The Maris Review

Jenny Zhang was born in Shanghai and grew up in New York. She is the author of the poetry collection Dear Jenny, We Are All Find and the story collection Sour Heart. Her latest poetry collection is called My Baby First Birthday.

Recommended Reading:

The Teebs Tetralogy by Tommy Pico

Magical Negro and Who Put This Song On by Morgan Parker

Dear Friend, From My Life I Write to You in Your Life by Yiyung Li

Homie by Danez Smith

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Matt Ortile is the managing editor of Catapult. His writing has been published by BuzzFeed, Into, Self, and Out, among others. He lives in Brooklyn.

This episode is sponsored by Penguin Random House Audio. Stay on top of your book club reading with audiobooks such as The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead, Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half, Elizabeth Kay’s Seven Lies, A Burning by Megha Majumdar, and much more. These titles are available wherever audiobooks are sold.

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Alexandra Petri is an American humorist and newspaper columnist at the Washington Post. She lives in Washington DC. Nothing Is Wrong And Here Is Why is her essay collection.

Recommended Reading:

Here For It by R. Eric Thomas

War and Peace

The Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

David Copperfield

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Zaina Arafat is a Palestinian-American writer. Her stories and essays have appeared in publications including The New York Times, Granta, and more. She holds an M.A. in international affairs from Columbia University, an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. She grew up between the U.S. and the Middle East and currently lives in Brooklyn. Her debut novel is called You Exist Too Much.

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Jayson Greene is a music writer and the author of Once More We Saw Stars.

Recommended Reading:

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa

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Marie-Helene Bertino is the author of 2 A.M. at the Cat's Pajamas and the story collection Safe as Houses. Her work has received The O. Henry Prize, The Pushcart Prize, The Iowa Short Fiction Award, and The Mississippi Review Story Prize. Her latest novel is called Parakeet.

Recommended Reading

Hex by Rebecca Dinerstein Knight

Quotients by Tracy O’Neill

These Ghosts Are Family by Maisy Card

A Burning by Megha Majumdar

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Ishmael Beah is the Sierra Leonean and American author of the novel Radiance of Tomorrow and the memoir A Long Way Gone, which was a #1 New York Times bestseller and has been published in more than 40 languages. A UNICEF Ambassador and Advocate for Children Affected by War, and a member of the Human Rights Watch Children’s Advisory Committee, Beah’s latest novel is called Small Family.

Recommended Reading:

The Plague by Albert Camus

Children of the Alley by Naguib Mahfouz

The House of Hunger by Dambudzo Marechera

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Patrick Hoffman is a writer and private investigator based in Brooklyn. His first novel, The White Van, was a finalist for the Crime Writers’ Association Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award. His latest novel is called Clean Hands.

Recommended Reading

The Paying Guest by Sarah Waters

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Ivy Pochoda is the author of The Art of Disappearing, Visitation Street, and Wonder Valley, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist and winner of the Strand Critics Award. She lives in Los Angeles. Her latest novel is called These Women.

Recommended Books

Make Them Cry by Smith Henderson and John Marc Smith

The Book of Lamps and Banners by Elizabeth Hand

Take Me Apart by Sarah Sligar

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Susannah Cahalan is the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness, a memoir about her struggle with a rare autoimmune disease of the brain. Her second and most recent book is called The Great Pretender.

Recommended Reading:

The Collected Schizophrenias by Esme Weijun-Wang

The Friend by Sigrid Nunez

This episode is brought to you by Catapult, publishers of Rough Magic by Lara Prior-Palmer. "If you like your memoirs to revolve around singular experiences, Lara Prior-Palmer’s Rough Magic delivers." That’s what The New York Times said about Rough Magic, the extraordinary true story of one young woman’s experience riding what’s billed as “The World’s Longest and Toughest Horse Race”—The Mongol Derby.

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