< 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

< Back Maybe It's Me: On Being the Wrong Kind of Woman Eileen Pollack November 1, 2022 In her new essay collection, Maybe It’s Me: On Being the Wrong Kind of Woman (Delphinium Books 2022), Eileen Pollack covers her life in snippets or by delving into history, but the overall picture is of an extremely talented writer, a brilliant woman with a degree in physics and a long list of respected publications who is still somewhat bewildered to find herself alone. She tells stories about her childhood home, her grandparents, her father the dentist, her mother’s closets, her ex-husband who thought his work took precedence, her son who turned into a socialist, and assorted neighbors, friends, and men who drifted through her life. In her distinctive voice, she sometimes slips humor into the most horrendous situations, maybe because that’s how she survived. This is an author who dissects her thoughts, words, and actions without worrying about having a big bow to tie it all together. Eileen Pollack is a writer whose novel Breaking and Entering , about the deep divisions between blue and red America, was named a 2012 New York Times Editor’s Choice selection. Her essay, “Why Are There Still So Few Women in Science?” was published in the Sunday, October 6, 2013, issue of The New York Times Magazine and went viral; the essay is an excerpt from her investigative memoir The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science Is Still A Boys’ Club , published in 2015 by Beacon Press. A native of the Catskill Mountains, Eileen also is the author of the novels The Bible of Dirty Jokes and Paradise, New York , as well as two collections of short fiction, In the Mouth and The Rabbi in the Attic . Her innovative work of creative nonfiction called Woman Walking Ahead: In Search of Catherine Weldon and Sitting Bull was made into a major motion picture starring Jessica Chastain, Sam Rockwell, and Michael Greyeyes. A long-time faculty member and former director of the Helen Zell MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Michigan , she now lives in Boston and offers her services as a freelance editor and writing coach . When she isn’t reading, writing, or teaching, Eileen loves to play tennis. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back The Rocky Orchard Barbara Monier June 26, 2020 Sitting on the porch swing at her family’s vacation house, Mazie sees an old woman cutting through the orchard across the way and offers her a glass of water. Before long, they are playing cards every morning, and Mazie, triggered by the place that holds many childhood memories, begins sharing stories with her new friend, Lula. As Mazie reveals more about her past, she begins to question how Lula happened to come into view that morning, and how she herself made her way back to the orchard. Today I talked to Barbara Monier about her new novel The Rocky Orchard (Amika Press, 2020). Monier studied writing at Yale University and the University of Michigan, but she has been writing since she could hold a chubby pencil. While at Michigan, she received the Avery and Jule Hopwood Prize. Before The Rocky Orchard’ s release, her three previous novels are You, In Your Green Shirt , A Little Birdie Told Me , and Pushing the River . Ms. Monier lives in Chicago, where a breathtaking view of Lake Michigan inspires her writing, except when it distracts her and makes writing anything completely impossible. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< 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

< Back Song of the Sisters C. P. Lesley January 19, 2021 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. Should she not instead take monastic vows and surrender her will to the soaring ritual of the Orthodox Church? When a cousin lays claim to her father's estate, Darya's decision acquires a new urgency. Because this cousin will stop at nothing to advance his career, and his most valuable asset is Darya herself. Years ago, C. P. Lesley decided to focus on sixteenth-century Russia. After all, they say, “write what you know,” and as a historian with a Stanford doctorate, that’s what she knew. It was also a time and place filled with exciting and dramatic events, some of which defy belief. The result was a mystery story set in 1530s Moscow about a young couple resolving a series of crimes by combining clues they pick up in the gender-segregated worlds of husbands and wives. Although she didn’t complete that novel, the original idea gave rise to The Golden Lynx , which became the basis of a series called Legends of the Five Directions and led to her becoming the host of New Books in Historical Fiction here on the New Books Network. After almost a decade spent creating an entire world of characters, she couldn’t bear to let them go, and the result is Songs of Steppe & Forest , a less tightly linked set of books that exist in the same story space five to ten years later and feature characters who, for one reason or another, took a back seat in the Legends novels. Songs of Steppe and Forest will answer the question, “What made Ivan the Terrible so terrible?”. When not thinking up new ways to torture her characters, C.P. Lesley edits other people's manuscripts, reads voraciously, maintains her website, and practices classical ballet. That love of ballet also finds expression in her Tarkei Chronicles series, "Desert Flower" and "Kingdom of the Shades." Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back This Place That Place Nandita Dinesh July 19, 2022 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. Author Nandita Dinesh never identifies the country, but the two protagonists share a language and much of their culture. They’re also falling in love. The young woman from That Place is a De-programmer, whose job involves interviewing the military troops now patrolling outside the house where she’s holed up with the young man. He is a Protest Designer, skilled at waiting out curfews, although his brother is supposed to be getting married the next day and there’s a lot of conversations about that. While confined with the young woman, the young man explains his strategies for passing time while under curfew. He wonders how his family and neighbors will react if he marries her. Where would they live? They swap stories about their families and respective homelands, and want to imagine strategies for ending the conflict, but nothing seems doable. This is an allegory for military occupations, like what we’re currently seeing in Ukraine, but it’s happened all over the world. This Place That Place (Melville House, 2022) is also a glimpse at what it might be like for hapless citizens to be imprisoned in their own homes. Nandita holds a PhD in Drama from the University of Cape Town in South Africa, and an MA in Performance Studies from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. An amateur cook who loves experimenting with Indian cuisines, Nandita has conducted community-based theatre projects across a range of contexts and in 2017, she was awarded the Elliott Hayes Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dramaturgy by Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas. She was born and raised in Coimbatore, India and now lives in San Francisco with her husband and a 90-pound Doberman Mix named Mila. Nandita is currently working on projects across literary genres — a book that lies somewhere between a novel, a memoir, and a play being the next in line! Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Homicide and Halo-Halo Mia P. Manansala February 22, 2022 Homicide and Halo-Halo (Berkley, 2022) is the second cozy mystery in the Tita Rosie’s Kitchen mystery series. Written in first person, baker Lila Macapagal is about to open the Brew-Ha Café in Shady Palms, a fictional town about 2 hours outside of Chicago. Lila, a proud Filipino American who bakes awesome fusions of Filipino and American pastry, is a 25-year-old who has been asked to guest judge a local beauty pageant that she won as a teenager. The first sign of trouble is a threat about the competition, and then one of Lila’s fellow judges is found dead. Cozy mysteries are usually lightweight and amusing – while Homicide and Halo-Halo is written in a light-hearted style, characters grapple with serious issues such as PTSD, fatphobia, fertility and pregnancy issues, predatory behavior, unresolved grief, parental death, and dismissive attitudes toward mental health. Mia P. Manansala is a writer and certified book coach who earned her undergraduate degree in English at Northeastern Illinois University. A 2017 alum and 2018-20 mentor for Pitch Wars, a volunteer-run writing program, Manansala uses humor (and murder) to explore aspects of the Filipino diaspora, queerness, and her millennial love for pop culture. She is the winner of the 2018 Hugh Holton Award, the 2018 Eleanor Taylor Bland Crime Fiction Writers of Color Award, the 2017 William F. Deeck - Malice Domestic Grant for Unpublished Writers, and the 2016 Mystery Writers of America/Helen McCloy Scholarship. A lover of all things geeky, Mia spends her days procrastibaking , playing JRPGs and dating sims, reading cozy mysteries, and cuddling her dogs Gumiho, Max Power, and Bayley Banks (bonus points if you get all the references). Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

Muffin & Bread Recipes to Die For Muffins and Breads, Gluten Free, Baking, Breakfast Gluten-Free Pancakes We were desperate for pancakes so I tweaked another recipe I was working on to make these. Read Recipe Muffins and Breads, Gluten Free, Vegetarian, Baking, Vegan Gluten-Free/Nut Free/Vegan Banana Bread The recipes uses 2 bananas and a whole small seed apple. Read Recipe Vegetarian, Baking, Breakfast, Muffins and Breads, Cakes & Pies & Icing Chocolate Zucchini-Pear Cake GF Healthy enough for breakfast! 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 Muffins and Breads, Baking Challah Traditional recipes never tasted so good! Read Recipe Muffins and Breads, Vegan, Breakfast Vegan Sweet Potato or Pumpkin Muffins "There are only six sweet potato muffins left," said Alene. Read Recipe Muffins and Breads, Baking, Vegetarian, Breakfast, Cakes & Pies & Icing Chocolate Zucchini – Apple Cake Yes, we eat this for breakfast! Read Recipe Muffins and Breads, Gluten Free Fudgy Chocolate Butternut Squash Muffins No dairy, low-sugar, healthful, delicious! Read Recipe All Recipes Baking Breakfast Cakes, Pies, & Icing Cookies & Brownies Dips & Sauces Entrees Gluten-Free Muffins & Breads Soup Vegan Vegetarian Load More

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

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

< Back Holding Onto Nothing Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne November 19, 2019 Lucy Kilgore has her bags packed for her escape from her rural Tennessee upbringing, but a drunken mistake forever tethers her to the town and one of its least-admired residents, Jeptha Taylor, who becomes the father of her child. Together, these two young people work to form a family, though neither has any idea how to accomplish that, and the odds are against them in a place with little to offer other than tobacco fields, a bluegrass bar, and a Walmart full of beer and firearms for the hunting season. Their path is harrowing, but Lucy and Jeptha are characters to love, and readers will root for their success in a novel so riveting that no one will want to turn out the light until they know whether this family will survive. Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne , the author of Holding Onto Nothing (Blair, 2019), grew up reading, writing, and shooting in East Tennessee. After graduating from Amherst College, she became a writer and a staff editor at the Atlantic Monthly . Her nonfiction work has been published in the Atlantic Monthly, Boston Globe , and Globalpost , among others. She worked on this novel in Grub Street’s year-long Novel Incubator course, under Michelle Hoover and Lisa Borders. Her essay on how killing a deer made her a feminist was published in Click! When We Knew We Were Feminists, edited by Courtney E. Martin and J. Courtney Sullivan. She lives outside Boston with her husband and four children. When she’s not kid-wrangling, Elizabeth enjoys doing CrossFit. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back I Meant to Tell You Fran Hawthorne January 17, 2023 I Meant to Tell You , by Fran Hawthorne (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2022) opens during a conversation between Miranda Isaacs and her fiancé, Russ, who is going through an FBI security check as a prelude to getting his dream job in the U.S. Attorney’s office. Miranda worries that her parents’ antiwar activities in the late 60s might be a stumbling block, but neglects to mention a felony kidnapping arrest that happened when she tried to help a good friend escape a bad marriage. Miranda thought that charge from nearly a decade ago had been erased, so she never mentioned it to Russ. But now, Russ is justified in bringing up the question of honesty in a serious relationship. Fran Hawthorne has been writing novels since she was four years old, although she was sidetracked for several decades by journalism. During that award-winning career, she wrote eight nonfiction books, mainly about consumer activism, the drug industry, and the financial world. (Ethical Chic was named one of the best business books of 2012 by Library Journal, and Pension Dumping was a Foreword magazine 2008 Book of the Year.) Hawthorne has been an editor or regular contributor for The New York Times, Business Week, Fortune, and many other publications. She also writes book reviews for the New York Journal of Books. Her debut novel, The Heirs, was published by Stephen F. Austin State University Press in 2018. In her non-writing life, Fran runs 8 miles a day, studies Hebrew and French, volunteers at the New-York Historical Society, and works on community projects at her local park and other places. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next