Poured Over

"I wanted to tell my story in a way that made you feel like you were having a beer with me. And…even though I delve into things like identity and politics and family history and things that things that I'm really excited to share with everybody, I want it to be accessible to people who might disagree with me or might not have experience with the things that I have experiences with." From the Holly...

"I'm here to have a dialogue with a person. And if I'm just gonna sit there and look down at my lap, well, speaking profoundly into my lap. That's not enough for me, I need to speak out--and entertain." Gary Shteyngart's new novel,  Our Country Friends , is our November B&N Book Club pick, and it's a charming (and provocative) story of friendship and the family we make. Gary joins us on the show t...

"And so, what was to me a relatively — at least in terms of storytelling — a tidy story of me collapsing and having my wife and my co-workers save my life and be getting up and getting out of the hospital and getting to write again, was a bit more involved than that." In his new book, The Night the Lights Went Out ,  Defector  columnist Drew Magary delivers a darkly comic and deeply honest story a...

"And I had a great, great professor named Albert Guerard when I was starting out, and he said to me, 'Some people will tell you to write what you know. But I'm going to tell you write what you can imagine.' And that was such a gift." Words are magic (and truth and love and power) in Alice Hoffman's newest novel,  The Book of Magic . It's the fourth in a series that started with  Practical Magic  i...

"I love it, when, as a reader, I am surprised by the way people behave, you know that you're aghast and shocked and standing back a little bit. And I love it even more when I'm writing it, when I have tapped into a sense that I'm not in control of this guy, either." We've been fans of Joshua Ferris since his very funny and acclaimed 2007 debut,  Then We Came to the End  — and he had us howling wit...

"I'm so interested in people. I have been fascinated by people since I was just my first memory. I just think people are, for me, they are the most interesting things in the world." No one captures the nuances of complicated lives quite like Elizabeth Strout, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author who likes to return to her characters and their communities in sometimes surprising ways, as she does in h...

"Because for every kid who makes it out, there are thousands more who are just as capable, who don't. And I think we need to shift the conversation away from what was it that helped that one kid make it out to why are all these other kids not?" Andrea Elliott's  Invisible Child  belongs on the shelf next to  Evicted  by Matthew Desmond and Alex Kotlowitz's books  There are No Children Here  and  A...

"I'm so grateful to be part of the world of books. And that's what makes me work so hard on them because it's possibly the greatest privilege I've been afforded." Nick Offerman's fifth book,  Where the Deer and the Antelope Play , is charming, earnest  and  a little pointed, and, of course, very funny. It opens with Nick gallivanting in Glacier National Park with pals George Saunders and Jeff Twee...

America's opioid crisis shows no signs of slowing down, and if you want to know how we got where we are, Beth Macy's 2018 bestseller  Dopesick  is coming to Hulu as a limited series on October 13 th , produced by Danny Strong ( Game Change  and  Recall ), Warren Littlefield ( The Handmaid's Tale ), director Barry Levinson, actor Michael Keaton and Beth herself, among others. Beth joins us on the s...

"Suffragettes, but witches." That was the three-word pitch that Alix E. Harrow used to sell her very fun and very smart second novel,  The Once and Future Witches , our newest Monthly Speculative Fiction pick. Alix joins us on the show to talk about portal fantasy, our fascination with fairy tales (and why we keep returning to them), being a messy reader and more. Featured books: The Once and Futu...

"One of the ways you make magic work is by believing it's going to work." Readers love Naomi Novik's series set at the mysterious (and deadly) Scholomance. Volume two,  The Last Graduate,  has just landed, and our favorite prickly heroine Galadriel (El) is back, along with her gang of friends, and, of course, Orion Lake, who El might just hate a little less these days. Naomi Novik joins on the sho...

"You never know what's going to happen in a bookstore." Wiley Cash joins us on the show to talk about the story about a too-big aircraft and a too-short runway that inspired his new novel, When Ghosts Come Home; tell us why he had to set the book in the 1980s; and how excited he is by the current rise of the Rural South in literary fiction. He also delivers a couple of reading lists you'll want to...

"I was honing my writing voice before anyone knew anything or cared about me as a writer." Phoebe Robinson's a force of nature with her standup shows, podcasts, TV shows and books. And now she's adding publisher to her list of accomplishments with her new imprint, Tiny Reparations Books. Phoebe joins us on the show to talk about her newest book, Please Don't Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes ,...

"But if you say today, I'm just working on this little monologue by this one character, you can trick yourself into making something bigger…" Anthony Doerr joins us on the show to talk about his epic new novel-about-everything,  Cloud Cuckoo Land , his first since his Pulitzer Prize-winning  All the Light We Cannot See . Featured books:   Cloud Cuckoo Land  , All the Light We Cannot See ,  and  Me...

Ruth Ozeki's new novel, The Book of Form and Emptiness , is a beautiful story about books and libraries, life and love. Ruth joins us on the show for a lively conversation about hearing voices, the connections between her last bestseller A Tale for the Time Being , and her latest, the relationship between her writing practice and her meditation practice, her very funny debut novel My Year of Meats...

Brendan Kiely's an award-winning author of YA fiction, including  All-American Boys , which he co-wrote with Jason Reynolds. His fifth book is a bit of a departure for him; The Other Talk: Reckoning with Our White Privilege is a nonfiction book that asks us to consider where we are in the world today and how we start  and sustain necessary conversations about race and whiteness with young people a...

Richard Powers is the author of 13 novels, including The Overstory , winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. His new novel, Bewilderment, shortlisted for The Booker Prize and longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction, is an intimate story of two lost boys—father and son—and it's a bit of a departure from his earlier books. Richard joins us on the show for a charming conversation about w...

We've seen what death and dying do to the human body and we've investigated the afterlife thanks to Mary Roach. We've gone to space and to war with her. We've learned more than a little about taste and our digestive tracts, and, well, bonking--all thanks to Mary and her very, very funny books, her seventh book Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law has just landed. And as with all of her earlier books,...

Two Pulitzers, a National Book Award, and a MacArthur Genius Grant: Colson Whitehead is one of the greatest novelists working today. From The Intuitionist to The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys , his incredible body of work is driven by sharp insight and brilliant sentences. Harlem Shuffle is his newest novel, a character study, a caper flick, and an absolute thrill to read. Colson joins...

Qian Julie Wang's unforgettable memoir, Beautiful Country , belongs on the shelf next to modern classics like Educated by Tara Westover, When I Was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago, The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls and Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. Qian Julie joins us on the show to talk about capturing the universality of childhood (no matter how difficult the details), facing down shame in...

"My ears were bent for stories." Poet Warrior is the indelible new memoir by Joy Harjo, Poet Laureate of the United States. Joy joins us on the show to talk about her family's stories, making music, Emily Dickinson's poetry, how reading work out loud helps with the editing process, and more. Featured Books: Poet Warrior and An American Sunrise by Joy Harjo. Produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and e...

A new book from Lauren Groff is always a hit with us, from her early novels, The Monsters of Templeton and Arcadia , to her massive 2015 bestseller, Fates and Furies , and her story collections, Delicate Edible Birds and Florida . We can't get enough of her gorgeous sentences, evocative details, and the worlds she conjures. We'll follow Lauren anywhere, and now that includes a 12th Century Abbey;...

We love B.B. Alston and his Supernatural Investigation series—his debut novel for Middle Readers, Amari and the Night Brothers , is the Overall Winner of the Barnes & Noble Children's and YA Book Awards—and the second book in the series is due in 2022. B.B. joins us on the show to talk about writing for children (and how to bring reluctant readers around to the sheer joy of books and reading); the...

Love it or hate it (and there really seems to be no middle ground), The Great Gatsby still speaks volumes about us, our society, and the American Dream. Min Jin Lee, the acclaimed author of Pachinko and Free Food for Millionaires, has a written an introduction for this classic, and she joins us on the show to talk about Fitzgerald's characters, what the novel means to her, and more. Featured books...

A fun, spoiler-free conversation with Linden Lewis about her fabulous new novel The Second Rebel , the sequel to The First Sister , our first Speculative Fiction Monthly Pick. Linden joins us on the show to talk about Space Opera, world-building, scrapping full first drafts, giving yourself permission to write what you want to write, and more. Produced/Hosted by Miwa Messer and engineered by Harry...