Castle Hill Author Talks

New York Times Bestselling Author Mary Beth Keane talks about her newest, most personal novel yet: Whale Harbor , inspired by her father's lifelong regrets about leaving a younger brother behind when he left Ireland for New York as a teenager. Written with Keane's trademark empathy, wisdom, and crystalline prose, Whale Harbor is a sweeping, emotional family saga, a must-read for those who loved Ke...

Julie Orringer, the bestselling author of The Invisible Bridge, talks about her literary page-turner LUNA, PHOENIX, QUEEN, which The New York Times called "thrilling." A story of marital infidelity, literary theft, memory loss, and resilience, the novel also features an injured rescue dog who impacts the characters in profound and surprising ways. I absolutely loved this conversation (and obviousl...

In The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman, prize-winning short story writer Deesha Philyaw tells the outrageous, daring, and ultimately triumphant story of Scharisse Freeman, the wife of a popular and powerful megachurch pastor who upends her charmed “rags-to-Rolex” life when her secret past comes roaring into the spotlight. It's a satirical wild ride of a novel that packs an emotional punch,...

This week, host Karen Dukess tells an unfortunately true story about what AI fabricated about her and a recently published novel. After an end-of-summer break, we'll be back with more author interviews later this month.

In her instant NYT bestselling memoir,  Emilee Hackney offers a blisteringly honest, loving and unflinching portrait of her native Appalachia and the tumultuous adolescence that took her from  radical Pentecostalism to the classrooms of Harvard.  Emilee joins us to talk about the nuances of the  Appalachian region and people, the life of submission and repentance she would have...

The NYTimes bestselling author (The Nest, Good Company) discusses her fascination with the 1970s, when divorce came to her hometown of Rochester, New York: why it's great to be a late-blooming author; and what she does when the writing starts to feel like a slog. 

Annabel Monaghan, the NYT best-selling author of such runaway hits as Dolly All The Time and Nora Goes Off Script , is the queen of smart, witty, grown-up romance. In this wide-ranging interview, she talks about why she loves writing about women in their late thirties; how she copes with that inevitable panicky stage when her drafts feel disastrous; the novel she’d love to write, but never will; a...

A brilliant and gripping debut, Shannon Sanders' The Great Wherever is about a heartbroken and financially strapped millennial who inherits her father's share of a Tennessee farm purchased by her great-grandfather, one of the first Black landowners in his community. Shannon joins us to talk about the family farm that inspired the novel, the value of having a homestead even if no one lives there, a...

Truly a novel for our times, The Emilys is about motherhood, friendship, marriage, and community and how to navigate these things in a world that is forcing us to reckon with the physical environment in unsettling ways. If you're looking for a smart, speculative, literary page-turner, this episode is for you. Heather Abel’s second novel, The Emilys (Random House), came out inJune, 2026. Her debut...

If you’ve ever bemoaned the lure of your I-phone, you’re not alone. In this interview, Emmy-winning MSNOW host Chris Hayes explains how our attention is being extracted against our will for corporate gain. His NYT best-selling book The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource is a powerful reckoning with how the assault from attention capitalism on our minds and our...

London 1953: A boarding house, a dead body, and so many secrets. Reading Emma Garman's debut novel, The Kindness of Strangers, is like discovering a forgotten classic from the 1950s that was written with a surprisingly modern sensibility. An ingeniously plotted and moving story, this one's a must for mystery lovers.

Christina Baker Kline’s THE FOURSOME is a riveting novel based on the true story of the author’s distant relatives, sisters in 19th-century North Carolina who married conjoined twins, Chang and Eng Bunker, with whom they had 21 children. Christina Baker Kline joins us to discuss how she blended imagination and historical research, why she thinks this is ultimately a novel about slavery and complic...

Virginia Evans’ debut novel, THE CORRESPONDENT, was the breakout novel of 2025, and is now clocking 25 consecutive weeks on The New York Times bestseller list. In honor of the one-year anniversary of its publication, we’re running this live interview from last year, in which Virginia talks about why she wrote a novel in letters, how she survived years of rejection, and what inspired her to create...

John Kenney may not consider himself a humor writer, but his novel about a divorced obituary writer who accidentally posts his own obituary is very funny. In this interview, Kenney talks about why he loves writing about “middle-aged, slightly broken men,” the role of humor in coping with grief, how he became a contributor to The New Yorker after years of trying, and what contemporary novel he’s re...

Welcome to The Castle Hill Author Talks, a podcast celebrating great writers and great books. I'm your host, Karen Dukess, a bestselling author and a complete and total bookworm. For each episode, I interview a writer with a new book, maybe one you've heard about, and definitely one I think you should know about. My interviews are lively and fun with no spoilers. They're for readers and for writer...