< Back Gravity Hill Susanne Davis September 28, 2022 Gravity Hill (Madville Publishing 2022) is the story of a small town in Connecticut grappling with the tragic death of three teenage boys. What first appears to be a drunk driving tragedy leads back to a mysterious accident (based on the real Revere Textile Mill Superfund site in Sterling) that has plagued the town for years. The sister of one of the boys nearly spins out of control before embarking on a journey to clear her brother’s name. She questions the presence of someone from the Environmental Protection Agency, finds a hidden toxic waste site, and begins the process of healing everyone who was affected. Susanne Davis is the daughter of a sixth-generation dairy farmer and grew up in Sterling, where her brother still operates the family dairy farm just a couple of miles from Gravity Hill. She has an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a short story collection, The Appointed Hour. Individual stories have been published in American Short Fiction, Notre Dame Review, Clackamas Literary Review, and other literary journals. Her work has won awards and recognition, including 2nd place in Madville's Blue Moon Literary Competition. Davis also teaches writing at the college level. When she's not writing or reading, she loves spending time with her family, sailing, photographing the very photogenic family cats, Zoey and Bear, and baking chocolate chip cookies for anyone who will eat them! Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back All Sorrows Can Be Borne Loren Stephens May 11, 2021 In All Sorrows Can Be Borne (Rare Bird Books, 2021), Loren Stephens tells the story, inspired by true events, of a Japanese woman who survives the bombing of Hiroshima, joins her half-sister in Osaka and gives up her dream of becoming a theater star. Later, she marries the man of her dreams and gives birth to a beautiful son. After her husband is diagnosed with tuberculosis, he convinces Noriko to send the toddler to his sister and her Japanese American husband, who live in Montana. Eighteen years later, Noriko’s son enlists in the U.S. Navy and gets sent to Japan. This is a novel about Japanese society and postwar cultural norms, the human cost of war, and a mother’s love. Loren Stephens is a widely published essayist and fiction and nonfiction storyteller. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times , the Chicago Tribune , MacGuffin , The Jewish Women’s Literary Annual , Forge , Crack the Spine , Amuse Bouche , The Writer’s Launch , the Summerset Review , the Montreal Literary Review , and Tablet Travel Magazine to name a few. She is a two-time nominee of the Pushcart Prize and the book Paris Nights: My Year at the Moulin Rouge , by Cliff Simon with Loren Stephens was named one of the best titles from an independent press by Kirkus . She is president and founder of the ghostwriting companies, Write Wisdom and Bright Star Memoirs. Prior to establishing her company Loren was a documentary filmmaker. Among her credits are Legacy of the Hollywood Blacklist , produced for PBS and nominated for an Emmy Award; Sojourner Truth: Ain't I a Woman? produced for Coronet Films and recipient of a Golden Apple from the National Education Association; and Los Pastores: The Shepherd’s Play produced for the Latino Consortium of PBS and recipient of a Cine Gold Eagle and nominated for an Imagen Award. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back So Are You to My Thoughts Connie Kronlokken July 6, 2020 So Are You to My Thoughts (Lightly Held Books, 2020 is the seventh novel in a series about the Mikkelson siblings and loosely based loosely on the author’s family. Kronlokken’s earlier novels in the series began with stories from the 1950’s and this latest installment brings us into the new century. As the book opens, sometime in the nineties, widowed Marty (Margaret) is happily living with a wonderful divorced winemaker and his four children in the hills above Santa Cruz. Line (Caroline) and her husband have returned home to Santa Cruz after several years abroad. And Paul, still in Minnesota, is grappling with his wife’s cancer. As the decade unfolds, children grow up and move on, problems are confronted, spirituality is explored, and the loving bonds of this large family continue to pull them all together. Connie Kronlokken grew up in a large Norwegian/Dutch family and spent her childhood in small towns across Minnesota, North Dakota, and Iowa. She went to a Lutheran College and completed her master’s in library science at the University of Michigan. In 1969 she and her husband moved to San Francisco, where she worked as an office manager in large architectural firms and a database manager at a wine brokerage. She studied filmmaking in Denmark, and writes two blogs. Kronlokhen published two novels and a book of essays before embarking on the So Are You to My Thoughts series. Now living in Los Angeles, she enjoys cooking and gardening, and has studied yang style tai chi for over thirty years. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back The Village Idiot Steve Stern September 13, 2022 The Village Idiot by Steve Stern (Melville House, 2022) opens with a marvelous boat race on the River Seine in 1917. The already well-known artist Amedeo Modigliani is in a bathtub ostensibly being pulled by a flock of ducks, but actually being hauled by immigrant painter Chaim Soutine. Soutine, a poorly educated, rough, and unmannered immigrant from a shtetl in the Pale of Settlement, is disoriented by the recycled air he breathes into his helmet. As he trudges along the river bottom pulling the bathtub along, he considers his past and future life. Soutine painted as a child even when it led to humiliation and beatings by his father and brothers. Neither the collectors who supported him, the friends (like Modigliani) who stood up for him, or the women who fought over him could get in the way of his painting. But then the Nazis swept across Europe, destroying everything Jewish in their path, including a generation of talented Jewish artists. Some, like Soutine, managed to evade capture. Stern’s gorgeous novel is a sweeping, imaginative story of a great artist who was uniquely brilliant but simultaneously unpleasant and unwashed. Steve Stern was born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1947, and left to attend college, then to travel before ending up on a hippie commune in the Ozarks. He studied writing in the graduate program at the University of Arkansas, at a time when it included several notable writers who've since become prominent, including poet C.D. Wright and fiction writers Ellen Gilchrist, Lewis Nordan, Lee K. Abbott and Jack Butler. In his thirties, Stern accepted a job at a local folklore center where he learned about the city's old Jewish ghetto, The Pinch, and began to steep himself in Yiddish folklore. His first book, Isaac and the Undertaker's Daughter, 1983 won the Pushcart Writers' Choice Award. By decade's end Stern had won the O. Henry Award, two Pushcart Prize awards, published more collections, including Lazar Malkin Enters Heaven (which won the Edward Lewis Wallant Award for Jewish American Fiction) and the novel Harry Kaplan's Adventures Underground, and was being hailed by critics, such as Cynthia Ozick, as the successor to Isaac Bashevis Singer. Stern's 2000 collection The Wedding Jester won the National Jewish Book Award and his novel The Angel of Forgetfulness was named one of the best books of 2005 by The Washington Pos t . Stern, who teaches at Skidmore College, has also won some notable scholarly awards, including a Fulbright fellowship and the Guggenheim foundations Fellowship. He splits his time between Brooklyn and Balston Spa, New York and enjoys hiking, climbing, biking, and kayaking. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Shadows We Carry Meryl Ain July 4, 2023 Meryl Ain's Shadows We Carry (Sparkspress, 2023) is a follow-up to the author’s 2020 novel, The Takeaway Men , focuses on fraternal twins Bronka and JoJo Lubinski, now in college and figuring out what to do with their lives. Beginning with the assassination of President Kennedy, we watch the sisters navigate social upheaval, family expectations, and all the usual aspects of growing up, but they were born in a DP camp after WW2 and are children of Holocaust Survivors, now referred to as “Second - Generation Survivors.” They’ve inherited their parents’ guilt (their mother lives a Jewish life but never converted) and emotional trauma (their father’s first family was killed by Nazis) but they live in 1960s and 70s New York and also have to navigate relationships, career dreams, and social expectations for women of that generation. Then Branka, who dreams of becoming a serious journalist but has been relegated to the food column, is asked to cover a neo-Nazi protest, and her eyes are opened to the presence of Hitler acolytes in this country. Meryl Ain is a writer, author, podcaster, and career educator. She received a BA in Political Science from Queens College, holds an MA in Teacher History from Columbia University, and earned a doctorate in Educational Administration from Hofstra University. She has worked as a journalist and her articles and essays were published in many publications, but most of her career was spent working as a high school history teacher and administrator. Her award-winning post-Holocaust debut novel, The Takeaway Men , was published in 2020. She is the host of the podcast, People of the Book , and the founder of the Facebook group, Jews Love To Read! which has more than 4,000 members. Her novels are a result of her life-long quest to learn more about the Holocaust, a thirst that was first triggered by reading The Diary of Anne Frank in the sixth grade. When she's not reading or writing, she enjoys meeting with groups to discuss her books. She's a lifetime member of Hadassah, a member of The International Advisory Board for Holocaust Survivor Day, a supporter of UJA-Federation, as well as Holocaust centers and causes. Meryl lives in New York with her husband, Stewart. Her greatest joy is spending time with their six grandchildren. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back The Pain of Pleasure Amy Grace Loyd July 25, 2023 In Amy Grace Loyd’s new novel, The Pain of Pleasure (Roundabout Press 2023), nearly everyone suffers some kind of intense pain. Some find their way to the Doctor, formerly a respected neurologist but now director of a headache clinic in the basement of what was once a Brooklyn church. He experiments with different treatments for a wide variety of migraine sufferers but can’t stop obsessing over Sarah, the patient who suddenly broke off contact with the clinic and disappeared, leaving only a journal that describes her affair with a married man. The Doctor’s salary and the clinic’s costs are underwritten by a wealthy patron, Adele Watson, who, because she believes the doctor was in love with Sarah, is also obsessed. Mrs. Watson hires Ruth, a nurse with her own troubled back story, to spy on the Doctor. And the fragile balance between patient health and trust in The Doctor starts to crumble when a hurricane sweeps through New York, upending or destroying whatever is in its path. Amy Grace Loyd is an editor, teacher, and author of the novels The Affairs of Others , a BEA Buzz Book and Indie Next selection, and The Pain of Pleasure . She began her career at independent book publisher W.W. Norton & Company and The New Yorker , in the magazine’s fiction and literary department. She was the associate editor on the New York Review Books Classics series and the fiction and literary editor at Playboy magazine and later at Esquire . She’s also worked in digital publishing, as an executive editor at e-singles publisher Byliner and as an acquiring editor and content creator for Scribd Originals. She has been an adjunct professor at the Columbia University MFA writing program and a MacDowell and Yaddo fellow. She lives between New York and New Hampshire. Amy loves to get lost in music, dance wildly to wild music, walk long distances, often with NO PHONE on hand, just the sounds of the world around her as she moves, especially the sounds of trees (she’s made for trees). She is passionate about silence and solitude and kindness in an unkind world. We all have a lot of healing to do these days and she keeps searching for ways to achieve that for herself and others. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Lost in Oaxaca Jessica Winters Mireles July 15, 2020 After an injury to her hand derails her promising concert career, Camille retreats to her mother’s house and teaches piano to mostly desultory students. The years pass, and she finds Graciela, the talented daughter of her mother’s Mexican housekeeper, and Camille focuses on preparing her to live the life she herself was unable to live. Graciela has just won a prestigious piano competition and the chance to jump start her career, but two weeks before she’s supposed to perform with the LA Philharmonic, she disappears. Camille is determined to find her and bring her back before she squanders the opportunity of a lifetime, but a bus accident on route to Graciela’s family village outside of Oaxaca leaves her alone, unable to speak the indigenous language, and without a passport, money, or clothes. Camille, who grew up privileged, finally starts to learn just what it really means to be hungry. Born and raised in Santa Barbara, California, Jessica Winters Mireles holds a degree in piano performance from USC. After graduating, she began her career as a piano teacher and performer. Four children and a studio of over forty piano students later, Jessica’s life changed drastically when her youngest daughter was diagnosed with leukemia at the age of two; she soon decided that life was too short to give up on her dreams of becoming a writer, and after five years of carving out some time each day from her busy schedule, she finished Lost in Oaxaca (She Writes Press, 2020). Jessica’s work has been published in GreenPrints and Mothering magazines. She also knows quite a bit about Oaxaca, as her husband is an indigenous Zapotec man from the highlands of Oaxaca and is a great source of inspiration. She lives with her husband and family in Santa Barbara and has transformed her front yard into an English Garden.d Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back American Scholar Patrick E. Horrigan September 12, 2023 Patrick Horrigan’s novel, American Scholar (Lethe Press 2023) centers on James (Jimmy) Fitzgerald, who teaches American Literature at a prestigious university, is in a happy (open) marriage that allows him to enjoy a much younger boyfriend, and has just published a novel about literary critic, Harvard Professor of History and Literature, F.O. Matthiesen, who was forced to hide his love for artist Russell Cheney during a time before homosexual love and marriage were accepted. The sister of Jimmy’s first serious boyfriend shows up at a book signing for Jimmy’s new novel and hands him a letter that sends him spinning back to memories of the first man he ever loved. James describes his sexual awakening and recalls haunting moments with Gregory, whose self-destructive personality was part of Jimmy’s impetus for writing American Scholar. Horrigan’s novel, which weaves in the study of Queer Theory, Jimmy’s sexual awakening, and fears of the AIDS virus then sweeping across the globe. Horrigan whips back and forth from that difficult time to 2016, when his now middle-aged protagonist is now a professor and published author, but political polarization following the presidential election has inspired new fears throughout the gay community. Born and raised in Reading, Pennsylvania, Patrick E. Horrigan received his BA from The Catholic University of America and his PhD from Columbia University. He is the author of the novel Pennsylvania Station (Lethe Press; Indie Book Award finalist for best LGBTQ2 fiction) and the novel Portraits at an Exhibition (Lethe Press; winner of the Dana Award for fiction as well as the Mary Lynn Kotz Art-in-Literature Award, sponsored by the Library of Virginia and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts). His other works include the memoir Widescreen Dreams: Growing up Gay at the Movies (University of Wisconsin Press), the play Messages for Gary: A Drama in Voicemail , and (with Eduardo Leanez) the solo show “You Are Confused”! He has written artists’ catalogue essays for Thion’s LIMI-TATE: DRAWINGS OF LIFE AND DREAMS (cueB Gallery, London) and Ernesto Pujol’s LOSS OF FAITH (Galeria Ramis Barquet, New York). His essay “The Inner Life of Ordinary People” appears in Anthony Enns’ and Christopher R. Smit’s “Screening Disability: Essays on Cinema and Disability” (University Press of America). Horrigan and Eduardo Leanez are the hosts of “Actors with Accents”, a recurring variety show in Manhattan. Winner of Long Island University’s David Newton Award for Excellence in Teaching, he taught literature for twenty-five years at LIU Brooklyn. He has played the piano throughout his life and currently works as a tour guide at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, where he lives. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back The Last Interview Eshkol Nevo October 13, 2020 Eshkol Novo's The Last Interview was published in Hebrew in 2018 and was at the top of Israel’s bestseller list for 30 weeks. It is currently on the short list for the Lattes Grinzano Prize in Italy and is longlisted for the prestigious Femina Prize in France. In The Last Interview , a famous but stressed Israeli writer finds that the only way he can write is by answering a set of interview questions sent from a website. As he answers the questions, the author slowly lets go of his calculated answers and begins to honestly confront his life, his lies, and his mistakes. He digs deeply into his past and recalls serious missteps and faulty decisions. Now, his marriage is falling apart, his eldest child wants nothing to do with him, and his best friend is dying. The only time he thinks clearly is while he sits at his computer answering the interview questions that force him to confront himself, no matter where he is in the world. Born in Jerusalem in 1951, Eshkol Nevo studied advertising at the Tirza Granot School and psychology at Tel Aviv University. He owns the largest creative writing school in Israel and is considered the mentor of many upcoming young Israeli writers. His books have been translated into 12 languages, have won several literary prizes, and have sold over a million copies all over the world. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back The Island of Always Stephen Evans January 25, 2019 Minneapolis environmental attorneys Nick Ward and Lena Grant are no longer partners in law or marriage, but their lives are still strongly intertwined. Nick and his puppet can charm his psychiatrist, his attendant at the psychiatric facility, his supervisors at his mandatory community service, and his former students, but he just keeps breaking Lena’s heart. She tries to protect him as Nick pursues ever-wilder animal rescue schemes, until it seems like everything is starting to unravel. Stephen Evans is a playwright and the author of several books, including The Marriage of True Minds , A Transcendental Journey , Painting Sunsets and The Island of Always (Time Being Press, 2019). He attended Georgetown University, and when not reading, writing or acting, works as a technical writer and systems analyst. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Road to Delano John DeSimone August 12, 2020 In John DeSimone's Road to Delano (Rare Bird Books, 2020), it's 1968, and Cesar Chavez is organizing the United Farm Workers to fight for decent working conditions and basic human rights, while growers get increasingly violent in trying to prevent unionization. Teenager Jack Duncan learns that his father’s death did not happen the way he’d been told. His best friend Adrian joins his own father in fighting for workers rights with Chavez. Jack and Adrian hope baseball will be their ticket to college scholarships and a way out of Delano, California, but Jack’s widowed mother is about to lose her house to a greedy grower, and because of his father’s activities, school officials threaten Adrian’s hope of graduation. Turns out the growers own the town, including the police department and the school officials. The plight of pesticide-poisoning and other injustices to immigrant workers (which we are sadly still fighting today) pulls the two best friends away from their goal of getting out of Delano and pushes them into a deadly game of survival. John DeSimone is a published writer, novelist, and teacher. He's been an adjunct professor and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Spalding University. His recent co-authored books include Broken Circle: A Memoir of Escaping Afghanistan (Little A Publishers) with Enjeela Ahmadi, and Courage to Say No with Dr. Raana Mahmood, about her struggles against sexual exploitation as a female physician in Karachi. His novels Leonardo's Chair and No Ordinary Man have received critical recognition, and in 2012, he won a prestigious Norman Mailer Fellowship to complete Road to Delano . He works with aspiring writers with stories of inspiration and determination or with those who have a vital message. When he isn’t reading or writing, John loves traveling and tasting different foods and cultures, but he is currently a caregiver for his wife. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Among the Lesser Gods Margo Catts August 20, 2018 Margo Catts' new novel Among the Lesser Gods (Arcade Publishing, 2017) opens in 1978, as Elena Alvarez, a newly minuted physics graduate living in LA, discovers she's pregnant. She considers it to be just one more mistake in a lifetime of screw-ups. Her mother abandoned her after she accidentally set a deadly fire as a child, and she was raised by her cold distant father. She felt loved only when visiting her grandmother, who divides her time between the town of Leadville, Colorado, and a rustic mountain cabin in an old abandoned mining town. When her grandmother writes to ask Elena to come and babysit for two children whose mother is "gone," Elena accepts with hopes that she can put off making any real decisions about her future. Through her grandmother's stories, Elena starts to understand her father's remoteness, and as the children she babysits become more attached to her, she starts to understand herself. "It seems a person is never finished learning about sorrow..." Elena's internal conflicts, metaphysical musings, and reflections on family and forgiveness are all part of the stunning landscape. Then the two children go missing, and Elena is forced to confront the guilt that has followed her since childhood. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next