NBN Podcast Episodes Hosted by G. P. Gottlieb Global Fiction March 5, 2024 Inside the Mirror Parul Kapur INSIDE THE MIRROR centers on twin sisters growing up in 1950s Bombay, who aspire to become artists. The family is still recovering from the Partition of India in 1947, especially the twins’ grandmother, who once fought for justice against the British regime. Listen to Episode Buy Book January 23, 2024 Nadiia Christine Evans Nadia is a young Bosnian refugee who has lost everyone she’s loved. In 1997 she gets into England on a fake passport and finds temp work in a shady office that might be doing something illegal. A new temp shows up and Nadia knows he’s from her country even though he says he’s Armenian. She can tell that he’s Serbian, perhaps the kind that hunted down Bosnians like her. Nadia sees danger everywhere. Listen to Episode Buy Book October 31, 2023 A Coup: Turkish Trilogy Book 3 Phyllis Skoy It’s 2016, after an attempted coup against Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and because of a tip, the police suddenly show up at the office of a young journalist. Nuray, her fellow journalists, and her visiting friend Adalet are thrown into a notorious prison. They’re placed in separate, filthy and horrifying cells, and Adalet has to confront the possibility of never getting out alive. Her Jewish boyfriend has already left Istanbul and is trying to get her to marry him, but Adelet loves her country. Nuray is alone in the world, but she has to confront the father who disappeared from her life and the soldier who wants to see her punished. This is a novel about regular people trying to live their lives in the aftermath of Turkey’s takeover by a populist, authoritarian leader. Listen to Episode Buy Book September 5, 2023 I Surrender: A Memoir of Chile's Dictatorship, 1975 Kathleen M. Osberger In 1975, Kathleen Osberger, who’d just graduated from Notre Dame University, flew to Chile to teach in a Catholic school in Santiago. She was assigned to live with several religious women, and when she arrived, was told that they would sometimes shelter dissidents who were wanted by the secret police. Listen to Episode Buy Book May 23, 2023 After the Barricades Jessica Stilling After her mother dies in a tragic accident, Anna cleans out her closet and finds a striking painting that she’d never seen before. She also finds a trove of letters from Stefan Terre, a name she’s never heard. Listen to Episode Buy Book February 21, 2023 In the Fall They Leave: A Novel of the First World War Joanna Higgins Nineteen-year-old pianist Marie-Thérèse has dropped out of her prestigious conservatory in favor of becoming a nurse, much to her mother’s disappointment. As she begins her final year of study, Germany invades Belgium on its way to France. It’s 1914, and Marie-Thérèse’s world is upended by harsh rules and demands that students and staff spy on each other. Listen to Episode Buy Book December 13, 2022 Compass Murray Lee "We can't all be heroes. Some try and succeed. Others posture and pretend. And a few--just a few--set off on their hero's quest only to discover that failure was within them all along." Listen to Episode Buy Book December 3, 2019 The Art of Regret Mary Fleming Trevor McFarquhar is haphazardly running a struggling bicycle shop, with few friends, little ambition, and an inability to form a lasting relationship. Then, during the chaos of the 1995 Transit Strike in Paris, Trevor does something horrible. Five years later, he gets a chance to redeem himself. Listen to Episode Buy Book September 6, 2019 Agnon Library of The Toby Press S.Y. Agnon (Translated by Jeffrey Saks) Shmuel Yosef Agnon (1888-1970) was born in Buczacz, Eastern Galicia (now part of Ukraine). Yiddish was the language of his home, and Hebrew the language of the Bible and the Talmud which he studied formally until the age of nine. Considered one of the greatest Hebrew writers, in 1966, Agnon was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Listen to Episode Buy Book July 25, 2019 To Keep the Sun Alive Rabeah Ghaffari Told through a host of vivid, unforgettable characters that range from servants to elderly friends of the family, To Keep the Sun Alive is the kind of rich, compelling story that not only informs the past, but raises questions about political and religious extremism today. Listen to Episode Buy Book July 9, 2019 Make it Concrete Miryam Sivan 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? Listen to Episode Buy Book February 13, 2020 The Lost Book of Adana Moreau Michael Zapata The story of how a book ends up decades later in Chicago is interwoven with train-jumping, alternate universes, and the heartbreaking tales of displaced people. Listen to Episode Buy Book January 19, 2021 Song of the Sisters C. P. Lesley Everywhere young Russian noblewoman Darya Sheremeteva turns, someone in her circle of family and friends reminds her that she exists to serve a single purpose: to marry a powerful man selected by her male relatives and bear children, preferably sons, to continue his line. But after years in isolation nursing her elderly father, Darya questions whether marriage and motherhood constitute the best, never mind the only, future for a woman of twenty-five. Listen to Episode Buy Book January 25, 2022 The Singing Forest Judith McCormack 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. Listen to Episode Buy Book April 19, 2022 The Lamps of Albarracin Edith Saavedra The Lamps of Albarracin tells the story of Sarita, who looks back on her life before and after the Inquisition arrived in her town. It’s 15th century Spain, and Sarita is the daughter and assistant of the town’s Jewish doctor. Listen to Episode Buy Book Load More

NBN Podcast Episodes Hosted by G. P. Gottlieb Dystopian Fiction October 31, 2019 Pigs Johanna Stoberock In her new novel Pigs, Johanna Stoberock has written a lyrical fable about an island that receives all the world’s garbage. That garbage, both physical and psychological in the forms of dreams and memories, is consumed by six enormous, voracious pigs. Listen to Episode Buy Book July 19, 2022 This Place That Place Nandita Dinesh A nameless young woman from This Place, and a nameless young man from That Place are stuck together when That Place, the occupying force, imposes another curfew on This Place. Listen to Episode Buy Book Load More

< Back The Stark Beauty of Last Things Céline Keating March 19, 2024 The Stark Beauty of Last Things (She Writes Press, 2023) is set in Montauk, the far reaches of the famed Hamptons, an area under looming threat from a warming climate and overdevelopment. Now outsider Clancy, a thirty-six-year-old claims adjuster scarred by his orphan childhood, has inherited an unexpected legacy: the power to decide the fate of Montauk’s last parcel of undeveloped land. Everyone in town has a stake in the outcome, among them Julienne, an environmentalist and painter fighting to save the landscape that inspires her art; Theresa, a bartender whose trailer park home is jeopardized by coastal erosion; and Molly and Billy, who are struggling to hold onto their property against pressure to sell. When a forest fire breaks out, Clancy comes under suspicion for arson, complicating his efforts to navigate competing agendas for the best uses of the land and to find the healing and home he has always longed for. Told from multiple points of view, The Stark Beauty of Last Things explores our connection to nature—and what we stand to lose when that connection is severed. Céline Keating is an award-winning writer and author of two novels: Layla (2011), a Huffington Post featured title, and Play for Me (2015), a finalist in the International Book Awards, the Indie Excellence Awards, and the USA Book Awards. Her short fiction and articles have been published in many literary journals and magazines. For many years a resident of Montauk, NY, Céline continues to serve on the board of environmental organization Concerned Citizens of Montauk. She is the coeditor of the anthology On Montauk: A Literary Celebration . She lives in Bristol, Rhode Island, and New York City. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Inside the Mirror Parul Kapur March 5, 2024 INSIDE THE MIRROR (Parul Kapur, University of Nebraska Press 2024) centers on twin sisters growing up in 1950s Bombay, who aspire to become artists. The family is still recovering from the Partition of India in 1947, especially the twins’ grandmother, who once fought for justice against the British regime. One sister is supposed to study medicine, but she is a talented painter, and other studies education, but she is highly trained in a classical Hindu dance form called Bharata Natyam. They live in a Bengali community in which parents choose their daughters’ husbands and society demands conformity. Jaya’s paintings and Kamlesh’s dancing could destroy their chances of finding a good husband, ruin their father’s career, and affect the family’s standing in their community. Jaya moves out of the house, an aberration not only affects her medical schooling, but also disturbs the bond she has with her twin. This is a beautifully written novel about family, art, British colonialism, and coming of age in a time and place in which women could not easily choose their own paths. Parul Kapur was born in Assam, India and immigrated to the United States with her family when she was seven. She received a BA in English Literature from Wesleyan University and an MFA from Columbia University. Returning to India, she worked for a year as a reporter for the city magazine Bombay, covering social issues, and culture and the arts. A journalist, literary critic and fiction writer, Parul was a press officer at the United Nations in New York and a freelance arts writer for The Wall Street Journal Europe, New York Newsday, ARTnews, and Art in America during a decade spent in Germany, France, and England. Her articles and reviews have also appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Esquire, GQ, Slate, Guernica , and Los Angeles Review of Books . Her short stories appear in Ploughshares, Pleiades, Prime Number, Midway Journal, Wascana Review , and the anthology {Ex}tinguished & {Ex}tinct . In 2010, she founded the Books page at ArtsATL, Atlanta’s leading online arts review, covering the literary scene for four years. She was also a co-founder of the global voices program, showcasing a diversity of authors, at the Decatur Book Festival, formerly the nation’s largest indie book festival. She created programs such as visits to collectors’ homes and artist studio visits for members of the High Museum in Atlanta. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Secrets of the Sun Mako Yoshikawa February 20, 2024 Mako Yoshikawa's Secrets of the Sun: A Memoir (Mad Creek Books 2024) contains a host of essays about her difficult, brilliant father. Shoichi Yoshikawa grew up in a wealthy family in 1930s Japan, but his mother died when he was five, and he died alone on the eve of Mako’s wedding. He had been a genius, renowned for his research in nuclear fusion and respected at Princeton, until he fell apart. She remembered him being alternatingly kind or violent when bipolar disease gripped him. Her mother packed up and left the house with Mako and her sisters, later remarrying a wonderful man and brilliant chess player who Mako considered the father she always wanted. Mako wants to understand him; why he cross-dressed, why he was so passionate about fusion, why he alienated his daughters so that he hadn’t even been invited to Mako’s wedding. Mako Yoshikawa is the author of the novels One Hundred and One Ways and Once Removed . Her novels have been translated into six languages; awards include a Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant and a Radcliffe Fellowship. As a literary critic, she has published articles that explore the relationship between incest and race in 20th-century American fiction. After her father’s death in 2010, Mako began writing about him and their relationship: essays which have appeared in the Missouri Review , Southern Indiana Review , Harvard Review , Story , Lit Hub , Longreads , and Best American Essays . These essays became the basis for her new memoir, Secrets of the Sun . Yoshikawa grew up in Princeton, New Jersey but spent two years of her childhood in Tokyo, Japan. She received a B.A. in English literature from Columbia University, a Masters in Shakespeare and Renaissance Drama at Lincoln College, Oxford, and a Ph. D. in English literature from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Mako is a professor of creative writing and the director of the MFA program at Emerson College. In addition to her MFA classes, Mako teaches Comedic Lit to undergraduates in Emerson’s Comedic Arts program. She also teaches as often as she can in the Emerson Prison Initiative, a degree-granting program that is based in MCI-Norfolk, a medium-security prison for men. She lives with her husband and two unruly cats in Boston and Baltimore. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Cravings Garnett Kilberg Cohen February 13, 2024 Garnett Kilberg Cohen’s fourth short story collection, Cravings ( University of Wisconsin Press, 2024), contains twelve beautifully-written tales. They each start simply before delving into universal human struggles of love, aging, repercussions, and community. Characters mull over or confront decisions and recognize or bemoan past mistakes. A little girl’s life changes while she’s sneaking olives from the pantry, a woman is plunged back in time while attending the book release of her ex, parents of a disabled child struggle as their marriage frays, the daughter of an ex appears on television, and a woman destroys the reputation of her only friend. The collection is about cravings of one kind or another, but also covers a range of complex emotions that arise over the course of a lifetime. Garnett Kilberg Cohen was born and raised in Ohio and feels a strong connection to the Midwest, a place in her memory that is replete with farms, small towns, car factories and fields of corn and purple clover. As a child, she was paid one cent for every five dandelions she ripped by the roots from her family’s yard. Her favorite drink was a cherry phosphate sipped while twirling on a stool at the marble counter of the village drug store. Yet, she was aware of the secrets and trauma often just below the surface. Cravings is Cohen’s fourth collection of short stories. She has also published a poetry chapbook, Passion Tour and multiple essays in such places as Rumpus, Antioch Review, The New Yorker online and Michigan Quarterly Review . Her honors include The Crazyhorse Fiction Prize, four awards from the Illinois Arts Council, and two Notable Essay citations from Best American Essays . In addition to writing and reading, she enjoys drawing, taking long walks, theater, museums and travel. In recent years, she has been fortunate to travel to far-flung places such as Taiwan, Australia, Laos, Tanzania, Iceland and Mexico. She believes that observation is often the key to understanding and inspiration for writing—even if the travel is just to a new neighborhood in the city where she now lives, Chicago. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Mrs. Lowe-Porter Jo Salas February 6, 2024 Mrs. Lowe-Porter (Jackleg Press 2024) was an American writer (1876-1963) who, after proving her ability, was contracted by publisher Alfred A. Knopf to translate the brilliant books and stories of Thomas Mann from 1924 -1960. Her flowing German to English translations led to Mann’s growing reputation and helped earn him the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1911, she married paleographer Elias Lowe, with whom she had three children and many good years, but he was also another dominating man in her life (in addition to Mann and Knopf). Lowe-Porter wrote numerous stories and one original play that was performed in 1948, but her struggle to write and publish was stymied by convention and the requirements of her time. On a side note, she was also the great-grandmother of former U.K. prime minister, Boris Johnson. Jo Salas is a New Zealander now living in upstate New York. She has a BA in English literature from Victoria University in New Zealand and an MM in music therapy from New York University. As the cofounder of Playback Theatre, an original theatre practice based on personal stories, Jo has published numerous articles and four books including Improvising Real Life , now in 10 translations. Her fiction includes the Pushcart-nominated short story “After,” and the Pen & Brush award winner “Antarctica.” Jo’s first novel, Dancing with Diana , is about a young man in a wheelchair who met the future princess when they were both 15 years old. When she's not reading or writing, Jo is likely to be teaching international students how to enact real people’s stories, playing hide-and-seek with her grandkids, or marching on the street with other social justice activists. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back The Half-White Album Cynthia Sylvester January 30, 2024 Cynthia Sylvester's The Half-White Album (University of New Mexico Press 2023) is a collection of stories, flash fiction, and poems revolving around the journey of a travelling band, The Covers. The stories are songs on the album, beginning with “Live at the House of Towers,” about a woman’s memories of her mother and home. The story of Shima (and her husband Claude) begins with all of her six daughters being taken by missionaries. The 10-year-old youngest, whom she calls The Last One, and the missionaries call Ruth, keeps running away. Shima is afraid because the missionaries will teach them to forget the songs and stories of their people. In Live at the House at the Edge of the World, Ruth is grown and eating dinner with Albert. We meet Margarita, who was born with cerebral palsy and is confined to a wheelchair and a parade of other characters who struggle to love, live, and survive in a harsh world. These are stories of hope and despair, family and banishment, based out west in what was once the wide-ranging country of native American tribes. Cynthia Sylvester is born into the Kiyaa’áanii Clan for the Bilagáana Clan and is an enrolled member of the Diné. She is a native of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her work has appeared in numerous literary magazines. She received the Native Writer Award at the Taos Writer’s Conference. She graduated from the University of New Mexico and received her MFA in creative writing from the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Cynthia hosts Albuquerque DimeStories—3-minute stories written and read by the author. Hosting DimeStories is a way to give back and foster a writing community. A community of writers is at the core of what she attributes to her success, endurance, and joy in writing. Writing is a solitary endeavor. “So much of what we writers write never sees the light of day.” A DimeStorie, fiction or non-fiction, is a way to have an achievable goal each month (about 500 words) and provides a venue to read the work to a receptive audience. Having a community of writers is important because Cynthia, like many writers, works a “9 to 5.” Her profession for over thirty years has been physical therapy. She comes from a line of “medicine women.” Her mother and aunts were nurses, and she and her sister have health professions. Cynthia’s career in medicine is often reflected in her work as a writer. When not working as a writer or a PT, Cynthia loves to box, take walks with her wife and their dog, Zeus, hang out with friends and family and talk about writing, TV shows, movies, books, sports, what happened last week or last year, whatever if there is a story involved, Cynthia is in her happy place. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Nadiia Christine Evans January 23, 2024 Christine Evans' Nadia (U Iowa Press, 2023) is a dark novel about how the trauma of war follows people no matter how far they’ve fled. A few years after the Balkan War, two refugees from Sarajevo are temping in the same questionable London office. Nadia, who is Bosnian, is unhinged by memories of starvation, deprivation, and losing everyone she loved, including her family and her girlfriend, Sanja. She sees potential snipers and visions of Sanja throughout London, sometimes becoming unhinged by it. All she has is her office friends, and the Indian family where she has tea with buns every day. Iggy was a Serbian sniper who gunned down Bosnians as part of a militaristic street gang, but he justifies all the innocent people he kills by weighing them against the people he saved by distracting his friends or purposefully missing. They’re both forced to confront their choices during the chaotic days of the war, but Nadia still struggles with survivor’s guilt, the ethical choices she made in taking a job in a shady office, and her queer sexuality. Christine Evans writes internationally produced plays, opera libretti, and fiction. Christine’s theater and opera work has been staged at the Sydney Opera House, the American Repertory Theater and many other venues, and her plays are published by Samuel French. She is a multiple MacDowell fellow, VCCA fellow, and a recipient of several DC Council on the Arts & Humanities Fellowships. Originally from Australia, she is a Professor of Performing Arts at Georgetown University, and lives in Washington, DC. She loves the ocean beyond all reason, dreams of dividing her time (as they say on the book jackets) between DC and Australia and has just dusted off her mandolin to start playing music again. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

Cake, Pie, & Icing Recipes to Die For Breakfast, Vegan, Gluten Free, Vegetarian, Cakes & Pies & Icing Almond Berry Breakfast Cake (gluten-free/vegan) Now Alene began measuring ingredients for Ruthie’s strawberry breakfast cake. Read Recipe Vegan, Vegetarian, Baking, Cakes & Pies & Icing Chocolate Peanut Butter Frozen Pie A refreshing dessert in the summer and a pleasingly light dessert to nibble on after a heavy winter meal. Read Recipe Vegetarian, Baking, Breakfast, Muffins and Breads, Cakes & Pies & Icing Chocolate Zucchini-Pear Cake GF Healthy enough for breakfast! Read Recipe Baking, Gluten Free, Cakes & Pies & Icing Apple Banana Chocolate Cake (gluten free) The recipe is going to be in my second book, SMOTHERED: A Whipped and Sipped Mystery Read Recipe Muffins and Breads, Baking, Vegan, Gluten Free, Cakes & Pies & Icing Best Chocolate Cake/Muffins GF. V. Didn’t I tell you I was going to be at my Aunt Ivy’s for a barbeque dinner at which I ate purely protein ... Read Recipe Vegan, Gluten Free, Baking, Dips and Sauces, Cakes & Pies & Icing Dairy-free Chocolate Frosting After a night in the refrigerator, it will be thick like a ganache. Read Recipe Vegetarian, Cakes & Pies & Icing Cocoa-Bear Cake (AKA Dragon’s Milk Cake) Neal bought her a beer and invited her to a Cubs game. That had been her first stout, and she thought it was so... Read Recipe Muffins and Breads, Baking, Vegetarian, Breakfast, Cakes & Pies & Icing Chocolate Zucchini – Apple Cake Yes, we eat this for breakfast! Read Recipe Baking, Cakes & Pies & Icing Apple Crisp The one I made nearly every Friday while my kids were growing up! Read Recipe All Recipes Baking Breakfast Cakes, Pies, & Icing Cookies & Brownies Dips & Sauces Entrees Gluten-Free Muffins & Breads Soup Vegan Vegetarian Load More

< Back Louise Penny Author of The Armond Gamache Mysteries February 14, 2023 Canadian author Louise Penny is a little younger than me and has written one of the most beloved mystery series of all time ( I think). Her Inspector Gamache has a complex personality and has experienced much anguish but still maintains his kind dignity. She writes that he is based on her husband Michael, who developed dementia and died in 2016 at age 83. Penny credits her husband with having given her the ability to stop working and focus on writing . She was already forty when she published Still Life, the first of the Gamache books (which I loved). I think highly of Louise Penny’s ability to portray her characters with so much humanity. They feel the range of human emotions and seem like they could walk off the page and continue their conversations. I’ve devoured at least five Inspector Gamache novels and would continue reading the entire set if I wasn’t trying so hard to read at least one book of every author I know (and those I don’t)! Previous Next

< Back Guacamole Salad May 3, 2020 Prep Time: 15 minutes Cook Time: 0 Minutes Serves: 2 cups Tags: Dips and Sauces, Vegetarian, Gluten Free, Vegan About the Recipe In last week's grocery order I forgot tortilla chips and ate this with a spoon! It's that good! Ingredients 1 ripe avocado 2 TBSP salsa (my favorite is Trader Joe’s Chunky Salsa) 1 scallion, chopped (grow them on the windowsill so you also have a few available) 1/2 chopped shallot or sweet onion 1 cup cherry tomatoes, quartered or halved 1 cup sliced red and yellow sweet mini peppers 1/4 cup (about a handful) chopped parsley or cilantro Juice of 1 lime or about 1 TBSP Nelly & Joe Key Lime juice (it’s always in the fridge) 1/4 tsp each salt and pepper (add more if desired) Sprinkle of red pepper flakes or 1 tsp of Sriracha (also always in the fridge) Preparation In a medium bowl, lightly mash up avocado and salsa – leave chunks – don’t make it super smooth Add all the chopped vegetables, lime juice and salt, pepper Mix it into a chunky guacamole – it’s not the usual kind, but avocados are hard to find – and it’s still delicious! Serve as a side to the main protein or with a bowl of tortilla chips Previous Next