The Literary Life with Mitchell Kaplan

On this episode of The Literary Life, Ellis Cose talks with Mitchell Kaplan about his new book, The Short Life and Curious Death of Free Speech in America, how writing the history of the American Civil Liberties Union led him to the project, and Banned Books Week. Host: Mitchell Kaplan Producer: Carmen Lucas Editor: Justin Alvarez, Lit Hub Radio https://booksandbooks.com/ Learn more about your ad...

On this episode of The Literary Life, Carl Hiaasen talks with Mitchell Kaplan about his new novel, Squeeze Me, the ubiquity of Florida pythons, and getting his start writing satire during the Nixon era. Host: Mitchell Kaplan Producer: Carmen Lucas Editor: Justin Alvarez, Lit Hub Radio https://booksandbooks.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ayad Akhtar joins Mitchell Kaplan on this new episode of The Literary Life. Akhtar shares Homeland Elegies, “part memoir, part novel,” about an American son, his immigrant father, and their life in a post-9/11 America. Akhtar is a playwright, novelist Pulitzer Prize recipient who will serve as the next president of PEN America. Recorded in Miami and New York City. Host: Mitchell Kaplan Producer: C...

Alka Joshi started out her life as an artist. Painting and drawing allow her to see colors, where everything is located in a scene, what people are wearing, the designs, patterns, then she “transfers them down to the paper.” On this episode, Joshi talks to Mitchell Kaplan about marrying her writing and art director past to create her first book, The Henna Artist, a loving tribute to her mother. Re...

“I look at the world as a laboratory of ideas. Despite the news, there’s good stuff happening out there as we’re speaking. And it’s that good stuff that I try to excavate in my writing,” Eric Weiner, best-selling author of The Geography of Bliss. Weiner joins Mitchell Kaplan to talk about his new travel book, The Socrates Express: In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers. Recorded in Miami...

Emergency room physician, Michele Harper, grew up in a complicated family. She went on to attend Harvard, where she met her husband. The end of her marriage brought the beginning of her self-healing. Harper shares her poignant stories from the ER with Mitchell Kaplan. Her book, The Beauty in Breaking: A Memoir. Recorded in Miami and Philadelphia. Host: Mitchell Kaplan Producer: Carmen Lucas Editor...

“If there is ever someone whose work and life cannot be squeezed into a neat category, it’s my guest this week on The Literary Life. Critic, editor, anthologist, essayist, poet, public intellectual, John Freeman is all of these,” Mitchell Kaplan. Freeman’s books include Dictionary of the Undoing, Tales of Two Planets, and his latest poetry book, The Park. Recorded in Miami and London. Host: Mitche...

Ruth Behar explores her Cuban-Jewish-American roots. Behar talks with Mitchell Kaplan about her family and her coveted hand-made books created in Cuba by poet and artist Rolando Estévez. Her new book is Letters from Cuba.  Host: Mitchell Kaplan Producer: Carmen Lucas Editor: Justin Alvarez, Lit Hub Radio https://booksandbooks.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Edwidge Danticat, the first two-time winner of The Story Prize, sat with her long-time friend Mitchell Kaplan, for a moving conversation last year. “Everything Inside” now out in paperback, has been selected by Reese Witherspoon as her Hello Sunshine book club pick for August.  Host: Mitchell Kaplan Producer: Carmen Lucas Editor: Justin Alvarez, Lit Hub Radio https://booksandbooks.com/ Learn more...

“I like to think of a bookstore as what a candy store is for a kid,” said Susan Wiggs. The author of more than fifty books, talks with Mitchell about how teaching led her to become an author, writing one or two books each year, and her latest, The Lost and Found Bookshop. Recorded in Miami and a lovely island off Puget Sound. Host: Mitchell Kaplan Producer: Carmen Lucas Editor: Justin Alvarez, Lit...

“None of this is real and all of it is true,” Jim Carrey on his fictional life story, Memoirs and Misinformation, co-authored by Dana Vachon. With a special introduction by Judy Blume, whose “face makes the sun jealous” as shared by Jim. Recorded in Florida and New York. Host: Mitchell Kaplan Producer: Carmen Lucas Editor: Justin Alvarez, Lit Hub Radio https://booksandbooks.com/ Learn more about y...

International bestselling author Kevin Kwan talks with Mitchell Kaplan about his new novel, Sex and Vanity, his follow-up to Crazy Rich Asians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Journalist and award-winning author, Nicholas Griffin, talks with Mitchell Kaplan about the most dangerous year in Miami’s history, 1980. From the Mariel boatlift, cocaine cowboys to the deadly riots that followed the acquittal of four police officers in the death of Arthur McDuffie, a Black, 33-year-old insurance salesman…A relevant and timely conversation recorded in Florida and the Dominican Re...

The author of My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Homesick for Another World and Eileen, joins Books & Books' events coordinator, Cristina Nosti, for a virtual conversation on bookstores, craft, isolation, film, humor, art, love and death. Moshfegh talks in-depth and reads from her latest novel of haunting, metaphysical suspense, Death in Her Hands, about an elderly widow whose life is upturned when s...

“It was a very interesting experience for me writing in the first-person. So I put on a blonde wig and a pantsuit every morning for three years…I actually mean that metaphorically,” Curtis Sittenfeld. On this episode, Curtis talks with Mitchell about RODHAM, her all too real, alternate biography of Hillary Clinton. Recorded in Minneapolis and Miami. Host: Mitchell Kaplan Producer: Carmen Lucas Edi...

Bum-Bum, Elephant, Hot Sausage, and Sportcoat. Just a few of the characters created by the brilliant mind of James McBride, for his latest novel, Deacon King Kong. A soulful conversation with Mitchell Kaplan, with a little jazz piano on the side, courtesy of McBride. Yes, he is also an accomplished musician. Recorded in Miami and New Jersey. Host: Mitchell Kaplan Producer: Carmen Lucas Editor: Jus...

When Megha Majumdar began writing her debut novel, A BURNING, her “question for the book was, how do people still dream, make jokes and strive, even in conditions of great oppression?” Majumdar joins Mitchell Kaplan for a deeply introspective conversation. Recorded in Miami and Brooklyn. Host: Mitchell Kaplan Producer: Carmen Lucas Editor: Justin Alvarez, Lit Hub Radio https://booksandbooks.com/ L...

Accused of a crime he says he did not commit, Albert Woodfox endured years of brutal beatings and racial taunting by prison guards. Locked down in a cell, 9 ft. long and 6 ft. wide, Woodfox endured 43 years in solitary confinement. During the most devastating weeks in this country’s history, we revisit his story of survival. Recorded at Books&Books in Coral Gables, Florida, on May 17, 2019. Host:...

Hidden Valley Road is journalist and author Robert Kolker’s riveting account of the Galvin family, with 12 children, six of whom were diagnosed with schizophrenia. Kolker shares their heartbreaking, yet ultimately hopeful story, with Mitchell Kaplan. Recorded in Miami and Brooklyn. Host: Mitchell Kaplan Producer: Carmen Lucas Editor: Justin Alvarez, Lit Hub Radio https://booksandbooks.com/ Learn m...

James Mustich, book-seller, editor and writer, on his “must-read guide to must-reads.” Mustich talks with Mitchell Kaplan about curating his classic, 1,000 BOOKS TO READ BEFORE YOU DIE, and how the list continues to grow every day. Host: Mitchell Kaplan Producer: Carmen Lucas Editor: Justin Alvarez, Lit Hub Radio https://booksandbooks.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adcho...

After practicing law for nearly 10 years, John Grisham, turned to writing, inspired by a testimony he overheard. Grisham has since sold more than 300-million books. On this episode he talks with Mitchell Kaplan about his latest murder mystery, CAMINO WINDS. Recorded virtually in Florida and Virginia.  Host: Mitchell Kaplan  Producer: Carmen Lucas Editor: Justin Alvarez, Lit Hub Radio https://books...

Investigative journalist Gerald Posner talks about the DNA of the pharmaceutical industry and how finding a vaccine or treatment can rescue its since tarnished reputation. His new book is PHARMA: Greed, Lies, and the Poisoning of America. Recorded virtually in Miami, Florida.  Host: Mitchell Kaplan  Producer: Carmen Lucas Editor: Lit Hub Radio https://booksandbooks.com/ Learn more about your ad ch...

“The book stays with somebody in a way that not a lot of narratives do. Afterlife could be about this time, as well.” Beloved Dominican author, Julia Alvarez takes about her first novel in 14 years. Livestreamed between South Florida and Vermont. Host: Mitchell Kaplan  Producer: Carmen Lucas Editor: Lit Hub Radio https://booksandbooks.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adcho...

On this episode Nick Flynn talks with Mitchell about his new book, Stay: threads, conversations, collaborations, a mixed-media retrospective and self-portrait through's collaborations over the years, including photographer Amy Arbus, actor Robert De Niro, filmmaker Paul Weitz, and artists John Baldessari and Marilyn Minter. This is episode was livestreamed between Miami and outside New York City....

“The ocean is losing its ability to feed the animals that live in it. This is the scariest thing I’ve ever learned,” author and journalist Mark Kurlansky. On this episode he talks with Mitchell about the impact of climate change on food supplies and sea life. Kurlansky is currently social distancing with his family in New York City. His new book is SALMON: A Fish, the Earth, and the History of The...