FictionMatters Books That Matter: Anika Jade Levy on THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger
Welcome to Books That Matters. Today, I’m joined by Anika Jade Levy. Anika is a writer from Colorado, a founding editor of Forever Magazine, and an instructor in the Writing program at Columbia. Her fiction and reporting have appeared in The Paris Review, Vogue, Playboy, GQ, Interview Magazine, and elsewhere. Her debut novel Flat Earth came out from Catapult in 2025.
In today’s episode, Anika and I chat about voice in fiction, the male literacy crisis, and why The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger is a book that matters to her. Later we get into Anika’s novel Flat Earth, a raw and funny novel that excels at capturing both voice and place. Anika shares about the novel’s origins as a stream of consciousness exercise, how art and ideas are contagious, and her hopes for her future writing .
You can find links to Anika’s work and the books she recommends in the show notes. Alright let’s get into my conversation with Anika Jade Levy.
Books and Links
* Flat Earth by Anika Jade Levy
* The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
* Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
* The Babysitter at Rest by Jen George
* Books That Matter with Jade Chang
* Taipei by Tao Lin
* Leave Society by Tao Lin
* Female Loneliness Epidemic by Danielle Chelosky
* “Worst Friends Forever” - Kazou Robinson’s review of Flat Earth
* Anika’s Review of Shadow Ticket
* Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
* Shadow Ticket by Thomas Pynchon
* Rayne Fisher Kwann and what it means to be woman’d
* “I’m Crazy” by J.D. Salinger
* Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte
* At Home in the World by Joyce Maynard
* “The Sentence is a Lonely Place” by Gabrielle Lutz
* Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
* A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler)
* Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt
*This post contains affiliate links.
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