Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

Host David Naimon talks with Lenore Zion about her debut novel Stupid Children, a book Thomas Michael Duncan of Necessary Fiction calls “a bildungsroman of twisted proportions told with startling clarity through the filter of a smart, psychoanalytic perspective. No character is safe from Zion’s unapologetic examinations. She bestows her protagonist with an open mind, a sharp intellect, and a sweltering imagination—all of the requisite ingredients for a disturbing, fascinating novel.”

They live among us.
 They are your neighbor, your mother, your lover.
 They change.  Every teenage girl thinks she’s different. When government agents kick down Claire Forrester’s front door and murder her parents, Claire realizes just how different she is. Patrick Gamble was nothing special until the day he got on a plane and hours later stepped off it, the only passenger left alive, a hero. President Chase Williams has sworn to protect the people of the United States from the menace in their midst but is becoming the very thing he has promised to destroy. So far the threat has been controlled by laws and violence and drugs. But the night of the red moon is coming, when an unrecognizable world will emerge, and the battle for humanity will begin. Host David Naimon talks with author Benjamin Percy about his new novel, Red Moon.

Karen Russell is one of today’s most celebrated and vital writers—honored in the New Yorker’s list of the twenty best writers under the age of forty, Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists, and the National Book Foundation’s five best writers under the age of thirty-five. Last year, Karen Russell was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction (along with David Foster Wallace and Denis Johnson) for her debut novel, Swamplandia!  Now Russell is back with a magical new collection of stories, Vampires in the Lemon Grove, that showcases her gifts at their inimitable best.

In the hip haven of Portland, Oregon, a pack of unsteady but loyal friends asks what it means to bring babies into an already crowded world. A smart, edgy and poignantly funny exploration of the complexities of what parenthood means today, Monica Drake’s second novel, The Stud Book, demonstrates that when it comes to babies, we can learn a lot by considering our place in the animal kingdom. Cheryl Strayed calls The Stud Book a “take your breath away good, blow your mind wise, crack your heart open beauty of a novel. A smart sexy, comic compassionate, absorbing and necessary story of our times.”

A hilarious collection of stories from the writer the New York Times called “the novelist of his generation.” Returning to the form in which he began, Sam Lipsyte, author of the New York Times bestseller The Ask, offers up The Fun Parts, a book of bold, hilarious, and deeply felt fiction. Combining both the tragicomic dazzle of his beloved novels and the compressed vitality of his classic debut collection, The Fun Parts is Lipsyte at his best–an exploration of new voices and vistas from a writer Time magazine has said “everyone should read.”

“George Saunders Has Written the Best Book You’ll Read All Year,” declared the cover of the New York Times Magazine several weeks ago. Since then, the world has rushed to agree that Saunders’ new story collection, Tenth of December, is a remarkable literary achievement. “George Saunders is a complete original, unlike anyone else, thank god—and yet still he manages to be the rightful heir to three other complete American originals—Barthelme (the lyricism, the playfulness), Vonnegut (the outrage, the wit, the scope), and Twain (the common sense, the exasperation). There is no author I recommend to people more often—for ten years I’ve urged George Saunders onto everyone and everyone. You want funny? Saunders is your man. You want emotional heft? Saunders again. You want stories that are actually about something—stories that again and again get to the meat of matters of life and death and justice and country? Saunders. There is no one better, no one more essential to our national sense of self and sanity.”—Dave Eggers

Chris Kraus, a renowned writer, filmmaker, and art critic, discusses her provocative book, Summer of Hate. She dives into the contrasting lives of her protagonists, Kat and Paul, exploring themes of romance and systemic inequalities tied to capitalism and the prison system. Kraus sheds light on the struggles of reintegration after incarceration, the nuances of intimacy against New Mexico's backdrop, and critiques the isolation of personal narratives from broader socio-political contexts. Her insights blend personal stories with pressing societal issues.

Portland author Alexis Smith talks with host David Naimon about Glaciers, her debut novel from Tin House books. Glaciers follows Isabel through a day in her life, in which work with damaged books in the basement of a library, unrequited love for the former soldier who fixes her computer, and dreams of the perfect vintage dress move over a backdrop of deteriorating urban architecture and the imminent loss of the glaciers she knew as a young girl in Alaska. Glaciers was a Publishers Weekly pick of the week, received its coveted starred review, and was selected by IndieBound.org for the January 2012 Indie Next List. “An Alaska childhood and dreams of faraway cities such as Amsterdam inform Alexis M. Smith’s Glaciers, a delicate debut novel set in Portland, Oregon—‘a slick fog of a city . . . drenched in itself’—that reveals in short, memory-soaked postcards of prose a day in the life of twentysomething library worker Isabel.”—Lisa Shea, ELLE Magazine

Host David Naimon talks with Jess Walter about his sixth novel, Beautiful Ruins, a deeply human rollercoaster of a novel, spanning fifty years and nearly as many lives. Walter is also the author of the national bestseller The Financial Lives of the Poets, the National Book Award finalist The Zero, the Edgar Award-winning Citizen Vince, Land of the Blind, and the New York Times Notable Book Over Tumbled Graves. He lives in Spokane, Washington with his family. “A blockbuster, with romance, majesty, comedy, smarts, and a cast of thousands. There’s lights, there’s camera, there’s action. If you want anything more from a novel than Jess Walter gives you in Beautiful Ruins, you’re getting thrown out of the theater.”—Daniel Handler

Host David Naimon speaks with Junot Diaz, who the New Yorker calls one of the top 20 writers for the 21st century. He’s the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, a Creative Writing professor at MIT, the Fiction Editor at the Boston Review, and a founding member of Voices of Our Nations Arts Writing Workshop, which focuses on writers of color. In 2010, he was the first Latino to be appointed to the board of jurors for the Pulitzer Prize. Junot Diaz is here today to talk about his new short story collection This is How you Lose Her, a much-anticipated work, sixteen years in the making.