Podcasts about Grove Atlantic

On Tuesday, veteran sportswriter S.L. Price released his latest book called "The American Game: History and Hope in the Country of Lacrosse." Published by Grove Atlantic, it tells "the scintillating story of lacrosse — the game invented by the Haudenosaunee, played with more passion than any other, that stubbornly mirrors America's ongoing struggle with inclusivity." About a month before the book's release, he talked to IL CEO Terry Foy about some of the most pertinent topics — like what drew him to lacrosse and why he wanted to write a book about the sport — to his opinions on some of the most pertinent forward-looking questions — like whether he thinks the Haudenosaunee will be invited to LA28. Learn more about the book here, and purchase it on Amazon here.

Becca's pick for March's prompt to read a book published by an indie press is Earthlings by Sayaka Murati, translated from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori, and published by Grove Atlantic.   Content warnings: sexual assault, death, murder, violence, cannibalism   Our next book discussion will be Witches by Brenda Lozano. You can find it at your local bookstore or library and read along with us.   If you want to read along with The Bookstore Challenge 2024, you can join us on The StoryGraph to see what others are reading for each month and get ideas for your TBR: The Bookstore Challenge 2025. Get two audiobook credits for the price of one at Libro.fm when you sign up using the code BOOKSTOREPOD. Website | Patreon

February's prompt is to read a book with a non-human narrator or from a non-human perspective. Corinne's pick, that we'll be discussing today, is Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck, which is about a house/plot of land. Content warning: swearing, Nazism, repressive regimes, book has sexual and physical violence March prompt is to read a book published by an indie press, our first book is Becca's pick, Earthlings by Sayaka Murata, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori, and published by Grove Atlantic. Corinne's pick is Witches by Brenda Lozano, translated by Heather Cleary and published by Catapult. If you want to read along with The Bookstore Challenge 2025, you can join us on The StoryGraph to see what others are reading for each month and get ideas for your TBR: The Bookstore Challenge 2025. Get two audiobook credits for the price of one at Libro.fm when you sign up using the code BOOKSTOREPOD. Website | Patreon

Casualties of Truth, inspired by Francis-Sharma's time at South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation's Amnesty Hearings, is a gripping tale that explores themes of justice, revenge, race, parenting, and of course, the complications of friendship.It is a riveting literary novel with the sharp edges of a thriller about the abuses of history and the costs of revenge, set between Washington, D.C., and Johannesburg, South Africa.Her third offering, Casualties of Truth is published by Grove Atlantic and will be celebrated by Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival on Feb 18, 2025 at the Center for Fiction in Brooklyn. Get tickets here https://events.humanitix.com/casualties-of-truthTicket linkAbout Lauren Francis-SharmaLauren Francis-Sharma is the author of Book of the Little Axe, a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the critically acclaimed novel 'Til the Well Runs Dry. She was a MacDowell fellow and is the Assistant Director of Bread Loaf Writers' Conference at Middlebury College. She resides near Washington, DC, with her family.

Meet Roxane Gay, the prolific and critically acclaimed New York Times-bestselling author, editor, essayist, respected academic and celebrated cultural commentator, whose intellect, charm and singular perspective capture the zeitgeist of our era. Roxane's next highly anticipated book OPINIONS: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People's Business, an exhilarating collection of her best nonfiction essays on culture, feminism, politics, and everything in between, will be published by HarperCollins on October 10th. Roxane is beloved for her bestselling books, including BAD FEMINIST, HUNGER, AYITI, AN UNTAMED STATE, and WORLD OF WAKANDA(Marvel). She has a widely read newsletter, The Audacity, AND an excitingnew imprint with Grove Atlantic, Roxane Gay Books. EnJOY! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi, I'm David Steinberger, and I'm inviting you to listen to the Open Book podcast, where we explore the stories behind the bestsellers, and also the many different ways our guests were first drawn to books, and ultimately found themselves making a life in publishing. Here are a few snippets of the kinds of conversations you will hear – from Morgan Entrekin, the longtime publisher of Grove Atlantic; Lisa Lucas, the first black woman to be Executive Director of the National Book Foundation; and John Sargent, former CEO of Macmillan.

The Crisis in Psychotherapy: Reclaiming Its Soul in the Age of Neoliberalism" Summary: Explore the identity crisis facing psychotherapy in today's market-driven healthcare system. Learn how neoliberal capitalism and consumerism have shaped our understanding of self and mental health. Discover why mainstream therapy often reinforces individualistic self-constructions and how digital technologies risk reducing therapy to scripted interactions. Understand the need for psychotherapy to reimagine its approach, addressing social and political contexts of suffering. Join us as we examine the urgent call for a psychotherapy of liberation to combat the mental health toll of late capitalism and build a more just, caring world. Hashtags: #PsychotherapyCrisis #MentalHealthReform #NeoliberalismAndTherapy #TherapyRevolution #SocialJusticeInMentalHealth #CriticalPsychology #HolisticHealing #TherapeuticLiberation #ConsumerismAndMentalHealth #PsychotherapyFuture #CapitalismAndMentalHealth #DeepTherapy #TherapyAndSocialChange #MentalHealthActivism #PsychologicalEmancipation   Key Points: Psychotherapy is facing an identity and purpose crisis in the era of market-driven healthcare, as depth, nuance, and the therapeutic relationship are being displaced by cost containment, standardization, and mass-reproducibility. This crisis stems from a shift in notions of the self and therapy's aims, shaped by the rise of neoliberal capitalism and consumerism. The “empty self” plagued by inner lack pursues fulfillment through goods, experiences, and attainments. Mainstream psychotherapy largely reinforces this alienated, individualistic self-construction. Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and manualized treatments focus narrowly on “maladaptive” thoughts and behaviors without examining broader contexts. The biomedical model's hegemony views psychological struggles as brain diseases treated pharmacologically, individualizing and medicalizing distress despite research linking it to life pains like poverty, unemployment, trauma, and isolation. Digital technologies further the trend towards disembodied, technocratic mental healthcare, risking reducing therapy to scripted interactions and gamified inputs. The neoliberal transformation of psychotherapy in the 1970s, examined by sociologist Samuel Binkley, aligned the dominant therapeutic model centered on personal growth and self-actualization with a neoliberal agenda that cast individuals as enterprising consumers responsible for their own fulfillment. To reclaim its emancipatory potential, psychotherapy must reimagine its understanding of the self and psychological distress, moving beyond an intrapsychic focus to grapple with the social, political, and existential contexts of suffering. This transformation requires fostering critical consciousness, relational vitality, collective empowerment, and aligning with movements for social justice and systemic change. The struggle to reimagine therapy is inseparable from the struggle to build a more just, caring, and sustainable world. A psychotherapy of liberation is urgently needed to address the mental health toll of late capitalism. The neoliberal restructuring of healthcare and academia marginalized psychotherapy's humanistic foundations, subordinating mental health services to market logic and elevating reductive, manualized approaches. Psychotherapy's capitulation to market forces reflects a broader disenchantment of politics by economics, reducing the complexities of mental distress to quantifiable, medicalized entities and eviscerating human subjectivity. While intuitive and phenomenological approaches are celebrated in other scientific fields like linguistics and physics, they are often dismissed in mainstream psychology, reflecting an aversion to knowledge that resists quantification. Psychotherapy should expand its understanding of meaningful evidence, making room for intuitive insights, subjective experiences, and phenomenological explorations alongside quantitative data. Academic psychology's hostility towards Jungian concepts, even as neurology revalidates them under different names, reflects hypocrisy and a commitment to familiar but ineffective models. To reclaim its relevance, psychotherapy must reconnect with its philosophical and anthropological roots, reintegrating broader frameworks to develop a more holistic understanding of mental health beyond symptom management. How Market Forces are Shaping the Practice and Future of Psychotherapy The field of psychotherapy faces an identity and purpose crisis in the era of market-driven healthcare. As managed care, pharmaceutical dominance, and the biomedical model reshape mental health treatment, psychotherapy's traditional foundations – depth, nuance, the therapeutic relationship – are being displaced by the imperatives of cost containment, standardization, and mass-reproducibility. This shift reflects the ascendancy of a neoliberal cultural ideology reducing the complexity of human suffering to decontextualized symptoms to be efficiently eliminated, not a meaningful experience to be explored and transformed. In “Constructing the Self, Constructing America,” cultural historian Philip Cushman argues this psychotherapy crisis stems from a shift in notions of the self and therapy's aims. Individual identity and psychological health are shaped by cultural, economic and political forces, not universal. The rise of neoliberal capitalism and consumerism birthed the “empty self” plagued by inner lack, pursuing fulfillment through goods, experiences, and attainments – insecure, inadequate, fearing to fall behind in life's competitive race. Mainstream psychotherapy largely reinforces this alienated, individualistic self-construction. Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and manualized treatment focus narrowly on “maladaptive” thoughts and behaviors without examining social, political, existential contexts. Packaging therapy into standardized modules strips away relational essence for managed care's needs. Therapists become technicians reinforcing a decontextualized view locating problems solely in the individual, overlooking unjust social conditions shaping lives and psyches. Central is the biomedical model's hegemony, viewing psychological struggles as brain diseases treated pharmacologically – a seductive but illusory promise. Antidepressant use has massively grown despite efficacy and safety doubts, driven by pharma marketing casting everyday distress as a medical condition, not deeper malaise. The model individualizes and medicalizes distress despite research linking depression to life pains like poverty, unemployment, trauma, isolation. Digital technologies further the trend towards disembodied, technocratic mental healthcare. Online therapy platforms and apps expand access but risk reducing therapy to scripted interactions and gamified inputs, not genuine, embodied attunement and meaning-making. In his book “Getting Loose: Lifestyle Consumption in the 1970s,” sociologist Samuel Binkley examines how the social transformations of the 1970s, driven by the rise of neoliberalism and consumer culture, profoundly reshaped notions of selfhood and the goals of therapeutic practice. Binkley argues that the dominant therapeutic model that emerged during this period – one centered on the pursuit of personal growth, self-actualization, and the “loosening” of the self from traditional constraints – unwittingly aligned itself with a neoliberal agenda that cast individuals as enterprising consumers responsible for their own fulfillment and well-being. While ostensibly liberatory, this “getting loose” ethos, Binkley contends, ultimately reinforced the atomization and alienation of the self under late capitalism. By locating the source of and solution to psychological distress solely within the individual psyche, it obscured the broader social, economic, and political forces shaping mental health. In doing so, it inadvertently contributed to the very conditions of “getting loose” – the pervasive sense of being unmoored, fragmented, and adrift – that it sought to alleviate. Binkley's analysis offers a powerful lens for understanding the current crisis of psychotherapy. It suggests that the field's increasing embrace of decontextualized, technocratic approaches to treatment is not merely a capitulation to market pressures, but a logical extension of a therapeutic paradigm that has long been complicit with the individualizing logic of neoliberalism. If psychotherapy is to reclaim its emancipatory potential, it must fundamentally reimagine its understanding of the self and the nature of psychological distress. This reimagining requires a move beyond the intrapsychic focus of traditional therapy to one that grapples with the social, political, and existential contexts of suffering. It means working to foster critical consciousness, relational vitality, and collective empowerment – helping individuals to deconstruct the oppressive narratives and power structures that constrain their lives, and to tap into alternative sources of identity, belonging, and purpose. Such a transformation is not just a matter of therapeutic technique, but of political and ethical commitment. It demands that therapists reimagine their work not merely as a means of alleviating individual symptoms, but as a form of social and political action aimed at nurturing personal and collective liberation. This means cultivating spaces of collective healing and visioning, and aligning ourselves with the movements for social justice and systemic change. At stake is nothing less than the survival of psychotherapy as a healing art. If current trends persist, our field will devolve into a caricature of itself, a hollow simulacrum of the ‘branded, efficient, quality-controlled' treatment packages hocked by managed care. Therapists will be relegated to the role of glorified skills coaches and symptom-suppression specialists, while the deep psychic wounds and social pathologies underlying the epidemic of mental distress will metastasize unchecked. The choice before us is stark: Do we collude with a system that offers only the veneer of care while perpetuating the conditions of collective madness? Or do we commit ourselves anew to the still-revolutionary praxis of tending psyche, dialoguing with the unconscious, and ‘giving a soul to psychiatry' (Hillman, 1992)? Ultimately, the struggle to reimagine therapy is inseparable from the struggle to build a more just, caring, and sustainable world. As the mental health toll of late capitalism continues to mount, the need for a psychotherapy of liberation has never been more urgent. By rising to this challenge, we open up new possibilities for resilience, regeneration, and revolutionary love – and begin to create the world we long for, even as we heal the world we have. The Neoliberal Transformation of Psychotherapy The shift in psychotherapy's identity and purpose can be traced to the broader socioeconomic transformations of the late 20th century, particularly the rise of neoliberalism under the Reagan and Thatcher administrations. Neoliberal ideology, with its emphasis on privatization, deregulation, and the supremacy of market forces, profoundly reshaped the landscapes of healthcare and academia in which psychotherapy is embedded. As healthcare became increasingly privatized and profit-driven, the provision of mental health services was subordinated to the logic of the market. The ascendancy of managed care organizations and private insurance companies created powerful new stakeholders who saw psychotherapy not as a healing art, but as a commodity to be standardized, packaged, and sold. Under this market-driven system, the value of therapy was reduced to its cost-effectiveness and its capacity to produce swift, measurable outcomes. Depth, nuance, and the exploration of meaning – the traditional heart of the therapeutic enterprise – were casualties of this shift. Concurrent with these changes in healthcare, the neoliberal restructuring of academia further marginalized psychotherapy's humanistic foundations. As universities increasingly embraced a corporate model, they became beholden to the same market imperatives of efficiency, standardization, and quantification. In this milieu, the kind of research and training that could sustain a rich, multi-faceted understanding of the therapeutic process was devalued in favor of reductive, manualized approaches more amenable to the demands of the market. This academic climate elevated a narrow caste of specialists – often far removed from clinical practice – who were empowered to define the parameters of legitimate knowledge and practice in the field. Beholden to the interests of managed care, the pharmaceutical industry, and the biomedical establishment, these “experts” played a key role in cementing the hegemony of the medical model and sidelining alternative therapeutic paradigms. Psychotherapy training increasingly reflected these distorted priorities, producing generations of therapists versed in the language of symptom management and behavioral intervention, but often lacking a deeper understanding of the human condition. As researcher William Davies has argued, this neoliberal transformation of psychotherapy reflects a broader “disenchantment of politics by economics.” By reducing the complexities of mental distress to quantifiable, medicalized entities, the field has become complicit in the evisceration of human subjectivity under late capitalism. In place of a situated, meaning-making self, we are left with the hollow figure of “homo economicus” – a rational, self-interested actor shorn of deeper psychological and spiritual moorings. Tragically, the public discourse around mental health has largely been corralled into this narrow, market-friendly mold. Discussions of “chemical imbalances,” “evidence-based treatments,” and “quick fixes” abound, while more searching explorations of the psychospiritual malaise of our times are relegated to the margins. The result is a flattened, impoverished understanding of both the nature of psychological distress and the possibilities of therapeutic transformation. Psychotherapy's capitulation to market forces is thus not merely an abdication of its healing potential, but a betrayal of its emancipatory promise. By uncritically aligning itself with the dominant ideology of our age, the field has become an instrument of social control rather than a catalyst for individual and collective liberation. If therapy is to reclaim its soul, it must begin by confronting this history and imagining alternative futures beyond the neoliberal horizon. Intuition in Other Scientific Fields Noam Chomsky's groundbreaking work in linguistics and cognitive science has long been accepted as scientific canon, despite its heavy reliance on intuition and introspective phenomenology. His theories of deep grammatical structures and an innate language acquisition device in the human mind emerged not from controlled experiments or quantitative data analysis, but from a deep, intuitive engagement with the patterns of human language and thought. Yet while Chomsky's ideas are celebrated for their revolutionary implications, similar approaches in the field of psychotherapy are often met with skepticism or outright dismissal. The work of Carl Jung, for instance, which posits the existence of a collective unconscious and universal archetypes shaping human experience, is often relegated to the realm of pseudoscience or mysticism by the mainstream psychological establishment. This double standard reflects a deep-seated insecurity within academic and medical psychology about engaging with phenomena that resist easy quantification or empirical verification. There is a pervasive fear of straying too far from the narrow confines of what can be measured, controlled, and reduced to standardized formulas. Ironically, this insecurity persists even as cutting-edge research in fields like neuroscience and cognitive psychology increasingly validates many of Jung's once-marginalized ideas. Concepts like “implicit memory,” “event-related potentials,” and “predictive processing” bear striking resemblances to Jungian notions of the unconscious mind, while advanced brain imaging techniques confirm the neurological basis of personality frameworks like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). Yet rather than acknowledging the pioneering nature of Jung's insights, the psychological establishment often repackages these ideas in more palatable, “scientific” terminology. This aversion to intuition and subjective experience is hardly unique to psychotherapy. Across the sciences, there is a widespread mistrust of knowledge that cannot be reduced to quantifiable data points and mathematical models. However, some of the most transformative scientific advances have emerged from precisely this kind of intuitive, imaginative thinking. Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, for instance, emerged not from empirical data, but from a thought experiment – an act of pure imagination. The physicist David Bohm's innovative theories about the implicate order of the universe were rooted in a profoundly intuitive understanding of reality. And the mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan attributed his brilliant insights to visions from a Hindu goddess – a claim that might be dismissed as delusional in a clinical context, but is celebrated as an expression of his unique genius. Psychotherapy should not abandon empirical rigor or the scientific method, but rather expand its understanding of what constitutes meaningful evidence. By making room for intuitive insights, subjective experiences, and phenomenological explorations alongside quantitative data and experimental findings, the field can develop a richer, more multidimensional understanding of the human mind and the process of psychological transformation. This expansive, integrative approach is necessary for psychotherapy to rise to the challenges of our time – the crisis of meaning and authenticity in an increasingly fragmented world, the epidemic of mental illness and addiction, and the collective traumas of social oppression and ecological devastation. Only by honoring the full spectrum of human knowledge and experience can we hope to catalyze the kind of deep, lasting change that our world so desperately needs. It is a particular vexation of mine that academic psychology is so hostile to the vague but perennial ideas about the unconscious that Jung and others posited. Now neurology is re-validating Jungian concepts under different names like “implicit memory”, “event-related potentials”, and “secondary and tertiary consciousness”, while qEEG brain maps are validating the underlying assumptions of the Jungian-derived MBTI. Yet the academy still cannot admit they were wrong and Jung was right, even as they publish papers in “premiere” academic journals like The Lancet that denounce Jung as pseudoscience while repurposing his ideas. This is another example of hypocrisy. Academia seems to believe its publications have innate efficacy and ethics as long as the proper rituals of psychological research are enacted. If you cite your sources, review recent literature in your echo chamber, disclose financial interests, and profess ignorance of your profession's history and the unethical systems funding your existence, then you are doing research correctly. But the systems paying for your work and existence are not mere “financial interests” – that's just business! This is considered perfectly rational, as long as one doesn't think too deeply about it. Claiming “I don't get into that stuff” or “I do academic/medical psychology” has become a way to defend oneself from not having a basic understanding of how humans and cultures are traumatized or motivated, even while running universities and hospitals. The attitude seems to be: “Let's just keep handing out CBT and drugs for another 50 years, ‘rationally' and ‘evidence-based' of course, and see how much worse things get in mental health.” No wonder outcomes and the replication crisis worsen every year, even as healthcare is ostensibly guided by rational, empirical forces. Academia has created a model of reality called science, applied so single-mindedly that they no longer care if the outcomes mirror those of the real world science was meant to serve! Academic and medical psychology have created a copy of the world they interact with, pretending it reflects reality while it fundamentally cannot, due to the material incentives driving it. We've created a scientific model meant to reflect reality, but mistake it for reality itself. We reach in vain to move objects in the mirror instead of putting the mirror away and engaging with what's actually there. How do we not see that hyper-rationalism is just another form of religion, even as we tried to replace religion with it? This conception of psychology is not only an imaginary model, but actively at war with the real, cutting us off from truly logical, evidence-based pathways we could pursue. It wars with objective reality because both demand our total allegiance. We must choose entirely between the object and its reflection, god and idol. We must decide if we want the uncertainty of real science or the imaginary sandbox we pretend is science. Adherence to this simulacrum in search of effective trauma and mental illness treatments has itself become a cultural trauma response – an addiction to the familiar and broken over the effective and frightening. This is no different than a cult or conspiracy theory. A major pillar of our civilization would rather perpetuate what is familiar and broken than dare to change. Such methodological fundamentalism is indistinguishable from religious devotion. We have a group so committed to their notion of the rational that they've decided reason and empiricism should no longer be beholden to reality. How is our approach to clinical psychology research any different than a belief in magic? The deflections of those controlling mainstream psychology should sound familiar – they are the same ego defenses we'd identify in a traumatized therapy patient. Academic psychology's reasoning is starting to resemble what it would diagnose as a personality disorder: “It's not me doing it wrong, even though I'm not getting the results I want! It's the world that's wrong by not enabling my preferred approach. Effective practitioners must be cheating or deluded. Those who do it like me are right, though none of us get good results. We'd better keep doing it our way, but harder.” As noted in my Healing the Modern Soul series, I believe that since part of psychology's role is to functionally define the “self”, clinical psychology is inherently political. Material forces will always seek to define and control what psychology can be. Most healthy definitions of self threaten baseless tradition, hierarchy, fascism, capital hoarding, and the co-opting of culture to manipulate consumption. Our culture is sick, and thus resistant to a psychology that would challenge its unhealthy games with a coherent sense of self. Like any patient, our culture wants to deflect and fears the first step of healing: admitting you have a problem. That sickness strokes the right egos and lines the right pockets, a societal-scale version of Berne's interpersonal games. Our current psychological paradigm requires a hierarchy with one group playing sick, emotional child to the other's hyper-rational, all-knowing parent. The relationship is inherently transactional, and we need to make it more authentic and collaborative. I have argued before  that one of the key challenges facing psychotherapy today is the fragmentation and complexity of modern identity. In a globalized, digitally-connected world, we are constantly navigating a myriad of roles, relationships, and cultural contexts, each with its own set of expectations and demands. Even though most people would agree that our system is bad the fragmentary nature of the postmodern has left us looking through a kaleidoscope. We are unable to agree on hero, villain, cause, solution, framework or label. This fragmentation leads to a sense of disconnection and confusion, a feeling that we are not living an authentic or integrated life. The task of psychotherapy, in this context, is to help individuals develop a more coherent and resilient sense of self, one that can withstand the centrifugal forces of modern existence. Psychotherapy can become a new mirror to cancel out the confusing reflections of the kaleidoscope. We need a new better functioning understanding of self in psychology for society to see the self and for the self to see clearly our society. The Fragmentation of Psychotherapy: Reconnecting with Philosophy and Anthropology To reclaim its soul and relevance, psychotherapy must reconnect with its philosophical and anthropological roots. These disciplines offer essential perspectives on the nature of human existence, the formation of meaning and identity, and the cultural contexts that shape our psychological realities. By reintegrating these broader frameworks, we can develop a more holistic and nuanced understanding of mental health that goes beyond the narrow confines of symptom management. Many of the most influential figures in the history of psychotherapy have argued for this more integrative approach. Irvin Yalom, for instance, has long championed an existential orientation to therapy that grapples with the fundamental questions of human existence – death, freedom, isolation, and meaninglessness. Erik Erikson's psychosocial theory of development explicitly situated psychological growth within a broader cultural and historical context. Peter Levine's work on trauma healing draws heavily from anthropological insights into the body's innate capacity for self-regulation and resilience. Carl Jung, perhaps more than any other figure, insisted on the inseparability of psychology from broader humanistic inquiry. His concepts of the collective unconscious and archetypes were rooted in a deep engagement with mythology, anthropology, and comparative religion. Jung understood that individual psychological struggles often reflect larger cultural and spiritual crises, and that healing must address both personal and collective dimensions of experience. Despite the profound insights offered by these thinkers, mainstream psychotherapy has largely ignored their calls for a more integrative approach. The field's increasing alignment with the medical model and its pursuit of “evidence-based” treatments has led to a narrow focus on standardized interventions that can be easily quantified and replicated. While this approach has its merits, it often comes at the cost of deeper engagement with the philosophical and cultural dimensions of psychological experience. The relationship between psychology, philosophy, and anthropology is not merely a matter of academic interest – it is essential to the practice of effective and meaningful therapy. Philosophy provides the conceptual tools to grapple with questions of meaning, ethics, and the nature of consciousness that are often at the heart of psychological distress. Anthropology offers crucial insights into the cultural shaping of identity, the diversity of human experience, and the social contexts that give rise to mental health challenges. By reconnecting with these disciplines, psychotherapy can develop a more nuanced and culturally informed approach to healing. This might involve: Incorporating philosophical inquiry into the therapeutic process, helping clients explore questions of meaning, purpose, and values. Drawing on anthropological insights to understand how cultural norms and social structures shape psychological experience and expressions of distress. Developing more holistic models of mental health that account for the interconnectedness of mind, body, culture, and environment. Fostering dialogue between psychotherapists, philosophers, and anthropologists to enrich our understanding of human experience and suffering. Training therapists in a broader range of humanistic disciplines to cultivate a more integrative and culturally sensitive approach to healing. The reintegration of philosophy and anthropology into psychotherapy is not merely an academic exercise – it is essential for addressing the complex psychological challenges of our time. As we grapple with global crises like climate change, political polarization, and the erosion of traditional sources of meaning, we need a psychology that can engage with the big questions of human existence and the cultural forces shaping our collective psyche. By reclaiming its connections to philosophy and anthropology, psychotherapy can move beyond its current crisis and reclaim its role as a vital force for individual and collective healing. In doing so, it can offer not just symptom relief, but a deeper engagement with the fundamental questions of what it means to be human in an increasingly complex and interconnected world. References: Binkley, S. (2007). Getting loose: Lifestyle consumption in the 1970s. Duke University Press. Cipriani, A., Furukawa, T. A., Salanti, G., Chaimani, A., Atkinson, L. Z., Ogawa, Y., … & Geddes, J. R. (2018). Comparative efficacy and acceptability of 21 antidepressant drugs for the acute treatment of adults with major depressive disorder: a systematic review and network meta-analysis. The Lancet, 391(10128), 1357-1366. Cushman, P. (1995). Constructing the self, constructing America: A cultural history of psychotherapy. Boston: Addison-Wesley. Davies, W. (2014). The limits of neoliberalism: Authority, sovereignty and the logic of competition. Sage. Fisher, M. (2009). Capitalist realism: Is there no alternative?. John Hunt Publishing. Hillman, J. (1992). The thought of the heart and the soul of the world. Spring Publications. Kirsch, I. (2010). The emperor's new drugs: Exploding the antidepressant myth. Basic Books. Layton, L. (2009). Who's responsible? Our mutual implication in each other's suffering. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 19(2), 105-120. Penny, L. (2015). Self-care isn't enough. We need community care to thrive. Open Democracy. Retrieved from https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/transformation/selfcare-isnt-enough-we-need-community-care-to-thrive/ Rose, N. (2019). Our psychiatric future: The politics of mental health. John Wiley & Sons. Samuels, A. (2014). Politics on the couch: Citizenship and the internal life. Karnac Books. Shedler, J. (2018). Where is the evidence for “evidence-based” therapy?. Psychiatric Clinics, 41(2), 319-329. Sugarman, J. (2015). Neoliberalism and psychological ethics. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 35(2), 103. Watkins, M., & Shulman, H. (2008). Toward psychologies of liberation. Palgrave Macmillan. Whitaker, R. (2010). Anatomy of an epidemic: Magic bullets, psychiatric drugs, and the astonishing rise of mental illness in America. Broadway Books. Winerman, L. (2017). By the numbers: Antidepressant use on the rise. Monitor on Psychology, 48(10), 120. Suggested further reading: Bordo, S. (2004). Unbearable weight: Feminism, Western culture, and the body. University of California Press. Cacioppo, J. T., & Patrick, W. (2008). Loneliness: Human nature and the need for social connection. WW Norton & Company. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1988). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. Bloomsbury Publishing. Fanon, F. (2007). The wretched of the earth. Grove/Atlantic, Inc. Foucault, M. (1988). Madness and civilization: A history of insanity in the age of reason. Vintage. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Bloomsbury publishing USA. Fromm, E. (1955). The sane society. Routledge. Hari, J. (2018). Lost connections: Uncovering the real causes of depression–and the unexpected solutions. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. Herman, J. L. (2015). Trauma and recovery: The aftermath of violence–from domestic abuse to political terror. Hachette UK. hooks, b. (2014). Teaching to transgress. Routledge. Illouz, E. (2008). Saving the modern soul: Therapy, emotions, and the culture of self-help. Univ of California Press. Laing, R. D. (1960). The divided self: An existential study in sanity and madness. Penguin UK. Martín-Baró, I. (1996). Writings for a liberation psychology. Harvard University Press. McKenzie, K., & Bhui, K. (Eds.). (2020). Institutional racism in psychiatry and clinical psychology: Race matters in mental health. Springer Nature. Metzl, J. M. (2010). The protest psychosis: How schizophrenia became a black disease. Beacon Press. Orr, J. (2006). Panic diaries: A genealogy of panic disorder. Duke University Press. Scaer, R. (2014). The body bears the burden: Trauma, dissociation, and disease. Routledge. Szasz, T. S. (1997). The manufacture of madness: A comparative study of the inquisition and the mental health movement. Syracuse University Press. Taylor, C. (2012). Sources of the self: The making of the modern identity. Cambridge University Press. Teo, T. (2015). Critical psychology: A geography of intellectual engagement and resistance. American Psychologist, 70(3), 243. Tolleson, J. (2011). Saving the world one patient at a time: Psychoanalysis and social critique. Psychotherapy and Politics International, 9(2), 160-170.

Temim Fruchter discusses her debut novel, City of Laughter, the Jewish folklore and queer joy that informed it, the circular/non-linear structure to be found in Jewish folklore and in her novel, writing in different timelines and generations, hosting Pete's Reading Series, ultrafemme queerness, and more! Temim Fruchter is a queer nonbinary anti-Zionist Jewish writer who lives in Brooklyn, NY. She holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Maryland, and is the recipient of fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, Vermont Studio Center, and a 2020 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Award. She is co-host of Pete's Reading Series in Brooklyn. Her debut novel, CITY OF LAUGHTER, a New York Times Editors' Pick, is out now on Grove Atlantic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Blues Brothers: An Epic Friendship, the Rise of Improv, and the Making of an American Film Classic (Grove Atlantic, 2024) tells the story of the epic friendship between John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, the golden era of improv, and the making of a comedic film classic that helped shape our popular culture. “They're not going to catch us,” Dan Aykroyd, as Elwood Blues, tells his brother Jake, played by John Belushi. “We're on a mission from God.” So opens the musical action comedy The Blues Brothers, which hit theaters on June 20, 1980. Their scripted mission was to save a local Chicago orphanage. But Aykroyd, who conceived and wrote much of the film, had a greater mission: to honor the then-seemingly forgotten tradition of rhythm and blues, some of whose greatest artists—Aretha Franklin, James Brown, John Lee Hooker, Cab Calloway, Ray Charles—made the film as unforgettable as its wild car chases. Much delayed and vastly over budget, beset by mercurial and oft drugged-out stars, The Blues Brothers opened to outraged reviews. However, in the 44 years since, it has been acknowledged a classic: it has been inducted into the National Film Registry for its cultural significance, even declared a “Catholic classic” by the Church itself, and re-aired thousands of times on television to huge worldwide audiences. It is, undeniably, one of the most significant films of the twentieth century. The story behind any classic is rich; the saga behind The Blues Brothers, as Daniel de Visé reveals, is epic, encompassing the colorful childhoods of Belushi and Aykroyd; the comedic revolution sparked by Harvard's Lampoon and Chicago's Second City; the birth and anecdote-rich, drug-filled early years of Saturday Night Live, where the Blues Brothers were born as an act amidst turmoil and rivalry; and, of course, the indelible behind-the-scenes narrative of how the film was made, scene by memorable scene. Based on original research and dozens of interviews probing the memories of principals from director John Landis and producer Bob Weiss to Aykroyd himself, The Blues Brothers illuminates an American masterpiece while vividly portraying the creative geniuses behind modern comedy. Daniel de Visé is an author and journalist. A graduate of Wesleyan and Northwestern universities, he worked at the The Washington Post, the Miami Herald and three other newspapers in a 23-year career. He shared a 2001 team Pulitzer Prize and garnered more than two dozen other national and regional journalism awards. His investigative reporting twice led to the release of wrongly convicted men from life terms in prison. His first book, I Forgot To Remember (with Su Meck, Simon & Schuster, 2014), began as a front-page article de Visé wrote for the Washington Post in 2011. His second book, Andy & Don (Simon & Schuster, 2015), began as a journalistic exploration into the storied career of his late brother-in-law, famed actor Don Knotts. His third book, The Comeback (Grove Atlantic, 2018), rekindles a childhood obsession with professional cycling. Daniel is married to Sophie Yarborough, a senior editor at The Washington Post​. They and their children live outside Washington D.C. Daniel Moran earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O'Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers and articles on G. K. Chesterton and John Ford, he teaches research and writing at Rutgers and co-hosts the podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, found here on the New Books Network and on X. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

The Blues Brothers: An Epic Friendship, the Rise of Improv, and the Making of an American Film Classic (Grove Atlantic, 2024) tells the story of the epic friendship between John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, the golden era of improv, and the making of a comedic film classic that helped shape our popular culture. “They're not going to catch us,” Dan Aykroyd, as Elwood Blues, tells his brother Jake, played by John Belushi. “We're on a mission from God.” So opens the musical action comedy The Blues Brothers, which hit theaters on June 20, 1980. Their scripted mission was to save a local Chicago orphanage. But Aykroyd, who conceived and wrote much of the film, had a greater mission: to honor the then-seemingly forgotten tradition of rhythm and blues, some of whose greatest artists—Aretha Franklin, James Brown, John Lee Hooker, Cab Calloway, Ray Charles—made the film as unforgettable as its wild car chases. Much delayed and vastly over budget, beset by mercurial and oft drugged-out stars, The Blues Brothers opened to outraged reviews. However, in the 44 years since, it has been acknowledged a classic: it has been inducted into the National Film Registry for its cultural significance, even declared a “Catholic classic” by the Church itself, and re-aired thousands of times on television to huge worldwide audiences. It is, undeniably, one of the most significant films of the twentieth century. The story behind any classic is rich; the saga behind The Blues Brothers, as Daniel de Visé reveals, is epic, encompassing the colorful childhoods of Belushi and Aykroyd; the comedic revolution sparked by Harvard's Lampoon and Chicago's Second City; the birth and anecdote-rich, drug-filled early years of Saturday Night Live, where the Blues Brothers were born as an act amidst turmoil and rivalry; and, of course, the indelible behind-the-scenes narrative of how the film was made, scene by memorable scene. Based on original research and dozens of interviews probing the memories of principals from director John Landis and producer Bob Weiss to Aykroyd himself, The Blues Brothers illuminates an American masterpiece while vividly portraying the creative geniuses behind modern comedy. Daniel de Visé is an author and journalist. A graduate of Wesleyan and Northwestern universities, he worked at the The Washington Post, the Miami Herald and three other newspapers in a 23-year career. He shared a 2001 team Pulitzer Prize and garnered more than two dozen other national and regional journalism awards. His investigative reporting twice led to the release of wrongly convicted men from life terms in prison. His first book, I Forgot To Remember (with Su Meck, Simon & Schuster, 2014), began as a front-page article de Visé wrote for the Washington Post in 2011. His second book, Andy & Don (Simon & Schuster, 2015), began as a journalistic exploration into the storied career of his late brother-in-law, famed actor Don Knotts. His third book, The Comeback (Grove Atlantic, 2018), rekindles a childhood obsession with professional cycling. Daniel is married to Sophie Yarborough, a senior editor at The Washington Post​. They and their children live outside Washington D.C. Daniel Moran earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O'Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers and articles on G. K. Chesterton and John Ford, he teaches research and writing at Rutgers and co-hosts the podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, found here on the New Books Network and on X. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

The Blues Brothers: An Epic Friendship, the Rise of Improv, and the Making of an American Film Classic (Grove Atlantic, 2024) tells the story of the epic friendship between John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, the golden era of improv, and the making of a comedic film classic that helped shape our popular culture. “They're not going to catch us,” Dan Aykroyd, as Elwood Blues, tells his brother Jake, played by John Belushi. “We're on a mission from God.” So opens the musical action comedy The Blues Brothers, which hit theaters on June 20, 1980. Their scripted mission was to save a local Chicago orphanage. But Aykroyd, who conceived and wrote much of the film, had a greater mission: to honor the then-seemingly forgotten tradition of rhythm and blues, some of whose greatest artists—Aretha Franklin, James Brown, John Lee Hooker, Cab Calloway, Ray Charles—made the film as unforgettable as its wild car chases. Much delayed and vastly over budget, beset by mercurial and oft drugged-out stars, The Blues Brothers opened to outraged reviews. However, in the 44 years since, it has been acknowledged a classic: it has been inducted into the National Film Registry for its cultural significance, even declared a “Catholic classic” by the Church itself, and re-aired thousands of times on television to huge worldwide audiences. It is, undeniably, one of the most significant films of the twentieth century. The story behind any classic is rich; the saga behind The Blues Brothers, as Daniel de Visé reveals, is epic, encompassing the colorful childhoods of Belushi and Aykroyd; the comedic revolution sparked by Harvard's Lampoon and Chicago's Second City; the birth and anecdote-rich, drug-filled early years of Saturday Night Live, where the Blues Brothers were born as an act amidst turmoil and rivalry; and, of course, the indelible behind-the-scenes narrative of how the film was made, scene by memorable scene. Based on original research and dozens of interviews probing the memories of principals from director John Landis and producer Bob Weiss to Aykroyd himself, The Blues Brothers illuminates an American masterpiece while vividly portraying the creative geniuses behind modern comedy. Daniel de Visé is an author and journalist. A graduate of Wesleyan and Northwestern universities, he worked at the The Washington Post, the Miami Herald and three other newspapers in a 23-year career. He shared a 2001 team Pulitzer Prize and garnered more than two dozen other national and regional journalism awards. His investigative reporting twice led to the release of wrongly convicted men from life terms in prison. His first book, I Forgot To Remember (with Su Meck, Simon & Schuster, 2014), began as a front-page article de Visé wrote for the Washington Post in 2011. His second book, Andy & Don (Simon & Schuster, 2015), began as a journalistic exploration into the storied career of his late brother-in-law, famed actor Don Knotts. His third book, The Comeback (Grove Atlantic, 2018), rekindles a childhood obsession with professional cycling. Daniel is married to Sophie Yarborough, a senior editor at The Washington Post​. They and their children live outside Washington D.C. Daniel Moran earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O'Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers and articles on G. K. Chesterton and John Ford, he teaches research and writing at Rutgers and co-hosts the podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, found here on the New Books Network and on X. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film

The Blues Brothers: An Epic Friendship, the Rise of Improv, and the Making of an American Film Classic (Grove Atlantic, 2024) tells the story of the epic friendship between John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, the golden era of improv, and the making of a comedic film classic that helped shape our popular culture. “They're not going to catch us,” Dan Aykroyd, as Elwood Blues, tells his brother Jake, played by John Belushi. “We're on a mission from God.” So opens the musical action comedy The Blues Brothers, which hit theaters on June 20, 1980. Their scripted mission was to save a local Chicago orphanage. But Aykroyd, who conceived and wrote much of the film, had a greater mission: to honor the then-seemingly forgotten tradition of rhythm and blues, some of whose greatest artists—Aretha Franklin, James Brown, John Lee Hooker, Cab Calloway, Ray Charles—made the film as unforgettable as its wild car chases. Much delayed and vastly over budget, beset by mercurial and oft drugged-out stars, The Blues Brothers opened to outraged reviews. However, in the 44 years since, it has been acknowledged a classic: it has been inducted into the National Film Registry for its cultural significance, even declared a “Catholic classic” by the Church itself, and re-aired thousands of times on television to huge worldwide audiences. It is, undeniably, one of the most significant films of the twentieth century. The story behind any classic is rich; the saga behind The Blues Brothers, as Daniel de Visé reveals, is epic, encompassing the colorful childhoods of Belushi and Aykroyd; the comedic revolution sparked by Harvard's Lampoon and Chicago's Second City; the birth and anecdote-rich, drug-filled early years of Saturday Night Live, where the Blues Brothers were born as an act amidst turmoil and rivalry; and, of course, the indelible behind-the-scenes narrative of how the film was made, scene by memorable scene. Based on original research and dozens of interviews probing the memories of principals from director John Landis and producer Bob Weiss to Aykroyd himself, The Blues Brothers illuminates an American masterpiece while vividly portraying the creative geniuses behind modern comedy. Daniel de Visé is an author and journalist. A graduate of Wesleyan and Northwestern universities, he worked at the The Washington Post, the Miami Herald and three other newspapers in a 23-year career. He shared a 2001 team Pulitzer Prize and garnered more than two dozen other national and regional journalism awards. His investigative reporting twice led to the release of wrongly convicted men from life terms in prison. His first book, I Forgot To Remember (with Su Meck, Simon & Schuster, 2014), began as a front-page article de Visé wrote for the Washington Post in 2011. His second book, Andy & Don (Simon & Schuster, 2015), began as a journalistic exploration into the storied career of his late brother-in-law, famed actor Don Knotts. His third book, The Comeback (Grove Atlantic, 2018), rekindles a childhood obsession with professional cycling. Daniel is married to Sophie Yarborough, a senior editor at The Washington Post​. They and their children live outside Washington D.C. Daniel Moran earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O'Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers and articles on G. K. Chesterton and John Ford, he teaches research and writing at Rutgers and co-hosts the podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, found here on the New Books Network and on X. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

The Blues Brothers: An Epic Friendship, the Rise of Improv, and the Making of an American Film Classic (Grove Atlantic, 2024) tells the story of the epic friendship between John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, the golden era of improv, and the making of a comedic film classic that helped shape our popular culture. “They're not going to catch us,” Dan Aykroyd, as Elwood Blues, tells his brother Jake, played by John Belushi. “We're on a mission from God.” So opens the musical action comedy The Blues Brothers, which hit theaters on June 20, 1980. Their scripted mission was to save a local Chicago orphanage. But Aykroyd, who conceived and wrote much of the film, had a greater mission: to honor the then-seemingly forgotten tradition of rhythm and blues, some of whose greatest artists—Aretha Franklin, James Brown, John Lee Hooker, Cab Calloway, Ray Charles—made the film as unforgettable as its wild car chases. Much delayed and vastly over budget, beset by mercurial and oft drugged-out stars, The Blues Brothers opened to outraged reviews. However, in the 44 years since, it has been acknowledged a classic: it has been inducted into the National Film Registry for its cultural significance, even declared a “Catholic classic” by the Church itself, and re-aired thousands of times on television to huge worldwide audiences. It is, undeniably, one of the most significant films of the twentieth century. The story behind any classic is rich; the saga behind The Blues Brothers, as Daniel de Visé reveals, is epic, encompassing the colorful childhoods of Belushi and Aykroyd; the comedic revolution sparked by Harvard's Lampoon and Chicago's Second City; the birth and anecdote-rich, drug-filled early years of Saturday Night Live, where the Blues Brothers were born as an act amidst turmoil and rivalry; and, of course, the indelible behind-the-scenes narrative of how the film was made, scene by memorable scene. Based on original research and dozens of interviews probing the memories of principals from director John Landis and producer Bob Weiss to Aykroyd himself, The Blues Brothers illuminates an American masterpiece while vividly portraying the creative geniuses behind modern comedy. Daniel de Visé is an author and journalist. A graduate of Wesleyan and Northwestern universities, he worked at the The Washington Post, the Miami Herald and three other newspapers in a 23-year career. He shared a 2001 team Pulitzer Prize and garnered more than two dozen other national and regional journalism awards. His investigative reporting twice led to the release of wrongly convicted men from life terms in prison. His first book, I Forgot To Remember (with Su Meck, Simon & Schuster, 2014), began as a front-page article de Visé wrote for the Washington Post in 2011. His second book, Andy & Don (Simon & Schuster, 2015), began as a journalistic exploration into the storied career of his late brother-in-law, famed actor Don Knotts. His third book, The Comeback (Grove Atlantic, 2018), rekindles a childhood obsession with professional cycling. Daniel is married to Sophie Yarborough, a senior editor at The Washington Post​. They and their children live outside Washington D.C. Daniel Moran earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O'Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers and articles on G. K. Chesterton and John Ford, he teaches research and writing at Rutgers and co-hosts the podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, found here on the New Books Network and on X. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

The Blues Brothers: An Epic Friendship, the Rise of Improv, and the Making of an American Film Classic (Grove Atlantic, 2024) tells the story of the epic friendship between John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, the golden era of improv, and the making of a comedic film classic that helped shape our popular culture. “They're not going to catch us,” Dan Aykroyd, as Elwood Blues, tells his brother Jake, played by John Belushi. “We're on a mission from God.” So opens the musical action comedy The Blues Brothers, which hit theaters on June 20, 1980. Their scripted mission was to save a local Chicago orphanage. But Aykroyd, who conceived and wrote much of the film, had a greater mission: to honor the then-seemingly forgotten tradition of rhythm and blues, some of whose greatest artists—Aretha Franklin, James Brown, John Lee Hooker, Cab Calloway, Ray Charles—made the film as unforgettable as its wild car chases. Much delayed and vastly over budget, beset by mercurial and oft drugged-out stars, The Blues Brothers opened to outraged reviews. However, in the 44 years since, it has been acknowledged a classic: it has been inducted into the National Film Registry for its cultural significance, even declared a “Catholic classic” by the Church itself, and re-aired thousands of times on television to huge worldwide audiences. It is, undeniably, one of the most significant films of the twentieth century. The story behind any classic is rich; the saga behind The Blues Brothers, as Daniel de Visé reveals, is epic, encompassing the colorful childhoods of Belushi and Aykroyd; the comedic revolution sparked by Harvard's Lampoon and Chicago's Second City; the birth and anecdote-rich, drug-filled early years of Saturday Night Live, where the Blues Brothers were born as an act amidst turmoil and rivalry; and, of course, the indelible behind-the-scenes narrative of how the film was made, scene by memorable scene. Based on original research and dozens of interviews probing the memories of principals from director John Landis and producer Bob Weiss to Aykroyd himself, The Blues Brothers illuminates an American masterpiece while vividly portraying the creative geniuses behind modern comedy. Daniel de Visé is an author and journalist. A graduate of Wesleyan and Northwestern universities, he worked at the The Washington Post, the Miami Herald and three other newspapers in a 23-year career. He shared a 2001 team Pulitzer Prize and garnered more than two dozen other national and regional journalism awards. His investigative reporting twice led to the release of wrongly convicted men from life terms in prison. His first book, I Forgot To Remember (with Su Meck, Simon & Schuster, 2014), began as a front-page article de Visé wrote for the Washington Post in 2011. His second book, Andy & Don (Simon & Schuster, 2015), began as a journalistic exploration into the storied career of his late brother-in-law, famed actor Don Knotts. His third book, The Comeback (Grove Atlantic, 2018), rekindles a childhood obsession with professional cycling. Daniel is married to Sophie Yarborough, a senior editor at The Washington Post​. They and their children live outside Washington D.C. Daniel Moran earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O'Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers and articles on G. K. Chesterton and John Ford, he teaches research and writing at Rutgers and co-hosts the podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, found here on the New Books Network and on X. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

City Lights LIVE and Litquake celebrate the final issue of John Freeman's distinguished journal “Freeman's: Conclusions,” published by Grove Atlantic, with John Freeman, joined by Jaime Cortez, Elaine Castillo, and Oscar Villaon. Over the course of ten years, “Freeman's" has introduced the English-speaking world to countless writers of international import and acclaim, from Olga Tokarczuk to Valeria Luiselli, while also spotlighting brilliant writers working in English, from Tommy Orange to Tess Gunty. Now, in its last issue, this unique literary project ponders all the ways of reaching a fitting conclusion. For Sayaka Murata, keeping up with the comings and goings of fashion and its changing emotional landscapes can mean being left behind, and in her poem “Amenorrhea,” Julia Alvarez experiences the end of the line as menopause takes hold. Yet sometimes an end is merely a beginning, as Barry Lopez meditates while walking through the snowy Oregonian landscapes. While Chinelo Okparanta's story “Fatu” confronts the end of a relationship under the specter of new life, other writers look towards aging as an opportunity for rebirth, such as Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, who takes on the role of being her own elder, comforting herself in the ways that her grandmother used to. Finally, in his comic story “Everyone at Dinner Has a Max von Sydow Story,” Dave Eggers suggests that sometimes stories don't have neat or clean endings—that sometimes the middle is enough. John Freeman is the founder of the literary annual “Freeman's” and the author and editor of ten books, including “Dictionary of the Undoing,” “The Park,” “Tales of Two Planets,” “The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story,” and, with Tracy K. Smith, “There's a Revolution Outside,” “My Love”. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Orion, and been translated into over twenty languages. The former editor of Granta, he lives in New York City, where he teaches writing at NYU and is an executive editor at Alfred A. Knopf. Jaime Cortez is a writer and visual artist based in Watsonville, California. His fiction, essays, and drawings have appeared in diverse publications that include “Kindergarde: Experimental Writing For Children,” “No Straight Lines,” a 40-year compendium of LGBT comics, “Street Art San Francisco,” and “Infinite Cities,” an experimental atlas of San Francisco. He wrote and illustrated the graphic novel “Sexile” for AIDS Project Los Angeles in 2003. “Gordo” is Jaime's debut collection of short stories, and was published by Grove Atlantic to national acclaim in 2021. Jaime received his BA in Communications from the University of Pennsylvania, and his MFA from UC Berkeley. Elaine Castillo, named one of “30 of the planet's most exciting young people” by the Financial Times, was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her debut novel “America Is Not the Heart” was named one of the best books of 2018 and has been nominated for the Elle Award, the Center for Fiction Prize, the Aspen Words Prize, the Northern California Independent Booksellers Book Award, and the California Book Award. Her essay collection “How To Read Now” was published to wide acclaim in July 2022, and was chosen as the September pick for Roxane Gay's Audacious Book Club, among others. Her latest longform essay on grief, dog rescue and the politics of dog training is forthcoming this fall from Scribd. She is currently working on her second novel, to be published in late 2024/early 2025. Oscar Villalon is the editor of “ZYZZYVA." His work has been published in The Believer, Freeman's, VQR, Stranger's Guide, Alta, and many other publications. He lives with his wife and son in San Francisco. You can purchase copies of “Freeman's: Conclusions” at https://citylights.com/freemans-conclusions/ This event is made possible with the support of the City Lights Foundation. To learn more visit: https://citylights.com/foundation/

We're thrilled to bring you a reading from And Then He Sang a Lullaby by Ani Kayode Somtochukwu. This is the inaugural title from a new publisher on the scene: Roxane Gay Books, an imprint of Grove Atlantic. Roxane Gay is of course the bestselling author of Bad Feminist and her press will publish beautifully written, provocative, intelligent writing including underrepresented fiction, nonfiction and memoir.  And Then He Sang a Lullaby is a passionate and heartbreaking debut from a Nigerian writer and queer liberation activist, exploring what love and freedom cost in a society steeped in homophobia. It's a poignant and searching book, reminding us of the work to be done around the world to ensure the safety and rights of our LGBTQ+ community. ‘A courageous, heart-in-mouth debut about the lives and loves of young gay Nigerians. I can't wait to see what Ani Kayode Somtochukwu writes next.' - Patrick Gale, author of Mother's Boy We recommend buying a copy from your local indie bookshop or you can visit our shop on Bookshop.org. Podcast produced and edited by Megan Bay Dorman Programmed by Matt Casbourne Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 448, my conversation with Roxane Gay from January 2017. Roxane Gay is the bestselling author of the books Bad Feminist, Hunger, An Untamed State, Difficult Women, and Ayiti. She is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. She wrote The World of Wakanda, the Marvel Comics Series. She has a Substack called The Audacity, which has its own very popular book club. And this month, her publishing imprint, Roxane Gay Books, which she launched in association with Grove Atlantic, is celebrating the publication of its inaugural title, a debut novel called And Then He Sang a Lullaby, by Nigerian writer Ani Kayode Somtochukwu. I spoke with Roxane Gay as Difficult Women was being published and her memoir, Hunger, was imminent. Air date: January 11, 2017. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc. Subscribe to Brad Listi's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch @otherppl Instagram  YouTube TikTok Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In today's episode we talk to Jane Campbell, the author of the short story collection Cat Brushing (published in the UK by Hachette and US by Grove/Atlantic). Her first published short story, "Cat Brushing," came out in 2017 in the London Review of Books -- when she was 77. Interpretations of Love is the name of her next novel, which is scheduled for Spring 2024. We really loved talking to her in this wide-ranging interview, in which we touch on everything from portrayals of the elderly to existential angst. By the end, she's even interviewing us. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did. * As always, we'd love for you to take a minute to rate and review us in your podcast app, as this helps other listeners find the show.  Visit our website, marginallypodcast.com, for complete show notes and to get in touch. Find us on Instagram @marginallypodcast. Theme music is "It's Time" by Scaricá Ricascá 

City Lights presents Eileen Myles, joined by Fanny Howe, Maggie Nelson, Camille Roy, Laurie Weeks, Simone White, Frank Wilderson, and Jillian Weise, celebrating the publication of "Pathetic Literature," edited by Eileen Myles and published by Grove Atlantic. This event was originally broadcast via Zoom and hosted by Peter Maravelis. You can purchase copies of "Pathetic Literature" directly from City Lights here: https://citylights.com/pathetic-lit/ “Literature is pathetic.” So claims Eileen Myles in their bold and bracing introduction to "Pathetic Literature," an exuberant collection of pieces ranging from poetry to drama to prose to something in between, all of which explore those so-called “pathetic” or sensitive feelings around which lives are built and revolutions are incited. From confrontations with suffering, embarrassment, and disquiet, to the comforts and consolations of finding one's familiar double in a poem, "Pathetic Literature" is a swarming taxonomy of ways to think differently and live pathetically on a polarized and fearful planet. To learn more about Eileen Myles and the other participants, visit: https://citylights.com/events/eileen-myles/ This event was made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation: citylights.com/foundation

In this episode, we discuss Kay Ryan's "Crib," a brief poem that begins with an interest in the deep archaeology of language and shifts to a powerful meditation on theft, innocence, and guilt. "Crib" appears in The Best of It © 2010 by Kay Ryan. Used by permissions of Grove/Atlantic, Inc. For more on Kay Ryan and her work, you can visit the Poetry Foundation (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/kay-ryan) website. Our favorite interview with Kay Ryan appears in the Paris Review (https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5889/the-art-of-poetry-no-94-kay-ryan).

Roxane Gay describes her wild trajectory as a multihyphenate writer-editor-publisher-professor-social commentator as “fairly bewildering.” And she's not wrong: Over the past decade—and with long odds stacked up against her as a queer Black woman of size—Gay has had a meteoric rise in the media and publishing stratosphere, achieving rare heights. She has written a best-selling memoir, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017); a book of essays, Bad Feminist (2014); and two collections of short stories, Ayiti (2001) and Difficult Women (2017). She publishes a weekly newsletter called The Audacity and hosts The Roxane Gay Agenda podcast. Gay is also a contributing Opinion writer for The New York Times. This spring, she launched the Roxane Gay Books imprint with the publisher Grove Atlantic, and this fall, she begins her rarified position as the Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture, and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. Her next book, the astutely titled How to Be Heard, comes out in the spring. Across all of her work, Gay addresses topics related to feminism, women's rights, rape culture, sexual violence, weight and body image, trauma, race, and friendship. Gay, it is safe to say, is one of the most essential writers of our time, someone hyperattuned to the moment we're in and who fights like hell for the issues and causes she deeply believes in. Now in a well-earned position of power, she uses the influence she has to elevate the voices of other writers she feels are being or have been overlooked.On this episode of Time Sensitive, Gay talks with Spencer about her nomadic childhood across America as the daughter of Roman Catholic Haitian immigrant parents, her fluid and flexible approach to time, and her open-armed joy of cooking.Special thanks to our Season 6 sponsor, L'ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes:Roxane Gay[04:16] Bad Feminist[04:16] Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body[13:01] Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture and Feminist Studies[13:12] Roxane Gay Books[13:16] The Audacity Newsletter[13:18] Roxane Gay Agenda Podcast[13:22] Roxane Gay MasterClass[45:31] Ayiti[45:31] An Untamed State[45:31] Difficult Women[48:20] T Magazine “Cooking Class” videos

It is a parent's worst nightmare. The abduction of a child is more than traumatic but what if two of your children simply disappeared. That is precisely what happened on March 25, 1975, when 12-year-old Sheila Lyon and her little sister, 10-year-old Katherine departed from their home to walk ½ mile to the local shopping mall in Wheaton, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, DC. The girls made it to the mall but never made it home, they would never be seen again. This case has many twists and turns, but a dogged investigator and his team refused to give up. This is the story of The Lyon Sisters. Join Jen and Cam on this episode of Our True Crime Podcast entitled “Little Girls Lost: The Lyon Sisters.” Listener discretion by the remarkably talented Edward October from @octoberpodVHS All music is by our fabulous executive producer Nico @wetalkofdreams A big thanks to Mark Bowden and his book The Last Stone which did a great job telling the story of Katie and Sheila Lyon. Get it wherever you get your books or on Amazon as a Kindle or Audible edition. Sources: Bowden, Mark (April 2, 2019). The Last Stone. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, an imprint of Grove/Atlantic. ISBN 9780802147301.https://www.amazon.com/Last-Stone-Masterpiece-Criminal-Interrogation/dp/0802147305‘Who Killed the Lyon Sisters” https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13370308/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/magazine/wp/2019/04/01/feature/the-lyon-sisters-had-vanished-40-years-earlier-but-this-cold-case-team-didnt-give-up-on-them/https://wtop.com/local/2017/03/the-investigation-continues-lyon-sisters/http://wtop.com/local/2015/07/after-indictment-new-information-expected-in-lyon-sisters-disappearance/slide/1/https://www.cbsnews.com/news/lyon-sisters-case-lloyd-lee-welch-pleads-guilty-to-1975-murders-of-2-maryland-girls/http://wset.com/news/local/man-pleads-guilty-to-murdering-lyon-sisters-in-1975https://web.archive.org/web/20071001001513/https://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost_historical/access/143626632.html?dids=143626632:143626632&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:AI&date=May+23%2C+1975&author=By+Deborah+Sue+YaegerWashington+Post+Staff+Writer&pub=The+Washington+Post++(1974-Current+file)&edition=&startpage=B1&desc=Md.+Guardsmen+to+Join+Hunt+for+Lyon+Sistershttps://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/investigators-prepare-announcement-in-1975-missing-girls-case/2015/07/14/2ca2e68c-2a2f-11e5-a250-42bd812efc09_story.html https://streetcarsuburbs.news/lloyd-lee-welch-jr-pleads-guilty-to-1975-murder-of-the-lyon-sisters/https://wset.com/archive/where-are-the-lyon-sisters-a-closer-look-at-lloyd-welch-jrhttps://www.distractify.com/p/lloyd-lee-welch-jr-nowhttps://www.wdbj7.com/content/news/Only-On-WDBJ7-Welch-relative-explains-her-familys-side-of-the-story-in-Lyon-Sisters-case-390366592.htmlhttps://wtop.com/local/2016/07/cousin-100-percent-sure-lloyd-welch-murdered-lyon-sisters/https://www.whsv.com/content/news/Crime-draws-unwanted-attention-to-remote-Virginia-mountain-445438523.htmlhttps://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/02/19/missing-maryland-sisters-delaware-sex-offender/5601455/https://newsadvance.com/news/local/it-wasnt-just-the-lyon-sisters-he-harmed-lloyd-welch-pleads-guilty-in-two-child/article_faca21fa-9ef5-11e7-b4cf-97a3cdb56f46.htmlhttps://www.fbi.gov/baltimore/press-releases/2014/person-of-interest-named-in-kidnapping-of-lyon-sisters-others-victims-soughthttps://www.wsls.com/news/2017/09/12/lloyd-lee-welch-pleads-guilty-in-lyon-sisters-murder-case/https://www.somdnews.com/recorder/crime_and_courts/sentenced-child-sex-abusers-request-to-serve-time-on-home-detention-denied/article_cfe998cc-c1e7-5663-98cc-7edbc3a7cbb2.htmlhttps://thebaynet.com/montgomery-man-sentenced-in-calvert-sex-abuse-case-html/

On today's episode of The Literary Life, at a live event at Books & Books, Connie Ogle interviews Douglas Stuart to discuss his new novel, Young Mungo, out now from Grove Atlantic. Douglas Stuart is a Scottish-American author. His New York Times-bestselling debut novel Shuggie Bain won the 2020 Booker Prize and the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. It was the winner of two British Book Awards, including Book of the Year, and was a finalist for the National Book Award, PEN/Hemingway Award, National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, Kirkus Prize, as well as several other literary awards. Stuart's writing has appeared in the New Yorker and Literary Hub. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Available at patreon.com/unregistered and thaddeusrussell.com/courses/nato. As Russians and Ukrainians are fighting and dying over the existence of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)—the military alliance established at the beginning of the Cold War to “keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down”—in this live interactive webinar Scott Ritter and Thaddeus Russell will place the war in context through an analysis of the founding, operations, and rapid expansion of the organization that became "Putin's worst nightmare." The webinar will include a presentation and Q&A with Scott Ritter on May 2 and a discussion led by Thaddeus Russell on May 9. Scott Ritter served as a Marine intelligence officer in the former Soviet Union, implementing arms control agreements, and on the staff of General Norman Schwartzkopf during the Gulf War, where he played a central role in the hunt for Iraqi SCUD missiles. From 1991 until 1998, he served as a Chief Inspector for the United Nations in Iraq, leading the search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and was one of the most prominent critics of the American decision to go to war with Iraq. Ritter rose to fame for correctly insisting that Iraq had no significant weapons of mass destruction when the Bush administration claimed otherwise. He has published eight books, including most recently Scorpion King: America's Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump. Thaddeus Russell is the founder of Unregistered Academy, host of the Unregistered podcast, and author of a Renegade History of the United States. He received his PhD in United States history from Columbia University and taught history and international relations at Columbia, Barnard College, The New School for Social Research, and Occidental College. He is completing a history of American relations with the world for Grove Atlantic. Schedule Monday May 2 7:00 PM Eastern Russia, Ukraine, the United States, and the history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Presentation and Q&A with Scott Ritter Monday May 9 7:00 PM Eastern The war in Ukraine and the politics of NATO expansion Q&A and discussion with Thaddeus Russell

Lily King discusses the title story from her collection "Five Tuesdays in Winter." The story is available at most local libraries and should be read before listening to the podcast. I apologize--normally I am able to provide a copy of the story on my website but apparently Grove Atlantic does not have serial rights to the individual stories. Lily King is the award-winning author of five novels. Her most recent novel, Writers & Lovers, was published on March 3rd, 2020, and her first collection of short stories, Five Tuesdays in Winter, was released on November 9, 2021. Her 2014 novel Euphoria won the Kirkus Award, The New England Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Award. Euphoria was named one of the 10 Best Books of 2014 by The New York Times Book Review. It was included in TIME's Top 10 Fiction Books of 2014, as well as on Amazon, NPR, Entertainment Weekly, Publishers Weekly, and Salon's Best Books of 2014. Kelly Fordon's (podcast host) latest short story collection I Have the Answer (Wayne State University Press, 2020) was chosen as a Midwest Book Award Finalist and an Eric Hoffer Finalist. Her 2016 Michigan Notable Book, Garden for the Blind, (WSUP), was an INDIEFAB Finalist, a Midwest Book Award Finalist, Eric Hoffer Finalist, and an IPPY Awards Bronze Medalist. Her first full-length poetry collection, Goodbye Toothless House, (Kattywompus Press, 2019) was an Eyelands International Prize Finalist and an Eric Hoffer Finalist and was adapted into a play, written by Robin Martin, which was published in The Kenyon Review Online. This is the second "Let's Deconstruct a Story" podcast offered in collaboration with the Grosse Pointe Public Library in Michigan. The GPPL has committed to purchasing ten books by each author this season to give to their patrons! If you are a short story writer who has tried to make money in this game then you know what a big deal this is! My hope is that other libraries will follow the GPPL's lead and be inspired to buy books by these talented short story writers. I will be contacting many libraries this year to suggest this programming. Please feel free to do the same if you enjoy this podcast.

Today's episode centres on an anonymous 16th-century account of the Hajj that first appeared in English in a 1599 Hakluyt publication. If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here. I'm on Twitter @circus_human, Instagram @humancircuspod, and I have some things on Redbubble. Sources: Hakluyt, Richard. The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques & Discoveries of the English Nation. James MacLehose and Sons, 1904. One Thousand Roads to Mecca: Ten Centuries of Travelers Writing about the Muslim Pilgrimage, edited by Michael Wolfe. Grove Atlantic, 2015. The Hajj: Pilgrimage in Islam. edited by Eric Tagliacozzo & Shawkat M. Toorawa. Cambridge University Press, 2016. Peters, F.E. The Hajj: The Muslim Pilgrimage to Mecca and the Holy Places. Princeton University Press, 2021. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We pause in our interviews and other segments in this episode, to pay tribute to a brilliant mind of our times—writer, satirist and brilliant wit, PJ O'Rourke.In this episode, Ramjee Chandran talks about how PJ O'Rourke influenced his writing more than any other literary figure has. And rues that he missed the opportunity to meet and interview him.There would be no need to explain why anyone would emulate PJ O'Rourke—man, author and analyst.From being a gonzo journalist in National Lampoon, the wackiest publication of all time (it even out-wacky'd MAD magazine) to becoming a respected political analyst, O'Rourke's career took interesting turns.Only the most capable among us would be able to fashion a life and earn a living from what we want to do, and not what we have to do.Only O'Rourke's unusual approach to analytical reportage and his extremely popular wit, could have given him the leeway to get editor to allow him—and fund him—to do the stories he wanted to do. This included travelling to terrible places in which to live, or even visit. To give you a sense of what that means, a present day sequel to Holidays In Hell would have included Aleppo in Syria.A committed conservative, he was apologetic for much his hippie years and became a believer in free market economics. His conservative side seemed more about the economy than about politics, and to prove it, O'Rourke savaged both sides of the aisle equally.In his book, "Don't Vote, It Only Encourages The Bastards", he made the case that to vote for a politician is to provide that individual with your licence to do whatever it is they do.PJ O'Rourke died from lung cancer. He leaves behind a rich legacy—of descriptions of a time in which we currently live.The audio passages of O'Rourke are from him reading from the introduction to his book, "A Cry From The Far Middle - Despatches From A Divided Land" (Grove Atlantic). The extract is from a YouTube video, accessible here.You can buy the book here. Or wherever you buy books, of course.In this episode we have. not included the popular segment, WHAT'S THAT WORD?! but if you have a word or phrase you would like to explore, join us live on the show. Reach us by mail: theliterarycity@explocity.com or simply, tlc@explocity.com.Or, Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/bangaloreliterarysocietyOr Instagram https://www.instagram.com/explocityblr/If your word or phrase is selected, we'll call you.Join our Facebook group, Bangalore Literary Society. It does not matter if you are not in Bangalore. This group is for anyone interested in language and words.HELP EDUCATE A NEEDY CHILDThe Literary City encourages you to give to those children who struggle to get an education.  We ask you to contribute whatever you can to The Association of People with Disability. The link to donate is: https://www.apd-india.org/donations. Visit their site and take a look at the wonderful work they do and find it in your heart to, well, teach a child to fish. 

Trying to vote ourselves rich …and more on today’s CrossPolitic Daily News Brief. This is Toby Sumpter. Today is Friday, February 18, 2022. Would you please Like and share this show? Do it now so we can reach more people with the truth. Florida’s Don’t Say Gay Law https://www.thebulwark.com/desantis-shapiro-co-want-to-put-my-kid-in-the-closet/ Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has voiced his support for a bill that would prohibit the discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in the state's primary schools. Asked by reporters recently, he said it was "entirely inappropriate" for teachers to be having conversations with students about gender identity, citing instances of them telling children, “Don’t worry, don’t pick your gender yet," and also "hiding" classroom lessons from parents. “Schools need to be teaching kids to read, to write,” DeSantis said. “They need to teach them science, history. We need more civics and understanding of the U.S. Constitution, what makes our country unique, all those basic stuff.” "The larger issue with all of this is parents must have a seat at the table when it comes to what's going on in their schools," he added. The Parental Rights in Education bill — dubbed by critics as the "Don't Say Gay" bill — says that “A school district may not encourage classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in primary grade levels or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students.” The enforcement section of the legislation takes a cue from the Texas abortion bounty legislation: “A parent of a student may bring an action against a school district to obtain a declaratory judgment that a school district procedure or practice violates this paragraph and seek injunctive relief. A court may award damages.” RIP PJ O’Rourke https://nypost.com/2022/02/15/p-j-orourke-was-americas-greatest-satirist-and-coolest-conservative/ P.J. O’Rourke, the political satirist and journalist who served as foreign-affairs desk chief at Rolling Stone until 2005 and wrote for numerous publications, has died. He was 74. His death was confirmed by NBC News. “Our dear friend and cherished Grove Atlantic author P.J. O’Rourke passed away this morning from complications of lung cancer,” Deb Seager, a vice president and spokeswoman at his publisher Grove Atlantic, said in a statement to NBC. Respected for his wit and storytelling by people across the political spectrum, O’Rourke’s early essays suggested a liberal leaning after he earned an M.A. in English at Johns Hopkins University in 1970. However, he soon changed his political stance and his work reflected libertarian conservatism. He wrote for several indie publications before landing at National Lampoon in 1973, where he had a variety of positions, including editor-in-chief. He also wrote for 1973 stage spinoff National Lampoon’s Lemmings, which featured John Belushi, Chevy Chase, and Christopher Guest, and he co-wrote National Lampoon’s 1964 High School Yearbook with Douglas Kenney. In 2016, he famously endorsed Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, announcing his begrudging decision during a Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me! episode. “It’s the second-worst thing that can happen to this country. But she’s way behind in second place,” he said. “I mean, she’s wrong about absolutely everything, but she’s wrong within normal parameters.” While his writing could at times be unnecessarily crass, and his Roman Catholicism and libertarianism sometimes got the better of him, his wit allowed him to see and explain more clearly many things quite well and in certainly very entertaining ways. Grab all the clips of O’Rourke: https://youtu.be/RrIeha0XHWs 0:00-1:49 P.J. O’Rourke, may you have found the peace of Christ. AD: Cornerstone Work & Worldview Institute’s vision is to see a community of businesses, churches, mentors, and instructors working together to provide our young people options beside the credentials game of our current culture. They desire to see confident students with integrity and a godly backbone that understand all things are subject to Christ and are trained to be competent on the job. Their mission is to build Kingdom culture in the workplace by equipping their Christian students with a Trinitarian worldview and vocational competencies. Visit their website: cornerstonework.org to learn how to enroll in their program or partner with them in their mission. House Agenda if it Flips? https://thehill.com/homenews/house/594452-gop-eyes-ambitious-agenda-if-house-flips Republicans are eyeing an ambitious legislative agenda if they flip the House in November’s elections, setting the stage for countless clashes with President Biden on a host of thorny issues, from COVID-19 protocols and Big Tech to border security and the national debt. The midterm cycle is historically brutal for the party of first-term presidents, and that track record — combined with Biden’s approval rating, which is underwater, and consumer inflation, which is soaring — has created a golden opportunity for Republicans to win back the lower chamber after just four years in the minority wilderness. With that in mind, GOP leaders are already turning their gaze beyond the elections to discuss how they’d wield their power, presuming they seize it. Their strategy features a series of lawmaker “task forces” charged with itemizing the party’s top-tier reform ideas across a spectrum of hot-button issues — a wish list designed to serve as both a messaging tool on the campaign trail this year and a legislative guide in 2023 if they do gain the majority. Providing counsel through the process have been a host of prominent Republicans, including former Trump administration officials; conservative power players, like Club for Growth President David McIntosh, who spoke to the Republican Study Committee last week; and former congressional leaders, like onetime Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), who’s acting as a kind of informal adviser. Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), the vice chair of the House GOP conference, said the process is now in its “final stages,” with much of the task force work expected to be presented at the Republicans’ annual issues conference, which is scheduled for next month in Florida. “I assume it will be rolled out, probably by early summer, in time for members to go home and talk about it in town halls and run on it,” Johnson said. “It’s all coming together.” The strategy marks an extension of the Republicans’ “Commitment to America” campaign of 2020, which featured broad promises to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic, fight domestic crime, bolster the nation’s infrastructure and empower parents when it comes to their children’s education. With Biden in the White House, this year’s effort is much broader. The seven task forces are charged with crafting legislation designed to boost jobs, streamline health care, rein in the big tech companies, strengthen national security, counter Chinese influence, promote energy independence and secure individual freedoms such as gun rights. Many are advocating for a focus on the southern border with Mexico, where a surge in migration has led to record detentions — and a humanitarian crisis — in the first year of the Biden administration. Republicans are framing it as a national security threat. “Border security would be right at the top,” said Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Calif.). “We need to finish the fence. We need to have all the protocols all along the border, in order to control our border.” Other Republicans argued that the emphasis should be on scaling back the public health protocols put in place by the Biden administration in the name of combating the COVID-19 pandemic. Conservatives have bashed those policies — particularly mask and vaccine mandates — as an unconstitutional encroachment on individual freedoms, vowing to outlaw any similar effort under their watch. “I would like to think that the Democrats, in the majority, and this administration would let go of the unconstitutional, unlawful, unjustified, unscientific mandates relative to the China virus, and stop with the masks and vaccines on everybody long before a year from now,” said Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.), a member of the far-right Freedom Caucus. “However, they are clearly ‘COVID forever,’ and it seems as if they want to continue it — certainly the administration does,” he continued. “So that is the No. 1 most important issue, is the trampling on people’s freedoms.” Echoing other fiscal hawks, Good is also hoping GOP leaders move quickly to rein in government spending by adopting a balanced budget amendment. “We’re heading for a fiscal crisis if we don’t get a grip on spending,” he said. Still others are eager to launch a slew of investigations into the administration, to include its management of the coronavirus crisis, Biden’s handling of the deadly U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the federal government’s interactions with local school boards. To that list of investigative priorities, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has added another: She wants Republicans to rush an investigation into the U.S. Capitol Police following accusations from Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) that officers had entered his office and spied on him. Psalm of the Day: 3 https://open.spotify.com/track/7nKOyu6HqwWIDBYEVlSIya?si=f7c301525ac94c67 Play: 0:50-1:39 “Lord rise and save me O my God For you subdue my every foe You strike the jaw of wicked men Smashing their teeth with mighty blows” Amen! Remember you can always find the links to our news stories and these psalms at crosspolitic dot com – just click on the daily news brief and follow the links. Or find them on our App: just search “Fight Laugh Feast” in your favorite app store and never miss a show. This is Toby Sumpter with Crosspolitic News. A reminder: Support Rowdy Christian media, and share this show or become a Fight Laugh Feast Club Member. What allows us to continuing growing to take on the Big Media Lie Fest is your monthly membership support. If you’ve already joined, a huge thanks to you, and if you haven’t, please consider joining today and have a great day.

Trying to vote ourselves rich …and more on today’s CrossPolitic Daily News Brief. This is Toby Sumpter. Today is Friday, February 18, 2022. Would you please Like and share this show? Do it now so we can reach more people with the truth. Florida’s Don’t Say Gay Law https://www.thebulwark.com/desantis-shapiro-co-want-to-put-my-kid-in-the-closet/ Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has voiced his support for a bill that would prohibit the discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in the state's primary schools. Asked by reporters recently, he said it was "entirely inappropriate" for teachers to be having conversations with students about gender identity, citing instances of them telling children, “Don’t worry, don’t pick your gender yet," and also "hiding" classroom lessons from parents. “Schools need to be teaching kids to read, to write,” DeSantis said. “They need to teach them science, history. We need more civics and understanding of the U.S. Constitution, what makes our country unique, all those basic stuff.” "The larger issue with all of this is parents must have a seat at the table when it comes to what's going on in their schools," he added. The Parental Rights in Education bill — dubbed by critics as the "Don't Say Gay" bill — says that “A school district may not encourage classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in primary grade levels or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students.” The enforcement section of the legislation takes a cue from the Texas abortion bounty legislation: “A parent of a student may bring an action against a school district to obtain a declaratory judgment that a school district procedure or practice violates this paragraph and seek injunctive relief. A court may award damages.” RIP PJ O’Rourke https://nypost.com/2022/02/15/p-j-orourke-was-americas-greatest-satirist-and-coolest-conservative/ P.J. O’Rourke, the political satirist and journalist who served as foreign-affairs desk chief at Rolling Stone until 2005 and wrote for numerous publications, has died. He was 74. His death was confirmed by NBC News. “Our dear friend and cherished Grove Atlantic author P.J. O’Rourke passed away this morning from complications of lung cancer,” Deb Seager, a vice president and spokeswoman at his publisher Grove Atlantic, said in a statement to NBC. Respected for his wit and storytelling by people across the political spectrum, O’Rourke’s early essays suggested a liberal leaning after he earned an M.A. in English at Johns Hopkins University in 1970. However, he soon changed his political stance and his work reflected libertarian conservatism. He wrote for several indie publications before landing at National Lampoon in 1973, where he had a variety of positions, including editor-in-chief. He also wrote for 1973 stage spinoff National Lampoon’s Lemmings, which featured John Belushi, Chevy Chase, and Christopher Guest, and he co-wrote National Lampoon’s 1964 High School Yearbook with Douglas Kenney. In 2016, he famously endorsed Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, announcing his begrudging decision during a Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me! episode. “It’s the second-worst thing that can happen to this country. But she’s way behind in second place,” he said. “I mean, she’s wrong about absolutely everything, but she’s wrong within normal parameters.” While his writing could at times be unnecessarily crass, and his Roman Catholicism and libertarianism sometimes got the better of him, his wit allowed him to see and explain more clearly many things quite well and in certainly very entertaining ways. Grab all the clips of O’Rourke: https://youtu.be/RrIeha0XHWs 0:00-1:49 P.J. O’Rourke, may you have found the peace of Christ. AD: Cornerstone Work & Worldview Institute’s vision is to see a community of businesses, churches, mentors, and instructors working together to provide our young people options beside the credentials game of our current culture. They desire to see confident students with integrity and a godly backbone that understand all things are subject to Christ and are trained to be competent on the job. Their mission is to build Kingdom culture in the workplace by equipping their Christian students with a Trinitarian worldview and vocational competencies. Visit their website: cornerstonework.org to learn how to enroll in their program or partner with them in their mission. House Agenda if it Flips? https://thehill.com/homenews/house/594452-gop-eyes-ambitious-agenda-if-house-flips Republicans are eyeing an ambitious legislative agenda if they flip the House in November’s elections, setting the stage for countless clashes with President Biden on a host of thorny issues, from COVID-19 protocols and Big Tech to border security and the national debt. The midterm cycle is historically brutal for the party of first-term presidents, and that track record — combined with Biden’s approval rating, which is underwater, and consumer inflation, which is soaring — has created a golden opportunity for Republicans to win back the lower chamber after just four years in the minority wilderness. With that in mind, GOP leaders are already turning their gaze beyond the elections to discuss how they’d wield their power, presuming they seize it. Their strategy features a series of lawmaker “task forces” charged with itemizing the party’s top-tier reform ideas across a spectrum of hot-button issues — a wish list designed to serve as both a messaging tool on the campaign trail this year and a legislative guide in 2023 if they do gain the majority. Providing counsel through the process have been a host of prominent Republicans, including former Trump administration officials; conservative power players, like Club for Growth President David McIntosh, who spoke to the Republican Study Committee last week; and former congressional leaders, like onetime Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), who’s acting as a kind of informal adviser. Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), the vice chair of the House GOP conference, said the process is now in its “final stages,” with much of the task force work expected to be presented at the Republicans’ annual issues conference, which is scheduled for next month in Florida. “I assume it will be rolled out, probably by early summer, in time for members to go home and talk about it in town halls and run on it,” Johnson said. “It’s all coming together.” The strategy marks an extension of the Republicans’ “Commitment to America” campaign of 2020, which featured broad promises to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic, fight domestic crime, bolster the nation’s infrastructure and empower parents when it comes to their children’s education. With Biden in the White House, this year’s effort is much broader. The seven task forces are charged with crafting legislation designed to boost jobs, streamline health care, rein in the big tech companies, strengthen national security, counter Chinese influence, promote energy independence and secure individual freedoms such as gun rights. Many are advocating for a focus on the southern border with Mexico, where a surge in migration has led to record detentions — and a humanitarian crisis — in the first year of the Biden administration. Republicans are framing it as a national security threat. “Border security would be right at the top,” said Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Calif.). “We need to finish the fence. We need to have all the protocols all along the border, in order to control our border.” Other Republicans argued that the emphasis should be on scaling back the public health protocols put in place by the Biden administration in the name of combating the COVID-19 pandemic. Conservatives have bashed those policies — particularly mask and vaccine mandates — as an unconstitutional encroachment on individual freedoms, vowing to outlaw any similar effort under their watch. “I would like to think that the Democrats, in the majority, and this administration would let go of the unconstitutional, unlawful, unjustified, unscientific mandates relative to the China virus, and stop with the masks and vaccines on everybody long before a year from now,” said Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.), a member of the far-right Freedom Caucus. “However, they are clearly ‘COVID forever,’ and it seems as if they want to continue it — certainly the administration does,” he continued. “So that is the No. 1 most important issue, is the trampling on people’s freedoms.” Echoing other fiscal hawks, Good is also hoping GOP leaders move quickly to rein in government spending by adopting a balanced budget amendment. “We’re heading for a fiscal crisis if we don’t get a grip on spending,” he said. Still others are eager to launch a slew of investigations into the administration, to include its management of the coronavirus crisis, Biden’s handling of the deadly U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the federal government’s interactions with local school boards. To that list of investigative priorities, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has added another: She wants Republicans to rush an investigation into the U.S. Capitol Police following accusations from Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) that officers had entered his office and spied on him. Psalm of the Day: 3 https://open.spotify.com/track/7nKOyu6HqwWIDBYEVlSIya?si=f7c301525ac94c67 Play: 0:50-1:39 “Lord rise and save me O my God For you subdue my every foe You strike the jaw of wicked men Smashing their teeth with mighty blows” Amen! Remember you can always find the links to our news stories and these psalms at crosspolitic dot com – just click on the daily news brief and follow the links. Or find them on our App: just search “Fight Laugh Feast” in your favorite app store and never miss a show. This is Toby Sumpter with Crosspolitic News. A reminder: Support Rowdy Christian media, and share this show or become a Fight Laugh Feast Club Member. What allows us to continuing growing to take on the Big Media Lie Fest is your monthly membership support. If you’ve already joined, a huge thanks to you, and if you haven’t, please consider joining today and have a great day.

Trying to vote ourselves rich …and more on today’s CrossPolitic Daily News Brief. This is Toby Sumpter. Today is Friday, February 18, 2022. Would you please Like and share this show? Do it now so we can reach more people with the truth. Florida’s Don’t Say Gay Lawhttps://www.thebulwark.com/desantis-shapiro-co-want-to-put-my-kid-in-the-closet/ Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has voiced his support for a bill that would prohibit the discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in the state's primary schools. Asked by reporters recently, he said it was "entirely inappropriate" for teachers to be having conversations with students about gender identity, citing instances of them telling children, “Don’t worry, don’t pick your gender yet," and also "hiding" classroom lessons from parents.“Schools need to be teaching kids to read, to write,” DeSantis said. “They need to teach them science, history. We need more civics and understanding of the U.S. Constitution, what makes our country unique, all those basic stuff.”"The larger issue with all of this is parents must have a seat at the table when it comes to what's going on in their schools," he added.The Parental Rights in Education bill — dubbed by critics as the "Don't Say Gay" bill — says that “A school district may not encourage classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in primary grade levels or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students.”The enforcement section of the legislation takes a cue from the Texas abortion bounty legislation: “A parent of a student may bring an action against a school district to obtain a declaratory judgment that a school district procedure or practice violates this paragraph and seek injunctive relief. A court may award damages.”RIP PJ O’Rourkehttps://nypost.com/2022/02/15/p-j-orourke-was-americas-greatest-satirist-and-coolest-conservative/ P.J. O’Rourke, the political satirist and journalist who served as foreign-affairs desk chief at Rolling Stone until 2005 and wrote for numerous publications, has died. He was 74. His death was confirmed by NBC News.“Our dear friend and cherished Grove Atlantic author P.J. O’Rourke passed away this morning from complications of lung cancer,” Deb Seager, a vice president and spokeswoman at his publisher Grove Atlantic, said in a statement to NBC.Respected for his wit and storytelling by people across the political spectrum, O’Rourke’s early essays suggested a liberal leaning after he earned an M.A. in English at Johns Hopkins University in 1970. However, he soon changed his political stance and his work reflected libertarian conservatism. He wrote for several indie publications before landing at National Lampoon in 1973, where he had a variety of positions, including editor-in-chief. He also wrote for 1973 stage spinoff National Lampoon’s Lemmings, which featured John Belushi, Chevy Chase, and Christopher Guest, and he co-wrote National Lampoon’s 1964 High School Yearbook with Douglas Kenney. In 2016, he famously endorsed Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, announcing his begrudging decision during a Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me! episode. “It’s the second-worst thing that can happen to this country. But she’s way behind in second place,” he said. “I mean, she’s wrong about absolutely everything, but she’s wrong within normal parameters.” While his writing could at times be unnecessarily crass, and his Roman Catholicism and libertarianism sometimes got the better of him, his wit allowed him to see and explain more clearly many things quite well and in certainly very entertaining ways. Grab all the clips of O’Rourke: https://youtu.be/RrIeha0XHWs 0:00-1:49 P.J. O’Rourke, may you have found the peace of Christ. AD: Cornerstone Work & Worldview Institute’s vision is to see a community of businesses, churches, mentors, and instructors working together to provide our young people options beside the credentials game of our current culture. They desire to see confident students with integrity and a godly backbone that understand all things are subject to Christ and are trained to be competent on the job. Their mission is to build Kingdom culture in the workplace by equipping their Christian students with a Trinitarian worldview and vocational competencies. Visit their website: cornerstonework.org to learn how to enroll in their program or partner with them in their mission.House Agenda if it Flips?https://thehill.com/homenews/house/594452-gop-eyes-ambitious-agenda-if-house-flipsRepublicans are eyeing an ambitious legislative agenda if they flip the House in November’s elections, setting the stage for countless clashes with President Biden on a host of thorny issues, from COVID-19 protocols and Big Tech to border security and the national debt. The midterm cycle is historically brutal for the party of first-term presidents, and that track record — combined with Biden’s approval rating, which is underwater, and consumer inflation, which is soaring — has created a golden opportunity for Republicans to win back the lower chamber after just four years in the minority wilderness.With that in mind, GOP leaders are already turning their gaze beyond the elections to discuss how they’d wield their power, presuming they seize it.Their strategy features a series of lawmaker “task forces” charged with itemizing the party’s top-tier reform ideas across a spectrum of hot-button issues — a wish list designed to serve as both a messaging tool on the campaign trail this year and a legislative guide in 2023 if they do gain the majority.Providing counsel through the process have been a host of prominent Republicans, including former Trump administration officials; conservative power players, like Club for Growth President David McIntosh, who spoke to the Republican Study Committee last week; and former congressional leaders, like onetime Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), who’s acting as a kind of informal adviser.Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), the vice chair of the House GOP conference, said the process is now in its “final stages,” with much of the task force work expected to be presented at the Republicans’ annual issues conference, which is scheduled for next month in Florida. “I assume it will be rolled out, probably by early summer, in time for members to go home and talk about it in town halls and run on it,” Johnson said. “It’s all coming together.”The strategy marks an extension of the Republicans’ “Commitment to America” campaign of 2020, which featured broad promises to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic, fight domestic crime, bolster the nation’s infrastructure and empower parents when it comes to their children’s education.With Biden in the White House, this year’s effort is much broader. The seven task forces are charged with crafting legislation designed to boost jobs, streamline health care, rein in the big tech companies, strengthen national security, counter Chinese influence, promote energy independence and secure individual freedoms such as gun rights.Many are advocating for a focus on the southern border with Mexico, where a surge in migration has led to record detentions — and a humanitarian crisis — in the first year of the Biden administration. Republicans are framing it as a national security threat.“Border security would be right at the top,” said Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Calif.). “We need to finish the fence. We need to have all the protocols all along the border, in order to control our border.”Other Republicans argued that the emphasis should be on scaling back the public health protocols put in place by the Biden administration in the name of combating the COVID-19 pandemic. Conservatives have bashed those policies — particularly mask and vaccine mandates — as an unconstitutional encroachment on individual freedoms, vowing to outlaw any similar effort under their watch.“I would like to think that the Democrats, in the majority, and this administration would let go of the unconstitutional, unlawful, unjustified, unscientific mandates relative to the China virus, and stop with the masks and vaccines on everybody long before a year from now,” said Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.), a member of the far-right Freedom Caucus.“However, they are clearly ‘COVID forever,’ and it seems as if they want to continue it — certainly the administration does,” he continued. “So that is the No. 1 most important issue, is the trampling on people’s freedoms.”Echoing other fiscal hawks, Good is also hoping GOP leaders move quickly to rein in government spending by adopting a balanced budget amendment. “We’re heading for a fiscal crisis if we don’t get a grip on spending,” he said.Still others are eager to launch a slew of investigations into the administration, to include its management of the coronavirus crisis, Biden’s handling of the deadly U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the federal government’s interactions with local school boards.To that list of investigative priorities, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has added another: She wants Republicans to rush an investigation into the U.S. Capitol Police following accusations from Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) that officers had entered his office and spied on him. Psalm of the Day: 3 https://open.spotify.com/track/7nKOyu6HqwWIDBYEVlSIya?si=f7c301525ac94c67 Play: 0:50-1:39 “Lord rise and save me O my GodFor you subdue my every foeYou strike the jaw of wicked menSmashing their teeth with mighty blows” Amen! Remember you can always find the links to our news stories and these psalms at crosspolitic dot com – just click on the daily news brief and follow the links. Or find them on our App: just search “Fight Laugh Feast” in your favorite app store and never miss a show. This is Toby Sumpter with Crosspolitic News. A reminder: Support Rowdy Christian media, and share this show or become a Fight Laugh Feast Club Member. What allows us to continuing growing to take on the Big Media Lie Fest is your monthly membership support. If you’ve already joined, a huge thanks to you, and if you haven’t, please consider joining today and have a great day.

This week's interview is with author Tim Brookes, about his fascinating book 'Guitar - An American Life.' The book looks at how the guitar took shape as the modern instrument we know today, but also its place in American culture and how it went from being a fringe instrument to reaching the point where it outsells every other instrument combined.Tim talks about the process of having a guitar built for him, why everything important that happened to the guitar actually happened between 1928 and 1941 and why people complained that the guitar ruined old-time music...plus much more.Stuff we cover in the episodeYou can buy the book at Barnes and NobleYou can also find more info on the Grove Atlantic website

The new book, "The Steal: The Attempt to Overturn the 2020 Election and the People Who Stopped It," (Grove Atlantic) delivers a bird's eye view of this period, following participants you may not have heard of, but who played a critical role in the immediate aftermath of the 2020 election.

On October 26th, 2021, the Lannan Center presented a reading and talk featuring Douglas Stuart and Maureen Corrigan. Introduction by Aminatta Forna.About Douglas StuartDouglas Stuart is a Scottish-American author. His debut novel, Shuggie Bain, won the Booker Prize. It is published by Grove Atlantic in the US and Picador in the UK, and is to be translated into thirty-four languages. He wrote Shuggie Bain over a ten year period and is currently at work on his second novel, to be published in 2022. His short stories, Found Wanting, and The Englishman, were published in The New Yorker magazine. His essay, Poverty, Anxiety, and Gender in Scottish Working-Class Literature was published by Lit Hub. Born in Glasgow, Scotland, he has an MA from the Royal College of Art in London and since 2000 he has lived and worked in New York City.About Maureen CorriganMaureen Corrigan is The Nicky and Jamie Grant Distinguished Professor of the Practice in Literary Criticism in the Department of English. She is an expert in the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald, the literature of New York City, American detective fiction, American Women's Autobiography, the work of American Public Intellectuals in the 20th Century, and 19th century British poetry and prose. She received her Ph.D. and M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania with a concentration in the social criticism of Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin and William Morris. She received her B.A. in English from Fordham University. For the past 31 years, Corrigan has been the weekly book critic on the Peabody Award-winning NPR program, ''Fresh Air.'' Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

Decades after the rise of rock music in the 1950s, the rock concert retains its allure and its power as a unifying experience—and as an influential multi-billion-dollar industry. In "Rock Concert", acclaimed interviewer Marc Myers sets out to uncover the history of this compelling phenomenon, weaving together ground-breaking accounts from the people who were there.Myers combines the tales of icons like Joan Baez, Ian Anderson, Alice Cooper, Steve Miller, Roger Waters, and Angus Young with figures such as the disc jockeys who first began playing rock on the radio, like Alan Freed in Cleveland and New York; the audio engineers that developed new technologies to accommodate ever-growing rock audiences; music journalists, like Rolling Stone's Cameron Crowe; and the promoters who organized it all, like Michael Lang, co-founder of Woodstock, to create a rounded and vivid account of live rock's stratospheric rise."Rock Concert" provides a fascinating, immediate look at the evolution of rock 'n' roll through the lens of live performances —spanning from the rise of R&B in the 1950s, through the hippie gatherings of the '60s, to the growing arena tours of the '70s and '80s. Elvis Presley's gyrating hips, the British Invasion that brought the Beatles in the '60s, the Grateful Dead's free flowing jams, and Pink Floyd's The Wall are just a few of the defining musical acts that drive this rich narrative. Featuring dozens of key players in the history of rock and filled with colorful anecdotes, Rock Concert will speak to anyone who has experienced the transcendence of live rock.Marc Myers is a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal, where he writes about music and the arts. He is the author of the critically acclaimed books Anatomy of a Song and Why Jazz Happened, and posts daily at JazzWax.com, a three-time winner of the Jazz Journalists Association's award for Jazz Blog of the Year.Purchase a copy of "Rock Concert: An Oral History as Told by the Artists, Backstage Insiders, and Fans Who Were There" through Grove Atlantic: https://groveatlantic.com/book/rock-concertFind Marc Myers at his official website: https://www.anatomyofasong.com Read Marc Myers' daily blogs at JazzWax: https://www.jazzwax.comThe Booked On Rock Website: https://www.bookedonrock.comFollow The Booked On Rock with Eric Senich:FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/bookedonrockpodcastTWITTER: https://twitter.com/bookedonrockContact The Booked On Rock Podcast:thebookedonrockpodcast@gmail.comSupport Your Local Bookstore! Find your nearest independent book store here: https://www.indiebound.org/indie-store-finderThe Booked On Rock Theme Song: “Whoosh” by Crowander [ https://freemusicarchive.org/music/crowander]

In our latest episode of the Read Smart podcast, host Toby Mundy is joined by founder of Daunt Books and managing director of Waterstones in the UK and Barnes and Nobile in the US, James Daunt alongside CEO and publisher of Grove Atlantic, Morgan Entrekin. Our two guests discuss American publishing, delving into the lasting consequences of the pandemic, the difference between US and UK bookselling and the politics of readership. Join us next time for the Longlist episode! This year the 2021 prize longlist will be announced on 9th September, followed by the shortlist on 15th October. The winner of the prize this year will then be announced on 16th November. The Read Smart Podcast is commissioned by The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction and is generously supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation.

What kind of stories are agents interested in? How do you find an agent and how do you know if the person is any good? And what about your publishing contract? What should you be mindful about there? All these questions, and many more, are answered in this episode of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast by Jane Friedman. Links to what was mentioned in the episode: QueryTracker: http://querytracker.net Duotrope: http://duotrope.com Publishers Marketplace: http://publishersmarketplace.com Not discussed during the interview, but this one is interesting as well: http://mswishlist.com You can find Jane at: http://janefriedman.com Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.  SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST! Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you'll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going. Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion). Narrator (2s): You're listening to The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast. In today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need in literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing. Join two best selling authors who have self published more than in 20 books between them. Now onto the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt. Jesper (30s): Hello, I'm Jesper. And this is episode 140 of the Am Writing fantasy podcast. Autumn is busy launching her brand new novel today, so I've instead brought someone else on, so I won't be all alone because that will be pretty boring on a podcast. Narrator (48s): But joking aside, I have to say that I really looked forward to this conversation, our little piece of intro music there to the podcast says that you don't really need a literary agent, or worry about gatekeepers and all that stuff, but that is all true if we are talking about self publishing, but not so much, if you want to get a traditional publishing contract and Autumn and I have actually started talking a bit about maybe trying to become hybrid authors, meaning that we will have both self published books and traditionally published titles. And so I guess in some ways you could say that it's a bit of, for selfish reasons as well, that I'm are joined by the very knowledgeable Jane Friedman today. Narrator (1m 31s): Welcome to The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast, Jane, and I hope you won't mind me picking your brain today. Jane (1m 38s): Not at all. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you. Jesper (1m 41s): Yeah. I have a sneaky suspicion that the quite a few of our listeners will already know who you are, Jane, but the, let me just, I'll try to give a short introduction, Jane, and then you can see if I miss out something important here. So Jane has more than 20 years of experience in the publishing industry. And in 2019, she was awarded what the publishing commentator of the year by digital digital book world. And Jane also has an incredibly popular, I guess I could say newsletter for authors with in 2020, it was awarded media outlet of the year. Jesper (2m 23s): And she also runs the award winning block for writers over@janefriedman.com and has been featured by New York times, Washington post publishers weekly. And the list just goes on and on. And that I miss anything that those are the important ones. Yeah. Yeah. And I think with those credentials, it's quite obvious why I want it to have a chat with you about traditional publishing, but maybe, maybe before we get into all of that, maybe you could just sort of share a bit about yourself that maybe has less to do with the business side, but more like who you are. So Jane (2m 58s): Yeah, I started in the business in the late 1990s, right out of college. So in some ways my, my life has been spent on nothing but publishing in one form or another. I did go full-time freelance in 2014. So I was traditionally employed out a book publishing company and a media company in the literary journal at a university. And then finally after, I guess it was 15 years, 15 years of, of working for other people. I decided to just embark on my own. So I've been very happy working independently. Jane (3m 40s): It's, it's a combination of doing the newsletter that you mentioned, which is for authors online teaching. And then I also do some consulting. So aside from that, you know, I do a lot, I do a lot of travel, but a lot of its because I go to the writing conferences. Mmm. So during the pandemic that certainly slowed down dramatically and I've spent a lot of time that my home office in the past year, but it's been good. I've been able to focus on things that I didn't have time for when I was traveling so much. Jesper (4m 11s): Yeah. W what, what drew you to publishing and writing original that, do you, do you do you know, it was more like some people stumbled out to collage and by coincidence they end up in some sort of industry, but I was there something in particular that drew in there. Jane (4m 26s): So it's, it's hard for me to say that I was drawn as much as it was the, maybe the process of elimination when I was growing up, I, I come from a very rural part of the United States. There wasn't a whole lot to do other than go to school and go to the library. My mother was a very bookish person. She was a librarian, in fact. So I spend a lot of hours in the library and I was just good at school. And I liked reading. And I dunno that I think this happens to many people who ultimately become English majors or they studied creative writing and they think, well, I I'd like books, I'll study literature. And so it just, I, but I think I'm fortunate in that I was able to turn that into something that actually pays the bills. Jane (5m 10s): Not everyone does that. Jesper (5m 12s): Oh, I know that. That's true. Yeah. I still have very fond memories myself of the library when I was a kid. I just, I don't know. I just love I could spend hours and hours in their well, but back then, it was the most comic books I was looking at. Of course. But yeah, you could just go out and take a new one and another one in another one in, and sit there for hours. Just go through all those pages. I don't know. There's something about it. Isn't that? I don't know what it is. Jane (5m 36s): Yeah. I I've always been drawn to bookstores and libraries from a young age, although I will admit now in the digital landscape it's I do a lot less of that. And I do have as much of a fascination with computers and with figuring things out from a digital media perspective. So I like bringing those two areas together. Jesper (5m 58s): Right, right. Yeah. OK. Well, in terms of, of talking about traditionally publishing contracts and how to get one, which is actually something that I'm, we are asked, but not all the time, but on a similar, a regular basis on them. And I, my cohost asked about how to, how to do that, how to get those kinds of contracts. And honestly, we're not the best one to advise on this because while autumn, they did have a contract like 10, 15 years ago, but I don't, we are not like the expert on this topic. And also, as I said, a bit earlier, 'cause we actually considering trying maybe to see if we can find an agent for ourself maybe in the years time or something, once we have a novel written for that particular purpose, I was thinking that maybe we could just try to structure our conversation in, in the same fashion light, sort of a bit of step-by-step where, where did we start and, and with what happens next to the next time. Jesper (6m 56s): So on, in the process, because then it might make a bit more sense for the listener. And obviously where we start is with the story of self, you know, and do you, do we need to sort of think about what kind of story or what kind of novel we are we right. If we want to get it traditionally published? Jane (7m 18s): Oh, a little bit, but not too much. So in other words, I think first and foremost, you need to write the story you feel called to riot, or that your interested in writing or, or that you are passionate about. And that's sort of cliched advice. You hear a lot, but its true that it takes far too much work, especially in my mind to go through the traditional publishing process, to try and write something that you think is going to just fit the market. To me, that's actually what self publishers do. There are always studying what's happening in the market and trying to jump on where the readers are going that happens in traditional publishing to, but I think there's also a concern for what's this writer doing that only they can do on, usually it comes out of your own obsessions or interest areas. Jane (8m 12s): So, but on the, on the other hand, you know, you do have to be aware of kind of the model that traditional publishing works under, which is the way, if you're a first time author for them, they want the book to be a certain length. You know, they're going to get dissuaded. If your book is say more than 150,000 words are more than 120,000 words, it's usually the, where things start to get rejected more often because it's just too long when they don't know you yet as an author, they haven't established an audience for you yet just costs more in terms of time and editing to do a longer book. And if you're writing something that is a real mashup or hybrid of lots of different things, if it's really too far out there that might also dissuade them. Jane (9m 3s): So they like things that are both familiar and fresh, which are, this is very frustrating to writers because what defines that? No one knows, you know that when you see it. Jesper (9m 15s): Yeah. Because, and I don't know if this is right or wrong, but I have this impression as well that traditional publishers and I guess therefore also agency, they don't like to, I mean maybe some agents do, but, but if we sort of just take it in the broader sense here, I have a feeling that they don't like to take meant to many chances, meaning that they probably prefer to have something that is at least fairly similar to what is generally on the market today. Do you think that's a correct assumption or am I just reading into things that I shouldn't no. Jane (9m 53s): And I think its true that they want something that fits the genre or sub genre. They like, they don't like things that are hard to categorize or that don't have good comparable titles or authors. So you should be able to usually imagine your book or yourself sitting alongside other books and authors, you know, you can say a free to use like ex they will like why if, if, if a publisher can't do that because your work is too odd or it's just, you know, it doesn't fit the model and yes, it's going to look risky. Oh Jesper (10m 27s): Yeah. So, so, so that also basically means I fully agree. What you said before about in the others are probably doing far more market research, then the traditional publishers as are bad. But if it doesn't mean though that you should be doing at least enough market research, then to be able to understand what are the true those tropes and what to do, what do I need to deliver upon? Because if you are getting too creative and maybe thinking that, let me write something they've never seen before, because then I'm going to blow their mind. They will probably think, well, I can't sell this stuff. Yeah, Jane (11m 4s): Exactly. Jesper (11m 7s): But what about stand alone versus series? And if you are trying to get an agent, would it be best to just write a complete standalone thing? Or do you give them like, here's this book one of the series and leave it open-ended or doesn't matter maybe. Oh yeah. Jane (11m 26s): Well there is of course a really strong tradition of series in science fiction and fantasy as well as some other genres like mystery or romance. So, but if it's safe or safer to propose a book that is the first and a potential series, so it can stand alone. But if it does really well, you're ready and it would make sense to continue it. Mmm. So I know that it's like a little dance that everyone is doing and, and the reason for this, his publishers or, you know, they like to see how things perform before they fully commit. Jane (12m 7s): So it's not that they're going to abandon you after the first book, but if, if, if the sales just don't go in the right direction, especially like after book to are booked, three of the sales get softer and softer instead of stronger, and you may find yourself getting dropped by the publisher. So in other words, what that would mean on a practical level as that you would never want to query a series saying this is a five books series and you have to take all five Jesper (12m 33s): It's something that Jane (12m 35s): Basically works to both, both of you and the publisher and to a corner. Jesper (12m 40s): Yeah. But I'm also thinking, and I don't know how often that happens, but I'm just, I'm, I'm, I'm just speculating a lot here. So do you have to correct me every time and say something incorrectly, but I'm assuming a lot of things I guess, but I would think that spending the time to right, like say the book 1, 2, 2, and three, and then give them big one and say, okay, here it is. I have two more books. If you are interested is probably not the best use of your time. I, I, I'm thinking it's probably a better to just write the first book, leave it in at least enough open-ended that you can continue and then just see if they want it before, because you couldn't, you just as risk spending a lot of time writing three books and they don't even want it. Jesper (13m 22s): Or even if they're want book one and then they will never buy books two and three. Jane (13m 25s): Yeah. Yeah. I, yeah, I would not, I would not write all 3, 4, 5, however many books there. I would not write the whole series and then start querying. I would write the first book and then have a really nice outline of how the series might unfold. And that doesn't take much, like it takes maybe a paragraph per book to show what direction you're going to take it in. Jesper (13m 49s): Yeah. Okay. So basically like a bit of a plot overview or something, so to do the age and can see what are your thoughts are. Jane (13m 56s): Right. And you wouldn't even submit that first. You, you have to sell the first book before you could have that conversation or at least interest them in the first book. Jesper (14m 4s): Yeah. Oh, okay. Well let's assume that we have a story written out there and at least we think that it is abiding to tropes and we believe that we have at least written something that is fairly common in of course it has a good cover and it has a good showing are trophy title and all that stuff. And we don't need to find an agent. And I think, I think the general advice is that you should not try to approach any of the big publishing houses without an agent. Is that right? Jane (14m 34s): That's correct. There are closed to authors'. So you're only weigh through the door is through an agent unless you happen to know someone on the inside or do you have a really good famous bestselling author friend who is going to make an introduction for you, even if that were the case though, you'd probably an agent to help you negotiate the contract, which I know we'll talk about. So yeah, I'd, I'd say when you're starting to query agents are step one and if the agent search doesn't go as intended, you can then start looking at publishers that are smaller, independent, that don't require you to have an agent they'll take your submission directly. Jane (15m 14s): Yeah. Jesper (15m 15s): Yeah. And I want to come back to that one about the smaller publishers, but I guess first, I mean, how do you find an agent? That's like the million dollar question that everybody asks? Probably yes. Jane (15m 28s): So it's actually not, it's not rocket science. There are a few recognized up to date databases that you can use. And you just filter down to the agents who would be interested in your work. You can do this at sites like QueryTracker dot nets, do a trope.com. There's also publishers marketplace, where you can look up deals that agents have maid and you can filter the deals by genre. You can also do keyword searches and those deals. So if you are, if you have some sort of EY space opera, let's say that you could actually search the deals for space opera and look for agents who seem to like those sorts of books. Jane (16m 11s): So if you use any, one of those are the best. If you use a combination that helps to consult different sources, you can then once you've got a working list and it might be, you know, for genre fiction, generally you can almost find a hundred agents just write off the bat without even working that hard. So then once you've got your list of a hundred or however many, you would want to go to that agency website, make sure that there are still open for submissions. Sometimes they'll close, you know, check out there guidelines, make sure its a good fit, look at their client lettuce. Do you think that this person is going to actually like what you send them and then you send off your query. Jesper (16m 54s): And can you sort of just assume that the people are the agents that are on the list like that are good agents or, or do you need to like vet the list yourself as well to Czech? Like do they actually know what they're doing? So yes. Yes. Jane (17m 10s): So the, the three sites that I mentioned are I think, quite reliable, it would be hard to find and unreputable agent threw one of those three sources. I'm not saying it can't happen, but the likelihood is greatly diminished. I think where you get into real trouble with bad agents, if you start Googling around very broadly, like if you go to Google and just type in and literary agent that has a terrible, terrible idea, you will get all sorts of scammers and people who have a financial interest in luring you in and charging you money. And who knows what? Now there are definitely good agents better agent's there are some who are more well-known and less well-known. Jane (17m 54s): Those are who, those who are still establishing their career and those who have been around for decades. And that's where you get into really subjective concerns. Like some people they want to get the biggest possible agent or they want an attack dog agent or they're like, actually I would like an agent. Who's still building their list and maybe they'll, they'll pay more attention to me if I'm one of their early clients and these are all legitimate reasons to choose one agent over another in the United States, there's the organization called the AA L a, which if you're a member of, of you have to abide by a certain code of ethics and it's also a place to go with complaints. Jane (18m 36s): So if you do have a bad experience, you can go to the AAL eye and say, you know, one of your members has treated me poorly or you, you tell them what happened and that they can help address it. Not all agents are going to belong to that, but a good number of them do. And there's a similar organization in the UK. And I have to imagine probably in Europe to Jesper (18m 59s): Yeah, because it it's, it's difficult. Right? And, and sometimes you see you on the internet, these really bad examples where you yeah. Almost like bordering on fraud almost right. Like from, from because the, the terrible thing is that the authors in this case are there sort of chasing a dream. And if somebody then says, okay, I'll take you on board. I guess a lot of people won't have there critical census M on God there. And, and then they jump in and say, well, regretted later. So the, oh Jane (19m 35s): Yes, you're absolutely right. A lot of people are preying on people's dreams, hopes and aspirations. You know, one of the first signs you may be dealing with a bad actor is that they praise you to this guy's and then ask for your money. So that's the sequence of events that should raise a red flag for you. People writers, especially to just get really taken in when someone says, oh, you're, you know, you're brilliant. You're a genius. And you know, it's what you've been hoping for all this time, for someone to select you and validate the hard work. But you know, the truth is that agents and publishers both tend to leave you feeling a little cold. Jane (20m 16s): There are not the most complementary people in the world. We tend to be very pragmatic, critical, well, you need to change this and this. And then, you know, maybe it will sell it. They just don't think they don't want to build up your hopes. In fact, there'll be very realistic. Jesper (20m 36s): Yeah. And I guess it's well, well, if, if, if they ask you for money that you should just run for the Hills, right? I mean, why would you, you, you shouldn't pay them anything unless they make a deal Jane (20m 48s): That's right. They only earn money when they sell your books. So they are in the U S agents get 15% of everything that the authors make. That's 15% of the advance, 15% of the royalties, 15% of, you know, an option sale. Or it can go as high as 20%. If there's a co-agent that gets into more complicated territory. But in other words, you're not paying them out of your pocket. There are like some rare cases where maybe the agent will say, look, you know, I really like what you've got, but there are these issues that need to be resolved. I can't resolve them for you, but maybe you should go hire this editor. Jane (21m 31s): And there are going to help you, you know, maybe, maybe in you, you would invest at that point, but just be super cautious because, you know, until you have an actual manuscript that the agent wants to represent, you could just be spending a lot of money for, for nothing. You'd have to agree with what they're saying, I guess is what the point I'd like to make. You have to see that there. Right? Jesper (21m 55s): Yeah. Quite recently here, I heard another example of M and agent, which again, of course it was fraught, but the agent was like saying, well, this, this is really good manuscript, but there is a lot of issues in it. And then lo and behold, I can fix them for you. You just need to pay me X amount of that. I can't remember how much it was, but something, and then I'll get my editor, which I have in house and they we'll fix it for you as well. That sounds nice. But again, don't pay them money. Jane (22m 24s): Oh yeah. I don't, I don't think it's a good idea too. If, if an agent does think, I mean, it's, it's true. There are many projects that need editorial work, but you have to be careful when the agent ha has a possible financial interest in you having that work done. That's not good. Jesper (22m 45s): But if you are then going off of these lists as human, and, but maybe by the way, maybe you can, you, maybe you can email me those lists that you mentioned earlier, then I can put them on the show notes for people. But if we're going off the list and let's say with, and sending out Query letters, which I'll come back to in a moment, because I want to ask about that as well. But let's say we are sending out hundreds of Query letters maybe. And then let's say some of them are a bit positive and they come back and say like, okay, this looks interested. But then I have heard examples of agents and saying like, they want to change something or this character doesn't work or this part of the plot doesn't work or whatever, but wouldn't, you sort of be chasing your own tail. Jesper (23m 29s): If you keep correcting things to every time one of those agents comes back and say something Jane (23m 34s): It's possible. So what you've described is called a revise and resubmit request. So this is where an agent has a phone call or sent an editorial letter saying, look, I'd like to represent this, but you need to change these things. And they'll go into sufficient detail that you, you get it, you know what their trying to get you to do. And then you go off and do it. But you have kind of going back to my earlier point, you have to agree with the work. Like you ha it should excite you like it. You should feel like, wow, yeah, this is going to make such a better book or yeah. I can see why they're making those suggestions and I can do it. Jane (24m 14s): Like I'm willing to compromise in that way. Usually what I tell people as if, I mean, it's like a revise and resubmit request's is great. Just neutral speaking. It means that they are really C something in the project or a new, and they, they would like to see it come to fruition. They don't issue those to just anyone. And there are probably testing to see if you have the ability to edit yourself, because that's really required when you begin working with the publisher, you know, the, the editor you work with is going to expect you to take revision suggestions. So this is like the first, you know, the first hurdle that you have to get over. Jane (24m 58s): But in any event, if you query several dozen agents and then, and you see a pattern in there, response, like there are all wanting you to do X, then, you know, okay, I'm getting a really strong message here. That X is a issue that has to be resolved. But if you get a bunch of feedback and it's all over the map, some people are like, we need to change the character. And others are all, you have to change the plot or no, you can't, you can't have this setting or your dialog sex. Like if there is no pattern, that's when I would really be reluctant to make changes. Jesper (25m 35s): Yeah. No, that makes sense. But what about those famous Query letters then? What, what do you, what, what you do you focus on there? Jane (25m 47s): It's almost all about this story promise. So the query is, were talking about as short, very short pitch are usually not more than 300 words, maybe 400 for some types of fantasy, where it might, you might have to do some set up are world-building to make sure that the whole thing makes sense, but very short. And we're talking about character problem setting. Those are the key elements. The rest of the query outside of that is really just housekeeping. So by housekeeping, I mean, there's, you know, maybe a hundred words of a bio. Jane (26m 27s): There might be an element of personalization there where you talk about I'm approaching you because I see you represent blah, blah, blah, which is similar to my book. And you'll of course I have the title and the word count. And you'll comment on the, the comparable titles, what you think is going to be similar. But the, like I said, the book of the query, though, that decision is made on this story, does the agent or editor think that this story has legs in the market, as it intrigue them, does it make them excited? And does it make them want to read or request the manuscript? Now there's a difference between sending a query by itself and sending a query with sample chapters. Jane (27m 8s): So if an agent or a publisher for that matter is asking for a query, plus the manuscript, they probably know from experience that a lot of writers are crap Jesper (27m 17s): Are writing their queries. So, Jane (27m 20s): You know, if they see the query in there, like, oh, this is a mess, they'll just flip to your first pages and see if there's something there. Yeah. So in those cases, I think the query holds less weight. And the agent's probably more interested in just reading the opening and seeing if you can write. So there is some reassurance there, but I hope, and that you're gonna be judged on the right thing rather than you're ability to pitch. But for those people that you're just sending the query, there are, those might be agents who are more concerned with things like, do you have a high concept? Can you write just to really snappy pitch, were the character are the voice really comes through? Does the book kind of sell itself when, you know, the general outline of the story? Jane (28m 4s): So it does put a lot of it puts more pressure on the writer to have something that just feels exciting, whether that's the character or that premise, or, you know, something about it, you know, that jumps out. Jesper (28m 16s): Yeah. And it's, it's just so much easier said than done to, to right. In, in an interesting M summary, I guess, of this story 'cause as well when you are, well, not even if it's not even in a blurb level. Right. But it's more like just the summary of what's happening. It's it's, it can be very difficult to actually make that sound interesting other than its just like, oh, well then there is this story about this guy who this guy does, blah, blah, blah. I mean, it's, it, it very easily becomes this sort of boring bland synopsis, Jane (28m 55s): Right? So that's precisely what you want to avoid in something that's really light kind of plot oriented and mechanical because that will be a turnoff. Even if the book is very plot driven, I think it's necessary in the query to be able to marry together that character and the plot M and in the case of fantasy, you need to probably have a couple sentences upfront that kind of establish the parameters, like our way on a ho in a whole other like a world or planets. What's the what's defining life in this world that you've created. You shouldn't assume too much about what the age and are editor may understand about the world that you've created. Jane (29m 39s): You have to be pretty direct. And you know, I think the thing that often gets left out of the queries icy is the relationship of tension. So most times we're really intrigued by stories where we see people in opposition or people are trying to preserve her relationship that matters to them, but there are forces getting in the way, are there personal motivations or what they need to achieve is in conflict with someone else in the story obviously, and you might have a village and it's really clearly in protagonist antagonist situation I'm. So I think, think about the relationship dynamics and what, what striving the story forward from that perspective, in addition to whatever interesting elements your fantasy world has in it, that's going to be, but hopefully these are whatever's magical or fantastical about your story is also built into what the characters want. Jane (30m 36s): What's giving them trouble rather than just, you know, window dressing. Jesper (30m 40s): Yeah. So in a, rather than just riding about the one on one ring, having to be carried to Mount doom, you also write about the relationship between Sam and Frodo and how the struggle and so on. Jane (30m 53s): It's like excellent example. Jesper (30m 55s): Yeah. Yeah. And why, while you were saying that, I just got to thinking, because you were talking about those sort of websites with lists of agents and so on. I, I just started wondering all of a sudden, if there wasn't like a repository of like, here are the examples of really good query letters or something that some people could look at it as examples, do you know if something like that exists? Jane (31m 19s): In fact, the query tracker site that I mentioned has a really robust set of resources and message boards and posts where they feature query is that actually worked in the, you know, there is even the potential for you to post your query in the message boards and get feedback from other people. Although you have to be careful or you can get a lot of different opinions. Yeah. You're left feeling more confused, but I think one of the best ways to write a better Query, I think to the point you're making is to actually see a lot of them. And you, you start to see what works. Jesper (31m 56s): Yeah. Yeah. Because it's often rather than trying to invent the wheel again, you know, it often works a lot better if you can. Just, the same thing goes for when we're writing blurbs, for example, the autumn. And I often do check out like, what are the, when this shop Shaundra, what our, like the bestselling books in the shop show on her. And it's, there are like some common elements that they use across those slopes. Because again, you will start seeing commonalities and you can start see, oh, oh, okay. I see. They always focus on something to do with this part or whatever. And then you can make your own version of that obviously, but then you are already like 10 steps ahead. Jane (32m 32s): Yes, yes. Jesper (32m 34s): Yeah. Okay. So let's, well now we have a book. We have found some Asians to send Query letters to, and we have written an awesome Query letters. Well, hopefully, so let's say that one of these agents then comes back to us and say, okay, this, this is great. I would like to represent you. What, what happens now? Jane (33m 1s): So they'll have a conversation with you where they talk about that, their strategy for submitting it, there is no right or wrong strategy here, but they, you know, they're going to hopefully be very open and transparent about what they want to see happen. And the approach they'll take. For instance, some agents will put things up for auction and they'll make editors bid against one another, but you have to feel like you have a pretty hot property because if no one that shows up to your auction, it's a little embarrassing. The more common approach that covers most projects is the agent will send it out to a select number of editor's that she thinks are going to be most likely to want the book. Jane (33m 45s): And then there will be some waiting and let's hope it's not that long. You know, maybe a month, maybe two months, you know, some of this depends on time of year. Like right now, it's a slower time because it's summer people in there away. And you can tell the agent, you know, I want to hear, I want to hear from you every time you get something from an editor, whether it's a rejection or whatever, or you can tell the agent, look, that would, it would be really hard on me to hear about every rejection that comes through. Can we, can we touch base on this state? Jane (34m 27s): And we'll talk about what's happened so far. Of course, if there's good news, the agent is going to call you right away. So if there is good news, the agent will bring you the offer and the offer starts off as it's not a contract, its usually a, they say, OK, this is the advance we're offering. These are the most important deal points. Like is it world rights or not? What's the royalty rate look like? And there'll be some other little details. Like, is it a one book deal, a two book deal? And then if you just have one offer, its kind of this very straightforward, do you take it or not? And it's not the agent's job, you know, to push you in one direction or the other. Jane (35m 7s): But to explain to you the merits of the deal, you know, the pros and cons and help you make a choice, that's right for you. If you have a competing interest, that's wonderful. And now you can decide where do you think is the best home for the book who is going to do the best job of bringing the book to market? Jesper (35m 26s): Yeah. And I'm also thinking that, I mean, just from a business perspective, I mean, if, if 'cause at this stage, you shouldn't be too much of the author wanting to get anymore, but you should more put your business hat on and say, okay, what makes sense here? And I'm almost because I, I'm not an expert on this, but I've heard like the advantage. They usually are pretty low when you are first starting out. And what I don't quite like about that to be honest is the fact that the publisher has absolutely zero skin in the game and it's so if they give you a very, very low, a advanced than well, they'll probably just leave it for you to figure out how to market and they're not going to throw as much money behind it. Jesper (36m 15s): So, and, but I guess that's more like common nowadays as well. 'cause the publishing houses probably also struggling a bit with finances and so on. So they put all the money on the big name authors and then everybody else gets us very small piece of the pie. But it is that right to you think. Yeah. 3 (36m 33s): I mean Jane (36m 35s): With the book publishing and sometimes it's hard to talk about it. Generally 'cause each publisher can operate so differently from another one in the us, for example, there's tour, which is really well known in the science fiction and fantasy space. And you know, if you had an offer from them, even if it were a low advance, it could be really helpful to be published by them just because of the really significant direct to consumer community that they have access to that you wouldn't. So there's a lot of this decision variables here. W I think its true that a low advance means the publisher isn't going to be as focused on getting a return on their investment. Jane (37m 21s): But I think people aren't as M there not as gracious with publishers as they might be of other businesses, like let's say Silicon valley startups have a 90% failure rate, but we don't go around criticizing them. Well maybe in recent years we do. But once upon a time we do, they go around criticizing them so much. We called them innovative and disruptive, even though the failure rate was high book publishing has always had a pretty high failure rate. I think the penguin random house CEO, Marcus Stoli recently said, it's a 50% failure rate. And by failure, meaning this book did not earn back the money that was invested into it, not just the advanced, but the time spent by the staff and the printing costs. Jane (38m 6s): But he doesn't see that as a failure of publishing. You just use it as, this is a very risky business that we engage in every book as a startup in his mind. And I think it's true. And it's like creating a new marketing plan from scratch every single time. Unless, you know, you have imprints that are devoted to a single genre, which is why I mentioned tour because I think those sorts of publishers, do you have an advantage in that they're going after a similar group of readers with a lot of the things that their publishing when you get so big five publishing where it's really random, like it's all sorts of books that are coming out. I think that's when it gets very, very, very difficult. Jesper (38m 50s): Yeah. And I want to return to something you said earlier about the publishing houses there, because if, if we're looking at the big five, w we have a chef HarperCollins, Macmillan, penguin, random house and Simon and Schuster, oh, that's probably the five very big one. But so if we haven't agent and where they probably gone on to these big five and nothing happens early on, you mentioned about maybe looking at the sort of next tier down kind of publishing houses. So in what is like the general view on doing something like that and having your agent ghost to go in to those, how do they age and just do that automatically, just you guys just go to everybody automatically or how, how do you approach that Jane (39m 43s): It's going to vary by agent, but most agents are gonna go to mid size houses and there really let's say prestigious or established smaller processes. So for example, in the U S there's a grey Wolf and Grove Atlantic, which were both independent publisher's on the literary ends of things. There are considered small by big five standards, but they punch way above their weight. You know, the, when the book of prizes and get on the bestseller lists and they tend to invest in there authors over many, many, many years. So even if your first book doesn't do well, even if your first five books don't do well, they're probably going to stand by you because they believe in what you're doing as, as an artist, because they believe in literature with a capital L. Jane (40m 31s): So I think that's the advantage you get. When you start working outside of the big five model, you get people who are in it for lots of different reasons, some are in it just for the commercial money, bit of it. And there has to be some focus on that or else the publisher won't stay in business, but many publishers, the smaller they get, the more mission-oriented they are, are they're in the business to bring attention and Lite to certain types of literature or stories. So it can be very satisfying. You could have a closer relationship with your editor and if they can be more agile, more experimental, more open to collaboration, easier to reach in communicate with than your big five publisher. Jesper (41m 10s): And you also need to have to trust the agent that he doesn't go out and query some sort of a very small press somewhere that actually has no, no mussels to, to, to use or whatever. And the market, right. I mean, I guess the agent needs to, he, he should know that, that kind of thing, right. Jane (41m 29s): They ought to, yes. I have seen some shocking sails from agents to really small presses or what I would even consider hybrid publishers where there might be no advanced or even the author is asked to pay some money. And I think of how you did not need an agent for that deal. And that, that was a total waste of everyone's time. So if you have a docent agent, at some point, there are going to say, look, I I've gone to everyone that I think you should publish with. There might be some other publishers out there that could be smaller, or maybe, you know, the places that offer very small advances. It's not worth my time to go to these places, but if you want to be my guest, so you might reach that point. Jane (42m 13s): Yeah. Jesper (42m 14s): Yeah. And at that point, I guess the new self-published that novel and you ride a new one on, and then you gave that one to B and say, okay, try this one instead of, I guess, Jane (42m 22s): Oh yes. Age agents, a good one should have a conversation with you about, okay. Let's what's next? What are you doing? What's your next book? Do you have anything else in the drawer? Like what do we think the next move is? Jesper (42m 33s): Oh yeah. Yeah, indeed. Okay. So, but let's assume that everything goes well, of course, because we want the success stories here and you then get that offer. And you mentioned it a bit earlier on as well, Jayne about the, the contract itself. And obviously the agent should be able to, to some extent advice you on, on the contract. But I, at the same time, I've heard some really like awful examples of what might be in those contracts. So what I mean, well, I guess what I'm getting at is I'm not a hundred percent convinced that you can just trust that the agent will understand everything and tell you everything you probably need to will read everything also to small letters yourselves. Jesper (43m 16s): And if you don't understand them, maybe even get a lawyer to look at it as something. But what, what, what's your view on that? I mean, usually Jane (43m 23s): You can trust the agent to take care of the contract in its entirety and explain to you what every claws means and what you are getting into. And where are you might be making compromises or thinks that where you're agreeing to something that's less than ideal. Usually some of the most important parts of the contract to negotiate are what would S what would be, what would be an unacceptable manuscripts scenario. So like where there is a difference of opinion between you and the publisher about what, what changes to make what's acceptable, what happens in those instances? So that should be carefully negotiated. As you know, most agents are going to try to ensure that you don't have to give back the advance. Jane (44m 6s): If there's some disagreement that would lead to no publication of the book, you don't want to be in that vulnerable position of having to give back money you've already spent. And there is, there are lots of ramifications of negotiating that well, and most agents are very focused on getting that part, right? The other big issue has to do with reversion of rights. So, and again, often, if things haven't gone well, but the publisher, you want to be able to sever that as cleanly in as quickly as possible. So the reversion of rights clause governs how that happens when it can happen, how long it takes, etcetera. You know, those are the areas that every agent knows about. You wouldn't have to have, I think, be concerned about what their doing on that front I'm. Jane (44m 52s): But of course there are lots of things like, oh, you know, what are the royalty escalators? Like? How does your royalty increase the sales increase? What are the different percentages for all sorts of sales, which are there, what are the rights sub rights situation's there is your agent going to be handling any of those sales and you could hire a lawyer to help, but they would have to know that publishing standards are, umm, 3 (45m 15s): Or you could also Jane (45m 17s): In the U S if you're a member of the authors Guild, they have a contract service where they'll review any contract at no charge. There might be something similar in other countries where if you go to your author society, they have something comparable. Right. So it doesn't, it doesn't hurt to get another set of eyes, but your age, I mean, that's your agent's job, but that's job number of one is Jesper (45m 38s): To go out. Oh, I understand. Yeah. Yeah. And maybe on just to skeptical, but because I'm, I'm also just thinking that the agent has he sort of playing he or she is sort of playing on to horses at the same time here. I know on one hand they, of course the one to have a good relationship with the author. 'cause the author is the client, but at the same time, they also want to close that deal with the publishing house, because that's the only way they're going to and earn some money on all the on hours they spend already. So I'm just a bit skeptical that you can a hundred percent just trust their word all the time. And maybe they sort of smooth out small things. He in there. Yeah. It's not a big deal that you can, you can access this. And because then we can close to deal kind of, I don't know, maybe I'm too skeptical. Jane (46m 23s): I think where those sorts of issues come more into play is when the books are already under contract. And, you know, there were differences of opinion or there is some tension between you and the publisher. I think there are the agent is I find them, there are going to try and smooth it over to as best they can because they don't want to lose the relationship with the editor or with the publisher because they have more books to sell presumably to those people. And they don't want to burn a bridge. So I think agents still do work. I don't use the word attack dog slightly, but you know, some of them are very aggressive on behalf of their clients and they have too much power to be pushed around by a publisher and they can, they could say, look, I'm not going to bring you my next book by whatever new, huge talent there is. Jane (47m 12s): So they have a lot of it depends on the agent, how much leverage they have in that regard, but they can, you know, give editors' the cold shoulder, uhm, with the contract or something that might offer a reassurance is that you usually agents deal with publishers multiple times over the years. And they end up having an negotiated boiler plate for their agency. So you're not starting from scratch each time you get the benefit of every other contract that agent has negotiated with that publisher. Right. And, and then they'd make some changes that are unique for you in your project. Jane (47m 51s): So anything that, you know, that would be of concern to the opp, to you, it's going to be of concern to the other clients. So that's why I'm less worried about the issue. Jesper (48m 4s): No. Okay. No, that's good to you clarify that because if it's probably in just me being to skeptical, but I'm also not in use to that kind of, that part of the publishing world a as you are. So it, so that was good too. You could clarify that, but, but Looker Jane we've already sort have been from the beginning to the end of the process and we could probably keep on from on our wire if we needed to hear, but you shared so much, very good and insightful information. So I was just wondering if, if people want to learn more about you and your advice and , do you want them to go? Jane (48m 45s): My website is the best place. That's Jane friedman.com. You can find out all the of courses I offer the book's, the newsletters it's all mentioned. They're Jesper (48m 55s): Excellent. And the thank you so much for your time, Jane. It was a pleasure talking to you today. Jane (48m 60s): Thank you so much. I really enjoyed it. Jesper (49m 3s): Alright. So next Monday, Autumn will be back in and we haven't quite decided what are we going to talk about yet? But I think it's going to be one out of funny top 10 lists. Narrator (49m 15s): If you like, what you just heard, there's a few things you can do to SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST. Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join Autumn and Jesper on patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy for as little as a dollar a month, you'll get awesome rewards and keep The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast, going. Stay safe out there and see you next Monday.  

On today's episode of The Literary Life, Mitchell Kaplan talks to Ross King about his new book, The Bookseller of Florence, out now from Grove Atlantic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After a brief hiatus, Vanessa and Alyssa are back to discuss what they've been up to, where they are, and some plans for the future. About us: https://linktr.ee/dearlitpod Notes: The Magnus Archives Paperbackdreams (Kat) The Diviners (audiobook) The Umbrella Academy car meme “Roxane Gay Starts Publishing Imprint with Grove Atlantic” by Elizabeth A. Harris (The New York Times) Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots (William Morrow / HarperCollins) CN: Medical trauma, body horror, fantasy violence Dexter The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng (Penguin Press) CN: Drug & alcohol use (Cigarettes) , child abuse (brief), infidelity, death Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng Raybearer by Jordan Ifueko (Amulet Books / ABRAMS) CN: Violence, sexual situation (brief) A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers Neon Yang Kazumi Chin Captain America "I can do this all day" scene "What is the Path to Equity in Publishing?" by Vanessa Genao “The Obsession with ‘Getting Ahead' in Your Twenties Is Failing Young People” Rainesford Stauffer (Catapult) “Mourning the Loss of Indigenous Queer Identities” by Astrud Bowman (Autostraddle)

This month Stuart and Guy are joined from sunny California by author, presenter and journalist Andrew Smith. We look at how music has continually inspired Andrew's work, through his time as a music journalist, writing his bestselling Moondust: in Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth, then through to his recent Totally Wired: The Rise and Fall of Josh Harris and the Great Dotcom Swindle. Armed with a list of ten songs that have served to soundtrack his life, we discuss Andrew's career (with some surprising diversions along the way including living down the street from Bob Dylan when he was a toddler, auditioning for the Clash and interviewing Madonna!). Listen to Andrew's specially compiled Spotify playlist here. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0sQq6t0JA7Mm4wot8oZNY8?si=d56abef6592845a0 Find out more about Andrew's work at andrewsmithauthor.com Biog:Andrew Smith was born in Greenwich Village, New York, to English parents. A spell living in San Francisco was followed by relocation to the Hastings in the UK, where school classmates at his comprehensive school included the artist Dinos Chapman and future Spice Girls/Pop Idol svengali Simon Fuller – who managed Smith's sixth form band, but could do nothing to help them. After studying philosophy and politics at the University of York, he moved to London, where he worked as a van driver, in music stores and as a musician (at one point auditioning for The Clash), before finally submitting to his first love, which was writing. Starting at the music paper Melody Maker, he moved rapidly to The Face, Guardian, Sunday Times and Observer as a longform feature writer, but in 2002 left journalism to write his UK #1 and international bestseller Moondust: in Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth, which was nominated for two British Book Awards (including Read of the Year) and chosen by the Times as one of its “100 Best Books of the Decade”. His most recent work, Totally Wired: The Rise and Fall of Josh Harris and the Great Dotcom Swindle, about the mysterious crash of Web 1.0, was Published by Grove Atlantic in 2019 and is currently being developed into a TV series by the actor/director Ben Stiller. His third book, Adventures in Coderland, about the micro-cosmos of computer code and this attempt to get inside it, will appear in 2022. Smith appears often on radio and TV and is the writer and presenter of films including the 60-minute BBC documentaries Being Neil Armstrong and To Kill A Mockingbird at 50. He currently divides his time between the San Francisco Bay Area and London, England. 

This week, Donna Leon discusses her latest installment of the Guido Brunetti mystery novels, “Transient Desires.” The series explores myriad social issues facing the city of Venice, Italy. Photo courtesy of Grove Atlantic.

Dantiel W. Moniz's debut collection, Milk Blood Heat, is out now from Grove Atlantic. She and Courtney discuss not protecting your characters, the inextricableness of place and identity, and deciding to take your writing seriously.  In the bonus segment, Dantiel talks about endings and death, and what makes for a good short story ending. Bonus segments are available to Patreon subscribers at patreon.com/wmfapodcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of "Keen On", Andrew is joined by William J. Bernstein, the author of "The Delusions of Crowds", to discuss Bitcoin and the Gamestop/Robinhood saga, as well to touch upon subjects like ISIS and even conspiracy groups like QAnon. William J. Bernstein is a neurologist, co-founder of Efficient Frontier Advisors, an investment management firm, and has written several titles on finance and economic history. He has contributed to the peer-reviewed finance literature and has written for several national publications, including Money Magazine and The Wall Street Journal. He has produced several finance titles, and also three volumes of history, The Birth of Plenty, A Splendid Exchange, and Masters of the Word, about, respectively, the economic growth inflection of the early 19th century, the history of world trade, and the effects of access to technology on human relations and politics. He was also the 2017 winner of the James R. Vertin Award from CFA Institute. Bernstein is a proponent of the equity or index allocation school of thought, believing that all equity selection strategies should be focused on allocating between asset classes, rather than selecting individual stocks and bonds, or from the timing of their sales. Bernstein's first book, The Intelligent Asset Allocator, makes this case in detail; his second book, The Four Pillars of Investing: Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio, is aimed for those less comfortable with statistical thought. It also puts asset-class returns into long-term historical perspective. Bernstein is an advocate for modern portfolio theory, which stands in stark contrast to the view that skilled managers can succeed in picking particular investments that will outperform the market, whether through market timing, momentum investing, or finding assets whose future value have been underestimated by the market. He argues that the financial research literature shows that most return is determined by the asset allocation of the portfolio rather than by asset selection. In 1996, Bernstein introduced Coward's Portfolio, a popular form of lazy portfolio. He explained "a rational coward might split their equity exposure equally between S&P, EAFE, US small, and foreign small stocks." A contemporary implementation of the Portfolio includes 40% short-term bonds, and 15% international equity evenly divided into Europe, Pacific, and emerging markets funds. Bernstein's third book, The Birth of Plenty, is a history of the world's standard of living; it proposes four conditions that have historically been necessary for it to rise. His fourth book, A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World, published in 2008 by Grove Atlantic, is a history of trade. In 2009 his fifth book was published "The Investor's Manifesto: Preparing for Prosperity, Armageddon, and Everything in Between" which continues the theme of asset allocation in a more accessible way. In 2014 his sixth book, "Rational Expectations: Asset Allocation for Investing Adults" was published. It updated his earlier books on investing to cover the position after the Great Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008-09, and the most recent research on investing, including that by Elroy Dimson, Paul Marsh, and Mike Staunton, authors of "Triumph of the Optimists". Bernstein holds a PhD in chemistry and an MD; he practiced neurology until retiring from the field. He lives in Portland, Oregon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On episode 149 of The Quarantine Tapes, guest host Walter Mosley is joined by Morgan Entrekin. Morgan is the publisher of Grove Atlantic. He tells Walter about his experience being in New York and weathering COVID early in the pandemic.Walter and Morgan discuss how the publishing industry has been affected by the pandemic. They talk virtual events, the changing role of books, and technology’s role in publishing. Morgan expresses both his hopes and fears for publishing, ending the episode with a note of optimism for the future. Morgan Entrekin grew up in Nashville, Tennessee. After graduating from Stanford and the Radcliffe Publishing Course, he joined Delacorte Press in 1977, where he worked with such authors as Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan. In 1984 he started his own imprint at Atlantic Monthly Press, publishing books by P.J. O’Rourke, Ron Chernow, and Francisco Goldman, among others. In 1993, Morgan merged Atlantic Monthly Press with Grove Press, the publisher of authors including Samuel Beckett, William Burroughs, Harold Pinter, and Tom Stoppard. Morgan is currently the CEO and Publisher of Grove Atlantic, Inc, which publishes 120 books a year ranging from general nonfiction, current affairs, history, biography, and narrative journalism to fiction, drama, and poetry. Authors include Mark Bowden, Aminatta Forna, Jim Harrison, Donna Leon, Yan Lianke, Helen Macdonald, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Kenzaburo Oe, Sarah Broom, Bernadine Evaristo, and Douglas Stuart. In 2015, Morgan launched the Literary Hub, a website that features original content from over 200 partners including publishers large and small, literary journals, not-for-profits, and booksellers. Lit Hub now has over 3 million visitors a month.Walter Mosley is one of the most versatile and admired writers in America. He is the author of more than 60 critically-acclaimed books including the just released Elements of Fiction, a nonfiction book about the art of writing fiction; the novel John Woman,Down the River and Unto the Sea (which won an Edgar Award for “Best Novel”) and the bestselling mystery series featuring “Easy Rawlins.” His work has been translated into 25 languages and includes literary fiction, science fiction, political monographs, and a young adult novel. His short fiction has been widely published, and his nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times and The Nation, among other publications. He is also a writer and an executive producer on the John Singleton FX show, “Snowfall.”In 2013 he was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame, and he is the winner of numerous awards, including an O. Henry Award, The Mystery Writers of America’s Grand Master Award, a Grammy®, and PEN America’s Lifetime Achievement Award.Mosley lives in New York City and Los Angeles.

Join us as we discuss Iceland's Christmas Eve tradition of exchanging books.   This holiday tradition is called Jolabokaflod.We also review the book, Miss Iceland, by Icelandic author Audur Ava OlafsdottirTo purchase this book, click the link below to be routed to our bookshop page.Click here!https://bookshop.org/shop/youvegottoreadthis(Disclosure: we an affiliate of Bookshop LLC and will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.)To reach us via e-mail - YouveGotToReadThis@outlook.com(NO APOSTROPHE in the e-mail address)

Otto Penzler is regarded as the world's foremost authority on crime, mystery and suspense fiction. He founded The Mysterious Press in 1975, which he later sold to Warner Books (1989). He reacquired the imprint in 2010 and it now publishes original books as an imprint at Grove/Atlantic, and both original works and classic crime fiction through MysteriousPress.com (www.mysteriouspress.com), in partnership with Open Road Integrated Media. Penzler is a prolific editor, and has won two Edgar Awards, for Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection in 1977 and The Lineup in 2010. The Mystery Writers of America awarded him the prestigious Ellery Queen Award in 1994 and the Raven--the group's highest non-writing award--in 2003. Listen in as Mike and Otto chat about his life and career including his experiences as a young boy emigrating to the US from Germany during the middle of World War II, how he traded in his desire to become a physicist for either the dreams of being a great American novelist or the center fielder for the New York Yankees, and how some harsh criticism towards his first novel pushed his aspirations in another direction. Along the way we speak of forbidden love, the importance of betting on oneself, and how a two-thousand-dollar investment in a midtown Manhattan building paid off. His latest anthology, The Big Book of Espionage is available now wherever books are sold and is the perfect holiday gift of anyone in your life who’s into dead drops, double agents, and duplicitous deeds. This episode of Uncorking a Story is brought to you by Mike Carlon’s novel Uncorking a Murder. You can purchase Uncorking a Murder wherever books are sold. Enjoy the show.

John Freeman is an American writer and a literary critic. He was the editor of Granta from 2009 to 2013, and is a former president of the National Book Critics Circle. His writing has appeared in more than 200 English-language publications around the world and he currently edits a series of anthologies of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry entitled Freeman's, published in partnership with Grove/Atlantic and The New School. Reason enough, I figured, to want to talk to him about the role of the editor.    His second book, a collection of his interviews with major contemporary writers titled How to Read a Novelist, was published in the U.S. in 2013 by FSG and features profiles of Margaret Atwood, John Updike, Geoff Dyer, Toni Morrison, Haruki Murakami, and others. It's the reason I wanted to talk to him about interviewing authors (plus the fact that I've watched him skillfully question authors on stage - well on Youtube - many times).   During his time with the National Book Critics Circle, John launched a campaign to raise awareness of the cutbacks in book coverage by the U.S. national print media and to save book review sections. We talk about how this effort resulted in the establishment of Literary Hub. 

Douglas Stuart joins host James Clarke to discuss his debut novel, Shuggie Bain, which was recently longlisted for the Booker Prize 2020. Douglas Stuart is a Scottish - American author. His debut novel, Shuggie Bain, is published by Grove Atlantic in the US and Picador in the UK. It is to be translated into eleven languages.He wrote Shuggie Bain over a ten year period and is currently at work on his second novel, Loch Awe.His short story, Found Wanting, was published in The New Yorker magazine. His essay, Poverty, Anxiety, and Gender in Scottish Working-Class Literature was published by Lit Hub.Born in Glasgow, Scotland, he has an MA from the Royal College of Art in London and since 2000 he has lived and worked in New York City.Read James’ review of Shuggie Bain in full at whatjamesread.comFind a local Black-owned bookstore to support here.Follow Douglas Stuart: Instagram | TwitterFollow This Book Could Change Your Life: Instagram | Twitter

On episode 081 of The Quarantine Tapes, Paul Holdengräber is joined by Rabih Alameddine. Alameddine and Holdengräber explore how poetry has impacted their lives, and share their mutual adoration for the work of Fernando Pessoa. When Holdengräber asks what is his favorite poem, Alameddine reads Happiness Writes White, by Edward Hirsch. Openly contemplating mental health, Alameddine and Holdengräber discuss observations on the human desires to be seen, as well as to be separate.Rabih Alameddine is the author of I, the Divine (W.W. Norton), The Hakawati (A.A. Knopf), Koolaids, The Perv, An Unnecessary Woman, and The Angel of History (all Grove Atlantic). An Unnecessary Woman was a finalist for the National Book Award 2014 and the winner of the prestigious Prix Femina étranger, and The Angel of History won the Lambda Literary Award. Alameddine is the winner of the 2019 Dos Passos Prize. His next novel, The Wrong End of the Telescope, will be published by Grove in spring/summer 2021. Read the poem “Happiness Writes White” by Edward HirschPhotography credit: Benito Ordonez

We talk about how two agents can have completely different comps for the same book (and both can be correct), how high concept works have their own stealth press packet (you've probably unwittingly taken part in their marketing), and tips for writers pitching in the pandemic (hint: it's not as bad as you think). We also talk about starting in action (versus peak action), how YA needs two layers (your unique concept + typical teen emotional life), and how we can create a strong character from tiny details on your very first page. Plus, the errors you can come back from when querying—and the ones you likely can't. And no--you do not have to be perfect to get an agent. As a graduate of Vanderbilt University and The Columbia Publishing Course, Kristy Hunter began her publishing career in New York City—first as an editorial intern at Bloomsbury Children's Books and then as a book publicist at Grove/Atlantic and Random House Children's Books. When she moved to the agenting side of the industry, she was closely mentored by Deidre Knight, president and founder of The Knight Agency, and her first co-agented project sold at auction soon after. As an associate agent, Kristy enjoys being able to bring a unique perspective to her clients thanks to her diverse publishing background. When she's not curled up with a fantastic book or manuscript, she can be found kickboxing or hiking with her dog and is an active member of SCBWI. You can find Kristy at https://knightagency.net/about-us/.

A young woman falls asleep in the 21st century and slowly finds herself slipping into 16th-century England, where she falls in love with an obscure young poet named Will. Sandra Newman’s new novel The Heavens crosses genres. You could call it historical fiction, with its meticulously accurate 16th-century details. You could call it science fiction for its use of time travel and parallel worlds. It’s also a really good, sexy romance novel about Emilia Bassano, the woman who some believe was the inspiration for half of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Sandra Newman joined us recently to talk about what inspired this novel and what it tells us about love, mental illness, and the past, present, and future. Newman is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. Sandra Newman is the author of four novels, including The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done, Cake, and The Country of Ice Cream Star. Her latest, The Heavens, was published by Grove Press, an imprint of Grove Atlantic, in 2019. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published May 26, 2020. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “If I Should Despair, I Should Grow Mad” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. Special thanks to Derek Rusinek and James Walsh at Threshold Recording Studios NYC in Manhattan and Andrew Feliciano at Voice Trax West in Studio City, California for their technical help.

Martin captains and the gang talks about gonzo journalist, satirist and general ne'er do well P. J. O'Rourke. Martin reveals the number 1 item on his bucket list is to have a drink with PJ. That's how big a deal this heroes episode is. P. J.'s books are too numerous to list here, but head to his website, www.pjorourke.com. His publisher, Grove Atlantic, has a full bio and a list of his stuff. If you take the plunge and buy a PJ, be sure it is one that includes his seminal article "How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed And Not Spill Your Drink".

Kristy Hunter and I discuss her career thus far from her education at the Columbia Publishing Course to her time as an editorial intern as well as a publicist to being mentored by Deidre Knight and becoming a successful literary agent with The Knight Agency. We talk about how she evaluates queries and submissions and her approach to working with her clients. She offers excellent advice on author voice, creating atmospheric settings, strengthening characterization, and so much more. And we can’t help chatting a little about quarantine for COVID-19 and its potential impact on publishing. As a graduate of Vanderbilt University and The Columbia Publishing Course, Kristy Hunter began her publishing career in New York City—first as an editorial intern at Bloomsbury Children’s Books and then as a book publicist at Grove/Atlantic and Random House Children’s Books. When she moved to the agenting side of the industry, she was closely mentored by Deidre Knight, president and founder of The Knight Agency, and her first co-agented project sold at auction soon after. As an associate agent, Kristy enjoys being able to bring a unique perspective to her clients thanks to her diverse publishing background. When she’s not curled up with a fantastic book or manuscript, she can be found kickboxing or hiking with her dog and is an active member of SCBWI.

What you’ll learn in this episode: What Boivin starfish brooches are, and why they are so sought after. The history of the House of Boivin and the socialites who wore its jewelry. Why the world of haute couture jewelry is notoriously secretive. Why rare, fine jewelry often goes out of sight for decades at a time.  About Cherie Burns: Cherie Burns is the author of “Diving for Starfish—The Jeweler, The Actress, The Heiress and One of the World’s Most Alluring Pieces of Jewelry” (St. Martin’s Press, 2018), which details her search for three ruby and amethyst starfish brooches created in Paris in the 1930s. Her earlier published books include the biography “Searching for Beauty—The Life of Millicent Rogers” (St. Martin’s Press, 2012), “The Great Hurricane: 1938 (Grove/Atlantic, 2005) and “Stepmotherhood—How to Survive Without Feeling Frustrated, Left Out or Wicked” (Times Books). Cherie has been a feature journalist since 1975 and her work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, People, Glamour, New York, Sports Illustrated, Constitution and other publications. Additional resources: Website Facebook Instagram Twitter Transcript

This is the nineteenth episode of "Talking with Authors" by HEC Media and HEC Books. We're a program dedicated to speaking with some of the best selling authors around, covering many different genres.Our author is award winning investigative journalist Ben Westhoff. We spoke with him as he was on tour in September of 2019 with his then brand new book “Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic” by publisher Grove Atlantic.But after following that thread of information, he found himself tracking down the source of the additives to China, tracing the spread of the synthetic drug throughout the world, and testifying in the halls of the Congress about the manufacture, use, abuse, and effect of fentanyl in the United States. We’ll learn about investigative journalist Ben Westhoff’s deep journey through the illicit drug world and hear some stories about the lives of the businesses and people effected by it on this edition Talking With Authors from HEC Media and HEC Books.Our host and interviewer this time is Brenda Madden.HEC Media is a production company out of St. Louis, Missouri. With the help of independent bookstore Left Bank Books and St. Louis County Library, we are able to sit down with these amazing writers and thought leaders to discuss their work, their inspiration, and what makes them special. You can watch video versions of most of our interviews at hecmedia.org.Host and producer of this episode - Brenda MaddenPhotography - Peter Foggy and Ken CalcaterraAudio - Ben SmithEditor and Graphics - Kerry MarksSupervising Producer - Julie WinkleProduction Support - Christina Chastain and Jane BallewHEC Media Executive Director - Dennis RiggsTalking with Authors Podcast Executive Producer - Christina ChastainPodcast Producer - Rod MilamPodcast Host - Rod MilamYou can follow us on all social media platforms. Just search for "Talking with Authors":Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/talkingwithauthorsInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/talkingwithauthorsTwitter: https://twitter.com/TalkingwAuthors

Today we’re taking a journey into the minds of one of the most prolific American playwrights of contemporary theater. If you’ve ever read any of his plays, had the privilege to work on any of his scripts, or sit in the audience of one of his shows, then you know the power of Neil Labute and his extraordinary body of work.  His imaginative use of language, his complicated and deeply human characters, and his provocative and sometimes shocking themes are widely celebrated, sometimes criticized, but always ignite a visceral reaction from audiences world-wide. His endless body of work includes plays like Reasons to be Pretty, Fat Pig, Some Girl(s), and The Shape of Things.  Neil N. LaBute is an American playwright, film director, and screenwriter. He is best-known for a play that he wrote and later adapted for film, In the Company of Men, which won awards from the Sundance Film Festival, the Independent Spirit Awards, and the New York Film Critics Circle. He has made himself a force to be reckoned with and a name to watch. With his true-to-life cynical and self-absorbed characters and all-too-true social themes, he has firmly established himself as an unforgiving judge of the ugliest side of human nature. He received his Master of Fine Arts degree in dramatic writing from New York University and was the recipient of a literary fellowship to study at the Royal Court Theatre, London. He also attended the Sundance Institute’s Playwrights Lab and is the Playwright-in-Residence with MCC Theatre in New York City. LaBute’s plays include: BASH: LATTER-DAY PLAYS, THE SHAPE OF THINGS, THE MERCY SEAT, THE DISTANCE FROM HERE, AUTOBAHN, FAT PIG (Olivier Award nominated for Best Comedy), SOME GIRL(S), THIS IS HOW IT GOES, WRECKS, FILTHY TALK FOR TROUBLED TIMES, IN A DARK DARK HOUSE, REASONS TO BE PRETTY (Tony Award nominated for Best Play) and THE BREAK OF NOON. In 2011 his play IN A FOREST, DARK AND DEEP premiered in London’s West End. LaBute is also the author of Seconds of Pleasure, a collection of short fiction which was published by Grove Atlantic. His films include In the Company of Men (New York Critics’ Circle Award for Best First Feature and the Filmmaker Trophy at the Sundance Film Festival), Your Friends and Neighbors, Nurse Betty, Possession, The Shape of Things, a film adaptation of his play of the same title, The Wicker Man, Lakeview Terrace and Death at a Funeral. Currently, Neil Labute's show The I-land is streaming on Netflix.   LINKS: IMDB: Neil's Profile BROADWAY PLAY PUBLISHING: Neil's Author Page NETFLIX: The I-Land #FABFITFUNPARTNER: Interested in becoming a FabFitFun member? Be sure to use the code 'TOA' at checkout on FabFitFun.com and get $10 off your first box! #fabfitfunpartner

Welcome to the Idries Shah Foundation podcast, practical psychology for today. This weekly podcast features selections from Idries Shah books, as well as original recordings. It has been made available by The Idries Shah Foundation, and is voiced by David Ault. This episode, from our Cultural Crossroads series, features an interview with Richard Lloyd Parry. Cultural Crossroads During his lifetime Idries Shah promoted contacts and connections between different traditions around the world, believing this to be an important element in the advancement of human culture. In this spirit, The Idries Shah Foundation has created ‘Cultural Crossroads’, a website forum where people from many walks of life are invited to talk about their own experiences crossing cultural boundaries, and the lessons that they have learned as a result. You can find these articles on the ISF blog. This is our fifth Cultural Crossroads interview for this podcast. About John Zada John Zada is a writer, photographer and author. His work has appeared in various magazines, newspapers and online publications including the Globe & Mail, Toronto Star, The Guardian, The Telegraph, Travel + Leisure, BBC, CBC, Al-Jazeera, New York Post, Explore, Maisonneuve, Montecristo, Los Angeles Review of Books, Toque & Canoe and Canadian Business. He has also worked as a news writer and producer at CBC News Network and Al-Jazeera English. John has recently completed his first book about Sasquatch lore in Canada’s Great Bear Rainforest. In the Valleys of the Noble Beyond: In Search of the Sasquatch is being published by Grove Atlantic in the U.S. and Greystone Books in Canada in July 2019. The book is available for pre-order from Amazon.com.

La domination coloniale a aussi été une domination linguistique. Seule langue enseignée dans les écoles, admise dans les tribunaux ou utilisée dans l’administration des territoires colonisés, le français a été le vecteur d’une déculturation encore visible.En quoi la langue française est-elle « à la fois un lieu d’oppression et un outil d’émancipation » ? Existe-t-il des différences de traitement entre les auteur·ice·s des anciennes colonies et celles et ceux des autres pays francophones comme la Belgique ? Pourquoi l’appellation littérature « francophone » pose question ? Comment s’émanciper de l’impérialisme culturel français ?Grace Ly et Rokhaya Diallo reçoivent Kaoutar Harchi, écrivaine et sociologue des arts et de la culture, autrice notamment de « Je n’ai qu’une langue et ce n’est pas la mienne » (éd. Fayard, 2016) où elle analyse la place de cinq écrivain·ne·s algérien·ne·s dans la littérature française.RÉFÉRENCES CITÉES DANS L’ÉMISSION Kateb Yacine, Assia Djebar, Rachid Boudjedra, Kamel Daoud, Boualem Sansal, Boubacar Boris Diop, éditions Zulma, Mariama Bâ, Aimé Césaire, J.M.G. Le Clézio, La geisha, la panthère et la gazelle (Kiffe ta race, Binge Audio, 2018), Décoloniser les arts de la scène (Kiffe ta race, Binge Audio, 2018), Amélie Nothomb, Georges Simenon, Kaoutar Harchi : « La langue française est à la fois un lieu d’oppression et un outil d’émancipation » écrit par Mehdi Fikri publié sur humanite.fr le 27 septembre 2017, Assia Djebar, Charles Ferdinand Ramuz, Le Sympathisant (Viet Thanh Nguyen, éd. Grove Atlantic, 2015), Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Salman Rushdie, Claire Ducournau, Fatou Diome, Maryse CondéCRÉDITS Kiffe ta race est un podcast de Rokhaya Diallo et Grace Ly produit par Binge Audio. Réalisation : Quentin Bresson. Générique : Shkyd. Chargée de production : Juliette Livartowski. Chargée d’édition : Diane Jean. Identité graphique : Manon Louvard (Upian). Direction des programmes : Joël Ronez. Direction de la rédaction : David Carzon. Direction générale : Gabrielle Boeri-Charles. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our gust is Madhuri Vijay, author of The Far Field published by Grove Atlantic on January 15th. The Far Field is a book of travel, almost in a picaresque manner, the journey of a woman who is an admixture of the good and bad qualities, we all posses but one with who we can emphasize and whose mistakes are mistakes we have all made, sometimes with unfortunate or even tragic consequences. Shalini, our protagonist is privileged and restless, much like the Buddha, who sets out on a journey from her home in cosmopolitan Bangalore to the mountains of Kashmir, a dangerous Kashmir. She is searching for Bashir Ahmed, a man from her past, who perhaps she loves and perhaps is just a connection between her and her mother, whose tragedy may be the catalyst for this journey. Throughout the book, Shalini makes lots of choices, some of them with pleasant and kind intention. In fact she always seems to mean well. But some of those choices lead to violent and tragic conclusions. Some of the people she meets are enemies and some are friends. It may very well be her naiveté which causes her to make the decisions that she does, but it may be something we as the reader have to figure out ourselves, and as I have said many times before, these are the best of books.

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our gust is Madhuri Vijay, author of The Far Field published by Grove Atlantic on January 15th. The Far Field is a book of travel, almost in a picaresque manner, the journey of a woman who is an admixture of the good and bad qualities, we all posses but one with who we can emphasize and whose mistakes are mistakes we have all made, sometimes with unfortunate or even tragic consequences. Shalini, our protagonist is privileged and restless, much like the Buddha, who sets out on a journey from her home in cosmopolitan Bangalore to the mountains of Kashmir, a dangerous Kashmir. She is searching for Bashir Ahmed, a man from her past, who perhaps she loves and perhaps is just a connection between her and her mother, whose tragedy may be the catalyst for this journey. Throughout the book, Shalini makes lots of choices, some of them with pleasant and kind intention. In fact she always seems to mean well. But some of those choices lead to violent and tragic conclusions. Some of the people she meets are enemies and some are friends. It may very well be her naiveté which causes her to make the decisions that she does, but it may be something we as the reader have to figure out ourselves, and as I have said many times before, these are the best of books.

Are you as fed up as I am with all the negative news pertaining to Immigrants? Well let me tell you people, Anastasia Goroshkova’s backstory is just as riveting as her current success story! Amongst many momentous updates and achievements in Anastasia’s ever-inspiring journey is now news of collaboration with international publishers as well as the interest of a member of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association in the concept of Anastasia’s second book! The laundry list of yumminess in this woman’s incredible journey is simply remarkable this week on C-Suite Radio/The C-Suite Network! Anastasia’s story is relatable to millions of people and immigrants in Canada and worldwide. Anastasia Goroshkova was born in 1990 in Yekaterinburg, Russia, one year before the USSR collapsed. She has many historical ties to Russia. Her ancestors were from St. Petersburg; their story reminiscent of Boris Pasternak’s novel “Doctor Zhivago”. Her Godmother is a Romanov, currently 92, and exhibiting art in many of Russia’s museums – most recently at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.  Anastasia’s passion for writing was inspired by a huge home library, containing the best of Russian and world literature. She remembers visiting orphanages when she was small, tagging along with her mother who interpreted to American adoptive parents. At that time orphanages in Russia hosted 3 million children. But few got lucky. Anastasia’s childhood impressions contributed to her desire to give back through humanitarian initiatives and to become a writer. Now, Anastasia is a staff reporter for Corriere Canadese, the only daily Italian-English newspaper in Canada (founded 1954) whose publisher, Joe Volpe, is a former minister of immigration in Canada. Corriere Canadese has applied for a National News Licence. Anastasia has been invited to become a screenwriter and host (covering culture) for the potential TV channel launching in 2019 or the online media channel should Corriere Canadese fail to secure the licence at the end of November. Anastasia is a reporter for Noviy Svet (New World) a top literary journal of the Russian community which features Russian writers living in Russia and abroad. Alena Joukova – the cofounder and editor of Noviy Svet, is a well-known contemporary Russian author, involved in many literary initiatives of the Russian community in Canada. Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Austrian State Prize for European Literature Winner, debuted in Noviy Svet as a poet. Last month, Anastasia attended the Frankfurt Book Fair, on behalf of Corriere Canadese and Noviy Svet, conducting over 30 interviews with representatives of Italian, Russian, and American publishing and media. She will be attending the Frankfurt Book Fair again in 2020, when Canada is guest of honor. The interviews will be featured in the upcoming issues of Corriere Canadese, on the Corriere Canadese website, and in the Noviy Svet literary journal. Anastasia is starting collaboration with Annemarie O’Brien, an instructor at Stanford University and a Knopf, Random House author (“Lara’s Gift” – a novel about pre-revolutionary Russia).  Their book will be a POV of the American and Russian perspective of 1990s-2000s Russia. Anastasia has written 2 novels – a literary fiction and a historical fiction which are currently requested for review by several publishing houses, including HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, and Grove/Atlantic, NYC. The concept of her second novel has caught the interest of a member of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. In addition to writing, Anastasia merges creativity with business at a global level as Chief Communications Officer of Semper8 Capital – an advisory and investment firm founded by her brother, an HBS alumnus. Another successful chapter in her story of turbulent immigration… #Grateful #Radio #Podcasts #CSuiteRadio #CSuiteNetwork #iHeartRadio #Spotify #CTRN #HaltonHonda #Forever #AHAthat #LivingFearlessly Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In “Playing Through the Whistle,” celebrated sportswriter S. L. Price tells the story of a remarkable place, its people, its players, and, through it, a wider story of American history from the turn of the twentieth century. Aliquippa has been many things—a rigidly controlled company town, a booming racial and ethnic melting pot, a battleground for union rights, and, for a brief time, a sort of workers’ paradise. Price expertly traces this history, following the growth and decline of industry and the struggles and triumphs of Eastern European immigrants and blacks from the South willing to trade their grueling labor for a better life for their families. S. L. Price, a senior writer at Sports Illustrated since 1994, is the author of three previous books: Heart of the Game; Pitching Around Fidel, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and Far Afield. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his family. Description courtesy of Grove Atlantic.

After some negative pre-publication reviews, Jamie Quatro feared the worst. Then, critic James Wood and the NYTBR (among others) hailed her collection, I WANT TO SHOW YOU MORE, as a classic. Jamie and James talk about conflating writer and subject matter, depicting the female gaze and female sexuality, and writing novels vs short stories. Then, the agent Anna Stein joins the show to go over what an agent does, how to find one, and mistakes writers make along the way.      Jamie and James Discuss:  David Gates  Amy Hempel  Bennington College Low Residency MFA  Princeton University Pepperdine University  Sheila Kohler  E.M. Forster  Franz Kafka  Flannery O'Connor  Margot Livesey  Andre Dubus (II)  PROXIES: ESSAYS NEAR KNOWING by Brian Blanchfield  Sewanee Writers' Conference  RUNNER'S WORLD  INFINITE JEST by David Foster Wallace  QUACK THIS WAY by David Foster Wallace  BRIEF INTERVIEWS WITH HIDEOUS MEN by David Foster Wallace  BLUETS by Maggie Nelson Tin House Summer Writer's Workshop  THE FUN STUFF: AND OTHER ESSAYS by James Wood  Claire Messud  Wyatt Prunty  Ann Patchett  Urban Waite  Lincoln Michel  George Saunders  Lydia Davis Alice Munro  INTERPRETER OF MALADIES by Jhumpa Lahiri OLIVE KITTERIDGE by Elizabeth Strout  P.J. Mark  Barry Hannah Steven Milhauser  A VERY OLD MAN WITH ENORMOUS WINGS by Gabriel Garcia Marquez  LADIES AND GENTLEMEN by Adam Ross  Yaddo  Sylvia Plath  Ted Hughes Zadie Smith  The Old Testament  THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner  Grove Atlantic    Anna and James Discuss:  Hanya Yanagihara  Ben Lerner  Garth Greenwell  Maria Semple  NEVERHOME by Laird Hunt  THE MOTHER-IN-LAW CURE by Katherine Wilson  THE EVENING ROAD by Laird Hunt  THE STORY OF A BRIEF MARRIAGE by Anuk Aradpragasam  THE CLANCYS OF QUEENS by Tara Clancy  TODAY WILL BE DIFFERENT by Maria Semple  THE PARIS REVIEW  Sewanee Writers' Conference  A LITTLE LIFE by Hanya Hanagihara  WHAT BELONGS TO YOU by Garth Greenwell    http://tkpod.com  /  tkwithjs@gmail.com  /  Twitter: @JamesScottTK https://www.facebook.com/tkwithjs/  /  Instagram: tkwithjs     

Katy Keiffer is joined by the legendary activist and writer Frances Moore Lappé on an inspiring episode of What Doesn’t Kill You. ** ** Frances More Lappé is the author or co-author of 18 books including the three-million copy Diet for a Small Planet. Frances was named by Gourmet Magazine as one of 25 people (including Thomas Jefferson, Upton Sinclair, and Julia Child), whose work has changed the way America eats. Her most recent work is World Hunger:10 Myths which she and co-author Joseph Collins co-wrote (October 2015, Grove/Atlantic). She is the cofounder of three organizations, including Oakland based think tank Food First and, more recently, the Small Planet Institute which she leads with her daughter Anna Lappé. Frances and her daughter have also cofounded the Small Planet Fund, which channels resources to democratic social movements worldwide. – See more at: http://smallplanet.org/about/frances/bio#sthash.VKZsX8pC.dpuf “Our whole book is about rethinking power down to its latin root meaning – which is ‘our capacity to act’.” [07:00] “If we don’t set the rules that are fair and democratic, then its set by highest return on existing wealth.” [16:00] “We have to stop complaining and join together in a movement like the movement that I was fortunate enough to experience in the 1960’s and 70’s. That movement is rising now and it’s a bipartisan movement.” [19:00] –Frances Moore Lappe on What Doesn’t Kill You  

Katy Keiffer is joined by the legendary activist and writer Frances Moore Lappé on an inspiring episode of What Doesn’t Kill You. ** ** Frances More Lappé is the author or co-author of 18 books including the three-million copy Diet for a Small Planet. Frances was named by Gourmet Magazine as one of 25 people (including Thomas Jefferson, Upton Sinclair, and Julia Child), whose work has changed the way America eats. Her most recent work is World Hunger:10 Myths which she and co-author Joseph Collins co-wrote (October 2015, Grove/Atlantic). She is the cofounder of three organizations, including Oakland based think tank Food First and, more recently, the Small Planet Institute which she leads with her daughter Anna Lappé. Frances and her daughter have also cofounded the Small Planet Fund, which channels resources to democratic social movements worldwide. – See more at: http://smallplanet.org/about/frances/bio#sthash.VKZsX8pC.dpuf “Our whole book is about rethinking power down to its latin root meaning – which is ‘our capacity to act’.” [07:00] “If we don’t set the rules that are fair and democratic, then its set by highest return on existing wealth.” [16:00] “We have to stop complaining and join together in a movement like the movement that I was fortunate enough to experience in the 1960’s and 70’s. That movement is rising now and it’s a bipartisan movement.” [19:00] –Frances Moore Lappe on What Doesn’t Kill You  

Aug. 30, 2014. Elizabeth Mitchell appears at the 2014 Library of Congress National Book Festival in Washington, D.C. Speaker Biography: The Statue of Liberty is one of the world's most recognizable symbols of freedom and the American dream. But, according to author Elizabeth Mitchell, the story of the creation of the statue has been obscured by myth. In reality, it was the inspiration of one quixotic French sculptor hungry for fame and adoration. In "Liberty's Torch: The Great Adventure to Build the Statue of Liberty" (Grove Atlantic), Mitchell tells the story of an artist, entrepreneur and inventor who fought against all odds to create this wonder of the modern world. For transcript, captions, and more information, visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6426

Patrick Hoffman is the guest. His debut novel The White Van is now available from Grove/Atlantic.  Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, says "A heist propels Hoffman’s outstanding first novel. Sophia, a Russian émigré, plans to rob a San Francisco branch of US Bank with some inside assistance from its manager, Rada Harkov, and the help of two people recruited (decidedly against their wills) for the job: “the Russian,” another émigré and a black-market trader who owes Sophia money; and Emily, a young woman coerced into helping with drugs and threats (“She had been made into a slave”). The robbery nets some $880,000, a powerful temptation for another major character, Elias, an officer with the SFPD Gang Task Force. An alcoholic, Elias is plagued by money worries. Beyond the engaging plot, the book focuses on people’s behavior in the face of impossible choices. Hoffman, who spent nine years working as a PI in San Francisco, writes with great authority about the city’s seamy side and the grim realities of life for its down-on-their-luck denizens." Monologue topics: Apple, technology fetishization, camping outside of stores, Ray Rice, public outrage.     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Author Margaret Wrinkle will read from and discuss her acclaimed new novel Wash, which reexamines American slavery in ways that challenge our contemporary assumptions about race, history, power and healing. Published by Grove Atlantic, Wash recently won the Center for Fiction’s Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize and has been named a Wall Street Journal Top Ten novel of the year, a New York Times Editor’s Choice, an O magazine selection for 10 Books to Pick up Now, and a People Magazine 4-Star pick. Born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, Wrinkle earned a BA and an MA in English from Yale University before studying traditional West African spiritual practices with Malidoma Somé. She will be in conversation with Marti Paschal, a longtime member of Temescal Writers, a Voices of Our Nation alumna, and a recipient of a Hedgebrook residency. A graduate of Stanford Law School, she works in local government and is currently writing her first novel.

David Abrams is the guest.  He's the author of the debut novel Fobbit, which is now available from Grove/Atlantic. Publishers Weekly, in a starred reviews, says Abrams’s debut is a harrowing satire of the Iraq War and an instant classic....Abrams, ... Continue reading → Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Melanie Abrams' novel, Playing, is forthcoming from Grove/Atlantic in April 2008, and has already been acquired for translation in three different languages. Howard Norman says, "In her arresting debut novel Melanie Abrams is disturbingly expert at exhibiting how erotic obsession makes a courtship a dangerous game indeed. Unpredictable and unforgettable. A stunning writer." Melanie received her M.F.A. from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She currently teaches creative writing at UC Berkeley. For more information see the Story Hour website Support for this series is provided by the University Library and the Department of English.

Melanie Abrams' novel, Playing, is forthcoming from Grove/Atlantic in April 2008, and has already been acquired for translation in three different languages. Howard Norman says, "In her arresting debut novel Melanie Abrams is disturbingly expert at exhibiting how erotic obsession makes a courtship a dangerous game indeed. Unpredictable and unforgettable. A stunning writer." Melanie received her M.F.A. from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She currently teaches creative writing at UC Berkeley. For more information see the Story Hour website Support for this series is provided by the University Library and the Department of English.

This week, Donna Leon discusses her latest installment of the Guido Brunetti mystery novels, “Transient Desires.” The series explores myriad social issues facing the city of Venice, Italy. Photo courtesy of Grove Atlantic.