New Books in Literature

Dong Li’s The Orange Tree (U Chicago Press, 2023) is a collection of narrative poems that braids forgotten legends, personal sorrows, and political upheavals into a cinematic account of Chinese history as experienced by one family. Amid chaos and catastrophe, the child narrator examines a yellowed family photo to find resemblances and learns a new language, inventing compound words to conjure and connect family stories. These invented words and the calligraphy of untranslated Chinese characters appear in lists separating the book’s narrative sections. This lyrical and experimental collection transcends the individual, placing generations of family members and anonymous others together in a single moment that surpasses chronological time and offering intimate perspectives on times that resonate with our own. The result is an unflinching meditation on family history, collective trauma, and imaginative recovery.In this conversation, Dong and Anna discuss landscape and memory, family and history, and poetry as a medium for storytelling and as a language all its own.Dong Li is a multilingual author who translates from Chinese, English, French, and German. Born and raised in China, he was educated at Deep Springs College and Brown University. His poems have been published by Conjunctions, Fence, Kenyon Review, POETRY, and elsewhere. He has served as the Olive B. O’Connor Fellow in creative writing at Colgate University and is a recipient of fellowships from Akademie Schloss Solitude, Camargo and Humboldt Foundations, MacDowell, PEN/Heim Translation Fund, Yaddo, and others. His debut poetry collection, The Orange Tree (University of Chicago Press, March 2023), was the inaugural winner of the Phoenix Emerging Poet Book Prize.Anna Zumbahlen lives in Albuquerque and works in book marketing and publicity at the University of Chicago Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Frank, conversational, and darkly funny, Gravitas examines the tendency of MFA programs to teach women that their lives aren’t worth writing about. These poems bear witness not only to alienation but also to the bittersweet joy of being forced to invent alternative ways of living and writing.Amy Berkowitz is the author of Gravitas (Éditions du Noroît / Total Joy, 2023) and Tender Points (Nightboat Books, 2019). She lives in San Francisco, where she co-hosts the Light Jacket Reading Series. She's working on a novel that she likes to call Untitled Bisexual Jumpsuits Project.Anna Zumbahlen lives in Albuquerque and works in book marketing and publicity at the University of Chicago Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Patrick Horrigan’s novel, American Scholar (Lethe Press 2023) centers on James (Jimmy) Fitzgerald, who teaches American Literature at a prestigious university, is in a happy (open) marriage that allows him to enjoy a much younger boyfriend, and has just published a novel about literary critic, Harvard Professor of History and Literature, F.O. Matthiesen, who was forced to hide his love for artist Russell Cheney during a time before homosexual love and marriage were accepted. The sister of Jimmy’s first serious boyfriend shows up at a book signing for Jimmy’s new novel and hands him a letter that sends him spinning back to memories of the first man he ever loved. James describes his sexual awakening and recalls haunting moments with Gregory, whose self-destructive personality was part of Jimmy’s impetus for writing American Scholar. Horrigan’s novel, which weaves in the study of Queer Theory, Jimmy’s sexual awakening, and fears of the AIDS virus then sweeping across the globe. Horrigan whips back and forth from that difficult time to 2016, when his now middle-aged protagonist is now a professor and published author, but political polarization following the presidential election has inspired new fears throughout the gay community.Born and raised in Reading, Pennsylvania, Patrick E. Horrigan received his BA from The Catholic University of America and his PhD from Columbia University. He is the author of the novel Pennsylvania Station (Lethe Press; Indie Book Award finalist for best LGBTQ2 fiction) and the novel Portraits at an Exhibition (Lethe Press; winner of the Dana Award for fiction as well as the Mary Lynn Kotz Art-in-Literature Award, sponsored by the Library of Virginia and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts). His other works include the memoir Widescreen Dreams: Growing up Gay at the Movies (University of Wisconsin Press), the play Messages for Gary: A Drama in Voicemail, and (with Eduardo Leanez) the solo show “You Are Confused”! He has written artists’ catalogue essays for Thion’s LIMI-TATE: DRAWINGS OF LIFE AND DREAMS (cueB Gallery, London) and Ernesto Pujol’s LOSS OF FAITH (Galeria Ramis Barquet, New York). His essay “The Inner Life of Ordinary People” appears in Anthony Enns’ and Christopher R. Smit’s “Screening Disability: Essays on Cinema and Disability” (University Press of America). Horrigan and Eduardo Leanez are the hosts of “Actors with Accents”, a recurring variety show in Manhattan. Winner of Long Island University’s David Newton Award for Excellence in Teaching, he taught literature for twenty-five years at LIU Brooklyn. He has played the piano throughout his life and currently works as a tour guide at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, where he lives. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Bookshop.org is an online book retailer that donates more than 80% of its profits to independent bookstores. Launched in 2020, Bookshop.org has already raised more than $27,000,000. In this interview, Andy Hunter, founder and CEO discusses his journey to creating one of the most revolutionary new organizations in the book world. Bookshop has found a way to retain the convenience of online book shopping while also supporting independent bookstores that are the backbones of many local communities. Andy Hunter is CEO and Founder of Bookshop.org. He also co-created Literary Hub.Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Em X. Liu, a science fiction author, brings a twist to Shakespeare's Hamlet in their book, The Death I Gave Him. The novel is a murder mystery and emotional thriller, described as a character study. Liu discusses the unique approach of retelling Hamlet as a locked-room thriller, exploring fan fiction and the evolution of the retelling, the concept of a story within a story, and the impact of technology on society. They also discuss the agency of female characters, puns, genres, and possibilities of adapting the book into a play or screenplay.

At five years old, Kristal Brent Zook sat on the steps of a Venice Beach, California, motel trying to make sense of her white father’s abandonment, which left her feeling unworthy of a man’s love and of white protection. Raised by her working-class African American mother and grandmother, Zook was taught not to count on anyone, especially men. Men leave. Men disappoint. In adulthood she became a feminist, activist, and “race woman” journalist in New York City. Despite her professional success, something was missing. Coming to terms with her identity was a constant challenge.The Girl in the Yellow Poncho: A Memoir (Duke UP, 2023) is Zook’s coming-of-age tale about what it means to be biracial in America. Throughout, she grapples with in-betweenness while also facing childhood sexual assault, economic insecurity, and multigenerational alcoholism and substance abuse on both the Black and white sides of her family. Her story is one of strong Black women—herself, her cousin, her mother, and her grandmother—and the generational cycles of oppression and survival that seemingly defined their lives.Setting out on an inner journey that takes her across oceans and continents, Zook tells the story of a little girl who never gives up on love, even long after it seems to have been destroyed. In the end she triumphs, reconciling with her father and mother to create the family of her dreams through forgiveness and sheer force of will. A testament to the power of settling into one’s authentic identity, this book tells a story of a daughter’s lifelong yearning, a mother’s rediscovery of lost love, and the profound power of atonement and faith to heal a broken family.Katrina Anderson is a doctoral candidate at the University of Delaware. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

In his debut novel, Hush Harbor (Hannover Square Press, 2023), Anise Vance takes readers inside a race revolution as a resistance group takes America's racial reckoning into its own hands. After the murder of an unarmed Black teenager by the hands of the police, protests spread like wildfire in Bliss City, New Jersey. A full-scale resistance group takes control of an abandoned housing project and decide to call it Hush Harbor, in homage to the secret spaces their enslaved ancestors would gather to pray. Jeremiah Prince, alongside his sister Nova, are leaders of the revolution, but have ideological differences regarding how the movement should proceed. When a new mayor with ties to white supremacists threatens the group's pseudo-sanctuary and locks the city down, the collective must come to a decision for their very survival. Haunting, provocative, heart-pounding and tender, Hush Harbor presents a high-stakes world grounded on the thought-provoking premise: What would you sacrifice in the name of justice?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

Today I talked to Kathleen Osberger about her book I Surrender: A Memoir of Chile's Dictatorship, 1975 (Oribis Books, 2023).In 1975, Kathleen Osberger, who’d just graduated from Notre Dame University, flew to Chile to teach in a Catholic school in Santiago. She was assigned to live with several religious women, and when she arrived, was told that they would sometimes shelter dissidents who were wanted by the secret police. This was after the CIA assisted coup that overthrew democratically elected president, Salvador Allende in 1973. Augusto Pinochet then ruled Chile as a dictator, clamping down on unrest, journalists, and critics. Those who tried tried to protect some of these dissidents from detention, torture, disappearance, and death were considered traitors and received the same punishment. Kathy Osberger learned all this, but she still wasn’t prepared when the secret police came with a warrant for her arrest, forced her into a car, and handed her a blindfold. They soon let her go, but everyone knew they’d come back, and she had to disappear.Kathleen Osberger earned her B.A. at the University of Notre Dame, an M.A. from Maryknoll School of Theology, and an A.M. from the University of Chicago–School of Social Work Administration. Her life was shaped by volunteer experiences when she lived in San Miguelito, Panamá; Santiago, Chile; Chimbote, Perú and the South Bronx. In 1987 she began a seventeen-year relationship with the Maryknoll Lay Missioners as an instructor in their orientation to mission program and in 1993 she joined the University of Chicago Hospitals—Department of Psychiatry. Her work as a licensed clinical social worker and psychotherapist has centered on the issues of trauma and torture.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Saleh, the narrator of Out of Mesopotamia (Akashic Books, 2020), is a middle-aged Iranian journalist who moonlights as a writer for one of Iran's most popular TV shows but cannot keep himself away from the front lines in neighboring Iraq and Syria. There, the fight against the Islamic State is a proxy war, an existential battle, a declaration of faith, and, for some, a passing weekend affair.After weeks spent dodging RPGs, witnessing acts of savagery and stupidity, Saleh returns to civilian life in Tehran but finds it to be an unbearably dislocating experience. Pursued by his official handler from state security, opportunistic colleagues, and the woman who broke his heart, Saleh has reason to again flee from everyday life. Surrounded by men whose willingness to achieve martyrdom both fascinates and appalls him, Saleh struggles to make sense of himself and the turmoil in his midst.An unprecedented glimpse into "endless war" from a Middle Eastern perspective, Out of Mesopotamia follows in the tradition of the Western canon of martial writers--from Hemingway and Orwell to Tim O'Brien and Philip Caputo--but then subverts and expands upon the genre before completely blowing it apart. Drawing from his firsthand experience of being embedded with Shia militias on the ground in Iraq and Syria, Abdoh gives agency to the voiceless while offering a meditation on war that is moving, humane, darkly funny, and resonantly true.AJ Woodhams hosts the "War Books" podcast. You can subscribe on Apple here and on Spotify here. War Books is on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. 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 Katherine Heiny about Games and Rituals: Stories (Knopf, 2023).The games and rituals performed by Heiny's characters range from mischievous to tender: In "Bridesmaid, Revisited," Marlee, suffering from a laundry and life crisis, wears a massive bridesmaid's dress to work. In "Twist and Shout," Erica's elderly father mistakes his four-thousand-dollar hearing aid for a cashew and eats it. In "Turn Back, Turn Back," a bedtime story coupled with a receipt for a Starbucks babyccino reveal a struggling actor's deception. And in "561," Charlene pays the true price of infidelity and is forced to help her husband's ex-wife move out of the family home. ("It's like you're North Korea and South Korea . . . But would North Korea help South Korea move?")Katherine Heiny is the author of Early Morning Riser, Standard Deviation, and Single, Carefree Mellow, a previous collection of short stories. Her fiction has been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, and many other places. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and children.Recommended Books and Podcasts: Katherine Newman, We All Want Impossible Things Elif Batuman, Either/Or Elizabeth Crane, This Story Will Change Celebrity Memoir Book Club (Podcast) Cold Case Murder Mysteries (Podcast) My Dad Wrote a Porno (Podcast) Mission to Zyxx (Podcast) 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