Between The Covers

  “One of the first great novels of the year... In a narrative so sharp it could draw blood, Miriam Toews' Women Talking asks an immense, weighty question: How do women who have lived their entire lives in a society that severely limits their agency act when suddenly ne... Read more

“Kenji Liu’s Monsters I Have Been writhes knotty tentacles through textual boneyards," raves Douglas Kearny, "disturbing screenplays, theoretical works, and literatures in their coffined-off sleeps... Sharp, protean, dexterous, and discontent―Liu’s collection shows where... Read more

Host Ken Jones talks with Karen Russell, author of the new book Orange World and Other Stories. Orange World is Karen’s fifth book, following the novel Swamplandia!, the novella Sleep Donation, and two collections of short fiction – St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by W... Read more

  The lyrical prose of Sophia Shalmiyev’s memoir, Mother Winter, splits open like layer after layer of an ornate matryoshka. With a mesmeric voice and scathing vulnerability, Shalmiyev peels her past down to its hollow core: the vacancy left by her absent mother. Across... Read more

  “Magical Negro is unsettlingly new: a book that incisively explores states of black womanhood with astonishing buoyancy and grief. I can’t stop thinking about the songs it sings, songs that feel inevitable and yet unvoiced, complex and yet urgent; poems that are steep... Read more

  “The contemporary Latin American detective novel is a form that uses the individual’s rollicking quest as a means of resistance against repressive structures and the violences they engender. Cristina Rivera Garza’s The Taiga Syndrome, in this stellar translation by Su... Read more

Host Suzanne LeGrande interviews Amy Stanton and Catherine Connors, authors of The Feminine Revolution. Read more

Host Ken Jones talks with Meg Vogt, author of the new book of photographs and poems MYKU: My Portland. “MYKU” is what Meg calls her variations on the haiku form, a poem in three lines of five, seven, and five syllables. The book pairs Meg’s MYKU’s with photographs from ... Read more

Host Ken Jones talks with Paul Skenazy, author of the new novel Temper CA, from Miami University Press. Paul’s essays, stories, and book reviews have appeared in a range of newspapers and magazines, and he’s published critical work on noir writers such as Dashiell Hamme... Read more