New Books In Literature

Katherine recalls being young and friendless. While growing up in the 40’ and 50’s, she remembers when her mother packed up and left, her father remarried, and she was left to focus on her studies – she was an exceptional mathematician. But she’d been wrong about her family – she later learned that the woman who gave birth to her had been murdered by the Nazis during WWII. In graduate school pursuing a doctorate in mathematics, Katherine gets involved with her brilliant teacher and travels to Germany for a year of research and introspection. She follows a few clues about her mother, most with dead ends, and discovers snippets of the truth. Nothing is as it seems, and she is nearly derailed time and again. The Tenth Muse (HarperCollins, 2019) is an engrossing tale about identity and the passion for knowledge. Catherine Chung earned an undergraduate degree in mathematics at the University of Chicago and an MFA at Cornell University. She has worked at a think tank and has gotten encouragement from a number of fo

In 2013, poet Lauren Russell acquired a copy of the diary of her great-great-grandfather, Robert Wallace Hubert, a Captain in the Confederate Army. After his return from the Civil War, he fathered twenty children by three of his former slaves. One of those children was the poet’s great-grandmother. Through several years of research, Russell would seek the words to fill the diary’s omissions and to imagine the voice of her great-great-grandmother, Peggy Hubert, a black woman silenced by history. The result is a hybrid work of verse, prose, images and documents that traversed centuries as the past bleeds into the present. Lauren Russell is the author of Descent (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2020) and What’s Hanging on the Hush (Ahsahta Press, 2017). She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Cave Canem, and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and work has appeared in various publications, including the The New York Times Magazine and the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day. She w

Today I talked to Ilona Andrews about her book Emerald Blaze: A Hidden Legacy Novel (Avon Books, 2020). Catalina Baylor is the titular Prime of House Baylor, where she and her crew, including her dangerous cousin Leon, engage in detective work. She’s also secretly the Deputy to the Texas Warden, charged with keeping the potent serum that creates magical powers out of the hands of evildoers. She’s just picked up the pieces of her broken heart and set her mind to keeping her extended family safe, when a new challenge disrupts her life. Four of Houston’s most powerful houses have a business deal with a nasty old codger by the name of Lander Morton. The focus of it is the swampy Pit, which is full of magical hazmat. Once it’s cleaned up, there’s a fortune to be made in real estate development. When Lander Morton’s son is tortured and killed onsite of the Pit, Morton is convinced one of the other Houses is behind it. In addition to hiring Catalina to conduct the investigation, he also hires a suave Italian assassi

In Art Is Everything (TriQuarterly Books, 2021), L.A. native Amanda Ruiz is a successful Chicana performance artist who is madly in love with her girlfriend, Xochitl. Amanda is about to enjoy a residency at the Guggenheim Museum in New York and plans to film a groundbreaking documentary in Mexico. Then Xochitl’s biological clock begins beeping, Amanda’s father dies, and Amanda is assaulted during an Uber ride. Her life and art are upended and she’s not sure how to get back on track. Written as a series of web posts, Instagram essays, Snapchat posts, rejected Yelp reviews, Facebook screeds, and streams-of-consciousness that merge volcanic confession with eagle-eyed art criticism, Art Is Everything is about a woman who has to grapple with being derailed. After earning her J.D. at Stanford Law School, Yxta Maya Murray clerked for two judges and then joined the Loyola Law School faculty in 1995. Recipient of an Art Writer’s Grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation, she published a one-act play about the Christine Bl

The world created by Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice has established a place for itself in contemporary culture that few other novels can match, yet amid the countless spinoffs, some stand out. Molly Greeley seems to have a special gift for creating novels that, although based on Austen’s creations, take on a life of their own. In 2019’s The Clergyman’s Wife, Greeley imagined how the marriage between Charlotte Lucas, the friend of Austen’s heroine Elizabeth Bennet, and Mr. Collins, Austen’s risible antagonist, might have worked out after three years. The Heiress: The Revelations of Anne de Bourgh (William Morrow, 2020) takes up the story of a character who in the original Pride and Prejudice exists mostly as an example of the kind of young woman that novel’s hero, Mr. Darcy, should prefer to Elizabeth, if only in the opinion of Anne’s formidable mother, Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Now, to anyone familiar with Lady Catherine, the thought of being her daughter is itself enough to cause shudders of alarm, but o

Writer Omer Friedlander speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about his story “Operation Tamar,” which appears in Issue 19 of The Common magazine. “Operation Tamar” is set in Israel, where Friedlander grew up. In this conversation, Friedlander talks about the setting and inspiration for this story and others, and the editing and revision that went into “Operation Tamar” before publication. He also discusses his current projects, a novel and a short story collection recently sold to Random House for publication. Omer Friedlander grew up in Tel-Aviv. His short story collection, The Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land, and his novel, The Glass Golem, are both forthcoming from Random House. He has a BA in English Literature from the University of Cambridge and an MFA from Boston University, where he was supported by the Saul Bellow Fellowship. He is a Starworks Fellow in Fiction at New York University. His writing has been supported by the Bread Loaf Work-Study Scholarship, Vermont Studio Center Fellowship, Virgi

There is something quintessentially American about the idea of the west. Though the time of western expansion has long since passed, stories about cowboys on horses and pioneers panning for gold resonate with us to this day, living on in our books, our movies, and our in cultural imaginations. Through these stories, the west has come to represent values like stoicism, self-reliance, and rugged individualism. For many who call it home, the west also represents a heritage, a tradition, and a way of life. But how many of these collective conceptions of the west are actually true? In her stunning debut essay collection, Anything Will Be Easy After This: A Western Identity Crisis (University of Nebraska Press, 2020), author Bethany Maile reaches into the depths of her childhood on the prairies of Eagle, Idaho to determine where the many myths about the American west begin and end. To help answer these questions, Maile goes on expeditions to an Idaho rodeo pageant, a Lady Antebellum concert, a livestock auction hou

Elizabeth McCulloch was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and lived in New England, the Midwest, Canada, and the South, before putting down roots in Gainesville, Florida, almost forty years ago. Previously a lawyer, then a teacher, she has had children of various stripes: one born, two foster, one step, and the granddaughter she is now raising with her husband. Elizabeth has always loved to read and always wanted to write. She began seriously pursuing her dream over 30 years ago, with pauses in the pursuit for various events and catastrophes. She has completed three novels and is working on a fourth. At her blog, The Feminist Grandma, she writes illustrated personal essays about family, friends, aging, social justice issues, and whatever takes her fancy. At Big Books from Small Presses, she posts illustrated reviews and other essays about books. Both blogs are at her website, elizabethmccullochauthor.com. When Elizabeth isn’t reading or writing, she sings at a nursing home, swims, gardens, dances, cooks, and h

The Ministry for the Future (Orbit, 2020) is a sweeping novel about climate change and how people of the near future start to slow, stop and reverse it. The story opens with a devastating heat wave that kills thousands in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. From there, Kim Stanley Robinson pulls back to show us the world’s reaction, taking readers from the eponymous Ministry for the Future (which advocates for new laws and policies, like carbon quantitative easing) to scientists in Antarctica, where glaciologists pump out water from under glaciers to slow their slide into the ocean. The book’s kaleidoscope of viewpoints goes beyond humans to include animals, inanimate objects and abstract concepts, like caribou, a carbon atom and history. Robinson also uses multiple forms, from traditional first- and third-person narratives and eyewitness accounts, to meeting notes and history lessons, to riddles and dialogues. The effect is epic, conveying both the complexity of the problem and a wake-up call. “I want to make

In The Lonely Letters (Duke UP, 2020), A tells Moth: “Writing about and thinking with joy is what sustains me, daily. It nourishes me. I do not write about joy primarily because I always have it. I write about joy, Black joy, because I want to generate it, I want it to emerge, I want to participate in its constant unfolding.” But alongside joy, A admits to Moth, come loneliness, exclusion, and unfulfilled desire. The Lonely Letters is an epistolary blackqueer critique of the normative world in which Ashon T. Crawley—writing as A—meditates on the interrelation of blackqueer life, sounds of the Black church, theology, mysticism, and love. Throughout his letters, A explores blackness and queerness in the musical and embodied experience of Blackpentecostal spaces and the potential for platonic and erotic connection in a world that conspires against blackqueer life. Both a rigorous study and a performance, The Lonely Letters gestures toward understanding the capacity for what we study to work on us, to transform u

Tara Skurtu is an American poet and writer, writing coach, and public speaker. She speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about “Offering,” her poem from Issue 19 of The Common magazine. “Offering,” and many more of Skurtu’s poems, are set in Bucharest, Romania, where the poet has lived for several years. Skurtu discusses the inspiration and process behind the poem, her thoughts on teaching creative writing, and her time studying with poet Louise Glück. This conversation also includes the story behind the International Poetry Circle, an online poetry-reading initiative Skurtu started on Twitter in the early days of the pandemic. Tara Skurtu is a two-time U.S. Fulbright grantee and recipient of two Academy of American Poets prizes, a Marcia Keach Poetry Prize, and a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Boston University, where she studied with Nobel Laureate Louise Glück and three-term U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky. Her poems are published internationally and translate

"Ivy Lin was a thief but you would never know it to look at her” White Ivy (Simon & Schuster: 2020), the debut novel by Susie Yang, is the story of Ivy Lin, a Chinese-American teenager growing up just outside of Boston, where she struggles to achieve the trappings of suburban teenagerhood. Years later, as a 27-year-old teacher haunted by confused feelings about her upbringing, she comes across characters from her past, which spurs a desire — perhaps an obsessive one — to remake her life. “White Ivy” has won rave reviews in publications and book clubs across the United States over the past few months.  Before turning to writing, Susie Yang originally launched a tech start-up that taught 20,000 people how to code. She then studied creative writing at Tin House and Sackett Street. She was born in China, came to the United States as a child, and now resides in the UK. You can follow her on Twitter at @susieyyang. In this interview, Susie and I discuss White Ivy’s character and setting in New england. We’ll delve

Seattle journalist Alienor Crespo flies to Spain to apply for citizenship as a descendant of Jews expelled from the Iberian Peninsula during the Inquisition, in 1492. She meets a long-lost cousin and begins to discover her family’s history. A strong and self-aware woman, Alienor is also invited into the hidden tunnels of a fantastic library, which for half a century has been preserving medieval Jewish and Muslim scholarly books that were saved from the Inquisition’s fires. The library is called the “Zahara” and is protected by a secret society of caretakers in a hidden fortress. But there is a violently fascist political group trying to restore the pure blood line of Iberia, trying to make Spain great again. And one of Alienor’s cousins is a member. Meanwhile, she has been connecting with her female ancestors in moments of spiritually awakening time travel. Today I talked to Joyce Yarrow about her new book Zahara and the Lost Books of Light (Adelaide Books, 2020). Yarrow began her writing life scribbling poem

Over the last ten years, Paul Kingsnorth has become recognised as one of the most extraordinary of contemporary writers. After The Wake, which was listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2014, and its follow-up, Beast, Kingsnorth was hailed as "a furiously gifted writer," his prose suggesting "Beckett doing Beowulf." In his outstanding new novel, Alexandria, just published by Graywolf Press in the US and forthcoming in the UK from Faber, Kingsnorth completes his Buccmaster trilogy, conjuring our world one thousand years into its future, in which the last surviving humans come to terms with some very ancient fears - and hopes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Det, Chang and Lek are young university students living in Thailand during the 1970s. It is a turbulent time for the country’s politics: student-led protests in 1973 succeeded in (briefly) overthrowing the country’s military dictatorship. Det, Chang and Lek — three students from very different backgrounds — navigate the country’s changing politics from the streets of Bangkok to the jungles of northern Thailand. This is the premise behind A Good True Thai (Epigram Books: 2020), the debut novel by Sunisa Manning, and a finalist for the Epigram Books Fiction Prize for Southeast Asian writers. In this interview, Sunisa and I discuss the historical setting of her book, and how much her characters represent the dynamics and emotions of Thailand’s student activists. We also discuss the process of writing historical fiction, and some of the parallels one might draw with today’s protest, with reference to Sunisa's recent piece for Nikkei Asia, "Thailand's punctured monarchy". Sunisa Manning was born and raised in Bang

No Entry (Stormbird Press, 2020) is Gila Green’s first young adult Eco-Fiction novel. It is the first in an environmental series focused on elephant poaching and the international trade that leads to their illegal slaughter. Seventeen-year-old Yael Amar is in South Africa, signed up for a summer course in South Africa’s Kruger National Park. A rising senior, she plans to join her parents in Johannesburg, where her father will spend his sabbatical year from a Canadian University. Yael’s parents originally emigrated to Canada from South Africa years before and have returned while mourning the tragic death of Yael’s brother. Yael, also in mourning, but busy learning everything from medic training to driving on the left side of the road, uncovers a deadly elephant poaching ring. After witnessing some horrible violence, she just isn’t sure what to do about it. In addition to No Entry, Canadian author Gila Green is the author of three novels: King of the Class (Non-Publishing 2013), Passport Control (S&H Publishing

It seems likely that most of our listeners have at least heard of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and her sister Emily’s Wuthering Heights. Many also know that Charlotte and Emily had two other talented siblings who grew to adulthood: Anne, author of the novel Agnes Grey, and the only male heir, Branwell—whose early promise evaporated in a haze of alcohol and opiates. Still, it seems likely that Branwell’s affair with his employer—Lydia Robinson, a wealthy, married woman eighteen years older than he—has received far less attention. This affair, the exact parameters of which have not been determined, is the subject of Finola Austin’s lovely debut novel, Brontë’s Mistress (Atria Books, 2020). Although advantaged in many ways, Lydia has many reasons for complaint when we meet her. Her mother has just died, and her father suffers from senility. At forty-three, she fears the effects of approaching middle age on her beauty and her ability to bear children, the things that have defined and given value to her life. She

Writer David Moloney speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about his story “Counsel,” which appears in Issue 19 of The Common magazine. “Counsel” is an excerpt from Moloney’s novel-in-stories, Barker House, set in a correctional facility in New Hampshire. The book follows nine correctional officers over the course of one year on the job. Moloney discusses his own experiences as a correctional officer in a New Hampshire facility, and the work of turning those complex experiences into stories for the novel. Barker House was published by Bloomsbury in April 2020, so this conversation also includes discussion of what it’s like to publish during a pandemic. David Moloney worked in the Hillsborough County Department of Corrections in New Hampshire, from 2007 to 2011. He received a BA in English and creative writing from the University of Massachusetts Lowell, where he now teaches. Read “Counsel” by David Moloney at thecommononline.org/counsel. Find out more about David Moloney at davidrmoloney.com. The Common is

Roy G. Guzmán’s Catrachos (Graywolf Press, 2020) is a stunning debut collection of poetry that immerses the reader in rich, vibrant language. Described as being “part immigration narrative, part elegy, and part queer coming-of-age story,” this powerful collection blends pop culture, humor, with Guzmán’s cultural experience to explore life, death, and borders both real and imaginary. “This isn’t supposed to be a history book, and yet it is,” says Guzmán in discussing Catrachos. It’s not supposed to be anthropology, sociology, or a testimonial either, and yet it is. “Those are the contradictions, especially when you’re a marginalized writer, your words are always operating on so many different frequencies at once.” “It is not a fallacy that the pulpería owner who wakes up dressed in a tunic of warriors’ pelos, or the milkman pressing his rough hands against the cow’s tectonic body, remembers the skirted boy with an ovarian lipstick for a tongue, the boy who offered a tenth of his knees to the teeth of a country

In order to reclaim her throne and save her people, an ousted queen must join forces with a young warrior in the second book of this"relentlessly gripping, brilliant" epic fantasy series from a breakout author (James Islington). Tau and his Queen, desperate to delay the impending attack on the capital by the indigenous people of Xidda, craft a dangerous plan. If Tau succeeds, the Queen will have the time she needs to assemble her forces and launch an all out assault on her own capital city, where her sister is being propped up as the 'true' Queen of the Omehi. If the city can be taken, if Tsiora can reclaim her throne, and if she can reunite her people then the Omehi have a chance to survive the onslaught. Listen in as I talked to Evan Winter, the author of The Fires of Vengeance (Orbit, 2020). Gabrielle Mathieu is the author of the YA fantasy, Girl of Fire, the first in the Berona’s Quest series, and the historical fantasy Falcon series. You can follow her on Twitter to get updates about new podcasts and mor