Poured Over

“I sort of figured that, having been interested in science from as long as I can remember, I would be a PhD student, and make a career for myself and research. And it turned out that the one hitch with that plan was that I am catastrophically bad at doing actual research. I was the world's worst graduate student….So instead, I thought that I would find a different purpose and better joy in talking and writing about science, which is what I did. That nourishes my soul much more; I get to learn about a lot of really cool things.” An Immense World is the delightful new book from The Atlantic staff writer Ed Yong, and he joins us on the show to talk about meeting animals on their own terms, the connection between Jane Austen and mice, peacocks and The Bee Gees; how hearing is also a kind of touch and how deer-like creatures transformed into whales; his pandemic puppy and his literary inspirations (including Mary Roach) and much more, with Poured Over’s host, Miwa Messer. And we end this episode with TBR Topoff book recommendations from Marc and Becky.   Featured Books: An Immense World by Ed Yong I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong How Far the Light Reaches by Sabrina Imbler H Is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald   Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays).   A full transcript of this episode is available here.

“I wanted to write something that was going to take me away, literally and metaphorically, literally take me away from sitting with my feelings about the present moment and take me to another place and this time where you couldn't travel at all. I barely left the neighborhood to play out some imagined incredible drama … I think escapism has its purpose, you know, and so does fiction in general, if we want to live in the biggest world possible, we need everybody's imagination to be there in the ether so we can grab it and follow it and follow ourselves through this journey beyond what we know.” Acclaimed author Ottessa Moshfegh (Eileen, My Year of Rest and Relaxation) joins us on the show to take us behind the scenes of Lapvona, her unexpected new novel set in a medieval village. Ottessa riffs on putting so much of what disgusts her into this new novel, writing in the third person, faith, the importance of creating a new topography, what’s next for her and much more with Poured Over’s host, Miwa Messer. And we end this episode with TBR Topoff book recommendations from Marc and his guest bookseller, Becky.   Featured Books: Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh McGlue by Ottessa Moshfegh   Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays).   A complete transcript of this episode is available here.

“You know, Marlon James said something once, he said, if you're going to write about the enslaved, and you're not going to write about the resilience, and the brilliance, and the incredible ability to make a life in a brutal system, a life full of love and some joy, then he said, he's not interested in reading that book.” Geraldine Brooks, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, March, is known for her moving historical novels. Her latest, Horse, is a stunning new novel that transports readers between 1850s Kentucky and the present day following a legendary thoroughbred racehorse named Lexington. Geraldine joins us on the show to talk about the real-world experiences of her unforgettable characters and why we still talk about slavery, growing up on the mindset that books are food, reading poetry before writing as part of her creative process, her literary influences and so much more with Poured Over’s host, Miwa Messer. And we end this episode with TBR Topoff book recommendations from Marc and Becky.   Featured Books: Horse by Geraldine Brooks March by Geraldine Brooks Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks The Island of Adventure by Enid Blyton   Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays).   A full transcript of this show is available here.

“...A part of the point of the book was to not shy away from what we shy away from in real life. And one of the things we shy away from in real life is admitting for exactly how long we are a mess and don't know what we're doing.” From her classic essay collections, including I Was Told There Would Be Cake through her last bestselling novel, The Clasp, Sloane Crosley keeps us entertained with her trademark wit, voice and gimlet eye. Her latest, the genre-busting new novel, Cult Classic, is gobs of fun and utterly original, and Sloane joins us on the show to talk about love and relationships and finding our sense of self, the fantasy of consistency, aiming through the wood and at the chopping block, having the same editor (or therapist) for 14 years, her literary influences, and much more with Poured Over’s host, Miwa Messer.    Featured Books: Cult Classic by Sloane Crosley The Clasp by Sloane Crosley The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. by Adelle Waldman Loitering with Intent by Muriel Spark Pitch Dark by Renata Adler The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner   Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays).   A full transcript of this show is available here.

“And when you give people the option to kind of live inside the head of a different character … if you're doing your job, and you make it a character that they can see themselves in and they can empathize with, and then you kind of throw these things at them. And then it just changes the way that people think about something.”  For the Throne is the stunning conclusion to the Wilderwood duology that invokes familiar fairy tales with sharp prose and epic world-building, and it’s out now. Hannah joins us on the show to talk about what draws readers to retellings, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings as a gateway to all fantasy, writing fanfiction and what she does with all those candles, The Foxglove King, her dream cast, what she’s reading and watching right now and much more with guest host Kat Sarfas.    Featured Books: For the Wolf by Hannah Whitten For the Throne by Hannah Whitten The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien The Hunter by Kerrigan Byrne Follow Me to Ground by Sue Rainsford   This episode of Poured Over was produced and hosted by Kat Sarfas, and mixed by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays).   A full transcript of this show is available here.

“It was the people really, that convinced me that this was a story not just worth telling, but needed to be told, and needed to be told the right way, in a way that would actually be fun to read and engaging, that would reach broader than an academic audience that would reach deep into the community and say, you know, this is a story about ordinary people trying to get justice in a time and place in America where it's pretty hard to do that…” Wastelands: The True Story of Farm Country on Trial is the true story of an epic battle of power and justice, good and evil, with heroes to remind us that there is virtue in the world. Corban Addison joins us on the show to talk about his nonfiction legal thriller—a book John Grisham says he wished he'd written—centered on the Black and brown residents of eastern North Carolina, two million hogs and the men who run the big business of pork, along with the ways story connects and empowers communities, the hours of personal interviews and research that informed his writing, what next for him, and much more with Poured Over’s host, Miwa Messer.   Featured Books: A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson City on Fire by Don Winslow   Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays).   A full transcript of this show is available here.

“I really wanted to depict the ways that young Black girls are made adults by a culture that sees us as that. And I wanted to show the way that that pressure piles on and what it does to teenage Black girls, who are really often forgotten in our culture.”   Nightcrawling is a powerful story of family, grief and justice with an unforgettable teenage narrator (and equally unforgettable author), and it’s out now. Leila Mottley joins us on the show to talk about writing her first novel at 14, sibling dynamics, the importance of published Black authors, the portrayal of young Black girls in the media, gentrification in Oakland, and much more with Poured Over’s host, Miwa Messer.    Featured Books: Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy There There by Tommy Orange   Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays).   A full transcript of this show is available here.

“Tracy never went away. So yes, you can say I'm bringing her back, but the culture kept her in circulation in a way that was really interesting to me, and at times a little alienating. It’s like you create a character and, suddenly, she's played brilliantly by Reese Witherspoon, and in a sense, that becomes the public's image of the character — and I love that performance as much as anybody. But then Tracy got picked up by political journalists and by the internet as a kind of shorthand for an overly ambitious woman… In a sense she became a kind of touchstone and a shorthand and sometimes a bit of a stereotype, caricature, whatever.” Tracy Flick Can’t Win is the first time Tom Perrotta (Election, Little Children, The Leftovers, Mrs. Fletcher) has revisited a character from one of his bestselling novels, and his timing couldn’t be better. Tom joins us on the show to talk about comic (and counterintuitive) openers, why he returned to Tracy’s orbit, how our own stories change over time, mental gymnastics, why he doesn’t see himself as a satirist, adapting his work for the screen and much more with Poured Over’s host, Miwa Messer. Featured Books: Tracy Flick Can’t Win by Tom Perrotta Election by Tom Perrotta   Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays).   A full transcript of this episode is available here.

“I missed it so much. And definitely didn't get it or appreciate the specialness of it, or this particular beauty of it … until you have to show up at a party full of strangers. And answer that, where are you from question so many times. I'm not sure I would have written this book, if I didn't have to do that over and over and over again, in so many different places.” That’s Katie Runde, riffing on the Jersey Shore; it’s more than just the setting for her debut novel, The Shore, it’s a character in its own right. Katie joins us on the show to talk about writing a coming-of-age novel for an entire family, homesickness, grief, sisterhood, jump-starting her own writing career with help from Jami Attenberg’s #1000wordsofsummer + a Catapult class + a Tin House workshop, her literary inspirations for this book and much more with Poured Over’s host, Miwa Messer. And we end the show with TBR Topoff book recommendations from Marc and his guest bookseller, Becky.   Featured Books: The Shore by Katie Runde Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance by Alison Espach We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong Wild by Cheryl Strayed   Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays).   A full transcript of this episode is available here.

“I was very, very unintentionally smart in that I started it as a short story, I genuinely believed it was a short story, which was good, because if I hadn't sat down and said, I'm now going to write my first novel I'd probably still be working on it, but because it was a short story that got longer and became a long story, and then became a novella. And then like, Oh, I'm writing the book that I want in the world, both as a person and as an editor.” David Levithan’s Boy Meets Boy is one of the most charming rom-coms we’ve ever read, and David joins us on the show to talk about his development as a writer and editor, the power of story, his creative process, his writing partnerships with Rachel Cohn (Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares) and others, his literary influences, Heartstopper, what he’s learned from his readers and much more with Poured Over’s host, Miwa Messer. And we end the show with TBR Topoff book recommendations from Marc and his guest bookseller, Rhys. Featured Books: Boy Meets Boy (B&N Exclusive Edition) by David Levithan Every Day by David Levithan Answers in the Pages by David Levithan Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays). A full transcript of this episode is available here.