< Back Conversation with Johnny Anthony Valerio May 25, 2021 Back in 1997, when Anthony Valerio’s Conversation with Johnny was first published, the world hadn’t yet seen The Godfather, The Sopranos, or Goodfellas. In this slim volume, Valerio explores two distinct Italian American stereotypes: the dashing man about town and the successful gangster. Nicholas, the descendant of parents who emigrated to America, goes back to the old Italian New York neighborhood where Johnny, the old but still powerful gangster resides, surrounded by acolytes and luxury. The source of Johnny’s power and wealth is assumed to be crime, but he is is a caring and nurturing godfather, listening closely as Nicholas cries about his married, lover calling it quits. He is also a ruthless don who can shower Nicholas with wealth, get him a job as a maître-d at a famous restaurant, or create a retirement home for Italian American Writers. But he can’t promise Nicholas an Italian-American culture that focuses on solely on art as if organized crime never happened. Anthony Valerio is the author of 12 books of fiction and non-fiction. As a book editor in major publishing houses, including McGraw-Hill, he was fortunate to have edited great writers such as Toni Cade Bambara, Shel Silverstein and others. His short stories have appeared in the Paris Review and have been published in anthologies by Random House, the Viking Press, and William Morrow. He has taught undergrad and post-grad writing at New York University, City University of New York, and Wesleyan University, and he has been a fiction judge at PEN's Prison Writing Committee. He works every day, is a jazz afficionado, and a passionate golfer who tries to get out in nature and on the links. About Anthony Valerio’s work, his friend and legendary children’s book author, the late Shel Silvertein said: "He knows his craft: he gets in, tells his story and gets out. It’s what good writing should be." Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Black Cloud Rising David Wright Faladé June 14, 2022 In Black Cloud Rising (Grove Press 2022), author and scholar David Wright Faladé tells the story of Richard Etheridge, who towards the end of the Civil War joined America’s first and only “African Brigade.” Later recognized as a state hero, Etheridge is a young man when he joins the brigade in late 1863. Led by the one-armed General Edward Augustus Wild and Captain Alonzo G. Draper, the mission is to flush out rebel guerrillas, “bushwackers,” who continue to fight in Union-won territory. Their other mission is to prove that freed slaves can be trusted as combat soldiers. Set mostly in the swampy barrier islands of northeastern North Carolina, Richard is the son of the master of the house and a black slave. As children, he played with his cousins Patrick (Paddy) and Sarah, until they learned that he was a slave, and they the masters. The Etheridge family sign loyalty to the Union, but Paddy joins the Confederate Partisan Rangers. As the African Brigade moves forward, their raids free those still being held as slaves, and Richard moves closer to reuniting with his childhood love, Fanny. This is a novel about identity, integrity, and the fight for human dignity. David Wright Faladé is a Professor of English at the University of Illinois and the Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fellow at the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. Raised in the Texas panhandle, he’s the recipient of the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Award, and has written for the New Yorker, the Village Voice, the Southern Review, Newsday, and more. Faladé is co-author (with Luc Bouchard) of the young adult novel Away Running and coauthor (with David Zoby) of the nonfiction book Fire on the Beach: Recovering the Lost Story of Richard Etheridge and the Pea Island Lifesavers (a New Yorker Notable Selection and the St Louis-Post Dispatch Best Book of 2021). Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Side Effects of Wanting Mary Salisbury February 14, 2023 In Side Effects of Wanting (Main Street Rag, 2022), author Mary Salisbury spent nearly twenty years gathering together the pieces of humanity she saw reflected in the lives around her and distilled them into a poetically written, beautifully curated short story collection. In this debut, small-town stories speak of love and belonging, longing and regret. The people who populate these tales yearn for companionship and comfort, but face the trauma of fractured relationships and the ache of not quite becoming the person they hoped to be. Mary Salisbury’s short fiction and essays have been published in Fiction Southeast , The Whitefish Review , Flash Fiction Magazine , Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts , and Cutthroat’s Truth to Power . Her chapbooks Come What May and Scarlet Rain Boots were published by Finishing Line Press , and her poetry has appeared in Calyx: A Journal of Art and Literature by Women . Salisbury is an Oregon Literary Arts Fellowship recipient and a graduate of Pacific University’s MFA in Writing Program. She is passionate about spending time with her two grandchildren. Monroe is almost four and Roscoe is one and a half—they play hide and seek and read picture books together. She lives in Portland, Oregon. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back The Authenticity Project Clare Pooley October 26, 2021 Today I talked to Clare Pooley about her novel The Authenticity Project (Penguin, 2020). In this chatty, very British story, a few personal lines written in a “pale-green exercise book like the one Monica had carried around with her at school,” inadvertently trigger enormous personal change in a group of strangers. Monica owns the café where Julian, an aging, lonely artist, has left a few words about himself in the exercise book. Julian hopes that whoever finds it might want to share their own truth and pass it along, and surprisingly, some do. Monica writes in it and leaves it for the next person, Hazard, a coke-snorting, financially high-flying jackass. Hazard takes it to Thailand and gives it to Riley, a cute young Australian gardener. And so on, but everyone ends up back Monica’s café, grappling with the challenges of finding love, or raising a baby, or getting sober. The Authenticity Project will bring you up to date on popular culture back in 2018, when slapdash gatherings, art classes in cafes, raising a glass with friends, and jumping on a plane to Thailand were all part of everyday life. Though not literary, this is a cute, charming story, and don’t be surprised if it turns into an even cuter movie. Clare Pooley was a backup singer with ABBA when she was eleven, and later studied economics at Cambridge University, where she constantly raided the bookshelves of the English students. For years, she was passionate about drinking wine, which led to a chronic alcohol addiction. She quit drinking and started an anonymous blog called Mummy was a Secret Drinker. The blog went viral and became a memoir, The Sober Diaries, which sold over 150,000 copies worldwide. She also gave a TEDX talk on the shame associated with alcohol addiction that has been viewed over 200,000 times. Before becoming a full-time writer, Pooley spent twenty years in the heady world of advertising. She lives in Fulham, London with her husband, three children, and two border terriers. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back What Passes as Love Trisha R. Thomas August 31, 2021 Today I talked to Trisha R. Thomas about her new novel What Passes as Love (Lake Union Publishing, 2021). In 1850, at age six, Dahlia Holt is taken from the only home she knows and moved into the big house to serve her two older sisters. They share a father, who owns the house and its slaves. On her sixteenth birthday, Dahlia gets to dress up in one of the sister’s discarded dresses for a trip to the city. There, she gets separated from her family, and meets a young Englishman who thinks she’s white. She introduces herself as an orphan without a family. It starts out as a lark, but her adventures could destroy those she left behind. Especially after her father puts a high bounty on her head, because she is, after all, a runaway slave. TRISHA R. THOMAS won the Literary Lion Award from the King County Library Foundation. Her first book, Nappily Ever After, was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literature as well as being featured in O Magazine’s Books That Make a Difference. Her work has been reviewed in the Washington Post, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, and the Seattle Post Intelligencer. Her debut novel is now adapted to a feature film on Netflix. She’s had 11 novels published and continues to write from her home in California. When she’s not writing, she’s tending to her mini farm where she grows tomatoes, avocados, and lemons, all the perfect ingredients for guacamole and avocado toast. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Start Without Me Joshua Max Feldman December 3, 2018 In Joshua Max Feldman 's thoughtful, bittersweet novel Start Without Me (William Morrow, 2017), two strangers meet at an airport restaurant, and through the course of one Thanksgiving Day, help each other grapple with love, disappointment, and family. In candid, witty, and often funny, razor-sharp dialogue, Feldman confronts the fall-out from excessive drinking, mental illness, childhood trauma, drugs, adultery, and nearly every other way a person can be wounded. His deeply-flawed characters are recognizable and honest as they strive to understand their mistakes while continuing to make them. Adam is a former musical prodigy who comes home for Thanksgiving for the first time since getting sober. Even though his family has seen him hit rock-bottom, he still feels like he’ll never be able to get anything right with them. Flight-attendant Marissa is in a marriage strained by tensions over race, class, and her husband’s lack of ambition. Now she finds out that she’s pregnant following a one-night-stand with her high school sweetheart. If Thanksgiving is the classic, all-American holiday, Start Without Me should be the classic, all-American tale about the struggle we face to become our best selves. Joshua Max Feldman is the author of two novels, The Book of Jonah (translated into nine languages) and Start Without Me . Joshua has written for The New York Times Book Review , among other publications, and is a former fellow of New York's Laboratory for Jewish Culture. He currently resides in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back The Counterfeit Wife Mally Becker October 25, 2022 Today I talked to Mally Becker about her new book The Counterfeit Wife: A Revolutionary War Mystery (Level Best Books, 2022). Philadelphia, June 1780. George Washington's two least likely spies return, masquerading as husband and wife as they search for traitors in Philadelphia. Months have passed since young widow Becca Parcell and former printer Daniel Alloway foiled a plot that threatened the new nation. But independence is still a distant dream, and General Washington can't afford more unrest, not with food prices rising daily and the value of money falling just as fast. At the General's request, Becca and Daniel travel to Philadelphia to track down traitors who are flooding the city with counterfeit money. Searching for clues, Becca befriends the wealthiest women in town, the members of the Ladies Association of Philadelphia, while Daniel seeks information from the city's printers. But their straightforward mission quickly grows personal and deadly as a half-remembered woman from Becca's childhood is arrested for murdering one of the suspected counterfeiters. With time running out-and their faux marriage breaking apart-Becca and Daniel find themselves searching for a hate-driven villain who's ready to kill again. Mally Becker combines her love of history and crime fiction in mysteries that feature strong, independent heroines. She is the Agatha Award-nominated author of The Turncoat's Widow, which Kirkus Reviews called, A compelling tale ... with charming main characters. Her first novel was also named a CIBA Mystery & Mayhem finalist. A member of the board of MWA-NY, Mally was an attorney until becoming a full-time writer and an instructor at The Writers Circle Workshops. She is also a member of Sisters in Crime and the Historical Novel Society. Mally and her husband live in New Jersey, where they raised their wonderful son and spend as much time as they can hiking and kayaking. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Then She Woke Up Jaime Baum April 17, 2020 One summer, Joni Griffith Wexler realizes that she hasn’t paid enough attention to her life. While her sons are at sleepaway camp and her husband immersed in his work, she rushes from one impulsive decision to the next, striving unsuccessfully for clarity. It takes her two closest friends, an unexpected girls' weekend, and the surprising wisdom of a psychic medium to give her the confidence to take control of her life. Until a shocking event threatens to undo everything. Joni's story as recounted in Then She Woke Up will resonate with anyone who's ever thought, "How did I get here?" A life long writer, Jaime Baum ’s background is in journalism and her prior work has appeared in magazines and newspapers such as Better , Living Without and the Sun-Times news group. She studied Journalism and History at Indiana University and spent the majority of her career in public relations. When she’s not reading or writing, Jaime loves to be outdoors walking, hiking, biking and gardening. She is a wife, mother, stepmom, daughter, sister, cat owner, dog lover and grateful friend. She loves chocolate, Paris, laughter, crimson fall leaves against a blue sky, and every woman who fights to make life better for others. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back The Botticelli Caper Sarah Wisseman November 10, 2020 The Botticelli Caper (Wings ePress, 2019) is set at the Uffizi Galleries during a period, not long ago, when workmen were constantly coming in and out during massive amounts of reconstruction. Flora, an art conservator, is working to clean Sondro Botticelli’s world-famous Birth of Venus. She realizes that there are no notes from the previous cleaning and begins to get suspicious as she removes the frame and looks at the paint’s sheen. Then she sees a smiley-face. She’d seen it before in a forgery of another famous painting. In this light-hearted caper, Wisseman asks how some very skilled painter could make a nearly perfect copy of one of the world’s great paintings. But, how would the original have been removed from the museum with guards all around, night and day? Now a few more forgeries are discovered along with two bodies. Against the advice of all, Flora continues to meander through the beautiful old building, wondering where the original copies might be stored. What about all the doors, the unused corridors, the bridge and tunnel that lead to other palaces? Sadly, the real-life incidents of art forgery and theft have sometimes been even stranger, but there was no Flora Garibaldi to solve those crimes. Retired archaeologist Sarah Wisseman (aka Sally Underhill) completed her undergraduate degree at Harvard University and her M.A. and Ph. D in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology at Bryn Mawr College. During her years working as an Archaeological scientist at the University of Illinois, she wrote non-fiction books and numerous articles on mummies, Greek vases, and archaeological science. Nowadays, Sarah splits her time between writing and painting. Starting in 2004, when she was a finalist for Best First Traditional Mystery Novel in the St. Martin’s Press/Malice Domestic Contest, she has based her fiction on thirty years of working in academia, museums, and on excavations in Italy, Israel, and the U.S. She writes two series, the Lisa Donahue Archaeological Mysteries (set in Boston and the Middle East) and the Flora Garibaldi Art Conservation Mysteries (set in Italy). Her paintings include mixed media landscapes, starscapes, and still lifes. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Ghost Forest Pik-Shuen Fung July 6, 2021 When her father dies after a drawn-out illness, the unnamed protagonist of Ghost Forest (One World, 2021) wonders how one grieves if a family never talks about feelings. The father is one of Hong Kong’s ‘astronaut’ fathers, who stays there to work after the rest of the family leave before the 1997 handover, when Britain returns the sovereignty of Hong Kong to China. The protagonist turns to her mother and grandmother with questions about customs, religious traditions, and misunderstandings that occurred over the course of her life. Their answers, together with snippets of her own memories, help her understand her own actions. She also begins to understand her parents and why they made the decision to live a world apart for most of the year. And she realizes that even though they didn’t talk about love, it was always there. Pik-Shuen Fung is a Canadian writer and artist living in New York City. She has received fellowships and residencies from the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Kundiman, the Millay Colony, and Storyknife. She has an MFA in Fine Art from the School of Visual Arts and a BA from Brown University. Ghost Forest is her first book. In her free time, she loves to cook, talk about food, and eat the delicious dishes cooked by her husband, who is a chef. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back The Lake on Fire Rosellen Brown March 26, 2019 Against the backdrop of a gritty 1890’s Chicago teeming with labor problems, filthy sweatshops, and putrid stockyards, two young immigrants struggle to survive. Chaya and her brilliant younger brother Asher escape the tedium of the Wisconsin farm to which their parents had emigrated from Eastern Europe. Guided by a kind, wealthy young man to the Jewish neighborhood of Maxwell Street, the two siblings, still speaking with Yiddish accents, scrape together a living until they each find a way to reconcile their convictions with their lives. The Lake on Fire (Sarabande Books, 2018) is about whom to love, the struggle between rich and poor, and the choices we make about how to live in an unfair world. Although set in the 19th century, Rosellen Brown ’s writing, as intriguing and luminous as Chicago’s “White City,” has something to say about our still unfair, turbulent times. Rosellen Brown currently teaches in the MFA in Writing Program at Chicago’s School of the Art Institute, and lives in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, home of the Columbian Exposition, the University of Chicago, and the Obamas. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Once, in Lourdes Sharon Solwitz August 3, 2018 Sharon Solwitz 's novel, Once, in Lourdes (Spiegel & Grau, 2017), is the story of four close friends in the fictional town of Lourdes, Michigan, who decide, during the summer before their senior year of high school, to make a suicide pact. The four friends are all struggling with something beyond normal adolescent angst--Kay is tormented by her weight and the new stepfamily she acquired after her mother’s death; CJ hides who he really is even from the friends; Saint struggles not to destroy everyone around him; and Vera is horrified by a shameful secret. The two weeks of the pact take place during the tumultuous summer of 1968. As the ground shifts beneath them, the four friends confront who they are and what the world means to them. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next