New Books in Literature

Alix E. Harrow’s new novel Starling House (Tor Books, 2023) is named for the infamous old mansion in the otherwise unremarkable town of Eden, Kentucky. For years the house has haunted the dreams of our protagonist, Opal, a reluctant resident of Eden who is focused on building a better life for her younger brother–one that would get him both out of the motel room where they live and out of Eden entirely. When the elusive Arthur Starling offers Opal a job caring for the manor, she decides the money is worth the risk.In this interview, Harrow explores the role of the gothic in fantasy and writing at the intersection of genres. We discuss the portrayal of sibling relationships in fiction, writing about contemporary Kentucky, and the legacy of coal companies. We chat about the way rumors around powerful women in small towns develop, the differences between libraries in stories and in real life, and the role of cleaning in fantasy novelsStarling House is a thoroughly good time and it was so fun getting to talk about it with the author.A. E. Lanier is a short fiction writer and educator living in Central Texas. More about her work can be found at aelanier.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Derek Askey is an associate editor on staff at The Sun magazine, located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.What qualifies as a Sun essay? As noted by my guest, odds are that means an essay that’s intimate, even raw, with an author who dares to leave a lot of themselves on the page. In Derek Askey’ case, he’s often drawn to an essay with a mix of moods and writing that “looks you in the eye.” Of the three essays discussed, “Lawn Skeletons” by Tom McAllister might seem the most whimsical. How much can you learn from your neighbors’ outdoor decorations and lawn signs, after all? A lot is the answer, as the author goes deeper into also questioning his identity. The second essay discussed here, “The Ice Age” takes on the topic of depression and how even peeling an orange can prove difficult. A third essay, Daniel Donaghy’s “Fire” considers the physical, emotional and even spiritual costs of being poor and, at times, literally having to fight your way out of poverty. As James Baldwin has noted, it’s very expensive to be poor in many ways beyond the financial angle. The bonus round here? That would be Derek recounting his interview of Lynn Casteel Harper regarding dementia, which The Sun’s founder Sy Safransky is now beginning to deal with himself.Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of ten books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Astrid Blodgett is the author of the short story collections This Is How You Start to Disappear (U Alberta Press, 2023) and You Haven’t Changed a Bit (U Alberta Press, 2013). Her stories have appeared in many Canadian literary magazines, and in translation in Inostrannaya Literatura, a Russian journal that publishes foreign writers. One of her stories is part of the Danish Royal Ministry of Education’s English exams and now the educational textbook Connect (in the chapter on "Puzzle Plots"!). Her work has been short- or long-listed for the Writers’ Guild of Alberta Howard O’Hagan Award for Short Story, a ReLit Award*, the Danuta Gleed Literary Award*, and the High Plains Book Award* for Short Stories. She is also a co-author of Recipes for Roaming: Adventure Food for the Canadian Rockies. For many years she co-hosted a literary salon in her home. Astrid also loves multi-day river trips and very long walks. She lives in Edmonton / amiskwaciwâskahikan.Judith Tanen is an LP candidate at the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Richard Hoffman is the creative nonfiction editor at Solstice and is the author of seven books, including two memoirs and four books of poetry. He’s won a Massachusetts Book Award for his poetry and is an Emeritus Writer in Residence at Emerson College.Over the 16 years that Richard Hoffman has been involved with Solstice, he’s happily seen it evolve to be ever more conscious of including more diverse voices in a literary conversation that was once upon a time literally “segregated.” For him, the essay form is often most attractive when a writer is positioning their personal content in a larger, societal context. In this episode, the focus was on two essays from the magazine and two other essays from Hoffman’s recent essay collection, Remembering the Alchemists. The Soltice essay “How Much Time Do You Want for Your Progress” by Allen M. Price uses repetitions of an entry in his childhood notebook to reflect on the negative impact of racism on his maturing psyche. Adrianna Paramo’s essay “A Minute of Silence” unflinchingly explores a time when her controlling mom had her receive a gynecological exam given her concerns about maintaining her daughter’s virginity. Hoffman’s two essays recounted here, “The Egg” and the title piece deal, respectively, with grieving over a lost opportunity to be closer to his now deceased mom and on how Eisenhower’s warning about the country’s “military-industrial complex” has come to complete, unfortunate fruition.Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of ten books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

On a slow autumn afternoon, an atmospheric physicist working at the Malta Weather Station receives a surprising email from a colleague working in the United Kingdom: something troubling has apparently been detected during one of their research flights. The ensuing meteorological mystery is the starting point for the science fiction novella The Clouds (Routledge, 2023). Alongside the novella, this book features three essays written by the same author that discuss in a more explicit and conventional way three philosophical ideas showcased in The Clouds: the expressive use of fictional games within fictional worlds; the possibility for existential meaning within simulated universes; and the unnatural narratological trope of "unhappening." With its unique format, this book is a fresh reflection on the mediatic form of philosophy and a compelling argument for the philosophical value of fiction.Rudolf Inderst is a professor of Game Design with a focus on Digital Game Studies at the IU International University of Applied Science, department lead for Games at Swiss culture magazine Nahaufnahmen.ch, editor of “DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist”, a weekly messenger newsletter about Game Culture and curator of @gamestudies at tiktok. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

How do fiction and research intersect? In The Frankfurt Kabuff Critical Edition (Wilfrid Laurier University Press 2023), Beth Driscoll, an Associate Professor in Publishing, Communications and Arts Management at the University of Melbourne and Claire Squires a Professor in Publishing Studies at the University of Stirling, reflect on Blaire Squiscoll’s The Frankfurt Kabuff, by bringing together a collection of scholarly and creative responses to the original novella. Playfully critiquing the idea of a critical edition, from its form and content through to the book’s footnotes and index, the book offers a huge range of insights on the publishing industry. Showing how fiction can be research, art, satire, and a political project, the collection of essays and appendices are essential readings across the arts and humanities, as well as for anyone interested in publishing, fiction, and wanting to read a good erotic thriller!Find out more about the writing partnership of Blaire Squiscoll and their philosophy of Ullapoolism and the Ullapoolism manifesto.Dave O'Brien is Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries, at the University of Manchester. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Kathleen Collins talks about her debut novel Study in Hysteria (Vine Leaves Press, 2024)). In the middle of 1974, Flora is privileged and middle-aged in a liberation-hued America, and feels both compelled by and left out of the women’s movement. She finds it difficult to activate her limited supply of empathy as she contends with a clandestine and unlikely friendship, a worrisome health scare, a domineering and philandering psychiatrist husband or her own distant daughter.Flora's secret foray into psychotherapy does nothing to halt the sense that there is a better life for her somewhere else, in some parallel existence. Through the continuum of psychological diagnoses, she is lost in the murky place between contentment and discontentment, normal and abnormal.Is her state of mind a clinical, diagnosable condition, or common malaise? Perhaps she'll find out if she stops resisting to share herself with those who love her.Rebekah Buchanan is a Professor of English and Director of English Education at Western Illinois University. Her research focuses on feminism, activism, and literacy practices in youth culture, specifically through zines and music. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

It’s the UConn Popcast, and today we discuss Prophet Song (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2023), Paul Lynch’s Booker Prize winning novel about a totalitarian regime coming to power in Ireland. We discuss the novel’s theorization of individual rights and political power, its success in depicting a family’s unraveling and its failures in telling a broader, more universal story. Why have critics lauded this novel, and who is its intended audience? More fundamentally, what is the role of literary fiction in popular culture?The UConn Popcast is proud to be sponsored by the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute. Check out the institute’s Popular Culture Initiative. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

I’ve interviewed Andrea Penrose before about her mysteries set in the Regency period—most notably, her ongoing series starring the Earl of Wrexford and Lady Charlotte Sloane. In this latest novel, she takes a break from dead bodies and the complicated plots associated with them to tackle a real-life question: how did a supposedly sheltered nineteenth-century aristocrat defy all of society’s expectations that she marry to suit her family and instead craft a life that suited herself?The titular Diamond of this fictional biography is Lady Hester Stanhope, tagged even today with adjectives such as “notorious” and “eccentric.” After her politically radical and mentally unstable father threatens her with a knife, Lady Hester flees her country estate for London. There—with the help of the noted dandy Beau Brummell during a previous visit—she has already acquired a reputation as outspoken, passionate, and “different.” At twenty-four, she is also regarded as almost too old to wed, but her ties to the politically powerful Pitt family, which boasts two prime ministers among its ranks, mean that she is still a “catch” for men of ambition.Lady Hester wants none of it. She’d rather dress in men’s clothes and sneak out to prize fights with her cousin Camelford, known to society as the “Half-Mad Lord,” or ride hell-for-leather across the moors. And so the stage is set for what will become, over the course of the book, a spectacular and wholly unconventional life.Penrose’s decision to focus on Lady Hester’s time in England, rather than her later and better-known sojourn abroad, makes sense in dramatic terms because that’s where the character change happens. And the author does a wonderful job of balancing the demands of history against the requirements for a good novel. Lady Hester is herself a diamond: brilliant and multifaceted, but also cutting and razor-sharp. Although not always likable, she is unforgettable—just as she must have been in real life. I rooted for her all the way, even when I wanted to shake her and say, “Are you nuts? Why would you do that?!”Andrea Penrose is the bestselling author of Regency-era historical fiction, including the acclaimed Wrexford & Sloane mystery series. The Diamond of London (Kensington Books, 2024) is her latest novel.C. P. Lesley is the author of two historical fiction series set during the childhood of Ivan the Terrible and four other novels. Her latest book—The Merchant’s Tale, co-written with P.K. Adams—appeared in November 2023. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Christine Evans' Nadia (U Iowa Press, 2023) is a dark novel about how the trauma of war follows people no matter how far they’ve fled. A few years after the Balkan War, two refugees from Sarajevo are temping in the same questionable London office. Nadia, who is Bosnian, is unhinged by memories of starvation, deprivation, and losing everyone she loved, including her family and her girlfriend, Sanja. She sees potential snipers and visions of Sanja throughout London, sometimes becoming unhinged by it. All she has is her office friends, and the Indian family where she has tea with buns every day. Iggy was a Serbian sniper who gunned down Bosnians as part of a militaristic street gang, but he justifies all the innocent people he kills by weighing them against the people he saved by distracting his friends or purposefully missing. They’re both forced to confront their choices during the chaotic days of the war, but Nadia still struggles with survivor’s guilt, the ethical choices she made in taking a job in a shady office, and her queer sexuality.Christine Evans writes internationally produced plays, opera libretti, and fiction. Christine’s theater and opera work has been staged at the Sydney Opera House, the American Repertory Theater and many other venues, and her plays are published by Samuel French. She is a multiple MacDowell fellow, VCCA fellow, and a recipient of several DC Council on the Arts & Humanities Fellowships. Originally from Australia, she is a Professor of Performing Arts at Georgetown University, and lives in Washington, DC. She loves the ocean beyond all reason, dreams of dividing her time (as they say on the book jackets) between DC and Australia and has just dusted off her mandolin to start playing music again. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature