fiction/non/fiction

Novelist Sally Franson and critic Emily Nussbaum join host V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about reality television. Franson, a recent reality TV show winner whose new novel, Big in Sweden, is from the point of view of a woman who joins the cast of a program in that country, reflects on transforming her real-life experience into fiction. Nussbaum, a staff writer at The New Yorker whose new nonfiction book, Cue the Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV, addresses the history of what she calls the “dirty documentary” genre, discusses the hundreds of interviews she conducted with reality show staff, as well as the form’s surprisingly early origins and the influence of The Apprentice on national politics. Nussbaum and Franson trade notes on how the relationships between people on camera and people behind the camera influence edited footage; the way race was and is handled on reality television; and what it’s like to be a contestant or producer. They also talk about poor labor conditions on sets and what that means to the genre. They read from their work.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.Sally Franson  Big in Sweden A Lady's Guide to Selling Out Emily Nussbaum Cue the Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution “Is “Love Is Blind” a Toxic Workplace?” | The New Yorker Others: Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 7, Episode 26: “Sally Franson on Fashion and Literature” Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 6, Episode 33: “The Stakes of the Writers’ Strike: Benjamin Percy on the WGA Walkout, Streaming, and the Survival of Screenwriting” Allt för Sverige Big Brother The Real World Survivor Love is Blind An American Family The Amazing Race Heartburn by Nora Ephron Nora Ephron Carl Bernstein Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the wake of the recent Trump-Biden debate, public relations operative Phil Elwood joins co-host V.V. Ganeshananthan and guest co-host Matt Gallagher to talk about his career spinning stories in favor of infamous international leaders. Elwood, whose clients previously included figures like Libya’s Gaddafi family and Syria’s al-Assads, recalls his strangest assignments, his biggest regret—helping Qatar to secure soccer’s World Cup—and his proudest accomplishments, including spotlighting the mental health treatment that has helped him. He reflects on how his career shifted when he was swept up in then-FBI Director Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, and also explains tactics such as “detonating the bomb in a safe location,” which means giving an unavoidable, damaging story to a second-tier publication so that the “hit isn’t so bad.” Elwood reads from his new book, All the Worst Humans: How I Made News for Dictators, Tycoons, and Politicians.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.Phil ElwoodAll the Worst Humans: How I Made New for Dictators, Tycoons, and PoliticiansOthers: “Sri Lanka, Lobbyists and War Crimes” by Ken Silverstein | Harper’s Magazine | October 23, 2009 “Gunner Palace,” by Peter Travers | Rolling Stone | February 24, 2005 “Nothing seemed to treat their depression. Then they tried ketamine,” by Meryl Kornfield | The Washington Post | September 12, 2022 John Grisham Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election by Robert Mueller | U.S. Department of Justice | March 2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As Literary Hub observes July 4, we return to our archives for a 2017 episode that remains relevant today. We will return with a new episode July 11.In episode 6, V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell talk political betrayal past and present with novelist Jess Walter and poet Kiki Petrosino. Jess Walter once interviewed an ailing Mark Felt, aka "Deep Throat" of Watergate fame, and he gives us the skinny on the literary qualities of Nixon, Trump, Flynn, NY mobsters, and his 2005 novel Citizen Vince. Plus, would John Gotti have liked the president? On the eve of the release of her new book, Witch Wife, Kiki Petrosino talks to us about MacBeth's witches and how Shakespeare can help us decode our current age of political skulduggery. What Trump Administration officials would you cast in Macbeth? Readings: All the President's Men by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward; Citizen Vince by Jess Walter; Witch Wife by Kiki Petrosino; The Tragedy of Macbeth; The Tempest; The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.In the Stacks: J.J. Cantrell interviews Annie Philbrick of Bank Square Books in Mystic, CT and Savoy Bookshop & Cafe in Westerly, Rhode Island. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Novelist Maxim Loskutoff joins co-host V.V. Ganeshananthan and guest co-host Matt Gallagher to talk about his new novel, Old King, which is about Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, who moved to Montana to withdraw from society. Loskutoff, who grew up in Missoula, Montana, discusses the mythology that draws men like Kaczynski—who sought to be in nature, and to avoid technology and other people—to his home state; the gap between the imaginary American West and its reality; and how these connect to American settler colonialism. He also explains how he positioned the Kaczynski of his novel not as a hero or even an antihero, but as a symbol of this dark and unhealed facet of American society. Loskutoff reads from Old King.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.Maxim Loskutoff Old King Ruthie Fear Come West and See Opinion | The Unabomber and the Poisoned Dream of the American West - The New York Times Others William Kittredge Richard Hugo  Lewis and Clark  Billy the Kid  Jack Kerouac  “The Story of Jack and Neal: the friendship that made On the Road—and the Beat Generation—possible” by James Parker, The Atlantic, March 11, 2022 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Journalist and novelist Nicolás Medina Mora joins co-host V.V. Ganeshananthan and guest co-host Matt Gallagher to talk about Mexico’s president-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, who will be the first woman and first Jewish person to lead the country. Medina Mora explains current president Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s history, his hold on Mexico’s political imagination, and how his connections to Sheinbaum will affect policy moving forward as he uses his last days in office to attempt 18 changes to Mexico’s constitution. Medina Mora, who is an editor at the Mexican magazine Nexos, reflects on writing about Lopez Obrador through both fiction and journalism. He elaborates on a pre-election piece he wrote for The New York Review of Books and also reads from his novel, América del Norte, in which he plays with the relationship between fiction and nonfiction.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.Nicolás Medina Mora América del Norte Where Next for Mexico? | Nicolás Medina Mora | The New York Review of Books Nexos Others Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 7, Episode 32: "Claire Messud on Blurring Family History and Fiction" Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 7, Episode 17: "Ed Park on Korea’s Past, Real and Imagined" "Mexico’s outgoing president pushes ahead with plan to fire 1,600 judges" by Christine Murray | Financial Times "Mexico’s bloodiest election in history sends new asylum-seekers to the US border" by Caitlin Stephen Hu, David Culver, Norma Galeana and Evelio Contreras| CNN The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this Pride Month episode, Navy veteran and author Karen Solt joins co-host V.V. Ganeshananthan and guest co-host Matt Gallagher to talk about her experience of being gay while serving in the military. Solt, who retired as a senior chief petty officer in 2006 and served both before and during “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” talks about the Clinton-era policy that prohibited the harassment of gay service members while requiring that they stay closeted. Solt explains the impossible position gay military members were in before and during DADT, as they faced questioning from investigators, the threat of losing their jobs if found out, and being separated from their partners rather than being moved together as their straight counterparts often were. Solt reads from her book, Hiding for My Life: Being Gay in the Navy.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.Karen SoltHiding for My Life: Being Gay in the NavyOthers Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 7, Episode 30: “Tracie McMillan on the Myth of Colorblindness” Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 2, Episode 21: “Elliot Ackerman and Anuradha Bhagwati on the Role of the Military in American Politics” The Lieutenant by Andrew Dubus Roger & Me A Former Marine Looks Back on Her Life in a Male-Dominated Military, by V.V. Ganeshananthan, The New York Times | April 17, 2024 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With summer approaching, Army veteran and long-distance hiker Akuna Robinson joins host V.V. Ganeshananthan and guest co-host Matt Gallagher to talk about the experience of through hiking, or long-distance hiking a trail from end to end. Robinson, the first Black man to complete the Pacific Crest Trail, the Appalachian Trail, and the Continental Divide Trail—the Triple Crown of through hiking—recounts how he was inspired by the movie Wild to attempt the Pacific Crest Trail as a way of managing post-traumatic stress disorder from his military service in Iraq. Robinson reflects on encountering greater diversity on the trail in recent years, seeing the landscape affected by climate change, and the individualized nature of packing for a months-long journey. He also discusses hiking with Gallagher, and reading and writing on the trail. Gallagher reads from his 2021 ESPN profile of Robinson. 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.Akuna Robinson “Iraq War veteran Will 'Akuna' Robinson is the trailblazing superstar of thru-hiking,” by Matt Gallagher | ESPN | Nov. 11, 2021  “For first Black man to wear hiking's 'triple crown,' the trails are a place for healing,” by Dakota Kim | Los Angeles Times | Feb. 23, 2023  Others: Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed Wild (movie) Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character by David Straithairn and Jonathan Shay Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming by Jonathan Shay, Senator Max Cleland   Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart: An Adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail by Carrot Quinn The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 3, Episode 4: “Wild Ecologies: So Go the Salmon, So Goes the World, with Tucker Malarkey, Will Bardenwerper, and Stan Brewer Pacific Crest Trail Appalachian Trail Continental Divide Trail Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Editor and writer Jonny Diamond joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about Nobel Prize-winning short story writer Alice Munro, who passed away May 13 in the same Canadian town where Diamond’s mother died 12 years earlier. He outlines what made the lives of the two women similar—namely, marrying young and starting families within the parameters of 1950s expectations, and then finding their own voices after divorcing in the 1970s—and discusses how beautifully Munro wrote about the interiority of those who lived that life or an adjacent life. He reads from his Literary Hub essay, “My Mother Will Live Forever in the Stories of Alice Munro.”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.Jonny Diamond  “My Mother Will Live Forever in the Stories of Alice Munro” | Literary Hub Others: Fiction/Non/Fiction: Season 1, Episode 19: “Podcasting Pro-Tips and Jonny Diamond on Creating Lit Hub Radio” Fiction/Non/Fiction: Season 7, Episode 32: “Claire Messud on Blurring Family History and Fiction” Alice Munro Margaret Atwood Margaret Laurence Carol Shields James Baldwin John Keats Walt Whitman Simone de Beauvoir Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert “Inside Alice Munro’s Notebooks” by Benjamin Hedin | Paris Review “Wood” by Alice Munro | The New Yorker | November 16, 1980 “Kindling The Creative Fire: Alice Munro's Two Versions of ‘Wood'" by Lisa Dickler Awano | New Haven Review | May 30, 2012 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Following the cancellation of PEN America’s annual literary awards ceremony as well as its World Voices Festival, acclaimed poet Monica Youn joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about political protests and literary prizes. Youn recounts the sequence of events that led her and eight other finalists for PEN’s $75,000 Jean Stein Book Award—as well as a number of nominees in other categories—to withdraw their work from consideration in protest of PEN’s position on Gaza. She explains how PEN’s efforts regarding Gaza and Palestine have failed to match its advocacy for writers in danger in other places, like Ukraine, and discusses whether the organization is living up to its mission to protect free expression. She also describes the situation for student protesters on her own campus, the University of California, Irvine. Youn reads from her most recent collection, From From.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.Monica Youn From From Blackacre Ignatz Barter Others: "PEN America calls off awards ceremony amid criticism over its response to Israel-Hamas war," by Hillel Italie |AP News "The PEN Awards and World Voices Festival Are on the Brink of Collapse," by Dan Sheehan | Literary Hub "A Leading Free Expression Group Is Roiled by Dissent Over Gaza," by Jennifer Schuessler | The New York Times American Writers Against the Vietnam War | Wikipedia 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” Anthony Cody Mai Der Vang  Suzanne Nossel Natalie Diaz “PEN Union Cries Foul in Contract Talks as Criticism of PEN America Intensifies,” by Jill Milliot and Sophia Stewart | Publishers Weekly  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Writer Brandy Jensen joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about polyamory’s place in the contemporary imagination. Jensen discusses the connections between polyamory and politics, noting its links to queer community and its defiance of normative gender roles. She analyzes protections for the rights of multiple-partner relationships in Massachusetts, New York, and California. Jensen also considers the language of polyamory and how it has been portrayed in current and past literature, especially science fiction. She reads from her recent Yale Review article, “The Polycrisis.”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.Brandy Jensen“The Polycrisis” | Yale Review Others: More: A Memoir of Open Marriage by Molly Roden Winter “On the Cover of New York: A Practical Guide to Polyamory,” by Priyanka Mantha | New York Magazine “Lessons From a 20-Person Polycule: How they set boundaries, navigate jealousy, wingman their spouses and foster community.” by Daniel Bergner | The New York Times Magazine “Polyamory, the Ruling Class’s Latest Fad,” by Tyler Austin Harper | The Atlantic “Scenes from an Open Marriage,” by Jean Garnett | The Paris Review |June 29, 2022 Oneida Community Octavia Butler N.K. Jemisin Sally Rooney American Poly: A History by Christopher Gleason Couplets: A Love Story by Maggie Millner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices