New Books in Literature

Today I talked to Lisa F. Rosenberg about Fine, I'm a Terrible Person (Sibylline Press, 2025).The pain of 73-year-old Aurora’s divorce over thirty years before continues to reverberate – she’s eccentric, filled with schemes, and only able to function with help from her daughter. Born in the 500-year-old Jewish community of Rhodes, she mixes Judeo-Espanol (Ladino) aphorisms into her speech and thinks she speaks Spanish, but few can understand her. With an expired license and an ancient car, she drives to Los Angeles hoping to find a treasure after the death of her father’s last wife. Aurora’s daughter Leyla is also affected by her father’s abrupt departure and spends her life seeking perfection, trying not to let her mother make her crazy, and striving to fit into their wealthy San Francisco community. When she learns that her husband might be having an affair, she takes her two young sons for a madcap weekend in Los Angeles where she’ll have to bend a few rules, grapple with her mother, sneak into her husband’s conference, and learn a bit about going with the flow. This is a charming mother-daughter novel about immigrants, overcoming family dysfunction, the cuisine of the Jewish community of Rhodes, and learning to overcome obstacles.Lisa F. Rosenberg earned a B.A. from U.C. Berkeley in Art History, an M.A. in Graduate Humanities, and an MFA in Creative Writing from the Dominican University of California. Her early professional career was in the blue-chip retail art world as a Gallerist for several prominent San Francisco art dealers including Crown Point Press and John Berggruen Gallery. She was most recently a public guide at SFMOMA and a Museum Educator on staff at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. Her writing up until now has been primarily non-fiction essays for exhibition catalogs, art criticism, tours, and public talks. Her short story, Family Footnotes was recently featured in the summer 2024 edition of Amaranth: a journal of food writing, art, and design, and she was a quarterfinalist in the Driftwood Press in-house short story contest for the Spring of 2024. Her family heritage is “Rhodeslis,” Ladino-speaking Sephardic Jews from the island of Rhodes. Her deep affection for her cultural legacy is reflected in the novel’s historical accuracy of language, cultural authenticity, and descriptions of mouthwatering cuisine. When she is not writing, she is reading, hiking, practicing yoga, or traveling with her husband of 35 years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Joanne and Bernadette Fareown are raised on their family farm in rural Illinois, keenly affected by their parents' volatile relationship and mounting financial debt, haunted by the cursed history of the women in their family. Largely left to their own devices, the sisters educate themselves on Greek mythology, feminism, and Virginia Woolf, realizing they must find unique ways to cope in these antagonistic conditions, questioning the American Dream as the rest of the country abandons their community in crisis.As Jo and Bernie's imaginative solutions for escape come up short against their parents' realities, the family leaves their farm for Chicago, where Joanne--free-spirited, reckless, and unable to tame her inner violence--rebels in increasingly desperate ways. After her worst breakdown yet, Jo goes into exile in Deadhorse, Alaska, and it is up to Bernadette to use all she's learned from her sister to revive a sense of hope against the backdrop of a failing world.With her debut novel, Nora Lange has crafted a rambunctious, ambitious, and heart-rending portrait of two idiosyncratic sisters, determined to persevere despite the worst that capitalism and their circumstances has to throw at them.Nora Lange’s debut novel Us Fools is a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction, named a best book of 2024 by The Boston Globe and NPR, a Los Angeles Times bestseller, and a New York Times Editors’ Choice. An earlier iteration of it was shortlisted for The Novel Prize, a prize to recognize novels that explore and expand the possibilities of the form.Nora’s writing has appeared in BOMB, Hazlitt, Joyland, American Short Fiction, Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships from Brown University and is a fellow at USC’s Los Angeles Institute of the Humanities. She recently moved to Salt Lake City with her family. And look for Nora’s in The Believer.Recommended Books: Miranda July, All Fours Svetlana Alexievich, Secondhand Time Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

NBN host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Tim Blacket about his award-winning debut short story collection, Grandview Drive (Nightwood Editions, 2024). Grandview Drive won two Saskatchewan Book Awards—the Fiction Book Award and the First Book Award.This is a pensive and darkly stunning collection that investigates the strange and unexpected intersections of loneliness and connection.From his car, a lonely, heartbroken man secretly watches strangers going about their lives in the comfort of their own homes; when caught, he wrecks his car in an attempt to escape. A man hears a car wreck outside his home and has a wild night of romance with a strange woman he meets at the scene. A reclusive old writer starts to believe he is becoming his own characters as he writes. A college student looks to his girlfriend's diary for pointers on how he should act. A mother confronted with her estranged son's death by car wreck organizes a memorial service for a list of attendees she has never met.This collection of sixteen connected short stories investigates the ways we humans so often feel lonely and alone, yet cannot avoid having our lives be contingent upon others--often in ways we can neither see nor understand. Blackett's characters long for meaningful connection and struggle to find it; they are too often unaware of the connections that are right in front of them.Grandview Drive is a collection that builds on itself; the stories stand on their own, but they are strengthened by the (sometimes secret) connections they hold with each other. Blackett's debut asks the reader to think about love and loss, loneliness and heartbreak, redemption and starting life anew.About Tim Blackett:Tim Blackett is a Canadian writer whose work has appeared in Briarpatch, [spaces], Grain Magazine and a small Saskatchewan journal called Swift, Flowing. He holds a Bachelor of Theology and a BA in English from the University of Regina, as well as a certificate in creative writing from Humber College. His short story collection, Grandview Drive, was shortlisted for two Saskatchewan book awards, and a pre-publication version placed second in the John V. Hicks Long Manuscript Award (2019). The titular story, "Grandview Drive" was longlisted for the Carter v. Cooper Short Fiction Award (2012). Blackett lives in Regina, SK.About Hollay Ghadery:Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is the host of the 105.5 FM Bookclub, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets and a co-chair of the League’s BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

There are two things Nina Jacobs is determined to do over the summer of 1986: avoid her mother’s depression-fueled rages, and lose her virginity before she starts college in the fall. Both are seemingly impossible—when her mother isn’t lying in bed for days, she’s lashing out at Nina over any perceived slight. And after a blowjob gone spectacularly wrong, Nina is the talk of Flanagan’s, the Upper East Side bar where young Manhattan society congregates. It doesn’t help that she’s Jewish, an outsider among the blue-eyed blondes who populate this rarified world. She can fit in, kind of, with enough alcohol and prescription drugs stolen from her parents’ medicine cabinet.Flanagan’s is where she pines for the handsome, preppy, and charismatic Gardner Reed. Every girl wants to sleep with him and every guy wants to be him. After she’s introduced to cocaine, Nina plunges headlong into her pursuit of Gardner, oblivious to the warning signs. When a new medication seemingly frees her mother from darkness, and Nina and Gardner grow closer, it seems like Nina might finally get what she wants. But at what cost?Freud called cocaine “a gorgeous excitement,” but a gorgeous excitement for the wrong guy can be lethal.Cynthia Weiner has had a long career writing and teaching fiction. Her short stories have been published in Ploughshares, The Sun, and Epiphany, and her story “Boyfriends” was awarded a Pushcart Prize. Recently, her story “A Castle in Outerspace” was republished in Coolest American Stories 2024. She is also the assistant director of The Writers Studio in New York City. A Gorgeous Excitement is her debut novel.Recommended Books: Beena Kamlani, The English Problem Margarita Montimore, The Doll House Academy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Adoption is often painted as a happy, inspirational act—a baby finds a family and lives happily ever after. But the truth is that adopted children experience displacement and rupture from their mother and that trauma can impact an individual for a lifetime. Adoption can lead to feelings of loss and grief not just for the adoptee, but for the biological and adoptive parents as well.This startling fact comes vividly to life in Janet Sherlund’s heartbreaking memoir, Abandoned at Birth: Searching for the Arms that Once Held Me (Worth, 2024). In her literary debut, Janet Sherlund explores the complex issues so many adoptees and their parents grapple with, including the complicated emotions of rejection, loss, grief, denial, and shame.Sherlund, who was given up for adoption within days of her birth, shares her journey to fulfill her lifetime longing for connection with her family of origin, her instinctive ache for connection with her birth mother, and what it was like to have a “borrowed identity.” In poignant detail, Sherlund describes her quest to find out who she is, where she came from, and why she was given away. And she reveals the pain and courage required to discover one’s true identity.With 5 million adoptees in the U.S., many of whom are discovering their biological roots on DNA websites, Abandoned at Birth is the book for our time. The insight Sherlund derived from her journey will encourage and console others on the same path, while examining the inherent need of all of us to belong, and understand our origins, our culture, and our genetic roots. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

As Nazi tanks roll toward Leningrad in August 1941, an unmarried nineteen-year-old ballerina gives birth to twin girls in the soon-to-be besieged city. Bereft of hope, the dancer—once a rising star at the Kirov—slashes her wrists, but her babies survive, rescued by the devoted friend who arrives just too late to save their mother. The friend, too, is a dancer with the Kirov, and her tutelage and self-sacrifice ensure that the girls, Maya and Natasha, become students at the Vaganova Academy after the Siege of Leningrad is broken.We meet the twins as they enter their senior year in 1958. At once inseparable and competitive, Maya and Natasha have developed quite different personalities, with Natasha the leader and future star, Maya her loyal follower. But as they turn seventeen, various factors pull them apart: boys; the changing climate of Khrushchev’s USSR; and the approaching end to their schooling, which even in a state-run economy doesn’t guarantee anyone a specific place in the world. But it’s when the state declares that, in response to recent defections by artists to the West, only one member of any given family can join the Kirov Ballet that Maya and Natasha must confront the reality that one sister’s success will come at the cost of the other’s. How each of them responds to that challenge drives the rest of this thoroughly engrossing novel. And although neither girl really recognizes it until near the end of the book, the choices each makes are driven at least in part by their determination to fulfill the goals their mother never had the chance to achieve.Weaving together such disparate elements as the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Cold War competition that drove the exchange between the New York City Ballet’s visit to Moscow and the Kirov’s tour of the United States in 1962, the filming of Sergei Bondarchuk’s monumental version of War and Peace, and the difficult yet rewarding training that produces elite dancers, Maya and Natasha (Mariner Books, 2025) explores the eternal bond between sisters while prompting readers to consider just how far they would go to achieve a cherished goal.Elyse Durham, a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan, with her husband, who is a Greek Orthodox priest. Maya & Natasha is her debut novel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

After their mother dies, Jackson Jones is too busy selling drugs and bedding young women to pay attention to his two motherless children. Sienna and her little brother Siddhartha grow up in a Miami Beach mansion without schools, doctors, or attention. It’s the 1980s and their dad uses the mansion, with its dock on the water, as a base for his drug dealing and to house the seekers and lost souls who follow his lackadaisical cult, leaving Sienna and Siddhi to raise themselves. Their dotty grandmother and distant occasionally picks up some slack but won’t take responsibility for her son’s failings as a father. Sienna realizes that she and Siddhi have to raise themselves in this intriguing and unusual story about siblings helping each other survive a dysfunctional family.Janna Brooke Wallack’s stories have been published by literary publications such as Hobart, Upstreet, Glimmer Train Press, American Literary Review, and more. Her short story "Campaigning" was a finalist for the Lascaux Prize in Short Fiction. Naked Girl’s prologue "Five Pictures" was a finalist for Glimmer Train Press's Short Story Award for New Writers, and her story "Cat and Rose" received a Pushcart nomination by The MacGuffin. Naked Girl was named a semifinalist for the 2024 Publishers Weekly Book Life Prize in Fiction. In addition to her writing career, Wallack has worked as a grant writer, a substance abuse prevention counselor, a wetlands manual editor, a theatre production assistant and an actress. After spending a couple of years in Hong Kong, she moved to Hoboken, NJ, raised five children and moved to Stone Ridge in the Catskills of New York, where she ran a permaculture gentleman’s farm. For more about Janna, visit https://jannabrookewallack.com/. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

NBN host Hollay Ghadery interviews Toronto author Caroline Topperman about her new book, Your Roots Cast a Shadow: One Family's Search Across History for Belonging (HCI, December 17, 2024).Your Roots Cast a Shadow explores where personal history intersects with global events to shape a family’s identity. From the bustling markets of Baghdad to the quiet streets of Stockholm, Topperman navigates the murky waters of history as she toggles between present and past, investigating the relationship between migration, politics, identity, and home. Her family stories bring history into the present as her paternal grandmother becomes the first woman allowed to buy groceries at her local Afghan market while her husband is tasked with building the road from Kabul to Jalalabad. Topperman’s Jewish grandfather, a rising star in the Communist Party, flees Poland at the start of WWII one step ahead of the Nazis, returning later only to be another Jew rejected by the Party. Topperman herself struggles with new cultural expectations and reconciling with estranged relatives.A study in social acceptance, Topperman contends with what one can learn about an adopted culture while trying to retain the familiar, the challenges of learning new languages and traditions even as she examines the responsibilities of migrants to their new culture, as well as that society’s responsibility to them.More about Caroline Topperman:Caroline Topperman is a European-Canadian writer, entrepreneur, and world traveller. Born in Sweden, raised in Canada with a recent stint of living in Poland, she holds a BFA in screenwriting. She is a co-founder of Mountain Ash Press and KW Writers Alliance, and currently runs Migrations Review, and Write, They Said. Her book, Tell Me What You See, serves as a toolkit for her writing workshops. She has written articles for Huffington Post Canada, Jane Friedman’s blog, was the Beauty Editor for British MODE Magazine, and served as managing editor for NonBinary Review. Her hybrid memoir, Your Roots Cast a Shadow, explores explosive intergenerational histories that link war zones and foreign shores with questions of identity and belonging. Her next book, The Road to Tang-e Gharu, integrates Afghan folktales and family memories with the story of one of the greatest roads ever built.About Hollay Ghadery:Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is the host of the 105.5 FM Bookclub, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets and a co-chair of the League’s BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Ethereal, soul-stirring, and playful, Baby Cerberus (Buckrider Books, 2024) by Natasha Ramoutar traces joy and kinship across a multitude of lives. Flitting from myths and folklore to video games to imagined futures, each piece asks us to consider how we care for one another. As we move through sentient galleries, swashbuckling adventures, and the doors of Atlantis, the collection reorients us in each section with the riddles as two lost souls try to find each other through time. These poems tug on the invisible threads between us all, trying to find what tethers us together and, in turn, what keeps us here.While Baby Cerberus centers fun and nostalgia with allusions to video games, internet lore, and Tamagotchis, there are still heavy themes throughout which address misogyny, racism, and colonization. The unique integration of literary topics with some of the more pop culture references will distinguish the book in the minds of readers and expand what we can ask of poetry.More about Natasha Ramoutar:Natasha Ramoutar is a writer of Indo-Guyanese descent from Toronto. Her debut collection of poetry Bittersweet, published in 2020 by Mawenzi House, was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. She was the editor of FEEL WAYS, an anthology of Scarborough literature. She is a senior editor with Augur Magazine and serves on the editorial board at Wolsak & Wynn.About Hollay Ghadery:Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is the host of the 105.5 FM Bookclub, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets and a co-chair of the League’s BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

After her husband Jonah asks for a divorce, Hailey Gelman’s difficult life in Binghamton turns into six weeks of litigation and custody battles in Tova Mirvis’s new novel, We Would Never (Avid Reader Press 2025). After she files a motion to move with their young daughter to Florida, the tension escalates, and Jonah is suddenly murdered. Hailey is the prime suspect. Hailey’s father, who had to rebuild his life after his academic advisor took credit for his work is dying of Parkinsons; her mother, whose reason for living is to make sure her family is safe, makes reckless decisions, her brother Nate, the troublemaker who managed to graduate from medical school and works in his father’s dermatology practice. tries to protect his sister, and her other brother Adam, can’t stand their mother’s interference, moves to Maine, and refuses to participate in family events of any kind. Based on a true story, We Would Never is about family loyalty, the damage of divorce, and the fierceness of parents’ love for their children.Tova Mirvis grew up in Memphis, Tennessee and attended Columbia College in New York City, followed by the Columbia School of the Arts where she received an MFA and was a teaching fellow. Her first novel The Ladies Auxiliary, which was set in the Memphis Jewish community, was a national bestseller and an Independent Bookstore bestseller. She is also the author of the novels The Outside World and Visible City. Her memoir The Book of Separation stemmed from an essay she wrote for the New York Times “Private Lives” column and was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice and excerpted in the New York Times Modern Love Column. She has been a visiting scholar at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute at Brandeis University and a fellow at the Brandeis Women’s Studies Research Center. Her essays have appeared in many publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe Magazine, Real Simple, and Psychology Today, and her fiction has been broadcast on NPR. She lives in Newton, MA with her family where she is working on a new novel. When she is not writing, she enjoys running, learning to play tennis and talking to her dog. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature