fiction/non/fiction

Writer and editor Dan Kois, who works at Slate, joins V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to discuss his debut novel, Vintage Contemporaries, which features a young woman who begins her career as an agent’s assistant in New York in the 1990s. He explains distinctive aspects of the era, including apartment building squatting and communal living. He also reflects on the pleasures of being an editor—a job he loves and that his protagonist eventually takes on. He reads an excerpt from the novel and compares his heroine’s prospects with the prospects of publishing staffers today, and comments on the HarperCollins strike.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 Anne Kniggendorf.Selected Readings:Dan Kois Vintage Contemporaries Facing Future  The World Only Spins Forward (with Isaac Butler) How To Be a Family The Martin Chronicles  Others: The Golden State by Lydia Kiesling Ours to Lose by Amy Starecheski Alex Haley Charles Baxter Slate Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe Maxwell Perkins Nuyorican Poets Cafe Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 5 Episode 18: “Unlivable and Untenable.” Molly McGhee on the Punishing Life of Junior Publishing Employees Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Novelist Curtis Sittenfeld joins V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell as a special guest co-host to discuss Ganeshananthan’s newly released novel, Brotherless Night. Sittenfeld and Terrell ask Ganeshananthan about growing up in the Washington, D.C. metro area and how she came to write a book about a Tamil family living in Jaffna, Sri Lanka during the 1980s, the earliest years of the Sri Lankan civil war. Ganeshananthan reads an excerpt and talks about working on the novel for almost 20 years with help from many readers; how Terrell’s notes helped her with characterization; and how a comment from Sittenfeld altered the first line of the book and part of the plot. 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 Anne Kniggendorf.Selected Readings:V.V. Ganeshananthan Brotherless Night Love Marriage “On Authenticity, Research, and Writing From the Diaspora,” Literary Hub Curtis Sittenfeld Romantic Comedy Rodham You Think It, I’ll Say It Eligible Others: Emergency ’58 Elizabeth McCracken Rebecca Shapiro Caitlin McKenna, editor ‘Terrorist’ — to Whom? V.V. Ganeshananthan’s novel ‘Brotherless Night’ reveals the moral nuances of violence, ever belied by black-and-white terminology. | by Omar El Akkad, The New York Times A young woman's family is torn apart during the lengthy Sri Lankan civil war in this propulsive masterpiece by a Minnesota writer. |by May-lee Chai, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Author and Literary Hub Managing Editor Emily Temple and Lit Hub Associate Editor Katie Yee join hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to talk about Lit Hub’s 38 favorite books of the year as chosen by the staff. The list spans genres from historical to memoir to post-digital post-capitalist manifesto to lesbian Sasquatch novel. Each editor reads a selection from a favorite, Temple from St. Sebastian’s Abyss by Mark Haber and Yee from The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka.  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 Anne Kniggendorf.Selected Readings:Emily TempleThe LightnessKatie YeeOthers: Our 38 Favorite Books of 2022, Literary Hub Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 5 Episode 26: “This is Such Bullshit.” Shelly Oria and Kristen Arnett on the Reproductive Rights Crisis Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 1 Episode 4: Edmund White and Emily Temple on Literary Feuds, Social Media, and Our Appetite for Drama The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell Getting Lost by Annie Ernaux Patricia Wants to Cuddle by Samantha Allen How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu St. Sebastian’s Abyss by Mark Haber My Three Dads by Jessa Crispin Fight Like Hell by Kim Kelly The Bond King by Mary Childs Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery Trust by Hernan Diaz Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin An Immense World by Ed Yong The Sky is Yours by Chandler Klang Smith Elderflora by Jared Farmer https://moonpalacebooks.com/browse/filter/t/kelly%20link/k/keyword Kelly Link Donald Barthelme Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka Earthlings by Sayaka Murata Tender is the Flesh by Augustina Bazterrica The Ultimate Best Books of 2022 List ‹ Literary Hub Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Poet, journalist, and novelist Dunya Mikhail joins hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to talk about the Yazidis, who are indigenous to Kurdistan and have been targeted by ISIS because of their religious beliefs. After ISIS slaughtered thousands of Yazidi men in northern Iraq in 2014—an event deemed an act of genocide by the U.N.—they kidnapped thousands of Yazidi women and children who were bought, sold, and traded as sexual slaves among ISIS fighters. Mikhail, who is Iraqi-American, previously wrote about the women in the National Book Award-nominated nonfiction book The Beekeeper. She discusses that book and its relationship to her new novel, The Bird Tattoo, which draws on some of the same histories. 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 Anne Kniggendorf.Selected Readings:Dunya Mikhail The Bird Tattoo In Her Feminine Sign The Beekeeper The Iraqi Nights Diary of a Wave Outside the Sea The War Works Hard Others: The Security Is Better, Seriously (by Whitney Terrell, Slate, 2011) This poet put the Yazidi women’s suffering and strength into words (PBS NewsHour) ISIS Forced Them Into Sexual Slavery. Finally, They've Reunited With Their Children. (New York Times) Dunya Mikhail Finds Freedom in Fiction (Publishers Weekly) Dunya Mikhail: 'The War Works Hard' (NPR) UNESCO-Sharjah Prize for Arab Culture awarded to poet Dunya Mikhail and actress Helen Al-Janabi (UNESCO) Who are the Yazidis and why is Isis hunting them? (The Guardian) Iraqi doctor provides care and comfort to Yazidi survivors (UNCHR) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Following Donald Trump's dinner at Mar-A-Lago with Ye (formerly Kanye West) and white supremacist Nick Fuentes, novelist Michael Knight joins hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to talk about the best and worst dinner parties in literature. They discuss the pressures of hosting, what makes someone a great guest, signature dishes, post-party regrets, and festive successes, as well as scenes in literature featuring all of these things. Knight also reads from a classic dinner party scene in his novella The Holiday Season.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 Anne Kniggendorf.Selected Readings:Michael Knight The Typist At Briarwood School for Girls Divining Rod Dogfight  Goodnight, Nobody  Eveningland The Holiday Season Others: “The inside story of Trump’s explosive dinner with Ye and Nick Fuentes,” by Marc Caputo The Days of Afrekete by Asali Solomon To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf Leo Tolstoy “The 8 best Festivus moments from ‘Seinfeld,’ ranked,” USA Today “Curb Your Enthusiasm”: Bad Middling Bobcat and Other Stories by Rebecca Lee Light Years by James Salter Last Night by James Salter Beloved by Toni Morrison The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf The Dark Tower VII by Stephen King Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg The Family Chao by Lan Samantha Chang The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro Jim Harrison Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway Redwall series by Brian Jacques Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’re changing things up a bit today and bringing you a preview of a new podcast we’re enjoying and think you will, too. Where There’s a Will searches for the surprising places Shakespeare shows up outside the theater. Host Barry Edelstein, artistic director at one of the country’s leading Shakespeare theaters, and co-host writer and director Em Weinstein, ask what is it about Shakespeare that’s given him a continuous afterlife in all sorts of unexpected ways?You’ll hear Shakespeare doing rehabilitative work in a maximum security prison, helping autistic kids to communicate, shaping religious observances, in the mouths of U.S. presidents, and even at the center of a deadly riot in New York City. Join Barry and Em as they uncover the ways Shakespeare endures in our modern society, and what that says about us. In this preview, Barry takes us into California’s Centinela State Prison for a one-of-a-kind production of Shakespeare’s English history plays performed by incarcerated individuals. Barry asks: What makes Shakespeare a force of transformation and transcendence behind bars?Hear more from Where There’s a Will at https://podcasts.pushkin.fm/wtaw?sid=fnf. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Novelist Erika T. Wurth joins hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to talk about the thousands of Indigenous women who go missing or are murdered in the U.S. every year. Wurth’s new literary-horror novel White Horse begins with the protagonist, a 35-year-old urban Native named Kari, receiving a bracelet that once belonged to her mother, who disappeared years ago. Wurth discusses what gets in the way of tracking the missing; how people talk about violence against Native women; intergenerational trauma; the real-life bracelet that led to the one in the book; why Kari loves Megadeth and Stephen King; and writing towards catharsis. She also reads from the opening of White Horse.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 Anne Kniggendorf.Selected Readings:Erika T. Wurth White Horse You Who Enter Here A Thousand Horses Out to Sea Buckskin Cocaine Crazy Horse’s Girlfriend Indian Trains “14 Contemporary Books By Native American Writers To Get Excited About” “Erika T. Wurth on Writing Horror During a Horror Renaissance,” CrimeReads Others: “Dave Mustaine lesson: Learn about exotic voicings, major and minor diads and ‘upside down’ chords” by Dave Mustaine Native Hope Department of Justice - Missing or Murdered Indigenous People Russell Means Ward Churchill Stephen Graham Jones Rebecca Roanhorse Brandon Hobson Kelli Jo Ford V. Castro Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 1 Episode 10: “Indigenous Imaginations: Native American Writers on Their Communities” Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 6 Episode 9: “With the Ancestors: Buki Papillon on African Folklore and Wakanda Forever” Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 6 Episode 8: “Live from Writers for Readers in Kansas City: Alexander Chee on Editing Best American Essays 2022” Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 5 Episode 8: “Paul Lisicky and Terese Marie Mailhot on the Long-Term Mental Health Effects of the Pandemic” Talking Scared Podcast Episode 117: “Erika T. Wurth & Bigfoot in Your Dreams” Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Report MMIWUSA.org “A Crisis Ignored: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women,” by Andrea Cipriano  Stephen King Megadeth Guns N’ Roses Metallica Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Buki Papillon, inaugural winner of the Maya Angelou Book Award in fiction, joins hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to discuss African folklore’s impact on popular culture. They talk about how the newly released blockbuster Black Panther: Wakanda Forever draws on the myths, histories, and languages of many African nations, including the tradition of calling to ancestors for guidance. Papillon, who was born in Nigeria, also reads from her prize-winning debut novel, An Ordinary Wonder, and discusses how she included folklore, proverbs, and deities from the Yoruba pantheon in the story, which follows an intersex protagonist seeking to claim her identity. 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 Anne Kniggendorf.Selected Readings:Buki PapillonAn Ordinary WonderOthers: “With 'Wakanda Forever,' African Folklore’s Influence on Pop Culture Is Finally Getting Overdue Recognition” by Elizabeth Agyemang Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Anansi the Spider by Gerald McDermott African trickster myths “Meet the African goddess at the center of Beyoncé’s Black is King” by Constance Grady “The 'Black Panther' Revolution: How Chadwick Boseman and Ryan Coogler created the most radical superhero movie of all time” by Josh Eells “How ‘The Woman King’ makes Hollywood history with an incredible true story” by Sonaiya Kelley The Maya Angelou Book Award ILGA InterACT Advocates intersex Nigeria Marlon James and Daniel José Older: Against Genre Snobbery (Season 1, Episode 17)  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Writer and editor Alexander Chee joins hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell live from the annual Writers for Readers gala in Kansas City to discuss editing Best American Essays 2022. Chee talks about what makes a strong essay and how he curated the volume, as well as how his training as a speed reader stood him in good stead as he made his selections. He also comments on specific pieces by Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, Kaitlyn Greenidge, Anthony Veasna So, Ryan Bradley, Vauhini Vara, Erika J. Simpson, and others. Writers for Readers is an ongoing partnership between the Kansas City Public Library and the University of Missouri’s MFA Program in Creative Writing. Funds raised support the Maya Angelou Book Award and enable graduate students to teach writing classes at the library. 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 Anne Kniggendorf.Selected Readings:Alexander Chee The Best American Essays 2022 (Ed.) How to Write an Autobiographical Novel Edinburgh The Queen of the Night Others: Annie Dillard Jamaica Kincaid David Foster Wallace Hilton Als Susan Sontag Cynthia Ozick Edward Hoagland Robert Atwan Elizabeth Hardwick Darryl Pinckney Diaries of Mavis Gallant Dmitri Nabokov Vladimir Nabokov  Black Folk Could Fly by Randall Kenan James Baldwin Joan Didion Anne Carson Edwidge Danticat Brian Doyle Franklin Burroughs Gerard Manley Hopkins Maya Angelou Alex Marzano-Leznevich Erika J. Simpson Ryan Bradley Kaitlyn Greenidge Gary Shteyngart Christopher Leonard “Ghosts” by Vauhini Vara “When World of Warcraft is an Escape – and a Memorial” by Tanner Akoni Laguatan “Baby Yeah,” by Anthony Veasna So Fiction/Non/Fiction, Season 5 Episode 10: “How on Earth Do You Judge Books?” Susan Choi and Oscar Villalon on the Story Behind Literary Awards Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fiction writer Dan Chaon joins Fiction/Non/Fiction hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to discuss the fate of Twitter and social media in the aftermath of Elon Musk’s $44 billion purchase of the platform. Chaon says Twitter is not a “public square,” it’s a business, and talks about how much we really own our online identities in light of that. He also reads from and discusses his Atlantic article, “The Story of My Imposters,” about a fake website purporting to be his, as well as his latest novel, Sleepwalk, which features characters trying to stay off the grid—and to discern each other’s true identities.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 Anne Kniggendorf.Selected Readings:Dan Chaon Sleepwalk Ill Will Stay Awake Await Your Reply Among the Missing “The Story of My Imposters,” The Atlantic Others: Edan Lepucki Charles Baxter The Soul Thief 'A chameleon's skill' | TribLIVE.com George Saunders Writers Wrestle with Twitter: Do I Stay or Go (and Where?) by Jess deCourcy Hinds, Literary Hub Fiction/Non/Fiction, Season 6 Episode 6: “Nancy Pelosi’s Majority: Matthew Clark Davison’s San Francisco Take on a National Leader” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices