New Books in Literature

Today I talked to Carol Cram about her new book Love Among the Recipes (New Arcadia Publishing, 2020).After Genna’s husband betrays her, she finds a way to spend six months writing a cookbook based on the city of Paris. In this lighthearted women’s fiction, Cram’s protagonist pairs both famous and lesser-known Parisian landmarks with often mouth-watering sounding recipes. Genna shops and cooks, sometimes for friends, sometimes for her landlord, but always for herself. Each chapter starts with a description of a different kind of macaron in varying colors and flavors that often describe the mood of the chapter that follows. In addition to exploring Paris, making friends with people she meets in her French class, and meeting a charming widower, Genna begins to understand that she has it in her power to create her own happiness.Carol M. Cram loves the arts, food, travel, and writing novels about people who follow their passions. Three previous novels of historical fiction, The Towers of Tuscany (Lake Union Publishing, 2014) and A Woman of Note (Lake Union Publishing, 2015), and Muse on Fire (New Arcadia Publishing 2018) are also about women in the arts, and she matches her travel-inspired vignettes with pastel drawings created by her husband, Canadian artist Gregg Simpson in Pastel & Pen: Travels in Europe (New Arcadia Publishing, 2018). CCarol expresses her enthusiasm for the written word, the arts, and her love of travel on Artsy Traveler (www.artsytraveler.com) and Art In Fiction (www.artinfiction.com), and on the Art In Fiction Podcast in her chats with authors who write novels inspired by the arts.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Alina Stefanescu posits that At First & Then by Danielle Rose is a collection in which “the feminine is reclaimed.” And it is. It is also a collection of lushly and cleverly crafted poetry that sees the self and the body as a multi-faceted state of being. One that is unafraid to dissect and question what makes the speaker who she is, what she is willing to let go of, and ultimately what moves her forward. Rose writes of expectation, experience, longing, violence, and possibility through the lenses of nature and society and marks her transition both internally and externally via poems which ask to spoken aloud.Danielle Rose is the author of At First & Then, available now from Black Lawrence Press, and The History of Mountains, forthcoming from Variant Lit. Her work can be found in Palette Poetry, Hobart & Sundog Lit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Owed (Penguin, 2020) is the second collection of poems by Dr. Joshua Bennett, poet, professor, and artist. This volume is a wide-ranging, celebratory book focused on what Bennett calls "the Black quotidian," including the poetry of the barbershop, plastic slip-covers on couches, and the benign struggle between a father and a son over a pair of long johns. Throughout the book, Bennett's attention to detail and gift for both sound and sense are on dazzling display. In this conversation we discuss Owed, as well as Bennett's evolving relationship to spirituality, his process of learning to write out loud through poetry slams, and his experience of being a new father. Bennett is also the author of the poetry volume The Sobbing School, the monograph Being Property Once Myself, and the upcoming Spoken Word: A Cultural History. Andy Boyd is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the playwriting MFA at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Arizona School for the Arts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

The three decades that followed World War II were an exceptionally fertile period for American essays. The explosion of journals and magazines, the rise of public intellectuals, and breakthroughs in the arts inspired a flowering of literary culture. At the same time, the many problems that confronted mid-century America--racism, sexism, nuclear threat, war, poverty, and environmental degradation among them--proved fruitful topics for America's best minds. In The Golden Age of the American Essay: 1945–1970 (Anchor Books, 2021), Phillip Lopate assembles a dazzling array of famous writers, critics, sociologists, theologians, historians, activists, theorists, humorists, poets, and novelists. Here are writers like James Agee, E. B. White, A. J. Liebling, and Mary McCarthy, adroitly pivoting from the comic indignities of daily life to world peace, boxing, and restaurants in Paris. Here is Norman Mailer on Jackie Kennedy and Vladimir Nabokov on Lolita. Here is Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail," alongside Richard Hofstadter's "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" and Flannery O'Connor's "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction." Here are Gore Vidal, Rachel Carson, James Baldwin, Susan Sontag, John Updike, Joan Didion, and many more, in a treasury of brilliant writing that has stood the test of time.Zach McCulley (@zamccull) is a historian of religion and literary cultures in early modern England and PhD candidate in History at Queen's University Belfast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

The western travel narrative genre has a history long tied to voyeurism and conquest. A way to see the world—and its many unique people and places—through the eyes of mostly white and male travelers. In an increasingly globalized world, many writers are beginning to raise questions about the ethics of travel writing and its tropes, especially the way western travelers tend to characterize cultures that are unfamiliar to them. These new books challenge the conventional approach, instead asking readers to consider perspectives other than their own.As a young native woman and member of the Karuk tribe, Ursula Pike joined the Peace Corps because she’d always dreamed of helping others. She was ecstatic to learn she would be assigned to serve in small town Kantuta, Bolivia. While at first Pike looked forward to helping the native people of Kantuta, she quickly realized they had less need for her help—and more to teach her—than she had imagined. In this thoughtful debut, An Indian Among Los Indígenas: A Native Travel Memoir, Pike examines the complicated ways we help one another, asking timely questions about how one can become of service to a community as an outsider.Today on the New Books Network, join us as we sit down with Ursula Pike to learn more about her memoir, An Indian Among Los Indígenas, available now from Heyday Books (2021).Zoë Bossiere is a doctoral candidate at Ohio University, where she studies and teaches creative writing and rhetoric & composition. She is the managing editor of Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction, and the co-editor of its anthology, The Best of Brevity (Rose Metal Press, 2020). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

The horror of the battlefield is fresh for Princess Askia. She’s just been forced to flee her kingdom, the northern country of Seravesh, where her cousin now rules under the protection of the Emperor of Roven. All that remains of her army is a loyal general and her last remaining legion, the Black Wolves—not enough to protect her former kingdom from men who are willing to burn entire towns to the ground in order to subjugate the population.Askia has one hope left, and it will not depend on her skill with a sword. Her father, a healer, once helped the Emperor of Vishir, the only land capable of matching Roven in strength. If Askia can reach Vishir and convince Emperor Armaan that Roven’s ruler will eventually challenge the peace and prosperity he’s created, Vishir might be drawn into the war before it’s too late to save Askia’s homeland.But how to obtain the favor of Vishir’s Emperor, Armaan? Should she take advantage of his son’s infatuation with her? Should she try to earn the friendship of his principal wife, a stern woman who seems put off by Askia? Should she accept the help of the religious zealots who champion her cause, even though they tortured her years ago, on suspicion of being a witch like her father.In a court full of devious strangers, Askia will have to learn whom to trust, and whose help to ask for. But it is her own concealed dark magic which ultimately holds the key to her survival.Full of twists and turns, The Frozen Crown (Harper Voyager, 2020)--the first installment of the Greta Kelly’s Warrior Witch Duology--left me checking publication dates for the follow-up. If you like strong heroines, court intrigues, magic, and a touch of sensual sizzle, this novel is for you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Today I talked to KT Sparks about her debut novel Four Dead Horses (Regal House, 2021)On May 1, 1982, eighteen-year-old Martin Oliphant watches a horse drown off the shore of Lake Michigan—the first of four equine corpses marking the trail that will lead Martin out of the small-minded small town of Pierre, Michigan, onto the open ranges of Elko, Nevada, and into the open arms, or at least open mics, of the cowboy poets who gather there to perform. Along the way, he nurtures a dying mother, who insists the only thing wrong with her is tennis elbow; corrals a demented father, who believes he’s Father Christmas; assists the dissolute local newspaper editor; and serves stints as horse rustler and pet mortician. For thirty years, Martin searches for an escape route to the West, to poetry, and to his first love, the cowgirl Ginger, but never manages to get much farther than the city limits of his Midwestern hometown—that is, until a world- famous cow horse dies while touring through Pierre, and Martin is tapped to transport its remains to the funeral at the 32nd Annual Elko Cowboy Poetry Confluence.KT Sparks is a writer and farmer whose work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Pank, and elsewhere. She received an AB in Politics, Economics, Rhetoric, and Law from University of Chicago, an MA in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics from Oxford University, Brasenose College, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University in Charlotte, an educational grounding that matches her lifelong interest in everything and mastery of nothing. She spent twenty-five years in Washington DC, most of it in the US Senate, as a policy analyst and speechwriter and continues to be involved in progressive politics. When she's not reading fiction (all types) or trying to banish weeds from the vegetable garden, she practices Zen Buddhism, binges British detective series, and cooks stuff grown on the farm (or by her more talented neighbors). Her greatest passion is her large distended family, which includes children, stepchildren, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, siblings, parents, in-laws, exes, and seemingly unending concentric circles of spouses, partners, fiancés, more exes, and more spouses—shining bright and swirling outward, like the rings of Jupiter, but less dusty. KT lives in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia with her husband, dog, a fluctuating population of barn cats, and no horses, dead or alive, waiting for the kids to come visit, or at least call for God’s sake. Four Dead Horses is her first novel.G.P. Gottlieb is the author of the Whipped and Sipped Mystery Series and a prolific baker of healthful breads and pastries. Please contact her through her website (GPGottlieb.com). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Visually arresting and utterly one-of-a-kind, Sarah J. Sloat's Hotel Almighty (Sarabande Books) is a book-length erasure of Misery by Stephen King, a reimagining of the novel's themes of constraint and possibility in elliptical, enigmatic poems. Here, "joy would crawl over broken glass, if that was the way." Here, sleep is “a circle whose diameter might be small," a circle "pitifully small," a "wrecked and empty hypothetical circle." Paired with Sloat's stunning mixed-media collage, each poem is a miniature canvas, a brief associative profile of the psyche―its foibles, obsessions, and delights. (Description by the publisher.)“When I was doing [Hotel Almighty] and even now when I work on projects, a lot of what I find I’m doing is just expressing a love of reading and of books themselves,” says Sloat in discussing her new book. “I mean, I just love paper. To take a book and be able to make it into something — that was really fun and exciting for me."Sarah J. Sloat is the author of Hotel Almighty, a collection of visual poetry published in September by Sarabande Books. Born in New Jersey, Sarah has lived in Kansas, China, and Italy, and now splits her time between Frankfurt and Barcelona, where she works as a news editor. She has spent most of the pandemic in Germany with her husband and son, eating take-out schnitzel and working in her pyjamas. Her favorite poets include Federico Garcia Lorca, Vasko Popa, Natasha Trethewey and Charles Wright. Andrea Blythe bides her time waiting for the apocalypse by writing speculative poetry and fiction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Writer and translator Edgar Garbelotto speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about his short story “A Fourteen-Hour Lesson in Theosophy,” which appears in Issue 20 of The Common magazine. The story imagines the final hours of author Clarice Lispector’s life. In this conversation, Garbelotto talks about the process of fictionalizing a real person, and bringing her to life in the streets of Rio. Garbelotto also discusses the experience of writing and translating in English, which is his second language, and the way that experience has changed his approach to writing original work. Portuguese is a more playful, allegorical language than English, Garbelotto says, and he’s learned to approach each language differently.Edgar Garbelotto is a writer and translator born in Brazil and based in the US for 20 years. His translation of João Gilberto Noll’s novel Lord won the 2020 Jabuti Prize as Best Brazilian Book Published Abroad and was a finalist for the 2020 Lambda Literary Award in Best Gay Fiction. His translation of Noll’s novel Harmada was published by Two Lines Press in November 2020 and Hugs & Cuddles, another award-winning novel by Noll, is forthcoming from the same publisher in Fall 2022. He has received fellowships from the DISQUIET International Literary Program in Lisbon and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, among others. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Illinois and lives in Chicago, where he is currently editing his debut novel Terra Incognita, written in both Portuguese and English.Read “A Fourteen-Hour Lesson in Theosophy” by Edgar Garbelotto at thecommononline.org/a-fourteen-hour-lesson-in-theosophy.Find Edgar Garbelotto’s translations of Lord and Harmada here.Follow Edgar Garbelotto on Twitter at @EdgarGarbelottoThe Common is a print and online literary magazine publishing stories, essays, and poems that deepen our collective sense of place. On our podcast and in our pages, The Common features established and emerging writers from around the world. Read more and subscribe to the magazine at thecommononline.org, and follow us on Twitter @CommonMag.Emily Everett is managing editor of the magazine and host of the podcast. Her stories appear in the Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, Tin House Online, and Mississippi Review. She holds an MA in literature from Queen Mary University of London, and a BA from Smith College. Say hello on Twitter @Public_Emily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

The Last Platoon: A Novel of the Afghanistan War (Bombardier Books, 2020) is a riveting book of infantry ground combat. As a work of fiction it is superb, showing the personal drama, drives and experiences of regular Marines combined with the high ambitions and political maneuverings of the highest ranks, including the President and Secretary of Defense. This narrative is not just fictional. It is a pastiche of the lives of Marines that Bing West has followed over the course of the last twenty years, with each firefight being a compilation of his own, personal experiences. This fact makes this book of interest not just to people looking to read fiction, but also to anyone who wants to know what war is like, how it impacts the people around them and just what happens in the far reaches of Afghanistan. More than an action story, this is a story of the morality of war told by someone who knows how it feels and what it means.In this episode, Bing and I discuss his life and background; his experiences of America’s wars in the Middle East; his analysis of America’s success and failures; how these wars compare to his own, Vietnam, and the wars of the past; and what challenges future warfare could pose to the United States.Jeffrey Bristol holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Boston University, a J.D. from the University of Michigan and an M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Chicago. He practices law, works as an independent scholar and serves as a naval officer in the US Navy Reserve. He lives in Tampa, Fl. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature