This week we're taking it back to one of those assigned reading classics, The Great Gatsby. Author David Stuart MacLean talks about how he incorporated aspects of this novel into his work, How I Learned to Hate in Ohio, and took it all in a new direction. Add in xenophobia, rural Ohio in the 1980s, a teenage boy, and the Challenger disaster, and you've got yourself one crazy book. Along the way we talk about reckoning with the sins of your childhood, the soullessness of high school, writing during a pandemic, and what we miss when we learn about The Great Gatsby. Celebrate this novel entering the public domain by listening to the episode! (There are mild spoilers for Gatsby but not for David's book)

TW: homophobic slurs, hate crime

Buy David's book and support local indies: https://bookshop.org/books/how-i-learned-to-hate-in-ohio/9781419747199

Follow the podcast on instagram and twitter @yfbpodcast