fiction/non/fiction

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

Poet, editor, and writer John Freeman and novelist Omar El Akkad join co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about the final issue of Freeman’s, a literary magazine founded in 2015. El Akkad, a contributor to the volume, describes founding editor Freeman’s intense and uniquely broad interest in literature, as well as his unusual ability to curate collections of pieces that are in conversation with one another. Freeman explains the work and support that made the magazine possible, and reflects on the moment when he decided to pursue it, as well as how he decided to conclude it. They discuss the publication as a project that created a valuable network of literary connections and gave many writers a new context and outlet for their work. El Akkad reads from “Pillory,” his story which appears in the final edition of Freeman’s, and talks about how he came to write it.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.John Freeman Freeman’s Wind, Trees Maps How to Read a Novelist Dictionary of the Undoing Omar El Akkad “Pillory”, by Omar El Akkad American War What Strange Paradise Others: Freeman’s Conclusions | Vancouver Writers Fest Freeman's Conclusions - The Nest - Vancouver - Oct 20, 2023 · Showpass Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 3, Episode 22: “The Unpopular Tale of Populism: Thomas Frank on the Real History of an American Mass Movement” Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 3, Episode 17: “Poetry, Prose, and the Climate Crisis: John Freeman and Tahmima Anam on Public Space and Global Inequality” Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 1, Episode 5: “Is College Education a Right or a Privilege?” featuring John Freeman and Sarah Smarsh Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 2, Episode 17: “Emily Raboteau and Omar El Akkad Tell a Different Kind of Climate Change Story” Denis Johnson Barry Lopez Wendy Chen Li Qingzhao Li Po Debra Gwartney Michael Salu Colson Whitehead Jon Gray Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Novelist Rebecca Makkai joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about new accusations of sex crimes or sexual misconduct, this time leveled against comedian Russell Brand, actor Danny Masterson, and Spanish Soccer Federation president Luis Rubiales. Makkai observes that since the start of the #MeToo movement, more people are willing to take such accusations seriously, but also describes the repetitive nature of the abuse as discouraging. She reads from her recent novel, I Have Some Questions for You, which, in part, asks readers to reconsider the way they think of sex, class, and race.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.Rebecca Makkai I Have Some Questions for You The Great Believers The Hundred-Year House The Borrower Music for Wartime Others: Fiction/Non/Fiction, Season 1, Episode 2: “Jia Tolentino and Claire Vaye Watkins Talk Abuse, Harassment, and Harvey Weinstein” Fiction/Non/Fiction, Season 1, Episode 22: “Alice Bolin and Kristen Martin on the Problem With Dead Girl Stories” “Russell Brand’s Timeline of Scandal and Controversy,” by Alex Marshall, New York Times “Danny Masterson sentenced to 30 years to life in prison in rape case,” by Alli Rosenbloom, CNN “Luis Rubiales resigns as Spanish soccer president following unwanted kiss with World Cup winner Jennifer Hermoso,” by Issy Ronald, Homero De la Fuente, Patrick Sung and Zoe Sottile, CNN StoryStudio Chicago Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Writer, programmer, and tech consultant Alex Reisner joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about his recent Atlantic articles on Books3, a massive data set that includes hundreds of thousands of pirated e-books, and that Meta and other companies have used to train generative AI. Reisner explains how he extracted book names and titles from long strings of text in Books3 to create a searchable database, and why not finding yourself in the database doesn’t mean your work is safe. He also reflects on the dangers of metaphorical language in discussing AI, what he’s heard from legal experts, what publishers are and aren’t doing, and how piracy has shifted from benefiting individuals to helping corporations profit. Reisner reads from his groundbreaking Atlantic coverage.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.Alex Reisner in The Atlantic “These 183,000 Books Are Fueling the Biggest Fight in Publishing and Tech” “What I Found in a Database Meta Uses to Train Generative AI” “Revealed: The Authors Whose Pirated Books Are Powering Generative AI” Others: Open Letter to Generative AI Leaders (The Authors Guild) Practical Tips for Authors to Protect Their Works from AI Use (The Authors Guild) “Some writers are furious that AI consumed their books. Others? Less so,” by Sophia Nguyen, The Washington Post  Fiction/Non/Fiction, Season 6, Episode 17: “Chatbot vs. Writer: Vauhini Vara on the Perils and Possibilities of Artificial Intelligence” “My Books Were Used to Train AI,” by Stephen King, The Atlantic “Murdered by My Replica?” by Margaret Atwood, The Atlantic “My Books Were Used to Train Meta’s Generative AI. Good.” by Ian Bogost, The Atlantic Alice Munro Rebecca Solnit Meghan O’Rourke George Saunders  Ta-Nehisi Coates Martin Amis “Sarah Silverman is suing OpenAI and Meta for copyright infringement,” by Wes Davis, The Verge Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In anticipation of Banned Books Week, Brooklyn Public Library’s collections manager Leigh Hurwitz joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss how the recent, dramatic rise in book bans disproportionately affects young people, and why BPL has chosen to offer access to its half a million eBooks and audiobooks to every person in the U.S. between the ages of 13 to 21. Hurwitz, one of the librarians behind the groundbreaking digital library card program launched in April 2022, talks about how in its first eighteen months, Books Unbanned has helped more than 7,000 users in all 50 states to access the books they need. Hurwitz unpacks the range of reasons teens cite for needing the cards, including privacy, lack of transportation, and—in some places—the requirement to get a parental signature or use a deadname to acquire a physical card at the local library. They also explain the positive responses from Books Unbanned readers who are able to see marginalized aspects of their identities portrayed on the page for the first time. Hurwitz reads from their Vice article about the program.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.Leigh Hurwitz “I Helped Thousands of Teens Impacted By Book Bans. Here’s What They Had To Say” | Vice Blog posts by Leigh Hurwitz | Brooklyn Public Library Others: Banned in the USA: The Mounting Pressure to Censor | PEN America Books Unbanned | Brooklyn Public Library “Brooklyn Library’s ‘Books Unbanned’ Team Wins Accolades,” by James Barron, New York Times   How the Brooklyn Library Helped Fight Book Bans in Oklahoma by James Barron, New York Times, Sept. 12, 2022 Introducing: Borrowed and Banned | Brooklyn Public Library PEN America & BPL Freedom to Read Advocacy Institute BookMatch and BookMatch Teen Reddit AMA with Freedom Forum Libraries for the People Fiction/Non/Fiction, Season 6, Episode 45: Celeste Ng on the GOP’s War on Children Fiction/Non/Fiction, Season 5, Episode 12: Intimate Contact: Garth Greenwell on Book Bans and Writing About Sex Fiction/Non/Fiction, Season 6, Episode 13: Censoring the American Canon: Farah Jasmine Griffin on Book Bans Targeting Black Writers “Readers Can Now Access Books Banned in Their Area for Free With New App,” by Christopher Parker, Smithsonian Magazine Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices