The Maris Review

Laura Lippman is a New York Times bestselling novelist who has won more than twenty awards for her fiction, including the Edgar Award. Since her debut in 1997, she has published twenty-one novels, a novella, a children’s book, and a collection of short stories. Lit Hub named her one of the “essential” female crime writers of the last hundred years.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Marcy Dermansky is the author of the critically acclaimed novels The Red Car, Bad Marie and Twins. Very Nice is her latest novel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Julia Phillips is a Fulbright fellow whose writing has appeared in Glimmer Train, The Atlantic, Slate, and The Moscow Times. Disappearing Earth is her first novel. She lives in Brooklyn.Recommended ReadingSabrina & Corrina by Kali Fajardo-Anstine *bonus: check out the author’s InstagramWomen Talking by Miriam ToewsPutney by Sofka Zinovieff  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lauren Mechling has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Slate, The New Yorker online, and Vogue, where she writes a book column. She's worked as a crime reporter and metro columnist for The New York Sun, a young adult novelist, and a features editor at The Wall Street Journal. How Could She is her first novel for adults.Recommended ClickingHow To End a FriendshipThe Life-Changing Magic of ClogsPeople StandingRecommended ReadingCoventry by Rachel CuskThree Women by Lisa TaddeoExcellent Women by Barbara Pym Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mona Awad is the author of 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize that won the Colorado Book Award, the Amazon Canada First Novel Award, and an Honorable Mention from the Arab American Book Awards. The recipient of an MFA in Fiction from Brown University and a Ph.D. in English and Creative Writing from the University of Denver, she has published work in Time, VICE, Electric Literature, McSweeney's, Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Anna Merlan is a New Mexico-born, New York-based journalist, specializing in politics, crime, religion, subcultures, conspiracy theories, and women’s lives. She is currently a reporter at the Special Projects Desk, an investigative division within Gizmodo Media Group. She has previously worked as a senior reporter at Jezebel, and as a staff writer at the Village Voice and the Dallas Observer. Her work has also appeared in Rolling Stone, BBC Travel, Topic, and on the op-ed page of the New York Times. She has been accused of being both a lizard person and a CIA agent, but never at the same time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nicole Dennis-Benn is a Lambda Literary Award winner and New York Foundation for the Arts Artist Fellowship recipient. She's also a finalist for the 2016 John Leonard Prize National Book Critics Circle Award, the 2016 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and the 2017 Young Lions Fiction Award for her debut novel, Here Comes the Sun— a New York Times Notable Book of the year, an NPR, Amazon, Barnes & Noble Best Book of 2016. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Elle, Electric Literature, Ebony, and the Feminist Wire. She was born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica, and lives with her wife in Brooklyn, New York. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week on the Maris Review, Maris talks to Ryan Chapman, the author of Riots I Have Known. The two discuss the influences on the book, writing from a transgressive voice and the fictive distance between the author and satire, the privatization of prisons, and exciting literary voices coming from Sri Lanka. Ryan Chapman is a Sri Lankan American novelist originally from Minneapolis, Minnesota. He has written online and in print for The New Yorker, GQ, Longreads, Guernica, Bookforum, BOMB, and The Believer, and received residency fellowships from The Millay Colony and Vermont Studio Center. He lives in Kingston, New York.Recommended Books:Money by Martin AmisThe Sugar-Frosted Nutsack by Mark LeynerThe Loser by Thomas BernhardToo Loud a Solitude by Bohumil HrabalThe Heart Is a Muscle The Size of a Fist by Sunil YapaOn Sal Mal Lane by Ru FreemanMusic:Billie EilishThe Magnetic FieldsMaris’s MP3 Blog Playlist Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week on the Maris Review, Maris talks to Juliet Grames, the author of The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna. The two discuss the personal family history behind the writing of the book, the lack of native voices from Calabria, her love for mob-related media (as much as she hates the mob), and her role at Soho Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week on the Maris Review, Maris talks to Erin Somers, the author of Stay Up with Hugo Best. The two discuss researching a book without any insider knowledge of late-night television, the timing of the #MeToo movement, the joy of an aging Jay McInerney, and the fact that the best books right now are being written by women. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices