situation / story

About the Book:

An eight-year-old trauma victim is enlisted as an underground courier, rushing frozen organs through the alleys of Eastern Europe. A young janitor transforms discarded objects into a fantastical, sprawling miniature city until a shocking discovery forces him to rethink his creation. A brazen child tells off a pack of schoolyard tormentors with the spirited invention of an eleventh commandment. A wounded man drives eastward, through tears and grief, toward an unexpected transcendence.

About Lidia:

Lidia Yuknavitch’s writing spans expectations and genres. Her national bestselling novel, The Book of Joan was named as a 2017 top 100 notable books in the New York Times Book Review, and her national bestselling novel, The Small Backs of Children was the winner of the 2016 Oregon Book Award's Ken Kesey Award for Fiction as well as the Reader's Choice Award. The Misfit's Manifesto, a book spawned from her Ted Talk The Beauty of Being A Misfit, is inspiring readers across the globe. Her widely acclaimed memoir The Chronology of Water was a finalist for a PEN Center USA Award for creative nonfiction and winner of a PNBA Award and the Oregon Book Award Reader's Choice. She also wrote the novel Dora: A Headcase and and a critical book on war and narrative, Allegories Of Violence.

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About the Book:

From internationally bestselling Argentine author Pedro Mairal and Man Booker International-winning translator Jennifer Croft, the unforgettable story of two would-be lovers over the course of a single day.



Lucas Pereyra, an unemployed writer in his forties, embarks on a day trip from Buenos Aires to Montevideo to pick up fifteen thousand dollars in cash. An advance due to him on his upcoming novel, the small fortune might mean the solution to his problems, most importantly the unbearable tension he has with his wife. While she spends her days at work and her nights out on the town-with a lover, perhaps, he doesn't know for sure- Lucas is stuck at home all day staring at the blank page, caring for his son Maiko and fantasizing about the one thing that keeps him going: the Uruguayan woman he met at a conference several months back and who he is longing to see on his day trip to Montevideo.



The surprising, moving story of this incredibly impactful day in Lucas' life, The Woman from Uruguay is both a gripping narrative and tender, thought-provoking exploration of the nature of relationships. An international bestseller published in twelve countries, it is the masterpiece of one of Latin America's most beloved writers.

About Pedro:

Pedro Mairal is a professor of English literature in Buenos Aires. In 1998 he was awarded the Premio Clarín and in 2007 he was included in the Hay Festival's Bogotá 39 list, which named the 39 best Latin American authors under 39. Among his novels are A Night with Sabrina Love, which was made into a film and widely translated, and The Woman from Uruguay, which was a bestseller in Latin America and Spain and has been published in twelve countries.

About Jennifer:

Jennifer Croft is the recipient of Fulbright, PEN, MacDowell, and National Endowment for the Arts grants and fellowships, as well as the inaugural Michael Henry Heim Prize for Translation and a Tin House Workshop Scholarship for her novel Homesick, originally written in Spanish. She holds a PhD from Northwestern University and an MFA from the University of Iowa. She is a founding editor of The Buenos Aires Review and has published her own work and numerous translations in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, VICE, n+1, Electric Literature, Lit Hub, BOMB, Guernica, The New Republic, The Guardian, The Chicago Tribune, and elsewhere.

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Sharyn Skeeter is a writer, poet, novelist, and educator. She was fiction/poetry/book review editor at Essence and editor in chief at Black Elegance magazine. She's taught at Emerson College, University of Bridgeport, Fairfield University, and Gateway and Three Rivers community colleges. She participated in panel discussions and readings at universities in India and Singapore. Sharyn Skeeter has written and published magazine articles. Her poetry and fiction are in journals and anthologies. She lives in Seattle where she's a member of the board of trustees of ACT Theatre. Dancing with Langston was published by Green Writers Press in October 2019.

About the Book:

Carrie, a business manager who always wanted to be a dancer, has two commitments today. She made a promise to her late father to move Cousin Ella, a former Paris café dancer, from her condemned Harlem apartment to a safe place. She’s also committed to catch a flight to Seattle with her husband for his new job. But Cousin Ella resists leaving the apartment where she’s had salons with Langston Hughes. She also has a mysterious gift that she wants Carrie to earn. If she does, a revelation about Carrie’s father and his cousin Langston Hughes will change her life.

Melissa Febos is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir, Whip Smart (St. Martin’s Press 2010), and the essay collection, Abandon Me (Bloomsbury 2017), which was a LAMBDA Literary Award finalist, a Publishing Triangle Award finalist, an Indie Next Pick, and was named a Best Book of 2017 by Esquire, Book Riot, The Cut, Electric Literature, Bustle, Medium, Refinery29, The Brooklyn Rail, Salon, The Rumpus, and others. Her second essay collection, Girlhood, was published by Bloomsbury on March 30, 2021. A craft book, Body Work, will be published by Catapult in 2022.

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Judith is a writer who lives in Baltimore, MD, and was born and raised in Africa.  She graduated from the University of Cape Town with a BA in Drama and History of Art, working as a professional actor before becoming the arts editor for SAfm at the South African Broadcasting Corporation. Judith joined WBJC shortly after immigrating to the United States in the late 1990s.

She holds an MFA in Creative Writing & Publishing Arts from the University of Baltimore, and is the author of Beyond the Baobab, a collection of essays about her immigrant experience. Her new book, Old New Worlds, is available from Green Writers Press.

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Rowena Alegría is Chief Storyteller for the City & County of Denver, founder and director of the Denver Office of Storytelling and the citywide storytelling and cultural preservation project I Am Denver. A 2019 Jack Jones Literary Arts Fellow, a 2019 Vermont Studio Center Fellow and a 2018 Writing by Writers Fellow, Alegría earned an MFA in Fiction from the Institute of American Indian Arts and is a member of Sandra Cisneros’ Macondo Writers Workshop. A career journalist, communications executive and speech writer, she is writing a novel that plays with form and the history of the Southwest.

https://rowenaalegria.com/ 

It was a joy to sit down with Meredith O'Brien to talk about her COVID-era memoir, UNCOMFORTABLY NUMB. We explore her experiences with a Multiple Sclerosis diagnosis through her lens of investigative journalism. In our conversation, she uncovers the all-too-prevalent patriarchal notion that women don't know their bodies as she struggles to get her diagnosis. 

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A Boston area writer, Meredith has authored four books and co-authored one, including Mr. Clark’s Big Band, which won an Independent Publisher Book Award and was a finalist for a Foreword Reviews INDIES Award. She teaches journalism at Northeastern University, where she also serves as a writing coach.

Uncomfortably Numb: a memoir (Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing, 2020), author

This medical memoir traces the moment Meredith first experiences what she later learns is a multiple sclerosis symptom, through the two-year diagnostic process, and, ultimately to the other side where she had to make an uneasy peace with the incurable and chronic disease of the central nervous system.

Buy it: The book can be purchased on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Signed copies can be purchased through Tatnuck Booksellers of Westborough, MA. Email them at: [email protected]. Ask your local bookstore to carry it!

Connect with Meredith:

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Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100270

Artist: http://incompetech.com/

TW: Violence, Rape, Drugs

David Heska Wanbli Weiden: a name as poetic as his prose and as his book is necessary for us right now. Listen in as we discuss his earth-shattering debut novel, WINTER COUNTS. We talk about Indigenous rights, decolonization, characterization, and how fiction writing has the potential to change policy.

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David Heska Wanbli Weiden, an enrolled member of the Sicangu Lakota nation, is author of the novel WINTER COUNTS (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2020).  WINTER COUNTS is a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and has been selected as an Amazon Best Book of August, Best of the Month by Apple Books, a main selection of the Book of the Month Club, and was an Indie Next Great Reads pick.

Weiden is also the author of the children’s book SPOTTED TAIL (Reycraft, 2019), a biography of the great Lakota leader and winner of the 2020 Spur Award from the Western Writers of America.  He’s published in the New York Times, Shenandoah, Yellow Medicine Review, Transmotion, Criminal Class Review, Tribal College Journal, and other magazines.  He’s the fiction editor for Anomaly, journal of international literature and arts, and he teaches creative writing at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver, the MFA program in Writing and Publishing at Vermont College of Fine Arts, and the low-residency MFA program at Western Colorado University.

He received his MFA in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts, his law degree from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, and his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. He’s an alumnus of VONA, a Tin House Scholar, a MacDowell Fellow, a Ragdale Foundation resident, and received the PEN/America Writing for Justice Fellowship.  He’s an active member of the Mystery Writers of America, International Thriller Writers, Western Writers of America, and the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers.  He’s Professor of Native American Studies and Political Science at Metropolitan State University of Denver, and lives in Colorado with his two sons.

His last name, Weiden, is pronounced “Why-den.” Heska Wanbli is pronounced “Heh-ska Wahn-blee.”  His nation, the Sicangu Lakota, is pronounced “See-chon-goo Lah-coat-ah.

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WINTER COUNTS Playlist

Listen in as Sarina Prabasi and I discuss the political state of the nation, the effects of COVID-19 on small businesses like Buunni Coffee, the joy and rage of motherhood, and more.

Find and follow Sarina Prabasi:

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Purchase The Coffeehouse Resistance: Brewing Hope in Desperate Times by Sarina Prabasi:

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When I started reading BLACKTOP WASTELAND in August, on recommendation from a friend, I don't think I realized quite how much S.A. Cosby would reveal about the contradictions and complexities of rural life in the South (U.S), especially for a Black man. In his review of the novel for NPR, Gabino Iglesias wrote, "The most surprising thing about S.A. Cosby's Blacktop Wasteland, which is marketed as a crime novel, is that crime is the least important element in the book." It wasn't the prescribed genre that drew me to his work, it was the fact that I knew he was going to give a voice to a Southern Black experience that I have been hungry for ever since he-who-shall-not-be-named took the highest office in the nation. Nonetheless, it is a remarkable work in the genre and is a well-earned contribution to the American canon of Southern literature.

Listen in as S.A. and I discuss race relations in the U.S., Southern cooking, what it's like to become the peer of our heroes, and how to tell a damn good story. 

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Purchase BLACKTOP WASTELAND by S.A. Cosby:

Macmillan Publishers

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Amazon, if you must (but please leave a review!)