Poured Over

"But we all want to see ourselves in a story of our country. And we call this a new origin story, not the origin story for reason. There are many origin stories; every person wants to feel a part of the narrative of our country." Nikole Hannah-Jones is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship (a.k.a. The Genius Grant), the Knight Chair in Race and Journalism at Howard University, and the driving force behind the revelatory, necessary 1619 Project. She joins us on the show to talk about the evolution of The 1619 Project from The New York Times magazine to book form; the book's extraordinary contributors, a veritable who's who of historians, poets, novelists, cultural critics, filmmakers, activists, playwrights, academics, and journalists; the conversations we can't have on Twitter, and more. Produced/hosted by Miwa Messer and engineered by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays.

"I don't remember my dreams a lot. But when I remember them, I stand up and pay attention." Both of Natashia Deon's novels, NAACP Image Award nominee Grace, and her latest, The Perishing, started with dreams she couldn't forget. Natashia joins us on the show to talk about her new novel—think N.K. Jemisin and Octavia Butler—1930s Los Angeles, love and justice, life and death, what it means to truly live in the present moment and more. Featured books: The Perishing and Grace by Natashia Deon. Produced/hosted by Miwa Messer and engineered by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays.

"I'd always wanted to write a ghost story. And I always wanted to write about what it was like to be haunted, because I feel that so many of us are." Louise Erdrich's new novel, The Sentence—her first after The Night Watchman, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction—is a funny, big-hearted and profound story of second chances and ghosts, books and bookselling, and the messy love between spouses and parents and children. Louise joins us on the show to talk about hauntings, perfect short novels, the joys of bookselling, the power of names and more. Featured books: The Sentence by Louise Erdrich and Euphoria by Lily King. Produced/hosted by Miwa Messer and engineered by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays.

"One of the comments that I've often gotten from parents who say, my son read Scythe, or my daughter read, Unwind, and made me read it, because they wanted to talk to me about it. And then we discussed it. And then the parent would say, I never knew my kid thought that deeply. You know, I think when we write things that ask the reader to rise to the level of the writing, and the level of the ideas behind the writing, they will do it, and they will appreciate not being talked down to." Acclaimed, prize-winning author Neal Shusterman continues to thrill readers of all ages with his series books like Scythe and Unwind, and standalones. He's co-written his latest novel, Roxy, with his son, Jarrod Shusterman, and they join us on the show to talk about collaborating with family, connecting with their readers through story, creating unforgettable characters and more. Featured book: Roxy by Neal Shusterman and Jarrod Shusterman. Produced/hosted by Miwa Messer and engineered by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays.

"I wanted to tell my story in a way that made you feel like you were having a beer with me. And…even though I delve into things like identity and politics and family history and things that things that I'm really excited to share with everybody, I want it to be accessible to people who might disagree with me or might not have experience with the things that I have experiences with." From the Hollywood to the White House, Kal Penn's careers have been anything but boring; he's just published a very funny and honest memoir called You Can't Be Serious, which covers the work and the people he loves and the lessons he's learned. He joins us on the show to talk about growing up South Asian, stereotyping and that accent, Jhumpa Lahiri's fiction and more. Featured books: You Can't Be Serious by Kal Penn and Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake, both by Jhumpa Lahiri. Produced/hosted by Miwa Messer and engineered by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays.

"I'm here to have a dialogue with a person. And if I'm just gonna sit there and look down at my lap, well, speaking profoundly into my lap. That's not enough for me, I need to speak out--and entertain." Gary Shteyngart's new novel, Our Country Friends, is our November B&N Book Club pick, and it's a charming (and provocative) story of friendship and the family we make. Gary joins us on the show to talk about how friendships evolve (or don't), societal scorecards and lost paradises, why he wrote a memoir in his late thirties, the writers who've influenced him, from Chekhov to Chang-rae Lee, and more. Featured books: Our Country Friends, The Russian Debutante's Handbook, Absurdistan and Little Failure by Gary Shteyngart. Produced/hosted by Miwa Messer and engineered by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays.

"And so, what was to me a relatively — at least in terms of storytelling — a tidy story of me collapsing and having my wife and my co-workers save my life and be getting up and getting out of the hospital and getting to write again, was a bit more involved than that." In his new book, The Night the Lights Went Out, Defector columnist Drew Magary delivers a darkly comic and deeply honest story about his recovery from the traumatic brain injury that almost killed him. Drew joins us on the show to talk about what happened the night he almost died, what came later (including his deafness and cochlear implant), why he writes (and what he learned self-publishing a novel), the books and writers he loves to read, and more. Featured book: The Night the Lights Went Out by Drew Magary. Produced/hosted by Miwa Messer and engineered by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays.

"And I had a great, great professor named Albert Guerard when I was starting out, and he said to me, 'Some people will tell you to write what you know. But I'm going to tell you write what you can imagine.' And that was such a gift." Words are magic (and truth and love and power) in Alice Hoffman's newest novel, The Book of Magic. It's the fourth in a series that started with Practical Magic in 1995, and features three generations of the fabulous (and sometimes prickly) Owens family, as it cuts between Essex, Massachusetts and Essex, England. The Book of Magic delivers a truly satisfying, emotional read about familial love, and Alice Hoffman joins us on the show for a spoiler-free conversation about turning a beloved stand-alone novel into a series, writing about sisters and mothers, her favorite books of all time, Amelia Bassano (and those rumors), and more. Featured books: The Book of Magic, The Rules of Magic, Magic Lessons, Practical Magic, The Dove Keepers and The Marriage of Opposites by Alice Hoffman, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, Frankenstein by Mary Shelly and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Produced/hosted by Miwa Messer and engineered by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays.

"I love it, when, as a reader, I am surprised by the way people behave, you know that you're aghast and shocked and standing back a little bit. And I love it even more when I'm writing it, when I have tapped into a sense that I'm not in control of this guy, either." We've been fans of Joshua Ferris since his very funny and acclaimed 2007 debut, Then We Came to the End — and he had us howling with laughter as we read his latest, A Calling for Charlie Barnes. Joshua joins us on the show to talk about second chances and whether or not people can change, family mythology, writing comedy without losing sight of his characters, and more. Featured books: A Calling for Charlie Barnes and Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris and To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. Produced/Hosted by Miwa Messer and engineered by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays.

"I'm so interested in people. I have been fascinated by people since I was just my first memory. I just think people are, for me, they are the most interesting things in the world." No one captures the nuances of complicated lives quite like Elizabeth Strout, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author who likes to return to her characters and their communities in sometimes surprising ways, as she does in her new novel, Oh William! Elizabeth joins us on the show to talk about the world of Lucy Barton and her first husband William, writing with her readers in mind and reading with an open heart, William Trevor's short stories and more. Featured books: Oh William!, My Name is Lucy Barton and Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout. Produced/hosted by Miwa Messer and engineered by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays.