Poured Over

Mary Beth Keane's new novel, The Half Moon, follows a small-town couple navigating the uncertainties of marriage and starting a family. Keane joins us to talk about how she creates her characters, why she chose to tackle tough themes, writing during the pandemic and more with guest host, Allyson Gavaletz. We end this episode with TBR Topoff book recommendations from Marc and Madyson.    This episo...

"When I was working forensics, I always thought, we do this work for the people who need us to do this work — it's not always the easiest thing."  Ramona Emerson's Shutter is not your typical procedural — join an unforgettable crime scene photographer with the ability to speak to the dead in a mystery that will keep you guessing. Emerson joined us to talk about her own career in forensics, the imp...

"I have to transport myself, and only then I can transport my reader." Brinda Charry's novel,  The East Indian , transports readers to Colonial Virginia to follow the life and adventures of a young Indian boy coming of age in the New World. Charry joins us to talk about her intensive research process, the effects of colonialism on the story, her love of world literature and more with Poured Over h...

"It's more than responsibility. It's fear of just sucking — I don't want to write some garbage that people are going to dismiss." John Wray's new novel Gone to the Wolves brings the world of heavy metal to the masses, following a group of young people on a nonstop ride from teenage angst to the dark recesses of doomsday cults. Wray joins us to talk about the responsibility of writing about subcult...

"I loved that sense of the slow evolution of a community and watching it happen under your eyes." Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone , returns with a long-awaited novel — The Covenant of Water , an inter-generational tale through the lives of a family in Southern India. Verghese joins us to talk about the long gap between his works, his career as a doctor, themes of finding home and mor...

"…A big part of the journey with this book is realizing that people's humanity shouldn't be negotiable."  Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's debut novel Chain-Gang All-Stars tells an explosive, unrelenting and ultimately compassionate story about a not-so-unbelievable future in which incarcerated people become gladiators fighting their way to freedom at any cost. Adjei-Brenyah joins us to talk about the u...

These riveting works of nonfiction by two incredible women have powerful narratives on family, race, and the way we get to tell our stories. Ordinary Notes  by Christina Sharpe compiles art and short vignettes into a beautiful work that explores the Black experience through a wide variety of themes. Sharpe joined us to talk about how these notes came to be, the wealth of literary influences on the...

"We all shape our stories in some way, we all try to emerge as the hero of them…" Author of  Killers of the Flower Moon,  David Grann, takes on mutiny and shipwreck in the shocking true story of The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder . Grann joined us on the show to talk about wading through archival research, his adventure to the sites from the book, seeing his works become films and m...

Dennis Lehane, prolific author for both the page and the screen, returns with Small Mercies,  a thriller set against the time of desegregation of public schools in Boston that balances one family's struggle with the turmoil of the era. Lehane talked about his personal connection to the history of the novel, writing challenging and complex characters, creating his tv show "Blackbird" and more with...

"I leave that book feeling less alone, because I've been welcomed into somebody else's humanity, and I feel like they've shared part of themselves with me and that feels communal…"  Maggie Smith's bestselling You Could Make This Place Beautiful transcends traditional memoir in a staggering take on divorce, motherhood and what it means to be a writer in a way only the poet could deliver. Smith spea...

"All of them, in my mind… were wrestling with the same question, which is — what do I do with either the burden of family or what do I do with the found family that I've made?" Victor LaValle's Lone Women takes supernatural suspense to early 1900s Montana as one young woman sets out to leave her past and family secrets behind. LaValle talks about the history that inspired this novel, the connectio...

"You get to learn a bit about the social issue of Native women and girls going missing and that's really what I hope a lot of people will take away from this, having more awareness…" Nick Medina's debut novel Sisters of the Lost Nation defies genre — mixing mystery, horror and family drama into the story of one teen girl as she searches for the women who've gone missing on her tribe's reservation,...

"I can even still have my festively neurotic characters, but they can be working their way toward a happy ending, instead of working their way towards crushing disappointment."  Curtis Sittenfeld's Romantic Comedy is a playful, smart and fizzy look at love and pop culture through the eyes of a charming and relatable late-night TV writer. Sittenfeld joins us to talk about how a good novel feels lik...

"I never start a book out with ideas. I always start a book out with people in places, and what could happen here." Charles Frazier, author of Cold Mountain , brings readers to the Great Depression-era American West with impeccably researched history in his new novel, The Trackers , featuring a vivid cast holding secrets and ambitions that transcend the past. Frazier talks about the photograph tha...

"It was going to be a story about American instability, and precarity, and what happens when we aren't able to access the things that we need — and yet still have to try to care for each other anyway." Nicole Chung's newest memoir, A Living Remedy , reflects on the tragic inequality of access to the American healthcare system and the way it directly affected her family. Chung talks with us about p...

"Loneliness is such a universal experience for so many of us — and I do hope that the book is a balm for that and helps make readers feel less alone…" Gina Chung's debut novel Sea Change explores family ties, grief and growing up through a complicated protagonist that readers will love to root for — and yes, there really is an octopus. Chung joins us to talk about sad girl characters, allowing wom...

"We all want the same thing; we want respect and security and to be loved — and that's what storytelling does, it connects the similarities that we have." Jeannette Walls, author of The Glass Castle , returns with Hang the Moon , a novel that follows feisty Sallie Kincaid as she comes into her own in the upheaval of Prohibition-era Virginia. Walls talks with us about the language of historical fic...

"I live on art. I'm an art vampire, that's how I sustain myself."  Jacqueline Holland's debut novel  The God of Endings weaves together themes of motherhood, mortality and the human condition in a vampire novel unlike any we've seen before. Holland joins us to discuss vampire lore, the power of art, how her novel grew out of a grad school novella, why you should always read the book rather than wa...

"As a kid, you don't know any of that. You're just like, wow, this sounds magical , like, how could this be the sea? How could this be land? How can that just happen? And I think that speaks to a particular quality of life in Singapore, and growing up in Singapore, and all of the changes that you see happening before your eyes…" Rachel Heng's new novel, The Great Reclamation , is an epic story of...

"I'm so interested in the moment when the reader takes over … I wanted it to be a book that feels like I'm walking alongside the reader, learning as they learn." Katherine May's first book, Wintering , was a finalist for the Barnes & Noble 2020 Book of the Year, and we've been waiting, waiting, waiting for her follow-up, Enchantment . Katherine joins us on the show to talk about the importance of...

"Look at all the advances we've made in the last 50 years, look at the way that culture and medicine and technology and science have advanced since the Beatles broke up, since we were involved in Vietnam, but the poverty rate has been incredibly stubbornly persistent and I think it's rather shameful for the richest country in the history of the world." Reading Matthew Desmond's books will make you...

Who gets to tell our stories? Two debut authors use their powerful voices to show strong female characters navigating family, race and colonialism with unfailing humor and heart. Claire Jiménez's  What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez follows a family in the wake of a tragedy as they attempt to move on — and up. Jiménez talks with us about finding the voice in her work, telling Puerto Rican stories, how...

From the trenches of WWI to the coast of Australia, these two debut novels depict the ubiquity of coming of age, even when the circumstances are drastically different.  In Alice Winn's In Memoriam , two young men find love and tragedy on the fields of battle. Winn talked with us about how the story came into being, the extensive research required to create her characters and their world, her liter...

Family dynamics, for better or worse, are front and center in these two novels from two striking voices in fiction. Jenny Jackson's debut, Pineapple Street , brings us to an upper-class suburb in New York City — an old-money family, new romance, heartbreak and the kinds of drama only the one-percent can deliver. Jackson joins us to talk about publishing as an author rather than an editor, the intr...

"I'm also trying to make use of how innate I think curiosity is for people, because curiosity is kind of a way towards hope… it's in that direction." Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock by Jenny Odell, author of How to Do Nothing , asks readers to look at the concept of time, how it relates to the structure of our society and how it can change the way we live our lives. Odell joins us...