fiction/non/fiction

Nonfiction writer Paul Elie joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss his new book The Last Supper: Art, Faith, Sex, and Controversy in the 1980s and Pope Leo XIV. Elie compares the new pope to John Paul II, whose conservative views shaped the 1980s. He explains how and why ’80s artists like Andy Warhol, U2, and Bob Dylan produced art he considers “crypto-religious,” a term coined by poet Czesław Miłosz. He analyzes limbo and purgatory in the work of writers of the period, including Louise Erdrich and Toni Morrison, and recalls the culture wars, including iconic incidents like Sinéad O’Connor tearing up the pope’s picture on Saturday Night Live, as well as the controversy over Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ. He reads from The Last Supper. Selected Readings: Paul Elie The Last Supper: Art, Faith, Sex, and Controversy in the 1980s Reinventing Bach: The Search for Transcendence in Sound The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage The Down-to-Earth Pope: Pope Francis Has Died at Eighty-eight | The New Yorker  Others Madame Bovary Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose  Love Medicine The Handmaid’s Tale Striving Towards Being: The Letters of Thomas Merton and Czeslaw Milosz U2 - Gloria  “The Controversial Saturday Night Live Performance That Made Sinéad O'Connor an Icon,” Time Magazine, July 26, 2023 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fiction writer Julia Elliott joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V Ganeshananthan to talk about why President Trump’s tariff policy appeals to voters in small towns in the Midwest and South, which have been economically devastated for the past couple of decades following the North American Free Trade Agreement. Elliott considers Democrats’ failure to articulate their own successes using tariffs to bring jobs back to the U.S. Elliott, who is from South Carolina, talks about conservatives who are hesitant to criticize Trump. She also reads from and discusses her new story collection, Hellions. To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/. This podcast is produced by V.V. Ganeshananthan, Whitney Terrell, and Hunter Murray. Selected Readings:   Julia Elliott ●  Hellions ●  The Wilds ● The New and Improved Romie Futch   Others ●  Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 5, Episode 2: Julia Elliott and DaMaris B. Hill on Writing Rural Americ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Novelist and journalist Mirza Waheed joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V Ganeshananthan to talk about brewing tensions between two nuclear powers: India and Pakistan. Waheed, who was born in Kashmir and previously worked as a journalist, explains how the recent massacre of Indian tourists there at the hands of militants connects to a broader context that includes Partition, the 1947 event that separated the two countries. He reflects on growing up in Kashmir, a place to which both Pakistan and India would like to lay claim. Waheed reads from his debut novel, The Collaborator. Selected Readings: Mirza Waheed Tell Her Everything The Book of Gold Leaves A massacre has reignited the forever war between India and Pakistan – once more, Kashmiri voices are missing | Mirza Waheed | The Guardian Others The Collaborator (2024) | MUBI  The Collaborator (2024) - IMDb An Urdu Epic Puts India’s Partition Into Historical Perspective - The New York Times | By Aditi Sriram, April 8, 2019 Kamila Shamsie Saadat Hasan Manto Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Writer Hamilton Nolan joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V Ganeshananthan to talk about opinion journalism. Nolan, who writes frequently about labor and politics, discusses how and why he entered journalism, the myth of objectivity, and how he views the relationship between activism and journalism. He explains how long it took for him to make money on Substack, reflects on what it means to share an opinion in the current political environment, and considers the importance of unions for writers. Nolan reads from his book, The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor. Hamilton Nolan The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor Your Opinions Can Be Bad But You Still Have to Tell the Truth Hamilton Nolan | The Guardian Here’s a New Year’s resolution for Trump’s America: no snitching  Hamilton Nolan - In These Times Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

South African writer Rešoketšwe Manenzhe joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about the influence that wealthy South African immigrants like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are having on the Trump administration and conservative U.S. politics in general. Manenzhe talks about how growing up under apartheid may have shaped these men’s views, how South Africans view Musk now, and what the country’s history can tell us about the current American political situation. She also discusses South Africa’s Immorality Act of 1927 and reads from her novel, Scatterlings.  To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/. This podcast is produced by V.V. Ganeshananthan, Whitney Terrell, and Hunter Murray. Selected Readings: Rešoketšwe Manenzhe Scatterlings Others: “A Biracial Family Risks Persecution in 1920s Cape Town” by V.V. Ganeshananthan How the roots of the ‘PayPal mafia’ extend to apartheid South Africa | Elon Musk | The Guardian Gravity's Rainbow (Classics Deluxe Edition) by Thomas Pynchon US focuses on persecution claims as white South Africans seek resettlement | Reuters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Following Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s widely publicized and false claims about autism, writer Jodie Hare joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V Ganeshananthan to talk about the politics of neurodiversity and the importance of autistic communities. Hare, who was diagnosed as autistic in adulthood, explains how the pathologization of the autistic population is historically connected to industrialization and capitalism. She also discusses the discriminatory and criminal history of searching for a “cure” for autism through a series of cruel methods, which have all failed. She challenges the idea that there are normal and abnormal ways of living, and reads from her book, Autism Is Not a Disease: The Politics of Neurodiversity. To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/ This podcast is produced by V.V. Ganeshananthan, Whitney Terrell, Hunter Murray and Vanessa Watkins.Selected Readings:Jodie Hare Autism Is Not A Disease: The Politics of Neurodiversity Why we must politicise neurodiversity | shado Autism cannot be cured — stop trying | huck, July 2024 The Dehumanisation of Autistic People Must End | Verso blog, May 2022 Others: Empire of Normality  by Robert Chapman Unmasking For Life: The Autistic Person's Guide to Connecting, Loving, and Living Authentically by Devon Price, PhD Neuroqueer Heresies  by Nick Walker RFK Jr. Is Using a New Study on Autism Rates to Push His Anti-Vaccine Agenda | Mother Jones People with autism seek dignity where RFK seeks a cure | Axios RFK Jr. Calls Autism ‘Preventable,’ Drawing Ire From Researchers | The New York Times A Kind of Spark by Elle McNicoll RFK Jr. Set to Launch Disease Registry Tracking Autistic People | The New Republic | The New Republic Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Acclaimed novelist and journalist Vauhini Vara joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V Ganeshananthan to discuss her new essay collection, Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age. Vara talks about the rise of the loser tech bro, internet privacy, Google search logs, the power and limits of turning one’s collected personal data into art, and whether a recently publicized AI-authored short story is actually good. To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/.This podcast is produced by V.V. Ganeshananthan, Whitney Terrell, Hunter Murray and Vanessa Watkins.Selected Readings:Vauhini Vara Searches This Is Salvaged The Immortal King Rao “Ghosts,” The Believer  Others: A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace  Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams “OpenAI’s metafictional short story about grief is beautiful and moving,” by Jeanette Winterson, The Guardian “‘A computer’s joke, on us’: writers respond to the short story written by AI,” The Guardian  Vauhini Vara on the Perils and Possibilities of Artificial Intelligence Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 6, Episode 17 Alex Reisner on Covering Books3 and Fighting Piracy Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 7, Episode 1 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Following ICE’s detention of Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil and the sudden revocation of hundreds of student visas across the country, professor and novelist Sheila Sundar joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about the targeting of international university students, especially those involved in pro-Palestine speech or protests, by the Trump administration. Sundar reflects on a childhood spent partly among intellectuals travelling between countries, and explains how this led to her recent novel, Habitations, in which the protagonist leaves her home in South India for graduate school at Columbia. Sundar discusses international students’ contributions to American intellectual life and how the current assault on diversity damages academia. She also talks about how work-restrictive policies treat international students as “takers” who are not welcome to integrate fully into American society. Sundar reads from Habitations.To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/.This podcast is produced by V.V. Ganeshananthan, Whitney Terrell, Hunter Murray and Vanessa Watkins.Selected Readings:Sheila Sundar Habitations (2024) Yellow Curtains The Massachusetts Review (2023) Diplomacy  Virginia Quarterly Review (2022) The Death of Tyler Clementi The Threepenny Review (2021) Others: Meghan O’Rourke on The End of the University, Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 8, Episode 27 Nearly 150 Students Have Had Visas Revoked and Could Face Deportation - The New York Times Secretary of State Marco Rubio Remarks to the Press Trump Immigration Policies Increase Peril For International Students Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Essayist, poet, and Yale Review editor Meghan O’Rourke joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about her recent New York Times piece, “The End of the University as We Know It.” O’Rourke discusses the situation at Columbia University; the Trump administration’s attacks on other universities, including the threats to deport international students for participation in pro-Palestine protests; the false notion of the radical college campus; and how the political balance on campuses has actually shifted in recent years. She also reflects on how the Cold War reshaped these institutions and made them national assets; the financial relationship between the university and the state; and why schools can’t just spend their endowments. O’Rourke reads from her essay.To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/.This podcast is produced by V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell.Selected Readings:Meghan O'Rourke Opinion | The View Inside Trump’s Assault on Universities - The New York Times: The End of the University as We Know It by Meghan O’Rourke The Yale Review | Meghan O'Rourke Yale’s Unsafe Spaces | The New Yorker The Invisible Kingdom (2023) Sun in Days (2019) Once (2013) The Long Goodbye (2012) Halflife (2008) Others: Creating the Market University | Princeton University Press by Elizabeth Popp Berman 20 Colleges With the Biggest Endowments | The Short List: Colleges | U.S. News Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this engaging conversation, novelist Alex Higley, author of True Failure, delves into the absurdities of modern capitalism through the lens of his protagonist's misguided ambition to impress on a Shark Tank-style show. He explores the emotional refuge of lying, especially in today's political climate, while critiquing the myth of individual success. Higley’s insights on authenticity in reality TV reflect larger societal issues, making this a thought-provoking discussion on truth, deception, and the pressures of visibility.