Let them eat cake! Or kale. Or cookies. Or whatever women are hungry for. In this episode, Bethanne Patrick sits down with highly educated and highly respected author Min Jin Lee to discuss hunger, most specifically women’s hunger, and how radical it is for women to loudly voice ‘I’M HUNGRY’. Min’s hit novel Pachinko has been turned into a renowned drama series on Apple TV.

We’re back with a Pop! Goes The Culture this week, focusing on The Color Purple by Alice Walker. Bethanne decides to do something different this week and focus not only on the book, but on Alice Walker’s cultural impact as well.

Can Bethanne beat the clock? She gives us 6 Recs for our To Be Read lists, this week focusing on books with phenomenal TV adaptations. Titles include: Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood, Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn, Orange is the New Black by Piper Kerman, The Little Drummer Girl by John Le Carré, Patrick Melrose (series) by Edward St. Aubyn, and The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis.

Find Bethanne on X, Substack, Instagram, and Threads.

The Book Maven: A Literary Revue is hosted by Bethanne Patrick, produced by Christina McBride, and engineered by Jordan Aaron, with help from Lauren Stack.

All titles mentioned:

Pachinko and Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee,

Authority by Andrea Long Chu,

Towards Zero by Agatha Christie,

The Thinking Heart by David Grossman,

The Color Purple by Alice Walker,

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood,

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn,

Orange is the New Black by Piper Kerman,

The Little Drummer Girl by John Le Carré,

Patrick Melrose (series) by Edward St. Aubyn, and

The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis.

Episode Transcript

Welcome to Season Two of The Book Maven: A Literary Revue. This season, we’ll talk to leading authors, dive into the classics to decide which should stay in the literary canon, and I’ll recommend some of my favorite books to you. We’ll have all of that and more in this episode. But first, this week, I talked to Min Jin Lee about hunger. We discuss consuming knowledge, relishing experiences, and the radical nature of a smart and hungry woman. Join us now in conversation as Min talks about the importance of food in her writing.

BP: I know Pachinko, for example, well Free Food for Millionaires as well—there’s so much about food in your writing. So, I wanted to talk about how you learned to write about food. You certainly weren't a food writer or a food journalist when you began writing fiction. Were there challenges in that? Was it something that came very naturally to you?

MJL: That's so interesting. I don’t even think about my food writing at all. I have actually done some food writing. I’ve written for Travel and Leisure and S Traveler and Food and Wine. I’ve written little essays and pieces, but…You know what? MFK Fisher, who is the great OG food writer, was asked why she writes about food, and her answer was: "No, I write about hunger." Isn’t that good? Isn’t that the best? It’s so good—it gets right to the heart of things. And I definitely feel like a hungry person sometimes. There are so many things I want to be nourished with, and whenever I do feel nourished by something or someone, or by a moment, I do feel joy. Because I don’t expect happiness in life at all. At all. As a matter of fact, I’m a little bit of a Grinch.

BP: There's the headline.

MJL: Min Jin Lee is a Grinch! So whenever I’m talking to young people and they say things like, “Oh, that job doesn’t make me happy,” or “That situation makes me really unhappy,” or “I’m really traumatized about something,” I just think, “That sounds fine.” I don’t even get troubled by it. I always kind of think, “Yeah, that’s life, pal.” I usually say something that sounds really tough, but I always say, “Seeking happiness is very sheep-like behavior. We get into a lot of trouble looking for happiness. I don’t think it’s something you go looking for. It comes to you now and then.”

BP: Happiness is definitely not something you get to have all the time. I completely agree with you, but I want to go back to something you said a minute ago about being a very hungry person.

MJL: Yeah, I’m hungry.

BP: What does that mean? Since you know you can’t be happy all the time, what does hunger mean? Because hunger doesn’t mean you’re always going to be satisfied, does it?

MJL: But I really respect my appetites. I respect my hunger, I respect my appetites. And if the world says that, especially women, that we’re not supposed to be hungry, for me to say that is actually a very threatening thing to the world.

BP: It’s radical. It’s radical for women to say we are hungry, that we want more. Something I’ve talked about, and I think I wrote about it in my memoir, is growing up and how the biggest or best portion was always reserved for dad. Because in my family, like so many others, dad was the one who went out to work. So the women were always saying, “You don’t get that beautiful pork chop,” or “You don’t get the delicious crusty corner of the casserole because that’s for the man in the family.” And I’m not blaming my parents for that. That was the reality. But I definitely blame society for that—telling women, “Hold back. Hold back.”

MJL: I recently… so you asked me about cooking and food writing, and I gave you the MFK Fisher quote because I think talking about food is, in many ways, a lovely and polite conversation. But the root of everything for me is that I have this enormous appetite. And I’ve been made to feel ashamed for having it for most of my life. It’s exactly what you said about dad getting the beautiful pork chop, or how we have to save the best for the men. In Korea, that thinking lasted for a very long time—men get to eat first, the sons eat with the men, but the daughters are in the kitchen. And I think there’s something wrong with me or right with me… I want to eat. And if you make me feel ashamed of it, you’re telling me I shouldn’t be human. That I shouldn’t have energy. That I shouldn’t keep going. This is my right. I have a right to my appetite. I feel like that is as much of a feminist gesture as anything else.

BP: You know, this is incredible to me that you said that, Min, because… at some point last year, my doctor wanted me to take one of these semaglutide injections—just like every woman I know seems to be on one of these. So I tried it, but I stopped. She asked why I stopped, and I said, “Well, I had absolutely no appetite at all.” And she said, “Well, that’s good. We want to get your weight down.” But I said, “No, having no appetite made me feel less than human. I didn’t feel like a human being.” And the doctor—oh, she clearly didn’t understand. She’s a very thin, health-conscious person, great, certainly not at all someone with disordered eating, but she couldn’t understand that someone with more weight on their body would rather feel human than feel no appetite. That really shocked me.

MJL: I really respect you saying that. I understand that a lot of people are taking semaglutides, and everyone has a personal journey with their weight and health. But what I really love about what you said, as a metaphor and also as an allegory for our lives, is that our hungers, our appetites, our weight… Even the word “weight,” right? The word “glory” is actually another way of saying “weight” or “significance.” Are you expecting me to give my glory and my weight and my significance and my gravitas away? And for what?

BP: Say that again.

MJL: What do I get in return if I gave away my glory? What do I get in return? Tell me what I get in return because, unfortunately for the world, I’ve been a very educated person. I’m a very well-read person. And I’m in good company. Sister,

BP: Yes, you are a very well-educated, very well-read person. And the unfortunate thing for the world is that a well-read woman is a dangerous thing.

MJL: A well-read woman… I mean, first of all, we’re well-read women and we’re writers. We might as well be anarchists. Yes, with really good manners.

BP: You know, this is a good time for me to remind our audience that Min is also an attorney—and a really good one. So, you know, tell me what I get in return. As you said, you’re a great negotiator. And this is the thing—don’t ask me to give up. For instance, we’re talking about all these hungers, and hunger means so many different things. It’s not just about food. And hunger—when we recognize it, when we try to fulfill it, we don’t always fulfill it—but when we try to fulfill it, that is a radical act.

MJL: Yeah.

BP: Especially, as you said, for women to say, “You know, I’m just going to eat this entire package of cookies,” or “I feel like eating a bowl of kale,” when it’s what we want, instead of what someone else wants. And that’s the radical part of it because it doesn’t have to be about sweet things, soft things, or fattening things. It’s about determining what we truly want. And that is something we women, especially women… we were both born in the 20th century. Sometimes you hear a kid when you’re teaching refer to it as the 1900s, and I think, “What happened?!” But that is a radical act. As you said, Min.

MJL: I love the allegory of hunger, appetite, nourishment, and food. And if I did want to eat a package of cookies—which I have done—and I’m not ashamed, you will not make me feel ashamed of wanting to have done that, and it’s because I wanted something else. Because there was no way that package of cookies gave me the nutritional value I needed. And I think just saying it all of a sudden makes me realize I don’t need to eat a package of cookies anymore.

BP: Right. Right.

MJL: Because what I really wanted wasn’t just the package. Maybe what I really wanted was something delightful, sweet, and almost forbidden. And this was the only thing I could get—maybe the $2.99 package of Hydrox was what I got because I couldn’t afford Oreos. Right? But you know what? Coming from parts of my life where I couldn’t afford things, I know exactly what it’s like to buy something that’s a day old as opposed to something that’s fresh out of the oven. And when I couldn’t walk into restaurants or stores. And I think now that I can tell that and be honest about it, you can’t hurt me anymore with that. And I think that’s the freedom of saying, “I’m hungry.” It’s not that I can’t do it, but in order for me to even get that nourishment, I had to say it. I was so uncomfortable in my skin going to a place like Yale, where there were so many written and unwritten social codes that I was trying to understand. I was so embarrassed. I didn’t have the right language, the right clothes, the right conversations, or the right experiences. And I remember being in certain spaces where I was eating away from my household, surrounded by food I’d never had before—endless muffins…

BP: Waffles, peanut butter toast whenever you wanted it…

MJL: … as much as you wanted! And I remember gaining all this weight, and then also becoming a sexual person, right? All of a sudden, there was access to your body, the idea that someone else might want pleasure from you—but you not even knowing what pleasure is.

BP: And I think that’s so fascinating because, a couple of minutes ago, you said, “You didn’t have the right experiences.” I had a similar experience. Of course, it’s not completely analogous because I happen to be white, but I went from the Rust Belt to Smith and also didn’t have the right experiences. I didn’t have the right family vacations, I didn’t have the right genealogies to talk about. And I’m not talking about going back to famous people, just that I didn’t have the right aunts and uncles, you know? That sort of thing.

MJL: Shame on you, Bethanne.

BP: I know, I know. And the food, in particular, at Smith was really amazing. I mean, amazing. We had brunches on Sundays with omelet stations, trifles, and all kinds of stuff. And you think, “I’m working really hard, visiting privilege, so I’m going to have this.” And I think I gained the freshman 15. I probably got rid of some of it. That's not the point. I think what you said about visiting privilege versus having it—uh, being in it—are different. They're different aspects of life. So, talk more about visiting privilege.

MJL: It's shocking. It's almost shocking to visit privilege, especially because, you know, it's not yours to keep. You're not even questioning why people have it. You're like, “Oh, I can't have it more than these three hours that I get to visit this room.” And I find that to be fascinating.

BP: Correct.

MJL: We're going back, but the three at the women's center. Where I took these classes with this really, like, such a sweet young woman. Like, if I could find her right now, I'd give her a hug. This young woman very had this clipboard, and you know, gave us a reading list of all the books that we were supposed to read, and every week she would do these little exercises with us to try to teach us about how to taste food. Like, she would actually try to teach us how to taste food and then teach us about how to manage. She wasn't telling us to eat this number of calories. She actually taught us about abundance. The idea that you could trust your body, that you could trust you, that you would come through for your hunger. And then you'll stand up for your right to eat. And I remember thinking like, “Holy smoke! What a way to think!” Like, you weren’t gonna become a model.

BP: That’s radical.

MJL: It is radical! And when you tell a person, the idea, when you tell a person who's been told to eat less their whole life, that the exact opposite thing, which is, “No, I don't want you to eat more. I don't want you to eat less. I want you to know that you have the right to eat that.” I want you to eat that. I want you to be healthy and strong, and that you will have the power and the energy to continue. Like, if you explain it in that way, and not about like, “You want to be a size two for reasons that are not clear to me.” And also, what do you get in return? Like, I think it was— it came at such the right time in my life to be told to tell a 19-year-old woman, who’s filled with self-hatred for the skin that she's in, that you have the right to be here. Like, it’s mind-blowing.

BP: That is mind-blowing. And it makes me think, I, you know, again, I know we're not talking really deeply about your actual fiction right now…

MJL: but I... But it's actually all of my fiction.

BP: This is all, this is everything. Forgive me if I mispronounce his name, uni. Is it Honney? So, it makes me think of the very beginning of the family in Pachinko because he is someone who could so easily have been left to wither and die. Families did not have to allow children with challenges like his to keep going. And we know about so many times and places in history where a person who is deemed by society—and that, of course, includes women throughout history—to be of less use. The very fact that he was allowed to live, let alone marry, and then have all of these people who came afterward. That’s pretty radical, man.

MJL: I think so.

BP: I really think so.

MJL: I mean, I don’t know how you feel about this, Bethanne, but when you're at Smith incognito, in a way...

BP: Uh-huh. Right, right.

MJL: Exactly. Like when people don’t know you. And I, ‘cause I think it’s interesting about whiteness because whiteness hides so many things. Like, whiteness does not always equal power and privilege. I study this. Like, I’ve written about this for The Great Gatsby because The Great Gatsby is a novel about whiteness in America and about being an outsider. It’s not about black people. It’s about white people and people... Yes. Keep saying it’s a universal story, and it is, but it isn’t as well. It’s both things. And I think that we’d miss an opportunity to study whiteness in America when we don’t study The Great Gatsby, because every single important character is actually not from New York or New Jersey or elite.

BP: That’s exactly it. Yes.

MJL: And when I think about the experience of all of us who don’t fit into a certain mold where people expect great things from us, it’s painful. It’s painful because you’re underestimated. But I also want to say, like, Uni, it’s also an opportunity to rise where they don’t expect anything from you.

BP: Yes.

MJL: My entire life is about being underestimated. Like, every time I go into a room, people think I’m nothing. I’ve had that experience over and over again. And then they go, “Wait, I should know who you are.” And that’s where I’m like…

BP: And what... wait a minute. Even now, I mean, you are an internationally bestselling author. You’re someone that people pay to hear speak, and they still underestimate you?

MJL: Routinely, and it’s fine. I think this is like the amazing thing about being a middle-aged Asian lady. And when I was a young Asian American lady, it was something else too. But people are surprised that I speak English still, and it’s fine. And you know what? It’s really, really fine because I can only change me, right? And if I go around constantly, endlessly despairing and heartbroken about the state of affairs, I don’t think I’d get much work done because there’s a lot of reasons to despair. There’s a lot of reasons to be upset, and I have all sorts of responses, emotional responses to the world, but the thing that I really need is I need to keep doing my work, and I can’t keep doing my work and honor my obligations until I have a certain core idea that the world thinks this, but I am still me and there’s nothing wrong with me.

BP: Absolutely nothing wrong with you, and also nothing wrong with your hungers, regardless of how others see them or underestimate them.

Thank you, Min, for joining us this week. You can find all of Min Jin Lee's books wherever books are sold. Now let’s move on to Friday Reads, where we'll see what you've been reading this week.

Welcome back to another week's Friday Reads, where we talk about what you tell us you're reading from the interwebs.

As usual, my producer Jordan is here to talk through these with me. So, what have we got up first this week, Jordan?

JA: All right, our first post is from Hannah, who says: This week’s hashtag Friday Reads is Authority, the forthcoming book of essays and criticism by Andrea Long Chu, accompanied by a 2-21 Baker Brown from Red Beard Brewing in Stanton, Virginia. Perfect start to a literary weekend.

BP: I love it. You got Stanton just right. That’s, I’m so proud, living in the old Dominion as I do. So, Andrea Long Chu is a cultural critic whose recent New York Magazine takedown of former New York Times op-ed columnist Pamela Paul was an uncommonly elegant high-wire act. Since her canonical 2017 essay on liking women, Chu, the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, has established herself as a public intellectual straight out of the 1960s. Yes, queen. Long Chu is who I'd like to be when I grow up. Fearless. Fierce, feminist, and fair. Her book, I think, is for fans of cultural critics like Corina Chicano, Emily Nussbaum, and literary critic Merve M Ray. So enjoy it. It's going to be coming out soon, and I think you will all find a great deal to love and debate in it as well. So, what’s next, Jordan?

JA: Alright, the second one we've got today is from Anna, who says, My hashtag Friday Reads recommendation is this rather smart new edition of Agatha Christie’s Before Zero.

BP: Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Isn't it Towards Zero by Agatha Christie?

JA: Oh, um, yeah, yeah, I guess.

BP: 'Cause the book says Towards Zero, but...

JA: Yeah, I read that like Ron Burgundy. Just whatever's in front of me is what’s gonna come out.

BP: So, Towards Zero, and I love what Anna says. She says, "I like to read or reread a novel before I watch the TV or film adaptation so that I can see what they’ve done with it." The double twist in this one is brilliant. Have you seen the adaptation yet? Well, in America, we probably haven’t because it’s a BBC adaptation, but it stars, among others, Angelica Houston and Matthew Reese. So it has to be kind of fun, right? It is a gorgeous edition of the book. It might be a Folio Books edition. I’m not sure about that. Most of us know Agatha Christie’s name, but I have to say, it is worth rereading her novels from time to time because there’s a reason they keep getting new covers as well as new adaptations. And this one is set in the thirties. It’s about a British tennis player who goes to stay with an aunt at a Cornish estate. And Christie aficionados may want to know it’s her last novel featuring Superintendent Battle. This is for fans of all the Golden Age mystery authors: Dorothy Sayers, Nail Marsh, Marjorie Allingham, but... If you like your mystery novelists in a more contemporary vein, this would be great for fans of Martha Grimes, Tana French, and Deborah Crombie. So, our last Friday Reads for the week. What is it?

JA: Alright, our last one is from Erica whose hashtag Friday Reads and hashtag Shabbat Reads is The Thinking Heart by David Grossman, essays on Israel and Palestine.

BP: I really appreciate this one. Erica uses the hashtag Shabbat Reads. I think she may have invented it. And I just love the idea that at Shabbat, the day of rest, you might be reading. That reading is not necessarily work. It’s something that can be about a more meditative state of mind. So, this book has a beautiful, simple white cover with blue and green, almost watercolory lettering. Grossman is a very well-known Israeli novelist. He’s won the Booker Prize for his fiction, and he has been thinking, writing, and talking about the Middle East in prose for decades. He holds the Jewish state to account, but more importantly, he considers in these pieces what peace might look like, or could look like, in the region. The 11 essays in The Thinking Heart all appeared in newspapers and journals as Grossman grappled in real time with October 7th and its aftermath. This is for people who love thoughtful, serious writers like Orhan Pamuk and his writing about Turkey, Nathan Thrall, who has written about Syria, Nicole Krauss and her fiction about the Jewish diaspora and history. So, I think that anything by David Grossman is going to be beautifully written and is not any kind of knee-jerk anything. This is someone truly thinking with his heart. Thank you, Jordan, so much for these reads this week. We will have more for you next time.

This week, I am doing something a little bit different. I'm talking less about the actual adaptations of the book I've chosen and a little bit more about the issues surrounding the author, her book, and some politics that come up because of the author's beliefs. So, it's The Color Purple by Alice Walker.

Most of us know something about this book if we haven’t read it already or more than once, but we may not know everything about it. We also may not know how a few of these issues affect the way we look at Walker and her work in general. So, let’s see how I handle things. Thanks for following along, and let’s get into The Color Purple.

The Color Purple by Alice Walker was made into a feature film in 1985, directed by Steven Spielberg and featuring Oprah Winfrey as Sophia. In 2005, a musical adaptation opened on Broadway, and Oprah Winfrey was one of its producers and investors. Guess who else was? That's right, Harvey Weinstein. Mr. Hollywood Casting Couch himself. In 2008, the BBC made it into a radio drama, and in 2023, Spielberg, Winfrey, and Quincy Jones teamed up to produce a new film version based on the musical. It's clear that Oprah loves Walker's novel and its story. We all know a great deal about Oprah Winfrey's backstory, and some of it sadly intersects with Walker's protagonist, Celie.

So, why would a beloved novel that's won a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, and been adapted at least four times by large media outfits be unavailable in Israel? The answer: acclaimed author and activist Walker declined to have her 1982 book published in Israel as long as that country maintains what Walker calls a system of apartheid, referring in part to Israel's strict separation between Jewish and Palestinian residents on occupied land and more broadly in Israel.

You can easily learn more about that. Walker herself says she's not anti-Semitic but pro-Palestinian. While recent events have demonstrated Israel's hostility towards Palestinian people, we've also seen critiques of Israel's actions progress into anti-Semitic rhetoric. Alice Walker has a right to speak out against Israel and support Palestine, but what about her support of well-known Holocaust denier David Icke, who developed a theory that child-sacrificing lizard people run the world?

I am not here to debate what Walker means by apartheid, nor to compare global systems of apartheid, nor even to argue about Alice Walker's long-documented stance against Israel. And while Walker has written and talked about racism in the United States, she's also been taken to task by African American critics for how she portrays the male characters in The Color Purple.

The book is frequently on lists of challenged and banned titles due to its content about violence, sexuality, and explicit language. So, let's take a few minutes to discuss, shall we say, "artists with issues." Walker isn't one of the monstrous men that have been called out for sexual predation, the most recent in the literary community being Neil Gaiman, but she's also not an innocent when she takes action personally or professionally.

Alice Walker stands behind her deeds and her words. What do you do if you disagree with her? Do you choose not to read her work? What if you've already read it and loved it? How do you feel? Then what do you do if, as is the case with someone I know, you've used essays by Walker in a university classroom for years, despite being aware of the fact that some of your students would find her views repugnant? Put it another way:

Do you still watch Woody Allen movies? Do you appreciate the paintings of Picasso? How do you feel about Flannery O'Connor's fiction, knowing that she too was an anti-Semite and a racial bigot? These questions are just the tip of a massive iceberg of conflicts between the personal morals and public works artists create.

Alice Walker is both a person and an artist of extremes whose choices underscore some of the topics she includes in The Color Purple, which is a novel of extremes stuffed to the gills with different kinds of suffering and misdeeds. While a book like this might serve a broader purpose, it's useful to consider how its creator affects its content.

It is time for another themed book list. Six Recs is back, and for this week, I decided, since we're discussing Min Jin Lee and her novel Pachinko, which is currently doing really, really well on television, that I would talk about some fantastic television series that are truly excellent adaptations of their original novels.

So, we'll see what you think. A little bit different, but as usual, Jordan, my producer, is here to time me and see if I can get six recs in under three minutes. Otherwise, the great bookcase of shame falls. So, Jordan, are we ready with the stopwatch?

JA: We're rolling.

BP: Alright, here we go. First up, Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood. The 2017 CBC production directed by Mary Herron and written by Sarah Polley will surprise and shock you, even if you've read Atwood's excellent 1996 novel. As usual, the author's genius lies in placing believable characters into situations rife with social ills. No one here gets out alive, even if they're not part of the body count.

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn, and yes, that’s how you say her name. Who is more electric in this very dark HBO mystery adaptation: Patricia Clarkson as Adora Crellin, or Amy Adams as her daughter Camille? I can't decide. It's set in small-town Missouri, and Flynn's savage plot gets tons of atmosphere, especially the enormous family home with its wraparound porch and fastidiously decorated rooms.

Orange is the New Black by Piper Kerman is what happens when a series takes on a life of its own, as did this seven-season Netflix adaptation of Kerman's origin story of privilege, drug running, and a prison sentence. The series accomplished more of the activist author's goal, which is drawing attention to our criminal justice system and how it fails everyone.

The Little Drummer Girl by John Le Carré. Two words: Florence Pugh. You won’t be able to take your eyes off of her in Park Chan-wook’s take on Le Carré's 1983 novel about Anglo-Arab-Israeli espionage. Michael Shannon as Gadi Becker and Alexander Skarsgård as her Israeli lover, eh, they're fine and all, but Pugh, the ultimate honey trap, cannot be ignored.

Patrick Melrose by Edward St. Aubyn. Call me a "Cumberbitch" if you must, but who besides Benedict Cumberbatch could take on St. Aubyn's autofiction-esque five-novel self and carry that protagonist through a hallucinatory journey from childhood to adulthood? Written by David Nicholls and directed by Edward Berger, the 2018 production is A+ television.

Finally, The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis. This 2020 Netflix take on Tevis' 1983 novel about a 1950s female chess prodigy transcends eras, largely due to Anya Taylor-Joy’s flame-haired, doe-eyed turn as Beth Harmon, a Kentucky orphan whose difficult childhood led her into addictions to alcohol and drugs that jeopardized her genius and, at times, her life.

There we go. Six recs in.

JA: Alright, well, after a few weeks of collapses of the bookshelf, we're back under the three-minute threshold at two minutes and 37 seconds.

BP: Ah, fantastic. I did it. I did it. I love it. Thank you. Thank you, Jordan. I'll be back next week with another themed list of six recs.

Well, that does it for this episode of The Book Maven: A Literary Review. Follow us on Substack for our weekly newsletter containing new book releases, commentary, and more. Talk to you next week.

The Book Maven: A Literary Review is hosted and produced by me, Bethanne Patrick. It’s produced by Christina McBride, with engineering by Jordan Aaron, and our booking producer is Lauren Stack.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebookmavenunbound.substack.com