal can get you arrested, but for the three of them the risk is well worth...
02.28.2024
Tyler C. Gore, "My Life of Crime: Essays and Other Entertainments" (Sagging Meniscus Press, 2022)
In his debut essay collection, My Life of Crime (Sagging Meniscus Press, 2022), Tyler C. Gore brings readers on an awkward visit to a nude beach. A bike-pedaling angel careening through rush-hour traffic. The mystery of a sandwich found in a bathroom stall. A...
02.27.2024
Marie-Helene Bertino, "Beautyland" (FSG, 2024)
At the moment when Voyager 1 is launched into space carrying its famous golden record, a baby of unusual perception is born to a single mother in Philadelphia. Adina Giorno is tiny and jaundiced, but she reaches for warmth and...
02.26.2024
Harry Turtledove, "Wages of Sin" (Caezik SF & Fantasy, 2024)
What if HIV started spreading in the early 1500s rather than the late 1900s? Without modern medicine, anybody who catches HIV is going to die. In Wages of Sin (Caezik SF & Fantasy, 2024), by Dr. Harry Turtledove, a patriarchal society reacts...
02.25.2024
Kate Quinn and Janie Chang, "The Phoenix Crown" (William Morrow, 2024)
Kate Quinn and Janie Chang are independently acclaimed authors of historical fiction, both of whom have previously appeared on this podcast channel. Here they combine their skills to tell a story about the 1906 San Francisco earthquake from multiple points...
02.22.2024
"Michigan Quarterly Review" magazine
Chandrica Barua is the Nonfiction and Online Editor for MQR. A PhD candidate in the Department of English Language and Literature, her dissertation focuses on encounters between imperial objects and colonial bodies in the British Empire, especially in British India. She hails...
02.20.2024
Mako Yoshikawa, "Secrets of the Sun: A Memoir" (Mad Creek Books, 2024)
Mako Yoshikawa's Secrets of the Sun: A Memoir (Mad Creek Books 2024) contains a host of essays about her difficult, brilliant father. Shoichi Yoshikawa grew up in a wealthy family in 1930s Japan, but his mother died when he was five, and...
02.16.2024
Sheila Heti Speaks About Awe with Sunny Yudkoff (JP)
In this fantastic recent episode from our colleagues at Novel Dialogue, Sheila Heti sits down with Sunny Yudkoff and John to discuss her incredibly varied oeuvre. She does it all: stories, novels, alphabetized diary entries as well as a series of dialogues in the New Yorker with...
02.15.2024
Deborah Taffa, "Whiskey Tender: A Memoir" (Harper, 2024)
Today’s book is: Whiskey Tender: A Memoir (Harper, 2024), by Deborah Jackson Taffa, who was raised to believe that some sacrifices were necessary to achieve a better life. Her grandparents—citizens of the Quechan (Yuma) Nation and Laguna Pueblo tribe—were sent to Indian boarding schools...
02.13.2024
Garnett Kilberg Cohen, "Cravings" (U Wisconsin Press, 2024)
Garnett Kilberg Cohen’s fourth short story collection, Cravings (University of Wisconsin Press, 2024), contains twelve beautifully-written tales. They each start simply before delving into universal human struggles of love, aging, repercussions, and community. Characters mull over or confront decisions and recognize or...
02.10.2024
Gila Green, "With a Good Eye" (Ace of Swords, 2024)
Luna Levi is an ordinary 19-year-old with extraordinary problems. Her mother's acting career is more important to her than the stage of real life. Her father struggles with PTSD as an ex-combat soldier and is equally MIA when it comes...
02.08.2024
"The New England Review" magazine: A Discussion with Elizabeth Kadetsky
The New England Review bills itself as a “snapshot of the literary moment,” which for my guest Elizabeth Kadetsky means great writing, of course, but also work that’s relevant to today and showcases a writer able to get out of her...
02.06.2024
Teresa H. Janssen, "The Ways of Water" (She Writes Press, 2023)
Josie Belle Gore is only six years old when we meet her in 1908, yet her father has tied a rope around her waist and is lowering her into a dark well to retrieve a dead animal that is poisoning...
02.06.2024
Jo Salas, "Mrs. Lowe-Porter" (Jackleg Press, 2024)
Mrs. Lowe-Porter (Jackleg Press 2024) was an American writer (1876-1963) who, after proving her ability, was contracted by publisher Alfred A. Knopf to translate the brilliant books and stories of Thomas Mann from 1924 -1960. Her flowing German to English translations...
02.06.2024
Karen Rigby, "Fabulosa" (JackLeg Press, 2024)
After her prize-winning debut, Karen Rigby returns with a beguiling ars poetica and tribute to the dazzling. From Dior to Olympic figure skating, Bruegel to British crime drama, Rigby’s poems revere memorable art, where “performance masks the hours.” Here, thread galvanizes air....
02.01.2024
"Fourth Genre" Magazine: A Chat with Patrick Madden and Joey Franklin
Patrick Madden and Joey Franklin are English professors at Brigham Young University. Madden’s latest book is Disparates (U Nebraska Press, 2020) and Franklin’s is The Writer's Hustle: A Professional Guide to the Creativity, Discipline, Humility, and Grit Every Writer Needs to Flourish (Bloomsbury, 2022). They...
01.30.2024
Jon Clinch, "The General and Julia" (Atria Books, 2023)
Barely able to walk and rendered mute by the cancer metastasizing in his throat, Ulysses S. Grant is scratching out words, hour after hour, day after day. Desperate to complete his memoirs before his death so his family might have...
01.30.2024
Cynthia J. Sylvester, "The Half-White Album" (U New Mexico Press, 2023)
Cynthia Sylvester's The Half-White Album (University of New Mexico Press 2023) is a collection of stories, flash fiction, and poems revolving around the journey of a travelling band, The Covers. The stories are songs on the album, beginning with “Live at the...
01.26.2024
Leo Ríos, "Lencho," The Common magazine (2023)
Leo Ríos speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about his story “Lencho,” which appears in The Common’s most recent issue, in a portfolio from the immigrant farmworker community. Leo talks about the process of writing and revising this story, which explores the...
01.26.2024
Alix E. Harrow, "Starling House" (Tor Books, 2023)
Alix E. Harrow’s new novel Starling House (Tor Books, 2023) is named for the infamous old mansion in the otherwise unremarkable town of Eden, Kentucky. For years the house has haunted the dreams of our protagonist, Opal, a reluctant resident of Eden...
01.26.2024
Samantha Harvey, "Orbital" (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2023)
A slender novel of epic power, Orbital (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2023) deftly snapshots one day in the lives of six women and men hurtling through space--not towards the moon or the vast unknown, but around our planet. Selected for one of the last...
01.26.2024
What Makes A Great Picture Book?
Betsy Bird is the Collection Development Manager of Evanston Public Library and the former Youth Materials Specialist of New York Public Library. She writes for the School Library Journal blog A Fuse #8 Production and reviews for Kirkus. She is the host of...
01.25.2024
Astrid Blodgett, "This Is How You Start to Disappear" (U Alberta Press, 2023)
Astrid Blodgett is the author of the short story collections This Is How You Start to Disappear (U Alberta Press, 2023) and You Haven’t Changed a Bit (U Alberta Press, 2013). Her stories have appeared in many Canadian literary magazines, and in translation in Inostrannaya Literatura, a...
01.25.2024
"The Sun" Magazine: A Chat with Derek Askey
Derek Askey is an associate editor on staff at The Sun magazine, located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. What qualifies as a Sun essay? As noted by my guest, odds are that means an essay that’s intimate, even raw, with an author who dares to...
01.24.2024
Stefano Gualeni, "The Clouds: An Experiment in Theory-Fiction" (Routledge, 2023)
On a slow autumn afternoon, an atmospheric physicist working at the Malta Weather Station receives a surprising email from a colleague working in the United Kingdom: something troubling has apparently been detected during one of their research flights. The ensuing...

What's New Books in Literature about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

New Books in Literature episodes:

Ruth Reichl, "The Paris Novel" (Random House, 2024)

The Things We Didn't Know: A Conversation with Elba Iris Pérez

Greg Sarris, "The Forgetters" (Heyday Books, 2024)

Ihsan Abdel Kouddous, "A Nose and Three Eyes" (Hoopoe, 2024)

On Monsters, Goddesses and Myths: A Discussion with Author Katherine Marsh

Zhang Ling, "Aftershock" (Amazon Crossing, 2024)

Rachel Greenlaw, "Compass and Blade" (Inkyard Press, 2024)

D. J. Green, "No More Empty Spaces" (She Writes Press, 2024)

Wole Talabi, "Convergence Problems" (Astra Publishing House, 2024)

"Ploughshares" Magazine: A Discussion with Ladette Randolph

Nell Freudenberger, "The Limits" (Knopf, 2024)

Deborah Kalb, "Off to Join the Circus" (Apprentice House, 2023)

Greg Wrenn, "Mothership: A Memoir of Wonder and Crisis" (Regalo Press, 2024)

Marie Mutsuki Mockett, "The Tree Doctor" (Graywolf Press, 2024)

The Georgia Review: A Discussion with Gerald Maa and Maggie Su

Jennifer Lang, "Places We Left Behind: A Memoir-in-miniature" (Vine Leaves Press, 2023)

Herbert Gold and Ari Gold, "Father Verses Sons: A Correspondence in Poems" (Rare Bird Books, 2024)

Céline Keating, "The Stark Beauty of Last Things" (She Writes Press, 2023)

Robin Oliveira, "A Wild and Heavenly Place" (Putnam, 2024)

Brenda Novak, "Tourist Season" (Mira Books, 2024)

Scott Alexander Howard, "The Other Valley" (Atria Books, 2024)

The Iowa Review: A Discussion with Lynne Nugent

Millicent Borges Accardi, "Quarantine Highway" (Flowersong Press, 2022)

Parul Kapur, "Inside the Mirror" (U Nebraska Press, 2024)

Nayereh Doosti, “The Little One” The Common magazine (Nov, 2023)

John Wray, "Gone to the Wolves" (FSG, 2023)

Tyler C. Gore, "My Life of Crime: Essays and Other Entertainments" (Sagging Meniscus Press, 2022)

Marie-Helene Bertino, "Beautyland" (FSG, 2024)

Harry Turtledove, "Wages of Sin" (Caezik SF & Fantasy, 2024)

Kate Quinn and Janie Chang, "The Phoenix Crown" (William Morrow, 2024)

"Michigan Quarterly Review" magazine

Mako Yoshikawa, "Secrets of the Sun: A Memoir" (Mad Creek Books, 2024)

Sheila Heti Speaks About Awe with Sunny Yudkoff (JP)

Deborah Taffa, "Whiskey Tender: A Memoir" (Harper, 2024)

Garnett Kilberg Cohen, "Cravings" (U Wisconsin Press, 2024)

Gila Green, "With a Good Eye" (Ace of Swords, 2024)

"The New England Review" magazine: A Discussion with Elizabeth Kadetsky

Teresa H. Janssen, "The Ways of Water" (She Writes Press, 2023)

Jo Salas, "Mrs. Lowe-Porter" (Jackleg Press, 2024)

Karen Rigby, "Fabulosa" (JackLeg Press, 2024)

"Fourth Genre" Magazine: A Chat with Patrick Madden and Joey Franklin

Jon Clinch, "The General and Julia" (Atria Books, 2023)

Cynthia J. Sylvester, "The Half-White Album" (U New Mexico Press, 2023)

Leo Ríos, "Lencho," The Common magazine (2023)

Alix E. Harrow, "Starling House" (Tor Books, 2023)

Samantha Harvey, "Orbital" (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2023)

What Makes A Great Picture Book?

Astrid Blodgett, "This Is How You Start to Disappear" (U Alberta Press, 2023)

"The Sun" Magazine: A Chat with Derek Askey

Stefano Gualeni, "The Clouds: An Experiment in Theory-Fiction" (Routledge, 2023)