New Books in Literature

With insight, humor, formal invention, and lyricism, in A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2023), Viet Thanh Nguyen rewinds the film of his own life. He expands the genre of personal memoir by acknowledging larger stories of refugeehood, colonization, and ideas about Vietnam and America, writing with his trademark sardonic wit and incisive analysis, as well as a deep emotional openness about his life as a father and a son. At the age of four, Nguyen and his family fled his hometown of Ban Mê Thuột to become refugees in the USA. After being removed from his brother and parents and homed with a family on his own, Nguyen is later allowed to resettle into his own family in suburban San José. But there is violence hidden behind the sunny façade of what he calls AMERICA™. One Christmas Eve, when Nguyen is nine, while watching cartoons at home, he learns that his parents have been shot while working at their grocery store, the Sài Gòn Mới. As a teenager, films about the American War in Vietnam such as Apocalypse Now threw him into an existential crisis: how can he be both American and Vietnamese, both the killer and the person being killed? As his parents age, he worries increasingly about their comfort and care, and realizes that some of their older wounds are reopening. Profound in its emotions and brilliant in its thinking about cultural power, A Man of Two Faces explores the necessity of both forgetting and of memory in the life story of one of the most original and important writers working today.Viet Thanh Nguyen is most famous for his novel The Sympathizer which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and scores of other awards. His other books include Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War (a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award in General Nonfiction), Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America, the bestselling short story collection The Refugees, and The Committed, a sequel The Sympathizer. He co-authored Chicken of the Sea, a children’s book, with his then six-year-old son, Ellison. HBO is turning The Sympathizer into a TV series directed by Park Chan-wook of Oldboy fame. For a day-job, Dr. Nguyen is the Aerol Arnold Chair of English and a Professor of English, American Studies and Ethnicity, and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California. Dr. Nguyen has been the recipient of many fellowships including the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations. But most importantly, this is the third time I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing him for the New Books Network. Search through the back catalog to hear us talk about his novels and, my favorite Viet Thanh Nguyen Book, Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War.Michael G. Vann is a professor of world history at California State University, Sacramento. A specialist in imperialism and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, he is the author of The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empires, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam (Oxford University Press, 2018). When he’s not reading or talking about new books with smart people, Mike can be found surfing in Santa Cruz, California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Annie, Edward, and their young daughter, Rose, live in a cramped apartment. One night, without warning, they find a beautiful terrace hidden in their closet. It wasn't there before, and it seems to only appear when their friend Stephanie visits. A city dweller's dream come true! But every extra bit of space has a hidden cost, and the terrace sets off a seismic chain of events, forever changing the shape of their tiny home, and the shape of the world.Terrace Story follows the characters who suffer these repercussions and reverberations: the little family of three, their future now deeply uncertain, and those who orbit their fragile universe. The distance and love between these characters expands limitlessly, across generations. How far can the mind travel when it's looking for something that is gone? Where do we put our loneliness, longing, and desire? What do we do with the emotions that seem to stretch beyond the body, beyond the boundaries of life and death?Based on the National Magazine Award-winning story, Hilary Leichter's profound second novel asks how we nurture love when death looms over every moment. From one of our most innovative and daring writers, Terrace Story (Ecco, 2023) is an astounding meditation on loss, a reverie about extinction, and a map for where to go next.Hilary Leichter is the author of the novel Temporary, which was a finalist for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Prize, and was longlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Hilary’s other writings have appeared in The New Yorker, n+1, The New York Times, Conjunctions and Harper’s Magazine. She has been awarded fellowships from Yaddo, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She teaches at Columbia University where she is the Undergraduate Creative Writing Adviser in Fiction.Recommendations: Alexandra Chang, Tomb Sweeping Yuri Herrara, Ten Planets 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 as World Literature, is under contract 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

Jake Lancaster speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about his story “Grace’s Folly,” which appears in The Common’s most recent issue. Jake talks about writing stories that lean into the offbeat, uncomfortable, and sometimes grotesque parts of his characters and their lives. He also discusses his writing and revision process—carving away at long first drafts until all that’s left is essential—and his work teaching writing at the University of Minnesota.Jake Lancaster is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he was awarded the Henfield Prize for Fiction. His short stories have appeared in Forever Magazine, heavy traffic, The Southampton Review, Sierra Nevada Review, and X-R-A-Y. He lives with his family in Minneapolis.­­Read Jake’s story “Grace’s Folly” in The Common at thecommononline.org/graces-folly.Follow Jake on Twitter @jakelancasterrr and learn more about him at jake-lancaster.squarespace.com/about.The 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 debut novel is forthcoming from Putnam Books. Her stories appear in the Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, Tin House Online, and Mississippi Review. She is a 2022 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Jessica Hendry Nelson, Joy Rides through the Tunnel of Grief (University of Georgia Press, 2023) is a compelling memoir in essays. When Nelson's father died from an accident caused by complications of alcoholism, she knew immediately she had inherited his love-that it left his body, traveled through the air, and entered her own. And so, she needed a place to put it. She needed to know what to do with it, how not to waste it, how to make something with it, how to honor it and put language to it. So, she placed it with her brother, Eric, whose opioid addiction made his death feel always imminent. With her partner, Jack, together for thirteen years. With her exhausted, nicotine-addicted mother, her best friend Jessie, women at the gym she never met but loved completely. But mostly with her future child, the one she does not yet have but deeply wants. The child who is both the question of love-and the answer to it. So, when Jack suddenly confesses that he does not want to have children-not with her, not ever-the someday vessel for her boundless and insatiable love hunger swiftly disappears, taking with it a fundamental promise of her life: motherhood. Joy Rides through the Tunnel of Grief catalyzes from this place. Fluidly navigating through past, present, and future, Nelson asks: Where does her desire to have a child come from? Are the imperatives to make art and to make a child born from the same searching place? Are they both masked and misguided attempts to thwart death? Nelson investigates the tremulous makings and unmakings of our most intense and fragile bonds-family, friends, lovers-with searing insight, humor, and tenderness. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Today’s book is A Calm and Normal Heart: Stories (The Unnamed Press, 2022) by Chelsea T. Hicks. The heroes of A Calm and Normal Heart are modern-day adventurers—seeking out new places to call their own inside a nation to which they do not entirely belong. A member of the Osage tribe, Hicks’ stories are compelled by an overlooked diaspora happening inside America itself: that of young Native people. In stories like “Superdrunk,” “Tsexope,” and “Wets’a,” iPhone lifestyles co-mingle with ancestral connection, strengthening relationships or pushing people apart, while generational trauma haunts individual paths. Broken partnerships and polyamorous desire signal a fraught era of modern love, even as old ways continue to influence how people assess compatibility. In “By Alcatraz,” a Native student finds herself alone on campus over Thanksgiving break, seeking out new friendships during a national holiday she does not recognize. Leaping back in time, “A Fresh Start Ruined” inhabits the life of Florence, an Osage woman attempting to hide her origins while social climbing in midcentury Oklahoma. And in “House of RGB” a young professional settles into a new home, intent on claiming her independence after a break-up, even if her ancestors can’t seem to get out of her way. Whether in between college semesters or jobs, on the road to tribal dances or escaping troubled homes, characters occupy a complicated and often unreliable terrain.Our guest is: Chelsea T. Hicks, who is a Wahzhazhe writer and citizen of the Osage Nation. She holds an MA from UC Davis and an MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her writing has been published in The Paris Review, Poetry, McSweeney’s, and elsewhere. A Calm and Normal Heart is her first book. It was longlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection and received a 5 Under 35 award from the National Book Foundation. She lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma on ancestral land.Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore what stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell. She is the producer and show-host of the Academic Life podcasts.Listeners to this episode may be interested in: Institute of American Indian Arts National Book Foundation Becoming the Writer You Already Are, by Michelle Boyd This conversation with Morgan Talty about Night of the Living Rez Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey--and beyond! Join us to learn from experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 175+ Academic Life episodes? You’ll find them all archived here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

When poet Jane Hirshfield first arrived at Tassajara Monastery nearly fifty years ago, a Zen teacher told her that it was a good idea to have a question to practice with. She’s been asking questions ever since. Both in her Zen practice and in her poetry, Hirshfield is guided by questions that resist easy answers, allowing herself to be transformed through the process of asking and paying attention. With her latest poetry collection, The Asking: New and Selected Poems, she takes up the question, “How can I be of service?,” inviting readers to resist fixity and certainty and instead to dwell in not-knowing.In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Hirshfield to talk about the questions she’s been asking recently, why she views poetry as an antidote to despair, and how Zen rituals have informed her creative process. Plus, she reads a few poems from her new collection.Tricycle Talks is a monthly podcast featuring prominent voices from within and beyond the Buddhist fold. Listen to more episodes here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

In The Heart of It All (Melville House, 2023), Christian Kiefer imagines a group of factory workers and their families living in a once vibrant Ohio town during the Trump era. The factory is the only place to work outside of Walmart, the grocery store, or a fast-food chain, and it’s owned by Mr. Marwat, a Pakistani man whose wife helps in the office, while their teenagers embrace American life. The family is upended when Mr. Marwat’s parents move in. The factory foreman, Tom Bailey, and his family’s lives are upended when their sick baby dies. Their daughter Janey’s life is upended when she befriends the only Black young man in the town. Mr. Marwat’s secretary Mary Lou’s life is upended when her mother moves into a nursing home and dies. All of their struggles are exacerbated by small injustices but eased by small kindnesses in this sweet and thoughtful glimpse into the lives of people just trying to get by.CHRISTIAN KIEFER’s novels have appeared on best of the year lists from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and Booklist and have received rave reviews in The Washington Post, Oprah.com, the San Francisco Chronicle, Brooklyn Rain, Library Journal, Huffington Post, and elsewhere. He is the author of the novels The Infinite Tides, The Animals, Phantoms, and the novella One Day Soon Time Will Have No Place Left to Hide. Christian is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize for his short fiction and has enjoyed a long second career in music, under the auspices of which he has collaborated with members of Smog, Pedro the Lion, DNA, 7 Seconds, John Zorn’s Naked City, Sun Kil Moon, Boxhead Ensemble, Califone, Cake, Kronos Quartet, Wilco, Low, Fun, Anathallo, and The Band, among many others. He holds a Ph.D. in American literature from the University of California at Davis and has served as contributing editor for Zyzzyva, fiction reader for VQR, and as the West Coast editor for The Paris Review. He teaches at American River College in Sacramento and is the Director of the Ashland University MFA.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

Hannah Kaner’s debut novel Godkiller (Harper Voyager, 2023) takes place in Middren, a country where gods have been banned as the result of a brutal civil war. The novel follows Kissen–a woman whose family were killed by zealots of a fire god and who now makes a living killing gods herself.In this interview, Kaner describes her interest in examining the aftermath of war and violence and the value of angry, ordinary female protagonists. She discusses the variety of gods in her novel and the way that characters’ shifting relationships with the natural world and divinity shape the politics and magic of Middren. We also chat about the role of food in fantasy novels, writing quest stories, and the ways that younger point of view characters shape stories written for adults.Godkiller is a thoughtful, empathetic book and it was a joy to discuss 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

"I wept as time stopped, and I wept as time refused to cease." Grieving her faith, her love, and her identity, twenty-one-year-old Scarlett V. Leonelli is devastated by an unexpected tragedy--one threatening to unravel her to her very core. Following a series of inexplicable synchronicities, Scarlett journeys deep into the jungle of a hidden village in Costa Rica where, far beyond the only reality she has ever known, she is forced to trust the path as it appears beneath her feet. Led by the sacred invitations in riddles of mysterious guides, romantic rendezvous, and enticing adventures, Scarlett falls into the belly of the Beast itself. Will Scarlett give in or choose to alchemize one of humanity's inevitable tragedies? The Alchemy of The Beast is the first installation of The Lionheart Chronicles, a series inspired by author Alyssa Noelle Coelho's own truth-seeking journey. Drawing upon her training in sociocultural anthropology and her own experiences as a Traveler, wrestling with the meaning of existence, love, connection, and contribution, Alyssa shines a light on the raw truths of the human condition and showcases the beauty of cultures worldwide.After sharing her first journey back to love in her 2016 #1 bestselling poetry compilation, CHOSEN, Death's breath sent twenty-one-year-old Alyssa Noelle Coelho on her first meaning-seeking mission around the world. Through her sociocultural anthropology training at UCSD and many seasons of disconnection with her soul and source, Alyssa unearthed some deeper truths behind the human experience and learned to alchemize her own tragedies into a greater sense of meaning and adventure.A poet and novelist, dancer and world traveler, she has been passionately immersing herself in cultures worldwide, studying their traditions and transformations through the lens of meaning and purpose for years. A lover of novelty and a delighter in the extraordinary, Alyssa uses the power of words and stories to romance humans into falling in love with their precious existence. She reminds us of our wild potential, of our hungry spirits, and of the entire world awaiting our unique gifts.As the Founder of Lionheart Creations, and Co-Founder and Lead Designer at Saved By Story Publishing, she serves messengers and enterprises on a mission to facilitate positive change in the world. She co-hosts the savory, storytelling madness of Sips of Story 'n Sanity podcast, showcasing the journeys of other Seekers and Creators from around the world.You can learn more about Alyssa's work here, as well as Instagram and Facebook.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

The riddles of desire, youth, old age, poverty, and wealth are laid bare in this radiant collection from a master of the form. From inner-city pawnshops to high-powered law firms, from the desert of California to the coast of France, The Flounder (Blackwater Press, 2023) paints a vivid portrait of how complex and poignant everyday life can be. Told in vibrant, incantatory prose, these moving, lyrical, and surprising stories teeter between desperation and hope, with Fulton showing us what lasts in an impermanent world.John Fulton is the author of four books of fiction, including Retribution, which won the Southern Review Short Fiction Award in 2001, the novel More Than Enough, which was a finalist for the Midland Society of Authors Award, and The Animal Girl, a collection of two novellas and three stories, which was a Story Prize Notable Book.His short fiction has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, twice cited for distinction in the Best American Short Stories, short-listed for the O. Henry Award, and published in numerous journals, including Zoetrope, Oxford American, and The Southern Review. He currently lives with his wife and daughter in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, and is a professor at the University of Massachusetts-Boston, where he directs the MFA Program in Creative Writing. And his most recent book of stories is The Flounder.Recommended Books: Morgan Talty, Night of the Living Rez Colin Barrett, Young Skins Natalia Ginsberg, Family William Trevor, Collected Stories 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 as World Literature, is under contract 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