The Maris Review

Esmé Weijun Wang is the author of The Border of Paradise. She received the Whiting Award in 2018 and was named one of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists of 2017. Her latest collection, The Collected Schizophrenias, received the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize.

Recommended Reading:

Real Life by Brandon Taylor

Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls by T. Kira Madden

Where Reason Ends by Yiyun Li

Demon Camp by Jennifer Percy

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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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Amber Sparks is the author of The Unfinished World, and her fiction and essays have appeared in American Short Fiction, Paris Review, Tin House, Granta, and elsewhere. She lives in Washington, DC, with her husband, daughter, and two cats.

This episode is brought to you by Kobo. If you like podcasts like this one, then you’ll love Kobo Audiobooks. Listening to audiobooks lets you fit more reading into your life. Listen while you work out, dinner, play video games … or any time. Kobo has a huge catalogue of audiobooks, including best-sellers and originals -- across all genres. Start a free 30-day trial by going to kobo.com/MARISREVIEW or use the code MARIS40 to get 40% off one of our select audiobooks, curated by Kobo’s audiobook experts. 

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Teddy Wayne is the author of Loner, The Love Song of Jonny Valentine, and Kapitoil. He is the winner of a Whiting Writers' Award and an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship. He is a regular contributor to the New Yorker, the New York Times, and McSweeney's. His latest novel is called Apartment.

This episode is brought to you by Kobo. If you like podcasts like this one, then you’ll love Kobo Audiobooks. Listening to audiobooks lets you fit more reading into your life. Listen while you work out, dinner, play video games … or any time. Kobo has a huge catalogue of audiobooks, including best-sellers and originals -- across all genres. Start a free 30-day trial by going to kobo.com/MARISREVIEW or use the code MARIS40 to get 40% off one of our select audiobooks, curated by Kobo’s audiobook experts. 

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Laura Zigman is the author of Animal Husbandry (which was made into the movie, Someone Like You, starring Hugh Jackman and Ashley Judd), Dating Big Bird, Piece of Work and Her. Her latest novel is called Separation Anxiety. She lives in Cambridge with her husband, son, and deeply human Sheltie.

This episode is brought to you by Kobo. If you like podcasts like this one, then you’ll love Kobo Audiobooks. Listening to audiobooks lets you fit more reading into your life. Listen while you work out, dinner, play video games … or any time. Kobo has a huge catalogue of audiobooks, including best-sellers and originals -- across all genres. Start a free 30-day trial by going to kobo.com/MARISREVIEW or use the code MARIS40 to get 40% off one of our select audiobooks, curated by Kobo’s audiobook experts. 

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Rebecca Solnit is the author of more than 20 books, including A Field Guide to Getting Lost, The Faraway Nearby, and Wanderlust. She is also the author of Men Explain Things to Me and many essays on feminism, activism and social change, hope, and the climate crisis. Her new memoir is called Recollections of My Non-Existence.

This episode is brought to you by Kobo. If you like podcasts like this one, then you’ll love Kobo Audiobooks. Listening to audiobooks lets you fit more reading into your life. Listen while you work out, dinner, play video games … or any time. Kobo has a huge catalogue of audiobooks, including best-sellers and originals -- across all genres. Start a free 30-day trial by going to kobo.com/MARISREVIEW or use the code MARIS40 to get 40% off one of our select audiobooks, curated by Kobo’s audiobook experts. 

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Kevin Nguyen is the features editor at The Verge and was previously a senior editor at GQ. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. His debut novel is called New Waves

Recommended Books:

Topics of Conversation by Miranda Popkey

Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener

Memorial by Bryan Washington

This episode is brought to you by Kobo. If you like podcasts like this one, then you’ll love Kobo Audiobooks. Listening to audiobooks lets you fit more reading into your life. Listen while you work out, dinner, play video games … or any time. Kobo has a huge catalogue of audiobooks, including best-sellers and originals -- across all genres. Start a free 30-day trial by going to kobo.com/MARISREVIEW or use the code MARIS40 to get 40% off one of our select audiobooks, curated by Kobo’s audiobook experts. 

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Raised in the coastal town of Danvers, Massachusetts, QUAN BARRY is the author of the novel She Weeps Each Time You’re Born and of four books of poetry, including the collection Water Puppets. She lives in Wisconsin and teaches at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her latest novel is We Ride Upon Sticks.

Recommended Reading:

August Town by Kei Miller

The Last Warner Woman by Kei Miller

Imperial Liquor by Amaud Johnson

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Lidia Yuknavitch is the nationally bestselling author of the novels The Book of Joan, The Small Backs of Children, and Dora: A Headcase, and of the memoir The Chronology of Water. She lives in Portland, Oregon. Verge is her first story collection.

Recommended Reading:

Heart Berries by Therese Maillot

Cleanness by Garth Greenwell

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

There, There by Tommy Orange

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Brandon Taylor is the senior editor of Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading and a staff writer at Lit Hub. He holds graduate degrees from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of Iowa, where he was an Iowa Arts Fellow at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in fiction. His debut novel is called Real Life.

Recommended Reading:

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

How Much of These Hills Is Gold by C. Pam Zhang

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Rachel Vorona Cote publishes frequently in such outlets as the New Republic, Longreads, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, and Literary Hub. She was previously a contributing writer at Jezebel. Rachel was ABD in a doctoral program in English at the University of Maryland, studying and teaching the literature of the Victorian period. Her debut collection is called Too Much: How Victorian Constraints Still Bind Women Today.

Recommended Reading:

The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot

Emily of New Moon by Lucy Maud Montgomery

Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

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