< Back Cora's Kitchen Kimberly Garrett Brown October 27, 2022 Cora’s Kitchen by Kimberly Garrett Brown (Inanna Publications 2022) is a striking novel told in letters, journal entries, and a series of stories written by an educated young Black mother, wife, and librarian. Cora, who works at Harlem’s 135th Street library, reads a powerful poem by the young Langston Hughes, who begins to offer advice about her own writing. She’s awakened to thoughts about society and the role of women, prejudice, and the plight of Black women. Cora is ambitious, but loyal, and stepping in to help a family member leads to a series of events that could destroy her life. She’s ultimately surprised to find herself longing to be back in her tiny apartment cooking for her own family, raising her kids, and working in the library stacks. The experience gives her the fortitude to plunge ahead as a writer. KIMBERLY GARRETT BROWN is Publisher and Executive Editor of Minerva Rising Press. Her work has appeared in Black Lives Have Always Mattered: A Collection of Essays, Poems and Personal Narratives, The Feminine Collective, Compass Literary Magazine, Today’s Chicago Woman, Chicago Tribune, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. Her first novel, Cora’s Kitchen, was published by Inanna Publications in September 2022. It was a finalist in the 2018 William Faulkner – William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition and the 2016 Louise Meriwether First Book Prize. She earned her MFA in creative writing at Goddard College. When she’s not writing, Brown loves taking pictures, painting, and drawing. She has three adult children and currently lives in Boca Raton, Florida, with her husband and pampered Shih Tzu. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Reinhardt's Garden Mark Haber April 1, 2020 Ten men have already died while searching the jungles of Uruguay for a reclusive writer, Emiliano Gomez Carrasquilla, who Jacov Reinhardt believes knows the key to understanding melancholy. Carried in circles through the jungle on a stretcher, the narrator recalls how Reinhardt fueled himself with copious amounts of cocaine, built himself an outrageous castle with fake walls and trap doors, and cared nothing for the safety of those those around him, including Ulrich the dog killer, Sonja the one-legged former prostitute, and the unnamed narrator himself. The only thing that really mattered to Reinhardt, according to his amanuensis, was his search for the essence of melancholy. Mark Haber is the author of Reinhardt's Garden (Coffee House Press, 2019). He was born in Washington DC and grew up in Florida. His first collection of stories, Deathbed Conversions , was translated into Spanish in a bilingual edition as Melville’s Beard. His debut novel, Reinhardt’s Garden was longlisted for the 2020 PEN/Hemingway Award for a Debut Novel and was listed as one of the Texas Observer ’s Best Texas Books of the Decade. He lives in Houston, Texas, loves reading and Vietnamese soup, and is operations manager and a bookseller at Brazos Bookstore in Houston. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Nermina's Chance Dina Greenberg November 30, 2021 Today I talked to Dina Greenberg about her new novel Nermina's Chance (Atmosphere Press, 2021). Nermina is a medical student in Sarajevo. She’s been raised in an educated family of Westernized, secular Muslims, but it’s 1992 and the Serbian Chetniks have started to destroy the city. Her mother and brother are murdered and Nermina is brutally raped. She manages to bribe her way out of Bosnia, flees with an orphaned five-year-old whom she leaves with relatives, and ultimately ends up in Portland, Oregon. She starts to rebuild her life and resolves to bring her own child into the world, but she’s twenty-four and can’t afford a medically induced pregnancy. So, she entices a ‘sperm donor’ who has no idea of her intentions. Through pregnancy and the first sixteen years of her daughter’s life, Nermina completes her degrees and begins counseling traumatized combat veterans. One of them turns out to be the brother of Nermina’s unknowing sperm donor. Nominated for The Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and The Millions, Dina Greenberg’s poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction have appeared widely in such journals as Bellevue Literary Review, Pembroke Magazine, Split Rock Review, Tahoma Literary Review, Barely South, and Wilderness House Literary Review. Dina earned an MFA in fiction from the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where she served as managing editor for the literary journal Chautauqua. She teaches creative writing at the Cameron Art Museum and provides one-on-one writing coaching for victims of trauma. Her work leading creative writing workshops for combat veterans resulted in Nermina’s Chance . When she’s not writing, teaching, or reading, Dina loves to work transforming a previously litter-strewn median into what she and a group of neighbors hope will be a city oasis. She also loves iPhone photography, building things (think DIY compost tumbler, raised garden beds, etc.), and power walking on Wilmington, NC’s Riverwalk. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back No Entry Gila Green December 8, 2020 No Entry (Stormbird Press, 2020) is Gila Green’s first young adult Eco-Fiction novel. It is the first in an environmental series focused on elephant poaching and the international trade that leads to their illegal slaughter. Seventeen-year-old Yael Amar is in South Africa, signed up for a summer course in South Africa’s Kruger National Park. A rising senior, she plans to join her parents in Johannesburg, where her father will spend his sabbatical year from a Canadian University. Yael’s parents originally emigrated to Canada from South Africa years before and have returned while mourning the tragic death of Yael’s brother. Yael, also in mourning, but busy learning everything from medic training to driving on the left side of the road, uncovers a deadly elephant poaching ring. After witnessing some horrible violence, she just isn’t sure what to do about it. In addition to No Entry , Canadian author Gila Green is the author of three novels: King of the Class (Non-Publishing 2013), Passport Control (S&H Publishing, 2018), and White Zion (Cervena Barva Press, 2019). Her short fiction appears in dozens of literary magazines in the U.S.A., Canada, Australia, Israel, Ireland, and Hong Kong including: The Fiddlehead , Terrain.org , Akashic Books, Sephardic Horizons , Jewish Literary Journal , Fiction Magazine, The Saranac Review, Arc Magazine, Many Mountains Moving, Noir Nation, Quality Women's Fiction, The Dalhousie Review, The Bookends Review, and Boston Literary Review . Green’s work has been short-listed for the Doris Bakwin Literary Award (Carolina Wren Press), WordSmitten's TenTen Fiction Contest, the Walrus Literary Award, and the Eric Hoffer Best New Writing Award. She also wrote the introduction to Doikayt, an anthology of short tabletop roleplaying (November 2020). When She’s not teaching or writing, Green is busy raising five children, cooking, and baking her own bread. She loves music, daily walks through the Judean Hills by her home, hiking, pilates, and really good coffee. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

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

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

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

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

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

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

< Back The Thin Ledge Daniel Shapiro July 27, 2021 Daniel Shapiro was a successful attorney in his early forties when his wife, Susan, suffered a brain bleed and a diagnosis that her future was uncertain. Stunned, and with three young children, the couple made the most of the few years that followed, before a massive second hemorrhage changed everything. Physically, Susan was badly compromised in her ability to speak, see, and walk. Mentally, she spiraled into depression and experienced a drastic personality change. The Thin Ledge: A Husband’s Memoir of Love, Trauma, and Unexpected Circumstances (River Grove Books, 2021) is about coping (often unsuccessfully) with the wreckage left in the wake of an illness that destroys a loved one. Shapiro addresses the questions that people living through unspeakable tragedy may never mention, but almost always ask. Daniel P. Shapiro completed his undergraduate degree as a member of Phi Beta Kappa at the University of Illinois, and earned a J.D. at the University of Chicago Law School. He grew up in the northern Chicago suburbs, his mother a homemaker and his father a professional artist. Daniel has always loved both photography and writing. Before practicing law, he was a contributing writer for a local newspaper. Over the years, and especially while undergoing the events described in his memoir, he found writing to be an effective way to access his inner thoughts and to think in a constructive way about the challenges he needed to address. Writing classes and working with excellent teachers (to whom he is immensely grateful) helped him hone his skills, with the result being his memoir, The Thin Ledge. He is already at work on a second book, a novel. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back The Gone Dead Chanelle Benz July 27, 2020 A decrepit house in Greendale, Mississippi once belonged to Billie James’s father, a renowned black poet who died unexpectedly when she was four years old. Her mother dies of cancer. Then years later, her paternal grandmother dies and leaves Billie the old Mississippi Delta house. At age 34, Billie returns to the house, encounters the locals, and learns that on the day her father died, she went missing. She doesn’t want to leave Mississippi until she finds out what happened, but someone doesn’t want Billie to know the truth. Told from several perspectives, The Gone Dead (Ecco, 2019) is a story about family and memory, justice for those who were never given a chance, and some of the wounds caused by racism in America. Chanelle Benz has published work in Guernica, Granta.com, The New York Times, Electric Literature, The American Reader , Fence and others, and is the recipient of an O. Henry Prize. Her story collection The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead was named a Best Book of 2017 by The San Francisco Chronicle and one of Electric Literature’s 15 Best Short Story Collections of 2017. It was also shortlisted for the 2018 Saroyan Prize and longlisted for the 2018 PEN/Robert Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction and the 2017 Story Prize. The Gone Dead was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice and a Tonight Show Summer Reads Finalist. It was long-listed for the 2020 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel and the 2019 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. It was also named a best new book of the summer by O, The Oprah Magazine , Time , Southern Living , and Nylon . Benz currently lives in Memphis where she teaches at Rhodes College. Whenever possible, she loves to listen to true crime and history podcasts. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next