Poured Over

"I'm interested in how deceptions can make you feel more of yourself or can unlock something in you that you didn't know you had." Eleanor Catton, Booker Prize-winning author of The Luminaries , is back with Birnam Wood — part eco-thriller, part social and political satire, wholly insightful. This propulsive novel is prescient, timely, and all-too relatable in our present day. Catton joins us in c...

"How do you spot a 'we should not be friends' friendship? It's when someone shows you who they are, and you like it." Will Schwalbe, author of The End of Your Life Book Club , tells us how an unexpected friendship with a polar-opposite grew into a lifelong journey through love, losses and triumphs. Schwalbe and Chris Maxey, former Navy SEAL and founder of the Island School, join us to talk about S...

"Each time I wrote a story that belonged in this book… It held some pain. It held some love. It held some hope, some longing..."  Eloghosa Osunde's debut novel Vagabonds! is an inventive, mythic whirlwind through the city of Lagos, Nigeria. Told through interconnected short stories, this raw, painful, and ultimately hopeful work sheds light on an often-unseen world and its diverse inhabitants. Osu...

"I feel like we're in a real golden age of fantasy that's exploring diversity from lots of different perspectives, and telling lots of stories that need to be heard at the moment — I feel really honored to be working within that space." A Day of Fallen Night  has what readers want in high fantasy: strong women, masterful worldbuilding and, of course, dragons. Samantha Shannon's prequel to her high...

"When you've been disappointed for that long in your life — what kind of people are you? What do you become?" A Country You Can Leave , the debut novel from author Asale Angel-Ajani, is an unconventional family story following a Russian mother and Black, biracial daughter as they navigate class, trauma and relationships in California's desert. Angel-Ajani joins us in conversation about discovering...

"I'm one of those writers that … I think I know the story I want to write when I'm going in with a novel … but by the time I get into the middle of it, it's like I've discovered a totally different story." Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀'s A Spell of Good Things explores class, love, and family ties with interwoven narratives of struggle, heartbreak and hope in Nigeria. She joins us to talk about her cast of un...

"It's a literary, feminist, boarding school murder mystery — everyone's favorite genre."  I Have Some Questions for You is the thrilling and inventive new novel from Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers , a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Part murder mystery, part timely take on issues that readers will connect with, this novel will keep you intrigued from cov...

"No one in this cast believes that they have a home — they have houses, but they don't have homes. They were born into this country, they were born into these places, but they don't feel like their homes." Within the rich setting of 1940s Trinidad, Kevin Jared Hosein's sweeping novel Hungry Ghosts brings readers into the world of two families connected by class, power and mystery. A distinctive ne...

"I wouldn't have written the book if I were not hopeful. I mean, the act of writing this book was a prayer for our country — it's making the case that there's another way of looking more deeply under the surface of our country, a way of seeing it that can enlighten us…"     From Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson, Caste combines history, social commentary and individual narratives into...

"Maureen's journey is about going to the dark — and when you go right into the dark, you then find the light and the kind of renewal — and of all of them, this book felt to me a book about rebirth, which felt the right place to end." Following The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy , Rachel Joyce's Maureen completes her series of novels revolving around a...

"For us, horror stories are a long, dark, scary tunnel. You hear sounds you don't want to hear; you see things that are going to stick in your head. But if you keep putting one foot after the other, that speck of light at the end is going to grow a little bit bigger and a little bit bigger and one day you step out into daylight."   Stephen Graham Jones' second installment in the Indian Lake Trilog...

"That was only three years ago, where I read a protagonist I could relate to on a deeper level, for the first time. Subconsciously, it gave me the idea of, oh, maybe you can write how you want to write… it was kind of that seed of — there is space for stories like this, I can use my own voice to tell a story."  Jessica George's debut novel Maame is a coming-of-age story that reminds us that where...

These two novels explore the gulf between expectation and reality, ambition and opportunity, and what happens when life veers off from your carefully planned path. Kashana Cauley and Matthew Salesses each give us indelible casts of characters to follow as they face career upheaval, challenges to their identities and find new love in unexpected ways. Listen to this Double Shot episode with both aut...

"I love finishing reading a book and thinking, I feel privileged to have read that, I feel dignified . I feel like that book sort of thought of me as sacred… I want to write the kind of books that I most love to read."  From Paul Harding, author of Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Tinkers , comes This Other Eden — an intricate novel inspired by the fascinating true story of Malaga, an island in Maine...

"At any given time, there's a choir of ideas and nagging voices in my head — chatter that I had to contend with I guess — in the end it ends up with this model of working and living in which everything is happening simultaneously."   Aleksandar Hemon, author of National Book Award Finalist The Lazarus Project , has no shortage of accomplishments, including screenwriting credits on Sense8 and The M...

This Double Shot episode features two authors, one familiar and one who soon will be, each tackling similar themes. Through fiction and essays these authors explore social politics and sexual freedom — listen in as both talk separately with Poured Over's host, Miwa Messer. And we end this episode with TBR Topoff book recommendations from Marc and Madyson. A Guest at the Feast is a collection of es...

"I wanted to spend time with a family and haunted house books are always about families." Grady Hendrix's bone-chilling novels The Final Girl Support Group and Horrorstör will have fans knocking at the door for his newest book, How to Sell a Haunted House . This new take on a classic horror story forces readers to confront one of the most frightening things there is: family. Hendrix joins us to ta...

Two witty novels, two funny women, and two engaging interviews await you in this Double Shot episode of Poured Over. This pair of authors and their stories of relationships and what happens when they end fit so well together - if you're a fan of one, you're sure to love the other. Listen in as both authors talk separately with host Miwa Messer. And we end this episode with TBR Topoff book recommen...

"That's one of those epiphanies - I realized if I wanted to be taken seriously, I needed representation. And who better than to do it than a man who doesn't exist, who's really me? Yeah, it was the perfect decoy."    You've heard her plucking guitar strings & heartstrings – now Margo Price sits down with guest host Allyson Gavaletz to talk about her new album Strays, songcraft, exorcising demons,...

"I remember being in an English class in high school (12th grade actually). We were reading  The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot, and I announced to the teacher that I could have written a better ending … And I remember the look of shock on the teacher's face because she probably thought I was so arrogant and presumptuous. I don't know how I would have ended it. But I remember thinking that I co...

"And I always tend to start a book with a very popcorn sensibility, like,  oh, well, this'll be fun, we're gonna have a little romp . And then to tell the story, honestly, you tend — especially when you're talking about things like institutional power and social influence and economic influence — you're going to bump up against some pretty heavy themes. And that certainly happened with Ninth House...

"But now, with the rise of new money, it's like there's this moment in India, when new money was eclipsing old money. And that's the moment that I basically find really interesting because I happen to be right there observing, and just talking to people and listening and picking up stories." You might have missed Deepti Kapoor's debut,  A Bad Character , in 2014; you absolutely do not want to miss...

Our January Discover and B&N Book Club picks have lots in common: both are debut novels with indelible characters and an unforgettable story,  both  are graduates of UT's Michener Center for Writers — think of this episode as an audio boxed set, as both authors sit down separately with Poured Over's host, Miwa Messer.   Tracey Rose Peyton knew she was taking on a major challenge with a narrative a...

We're closing out 2022 with something new: A Poured Over Double Shot with  host Miwa Messer.   Cormac McCarthy doesn't really do interviews — If you want to know about the work, it's on the page, he says.  Jenny Jackson and Chip Kidd are part of the team that publish McCarthy; Jenny's been his editor for the last eight years, and Chip has designed McCarthy's hardcover jackets from 1992's  All the...

"They have traveled for most of the day using what little daylight the season offers leaving Ferrara Dawn and riding out to what he had told her was a hunting lodge, far in the northwest of the province. 'But this is no hunting lodge' is what  Lucrezia had wanted to say when they reach their destination, a high walled edifice of dark stone flanked on one side by dense forest and on the other by a...