< Back Under the Blue Moon Joan Schweighardt June 20, 2023 Today I talked to Joan Schweighardt about her book Under the Blue Moon (Five Directions Press, 2023). An automobile accident in front of a homeless shelter causes Lola, a dog trainer/groomer in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to renew her battle with the grief she previously pushed below the surface of her daily life. Ben, formerly an architect in the same city, has been abandoned by his family and is currently homeless. Lola sees him on the day of her accident, trying to smuggle something into the shelter while all the people associated with the facility are outside with her, waiting for the ambulance to arrive and watching the drama unfold at the end of the street as the guy who broadsided her runs from the scene and is pursued by police. Ben, who lives on a ledge under an overpass with his 18-year-old cat and two space-mates, wants nothing more than to find a job and get back on his feet (and thereby win back both his dignity and his daughter’s love). Lola wants a second chance for a meaningful life. Their individual pursuits put them on parallel paths that offer not only chance encounters with each other but glimpses into the mysteries of luck, love, art, compassion, and what it means to be human in these times. Joan Schweighardt has worn multiple book-world hats over the course of the last many years. She has been a publisher, an agent, a ghostwriter, an editor and more. Her own projects include Under the Blue Moon (2023), and the Rivers Trilogy—Before We Died (2018), Gifts for the Dead (2019), and River Aria (2020). The Art of Touch: A Collection of Prose and Poetry from the Pandemic and Beyond— an anthology she conceived and co-edited, containing the work of 38 contributors—will be published by the University of Georgia Press in November (2023). When not reading or writing, Joan enjoys hiking in the foothills of Albuquerque's Sandia Mountains, bike riding on the city’s numerous trails, oil painting, and hanging out with friends and family. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Tandem Andy Mozina November 21, 2023 An economics professor at a Michigan college is struggling through a bad divorce, having a tough time with his only son, and then, through hardly any fault of his own, he must avoid getting caught by the police. He only had one extra beer and it was late and foggy outside, plus the two college kids were biking out of the entrance to the deserted beach, instead of the exit, without a headlight, so was it really his fault when he hit and killed them? Also, couldn’t he do more for the world and right his wrongs, if he was still teaching and making contributions, than if he was stuck in jail forever? Mike will do anything to avoid being caught in this moving novel about the lengths a person will go to avoid facing uncomfortable truths. Born and raised in Milwaukee, Andy Mozina majored in economics at Northwestern, then dropped out of Harvard Law School to study literature and write. He’s published fiction in Tin House , Ecotone , McSweeney’s, The Southern Review , and elsewhere. His first story collection, The Women Were Leaving the Men , won the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award. Quality Snacks , his second collection, was a finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Prize. His first novel, Contrary Motion , was published by Spiegel & Grau/Penguin Random House. His fiction has received special citations in Best American Short Stories , Pushcart Prize , and New Stories from the Midwest . He’s a professor of English at Kalamazoo College. His passion is grading papers, and his hobbies include listening to legal podcasts and rooting for Wisconsin professional sports teams. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Our Lying Kin Claudia Hagadus Long May 30, 2023 The story of middle-aged sisters Zara and Lilly begins in Long’s fast-paced, first novel in this witty series, Nine Tenths of the Law , when Zara recognizes a family menorah in a New York City Museum. She remembers seeing it displayed thirty years before on a visit to the Jewish Museum, when her mother recognized it as a family heirloom. Zara is haunted by her mother’s memory, and schemes to get it back, but the menorah and other Holocaust art works suddenly disappear from the museum. The assistant who might have stolen it is murdered, and Zara hallucinates her mother’s experiences as a young girl in 1939, when Nazis took the family’s possessions and singled her out for “special duties.” In Our Lying Kin (Kasva Press, 2023), Zara and her sister are just coming out of the long pandemic and planning a reunion when a woman calls, claiming to be related and demanding money. Now, Zara is dealing with both her mother’s and her father’s legacy. The sisters learn that the art thief/murderer who nearly killed Lilly has escaped from custody, and now the FBI is involved. The sisters spring into sometimes illegal action in this zany adventure about family, memory, International Art Theft, and figuring out what is worth preserving. Claudia Hagadus Long is the author of six novels which span centuries and serious topics. All are fueled by history, family secrets and hidden scandals. They are also funny. Her own conflicted background provides ample fuel for the imagination. Though born stateside, Claudia grew up in Mexico City, came to the US permanently as a seventh grader, and is the daughter of Hungarians on one side and a Polish-Sephardic Holocaust survivor on the other. She received her BA from Harvard University, her law degree from Georgetown, and promptly fled to California. Besides writing and practicing law, she's a dedicated weaver and a passionate cook. Married, with two grown children and two grandchildren, she lives in the far reaches of Napa Valley, California, land of wine, hot springs, and earthquakes. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Make it Concrete Miryam Sivan July 9, 2019 For twenty years, 47-year-old Isabel Toledo has been ghostwriting the stories of Holocaust survivors. It's the mid 1990's, Isabel is divorced from the father of her three children and in precarious relationships with three different men. Now, for the first time since she began ghosting, she’s having trouble finishing a book. This Holocaust survivor’s story brings up the angst she feels about not knowing how her own mother survived the war. And how much of Isabel’s inability to love just one man comes from the trauma of being raised by broken parents, also divorced? Miryam Sivan is the author of Make it Concrete (Cuidono Press, 2019). She is a former New Yorker who has lived in Tel Aviv for over 20 years. Miryam teaches literature and writing at the University of Haifa and has published scholarly work on numerous Israeli authors and American writers Cynthia Ozick, James Baldwin, and Jane Bowles. Her short fiction has appeared in various journals in the US and UK, and two of her short stories were adopted for the stage in London and New York. A collection, ANAFU and Other Stories , was published by Cuidono Press in 2014. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back The Singing Forest Judith McCormack January 25, 2022 Two children stumble upon a mass grave in the forest outside of Minsk in Belarus where the NKVD, Stalin’s secret police, buried tens of thousands of innocent victims of torture. The Singing Forest , by Judith McCormack (Biblioasis 2021) weaves the story of a low-rung enforcer of that torture in pre-WWII Belarus and a modern-day Canadian lawyer on the team prosecuting long-forgotten crimes. Stefan Drozd’s life from earliest childhood lacked anything resembling kindness, nurturing, or morality. He has no understanding of human interaction, never had a friend, and did whatever he had to do to survive, even when that required torturing, murder, or lying to get into Canada after the war. Years later, Drozd is in his nineties and doesn't understand why anyone is making a fuss about something that happened so long ago. Leah Jarvis, a somewhat timid and confused young lawyer from an eccentric family, is helping prosecute him for war crimes. Leah knows that Drozd is guilty, but she needs hard evidence. While working on this case, she grapples with her own history – the death of her mother, the disappearance of her father, and her erratic upbringing by three uncles. Leah questions her Jewish heritage and wonders how a person becomes evil, how power is wielded by those who have it, and how justice is served. This is a beautifully written, lyrical novel about truth, heritage, and memory. Judith McCormack was born outside Chicago and grew up in Toronto, with brief stints in Montreal and Vancouver. Her first short story was nominated for the Journey Prize, and the next three were selected for the Coming Attractions Anthology. Her collection of stories, The Rule of Last Clear Chance, was nominated for the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Award and was named one of the best books of the year by The Globe and Mail. Her work has been published in the Harvard Review, Descant and The Fiddlehead, and one of her stories has been turned into a short film by her twin sister, Naomi McCormack, an award-winning filmmaker. Her most recent short story in the Harvard Review was recorded as a spoken word version by The Drum and has been anthologized in 14: Best Canadian Short Stories. Backspring, her first novel, was shortlisted for the Amazon First Novel Award in 2016. McCormack has several law degrees, which have mostly served to convince her that law is a branch of fiction, and she tries to point out as often as possible that Honoré de Balzac, Henry James, Paul Cézanne, Cole Porter and Geraldo Rivera were lawyers. She is a recipient of the Guthrie Award for outstanding public service and contributions to access to justice, and the Law Society Medal for outstanding service in the highest ideals of the profession. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back A Song from Faraway Deni Ellis Béchard October 27, 2020 A young man visits his half-brother in Vancouver and steals a book that changes his life. An archeology student is befriended and brought to Iraq by a brother and sister who need his help in assessing a family art collection. A man who fought for the British in South Africa’s Boer War enlists as an American to fight in WWI Germany. Spanning decades and continents, the stories in Béchard's haunting novel A Song from Faraway (Milkweed Editions, 2020) slowly reveal themselves to be connected. In these pages, the lies of one generation are inherited by the next, homes are burnt to the ground, wives are abandoned, and innocent people suffer. With gripping portrayals of fathers and sons, mothers and siblings, passion and pain – this is a moving, non-linear novel about the relationships to family and society upon which all humanity rests. Deni Ellis Béchard is the author of eight books of fiction and nonfiction, including Vandal Love (Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book); Into the Sun (Midwest Book Award for Literary Fiction and chosen by CBC/Radio Canada as one of 2017’s Incontournables and one of the most important books of that year to be read by Canada's political leadership); Of Bonobos and Men (Nautilus Book Award for investigative journalism and Nautilus Grand Prize winner); Cures for Hunger (an IndieNext pick and one of the best memoirs of 2012 by Amazon.ca); Kuei, my Friend: a Conversation on Racism and Reconciliation , (coauthored with First Nations poet Natasha Kanapé-Fontaine). A traveler by nature, Béchard has a habit of changing homes as often as every three months, and the place he has lived in the longest over the past ten years was a community circus. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Zahara and the Lost Books of Light Joyce Ruth Yarrow December 15, 2020 Seattle journalist Alienor Crespo flies to Spain to apply for citizenship as a descendant of Jews expelled from the Iberian Peninsula during the Inquisition, in 1492. She meets a long-lost cousin and begins to discover her family’s history. A strong and self-aware woman, Alienor is also invited into the hidden tunnels of a fantastic library, which for half a century has been preserving medieval Jewish and Muslim scholarly books that were saved from the Inquisition’s fires. The library is called the “Zahara” and is protected by a secret society of caretakers in a hidden fortress. But there is a violently fascist political group trying to restore the pure blood line of Iberia, trying to make Spain great again. And one of Alienor’s cousins is a member. Meanwhile, she has been connecting with her female ancestors in moments of spiritually awakening time travel. Today I talked to Joyce Yarrow about her new book Zahara and the Lost Books of Light (Adelaide Books, 2020). Yarrow began her writing life scribbling poems on the subway and observing human behavior from every walk of life. Her published novels of suspense include Ask the Dead (Martin Brown), Russian Reckoning available in hardcover as The Last Matryoshka (Five Star Mysteries), and Rivers Run Back , co-authored with Arindam Roy (Vitasta, New Delhi). Yarrow is a Pushcart Prize Nominee with short stories and essays that have appeared in Inkwell Journal, Whistling Shade, Descant, Arabesques, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and Weber: The Contemporary West. She is a member of Sisters in Crime and has presented workshops on "The Place of Place in Mystery Writing" at conferences in the US and India. A New York native now living in Seattle, Yarrow is a trained musician, a writing tutor at the local community college and a prolific reader. When she is not reading, writing, or teaching, she loves being outdoors in nature, hiking, and canoeing in nearby Lake Washington. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back LOOT Tania James June 13, 2023 Tania James' novel Loot (Knopf 2023) is about a young woodcarver who is ordered by Tipu Sultan, ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore in late 18th century India to carve a large wooden tiger. The tiger seems to devour a life-sized European man. As the apprentice of an alcoholic French clockmaker, Abbas has a short time to create this gift for the sultan’s youngest sons after they return from being held captive by the British. Later, British forces attack Mysore, kill as many as they can reach, and ship everything of value back to England. Abbas survives the attack and then the sea and other adventures in order to reach Rouen, where his teacher’s teacher lives. Spanning 50 years and two continents, Loot is a hero’s quest, a love story, and an exuberant heist novel that traces the bloody legacy of colonialism across the world. Tania James is the author of the novels The Tusk That Did the Damage and Atlas of Unknowns and the short-story collection Aerogrammes . Her fiction has appeared in Freeman’s , Granta , The New Yorker , O, The Oprah Magazine , One Story , and A Public Space . Tania has been a fellow of Ragdale, MacDowell, the Sustainable Arts Foundation, and the Fulbright Program. She teaches in the MFA program at George Mason University and lives in Washington, D.C. When she's not writing, James likes to dance--whether it's the classical Indian dance form of kuchipudi or simply busting a move in her living room. Her favorite mode of transport is bicycle and her favorite place to chill is the terrace of the Martin Luther King Jr library. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Devil by the Tail Jeanne Matthews August 10, 2021 Today I talked to Jeanne Matthews about her new novel Devil by the Tail (D.X. Varos, 2021) It’s 1867, and a 20-something civil war widow has just set up a detective agency with a former rebel soldier named Gabriel Garnick. She uses a professional name, Mrs. Paschal, so nobody connects her with the former in-laws who are trying to stop her from receiving her dead husband’s estate. Garnick and Paschal get two cases on the same day – the first to help prove a man innocent of murdering his wife, the second to find reasonable doubt for an accused murderer. Imagine their surprise when the cases turn out to be linked? And imagine 19th Century pre-fire Chicago, teeming with corrupt politicians, gambling parlors, and bawdy houses of ill-repute. Also, someone is trying to murder Quinn Sinclair, aka Mrs. Paschal. Jeanne Matthews graduated from the University of Georgia with a degree in Journalism and has worked as a copywriter, a high school English and Drama teacher, and a paralegal. She worked for litigators for twenty years, and there was seldom a day when she didn’t fantasize about murder. So, it was no wonder when she turned to writing murder mysteries. Matthews’ five-book Dinah Pelerin mystery series published by Poisoned Pen Press between 2010 and 2015 received glowing reviews from Library Journal, Booklist, and Publisher’s Weekly. The settings for these books (Bones of Contention, Bet Your Bones, Bonereapers, Her Boyfriend’s Bones and Where the Bones Are Buried) range from the Australian Outback to the Norwegian Arctic to the sophisticated noir of Berlin. Matthews and her husband, a law professor, currently live in Washington State with Jack Reacher, their Norwich terrier. She loves travel, hiking, and photography, plays old torch songs from the 1930’s and 40’s on piano after a few glasses of wine, and enjoys cooking and baking. She also plays a mean game of Scrabble. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back The Flavia de Luce Mystery Series Alan Bradley October 11, 2019 Alan Bradley ’s first mystery, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie , came out in 2009, and received the Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger Award, the Agatha Award, the Barry Award, the Dilys Award, the Arthur Ellis Award, the Macavity Award and the Spotted Owl Award. This book introduced the intrepid 11-year-old protagonist, Flavia de Luce, who lives in an enormous manor house in England, with her widowed father and two sisters. It’s 1950, and England is still rebuilding itself after WWII. Another book has followed each year. Golden Tresses of the Dead , the 10th novel in the series, was released in early 2019, and continues the escapades of now orphaned Flavia, who is being cared for, along with her annoying little cousin Undine, by a staff of servants. Flavia collaborates with the estate gardener, Dogger, who was her father's previous army companion and has a surprising repertoire of talents. Together, they solve whatever crimes pop up in the seemingly peaceful little English town of Bishop’s Lacey. In addition to the Flavia de Luce Mystery Series, Canadian-born author Alan Bradley is the author of many short stories, children's stories, newspaper columns, and the memoir, The Shoebox Bible. He co-authored Ms. Holmes of Baker Street with the late William A.S. Sarjeant. Alan Bradley and his wife live on the Isle of Mann in the middle of the Irish Sea. He began writing the series after retiring from the University of Saskatchewan, where, among other things, he taught television broadcast engineering and designed engineering studios. When not writing, he can be found reading, and often, both take place in his bed. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Dry Land B. Platek October 3, 2023 Rand Brandt, a forester in the Northwoods of Wisconsin, discovers that his touch can grow any plant or tree. In this tale of Magical Realism, he dreams of using his gift to restore landscapes ruined by the lumber industry, but first needs to test his powers. Gabriel, his fellow forester, and secret lover, finds and saves Rand after he’s pushed himself by spending his nights sneaking into the forest instead of sleeping. It’s 1917 and the foresters are drafted to join in the fight in France. An old friend of Rand’s joins the press covering his unit and helps him cover his tracks. A commanding officer learns about Rand’s gift and demands that he grow forests for the wood needed to win the war, but Rand learns that everything he grows will die within days. Now, he’s keeping two major secrets, either of which, if discovered, could destroy him. Ben Pladek is associate professor of literature at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His first novel, Dry Land , appeared in September 2023 with the University of Wisconsin Press. He’s previously published short fiction in Strange Horizons, The Offing, Slate Future Tense Fiction, and elsewhere. As a colleague pointed out to him, his short fiction is often set in the near-future and his longer fiction in the near-past; other recurring interests include ecology, messy relationships, messier bureaucracy, and people feeling guilty. He’s also written an academic book called The Poetics of Palliation: Romantic Literary Therapy, 1790-1850, that came out from Liverpool University Press in 2019, as well as a number of articles on British Romanticism. Before getting hired at Marquette, he did his PhD at the University of Toronto and taught for a year in the fantastic Foundation Year Programme at the University of King’s College in Halifax, Nova Scotia. When he moved to Wisconsin, he fell in love with the landscape and the state’s fascinating history of conservation, including the writings of Aldo Leopold. Ben and his husband have hiked all over Wisconsin. They especially enjoy the Northwoods, Horicon Marsh, and the southwest “driftless” area. In Ben’s spare time you can find him reading, birdwatching, taking long walks around Milwaukee, admiring wetlands, eating peanut butter, and taking pictures of informational signs at historical monuments that he’ll never go back and read. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Take What You Need Idra Novey March 14, 2023 Today I talked to Idra Novey about her new novel Take What You Need (Viking, 2023). Leah, her husband, and their little son are driving back to where she grew up in the mountains of Appalachia. They are heading to the home where her stepmother fled after leaving Leah’s father, and after the divorce, Jean was no longer allowed to stay in touch with Leah. But she was the mother Leah knew and loved. Now, Jean has died and left Leah her artwork, and when they arrive at the house, Leah is stunned to find giant sculptures welded from scrap metal. During her final years, Jean had needed the help of a troubled young man, a neighbor who has no chance of finding employment and who is squatting without water in the house next door. He’s the one who tells Leah that Jean has died. This is a story about family, the opioid epidemic in rural America, the rise of hatred and bigotry during the past few years, and the grip of creating art on those who feel its pull. Idra Novey earned degrees at Barnard College and Columbia University. She’s the author of Those Who Knew , a finalist for the 2019 Clark Fiction Prize, a New York Time s Editors’ Choice, and a Best Book of the Year with over a dozen media outlets. Her first novel Ways to Disappear received the 2017 Sami Rohr Prize, the 2016 Brooklyn Eagles Prize, and was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize for First Fiction. Her poetry collections include Exit, Civilian , selected for the 2011 National Poetry Series, The Next Coun­try , a final­ist for the 2008 Fore­word Book of the Year Award, and Clarice: The Visitor , a collaboration with the artist Erica Baum. Idra teaches fiction writing at Princeton University and in the New York University MFA program in Creative Writing. When she is not writing or teaching, Idra likes welding and making collages with old literature magazines. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next