fiction/non/fiction

In this holiday re-broadcast of an episode from April 23, 2020, acclaimed poet Danez Smith discusses the role friendship plays in their most recent collection of poetry, Homie. Smith talks to Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell about the isolating effect COVID-19 has had on black communities, using space on the page inventively, and writing about money. This episode is presented in conjunction with the Loft Literary Center’s literary festival, Wordplay, which in 2020 was a virtual event. To hear the full episode, subscribe to the Fiction/Non/Fictionpodcast through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favoritepodcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listenby streaming from the player below. This episode was produced by Andrea Tudhope. Guests:●     Danez SmithSelectedreadings for the episode:●    Danez Smith○    Homie○    Don’t Call Us Dead○    TwoPoems○    what was said on the bus stop: a new poem by Danez Smith○    my president○    VS podcast, from the Poetry Foundation, hosted by Danez Smith and Franny Choi●    Others ○    Corona Correspondences: #28 by Danielle Evans (The Sewanee Review)○    Review: ‘Homie,’ a Book of Poems That Produces Shocking New Vibrations by PahrulSehgal○    Frank O’Hara○    As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner○    Angel Nafis○    Hieu Minh Nguyen○    Douglas Kearney○    1977:Poem for Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer by June Jordan○    Recordings of June Jordan from the RadcliffeInstitute for Advanced Study, Harvard University Digitized recordings and moredigitized recordings○    ‘Feet’ and ‘Spoon’ from Catalogof Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay○    Mirrors: Stories ofAlmost Everyone by Eduardo Galeano Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Novelist and critic Lydia Kiesling joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss the creation and the spirit of year-end book lists. She talks about list culture getting its start at the small, online literary magazine, The Millions, and its eventual spread to seemingly every media outlet. The three grapple with the significance of inclusion on these lists, whether they really sell more books, and the ethics of their construction. Kiesling reads from her new novel, Mobility.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 episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf.Lydia Kiesling:The Golden StateMobilityOthers:Books We Love | NPRA Year in Reading: 2023 | The Millions100 Notable Books of 2023 | New York Times​​The 10 Best Books Through Time | New York TimesA Year in Reading: 2023 | The Millions“Crime,” by Marilyn Stasio, August 19, 2001| New York Times “‘Terrorist’ – to Whom? V.V. Ganeshananthan’s novel ‘Brotherless Night’ reveals the moral nuances of violence, ever belied by black-an-white terminology” by Omar El Akkad, Jan. 1, 2023 | New York TimesMolly SternThe Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr SolzhenitsynBridget Jones’s Diary by Helen FieldingThe Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael PollanBlink by Malcolm GladwellThe Collected Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald The Stand by Stephen KingA Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtryThe Joy Luck Club by Amy TanAnna Karenina by Leo TolstoyAli & Nino by Kurban SaidThe Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel HawthorneHeart of Darkness by Joseph ConradThings Fall Apart by Chinua AchebeThe Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway1984 by George OrwellPod Save America (podcast) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Pulitzer-Prize winning writer Tracy K. Smith joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss the difference between being “free” and being “freed.” She suggests that citizens of the United States fall into one category or the other. The first appear to have descended from those who were always free. The second descend from those who were acted upon by those in the first category. Smith talks about the research she’s done to understand the roles her forefathers played in this country’s armed conflicts and the connections between the military and our historical understanding of freedom. She reads from her new collection of essays, To Free the Captives.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 episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf.Tracy K. Smith To Free the Captives Life on Mars Such Color Ordinary Light Wade in the Water My Name Will Grow Wide Like a Tree There’s a Revolution Outside, My Love The Body’s Question Duende American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Times (Ed.) Others: Fiction/Non/Fiction, Season 4 Episode 9: “Tracy K. Smith and Kawai Strong Washburn on Biden’s Debts to His Base (Especially Black Women)” The 1619 Project Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture W.E.B. Du Bois “The Glaring Contradiction of Republicans’ Rhetoric of Freedom” by Ronald Brownstein |The Atlantic, July 8, 2022 “Trump’s Second-Term Plans: Anti-‘Woke’ University, ‘Freedom Cities’” by Andrew Restuccia | The Wall Street Journal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Poet Taylor Byas joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss writing about Chicago, which she does in her Maya Angelou Book Award-winning collection of poetry, I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times. She talks about growing up in the country’s most segregated city, and considers its long traditions of Black, working-class, and ethnic literature, including writers like Nate Marshall, Lorraine Hansberry, Patricia Smith, and Jose Olivarez. She explains how moving away has given her a new perspective on Chicago’s politics, history, crime, and beauty. She reads a poem (“You from “Chiraq”?”) addressing how outsiders view the city, as well as from a crown of sonnets about the South Side.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 episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf.Taylor Byas I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times Bloodwarm Poemhood: Our Black Revival: History, Folklore & the Black Experience: A Young Adult Poetry Anthology (Ed.) Others: Richard Wright Saul Bellow Gwendolyn Brooks  A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry The Jungle by Upton Sinclair Nelson Algren  Stuart Dybek The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros  Nate Marshall  1919 — Eve L. Ewing Patricia Smith Promises of Gold by Jose Olivarez Carl Sandburg Chi-Raq (film, dir. Spike Lee) Gordon Parks Brandon Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Novelist Timothy Schaffert joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss how the concept of farce relates to today’s GOP-controlled House of Representatives. Schaffert describes the lack of self-awareness in both fictional and real-life characters, including politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz, and analyzes how it renders them comical, absurd, and maddening to watch. He talks about what observers can learn from those behaviors, and also reads from his forthcoming book, The Titanic Survivors Book Club. 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 episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf.Timothy Schaffert The Titanic Survivors Book Club The Perfume Thief The Swan Gondola The Coffins of Little Hope Devils in the Sugar Shop The Singing and Dancing Daughters of God The Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters Others: The Gashlycrumb Tinies by Edward Gorey Fiction/Non/Fiction Season One, Episode Three: “The Power of Facebook: How Big is Too Big?” “The Library of Babel” by Jorge Luis Borges Fiction/Non/Fiction Season Three, Episode Nine: “All the President’s Henchmen: Susan Choi and Garrett Graff on the Citizens of the Swamp” Tartuffe by Molière Beetlejuice Airplane! Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon” by Karl Marx Hamlet by William Shakespeare Jean Cocteau Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Thanksgiving, the show returns to an episode with playwright Rhiana Yazzie and novelist Brandon Hobson, who joined hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell in February 2019 to discuss Native literature. These interviews were recorded in the wake of viral images showing Covington Catholic students disrespecting Native activist Nathan Phillips in Washington, D.C. The episode turns the focus away from the MAGA hats and back to the Indigenous Peoples March and Indigenous writing. 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 episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf and Andrea Tudhope. Rhiana Yazzie●    Nancy●    Ady●    Queen Cleopatre and Princess Pocahontas●    New Native Theatre Brandon Hobson●    Deep Ellum●    Desolation of Avenues Untold●    Where the Dead Sit Talking●    The Removed●    The Storyteller   Others: ●    Mekko and Barking Water by Sterlin Harjo●    Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann●    Stewart O’Nan●    Louise Erdrich●    “The Indigenous Peoples March was about a Lot More than the Kids in MAGA Hats,” by Tekendra Parmar | Washington Post Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Writer and editor Zeke Caligiuri joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss American Precariat: Parables of Exclusion, a new collection of essays on class he co-edited along with eleven other incarcerated writers. The volume’s contributors include Eula Biss, Kao Kalia Yang, Lacy M. Johnson, Valeria Luisielli, Kiese Laymon, and many others. Caligiuri, who worked on the book while in Minnesota correctional facilities and is now free, discusses the challenges of creativity and the literary life in prison settings, as well as how the book came to be. He also reflects on the idea that “the history of class hasn't always been written by the powerful, but they have always been its editors,” as he writes in a foreword, which he reads from during the episode.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 episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf.Zeke Caligiuri American Precariat: Parables of Exclusion (ed.) This is Where I Am Prison Noir (ed. Joyce Carol Oates) The Sentences That Create Us: Crafting a Writer’s Life in Prison (ed. Caits Meissner) How a Collective of Incarcerated Writers Published an Anthology From Prison - Electric Literature “Before I Was Anything” (poem) Literary Hub Others: Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop What Incarcerated Writers Want the Literary Community to Understand: Caits Meissner on Why "Prison Writer" Is a Limiting Label (featuring Zeke Caligiuri, Literary Hub, Sept. 11, 2019) C. Fausto Cabrera Kiese Laymon Valeria Luiselli Steve Almond Jen Bowen Kristin Collier  Sarith Peou Toni Morrison Eula Biss Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fiction writer Lesley Nneka Arimah joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss how Black horror writing speaks to our current cultural moment. She talks about editor/director Jordan Peele’s new anthology, Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror, in which her work is included, and how she went from avoiding horror to writing it. Arimah reads from her story “Invasion of the Baby Snatchers,” explains its origins in her own fears, and shares an alternative ending.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 episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf.Lesley Nneka Arimah What it Means When a Man Falls From the Sky Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror (ed. Jordan Peele) Others: Jordan Peele Toni Morrison Stephen King “Black horror is having a big moment. So is its pioneer, Tananarive Due” by Paula L. Woods | L.A. Times N.K. Jemisin Nnedi Okorafor  Violet Allen The Nesting by C.J. Cook The Leech by Hiron Ennes Rebecca Roanhorse Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the wake of the recent violence in Palestine and Israel, the show returns to an interview taped in June 2021 with scholars Shir Alon and Joseph Farag, who join co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss how Palestinian and Israeli writers have written about the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Farag talks about the evolution of the portrayal of the Palestinian self in literature throughout history, as well as some of the themes and writers discussed in his book, Palestinian Literature in Exile: Gender, Aesthetics and Resistance in the Short Story. Alon explains how the unprocessed trauma of the history of massacre and expulsion of Palestinians seems to stage an appearance in Israeli literature every decade. She also talks about Dolly City by Orly Castel-Bloom, Minor Detail by Adania Shibli, and Funeral at Noon by Yeshayahu Koren.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 episode is produced by Andrea Tudhope and Anne Kniggendorf.Selected readings:Shir Alon Static: Labor, Temporality, and Literary Form in Middle Eastern Modernisms (forthcoming book) “The Ongoing Nakba and the Grammar of History,” LA Review of Books “No One to See Here: Genres of Neutralization and the Ongoing Nakba” “Gendering the Arab-Jew: Feminism and Jewish Studies After Ella Shohat” Joseph Farag Palestinian Literature in Exile Gender, Aesthetics and Resistance in the Short Story Teaching with Arabic Literature in Translation: ‘Palestinian Literature and Film’ OthersUpdated links: An Open Letter in Support of Adania Shibli From More Than 350 Writers, Editors, and Publishers, Literary Hub “Tension Over the Israel-Hamas War Casts a Pall Over Frankfurt Book Fair,” by Alexandra Alter and Elizabeth A. Harris, The New York Times The LiBeraturpreis 2023 (press release by Litprom) "We want to make Jewish and Israeli voices especially visible at the book fair" | Frankfurter Buchmesse “Palestinian voices ‘shut down’ at Frankfurt Book Fair, say authors,” The Guardian Original links: Amos Oz  David Grossman Facing the Forests by A. B. Yehoshua Khirbet Khizeh by S. Yizhar The Old New Land (Altneuland) by Theodor Herzl Men in the Sun, Palestine's Children: Returning to Haifa and Other Stories, and All That's Left to You: A Novella and Other Stories by Ghassan Kanafani  "A Lover from Palestine," "ID Card," and many others by Mahmoud Darwish The Ship by Jabra Ibrahim Jabra Wild Thorns and Passage to the Plaza by Sahar Khalifeh Eye of the Mirror and A Balcony Over the Fakihani by Liana Badr Nathan Alterman Funeral at Noon by Yeshayahu Koren Minor Detail by Adania Shibli Dolly City by Orly Castel-Bloom The Sound of Our Steps by Ronit Matalon Waltz with Bashir (film) by Ari Folman The Pessoptimist by Emile Habibi  Divine Intervention, The Time that Remains, and It Must Be Heaven (films) by Elia Suleiman  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Novelist Jonathan Lethem joins host Whitney Terrell live at the Cider Gallery in Lawrence, Kansas. Lethem discusses his new book, Brooklyn Crime Novel, which is set in the neighborhood where he grew up—and where he also set his 2003 novel Fortress of Solitude. They discuss terms like blockbusting and redlining, and the ways that Lethem’s writing explores the ramifications of real estate manipulation on residents of these cities and others around the nation. Lethem reads from Brooklyn Crime Novel and talks about the book’s inventive approach to time.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 episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf.Jonathan Lethem  Brooklyn Crime Novel Motherless Brooklyn The Arrest The Fortress of Solitude Others: James Alan McPherson A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith Black Spring by Henry Miller  Another Country by James Baldwin James Joyce Patricia Highsmith Iris Murdoch Henry James Mark Twain Benito Cereno by Herman Melville Ralph Ellison Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices