New Books in Literature

The stories and fables in A Girl Goes into the Forest (Dzanc Books, 2019) twist and turn with the sorrows and challenges of family, lovers, growing up, and aging. Sometimes wry, sometimes charming, occasionally a story will make you gasp, especially the one-pagers. In 78 pieces of fiction, flash fiction and micro-fiction, Alford’s writing is soothing, sparkling, opaque or mysterious, but it always packs a punch.Peg Alford Pursell, author of Show her a Flower, A Bird, A Shadow,the 2017 Indies Book of the Year for Literary Fiction, has had work published in many journals and anthologies. Her micro-fiction, flash fiction, and hybrid prose have been nominated for Best Small Micro-fictions and Pushcart Prizes. She is the founder and director of WTAW Press, a nonprofit publisher of literary books, and of Why There are Words, the national literary reading series. Also, she enjoys walking through her neighborhood with its redwoods and Little Free Libraries. One of the most fascinating dreams she's had was creating a crossword puzzle in her sleep and being able to remember the lower left section when she awoke.If you enjoyed today’s podcast and would like to discuss it further with me and other New Books network listeners, please join us on Shuffle. Shuffle is an ad-free, invite-only network focused on the creativity community. As NBN listeners, you can get special access to conversations with a dynamic community of writers and literary enthusiasts. Sign up by going to www.shuffle.do/NBN/joinG.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) if you wish to recommend an author (of a beautifully-written new novel) to interview, to listen to her previous podcast interviews, to read her mystery book reviews, or to check out some of her awesome recipes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Inari Sámi Folklore: Stories from Aanaar (University of Wisconsin Press, 2019) is rich multivoiced anthology of folktales, legends, joik songs, proverbs, riddles, and other verbal art, this is the most comprehensive collection of Sámi oral tradition available in English to date. Collected by August V. Koskimies and Toivo I. Itkonen in the 1880s from nearly two dozen storytellers from the arctic Aanaar (Inari) region of northeast Finland, the material reveals a complex web of social relations that existed both inside and far beyond the community.First published in 1918 only in the Aanaar Sámi language and in Finnish, this anthology is now available in a centennial English-language edition for a global readership. Translator Tim Frandy has added biographies of the storytellers, maps and period photos, annotations, and a glossary. In headnotes that contextualize the stories, he explains such underlying themes as Aanaar conflicts with neighboring Sámi and Finnish communities, the collapse of the wild reindeer populations less than a century before, and the pre-Christian past in Aanaar. He introduces us to the bawdy humor of Antti Kitti, the didacticism of Iisakki Mannermaa, and the feminist leanings of Juho Petteri Lusmaniemi, emphasizing that folktales and proverbs are rooted in the experiences of individuals who are links in a living tradition. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Drawing on the author’s deep knowledge of classical literature, Deborah L. Davitt’s book of poetry The Gates of Never (Finishing Line Press, 2018) explores the intersections of myth, science, and humanity through her beautifully accessible poems, reflecting a variety of forms and linguistic styles. These poems morph between being moving, irreverent, unsettling, and erotic — offering up a richly textured collection of work.“He writes me upside downand backwards, so thatI hardly know myself yet,but my hundred newly-open mouthswhisper secret meanings,and offer atramentum kisses;he soothes my wounds withcopper vitriol, making the wordsholy and incorruptible,incapable of fading into sepia;yet as he kisses me, our tongues meeting,the words spark white-fireunder my skin, the runes writhinginto new configurations”– from “Testament”Deborah L. Davitt was raised in Nevada, but currently lives in Houston, Texas with her husband and son. She has worked as a technical writer on contracts involving nuclear submarines, NASA, and computer manufacturing. Her poetry has received nominations for the Rhysling, Dwarf Star, and Pushcart awards; and her short fiction has appeared in InterGalactic Medicine Show, Compelling Science Fiction, and Pseudopod. For more about her work, including her Edda-Earth novels and her poetry collection, The Gates of Never, please see www.edda-earth.com.You can find New Books in Poetry on Shuffle here.Andrea Blythe bides her time waiting for the apocalypse by writing speculative poetry and fiction. She is the author of Your Molten Heart / A Seed to Hatch (2018) a collection of erasure poems created from the pages of Trader Joe’s Fearless Flyers, and coauthor of Every Girl Becomes the Wolf (Finishing Line Press, 2018), a collaborative chapbook written with Laura Madeline Wiseman. She is a cohost of the New Books in Poetry podcast and is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association and the Horror Writers Association. Learn more at: www.andreablythe.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

It’s 1991, and recent college graduate Mim wants to be a writer, but for now she is folding clothes at Benetton. She notices the trash-filled streets and befriends exotic Kyra, who joins Mim’s disparate group of roommates, all squeezed together in a crumbling NYC apartment. Their relationship gets closer, and Mim meets Roy, the man Kyra plans to marry. Then, the anguish of another of the roommates, a veteran of the Gulf war, becomes unbearable, and Mim returns home to Boston. She loses track of Kyra for twenty years. Now it’s 2012, Mim is married, a successful writer and raising an adopted child when she learns that Kyra has disappeared in Afghanistan. Mim’s journey to find her old friend forces her to confront her choices, herself, and her understanding of America’s ability to change the world.Join me today as I talk to Daphne Kalotay about her new novel Blue Hours (Triquarterly, 2019). Kalotay is the author of the critically acclaimed collection Calamity and Other Stories, which was shortlisted for the 2005 Story Prize; the award-winning novel Russian Winter--a national and international bestseller--and the novel Sight Reading, winner of the 2014 New England Society Book Award in Fiction. She received her M.A. from Boston University's Creative Writing Program, where her stories won the Florence Engel Randall Fiction Prize and a Transatlantic Review Award from the Henfield Foundation, before earning her Ph.D. in Modern and Contemporary Literature. Daphne has received fellowships from the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, Yaddo, and MacDowell. She has taught literature and creative writing at Princeton University, University of Massachusetts, Middlebury College, Boston University, Skidmore College, Harvard University and Grub Street. She lives in Somerville, Massachusetts, and in her spare time, tries to keep rabbits out of her vegetable garden. She also likes to take long urban walks, from one neighborhood into another.If you enjoyed today’s podcast and would like to discuss it further with me and other New Books network listeners, please join us on Shuffle. Shuffle is an ad-free, invite-only network focused on the creativity community. As NBN listeners, you can get special access to conversations with a dynamic community of writers and literary enthusiasts. Sign up by going to www.shuffle.do/NBN/joinG.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) if you wish to recommend an author (of a beautifully-written new novel) to interview, to listen to her previous podcast interviews, to read her mystery book reviews, or to check out some of her awesome recipes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Grand Duchess Maria Romanova arrives in Ekaterinburg in 1918 with her parents, the former Tsar Nicholas II and his wife, Alexandra. After months of house arrest in the deep interior of Russia, the family is beginning to despair of ever being rescued. As conditions worsen, Maria and her family are increasingly at the mercy of the men set to guard them. As the pro-monarchist White Army approaches Ekaterinburg, the fate of the Romanovs hangs in the balance.Thousands of miles away and six decades later, Australian Val Doyle has her hands full with an abusive husband, a small daughter, and a mystery surrounding her recently deceased father, who died claiming, “I didn’t want to kill her!” The only clues to what may have happened are a vintage camera with a roll of film still in it and an exquisite jeweled box that refuses to open.Veteran novelist Gill Paul unravels the stories of Maria and Val in The Lost Daughter(William Morrow, 2019), a meticulously researched, engrossing novel set in Russia, China, and Australia, which follows her highly popular 2016, The Secret Wife, in which she imagined an alternative history for Maria’s elder sister, Grand Duchess Tatiana. As Val finds the courage to defend herself against her husband, so too, does Maria mature into a strong, self-sufficient woman, though in a vastly different setting than the one imagined for a Romanov Grand Duchess.The Lost Daughter is a thoroughly satisfying read: Romanov fans will rejoice at this latest iteration of the alternative narrative; one which elevates the genre considerably. Gill Paul’s deft plot twists as Val tries to solve her father’s mystery are rewarding and perfectly crafted, as is the marvelous detail Paul brings to the sweep of twentieth-century history.Gill Paul’s best-selling historical novels have been translated into twenty languages. They are set in recent history and feature real historical characters presented innovatively. Gill is a native of Scotland, but today makes her home in London. She is a popular speaker on subjects such as the British Royal Family, the Romanovs, and writing. Follow Gill on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or visit her website.Jennifer Eremeeva is an American expatriate writer who writes about travel, food, lifestyle, and Russian history and culture with bylines in Reuters, Fodor’s, USTOA, The Moscow Times, and Russian Life. She is the in-house travel blogger for Alexander & Roberts, and the award-winning author of Lenin Lives Next Door: Marriage, Martinis, and Mayhem in Moscow and Have Personality Disorder, Will Rule Russia: A Pocket Guide to Russian History. Follow Jennifer on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook or visit jennifereremeeva.com for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

In Cadwell Turnbull’s The Lesson (Blackstone Publishing, 2019), the U.S. Virgin Islands serve as Earth’s entry point for the Ynaa, beings from a far corner of the universe whose intentions and desires are as complex as the humans who come to loathe them.The Ynaa (pronounced EE-nah) claim to come in peace, but there are echoes of colonization in the way they manipulate humans with fear and violence. And just as attitudes toward European colonization are reflected in the use of words like “discover” versus “invade,” so too do Virgin Islanders debate whether the Ynaa violently “invaded” or more neutrally “arrived.”Humans are no match—either physically or technologically—for the Ynaa, yet that doesn’t stop some angry (and one might argue foolish) homo sapiens from trying to thwart them. Turnbull treats human and Ynaa with an even hand, offering cultural and psychological insights into the nature of toxic masculinity and the Ynaa’s bursts of extreme violence.Even though Turnbull is from the U.S. Virgin Islands, he initially avoided it as a setting for his fiction. But when a teacher in his MFA program “recommended to me quite nicely that I should write about my own experience,” he found himself crafting stories that eventually turned into The Lesson.“I guess it's inevitable that once I started writing about home, something clicked for me. I think that my giving myself the opportunity to have that conversation with the place where I was from allowed me to find my way into storytelling in a way that I feel is more meaningful. I think lot of the things that I was trying to explore in the novel—faith and sexuality and relationships and violence and toxic masculinity—all these things are things that I have had to explore within myself.”(Note: In the interview, we talk about Hurricane Dorian as if it were a relatively minor storm. The interview was conducted on August 28, the day Tropical Storm Dorian moved through the U.S. Virgin Islands and turned into a hurricane. The U.S. Virgin Islands were not substantially affected, but four days later, Hurricane Dorian turned into a devastating Category 5 storm that inflicted catastrophic damage on the Bahamas. --RW)Rob Wolf is the author of The Alternate Universe and The Escape. A former journalist, he directs communications at a non-profit dedicated to justice reform. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Today, I’m talking with Chelene Knight. She’s written a new memoir called Dear Current Occupant (Book*hug, 2018). And as her title suggests, it’s a letter of sorts, one written to those people who might now be occupying one of many places she and her family lived back when she was growing up in downtown Vancouver’s eastside, and in this sense, her memoir is a map of the city, allowing us to see into lives and loves and struggles we might otherwise never see. But Dear Current Occupant is also a letter to Knight’s younger selves, to the girl and eventually young woman who lived in these places and who struggled to discover who she was and who she could be. The result of this correspondence is a rich and multifaceted account of what it means to become a strong writer and, in Knight’s words, “a strong black woman.” Knight’s book combines poetry, prose, maps, photographs, and other media to tell a singular story that could be told in no other way, to make visible what she calls “the cracks in the narrative,” which, in the end, hold the truth of her story and perhaps her very self.Eric LeMay is on the creative writing faculty at Ohio University. His work ranges from food writing to electronic literature. He is the author of three books, most recently In Praise of Nothing: Essay, Memoir, and Experiments (Emergency Press, 2014). He can be reached at eric@ericlemay.org. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Melissa Albert's novel The Hazel Wood(Flatiron Books, 2018) is a shivery delight, like a dazzling vintage ball gown of paisley silk, slithering over your head. Reading it is like drowning in musk rose petals and damson wine.It begins in an almost conventional manner, with a missing person mystery. Alice and her mother, Ella, live a peripatetic existence, which takes them from Nacogdoches, Texas to Brooklyn, New York. Alice copes with the frequent moves by becoming a loner, though she feels a fierce loyalty to her mother, and curiosity about her grandmother, a mysterious reclusive writer of fairy tales. When Ella meets and marries Harold, Alice and she stay still long enough for her past to catch up with them. One day Ella disappears, abducted in front of Harold. This is no ordinary kidnapping though, as Alice and her friend Finch soon find out. Their search for Ella takes them deeper and deeper into another reality, and the secrets of Alice’s origin, and things start to get really weird.Gabrielle Mathieu is the author of the historical fantasy Falcon series and the upcoming epic fantasy, Girl of Fire. She blogs about travel and her books at http://gabriellemathieu.com/. You can also follow her on Twitter to get updates about new podcasts and more @GabrielleAuthor. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Shmuel Yosef Agnon (1888-1970) was born in Buczacz, Eastern Galicia (now part of Ukraine). Yiddish was the language of his home, and Hebrew the language of the Bible and the Talmud which he studied formally until the age of nine. His knowledge of German literature came from his mother, and his love of the teachings of Maimonides and the Hassidim came from his father. In 1908 he left for Palestine, where, except for an extended stay in Germany from 1912 to 1924, he lived until his death.Agnon began writing stories when he was quite young. His first major publication, Hakhnasat Kalah (The Bridal Canopy), 1922, re-creates the golden age of Hassidism, and his apocalyptic novel, Oreach Nata Lalun (A Guest for the Night), 1939, depicts the ruin of Galicia after WWI. Much of Agnon’s other writing is set in Palestine. Israel’s early pioneers are portrayed in his epic Temol Shilshom (Only Yesterday), 1945, considered his greatest work, and in the surreal stories of Sefer Hamaasim (The Book of Deeds), 1932. Agnon also published work on the Jewish holy days Yamin Noraim (Days of Awe), 1938, on the giving of the Torah, Atem Reitem (Present at Sinai), 1959, and on the gathering of Hassidic lore, Sifreihem Shel Tzadikim (Books of the Righteous) and Sippurei HaBesht (Stories of the Baal Shem Tov), 1960-1961. Considered one of the greatest Hebrew writers, in 1966, Agnon was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.Rabbi Jeffrey Saks is the Director of Research at the Agnon House in Jerusalem and served as the Series Editor of The S.Y. Agnon Library at The Toby Press, now complete in 15 volumes. He is the founding director of The Academy for Torah Initiatives and Directions in Jewish Education, in Jerusalem, and its WebYeshiva.org program. Rabbi Saks was recently appointed as Editor of Tradition, the premier journal of Orthodox Jewish thought published in English. After earning his BA, MA, and rabbinic degrees from Yeshiva University, Rabbi Saks moved to Israel and has served on the faculties of several high schools and yeshivot, edited several books, and published widely on Jewish thought, education, and literature. Rabbi Saks lives in Efrat with his wife Ilana Goldstein Saks and their four children. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Two sisters are struggling to save their land when a gas well explodes on a neighboring ranch in western Colorado, setting off a disturbing chain of events. Their father has died, the older sister has become unraveled and the younger sister is mauled by an angry cow. Her ex-boyfriend is buying up oil and gas rights and downplays a spate of cancer-related deaths near his wells. The company offers the sisters bottled water when the river starts bubbling. There’s also an Iraqi war veteran who helps the sisters while he’s on probation from his job as a police officer, putting his own marriage at risk. This is a moving debut novel about family, land, and the preservation of both in rural America.Award-winning journalist Rebecca Clarren has been writing about the rural West for twenty years. Her journalism, for which she has won the Hillman Prize, an Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellowship, and nine grants from the Fund for Investigative Journalism, has appeared in such publications as MotherJones, High Country News, The Nation, and Salon.com. Her debut novel, Kickdown (Arcade, 2018) was shortlisted for the PEN/Bellwether Prize. She lives in Portland, Ore. with her husband and two young sons. When she’s not writing, Rebecca can be found hiking, running with friends, or telling people what books to read.If you enjoyed today’s podcast and would like to discuss it further with me and other New Books network listeners, please join us on Shuffle. Shuffle is an ad-free, invite-only network focused on the creativity community. As NBN listeners, you can get special access to conversations with a dynamic community of writers and literary enthusiasts. Sign up by going here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature