Upstart Crow

Mary Kay Zuravleff – American Ending

Mary Kay Zuravleff is the author most recently of the novel American Ending, a story inspired by the experiences of her grandparents, Old Believer Russian Orthodox emigres. She combined those experiences to tell the story of immigrants recruited into the dangerous work America needs to have done but which workers are reluctant to do. The book seems entirely appropriate to our times.

Her characters live in the Appalachian mining town of Marianna, Pennsylvania, during the early years of the twentieth century. The narrator of the novel, Yelena, wants more for herself than the limited life patterned out for her. This is a place where the girls are married off by the age of 14, soon start to have babies and try to manage their households with limited incomes and young husbands who themselves dropped out of school to go work in the coal mines. Their story is one of compromised goals and dreams, and grasping at whatever opportunities come along.

The title suggests a simple divide that may not always be so visible in the world: In the American ending, stories end happily. The prince rushes in, slays the dragon, and he saves the princess. That’s versus the Russian ending, where things are not so happy. There is at least compromise, loss, diminishment. The prince might rush in and slay the dragon but he might find the princess is beyond saving in some way.

Mary Kay Zuravleff is the award-winning author of the previous novels Man Alive, which was a Washington Post notable book; The Bowl is Already Broken, which the New York Times called a “tart, affectionate satire of the museum world’s bickering and scheming;” and The Frequency of Souls, a story of love, electricity and life after death. She has won the American Academy of Art’s Rosenthal Award, the James Jones First Novel Award, and multiple artist fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts.

“If your people aren’t on the shelf, you need to write that book.”

Hosted by William Miller

• Immigration stories are American stories. American Ending explores the lived experiences of Russian immigrants in early 20th-century coal towns and how questions of belonging, labor, and citizenship echo into the present.
• Identity is shaped by place and pressure. Though Elena is born in America, her sense of self is constantly challenged by family, religion, labor systems, and cultural expectations.
• Historical fiction requires restraint and rigor. Mary Kay discusses how deep research—rather than limiting creativity—opened new narrative possibilities while grounding the story in reality.
• Community memory matters. The novel has sparked powerful conversations in book clubs and communities across the country, revealing how many families still carry untold immigrant histories.

#ImmigrantStories

#HistoricalFiction

#AmericanIdentity

Connect with Mary Kay Zuravleff:

Website

Book

Instagram

LinkedIn

This entire episode is available to watch on our YouTube channel.

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Thank you for listening to Upstart Crow, a part of Watershed Lit Radio.

© 2025 Upstart Crow Podcast – All Rights Reserved

Upstart Crow: Library Reads Special Edition – Fairfax Local Author Festival

In this special edition of Upstart Crow, host Jennifer Disano visits the Fairfax Regional Library for the Local Author Festival, recorded November 15, 2025 in Fairfax, VA. Jennifer sat down with 16 talented authors and received submissions from 2 additional writers, exploring a wide variety of books, from memoirs and children’s stories to historical fiction, fantasy, and literary fiction. Each author shared insights into their creative process and delivered a captivating synopsis of their work.

Authors and Featured Books:

• Carolyn Belefski – Curls, Black Magic Tales (artwork), Adventures of Roxy and Dean
• Kristen Amundson – Grandparent Effect: Helping Children Thrive Through Love, Support and Connection
• Rebecca Hayden – Murder of Maggie Slipper, The Second Life of Brencie Jessup
• Kacy Cooney – Seeking Solace, In the Maze of Imagination
• Roy Whitehurst – Teaching Media Literacy with Social Media News
• Karma Shri P Murti – Lanka’s Forgotten Lives, Lully series
• Kayla Sanders – Mojada: Memoir of a Honduran Immigrant
• Leslie Lautenslager – My Time with General Colin Powell: Stories of Kindness, Diplomacy, and Protocol
• Jerry Markowitz – Hugs Poetic Life, Exploring Kindness and Respect
• Henry Brinton – War Bug
• Rick Spees – Capital Gains, Capital Losses
• Eric Smolinski (E.R. Smo) – Accrue's End series: Affliction, Provenance
• Kat Needham – Shepherd Girl: A Dog Story, Una and the Fox
• Beka Wueste – The Unsent Letters of Lucy Pryor, Fireflies in a Jar, My Side of the World and Other Tales of Death
• Keisha Strand – I Need a Friend, What If We Went?
• Dave Hatcher – Son of the Heartland: On the Way to the Promised Land
• Deanna Reina – MENtal: A Preposterous Pursuit of Love
• Janet Macreery – The Falls

List of all authors at the festival here.

Fairfax County Public Library and the Fairfax Library Foundation made this festival possible, supporting local authors and ensuring the community could engage with these incredible stories.

#FairfaxLocalAuthors

#LibraryAuthorFestival

#CommunityReads

#FairfaxVA

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Be sure to check out our website for more information about our hosts, guests, and ways you can support the show:UpstartCrow.org

Follow us on Facebook here.

Thank you for listening to Upstart Crow, a part of Watershed Lit Radio.

© 2025 Upstart Crow Podcast – All Rights Reserved

Hosted & Recorded by Jennifer Disano

Edited & Produced by Jon D PodCom

Andy Shallal – A Seat at the Table

Andy Shallal has been a voice for social causes in and around Washington, DC, so consistently and for so many years that many who stop in at one of his Busboys and Poets restaurants, bookshops and event spaces may think of him more as a social activist than as a restauranteur. But he grew up in a restaurant. His father, who came to the U.S. as a diplomat, bought a pizza restaurant in Northern Virginia when Andy was 13. His father hired someone to run the restaurant six days a week, but on Sundays, Andy, his brother, and his sister helped their father run the place. Andy would do whatever task had to be done and dream of what he would do if the restaurant were his own.

Some years later, after working for several other restaurants, he indeed was running his own place. In those days, the food might have come first. Even if the political activism was not far behind as a consideration. Today, 20 years after he opened the first Busboys, Andy now operates eight locations, each of which is a haven for writers, thinkers, performers of the literary and musical arts—as well as people who like well-prepared, congenially served food and drinks. In his memoir, A Seat at the Table, he tells how it all came to be, and how he came to create and helm it.

You can get a copy of Andy Shallal’s memoir at any of the bookstores in Busboy’s or from the publisher, O/R Books (orbooks.com). https://orbooks.com/catalog/A-seat-at-the-table/ and is also available in audiobook.

Hosted by William Miller

“Food is basically a way to bring people together to the table… people remember experiences much more than they remember the actual food.” -Andy Shallal

Key Takeaways

• Andy’s lifelong relationship with restaurants began at 13, helping his father run a small family pizza shop on Sundays.
• His early experiences as an immigrant shaped his worldview and later inspired his commitment to building inclusive, human-centered gathering spaces.
• After years of working in different restaurants, Andy opened his own spaces—each blending hospitality with art, community, and social engagement.
• Busboys and Poets was created as a place where food, conversation, books, and civic dialogue could thrive together.
• His memoir A Seat at the Table explores not just the creation of Busboys and Poets, but the deeper cultural, political, and personal forces that guided his journey.

#BusboysAndPoets #ImmigrantStory #SocialEntrepreneurship

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Be sure to check out our website for more information about our hosts, guests, and ways you can support the show: UpstartCrow.org

Follow us on Facebook here.

Thank you for listening to Upstart Crow, a part of Watershed Lit Radio.

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© 2025 Upstart Crow Podcast – All Rights Reserved

Recorded & Produced by Jon D PodCom

Amy Stuber wrote the stories and Rebecca Burke edited them to produce the book Sad Grownups that won the 2025 PEN/Bingham Prize for Best Debut Short Story Collection. A big deal in literary circles, the book becomes a milestone for its publisher, Stillhouse Press, a teaching press at George Mason University staffed by students and alums who learn the book business by publishing and selling books. Together, Amy and Rebecca discuss the writing process and editing processes, book production and marketing, the content of this prize-winning collection, and the differences today between major commercial publishing houses and small presses.

Sad Grownups is Amy Stuber’s first book of fiction. Her stories have appeared separately in literary journals and magazines, including Ploughshares, Tri-Quarterly, American Short Fiction, New England Review, Idaho Review, Cincinnati Review, Flash Fiction America, Joyland, and others. She received the 2023 William Peden Prize in fiction from the Missouri Review and the 2021 Northwest Review Fiction Prize, and she was runner-up for the 2022 CRAFT Short Fiction Prize. She has a Ph.D. in English, has taught writing, and has worked in on-line education for several years. Rebecca Burke is editorial manager-production for Science Advances, for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, where she has worked since 2021, not long after finishing her MFA at George Mason. She received her BA from Mason in 2017, majoring in government and international politics with minors in intelligence analysis and international security. She graduated summa cum laude.

At Stillhouse, Rebecca has been a consulting editor, submissions and acquisitions manager, and graduate professional assistant. In addition to Amy Stuber’s book, she also edited In Between Spaces: An Anthology of Disabled Writers (November 2022) and was an assistant editor for Catherine Klatzer’s book You Will Never Be Normal (May 2021), Michelle Ross’s Shapeshifting (November 2021), Phil Goldstein’s How to Bury a Boy at Sea (2022), and Josh Denslow’s Super Normal (2023). As a writer, she has published in several outlets, including Peatsmoke 2021 and Homology Lit 2019, where her work was a Best of the Net nominee. rrburkewrites.com

Amy Stuber’s book Sad Grownups can be ordered directly from Stillhouse Press. The teaching press was established in 2014 as a way for the students in Mason’s MFA, BFA, MA and BA programs in creative writing and publishing to solicit manuscripts, acquire and produce and market works from independent authors, for the educational benefit of the students and alums and also, as it says on the web site, “in an effort to forge lasting relationships and foster the growth of the greater literary community.” Stillhouse Press is part of the Watershed Lit Center for Literary Arts and Publishing Practice at Mason. The other components are the Fall for the Book festival, the Alan Cheuse International Writers Center, the Northern Virginia Writing Project, and the Poetry Daily on-line poetry distribution program.

You can purchase a copy of Sad Grownups by Amy Stuber at StillhousePress.org here.

“Small presses can take risks big publishers won’t. That’s where some of the most exciting writing is happening.” — Amy Stuber

Key Takeaways

• Writer Amy Stuber and editor Rebecca Burke walk through the creative evolution behind Sad Grown-Ups, from early drafts to a PEN Bingham Prize–winning debut.

• The episode reveals how collaborative editing, motif mapping, and story sequencing strengthened the collection’s emotional arc and overall cohesion.

• Amy and Rebecca break down the realities of small press publishing vs. big-house expectations, especially when it comes to debut short story collections.

• Several standout stories are explored, including “Day Hike,” “Sad Grown-Ups,” and “Little Women,” touching on themes of loss, reinvention, vulnerability, and identity.

• The conversation offers an honest look at marketing a debut, navigating rejection, and the tension between artistic integrity and marketability.

#ShortStoryCollections

#SmallPressPublishing

#LiteraryFictionInsights

Hosted by William Miller

Be sure to check out our website for more information about our hosts, guests, and ways you can support the show: UpstartCrow.org

Follow us on Facebook here.

Thank you for listening to Upstart Crow, a part of Watershed Lit Radio.

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© 2025 Upstart Crow Podcast – All Rights Reserved

Recorded & Produced by Jon D PodCom

In his new book, Matthew Davis explores one of the most iconic monuments in America—and perhaps the world. For nearly a century, Mount Rushmore has loomed large in the American imagination, but its origin story is far more complex than most visitors ever realize. From the slow, decades-long path to its creation, to the artistic and engineering challenges faced by sculptor Gutzon Borglum and the 400 men who carved the mountain, the monument’s history reveals layers that extend well beyond its granite faces.

Davis argues that Rushmore likely couldn’t be built today—not only because of its sheer artistic ambition, but because of the changing cultural, political, and ethical landscape. How different communities interpret the monument varies dramatically, shaped by beliefs, culture, memory, and contested histories. The Black Hills themselves provoke discussions of land, belonging, and the legacy of the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie—issues that continue to influence contemporary conversations about meaning, monuments, and national identity.

Matthew Davis is also the author of When Things Get Dark. His work has appeared in leading publications such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The Los Angeles Times Review of Books. He has been an Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fellow at New America, a Fellow at the Black Mountain Institute at UNLV, and a Fulbright Fellow. Davis holds an MFA in nonfiction from the University of Iowa and an MA in International Relations from Johns Hopkins. He was the founding director of the Alan Cheuse International Writers Center at George Mason University.

A Biography of a Mountain: The Making and Meaning of Mount Rushmore is published by St. Martin’s Press with an official release date of November 11, 2025. It will be available through Bookshop, independent bookstores, Barnes & Noble, Powells, Target, and Amazon.

• Mount Rushmore’s creation was shaped not only by artistry, but by politics, ego, and American mythmaking—its origin far more tangled than most realize.
• Sculptor Gutzon Borglum was both visionary and controversial, celebrated for his art yet entangled with the Ku Klux Klan and known for a domineering temperament.
• The history of the Black Hills, including the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie and the U.S. government’s seizure of the land, is central to understanding the monument’s ongoing controversy.
• Contemporary movements such as Land Back demonstrate that Rushmore’s story is not finished—its meaning continues to evolve through debates about justice, memory, and national identity.
• Memorials reflect their makers. Comparing Mount Rushmore to community-led memorials like Remembering the Children in Rapid City shows how public memory can shift from domination to inclusion.

Find out more about Matthew Davis:

http://matthewdaviswriter.com/

Read Matt’s Substack “About A Place”:

https://matthewdavisj.substack.com/

Purchase A Biography of a Mountain:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250285102/abiographyofamountain/

“History isn’t confined to the textbooks in the Black Hills—it’s a living, breathing organism that you really can’t escape.” — Matthew Davis

#MountRushmoreHistory

#AmericanMonuments

#MatthewDavisInterview

Hosted by William Miller

Be sure to visit our website for more information about our hosts, guests, and ways you can support the show:

https://UpstartCrow.org

Thank you for listening to Upstart Crow, a part of Watershed Lit Radio.

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© 2025 Upstart Crow Podcast – All Rights Reserved

Recorded & Produced by Jon D PodCom

Set in South Africa, Olufemi Terry’s first novel is, on one level, a straightforward story of an affluent Creole man coming of age, but on another level, it is the story of a post-apartheid country where a lot of Whites have fled and left behind Creoles, Blacks, and some Whites, all of whom face an uncertain future, politically and economically. On this level, the story evokes the possibilities of what has happened and what still can happen in many countries in the world. It dramatizes the roles of the manipulators and the manipulated, as well as the vulnerabilities of the innocent and unaware.

Olufemi Terry is a Sierra Leone-born writer, essayist and journalist whose short fiction has been published in Guernica, The Georgia Review, Chimurenga and The Granta Book of the African Short Story. His story “Stickfighting Days” won the prestigious Caine Prize. His essays have appeared in The American Scholar, Africa Is a Country, and The Guardian. He has been an international writer-in-residence at Cove Park, Scotland, and a writer-in-residence at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. He received a grant from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. He lives in Germany and Cote d’Ivoire.

You can buy Olufemi Terry’s book Wilderness of Mirrors directly from the publisher, Restless Books, an independent publisher based in Amherst, MA, that began in 2013 as a digital publisher of international literature. The organizers say on the Restless Books website that they think readers in the U.S. are hungry for works that take them to new places, give them new experiences, offer new perspectives, and that their mission is to feed that hunger. Restless Books offers free shipping on all orders within the U.S. so visit their web site at RestlessBooks.org for more information.

• An “anti–coming of age” story: Olufemi Terry describes Wilderness of Mirrors as an anti-bildungsroman, where experience dissolves rather than builds the protagonist’s sense of self.
• Race, class, and identity collide: The novel weaves themes of Creole identity, class tension, and post-apartheid power structures in South Africa, revealing how systems of privilege and inequality persist.
• Ambiguity as reflection: Terry embraces uncertainty—both for his characters and the reader—as a mirror of today’s unpredictable world and shifting moral ground.

“We are in a place of deep uncertainty, of deep unpredictability—and that’s precisely where Emil is going. He doesn’t even know exactly where he’s going.” -Olufemi Terry

#OlufemiTerry #WildernessOfMirrors #AfricanLiterature

Hosted by William Miller

Be sure to check out our website for more information about our hosts, guests, and ways you can support the show: UpstartCrow.org

Thank you for listening to Upstart Crow, a part of Watershed Lit Radio.

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Copyright 2025 - Upstart Crow Podcast - All Rights Reserved

Recorded & Produced by Jon D PodCom

Steven Mintz and Peter Stearns – The American Child

Have a child? Want to have a child? Listen to this podcast episode. The book—The American Child: The Transformation of Childhood Since World War II—by Steven Mintz and Peter Stearns, draws on a wealth of sources to bring an historical perspective to the profound transformations that have occurred in American childhood over the last 70 years, and their impact on children’s well-being.

The authors, award-winning historians, analyze how shifts in family life, education, and culture have reshaped childhood for good and not-so-good. And they suggest ways the less-than-good impacts can be improved upon.

Steven Mintz is a professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin. He is a past president of the Society for the History of Children and Youth and the author of many prizewinning books including Huck's Raft: A History of American Childhood. He has chaired the Council on Contemporary Families, a non-partisan non-profit that fosters understanding of how and why families are changing, what needs and challenges they face, and how to meet those needs.

Peter Stearns is Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at George Mason University, where he also served as provost for 14 years. He has written extensively on the history of childhood, including Anxious Parents and Childhood in World History, now in its 4th edition. In 2022, he was awarded Scholar of Distinction by the American Historical Association. He also has several kids and grandkids, which provides its own perspective.

Attentive to issues of diversity in class, ethnicity, gender, nationality, and race, the authors place contemporary controversies—rising rates of anxiety, depression, ADHD diagnoses, and emotional distress—in an historical context and challenge simplistic and astigmatic explanations that blame single causes such as social media, the internet, or the decline of marriage. They look instead at the transformations in schooling, childrearing practices, children's play, kid's culture, and other areas. Their analysis reveals the deeper structural, cultural, and historical forces driving the challenges and opportunities facing children, as well as their parents and society.

The publisher, Oxford University Press, says that the historical perspective these two use “shows that concerns about the ‘kids these days’” as some disparagingly say, “are as old as civilization itself, but in truth, today's young people are healthier than in the past and less likely to drink, smoke, or engage in reckless sex. The digital age has enabled them to learn, grow, and connect with the world in ways that were previously unimaginable.

There is greater acceptance and understanding of diverse backgrounds, identities, and orientations, giving many children more freedom to express themselves and find communities that support them. Many young people are more politically knowledgeable and socially aware than previous generations, speaking out about climate change, gun control, and social justice.”

But as most everyone knows, everything is not perfect. Autism, attention deficit disorders, allergies, obesity, learning disorders, and online bullying, as well as suicidal ideation and self-harm, have become more prevalent. School shootings and the 24/7 news cycle make the world seem even more dangerous for children. This book sorts through all these things from an historical perspective and with a thorough-going analysis.

You can order their book, The American Child, directly from Oxford University Press here.

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Key Takeaways

• Childhood has fundamentally transformed since WWII— with less unstructured play, narrower independence, and a stronger influence of corporate media on children’s imagination.
• Parental risk-aversion and helicopter parenting have limited kids’ autonomy, exploration, and opportunities for growth, often replacing adventure with overprotection.
• The rise of the therapeutic and medicalization of childhood has reframed ordinary traits as disorders, affecting children’s self-image and leading to heavy reliance on medication.
• Inequality and privatization of childhood mean affluent families can better support their children’s development, while less affluent families face structural disadvantages that deepen social divides.

“Kids need friendships more than they need followers.” – Steven Mintz

“One of our big points is the decline of opportunities for children to display competence.” – Peter Stearns

#ChildhoodTransformation #ParentingTrends #AmericanChildhood

Hosted by William Miller

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Be sure to check out our website for more information about our hosts, guests, and ways you can support the show: UpstartCrow.org

Thank you for listening to Upstart Crow, a part of Watershed Lit Radio

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Copyright 2025 - Upstart Crow Podcast - All Rights Reserved

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Recorded & Produced by Jon D PodCom

Since publishing his first book of fiction in 1980, Richard Bausch has produced ten collections of stories and thirteen novels. The tenth of those story collections, The Fate of Others, appeared this year. Already, he is working on his next novel. Here, he discusses the stories in this most recent collection, the novel he is working on, and a few of the stories from previous collections, revealing along the way how he does his work, where his stories come from, and the elements of craft he employs to achieve the level of success he aims for.

Over the course of his career, Richard Bausch has won numerous awards, including the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story, the REA Award for Influence on the Short Story as a Form, two National Magazine awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

His work has appeared numerous times in The Best American Short Stories volumes, The Pushcart Prize anthologies, and The O.HenryAwards collections. His earliest stories first appeared in publications like The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, and Harper’s. Three feature-length motion pictures have been made from his writings. Currently, he teaches at Chapman University in Orange, California. Earlier, he taught at George Mason University and then at the University of Memphis.

Key Takeaways:

• How playful first lines can spark entire stories
• Why context matters more than “one true sentence” in short fiction
• The role of surprise in deepening the bond between writer and reader
• Themes of fate, love, and resilience that shape The Fate of Others

#UpstartCrowPodcast #RichardBausch #ShortStoryFiction

“In almost every good story, there is a moment that it all really turns on. And sometimes you don’t even know what it is until a reader points it out later. That’s the intimacy of fiction—the writer is as surprised writing it as the reader is discovering it.” - Richard Bausch

Hosted by William Miller

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Be sure to check out our website for more information about our hosts, guests, and ways you can support the show: https://upstartcrow.org/

Thank you for listening to Upstart Crow, a part of Watershed Lit Radio

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Copyright 2025 - Upstart Crow Podcast - All Rights Reserved

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Recorded & Produced by Jon D PodCom

Veteran journalist Jerry Mitchell discusses his work that led to four reopened murder cases from the Civil Rights era including those of Medgar Evers and the three men whose story was told in the movie Mississippi Burning, with the resulting trials leading to convictions of the murderers.

Historian Robert Luckett joins to discuss the sorts of changes in society, public awareness, and the justice system that allowed for the trials’ outcomes—including the addition to the juries of blacks, both men and women, and on the white side, the addition of women. They also discuss another well-known case from that time that stands out for its lack of a conviction, the 1955 murder of Emmett Till, a case many liken to the George Floyd case of modern times.

As the Till case nears its 70th anniversary, Jerry and Robert discuss what these outcomes and situations mean for the country’s future and what might determine the course of that future.

Jerry Mitchell, a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius” award, worked for three decades for the Clarion-Ledger Mississippi newspaper and in his book Race Against Time details the reporting he did while with the Clarion-Ledger that led to re-opening four major murder cases from the Civil Rights era, and the trials that ended with convictions. He founded the non-profit Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, dedicated to exposing injustices, investigating cold cases, and giving voice to the voiceless. Currently he is associated with Mississippi Today, an on-line non-profit news outlet that boasts one of the largest newsrooms in Mississippi.

Robert E. Luckett Jr. is a history professor at Jackson State University in Jackson, Miss., where he also directs the Margaret Walker Center and the COFO Civil Rights Education Center. He is the author of numerous scholarly articles and carefully researched works, including a book that focuses on Joe T. Patterson, the Mississippi attorney general from 1956 to 1969. Robby and his work on Patterson were the focus of Upstart Crow episode No. 21. The book, Joe T.

Patterson and the White South’s Dilemma: Evolving Resistance to Black Advancement, offers a close read on the life and work of a dedicated white segregationist.

Hosted by William Miller

“To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi.”

–William Faulkner

Special thanks to Liz Egan of Millsaps College for the introductions and help with logistics.

#CivilRightsJustice

#EmmettTillLegacy

#InvestigativeJournalism

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Be sure to check out our website for more information about our hosts, guests, and ways you can support the show: https://upstartcrow.org/

Thank you for listening to Upstart Crow, a part of Watershed Lit Radio

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Copyright 2025 - Upstart Crow Podcast - All Rights Reserved

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Recorded & Produced by Jon D PodCom

David Baldacci – What is A Calamity of Souls?

The title of his most autobiographical novel occurred to David Baldacci the day he penned the first words. And it was literally penned—he started the book in a blank notebook his wife gave him on Christmas Day, 2011. He wrote that title and about 150 pages. He wasn’t even sure himself what the phrase a calamity of souls meant. He set it aside. Several years and novels later, he came back to this unfinished work. In the swirling events of 2020, he picked up the manuscript to finish it and ready the book for publication.In this episode of Upstart Crow, David joins host William Miller to talk about this novel, how it connects to and springs from his own life.

This hugely successful writer talks candidly and quite personally about his youth in the Richmond, Va., area, examples of racism he has witnessed, and, in very personal terms, what it was like to be among the busloads of White children bused to a formerly all-Black school in order to achieve integration some 20 years after the U.S. Supreme Court first ruled for it in its landmark Brown decision. He speaks of the confusion, the uncertainty—the fights he got into nearly every day. Why he set the novel in 1968. And the connection between this novel and his reading of James Baldwin while he wrote it.

David Baldacci is a global number-one bestselling novelist who began scribbling stories as a child in a notebook his mother gave him to keep him engaged and quiet, in order to give herself a break. Now, his total number of works is quickly approaching 60 titles, which have sold more than 150 million copies, in more than 45 languages, in more than 80 countries. His books have been turned into feature films as well as television adaptations.

He and his wife have cofounded the Wish You Well Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to supporting literacy efforts across America—reading being an activity that he believes builds empathy and enriches the lives of those who practice it.

He lives in his native Virginia, where he graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of Virginia Law School, two noteworthy public institutions. He was a practicing lawyer with a DC firm before beginning his career as a writer.

“I've always thought that books were body armor against bigotry.” — David Baldacci

#DavidBaldacciInterview

#ACalamityOfSouls

#BooksAgainstBigotry

Where to Buy David Baldacci’s Books:

A Calamity of Souls on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Calamity-Souls-David-Baldacci/dp/1538750634

David Baldacci’s full catalog on Bookshop.org (supports independent bookstores):

https://bookshop.org/contributors/david-baldacci

All titles by David Baldacci on Barnes & Noble:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/b/contributor/david-baldacci/_/N-2k0b

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Be sure to check out our website for more information about our hosts, guests, and ways you can support the show: https://upstartcrow.org/

Thank you for listening to Upstart Crow, a part of Watershed Lit Radio

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Copyright 2025 - Upstart Crow Podcast - All Rights Reserved

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Recorded & Produced by Jon D PodCom