New Books In Literature

Astrid Blodgett is the author of the short story collections This Is How You Start to Disappear (U Alberta Press, 2023) and You Haven’t Changed a Bit (U Alberta Press, 2013). Her stories have appeared in many Canadian literary magazines, and in translation in Inostrannaya Literatura, a Russian journal that publishes foreign writers. One of her stories is part of the Danish Royal Ministry of Education’s English exams and now the educational textbook Connect (in the chapter on "Puzzle Plots"!). Her work has been short- or long-listed for the Writers’ Guild of Alberta Howard O’Hagan Award for Short Story, a ReLit Award*, the Danuta Gleed Literary Award*, and the High Plains Book Award* for Short Stories. She is also a co-author of Recipes for Roaming: Adventure Food for the Canadian Rockies. For many years she co-hosted a literary salon in her home. Astrid also loves multi-day river trips and very long walks. She lives in Edmonton / amiskwaciwâskahikan. Judith Tanen is an LP candidate at the Institute for Contem

Derek Askey is an associate editor on staff at The Sun magazine, located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. What qualifies as a Sun essay? As noted by my guest, odds are that means an essay that’s intimate, even raw, with an author who dares to leave a lot of themselves on the page. In Derek Askey’ case, he’s often drawn to an essay with a mix of moods and writing that “looks you in the eye.” Of the three essays discussed, “Lawn Skeletons” by Tom McAllister might seem the most whimsical. How much can you learn from your neighbors’ outdoor decorations and lawn signs, after all? A lot is the answer, as the author goes deeper into also questioning his identity. The second essay discussed here, “The Ice Age” takes on the topic of depression and how even peeling an orange can prove difficult. A third essay, Daniel Donaghy’s “Fire” considers the physical, emotional and even spiritual costs of being poor and, at times, literally having to fight your way out of poverty. As James Baldwin has noted, it’s very expensive to

How do fiction and research intersect? In The Frankfurt Kabuff Critical Edition (Wilfrid Laurier University Press 2023), Beth Driscoll, an Associate Professor in Publishing, Communications and Arts Management at the University of Melbourne and Claire Squires a Professor in Publishing Studies at the University of Stirling, reflect on Blaire Squiscoll’s The Frankfurt Kabuff, by bringing together a collection of scholarly and creative responses to the original novella. Playfully critiquing the idea of a critical edition, from its form and content through to the book’s footnotes and index, the book offers a huge range of insights on the publishing industry. Showing how fiction can be research, art, satire, and a political project, the collection of essays and appendices are essential readings across the arts and humanities, as well as for anyone interested in publishing, fiction, and wanting to read a good erotic thriller! Find out more about the writing partnership of Blaire Squiscoll and their philosophy of Ull

On a slow autumn afternoon, an atmospheric physicist working at the Malta Weather Station receives a surprising email from a colleague working in the United Kingdom: something troubling has apparently been detected during one of their research flights. The ensuing meteorological mystery is the starting point for the science fiction novella The Clouds (Routledge, 2023). Alongside the novella, this book features three essays written by the same author that discuss in a more explicit and conventional way three philosophical ideas showcased in The Clouds: the expressive use of fictional games within fictional worlds; the possibility for existential meaning within simulated universes; and the unnatural narratological trope of "unhappening." With its unique format, this book is a fresh reflection on the mediatic form of philosophy and a compelling argument for the philosophical value of fiction. Rudolf Inderst is a professor of Game Design with a focus on Digital Game Studies at the IU International University

Richard Hoffman is the creative nonfiction editor at Solstice and is the author of seven books, including two memoirs and four books of poetry. He’s won a Massachusetts Book Award for his poetry and is an Emeritus Writer in Residence at Emerson College. Over the 16 years that Richard Hoffman has been involved with Solstice, he’s happily seen it evolve to be ever more conscious of including more diverse voices in a literary conversation that was once upon a time literally “segregated.” For him, the essay form is often most attractive when a writer is positioning their personal content in a larger, societal context. In this episode, the focus was on two essays from the magazine and two other essays from Hoffman’s recent essay collection, Remembering the Alchemists. The Soltice essay “How Much Time Do You Want for Your Progress” by Allen M. Price uses repetitions of an entry in his childhood notebook to reflect on the negative impact of racism on his maturing psyche. Adrianna Paramo’s essay “A Minute of Silence”

Kathleen Collins talks about her debut novel Study in Hysteria (Vine Leaves Press, 2024)). In the middle of 1974, Flora is privileged and middle-aged in a liberation-hued America, and feels both compelled by and left out of the women’s movement. She finds it difficult to activate her limited supply of empathy as she contends with a clandestine and unlikely friendship, a worrisome health scare, a domineering and philandering psychiatrist husband or her own distant daughter. Flora's secret foray into psychotherapy does nothing to halt the sense that there is a better life for her somewhere else, in some parallel existence. Through the continuum of psychological diagnoses, she is lost in the murky place between contentment and discontentment, normal and abnormal. Is her state of mind a clinical, diagnosable condition, or common malaise? Perhaps she'll find out if she stops resisting to share herself with those who love her. Rebekah Buchanan is a Professor of English and Director of English Education at Western I

Christine Evans' Nadia (U Iowa Press, 2023) is a dark novel about how the trauma of war follows people no matter how far they’ve fled. A few years after the Balkan War, two refugees from Sarajevo are temping in the same questionable London office. Nadia, who is Bosnian, is unhinged by memories of starvation, deprivation, and losing everyone she loved, including her family and her girlfriend, Sanja. She sees potential snipers and visions of Sanja throughout London, sometimes becoming unhinged by it. All she has is her office friends, and the Indian family where she has tea with buns every day. Iggy was a Serbian sniper who gunned down Bosnians as part of a militaristic street gang, but he justifies all the innocent people he kills by weighing them against the people he saved by distracting his friends or purposefully missing. They’re both forced to confront their choices during the chaotic days of the war, but Nadia still struggles with survivor’s guilt, the ethical choices she made in taking a job in a shady

It’s the UConn Popcast, and today we discuss Prophet Song (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2023), Paul Lynch’s Booker Prize winning novel about a totalitarian regime coming to power in Ireland. We discuss the novel’s theorization of individual rights and political power, its success in depicting a family’s unraveling and its failures in telling a broader, more universal story. Why have critics lauded this novel, and who is its intended audience? More fundamentally, what is the role of literary fiction in popular culture? The UConn Popcast is proud to be sponsored by the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute. Check out the institute’s Popular Culture Initiative. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

I’ve interviewed Andrea Penrose before about her mysteries set in the Regency period—most notably, her ongoing series starring the Earl of Wrexford and Lady Charlotte Sloane. In this latest novel, she takes a break from dead bodies and the complicated plots associated with them to tackle a real-life question: how did a supposedly sheltered nineteenth-century aristocrat defy all of society’s expectations that she marry to suit her family and instead craft a life that suited herself? The titular Diamond of this fictional biography is Lady Hester Stanhope, tagged even today with adjectives such as “notorious” and “eccentric.” After her politically radical and mentally unstable father threatens her with a knife, Lady Hester flees her country estate for London. There—with the help of the noted dandy Beau Brummell during a previous visit—she has already acquired a reputation as outspoken, passionate, and “different.” At twenty-four, she is also regarded as almost too old to wed, but her ties to the politically powe

Dayna Tororici is the co-editor of n + 1 magazine, located in New York City. She’s been on staff for the past 10 years, following her studies at Brown University. She’s also a new mother. n + 1 positions itself as combining a fine sense for how literature is composed through the use of voice, and an eye for detail and an ear for rhythm, in addition to wanting to address the current political and cultural situation in America and elsewhere. She sees the essay form as giving its authors time to “marinate” on a topic, building up their reflections to a richer outcome. Many of n + 1’s essays offer a mix of the memoir approach combined with reportage and often some historical analysis as context. In this case, we discussed in particular three essays that lean more purely in the memoir vein from three recent editions of the magazine: Jessica Karissa’s “Love and Wizkid” (about Afrobeats and trying to explore one’s sexuality without feeling exploited); Sander Pleij’s voice-driven essay “Cowboy in Sweden” (with travel

From the Dagger Award–winning author of Norwegian by Night comes a vivid, thrilling, and moving World War II art-heist-adventure tale where enemies become heroes, allies become villains, and a child learns what it means to become an adult—for fans of All the Light We Cannot See.  August, 1943. Fourteen-year-old Massimo is all alone. Newly orphaned and fleeing from Rome after surviving the American bombing raid that killed his parents, Massimo is attacked by thugs and finds himself bloodied at the base of the Montecassino. It is there in the Benedictine abbey’s shadow that a charismatic and cryptic man calling himself Pietro Houdini, the self-proclaimed “Master Artist and confidante of the Vatican,” rescues Massimo and brings him up the mountain to serve as his assistant in preserving the treasures that lay within the monastery walls. But can Massimo believe what Pietro is saying, particularly when Massimo has secrets too? Who is this extraordinary man? When it becomes evident that Montecassino will soon becom

Helen is one of the brightest minds of her generation: a young physicist on a path to solve high-temperature superconductivity (which could save the planet). When she discovers that her brilliant adviser is involved in a sex scandal, Helen is torn: should she give up on her work with him? Or should she accompany him to a controversial university, founded by a provocateur billionaire, that hosts academics other schools have thrown out? Helen decides she must go--her work is too important. She brings along her partner, Hew, who is much less sanguine about living on an island where the disgraced and deplorable get to operate with impunity. On campus, Helen finds herself drawn to an iconoclastic older novelist, while Hew stews in an increasingly radical protest movement. Their rift deepens until both confront choices that will reshape their lives--and maybe the world. Irreverent, generous, anchored in character, and provocative without being polemical, How I Won a Nobel Prize (Little, Brown, 2023) illuminates the

The opening story of Eternal Summer of My Homeland (Epigram Book, 2023) the debut story collection from Singaporean author Agnes Chew, is about grief. Hui Shan loses her mother right before the birth of her first child–and gradually cuts her father out of her life after he refuses to do the traditional things one does to commemorate the death of a family member. Until she learns what her father has actually been doing: Growing a garden, illegally, on Singaporean government land. Agnes’s stories are all about Singapore and its multiculturalism, tradition, and modernity. And, as she explains in today’s interview, the collection is in fact Agnes's attempt to reconnect with the city, after moving away to Germany. Agnes Chew is also the author of The Desire for Elsewhere (Math Paper Press: 2016), a collection of travel essays. Her work has appeared in Granta, Necessary Fiction, and Wildness Journal, among others. She holds a Master’s degree in international development from the London School of Economics; her priz

The Middle Daughter (Dzanc Books, 2023) by Chika Unigwe opens with a happy, well-to-do family living in a guarded community in Nigeria. The loving father owns a business, the formidable mother is a doctor, one daughter is at university in America and the other daughters are in private school. The story is told from the perspective of the youngest daughter, Ugo, and middle daughter, Nani, whose life in thrown off balance by the death of her father. A single bad choice leads to her giving up a college education in America to become a browbeaten mother of three married to an abusive husband who keeps her locked in a tiny apartment, chops off her hair and buys her ugly polyester dresses. Like Persephone in the underworld, she’s unable to see or contact her powerful mother. When she has an opportunity to escape, she needs strength and courage that she isn’t sure she possesses. Chika Unigwe was born and raised in Enugu, a hilly city in the southeast of Nigeria. Also known as the coal city because it was a significa

It’s been over a decade since a mysterious cataclysm caused a permanent blackout that toppled infrastructure and thrust the world into anarchy. Evan Whitesky led his community in remote northern Ontario off the rez and into the bush, where they’ve been living off the land, rekindling their Anishinaabe traditions in total isolation from the outside world. As new generations are born, and others come of age in the world after everything, Evan’s people are in some ways stronger than ever. But resources in and around their new settlement are beginning to dry up, and the elders warn that they cannot afford to stay indefinitely. Evan and his fifteen-year-old daughter, Nangohns, are elected to lead a small scouting party on a months-long trip to their traditional home on the north shore of Lake Huron—to seek new beginnings, and discover what kind of life—and what dangers—still exist in the lands to the south. Moon of the Turning Leaves (William Morrow, 2023) is Waubgeshig Rice’s exhilarating return to the world firs

A genre-bending debut with a fiercely political heart, A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens (Dutton, 2023) explores the weight of the devil's bargain, following the lengths one man will go to for the promise of freedom. Hugo Contreras's world in Miami has shrunk. Since his wife died, Hugo's debt from her medical bills has become insurmountable. He shuffles between his efficiency apartment, La Carreta (his favorite place for a cafecito), and a botanica in a strip mall where he works as the resident babaláwo. One day, Hugo's nemesis calls. Alexi Ramirez is a debt collector who has been hounding Hugo for years, and Hugo assumes this call is just more of the same. Except this time Alexi is calling because he needs spiritual help. His house is haunted. Alexi proposes a deal: If Hugo can successfully cleanse his home before Noche Buena, Alexi will forgive Hugo's debt. Hugo reluctantly accepts, but there's one issue: Despite being a babaláwo, he doesn't believe in spirits. Hugo plans to do what he's done with dozens of cli

Rosemary Candwell's past has exploded into her present. Down-and-out and deteriorating, she drifts from anonymous beds and bars in Providence, to a homeless shelter hidden among the hedge-rowed avenues of Newport, and through the revolving door of service jobs and quick-fix psychiatric care, always grasping for hope, for a solution. She's desperate to readjust back into a family and a world that has deemed her a crazy bitch living a choice they believe she could simply un-choose at any time. She endures flashbacks and panic attacks, migraines and nightmares. She can't sleep or she sleeps for days; she lashes out at anyone and everyone, especially herself. She abuses over-the-counter cold medicine and guzzles down anything caffeinated just to feel less alone. What if her family is right? What if she is truly broken beyond repair? Drawn from the author's experience of homelessness and trauma recovery, It's Not Nothing is a collage of small moments, biting jokes, intrusive memories, and quiet epiphanies meant to

During a year on sabbatical from his university position, Matthew Batt realized he needed money—fast—and it just so happened that a craft brewery in Minneapolis was launching a restaurant and looking to hire. So it was that the forty-something tenured professor found himself waiting tables. And loving it.  The Last Supper Club: A Waiter's Requiem (University of Minnesota Press, 2023) tells the story of Batt’s experience at the fine dining restaurant, an adventure that continued well past his sabbatical—right up to the restaurant’s sudden and unceremonious closing, shortly after it was named one of the best restaurants in the country by Food & Wine. Batt’s memoir conveys the challenge—and the satisfaction—of meeting the demands of a frenzied kitchen and an equally expectant crowd. The Last Supper Club reveals the ups and downs of a waiter’s workday and offers an insightful perspective on what makes a job good, bad, or great. James Kates is a professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Wis

In December 1992, Hindu nationalists seize the Babri Masjid mosque and tear it down, proclaiming their wish to build a Hindu temple in its stead. The brazen act of destruction sparks riots throughout the country, particularly in Mumbai, where Muslims and Hindus clash in the streets. An estimated nine hundred people, both Muslim and Hindu, die in the violence. The riots are the backdrop of Lindsay Pereira’s latest novel, The Memoirs of Valmiki Rao (Vintage Books, 2023). The titular Rao is a retired postman, living in the slums decades after the riots tore through his community. And he’s also a writer, portraying the life of one neighbor in particular: Rama, once a youth leader, beset by tragedy amid the riots. In this interview, Lindsay and I talk about the 1990s, these communities in India, and how his novel parallels one of the classic works of Indian literature, the Ramayana. Lindsay Pereira is a journalist and editor. He was co-editor of Women's Voices: Selections from Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centur

Jim Finley--a recently retired English teacher living alone on the shifting edge of San Francisco--has been set, unwittingly, on the back porch of life. Trying to harmonize the voices in his head, he sits most days by his stack of "to-do" books until, one day, his daughter comes home with the worst news of her life. Everything changes. As his broken heart reengages, he steps back into a new world. He sees his ex-wife has launched into a larger life than the one they'd shared. He is surprised to find it easier to talk to his son's immigrant girlfriend, or even the remains of a Russian saint, than to the young man he's raised. He misconnects with Carol--his first date in decades--a woman he enjoys talking with but doesn't quite hear.  Set in the pre-tech calm before the turn of this century, Outer Sunset (U Iowa Press, 2023) is a deeply felt story about the intimate place where long-lasting growth occurs in our lives; how we revise, or live without, our dreams; how to love the flaws of those closest to you and