fiction/non/fiction

Award-winning writers and longtime friends Vauhini Vara and Karan Mahajan join co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V. V. Ganeshananthan to discuss Vara’s recent New Yorker essay “What If Readers Like AI-Generated Fiction?” Vara explains recent research by scientist Tuhin Chakrabarty, who has attempted to fine-tune large language models to produce better writing by feeding them authors’ entire oeuvres. Sh...

Bestselling and award-winning writer Matthew Pearl joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss his new novel The Award . Pearl explores the relationship between cultural prizes and ideas of nationhood, as well as imposter syndrome and external validation, like MFAs, literary awards, and being seen writing in coffeeshops by and with other writers. He reflects on developing the...

Acclaimed fiction writer and long-time creative writing professor Elizabeth McCracken joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V. V. Ganeshananthan to discuss her ninth book and first volume about craft, A Long Game: Notes on Writing Fiction. McCracken reflects on her long-held reluctance to attempt such a project and the impossibility of creating absolute rules for writing. She explains why she doesn’t...

2025 Maya Angelou Book Award winner Alison C. Rollins joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V. V. Ganeshananthan to discuss her 2024 poetry collection Black Bell . She explores the history and symbolism of a bell-laden iron device used to control and torture enslaved people and describes the replica she created after studying metalworking. She also recounts the story of Harriet Jacobs, who spent seve...

Pulitzer Prize finalist Sven Beckert joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about his new book, Capitalism: A Global History. Beckert describes capitalism as an ongoing process comparable in significance to geological forces; he examines the way it shapes our interactions with the world and notes its presence in every aspect of daily life. He recounts how it has been influe...

Journalist Jacob Silverman joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about his new book, Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley . He discusses the rightward shift in ideology among leading tech giants and their companies, partially attributing the change to an interest in doing business with governments, including the U.S. and Israel. He speaks about t...

Poet and essayist Kathryn Nuernberger joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about her new collection of lyric essays, Held : Essays in Belonging , which is about symbiotic mutualisms, and grief and joy in an era of worsening climate change. She discusses COP30, the United Nations climate gathering currently underway in Brazil, and considers the global failure to keep warmi...

Translator Ottilie Mulzet joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about her award-winning translations of Nobel Prize winner László Krasznahorkai’s work . Mulzet, who was born in Canada and now lives in the Czech Republic, discusses how she learned Hungarian and began working with Krasznahorkai. She explains the humor in his novels and how his background in music shapes his...

Fiction writer Max Delsohn joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss his debut short story collection, Crawl, which features a number of transmasculine characters. Delsohn addresses the Trump administration’s broad and vicious assault on transgender Americans, from advertising misinformation to attacks on higher education. Given pending legislation, he considers how shiftin...

Graphic novelist Ben Passmore joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss his new graphic novel Black Arms To Hold You Up: A History of Black Resistance. Passmore explains the mix of personal reflection and historical storytelling in the book which follows the main character, a version of himself, time-traveling through a century of the Black radical tradition. Passmore talks...

New Yorker staff writer Jelani Cobb joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss his new essay collection, Three or More is a Riot: Notes on How We Got Here: 2012-2025 . Cobb recalls how he began the project by trying to understand how George Zimmerman’s killing of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin in 2012 set the tone for the era to come. Cobb considers how history’s exce...

Acclaimed fiction writer and essayist Edwidge Danticat joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss her new essay collection We’re Alone . Danticat reflects on misinformation and xenophobic rhetoric, such as Trump’s false 2024 debate claim about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, and how that type of language and propaganda has broadened during Trump’s second...

Fiction writer Yiming Ma joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss his new novel These Memories Do Not Belong To Us . Ma, who was born in Shanghai and visited China frequently after immigrating to the U.S. and Canada, talks about how terrifyingly easy it can be to live in a society in which censorship is the default, and the dangers of self-censorship. Ma, who has an MBA, a...

Journalist Caleb Gayle joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss his new book Black Moses: A Saga of Ambition and the Fight for a Black State , which recounts the efforts of Edward McCabe, a Black settler who became a prominent politician in the late 1800s and spearheaded a mission to establish a majority-Black state in the American West. Gayle sets the scene of McCabe’s up...

Writer Omar El Akkad joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss his recent nonfiction book, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, which was just nominated for the National Book Award in nonfiction. El Akkad talks about developing the arc of the book, which addresses how Israel’s genocide in Gaza led to his “breaking away from the notion that the polite, Weste...

Novelist Jessica Francis Kane joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss her new novel Fonseca, which fictionalizes writer Penelope Fitzgerald’s 1952 trip to Mexico. Kane talks about imagining Fitzgerald in her mid-thirties, before she had become a novelist, when she was living a financially precarious life and editing a journal with her husband Desmond. Kane reflects on Fit...

Fiction writer and editor Patrick Ryan joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss his debut novel, Buckeye, which traces two generations of two Midwestern families connected by a secret. Ryan recalls the coincidental conversation that informed his portrayal of one character’s experiences with disability in World War II-era Ohio, and reflects on taking Ann Patchett’s advice t...

New York Times book critics Jennifer Szalai and Alexandra Jacobs join co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss their recent article, “Love Jack Kerouac? Read These Great American Road Trip Books Next,” which they co-authored with their fellow critic Dwight Garner, and which includes books published after Kerouac's On the Road. They talk about road trips as escapism, claustrophob...

Biographer Nicholas Boggs joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss his groundbreaking new book, Baldwin: A Love Story, the first major biography of James Baldwin to be published in three decades. Boggs recalls how finding Baldwin’s only children’s book in a Yale library as a college student led him to track down the volume’s illustrator, the French artist Yoran Cazac, Bald...

Journalist Will Bardenwerper joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss his new book, Homestand: Small Town Baseball and the Fight for the Soul of America, which explores the consequences of Major League Baseball cutting 40 affiliated minor league teams, each one only as expensive as an average Major League salary. He explains how the accessibility and affordability of minor...

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Barbara Kingsolver joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss her support of Higher Ground, a long-term residence for women recovering from addiction. Kingsolver talks about Lee County, Virginia, which is both Higher Ground’s location and the setting for her wildly successful novel Demon Copperhead, which transforms Charles Dickens’ David Copp...

Vanity Fair journalist Dan Adler joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss his coverage of Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021 of facilitating Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse of minors. Adler explains how Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year sentence and was just interviewed by the Department of Justice, has recently emerged as a key figure in unlocking the p...

Acclaimed novelist Gary Shteyngart joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss his new novel, Vera, or Faith , which explores American identity, politics, and immigrant experiences in the near future through the eyes of the eponymous 10-year-old protagonist. Shteyngart talks about the novel’s speculative “Five-Three” amendment, a proposal to give those who can trace their anc...

Pulitzer Prize finalist Ed Park joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss his debut short story collection, An Oral History of Atlantis . Park talks about writing the stories in the book over a period of about 25 years, during which he was frequently asked to read in New York and crafted work for specific venues, audiences, and events. He explains how this led to a wide-ran...

Writer Raina Lipsitz joins co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to discuss Zohran Mamdani’s surprise win in the Democratic primary for New York City mayor. Lipsitz explains how Mamdani, a 33-year-old Muslim politician supported by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), appealed to a wide swath of voters to upset three-term governor Andrew Cuomo. She talks about volunteering for Ma...