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.” < 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

A beautiful family is torn apart by a shocking loss, and three of its members blame themselves. It’s the middle of the twentieth century, their farm in Maine needs tending, and the seasons move swiftly with specific chores and tasks. < Back Beneficence Meredith Hall October 19, 2021 Today I talked to Meredith Hall about her new novel Beneficence (Godine, 2020). A beautiful family is torn apart by a shocking loss, and three of its members blame themselves. It’s the middle of the twentieth century, their farm in Maine needs tending, and the seasons move swiftly with specific chores and tasks. The cows need calving, the chickens need feeding, the laundry needs washing, the rugs need airing, the food needs preparing. But each member of the family is numb from their huge loss, and they go their separate ways, telling small bits of the story as their lives unfold. Their dreams and hopes change, and some decisions have harsh consequences, but slowly, through the changing seasons, they struggle to make their way back to the family they once loved. Meredith Hall taught in the MFA program at the University of New Hampshire for many years. In her late fifties, she wrote an essay that won the Pushcart Prize, and on the basis of that encouragement, she was awarded the Gift of Freedom Award, which provided two years of dedicated writing. Her memoir Without a Map was named a best book of the year by Kirkus and BookSense and was both a NYT bestseller and an Elle magazine Reader’s Pick of the Year. She was a recipient of the 2004 Gift of Freedom Award from A Room of Her Own Foundation and her work has appeared in Five Points , The Gettysburg Review, The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, The New York Times, and many other publications. Hall writes while listening to Gregorian chant, and when she is not writing or reading, she is outdoors, finding beautiful wild places. She spends her time in Northern California and Maine, so beauty is available all around her, vital sustenance. She loves and needs the arts and spends each winter in the Bay Area gorging on performances of contemporary dance, modern and classical music, and drama. She wanders museums and galleries a lot. Her family and friends are at the center, always. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

In this well-written mystery, The Black Cage: A Milo Rigg Mystery (Severn House Publishers), it’s bitter winter in Chicago, and disgraced crime reporter Milo Rigg wakes up every night dreaming that his wife is calling to him from a black cage. < Back The Black Cage Jack Fredrickson August 28, 2020 In this well-written mystery, The Black Cage: A Milo Rigg Mystery (Severn House Publishers), it’s bitter winter in Chicago, and disgraced crime reporter Milo Rigg wakes up every night dreaming that his wife is calling to him from a black cage. He can’t reach or save her - she was killed by a random bullet two years before. Consumed with grief, he tried to expose a botched murder investigation, but the case nearly destroyed Milo's reputation along with his career. He was sent by paper’s struggling editor to the far suburbs, to write human interest stories. But now there are more murders, and he thinks the cases might be linked, so Milo is back asking questions. Everywhere he turns, it seems like someone is lying or covering up the truth. And he’s not sleeping well, because of the black cage. He just has to figure out what it’s trying to tell him. Jack Fredrickson lives with his wife, Susan, west of Chicago. He is the author of seven Dek Elstrom PI mysteries, the first of which, A Safe Place for Dying , was nominated for the Shamus Award for Best First Novel, and one standalone, Silence the Dead . Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

Molly Giles looks back at moments of her childhood, her mistakes and missteps, getting pregnant at eighteen, marrying her boyfriend and having a second child, divorcing, marrying a second time but failing to find the happiness she knows she deserves. As the decades passed, she edited many well-known novels and popped out four story collections, two novels, and this brutally honest memoir. < Back Life Span Molly Giles June 25, 2024 Molly Giles remembers when her father came back after WWII in 1945. Her memoir, Life Span (WTAW Press, 2024) opens when she is three years old, sitting in the front seat of a moving van as her father drives from San Francisco to their new home in Sausalito. Well-known editor and author of four story-collections and two novels, Giles referenced the journals she began writing at age nine to create a memoir filled with moments and thoughts from her eight decades so far. The Bay area is the backdrop for much of her life, although she spent fourteen years teaching in Arkansas. She delves into family relationships, husbands and lovers, siblings and children, teaching and editing, and the struggles of a being a single mother before women were accepted into the work force. In brutally honest prose, Molly dissects her life with a critical eye, never sugar-coating her failures or glorifying her successes, of which there were many. Molly Giles’s first collection of short stories, ROUGH TRANSLATIONS won the Flannery O’Connor Prize for Short Fiction. Four subsequent story collections—CREEK WALK, BOTHERED, ALL THE WRONG PLACES and WIFE WITH KNIFE, have also won awards, including the San Francisco Commonwealth Silver Medal for Fiction, the Spokane Short Fiction Award, and the Leapfrog Press Global Fiction Prize. She published her first novel, IRON SHOES, in 2000, and, twenty-three years later, published its sequel, THE HOME FOR UNWED HUSBANDS. Her work has been included in numerous anthologies including the O.Henry and Pushcart Prize (three times), and she has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Marin Arts Council, and the Arkansas Arts Council. Molly Giles has taught fiction writing at San Francisco State University, University of Hawaii in Manoa, San Jose State University, the National University of Ireland at Galway, the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, and at numerous writing conferences, including The Community of Writers and Naropa. She has won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Book Reviewing, been awarded residences at MacDowell, Yadoo, and The House of Literature in Paros, Greece, and has edited many published writers, including Amy Tan. Molly enjoys cooking, but she doesn’t love it, what she loves is reading cookbooks in bed, licking salt off her fingers after a light supper of Fritos. She also enjoys gardening (the watering part not the weeding) and watching the resident fawns graze what’s left of her lawn. Molly is a passionate reader and though she often forgets both keys and wallet, she never travels without a book in her purse. She lives in Woodacre, CA. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

The one I made nearly every Friday while my kids were growing up! < Back Apple Crisp May 25, 2019 Prep Time: 20 Minutes Cook Time: 60 Minutes Serves: 9 Servings Tags: Baking, Cakes & Pies & Icing About the Recipe p.214 Battered: A Whipped and Sipped Mystery “You were the one who told me about Hector-Schaf Electronics in the first place,” said Frank, chewing the crisp slowly and smiling the same way she did when she was eating something extraordinary, “but you neglected to say anything about Joan being blackmailed.” “I’m sorry,” said Alene. “It was a long time ago.” “Do you know if anyone else received a demand for money?” Frank asked. “Like your ex-mother-in-law?” “Mitzi never mentioned it,” said Alene. “She is an honest person and she wouldn’t have tolerated illegally obtained money. I told Gary that she’d probably have tossed Patrick out of her bed and her life if she knew he’d done something illegal such as helping Joan embezzle money.” Alene’s jaw had nearly dropped to the floor when Gary had asked if she thought Mitzi had tossed Patrick overboard on their cruise. Gary had also been on board when it happened. “She’d have called the police no matter what the blackmailer threatened her with,” Alene told Frank. “I once heard her rail against Neal when he couldn’t tell her what charities he supports.” “What about Neal’s father?” Alene said, “Well, you know that he died after falling off a cruise ship, right?” “That was very unusual and suspicious,” said Frank. “Yeah, it was weird, but the entire cruise industry changed their rules because of it,” said Alene Ingredients 7-8 tart apples (like Gala, Granny Smith or Fuji) - peeled and sliced thin) Juice of about half a lemon 1 tsp lemon zest 1 TBSP pure maple syrup ¼ cup fruity or berry liqueur or 1 tsp pure vanilla extract 1 cup chopped toasted almonds or pecans (or mix them together) 2 cups quick oats ¼ cup whole wheat flour, almond flour, or gluten-free flour ½ cup brown sugar 2 tsp cinnamon Pinch of salt ¼ cup canola or coconut oil Preparation Preheat oven to 350 degrees F Mix dry ingredients with oil in a bowl or a zip locked bag In a large bowl, whisk syrup, lemon, zest, cinnamon, vanilla or liquor. Add apple slices and stir gently with a large spoon to evenly coat apples Spray square or pie glass pan and pour in apple mixture Press nut mixture gently over the apples to cover the entire top Bake covered with foil for about 40 minutes Uncover and bake an additional 20 minutes until browned on top Previous Next

As a child, S. L. Wisenberg worried about being outside, not being able to breathe, and Nazis coming through the window of her Houston home. < Back The Wandering Womb: Essays in Search of Home S.L. Wisenberg April 4, 2023 As a child, S. L. Wisenberg worried about being outside, not being able to breathe, and Nazis coming through the window of her Houston home. In this remarkable collection of essays, she recalls chasing popularity, taking a Neiman Marcus sponsored class about fashion at age eleven. She tells funny but poignant stories about her travels in Paris, Vienna, and Poland, including a numbing visit to Auschwitz. In one essay Wisenberg searches through family records and history books and conducts interviews to learn more about Selma, Alabama, where her great grandparents ended up after leaving Lithuania. In another she describes going through sorority rush when she’s twenty-nine and teaching at the university. This is a moving, sometimes hilarious exploration of love, life, history. As the reviewer in the Southern Review of Books wrote,” This luxe tapestry of stories and ideas creates a vivid image of Wisenberg as a woman, as Jewish, and as a thinker in the world…. This book is at once intellectual, deeply personal, and delightful.” S.L. Wisenberg is the author of a fiction collection, The Sweetheart Is In ; the essay collection Holocaust Girls: History, Memory & Other Obsessions ; and a chronicle, The Adventures of Cancer Bitch . She has received a Pushcart Prize, and awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Illinois Arts Council, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. The former co-director of the MA/MFA program at Northwestern University, she has taught workshops and read and lectured widely. Wisenberg lives in Chicago, where she edits Another Chicago Magazine . When she's not writing, she's walking through her Chicago neighborhood, fixing a stir-fry, or collecting grocery lists that people leave behind. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

Sara Alvarado tells the story of growing up in Madison, studying Spanish, and escaping alcoholism, substance abuse, men, and sexual assault by moving to Puerto Vallarta in Mexico. < Back Dreaming in Spanish Sara Alvarado June 6, 2023 In Dreaming in Spanish: An Unexpected Love Story In Puerto Vallarta (Little Creek Press, 2023), Sara Alvarado tells the story of growing up in Madison, studying Spanish, and escaping alcoholism, substance abuse, men, and sexual assault by moving to Puerto Vallarta in Mexico. She’s honest about her struggle to overcome her weaknesses, her relationships, and her addictions at the age of twenty-four. In 1999, with $10,000 from her grandmother’s will, her goal is to live near a Mexican beach and get her act together. She commits to six months of celibacy and vows to avoid her previously reckless, party lifestyle in favor of reading, meditating, and getting healthy. Sara Alvarado is a writer, speaker, and fierce advocate for racial equity in real estate. She is the co-founder of OWN IT: Building Black Wealth, co-owner of Alvarado Real Estate Group, author of the Racial Justice Toolkit for Real Estate Professionals (2020), A Guide for Change Agents (2016), and creator of the Conversation Challenge: helping white people talk about race. Sara has also had numerous essays and articles published in Madison365, HuffPost, and Scary Mommy. She graduated from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis with a BA in Spanish and feels most at home in Madison, WI. and Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Sara is a lover of love, spirit, dance, and adventure (with the music turned up), and enjoys traveling, challenging the status quo, and writing. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

Two south side Chicago families are bound together by a violence-infused past. Ruby’s mother, Alice King, has been murdered. Her father, Lebanon King, is an abusive man who endured a terrible childhood. < Back Saving Ruby King Catherine Adel West September 8, 2020 Two south side Chicago families are bound together by a violence-infused past. Ruby’s mother, Alice King, has been murdered. Her father, Lebanon King, is an abusive man who endured a terrible childhood. Her best friend, Layla, has always tried to protect Ruby from Lebanon even though her own father and Ruby’s father have been close friends since childhood. And their mothers were friends before them. In this moving debut novel, Saving Ruby King (Park Row Books), Catherine Adel West gives each character a voice, but the voice that binds all of their lives together is that of the Calvary Hope Christian Church, objective witness to the complex ties between Ruby’s grandmother and her two friends, between Ruby’s father and Layla’s father, and between Ruby and Layla. In precise, lyrical writing, West delves into each of their secrets while exploring intergenerational trauma, racial injustice in Chicago, and the power of friendship. Catherine Adel West was born and raised in Chicago, IL where she currently resides. She graduated with both her Bachelors and Masters of Science in Journalism from the University of Illinois - Urbana. Her work is published in Black Fox Literary Magazine, Five2One, Better than Starbucks, Doors Ajar, 805 Lit + Art, The Helix Magazine, Lunch Ticket and Gay Magazine . In between writing and traveling, Catherine works as an editor and is currently obsessed with watching old episodes of Law and Order: Criminal Intent, especially the ones with Vincent D’Onofrio. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

Nineteen-year-old Martha gets pregnant, her father banishes her, and she’s sent to a home for unwed mothers in neighboring West Virginia. < Back Stoking Hope C. K. McDonough December 23, 2021 Stoking Hope (D.X. Varos, 2021), C.K. McDonough’s debut novel, opens in an early 1900’s southwest Pennsylvania coal town. Nineteen-year-old Martha gets pregnant, her father banishes her, and she’s sent to a home for unwed mothers in neighboring West Virginia. She gives birth, and when her daughter Frances is taken from her six years later, Martha agrees to marry her widowed boss with hopes of getting her daughter back. The loveless marriage allows Frances to stay in school and pursue her dream of becoming a chemist, until long-held secrets cut that dream short. Stoking Hope is a family saga that travels through five decades of challenges and heartache with moments of unexpected generosity and joy. The novel culminates with the creation of Kevlar, a life-saving fabric. A Uniontown, Pennsylvania native, C. K. McDonough has a journalism degree from West Virginia University’s Perley Isaac Reed School of Journalism, and twenty years’ experience in the communications industry. She says writing video scripts and advertising copy is fine but writing a novel is bliss! A self-proclaimed history nerd, Caren has turned her love of research and the written word into Stoking Hope, her first novel . When not writing, Caren is reading, devouring books of every genre. She also loves to ski, hike, and garden but her favorite pastime is hanging with her pets. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

After Henry Sinclair’s supervisor steals his research, he tries to rejuvenate his career by turning his girlfriend into a drug experiment. Astrid is a rising young singer. < Back What You Could Have Won Rachel Genn November 4, 2020 After Henry Sinclair’s supervisor steals his research, he tries to rejuvenate his career by turning his girlfriend into a drug experiment. Astrid is a rising young singer. From her New York City apartment to a rehabilitation facility in Paris and a nudist camp on the Greek island of Antiparos, she struggles between her passion for Henry and her need to make her own decisions. Throughout this non-linear story, Astrid and Henry watch the box set of Sopranos, each affected differently by the ongoing violence and Tony Soprano’s bullying. Ultimately, What You Could Have Won (And Other Stories, 2020) is a novel about resilience and self-discovery in the face of control. Rachel Genn is a senior lecturer at the Manchester Writing School/School of Digital Arts and is currently creating a course on the neuroscience of Reverie. She earned a PhD in Psychopharmacology from the University of Durham, worked some years as a neuroscientist, and completed an MA in Writing at the Sheffield Hallam University, after which she completed her first novel, The Cure<, 2011. In 2016, Genn was a Leverhulme Artist-in-Residence, and she has written for Granta, 3AM, and Hotel Magazine. She lives in Sheffield after spending a good deal of her academic career in North America/Canada with a Royal Society Fellowship to the University of British Columbia, where she studied the neuroanatomy and neurochemistry of motivated behaviors. On her return to the UK she worked on the genetic bases of attentional mechanisms at the Institute of Psychiatry of King’s College in London. Genn follows a Sufi path, and her short documentary PING PONG SUFI premiered in 2020 at the Muslim Film Festival in Sydney, Australia. She has two daughters Esther and Ingrid (to whom this novel is dedicated “that they may know their own power”). She enjoys outdoor swimming, hill walking and snowboarding. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

Emma lives in New Jersey, works as a civil engineer, has a reliable boyfriend, and had a wonderful best friend from college who she always secretly loved even. < Back The Almond in the Apricot Sara Goudarzi March 8, 2022 Today I talked to Sara Goudarzi about her novel The Almond in the Apricot (Deep Vellum Publishing, 2022). Emma lives in New Jersey, works as a civil engineer, has a reliable boyfriend, and had a wonderful best friend from college who she always secretly loved even. Not long after her best friend is killed crossing the street in Manhattan, Emma begins having nightmares. In these not-at-all-normal dreams, she is a young girl name Lilly whose life is continuously upended by bombs that force her and her family into a bunker. Unlike normal dreams, Emma’s are continuous and chronological, and she truly inhabits the little girl’s life, including playing with her friends, skipping home from school, or working on her math homework. Lily also finds a wonderful best friend, and when his life is at risk, Emma wants to go back to her dreams to rescue him, but how? Sara Goudarzi is a Brooklyn writer and holds an M.A. in journalism from New York University and an M.S. in engineering from Rutgers University. Her non-fiction, poetry and translations have appeared in Scientific American , The New York Times, National Geographic News, The Christian Science Monitor, The Globe and Mail, Scholastic’s Science World magazine, The Adirondack Review and Drunken Boat, among others. Sara is the author of Amazing Animals, Leila's Day at the Pool (2022) and several other titles from Scholastic Inc. and has taught writing at NYU and mediabistro. She is a 2017 Writers in Paradise Les Standiford fellow and a Tin House alumna. When she’s not writing, she loves swimming, going to the beach, gardening, traveling, and of course reading! Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

For two years author Elissa Bassist saw over twenty medical specialists for pain that none of them managed to diagnose or resolve. Some of their treatments led to other medical problems but never relief. Then an acupuncturist suggested that she simply needed to take control of her voice, and Bassist was shocked when it worked. < Back Hysterical Elissa Bassist November 22, 2022 Today I talked to Elissa Bassist about her memoir Hysterical: A Memoir (Hachette, 2022) For two years author Elissa Bassist saw over twenty medical specialists for pain that none of them managed to diagnose or resolve. Some of their treatments led to other medical problems but never relief. Then an acupuncturist suggested that she simply needed to take control of her voice, and Bassist was shocked when it worked. How, as far as we think we’ve come, is it still the case that a girl born in 1984 could have so much in common with generations of women who were expected to be silent, to "get along," to accept whatever was happening even when their souls ached, their heads pounded, and their bodies withered? Bassist was accused of "being dramatic" when she experienced pain and "inappropriate" when she expressed her sadness or suffering. She said “yes,” when she meant, “no,” and accepted others’ opinions that she was too emotional, too loud, or too aggressive. In her justifiably angry voice, the one she had to take control of, Bassist shares her personal journey from broken and bleeding, scared and lonely, to acerbically funny and quick to call out nonsense. She’s straightforward and unashamed in sharing the moments she’s least proud of and the times she’d rather forget, because now she wants to teach other women that it’s okay to "look bad" in service of unmuting their own voices. Elissa Bassist is the editor of the “Funny Women” column on The Rumpus and the author of the award-deserving memoir Hysterical . As a founding contributor to The Rumpus, she’s written cultural and personal criticism since the website launched in 2009. She also teaches humor writing at The New School, Catapult, 92NY, Lighthouse Writers Workshop, and elsewhere, and she is probably her therapist’s favorite. Bassist lives in Brooklyn with her dog Benny, a very good boy, and when not writing or reading or teaching, she watches horror movies, rides roller coasters, and does light witchcraft. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next