WYPL Book Talk

Book Talk veteran Scott Phillips joins us for our first remote interview during the Covid-19 era. Scott's writing mixes noir with biting wit. His novels include The Ice Harvest, Cottonwood, and Rake. Today we'll be talking about his most recent book, That Left Turn at Albuquerque.

Lee Durkee's work has appeared in Harper’s Magazine, Best of the Oxford American,  and New England Review. His first novel was Rides of the Midway, and today we'll be talking about his latest, The Last Taxi Driver, which is published by Tin House Books.

Michael Farris Smith is a novelist and has been on Book Talk before to talk about his novels, Rivers, Desperation Road, and The Fighter. Today we'll be talking about his latest, Blackwood, which is available from Little, Brown. And as a note, this interview was recorded on March 11th, prior to many of the safer at home orders began taking effect.

Andy Davidson holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Mississippi. His debut novel, In the Valley of the Sun, was nominated for the 2017 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel, This Is Horror’s Novel of the Year, and the 2018 Edinburgh International Book Festival’s First Book Award. Today we'll be talking about his second novel, The Boatman's Daughter, which is published by MCDxFSG Originals.

Alexander Weinstein is the director of The Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing and an Associate Professor of creative writing at Siena Heights University. He was last on Book Talk to talk about his debut story collection, Children of the New World. Today we'll be talking about his latest story collection, Universal Love, which is published by Henry Holt and Company.

Sonia Purnell is a journalist and non-fiction author. Her books include: Just Boris: A Tale of Blonde Ambition, Clementine: The Life of Mrs Winston Churchill, and today, well be talking about he most recent title, A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II, which is now in paperback from Penguin.

Candacy Taylor is a visual artist, photographer and writer. Her previous books are Counter Culture: The American Coffee Shop Waitress and the Moon Route 66 Handbook. Today, we'll be talking about her latest book, Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America which is published by Abrams Press.  It will be the companion book for the Smithsonian touring exhibition The Negro Motorists' Green Book and American Story which opens at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis in June 2020.

Maria Kuznetsova teaches at Auburn University and is an editor at The Bare Life Review, a journal of immigrant and refugee literature. Her writing has appeared in publications such as McSweeny's, The Southern Review, and Slate. 2019 saw the publication of her debut novel, Oksana, Behave! which is now in paperback from Random House.

Blake McVey talks with former Jackson(MS) Clarion-Ledger reporter and MacArthur genius grant recipient Jerry Mitchell about his book, Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era, which is published by Simon & Schuster.

Michael Zapata is a former Chicago public School teacher, the founding editor of Make Literary Magazine, and he has recently published his first novel, The Lost Book of Adana Moreau, which is published by Hanover Square Press/Harper Collins.