< Back Art Is Everything Yxta Maya Murray January 5, 2021 In Art Is Everything (TriQuarterly Books, 2021), L.A. native Amanda Ruiz is a successful Chicana performance artist who is madly in love with her girlfriend, Xochitl. Amanda is about to enjoy a residency at the Guggenheim Museum in New York and plans to film a groundbreaking documentary in Mexico. Then Xochitl’s biological clock begins beeping, Amanda’s father dies, and Amanda is assaulted during an Uber ride. Her life and art are upended and she’s not sure how to get back on track. Written as a series of web posts, Instagram essays, Snapchat posts, rejected Yelp reviews, Facebook screeds, and streams-of-consciousness that merge volcanic confession with eagle-eyed art criticism, Art Is Everything is about a woman who has to grapple with being derailed. After earning her J.D. at Stanford Law School, Yxta Maya Murray clerked for two judges and then joined the Loyola Law School faculty in 1995. Recipient of an Art Writer’s Grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation, she published a one-act play about the Christine Blasey Ford hearings, titled Advice and Consent (LARB Books 2019) and was named a finalist for the National Magazine Awards in Fiction. Her scholarly work focuses on Community Constitutionalism, Criminal Law, Property Law, Gender Justice, and Law and Literature. Professor Murray has published in a number of law journals, where her most recent work concerns FEMA’s failures in Puerto Rico. As a novelist and art critic, she has published six books and won a 1999 Whiting Writer’s Award. Her seventh novel, Art Is Everything, is being published by TriQuarterly Books. When she is not teaching, reading, or writing, Murray enjoys running, photography, painting, and eating. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back The Lost Archive Lynn C. Miller November 28, 2023 The Lost Archive (U Wisconsin Press, 2023) is comprised of a cast of characters who are mostly dealing with, or in the aftermath of a crisis of some kind. Or they are making big decisions about their lives. The stories bump up against each other, some longer, others shorter, from different time periods, geographical locations, and circumstances. There are several ex-husbands trying to weasel back in or extort, several women haunted by previous relationships, and several people who need to move, want to move, or just moved. Some stories are about friendship, relationships, lost chances, and the search for love, others are about mysterious happenings, mistaken identities, and end of life decisions. The Lost Archive is a collection of stories that delve into universal themes of resentment, betrayal, and redemption. Lynn C. Miller is the author of four novels. Her third novel, The Day After Death , was named a 2017 Lambda Literary Award finalist in lesbian fiction, and her short story, “Words Shimmer,” won an Editor’s Prize at Chautauqua journal. Previously, Miller taught performance studies and writing at the University of Southern California, Penn State University, and the University of Texas at Austin. Since 2020, she’s co-hosted the podcast The Unruly Muse, which features original music and performances of fiction and poetry by living writers. She’s toured performances of Gertrude Stein, Edith Wharton, Katherine Anne Porter, and Victoria Woodhull. Hiking and swimming are favorite pastimes, as is exploring Puebloan ruins in New Mexico, Utah, and southwestern Colorado. She and her wife, Lynda Miller collaborate with the poet Hilda Raz as publishers of Bosque Press, and publish ABQ inPrint, a magazine of visual art and writing featuring artists with a New Mexico connection. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Compass Murray Lee December 13, 2022 We can't all be heroes. Some try and succeed. Others posture and pretend. And a few--just a few--set off on their hero's quest only to discover that failure was within them all along. Murray Lee's Compass (Publerati, 2022) recounts the adventures of a man who, after traveling the world shilling stories for a major geographic magazine about historic expeditions and explorers, sets out on an adventure of his own--an ill-advised and poorly planned trip to the Arctic floe edge under the disorienting twenty-four-hour summer sun. When the ice breaks and his guide disappears, the narrator ends up alone and adrift in the hostile northern sea. He draws on his knowledge of historic expeditions to craft his own, inept, attempt at survival. As time passes and he becomes increasingly disoriented, his obsession with Sedna, the Inuit goddess of the sea, becomes terrifyingly real. Part Life of Pi, part Into the Wild, Compass draws heavily on true historical adventures, Inuit mythology, and its Arctic setting. The narrator, a self-aware buffoon who remains nameless throughout, is both remarkably well-informed and entirely useless. He knows just enough to steer himself into the path of disaster--repeatedly, often comically, and ultimately tragically. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back The Maverick Jennifer Valenti December 1, 2020 In The Maverick (Broken Arrow Books, 2020), author Jennifer Valenti plugs into the current zeitgeist of young women who struggle to defy the casual sexism of men in power. Jane Valiante is elated when the hottest tech company in the world offers to fly her from Florida to New York for the job of her dreams. After a long day of interviews, Jane feels insecure about her chances, but then she receives an invitation to the holiday party from the CEO and Founder, Peter Wright. She happily accepts, and has a lovely, if perhaps overly boozy time. Unfortunately, Peter ends up in her hotel room, where he overpowers and rapes her. Then he leaves. Although she’s traumatized, she doesn’t let it stop her from accepting a position in Peter’s company. What is it going to take to propel Jane on a journey of self-discovery that will allow her to learn who she is and what she is capable of? Jennifer Valenti was born in New Hampshire, grew up in Florida, hailed from Boston, and is mostly a New Yorker. Moving around meant learning to adapt quickly, which came in handy as a single mother raising two amazing young men (and a dog with separation anxiety.) For every failure, she enjoyed equal success with careers in film and television, technology, and consulting, the latter two of which were against much of her will. She earned a BA and MBA, and is currently a senior executive in business consulting. When Jennifer is not working, writing, cooking, or baking, she is an avid world traveler, and has so far visited 110 countries. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back News of the Air Jill Stukenberg October 4, 2022 Immigration problems, climate issues, dysfunctional families, road barricades, and the division between haves and have nots play a role in this dream-like novel. Set in Wisconsin’s stunning Northwoods, News of the Air (Black Lawrence Press, 2022) by Jill Stukenberg centers on a mother, father, and their teenage daughter, who voice the story from each of their perspectives. The novel opens with a pregnant Allie recalling her divorce, worried about her future, avoiding roadblocks to get to work at a Chicago museum, and frantic because of nearby eco-terrorism. In the next chapter, Allie and her husband Bud are proprietors of a far north rustic resort, and their previously homeschooled daughter Cassie, is about to finish her schooling in the local high school. Then two children show up in a canoe, and there is confusion about who they are and what they’re doing in the Northwoods. Jill Stukenberg’s short stories have appeared in Midwestern Gothic , The Collagist (now The Rupture ), Wisconsin People and Ideas magazine, and other literary magazines. News of the Air, her debut novel, won the Big Moose prize from Black Lawrence Press. Stukenberg is a graduate of the MFA program at New Mexico State University, has received writing grants from the University of Wisconsin Colleges, and has been awarded writing residencies at Shake Rag Alley and Write On, Door County. Jill is an Associate Professor of English at University of Wisconsin Stevens Point at Wausau. She grew up in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, and has previously taught in New Mexico and the Pacific Northwest. Jill enjoys cross country skiing, hiking, and sailing on Green Bay in a small, very old, but still bright blue sailboat with a cracked wooden tiller. She lives in Wausau with the poet Travis Brown and their eight-year-old. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back The House of Marvellous Books Fiona Vigo Marshall May 24, 2022 The House of Marvellous Books by Fiona Vigo Marshall (Fairlight Books 2022) describes a publishing house called The House of Marvelous Books that houses an old library in the center of London and hovers on the brink of financial disaster. Told in journal entries over the course of a year by Junior editor Mortimer Blakely-Smith, the publishing house seems to stumble into one disaster after another. The publisher focuses on safety issues, his assistant has cataracts and is nearly blind, and the chief editor is obsessed with finding a famous missing manuscript buried somewhere in the building. Mortimer grapples with his elderly uncle, annoying co-workers, a close friend who is in prison for stealing precious books from libraries all over the world, and hearsay about mysterious Russian buyers. Along the way, he attends fabulous concerts, reads Proust, and works on his own novel, about the patron saint of navigation. Fiona Vigo Marshall was born in London and educated at Somerville College, Oxford. Her debut novel Find Me Falling , published by Fairlight Books in 2019, was shortlisted for the Paul Torday Memorial Prize 2020. The House of Marvellous Books is her second novel. Her short stories and poems have been nominated for numerous awards, including the V. S. Pritchett Memorial Prize, which she won in 2016 with her short story ‘The Street of Baths’. Her work has appeared in Prospect, Ambit, The Royal Society of Literature Review, Orbis International Literary Journal , and The London Journal of Fiction. When not writing or reading, Fiona enjoys walking, swimming in the sea, and attending to her allotment or garden. She has a lifelong love of classical music. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Love Among the Recipes Carol M. Cram April 20, 2021 Today I talked to Carol Cram about her new book Love Among the Recipes (New Arcadia Publishing, 2020). After Genna’s husband betrays her, she finds a way to spend six months writing a cookbook based on the city of Paris. In this lighthearted women’s fiction, Cram’s protagonist pairs both famous and lesser-known Parisian landmarks with often mouth-watering sounding recipes. Genna shops and cooks, sometimes for friends, sometimes for her landlord, but always for herself. Each chapter starts with a description of a different kind of macaron in varying colors and flavors that often describe the mood of the chapter that follows. In addition to exploring Paris, making friends with people she meets in her French class, and meeting a charming widower, Genna begins to understand that she has it in her power to create her own happiness. Carol M. Cram loves the arts, food, travel, and writing novels about people who follow their passions. Three previous novels of historical fiction, The Towers of Tuscany (Lake Union Publishing, 2014) and A Woman of Note (Lake Union Publishing, 2015), and Muse on Fire (New Arcadia Publishing 2018) are also about women in the arts, and she matches her travel-inspired vignettes with pastel drawings created by her husband, Canadian artist Gregg Simpson in Pastel & Pen: Travels in Europe (New Arcadia Publishing, 2018). Carol expresses her enthusiasm for the written word, the arts, and her love of travel on Artsy Traveler ( www.artsytraveler.com ) and Art In Fiction ( www.artinfiction.com ), and on the Art In Fiction Podcast in her chats with authors who write novels inspired by the arts. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Lea Ariela Freedman May 10, 2022 Lea Roback was a feminist and labor activist who was raised in a large Jewish family in Quebec, Canada. In the novel Lea (Linda Leith Publishing, 2022), Ariela Freedman describes a strong, vibrant woman whose life spanned the 20th century. Lea Roback spoke four languages, and wherever she was in the world, she fought for workers’ rights, votes for women, access to contraception and abortion, pay equity, social housing and free education. She was often in the center of world history—in Berlin during the rise of Nazism and Moscow during Stalin’s reign of terror. She was intelligent, passionate about equality, and ultimately worked in factories as a union organizer. The real Lea is remembered by the work of the Lea Roback Foundation, which offers scholarships to women, the Lea Roback Research Centre, which focuses on inequality and public health; and the Maison Parent-Roback, which links community organizations that advance women's rights and social justice causes. Ariela Freedman was born in Brooklyn and has lived in Jerusalem, New York, Calgary, London, and Montreal. She has a Ph.D. from New York University and teaches literature at Concordia's Liberal Arts College in Montreal, where she lives with her family. Her debut novel, Arabic for Beginners (LLP, 2017), was shortlisted for the QWF Concordia University First Book Prize and won the 2018 J. I. Segal Prize for Fiction. Her second novel, A Joy to be Hidden (LLP, 2019), was shortlisted for the Segal Prize in 2020, and was a finalist for the The Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction. When she isn’t reading, writing or teaching, Freedman loves riding her bike, hiking in the countryside, and wandering through the city. For the last two years, she has deeply missed travelling. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Degrees of Difficulty Julie Justicz October 21, 2019 Ben Novotny was born with a rare chromosomal abnormality that caused profound mental retardation and seizures. He is severely limited but forms a tight bond with his older brother Hugo, who invents fun distractions and games that become dangerous as Ben gets older and bigger. Ben’s mother, Caroline, a lit professor at Emory, is barely holding herself together with mind-numbing drugs. His father, Percy, a successful contractor in Atlanta, keeps hoping to find an institution that will provide the kind of care Ben needs. His sister, Ivy angrily longs to escape after graduation, and his brother, Hugo gives up his own dreams to take care of Ben. Degrees of Difficulty (Fomite Press, 2019) follows the family over several decades as they each come to an understanding of how Ben affected their lives. Born and raised in England, Julie Justicz moved to the Bahamas when she was ten, and then to the United States as a teenager. Julie comes from a family of Olympians: Her father George Justicz rowed for Great Britain in the 1960 Rome Olympics; her brother Robert competed in the Special Olympics as a swimmer; and Julie has been a proud participant as a triathlete in the Gay Games (formerly known as the Gay Olympics). She earned a law degree from the University of Chicago and received an MFA in creative writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. As an attorney and advocate, Julie currently works on civil rights issues in Chicago. She lives in Oak Park, Illinois with her spouse, Mary, and their two children. When she’s not trying to read, Julie likes to run - physical motion seems to result in creative composting. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Burnt House Lowell Mick White January 28, 2020 After her parents' divorce, Jackie Stalnaker is sent to her grandmother’s dilapidated house in a tiny town in West Virginia. It’s a hot, mid 1970’s summer in Burnt House, where the only thing to look forward to is a weekly old movie shown at the library. But Jackie is grateful to be away from her squabbling parents and delighted with the crazy characters she meets in Burnt House (Buffalo Times Press, 2018). In these charming short stories, White creates a world of complex characters, some lazy, cranky or perfectly satisfied, others lonely and lost, but all connected by history and their shared geography. Lowell Mick White is the author of six books and his work has been published in many literary journals, including Callaloo , Iron Horse Literary Review , and Short Story . A winner of the Dobie-Paisano Fellowship, awarded by the University of Texas at Austin and the Texas Institute of Letters, White lived in Austin, Texas, for 25 years, at various times making his living working as a cab driver, a shade tree salesman, and an Internal Revenue Service bureaucrat. He is Editor of Alamo Bay Press and has been the National Endowment for the Arts Artist-in-Residence at the federal prison in Bryan, Texas. A member of the Texas Institute of Letters, White is an Instructional Associate Professor at Texas A&M University, where he earned his PhD. When not reading or writing, White enjoys drinking beer, eating turkey legs, and taking long drives in the Texas countryside. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Lucky Boy Shanthi Sekaran January 14, 2019 An optimistic young Mexican woman gets pregnant while trying to cross the border into the states. An Indian-American woman struggles with infertility. When undocumented Solimar is detained by the state, Kavya and her husband foster and then fall in love with her little boy. They’re good people, the law is on their side, and it’s hard not to root for them, but we’re forced to ask ourselves - what defines parenthood? Is it the biological connection or is it the daily grind of feeding, changing diapers, and tending to all their needs? In addition to a mother’s love, Lucky Boy (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2017) deals with immigration, undocumented workers, the struggle between haves and the have-nots, infertility, survival, and love. Shanthi Sekaran is a writer and educator from Berkeley, California. Lucky Boy was named an IndieNext Great Read and an NPR Best Book of 2017. It won the Housatonic Book Award and was a finalist for Stanford University's Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Her essays and stories have also appeared in The New York Times , Salon.com, and the LA Review of Books . Sekaran is a member of the San Francisco Writers' Grotto, an AWP mentor, and she teaches writing at Mills College. She was born in Sacramento, is the daughter of immigrants from India, and has two older brothers, a husband, two young sons, and a cat. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Father Guards the Sheep Sari Rosenblatt March 30, 2021 In Sari Rosenblatt’s collection, Father Guards the Sheep (University of Iowa Press, 2020), by turns tender and hilarious, we see fathers who are bullies and nervous watchdogs, haunted by their own pasts and fear of the future they may never see. And who do their daughters become? A substitute teacher who encounters mouthy students who believe she’s not real. Another lands a job on her city’s arson squad, researching derelict properties their owners might want to burn. A beleaguered mother, humiliated by the PTA’s queen bee, finds solace in an ancient piece of caramel candy. “I keep sucking,” she says, “until some flavor, no longer caramel, comes out.” In the end, this is what all these finely wrought characters want: to wring sweetness from what’s been passed down to them. Rosenblatt’s comic sensibility, so present in these stories, entertains and consoles, while seeming to say to her readers: you might as well laugh. Sari Rosenblatt earned an MFA (1984) from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has won awards for her stories from Nimrod International Journal of Prose and Poetry , Glimmer Train, New Millenium Writings, and Ms Magazine . She has been published in the Iowa Review and has taught fiction writing at several schools, most recently the Educational Center for the Arts in New Haven. Her first book of short stories, Father Guards the Sheep, was winner of the 2020 Iowa Short Fiction Award. Sari has also completed a novel, "Daughter of Retail", based on the first short story in Father Guards the Sheep . Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next