< Back Because I Loved You Donnaldson Brown April 11, 2023 Today I talked to Donnaldson Brown about her new novel Because I Loved You (She Writes Press 2023). Sixteen-year-old Leni O’Hare loves her horse, so when her mother tries to sell it, she rides as far as she can. It’s 1972, and she ends up falling in love with another horse-lover. Seventeen-year-old Caleb McGrath plays football with Leni’s beloved older brother Foy, and dreams of a future far from East Texas. Leni and Caleb fall in love and make the plans of young lovers, but they’re both torn between their desire and following their dreams. Tragedy strikes and turns everyone’s world apart, Caleb’s brother Hank has just returned from Vietnam filled with rage, and Leni needs Hank’s help to escape. Leni and Caleb build their lives separately until they’re pulled together again in New York City in the 1980s. Passion isn’t quite enough in this wide-ranging tale of young love, consequences, and finding home. An attorney and former screenwriter, Donnaldson Brown ran the New York office of Robert Redford’s film development company for several years. A student of theater (and clowning), her spoken word pieces have been accepted for performance by The Deep Listening Institute’s Writers in Performance and Women & Identity Festivals in New York City, and in the Made in the Berkshires Theatre Festival in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. She’s been awarded multiple residencies. She is a longtime resident of both Brooklyn, New York, and western Massachusetts, and grew up riding horses on a family ranch in northeast Texas and in her native Connecticut. Ms. Brown is currently a facilitator and trainer with The Equus Effect, offering somatic based experiential learning with horses for veterans, first responders and others struggling with post-traumatic stress injuries. She is certified to teach meditation and several forms of yoga. Ms. Brown is also a proud mother who loves to sing, and cycle, and hike with her dogs. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back A Coup: Turkish Trilogy Book 3 Phyllis Skoy October 31, 2023 A Coup , the third novel in Phyllis Skoy’s Turkish Trilogy (Black Rose Writing 2023) follows a young woman in Turkey. In the first book of the trilogy, Adalet, who has found new friends after a devastating earthquake killed her parents, destroyed their home, took her unborn baby, and left her scarred for life. Her husband leaves her for another woman, and as part of the divorce agreement, she’s forced to live far from the city. Now in the third book, Adalet is back in the city, visiting Nuray, a college friend who runs a small women’s magazine. It’s not long after an attempted coup against Erdogan, a strongman who is set to crush all opposition, and police suddenly show up and throw Nuray, her fellow journalists, and Adalet into a notorious prison. They’re in separate, filthy and horrifying cells, and Adalet has to confront the possibility of never getting out alive. This is a novel about regular people trying to live their lives in the aftermath of Turkey’s takeover by a populist authoritarian leader. Phyllis M Skoy’s first short story, “Life Before,” appeared as the Discovery of the Year in Bosque, 2013. What Survives , the first novel in the Turkish Trilogy (IP Books) was short listed for the Santa Fe Writers Project, a finalist in the New Mexico/Arizona Book Awards, and First Runner Up in the Eric Hoffer Grand Prize Short List. In 2022, Black Rose Writing reissued What Survives and published the prequel, As They Are . A Coup, the third novel in the trilogy, follows the lives of two women in the aftermath of the 2016 coup attempt in Turkey, a country which fascinates her. Myopia, A Memoir (IP Books 2017) describes what it was like to grow up with a refugee father still unknowingly consumed with the fears and struggles of his past. The author of various published short stories and essays, Skoy is a retired psychoanalyst who practiced in both New York City and Albuquerque before her retirement in 2018. She specialized in working with the deaf, with children, and with adults suffering from depression, anxiety, and trauma. She currently resides in Placitas, New Mexico with her husband and her Australian Cattle dog. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back The Strange Inheritance of Leah Fern Rita Zoey Chin October 12, 2022 The Strange Inheritance of Leah Fern (Melville House 2022) by Rita Zoey Chin is equal parts coming of age, epic travel tale, quest to find a mother who disappeared, and journey of personal discovery. The story begins as Leah Fern is planning to commit suicide. She hears someone banging on her door, which is strange since she has no friends. The visitor is a lawyer who shares a box that sends Leah on the road following clues that she hopes will lead to the mother who abandoned her when she was six, 15 years before. North to Canada and west to the ocean, Leah consumes copious amounts of candy as she surmounts obstacles, learns how to navigate with a piece of magnetite, and recounts her happy carnival life, before her mother, the magician, disappeared. Rita Zoey Chin is the author of the widely praised memoir, Let the Tornado Come . She holds an MFA from the University of Maryland and is the recipient of a Katherine Anne Porter Prize, an Academy of American Poets Award, and a Bread Loaf scholarship. She has taught at Towson University and at Grub Street in Boston. Her work has appeared in Guernica , Tin House, and Marie Claire . Outside of writing, Zoey can often be found hiking with her dogs, making silver amulets in her metalsmithing studio, and concocting herbal brews in her kitchen. This is her first novel. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant’s Son Sergio Troncoso October 6, 2020 A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant’s Son (Cinco Puntos Press, 2020) is a collection of linked short stories, which Luis Alberto Urrea called “a world-class collection.” The book won the Kay Cattarulla Award for Best Short Story and the International Latino book Award for Best Collection of Short Stories. Troncoso fills these 13 linked stories with the struggles and triumphs of Mexican/American immigrants or their children who’ve settled in the United States. In a nod to philosophical perspectivism, the view that perception changes according o the viewer’s interpretation, Troncoso presents characters who return again and again, in different situations, from different perspectives. Sergio Troncoso is an American author of short stories, essays, and novels. He often writes about the United States-Mexico border, immigration, philosophy in literature, families, fatherhood, and crossing cultural, religious, and psychological borders. Currently president of the Texas Institute of Letters, Tronosco is a Fulbright scholar and has served as a judge for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the New Letters Prize for Essays. His work has recently appeared in CNN Opinion , New Letters , The Yale Review , Michigan Quarterly Review , and Texas Monthly. Previous books include From This Wicked Patch of Dust, which won the Southwest Book Award, and Crossing Borders: Personal Essays , winner of the Bronze Award for Essays from Foreword Reviews . He is also the author of The Nature of Truth and The Last Tortilla and Other Stories. When he is not reading or writing, Troncoso loves to bike and hike in the Litchfield hills (Connecticut). He is always on the lookout for great mozzarella and asadero cheese. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Creatures Crissy Van Meter June 30, 2020 Going back and forth in time, Evangeline (Evie) recalls the challenges of being raised on a lush island off the coast of California. Her mother has left Evie and her father, and her father raises Evie from the age of three. He’s a jack-of-all-trades but survives by selling a specially grown variety of marijuana. And although he provides her with adventure and a deep love of the ocean, Evie’s father doesn’t show up as a consistent adult in her life. The book opens just before her wedding, when a storm is brewing, her fiancé is out at sea, and a dead whale beaches, which causes a pervading smell of decay across the island. Evie’s mostly absent mother suddenly shows up wanting to participate in the joy of her daughter’s wedding. In flashbacks and musings, Evie confronts her abandonment, guilt, anger and ultimately her love for all creatures - including her parents, her husband, her best friend, and her best friend’s child. With sporadic notes from Evie’s research on wales and sea life, this is a novel to savor while either gazing out to sea or imagining it. Crissy Van Meter is a writer based in Los Angeles. Creatures: A Novel (Algonquin Books) is her debut novel. She teaches creative writing at The Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College. She is the founder of the literary project Five Quarterly and the managing editor for Nouvella Books. She serves on the board of directors for the literary non-profit Novelly. Crissy loves going to Disneyland and has been an annual passholder since she was 5. She’s been to Tokyo Disneyland, Disneyland Paris, Walt Disney World, and she plans to visit the remaining Disney parks in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back The Promise of Pierson Orchard Kate Brandes November 19, 2018 How do families decide when financial relief outweighs the risks of drilling for natural gas on their land? In Kate Brandes' novel Promise of Pierson Orchard (Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing, 2017), a big energy company comes to Minden, Pennsylvania and hires the long-estranged brother of orchard owner Jack Pierson. Thinking that Wade Pierson is one of their own, some struggling neighbors start selling mining rights to Green Energy. Jack fears what the company will do to the land and worries that Wade will try to rekindle his relationship with Jack’s wife LeeAnn, who recently left him. Jack reaches out to the mother who abandoned him and his brother when they were teenagers. She’s now an environmental lawyer with experience in dealing with companies whose spurious promises to landowners are broken, along with ecosystems, relationships, and towns. Kate Brandes is an environmental scientist with 20 years of experience. A geology teacher at Moravian College, she is also a painter and writer who focuses on the environment. Her short stories have been published in The Binnacle, Wilderness House Literary Review , and Grey Sparrow Journal . A member of the Arts Community of Easton (ACE), the Pennwriters, as well as the Women’s Fiction Writers Association, Kate lives near the Delaware River with her husband and two sons. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back The Field Victoria Garza March 21, 2023 Victoria Garza begins her poetic memoir with her ten-year-old self learning that her little sister and cousin have died in a car accident. She painstakingly recalls lovely moments with her sister as they faced their parents’ divorce, their new lives surrounded by family members, their Mexican American culture and celebrations. Over the course of the book, she examines her own survivor’s guilt, her disassociation, and her attempt to rebuild herself. She includes the memories of other family members, each of whom remembers parts of that awful day, and she observes the different ways everyone is affected by grief. Garza also explores death and its customs as described by various poets, authors, and religious traditions. The Field (Jackleg Press, 2022) is a memoir about losing a loved one, family, and memory. For most of Victoria’s professional writing career, she’s written journalism, screenplays, documentaries, and multimedia content. Sometimes, she’s a filmmaker, information designer and content strategist. She holds an M.A in Media Theory, History and Criticism from the University of Arizona and an M.F.A in Film and Media Production from NYU's Graduate Institute of Film & Television. Currently, she's a senior writer for Apple's WW Enterprise group. She and her wife Lisa live in the Bay Area with two soulful children named Augustin and Dakota. When Victoria is not reading or writing, she loves hiking, cooking, and having deep conversations with her toddlers. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back How Fires End Marco Rafalà May 12, 2020 In a sad but loving tribute to his Sicilian-Italian heritage, Marco Rafala ’s debut novel How Fires End (Little A, 2019) centers on the haunting legacy of WWII on the people of a small Sicilian village. It’s the summer of 1943 and an unexploded mortar shell kills 9-year-old Salvatore’s twin brothers. His faith is destroyed, and his family unravels, fueling fear that the Vassallo name is cursed. Salvatore and his sister, Nella, accept the help of a fascist Italian soldier, Vincenzo, who accompanies them to a new life in America. But the three of them make the choice to keep their secrets hidden, and years later in America, Salvatore’s son, David, is swept up in the chaotic aftermath of their hidden pasts. This is a story about loyalty, family, and forgiveness. Marco Rafalà is a first-generation Sicilian American, novelist, musician, and writer for award-winning tabletop role-playing games (e.g. The One Ring). He earned his MFA in fiction from The New School and is a co-curator of the Guerrilla Lit Reading Series in New York City. His fiction and non-fiction have appeared in the Bellevue Literary Review and LitHub. Born in Middletown, Connecticut, he now lives in Brooklyn, New York. And when not working, reading or writing, Rafalà loves walking in the cemetery with his partner. 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