fiction/non/fiction

In this week’s episode of Fiction/Non/Fiction, co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan are joined by novelist and essayist Claire Messud and journalist Brendan O’Meara. First, Messud discusses her new book of essays, Kant’s Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write, and the difficulties of grasping the facts when we’re bombarded with so much information daily. Then, O’Meara shares craft insights from his interviews for The Creative Nonfiction podcast and discusses the connections between newsrooms and literary nonfiction. He also previews his memoir-in-progress about his father.To hear the full episode, subscribe to the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast 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. And check out video excerpts from our interviews at LitHub’s Virtual Book Channel and Fiction/Non/Fiction’s YouTube Channel.This podcast is produced by Andrea Tudhope.Selected readings:Claire Messud Kant’s Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write The Emperor’s Children The Burning Girl When the World Was Steady The Woman Upstairs The Hunters The Last Life Brendan O’Meara Six Weeks in Saratoga: How Three-Year-Old Filly Rachel Alexandra Beat the Boys and Became Horse of the Year The Creative Nonfiction Podcast Episode 60—The Godfather of Creative Nonfiction: Lee Gutkind Episode 99—David Grann on 'The Killers of the Flower Moon' and Why Every Story is a Struggle Episode 121—Susan Orlean on Pacing, Structure, and 'The Library Book' Episode 227: The Futility of Reassurance and Being on the Hook with Seth Godin “Isolation,” audio magazine  Others: Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio The Plague by Albert Camus War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy Selected Writings of Paul Valéry Continental Drift by Russell Banks NW by Zadie Smith Another Country by James Baldwin The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald The Company You Keep by Neil Gordon Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates Bronwen Dickey David Carr Sisters in Hate by Seyward Darby The Living and the Dead: War, Friendship and the Battles That Never End by Brian Mockenhaupt The Journalist and the Murderer by Janet Malcolm The Heart and Other Monsters by Rose Andersen Jean Guerrero “Host of ‘The Daily’ Clouds ‘N.Y. Times’ Effort To Restore Trust After ‘Caliphate’” by David Folkenflik, NPR Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this special live episode of Fiction/Non/Fiction, presented by Moon Palace Books in Minneapolis, acclaimed novelist and teacher Charles Baxter and his former student, short story writer Mike Alberti, join co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss their new books. Upon the release of his seventeenth book, the much-anticipated The Sun Collective, Baxter reflects on how time and place factor into his work and talks about writing about politics in his hometown. Then Alberti discusses his searing debut short story collection Some People Let You Down, and how he finds inspiration and hope in teaching incarcerated writers through the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. The two also provide a rare window into their ongoing conversations about teaching and the craft of fiction, and answer questions from audience members and readers, including incarcerated writers. To hear the full episode, subscribe to the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast 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. And check out video excerpts from our interviews at LitHub’s Virtual Book Channel and Fiction/Non/Fiction’s YouTube Channel.This podcast is produced by Andrea Tudhope.Selected readings:Charles Baxter: The Sun Collective The Feast of Love First Light Saul and Patsy Shadow Play The Soul Thief Believers Gryphon Harmony of the World A Relative Stranger There’s Something I Want You to Do Through the Safety Net Mike Alberti: “Summer People,” Colorado Review “Woods, Kansas,” Crazyhorse “Destiny,” Gulf Coast “Pestilence,” Indiana Review “Prairie Fire, 1899,” One Story Some People Let You Down  Others: Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop Dubliners, James Joyce Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson Lost in the City, Edward P. Jones Wright Morris George Ault, American painter Annie, Broadway musical The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand Cornel West Alice Munro ZZ Packer Denis Johnson   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this week’s episode of Fiction/Non/Fiction, co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan mark the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act by talking to two writers who have made important contributions to the way we talk about disability in America. First, poet and essayist Molly McCully Brown discusses her new essay collection Places I’ve Taken my Body, and reflects on the threat a global pandemic poses to populations who are already seen by society as less valuable. Then Rebekah Taussig talks about her memoir Sitting Pretty, as well as pervasive and tired ableist tropes in films and literature.To hear the full episode, subscribe to the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast 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. And check out video excerpts from our interviews at LitHub’s Virtual Book Channel and Fiction/Non/Fiction’s YouTube Channel.This episode was produced by Mary Henn, Emily Standlee, and Andrea Tudhope.Selected readings:Molly McCully Brown Places I’ve Taken my Body The Virginia State Colony For Epileptics and Feebleminded In The Field Between Us On Books and Their Harbors Rebekah Taussig Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body “I've Been Paralyzed Since I Was 3. Here's Why Kindness Toward Disabled People Is More Complicated Than You Think,” Time “I Called Mine Beautiful,” The Florida Review  Others: If You Really Love Me Throw Me off the Mountain, by Erin Clark “10 Body Positive Instagrammers With Disabilities You Should Follow Immediately” by Nina Matti, Bustle Special, Netflix series “Sia’s Trailer For ‘Music’ Struck A Nerve With The Disabled Community. Her Tweets Only Made Things Worse.” By Allison Norlian, Forbes The Golden Girls, TV series “Texas Lt. Governor: Old People Should Volunteer to Die to Save the Economy” by Bess Levin, Vanity Fair Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this week’s episode of Fiction/Non/Fiction, co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan talk to acclaimed novelist Jess Walter and award-winning essayist Jerald Walker. First, Walter unravels the literary elements of the Trump administration and discusses how his newest book, The Cold Millions, a historical novel touching on unions and feminism at the turn of the century, has many parallels to today’s politics. Then, Walker talks about centering Black courage vs. white cruelty, both in literature and this election, and how he works to find common ground in his writing, including his newest collection of essays, How to Make a Slave, which is a finalist for the National Book Award.To hear the full episode, subscribe to the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast 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. And check out video excerpts from our interviews at LitHub’s Virtual Book Channel and Fiction/Non/Fiction’s YouTube Channel.This podcast is produced by Andrea Tudhope. Selected readings:Jess Walter The Cold Millions Beautiful Ruins We Live in Water The Financial Lives of the Poets ‘The Ponz’: Michael Cohen's Prison Memoir Jerald Walker How to Make a Slave and Other Essays The World in Flames: A Black Boyhood in a White Supremacist Doomsday Cult Street Shadows: A Memoir of Race, Rebellion, and Redemption Once More to the Ghetto and Other Essays “Dragon Slayers”  Others: King Lear by William Shakespeare Elmore Leonard Henry IV, Part II by William Shakespeare “Did the pandemic sink Trump’s chances? Not as much as his opponents expected,” by Alex Roarty, McClatchy “'You are no longer my mother': A divided America will struggle to heal after Trump era,” by Tim Reid, Gabriella Borter, Michael Martina, Reuters Hue and Cry, by James Alan McPherson James Alan McPherson Albert Murray Stanley Crouch “The Little Man at Chehaw Station” by Ralph Ellison Self Help by Lorrie Moore Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this week’s episode of Fiction/Non/Fiction, co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan talk to #1 New York Times best-selling author Maria Dahvana Headley about the modern-day relevance of the epic poem Beowulf. She talks about her new translation of the ancient text, and illuminates how the “shit-talking” masculinity of the heroes of old can help us understand our current so-called leaders.To hear the full episode, subscribe to the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast 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. And check out video excerpts from our interviews at LitHub’s Virtual Book Channel and Fiction/Non/Fiction’s YouTube Channel.This podcast is produced by Andrea Tudhope.Selected readings:Maria Dahvana Headley  Beowulf: A New Translation  The Mere Wife  Arie  Queen of Kings The Year of Yes The End of the Sentence, Kat Howard and Maria Dahvana Headley Unnatural Creatures, Neil Gaiman (Editor), Briony Morrow-Cribbs (Illustrator), Maria Dahvana Headley  Others: Transcript: Donald Trump’s Taped Comments About Women, The New York Times Sarah Cooper and Helen Mirren Recreate Donald Trump’s Infamous ‘Access Hollywood’ Tape, HuffPost A “Beowulf” for Our Moment, Ruth Franklin, The New Yorker George Conway (Twitter) Walter Shaub (Twitter) Earth Abides, George R. Stewart  Circe, Madeline Miller The Odyssey, (translated by) Emily Wilson Beowulf, Seamus Heaney Television:The Wire (HBO) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this week’s episode of Fiction/Non/Fiction, co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan talk to novelist emily m. danforth and short story writer Laura van den Berg. danforth discusses her newly released sapphic-gothic horror comedy Plain Bad Heroines and how she reclaims negative and othering portrayals of lesbian vampires and queer monsters in the novel. Then, van den Berg shares her acclaimed new story collection I Hold a Wolf by the Ears and talks about how the pandemic and the Trump presidency has inspired her fiction. To hear the full episode, subscribe to the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast 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. And check out video excerpts from our interviews at LitHub’s Virtual Book Channel and Fiction/Non/Fiction’s YouTube Channel.This episode was produced by Andrea Tudhope, Emily Standlee and Mary Henn. Selected readings:emily m. danforth Plain Bad Heroines The Miseducation Of Cameron Post  Laura van den Berg I Hold a Wolf by the Ears The Isle of Youth What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us Find Me The Third Hotel Others: The Story of Mary MacLane by Mary MacLane Rebecca by Dame Daphne du Maurier Survivor Song by Paul Tremblay Stephen King The Elementals by Michael McDowell Paperbacks from Hell by Grady Hendrix Television: Get Out, film Lovecraft Country (HBO)  Carmilla, the Lesbian Vampire, film The Ring, film Beetlejuice, film The Others, film Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this week’s episode of Fiction/Non/Fiction, co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan talk to writer, curator and visual artist Kristina Kay Robinson and novelist and television writer Tom Piazza in the wake of the 15-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Robinson describes the shifting narrative of her hometown, and explains how the U.S. is only now experiencing the full implications of Katrina. Then, Piazza reflects on how the disaster foretold a series of 21st century catastrophes that would affect the most vulnerable among us. To hear the full episode, subscribe to the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast 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. And check out video excerpts from our interviews at LitHub’s Virtual Book Channel and Fiction/Non/Fiction’s YouTube Channel.This episode was produced by Andrea Tudhope and Emily Standlee. Selected readings:Kristina Kay Robinson Republica: Temple of Color and Sound, art exhibition “Contemplating Extinction as Theme in Basquiat’s ‘Pez Dispenser, 1984,’” poets.org “The Darkroom in the Attic: Blackness and Visibility,” Burnaway “Ten Years Since: A Meditation on New Orleans,” The Nation “Rhythm, Water, and Global Blackness,” The Nation “10 Questions for Kristina Kay Robinson,” The Massachusetts Review Letter from New Orleans: Down River Road, Burnaway The New Orleans African American Museum “Spiritually Uncensored,” Sugarcane Magazine  Tom Piazza “Incontinental Drift,” The Huffington Post City of Refuge Why New Orleans Matters Devil Sent the Rain A Free State “Living in the Present with John Prine,” The Oxford American  Writers: The Control of Nature by John McPhee José Saramago Leo Tolstoy Maurice Carlos Ruffin A.L. Steiner Television: Treme (HBO) Lovecraft Country (HBO) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this week’s episode of Fiction/Non/Fiction, co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan are joined by acclaimed novelist Maurice Carlos Ruffin and Pulitzer finalist in Biography Michael Gorra for a conversation about whether demographic changes are finally making the South new. We Cast a Shadow author Ruffin muses on what racial equality looks like in a futuristic South, and ponders whether political compromise can stabilize the oppositional nature of the United States. Then Gorra discusses his book, The Saddest Words: William Faulkner’s Civil War; and considers the intricate set of limitations that come with writing from multiple fictional perspectives. To hear the full episode, subscribe to the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast 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. And check out video excerpts from our interviews at LitHub’s Virtual Book Channel and Fiction/Non/Fiction’s YouTube Channel.This podcast is produced by Andrea Tudhope. Selected readings:Maurice Carlos Ruffin We Cast a Shadow The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You (forthcoming) Michael Gorra The Saddest Words: William Faulkner’s Civil War Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece The Bells in Their Silence: Travels Through Germany The English Novel at Mid-Century: From the Leaning Tower After Empire: Scott, Naipaul, Rushdie  Books:  Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon The Revisioners by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton The Tradition by Jericho Brown Dry September by William Faulkner Light in August by William Faulkner The Unvanquished by William Faulkner As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner Intruder in the Dust by William Faulkner Go Down, Moses by William Faulkner Flags in the Dust by William Faulkner Twentieth-Century Fiction and the Black Mask of Humanity by Ralph Ellison Shadow and Act by Ralph Ellison Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison South to a Very Old Place by Albert Murray To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain Opinion | How Donald Trump will finally kill the Southern Strategy  Writers: HP Lovecraft Flannery O’Connor Eudora Welty Richard Wright Zora Neale Hurston Nikki Giovanni Toni Morrison Nafissa Thompson-Spires Rion Amilcar Scott Jamel Brinkley Tayari Jones Roxane Gay Randall Kenan James Baldwin Ernest Hemingway F. Scott Fitzgerald Don DeLillo Henry James George Eliot Jesmyn Ward Charles Dickens Natasha Trethewey Television: Lovecraft Country Watchmen Atlanta Films: Terminator 2: Judgement Day Sorry to Bother You Directors: Jordan Peele Boots Riley Donald Glover Others: Justin Ward (journalist) FiveThirtyEight (podcast) Stacey Abrams (politician) Newt Gingrich (politician) James Meredith (civil rights activist) Disunion (NYT column) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this week’s episode of Fiction/Non/Fiction, co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan are joined by veteran war correspondent and bestselling author Scott Anderson and prize-winning novelist Andrew Altschul. Anderson shares what led him to the four spies featured in his new book The Quiet Americans. Then Altschul talks about decentering the narrative of the American abroad in his new novel The Gringa, which takes inspiration from the real-life case of Lori Berenson. To hear the full episode, subscribe to the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast 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. And check out video excerpts from our interviews at LitHub’s Virtual Book Channel and Fiction/Non/Fiction’s YouTube Channel.This podcast is produced by Andrea Tudhope. Selected readings:Scott Anderson Triage  Moonlight Hotel  The Man Who Tried to Save the World  War Zones Lawrence in Arabia  Fractured Lands The Quiet Americans “None Dare Call It a Conspiracy” Andrew Altschul The Gringa Deus Ex Machina Lady Lazarus  Others:  The Godfather Film Series Graham Greene Tenet The James Bond Films Austin Powers Movies  John le Carré The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert Mark Twain The Darling by Russell Banks  “The Storytellers of Empire” by Kamila Shamsie Libra by Don DeLillo "Why I Didn't Sign the Open Letter Against Trump" by Aleksandar Hemon  American Pastoral by Philip Roth The Good Lieutenant by Whitney Terrell  American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this week’s episode of Fiction/Non/Fiction, co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan are joined by novelist Margot Livesey and poet and essayist Jaswinder Bolina. Livesey discusses an excerpt from her fantastic new novel, The Boy in the Field, and challenges the traditional idea that that beach reads shouldn’t, or can’t, be “political.” Then Bolina discusses how the most popular books in this historic summer of protest and pandemic – including his own brilliant new collection of essays, Of Color – have engaged with themes of race and anti-racism. To hear the full episode, subscribe to the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast 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. And check out video excerpts from our interviews at LitHub’s Virtual Book Channel and Fiction/Non/Fiction’s YouTube Channel. This episode was produced by Dylan Miettinen and Andrea Tudhope.Selected readings:Margot Livesey The Boy in the Field Mercury: A Novel The Flight of Gemma Hardy The House on Fortune Street Banishing Verona Eva Moves the Furniture The Missing World Criminals Homework Jaswinder Bolina Of Color The 44th of July Phantom Camera Others: Middlemarch by George Eliot Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen Normal People by Sally Rooney The Mothers by Brit Bennett Milkman by Anna Burns The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid Ken Follett James A. Michener 1984 by George Orwell Toni Morrison Margot Livesey on moral weakness for the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast The Firm by John Grisham Tom Clancy Sue Monk Kidd Agatha Christie Rex Stout Ngaio Marsh Ralph Ellison Billy Collins How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong Ta-Nehisi Coates Citizen by Claudia Rankin Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett A Burning by Megha Majumdar The Professor’s House by Willa Cather Real Life by Brandon Taylor Feel Free by Zadie Smith The Great Believers Rebecca Makkai This Is One Way to Dance by Sejal Shah The Dark Tower by Stephen King Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices