In this episode, we chat with debut novelist Donna Gordon. While she has a long background as a poet and short story writer, she ventured into writing a novel when two ideas began swirling around in her head.

Her novel, What Ben Franklin Would Have Told Me, tells the story of two characters, Lee and Tomás, who seem to have nothing that connects them and yet they do. It’s a novel that deals with some heavy topics in a way that doesn’t leave you despondent but instead you feel strangely hopeful. It was recently named one of "45 Books We're Excited About from Indie Presses in 2022" by the Independent Book Review. Donna’s book hits bookstore shelves today.

Books Mentioned in This Episode:

1- What Ben Franklin Would Have Told Me by Donna Gordon

2- Lesser Saints by Donna Gordon

3- The Little School by Alicia Partnoy

4- You Can't Drown the Fire: Latin American Women Writing in Exile edited by Alicia Partnoy

5- The Vampire Knitting Club by Nancy Warren

6- Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

7- Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

8- Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

9- Six Days in Rome by Francesca Giacco

Readers have heard of the big 5 publishing companies that include Harper Collins, and Penguin/Random House. But there is something really special about university presses. Unfortunately, they don’t often get the attention they deserve. Sarah Munroe, Marketing Manager and Acquisitions Editor at West Virginia University Press, is our guest this week who talks to us about what makes a university press special and how they operate differently from the big 5.

One of the unique things about them is that they can and do feature more diverse voices and topics than what major publishers are willing to put out there. Former guest Neema Avashia, author of Another Appalachia, was published by WVU Press and she is just one of the diverse voices that readers can find at smaller publishers. WVU Press has made some pretty important headlines lately after their author Deesha Philyaw’s book The Secret Lives of Church Ladies became a finalist for the National Book Award in 2020.

While we definitely book nerd out with Sarah, we hope you stay tuned to what was supposed to be her 3 in the Third Degree where we asked only one question but learned a ton about her abiding love for dinosaurs and how they were part of her wedding ceremony with her husband.

Books Mentioned In This Episode:

1- Another Appalachia by Neema Avashia

2- Bad Tourist by Suzanne Roberts

3- The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw

4- Deer Season by Erin Flanagan

5- Even As We Breathe by Annette Sanuooke Clapsaddle

6- Ghosts of New York by Jim Lewis

7- Foote: A Mystery Novel by Tom Bredehoft

8- Lioness by Mark Powell

9- Curing Season by Kristine Langley Mahler

10- Kindred by Octavia Butler

11- Broken Earth trilogy by NK Jemisin

12- Moon Witch, Spider King by Marlon James

13- Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James

14- The Kill by Richard House

15- City of Brass by S. A. Chakraborty

16- The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Greene

17- Eragon by Christopher Paolini

Podcast mentioned:

1- Strong Sense of Place hosted by Melissa Joulwan and David Humphreys

Namrata Patel has been writing for 20 years, but it wasn’t until the pandemic that she had more time to work on it. She had always been interested in dual culture and challenges of the diaspora, specifically Indians who had moved to the United States. The isolation of COVID really brought home how lonely life can be if you don’t feel like you fit anywhere. Her debut novel The Candid Life of Meena Dave follows a photojournalist who inherits an apartment from a stranger. The apartment in Back Bay Boston surrounds her with a close-knit network of other Indian-Americans. Meena comes to learn more about herself and her culture, as well as understands the gift of found family and friendship through this experience.

The book comes out June 1 but those book lovers who have Amazon Prime can download her book for free during the month of May with their First Reads program. If you subscribe to Amazon Prime, you are able to download 1 free book a month from their First Reads selections which are editor favorites hitting bookshelves the following month. Just search First Reads in the search bar.

Books Mentioned In This Episode:

1- A Room With a View by E. M. Forster

2- Six Days in Rome by Franscesca Giacco

3- My Italian Bulldozer by Alexander McCall Smith

4- The Candid Life of Meena Dave by Namrata Patel

5- Books by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

6- Leonard: My Life as a Cat by Carly Sarosiak

7- The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman

8- The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music by Dave Grohl

9- Word by Word by Kory Stamper

10- Tidepool by Nicole Willson

11- A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket

13- Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

14- Persuasion by Jane Austen

16- FBI/US Attorneys series by Julie James

17- Into Thin Air by John Krakauer

Movies mentioned--

ET: The ExtraTerrestrial (1982)

Shows mentioned--

Lovecraft Country (HBO)

This week we talk to our first mystery series author: Jess Montgomery. The first book in her 4-book Kinship mystery series is The Widows which introduces us to Lilly Ross, a wife and mother in 1920s rural Ohio whose husband Daniel, the county sheriff, is killed in the line of duty.  The town council asks Lilly to take over the sheriff’s position for the rest of the term and the first crime she wants to investigate is the murder of her husband.  Lilly Ross is inspired by a real Ohio woman named Maud Colins who also became one of the first female sheriffs in the United States after her husband, also the sherrif, was murdered.

Jess’ most recent novel, The Echoes, was published this past March and follows Lilly and the townspeople of Kinship, OH as they reckon with ghosts of World War 1 some 10 years later.  Many of the men served. While some, like Lilly’s brother, died in The Great War, many others came back with emotional scars that affect their personal choices and the town at large.

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

1- The Widows by Jess Montgomery (Kinship series)

2- The Echoes by Jess Montgomery (Kinship series)

3- Shit Cassandra Saw by Gwen Kirby 

4- Deer Season by Erin Flanagan

5- How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith

6- The Office of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans

Our guest this week, Court Stevens, is outreach director for a public library and the author of 6 young adult suspense novels.  Her most recent, We Were Kings, came out this past February and is her contemporary version of an Agatha Christie locked room mystery where our main character, Nyla King’s dysfunctional family and juicy secrets means everyone is a suspect of a murder that took place 20 years earlier.

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

1- Ruta Sepetys books

2- David Arnold books

3- I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak

4- The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

5- Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak

6- The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

7- Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis

8- Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

9- The June Boys by Court Stevens

10- We Were Kings by Court Stevens

11- Faking Normal by Court Stevens

12- When Stars Are Scattered by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed

13- The Golden Couple by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen

14- Nothing To See Here by Kevin Wilson

15- Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss

16- On Animals by Susan Orlean

Movies mentioned--

1- Knives Out (2019)

2- The Green Mile (1991)

3- The Life of David Gale (2003)

Our guest this week, Chelsea Hofmann, loves to feel her pulse quicken and gets excited by the idea that anything could happen. She lives her life spontaneously so her love of the thriller genre with its twists, turns, and surprise endings fit her personality just fine.

After finishing college and moving to Southern California with her husband, she wanted to reconnect with her love of reading books that she had as a child but none of the book clubs she tried felt like a good fit. So she started a virtual book club on the Instagram platform called Thrillers By The Bookclub. As that virtual club became became popular with members all over the globe, people started asking her about in-person book clubs. Chelsea nurtured this idea, encouraging book lovers to start their own Thrillers By The Book Club chapters. There are now over 27 chapters and more are still forming. We chat with Chelsea in this episode about all the thrilling books she reads.

Books mentioned in this episode:

1- Boxcar Children series

2- Nancy Drew series

3- Hardy Boys series

4- Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

5- And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

6- Nothing Important Happened Today by Will Carver

7- His & Hers by Alice Feeney

8- In My Dreams I Hold a Knife by Ashley Winstead

9- The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewel

10- Survive the Night by Riley Sager

11- This Might Hurt by Stephanie Wrobel

12- The Bone Houses by Emily Lloyd-Jones

13- Outside by Ragnor Jonasson

14- The Mist by Ragnor Jonasson

15- Snowblind by Ragnor Jonasson

16- An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good by Helena Tursten

17- An Elderly Lady Must Not Be Crossed by Helena Tursten

18- The Series of Unfortunate Events series by Lemony Snickett

TV series:

1- The Series of Unfortunate Events (Netflix 2017-2019)

April is National Poetry Month and whether you love poetry or not, you’ve likely heard of poet laureates. You may not know what that distinction means, however. There are all kinds of poet laureates—of countries, of states, of cities, and of even smaller areas. A poet laureate is appointed by a head of government for her or his accomplishments and may publish poems for special occasions. It is an honor that comes with a lot of flexibility.

In this week’s episode, we chat with Luisa A. Igloria, a native of the Philippines who came to the US to attend graduate school and is one of only four poet laureates of color for the state of Virginia. She was appointed to the position right as Covid took over our lives in 2020. She talks about the three cornerstone projects she wanted to launch in order to make poetry a larger part of the community.

You can find Luisa on instagram at @poetslizard.

To see the Poetry Postcard Project and Young Poets in the Community, go to her website at www.luisaigloria.com.

Books and Poetry mentioned--

1- Maps for Migrants and Ghosts by Luisa A. Igloria

2- "Song of Meridians" by Luisa A. Igloria

3- "Blue Bucket" by Naomi Shihab Nye

4- Cartography by Luisa A. Igloria

5- "Vacation" by Wendell Berry

6- Sapiens: A Graphic History Vols 1 and 2 by Yuval Noah Harari, David Vandermeulen, Daniel Casanave

7- Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari

8- Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari

9- Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

10- Rise: A Pop History of Asian America from the Nineties to Now by Jeff Yang, Phil Yu, and Philip Wang

11- Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World by Anthony Doerr

12- All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

13- Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

In the Trump and post-Trump era, talking heads have been trying to understand Appalachia. After the publishing of Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance, a book about Appalachia that many people love to hate, a whole slew of books by diverse Appalachian writers came out that showed other versions of this complicated region of the country. Neema Avashia’s new book of essays, Another Appalachia: Growing Up Indian and Queer in a Mountain Place really demonstrates those contradictions and strong sense of place.

Neema is a middle school teacher who lives in Boston, but she grew up in a small West Virginia town that was built up around the chemical industry that used the state’s coal to power its plants. Her parents migrated from India and Neema had what she felt was a magical childhood. But as much as she loved her hometown and home state, as she became an adult she had to to come to terms with what home means when you are Indian-American, Hindu, vegetarian, and queer growing up in a place that is overwhelming white, meat and potatoes, and Christian. Her essays ask interesting questions about what it means to love a place that doesn’t always love you back.

You can find Neema on instagram at @avashia and at her author website www.neemaavashia.com.

Books Discussed in this Episode:

1- Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place by Neema Avashia

2- The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Natsukawa

3- Drowned Town by Jayne Moore Waldrop

4- Death in the Air: The Story of a Serial Killer, the Great London Smog, and the Strangling of a City by Kate Winkler Dawson

5- Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson

Articles mentioned--

What Does the Image of the Cat Signify in Japanese Literature? by Dee Das bookriot.com/cats-in-japanese-fiction/

Our guest this week is author and podcaster, Maggie Smith. Maggie’s second act in her professional life is as a novelist. She spent over 25 years running a business but when it began to feel boring and she needed to use her creativity, she attended a writer’s workshop where the instructor asked everyone to write down something they could never write about; Maggie wrote about mother daughter relationships. This idea transformed itself into a novel about where mothers/ daughters/ and mentors intersect titled TRUTH AND OTHER LIES.

One of the thematic ideas of the book is how important heroes are—they inspire us and make us feel a sense of empowerment. But sometimes we move into hero worship, where we fail to see that our heroes sometimes have big glaring unbelievably unethical behaviors that we could see if we opened our eyes. Of course, the blindness that keeps us from seeing the truth about our heroes is similar to the blindness that keeps us from seeing our mothers, or parents in general, in a favorable light. The novel covers a lot of ground in a fast-paced story.

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

1- Truth and Other Lies by Maggie Smith

2- The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger

3- The Beatryce Prophecy by Kate DiCamillo (audiobook)

4- Woman on Fire by Lisa Barr

5- Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson (audiobook and text)

6- The Christie Affair by Nina de Gramont

7- The Mystery of Mrs. Christie by Marie Benedict

Podcasts Mentioned--

1- Hear Us Roar, hosted by Maggie Smith

2- Books Are My People, hosted by Jennifer Caloyeras

Movies mentioned--

1- Chinatown (1974)

This week’s guest, Angela Jackson-Brown, is an award-winning novelist, poet, and playwright. She is also a professor at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana who completed her MFA at Spalding University in Louisville where she is also a member of the creative writing graduate faculty.

Her most recent novel, When Stars Rain Down, was published in 2021 and is a historical fiction story set in 1930s Georgia, and has been nominated for several awards. Angela also has a new novel coming out in July called The Light Always Breaks set in post WW 2 Washington, DC that features political and romantic intrigue between a high powered interacial couple. These are stand alone novels but what is cool is that these books’ characters are in the same fictional universe so readers get a chance to reconnect with characters they may have met before.

Angela talks to us about how she uses fiction to write about experiences in her life she wished she’d had, why she started writing plays, and the first book she read as a child that made a big impression on her (and this will surprise you).

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

1- When Stars Rain Down by Angela Jackson-Brown

2- The Light Always Breaks by Angela Jackson-Brown

3- The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music by Dave Grohl

4- Drinking From a Bitter Cup by Angela Jackson-Brown

5- Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

6- Roots by Alex Haley

7- The Color Purple by Alice Walter

8- The Prophets by Robert Jones Jr.

9- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

10- The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place: The Mysterious Howling by Maryrose Wood

11- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

12- We Are Not Like Them by Christine Pride and Jo Piazza

13- Girl at War by Sara Nović

14- True Biz by Sara Nović

Movies mentioned

1- Child's Play (1988)

2- The Conjuring (2013)