New Books In Literature

Ann, Fran, & Mary Ann (53rd State Press, 2020) is a new play by Erin Courtney, one of the most exciting contemporary American playwrights. This is a play that engages with themes of science, religion, and trauma through a highly theatrical and character-driven storytelling style. Ann and Mary Ann were both witnesses of traumatic events in their childhoods and were drawn to neuroscience as a way to understand and perhaps heal from their trauma. When Mary Ann begins experimenting with inducing spiritual experience, Ann's skepticism regarding the supernatural drives a wedge between them. When Ann's patient Fran begins experiencing Capgras syndrome, which convinces her that her loved ones are imposters, Mary Ann's desire to heal Fran conflicts with Ann's desire to study her. The interactions of these three characters open questions of medical ethics, the meaning of faith, and the possibility of healing. Andy Boyd is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the playwriting MFA at Columbia Univ

This is the second episode of a four-part series featuring the winners and honorable mentions of the 2021 Book Awards for the Association of Asian American Studies. This episode features two of the winners in Creative Writing: Poetry: Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley, whose poetry collection Colonize Me explores the lives of those communities and peoples on the intersections of indigeneity, migration, Asian, queerness, and lower class; and Jan-Henry Gray, whose collection Documents traces Gray’s upbringing as a queer undocumented Filipino American. Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley belongs to the Onondaga Nation of Indigenous Americans in New York and is an assistant professor of poetry and nonfiction in Old Dominion University’s MFA program. His poetry collection Colonize Me won the AAAS award in Creative Writing: Poetry. Jan-Henry Gray currently teaches at Adelphi University in New York. Born in the Philippines and raised in California where he worked as a chef, Jan lived undocumented in the U.S. for more than 32

The name of Dorothy Hale is not well known these days. In the 1920s, she enjoyed a career on Broadway as a dancer, including in a leading role with Fred Astaire. When an accidental injury ended that career, she auditioned, successfully, for the filmmaker Samuel Goldwyn and landed a part opposite Ronald Coleman, who would later star in Lost Horizon. But Dorothy’s film career did not take off, and she moved into art, writing, and museum work in support of her second husband, Gardner Hale, a well-known fresco painter and portraitist, until his tragic death in 1931. Dorothy survived the stock-market crash of 1929 with her wealth intact and remained a light of New York society into the 1930s. Her closest friend—Clare Boothe, who married Henry Luce in 1935—branched out from an active career in magazine publishing, including a stint as managing editor of Vanity Fair, to produce a Broadway play titled The Women. The play lampooned members of their social circle, evoking both amusement and outrage. Dorothy Hale then s

During the Cultural Revolution, many young Chinese in the cities were encouraged — if not ordered — to move to the countryside. Millions of young Chinese in high school and university moved to rural China ostensibly to “receive re-education from the poorest lower and middle peasants to understand what China really is” (to quote Mao Zedong, at the time). Many students remained in the countryside until the end of the Cultural Revolution almost a decade later. One of these young Chinese people was the mother of Emei Burell, who turned these stories into a graphic novel: We Served the People: My Mother's Storie (Archaia, 2020). The book is roughly split into two halves: her mother’s hard work on a rubber plantation in Yunnan, and her struggles a decade later to restart her education upon her return home. In this interview, Emei talks about her mother’s story, both during her time in the countryside and when she returned home. We talk about what it was like for her to turn these tales into a graphic novel, and wha

Not long ago, the only resource for uncovering our familial pasts was to consult libraries and archives, combing old newspapers for birth announcements and obituaries. These days, many people are turning to websites like Ancestry and 23andMe, taking DNA tests to learn more about their ancestors and where they came from—often discovering long buried secrets and long lost relatives in the process. But for some, the answers to these questions exist not in archives or in their DNA, but within a suitcase. When writer Danielle Geller’s estranged mother passed away, she left behind just eight suitcases of belongings, cataloging her wayward spirit, moving between boyfriends, states, and jobs, at times experiencing homelessness. In her debut memoir, Dog Flowers (One World, 2021), Geller, trained as an archivist, consolidates the most important artifacts from the collection—never before seen photographs, documents, letters, and diaries—piecing together a portrait of the mother she grew up without, and reconnecting with

Back in 1997, when Anthony Valerio’s Conversation with Johnny was first published, the world hadn’t yet seen The Godfather, The Sopranos, or Goodfellas. In this slim volume, Valerio explores two distinct Italian American stereotypes: the dashing man about town and the successful gangster. Nicholas, the descendant of parents who emigrated to America, goes back to the old Italian New York neighborhood where Johnny, the old but still powerful gangster resides, surrounded by acolytes and luxury. The source of Johnny’s power and wealth is assumed to be crime, but he is is a caring and nurturing godfather, listening closely as Nicholas cries about his married, lover calling it quits. He is also a ruthless don who can shower Nicholas with wealth, get him a job as a maître-d at a famous restaurant, or create a retirement home for Italian American Writers. But he can’t promise Nicholas an Italian-American culture that focuses on solely on art as if organized crime never happened. Anthony Valerio is the author of 12 bo

Today I talked to Vanessa Carlisle about her new book Take Me with You (Running Wild, 2021). Kindred Powell's youth is marked by a secret that her white mother and Black father kept from her. After her father Carl's unjust incarceration and her mother's death from illness, Kindred moves from Los Angeles to New York in a desperate search for peace. There, she finds her girlfriend Nautica, a career in sex work, and a kinky boy toy named Griffin. But when Carl goes missing from LA's Skid Row, Kindred must drop everything to find him. Keep an eye out for the special edition of the South Atlantic Quarterly edited by Heather Berg and Featuring more of Vanessa's work.  Rachel Stuart is a sex work researcher whose primary interest is the lived experiences of sex workers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Jennifer Jean speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her poem “California,” which appears on The Common online, in a special portfolio of writing from the Lusosphere (Portugal and its colonial and linguistic diaspora). Jean talks about writing this poem to be in conversation with Joni Mitchell’s song of the same title, and how music works its way into much of her poetry, in both rhythm and language. She also discusses writing her new poetry collection Object Lesson which centers on trauma, and co-translating poems by Iraqi women poets with an Arabic translator. Jennifer Jean’s poetry collections include The Fool and Object Lesson, out this year from Lily Books. Her teaching resource, Object Lesson: A Guide To Writing Poetry, is also out this year. Jennifer’s awards include a Kenyon Review Writers Workshop Fellowship, a DISQUIET Fellowship to write and study poetry in Portugal, a “Her Story Is” Residency (where she worked with Iraqi women artists in Dubai), and an Ambassador for Peace Award for her acti

In this ground-breaking work, Michael Sells (the Barrows Professor Emeritus of the History and Literature of Islam and Professor emeritus of comparative literature at the University of Chicago) translates sixty-one poems that form the Tarjuman al-ashwaq or The Translator of Desires by Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi (Princeton University Press, 2021). The poems are presented here both in Arabic and English, and are accompanied by an introduction and commentary. The masterful and accessible translations are truly a thrilling literary experience. Ibn ‘Arabi’s poems evoke numerous themes, such as of flora and fauna, nature, sacred spaces, especially of the Kaaba, love, longing, and grief. For instance, the longing of a lost beloved, which Sufis would have read as the Divine, is a central thematic thread woven throughout the collection of poetry, and is gendered feminine. The collection of poems along with Sells critical introduction and notes provides stunning insights to both the tradition of Arabic love poetry and to the

In Adrian Tchaikovsky’s The Doors of Eden (Orbit, 2020) the multiverse is filled with parallel Earths where evolution takes different twists and turns. The forks in the road and the paths species take vary from Earth to Earth, seeding sentience in a wide variety of organisms. In one, giant mollusks “understand and communicate profound truths about the nature of existence.” In another, a creature twice the size of the average human with traits of fish, salamander and slug creates a permanent ice age and must upload its citizens to supercomputers to survive. Toddler-sized rats pave the planet with Industrial Age warrens in a different Earth. And in still another version of our planet, giant immortal spacefaring trilobites establish themselves at the top of the evolutionary heap for all eternity. Tchiakovsky’s characters learn about the existence of other Earths because the boundaries between them have sundered, necessitating urgent action. No single species has the smarts or technology to fix the problem by its

Set in rural England, award-winning writer Claire Fuller's new novel Unsettled Ground (Tin House Books, 2021) explores what happens to two middle-aged twins, Jeanie and Julius, when their mother Dot – with whom they have lived their whole lives – suddenly dies. It’s a story full of secrets in which nothing is quite as it seems, and despite its apparently idyllic setting the tale is full of dramatic turns, most of them rather dark.  Unsettled Ground has just been shortlisted for the 2021 Womens’ Prize of Fiction, and has been making quite a splash. In this engaging conversation, Claire tells Duncan McCargo why all her books are rather dark, why she is not romantic about rural life, why Unsettled Ground doesn't exactly have a happy ending, and why the novel contains a hidden social message. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

In this episode, we are talking to Mark Krotov, the publisher and co-editor of n + 1, a magazine of politics, essays and fiction described once: “like The Paris Review, but not dead” (Keith Gessen, co-founder). Mark was born in Moscow and left Russia for Atlanta at the age of six. He graduated from Columbia in 2008. Before joining n + 1, he used to work as an assistant editor at Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Agata Popeda is a Polish-American journalist. Interested in everything, with a particular weakness for literature and foreign relations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Today I talked to Rebecca D’Harlingue about her novel The Lines Between Us (She Writes Press, 2020). A widow in 17th century Spain discovers that her beloved niece, Juliana, has suddenly disappeared. Juliana records her forced journey in the diary she received from Tia Ana. Years later, when she feels herself to be nearing the end of her life, she writes to Ana, explains why she fled, and tells her that she is a nun in the new world. Ana’s response provokes Juliana into sharing her life story and demanding that Mercedes, a nun who hasn’t yet taken her vows, leave the convent. The years pass, and Mercedes, near the end of her own life, passes Juliana’s packet to her granddaughter with a demand that the mothers among her descendants keep the secret of this packet from their own daughters, only passing it to one granddaughter in each generation. Three hundred years later and we’re in 20th century America, when a college Spanish professor finds the packet while cleaning out her mother’s closet after her mother’s

A brief, elegant memoir of the author's work as a Red Cross volunteer delivering emergency water to residents of Flint, Michigan, Standpipe sets the struggles of a city in crisis against the author's personal journey as his mother declines into dementia and eventual death. Written with a poet's eye for detail and quiet metaphor, Standpipe: Delivering Water in Flint (Belt, 2021) is an intimate look at one man's engagement with both civic and familial trauma. This gentle, observant book is for readers seeking to better understand the human experience of the Flint Water Crisis, and a vivid investigation into how we all heal. Claire Clark is a medical educator, historian of medicine, and associate professor in the University of Kentucky’s College of Medicine. She teaches and writes about health behavior in historical context. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Callimachus may be the best-kept secret in all of ancient poetry. Loved and admired by later Romans and Greeks, his funny, sexy, generous, thoughtful, learned, sometimes elaborate, and always articulate lyric poems, hymns, epigrams, and short stories in verse have gone without a contemporary poetic champion, until now. In After Callimachus (Princeton UP, 2020), esteemed poet and critic Stephanie Burt’s attentive translations and inspired adaptations introduce the work, spirit, and letter of Callimachus to today’s poetry readers. Skillfully combining intricate patterns of sound and classical precedent with the very modern concerns of sex, gender, love, death, and technology, these poems speak with a twenty-first century voice, while also opening multiple gateways to ancient worlds. This Callimachus travels the Mediterranean, pays homage to Athena and Zeus, develops erotic fixations, practices funerary commemoration, and brings fresh gifts for the cult of Artemis. This reimagined poet also visits airports, uses

The Portrait is a story full of ambiguity and suspense, one that works on many different levels and holds the reader’s attention until the very last page. Recently published to great acclaim, the book will soon become a Sky TV mini-series. In what she called a 'beautiful' conversation with Duncan McCargo, Ilaria Bernadini explains, inter alia: why she chose to write The Portrait (Simon and Schuster, 2021) in English; the disarmingly rich imaginative hinterlands of her secondary characters; what it was like to have her own portrait painted; and, most importantly, how, when Martìn falls desperately ill, Valeria suddenly becomes open to new people and to re-reading closed chapters of her life.  If you want to know how far The Portrait trangresses into the realm of magical realism, and what possible sequels Ilaria may write, you need to listen to this intriguing podcast about an extremely compelling and important new novel.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becomi

An exhilaratingly comical, crosscultural debut novel, The Wife Who Wasn't (New Europe Books, 2021) brings together an eccentric community from the hills of Santa Barbara, California, and a family of Russians from Chișinău, the capital of Moldova. It starts in the late 1990s, after the fall of communism, and has at its center the mail-order marriage between a California man (Sammy) and a Russian woman (Tania) who comes to America, which engenders a series of hilarious cultural misunderstandings. The novel's four parts take place alternately in California and Moldova, and comprise short chapters whose point of view moves seamlessly between that of the omniscient narrator and that of various characters. Delivered in arresting prose, both realities--late 90s, bohemian/hipster California and postcommunist Moldova--thus come together from opposite points of view. Above all, this novel is a comedy of manners that depicts the cultural (and personality) clash between Tania and Sammy, Anna (Sammy's teenage daughter) an

Today I interview Dinty W. Moore and Zoë Bossiere, the editors of the new anthology The Best of Brevity: Twenty Groundbreaking Years of Flash Nonfiction (Rose Metal Press, 2020). The anthology brings together the best of Brevity Magazine, which publishes works of literary nonfiction that are less than 750 words. So how do you write about, say, the experience of becoming a mother or losing a father or coming of age or the nature of our age, all in less than 750 words? And how do you do it powerfully, beautifully, and artfully? It seems impossible. And yet for over twenty years, this is exactly what Brevity has given us: thousands of literary gems that glow and pulse with our humanity. Today I get a chance to ask Dinty and Zoë about how these 750-words-or-less wonders work and how the magazine has fostered a new literary genre into American letters. Eric LeMay is on the creative writing faculty at Ohio University. He is the author of five books, most recently Remember Me. He can be reached at eric@ericlemay.org

The scene is Turkey in the mid-to-late Seventies. A young male college student hops onto a bus. He sits next to a cute female student from his class, but before they can strike up a conversation, they see a right-wing passenger, walk up to another passenger and hit him on the head with a hammer. The young woman screams. The two students get off the bus, only for the female student to call the male student a “disgusting fascist” and leave in anger. Scenes like this are seen in Turkish Kaleidoscope: Fractured Lives in a Time of Violence (Princeton University Press, 2021) is a graphic novel written by Professor Jenny White and illustrated by Ergün Gündüz. The book combines Jenny’s own experiences in Turkey with insights gleaned from interviews to illustrate Turkey’s political conflict in the late 1970s, between right-wing and left-wing movements. You can watch a promotional video for the book, and the book can be ordered from the Princeton University Press website. Jenny has also put together a Spotify playlist 

In All Sorrows Can Be Borne (Rare Bird Books, 2021), Loren Stephens tells the story, inspired by true events, of a Japanese woman who survives the bombing of Hiroshima, joins her half-sister in Osaka and gives up her dream of becoming a theater star. Later, she marries the man of her dreams and gives birth to a beautiful son. After her husband is diagnosed with tuberculosis, he convinces Noriko to send the toddler to his sister and her Japanese American husband, who live in Montana. Eighteen years later, Noriko’s son enlists in the U.S. Navy and gets sent to Japan. This is a novel about Japanese society and postwar cultural norms, the human cost of war, and a mother’s love. Loren Stephens is a widely published essayist and fiction and nonfiction storyteller. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, MacGuffin, The Jewish Women’s Literary Annual, Forge, Crack the Spine, Amuse Bouche, The Writer’s Launch, the Summerset Review, the Montreal Literary Review, and Tablet Travel Magazine t