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Excerpt of When It’s Over, by Barbara Ridley
Paris, January 1940 By the time Lena reached the British embassy, her feet ached, the sky was dark and overcast, and a cold wind whipped her face. She climbed the familiar stone steps and pushed...
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Barbara Ridley: The TNB Self-Interview
So, are you sitting comfortably? Yes, thank you. Then I’ll begin. Your novel, When It’s Over, is set in World War II. Does the world really need another WWII/Holocaust novel? Certainly, a lot of...
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Excerpt of This Is How It Begins, by Joan Dempsey
“I’m wracking brain, Izaac. Who is Stanley Brozek? This name is ringing a bell, but I cannot place it.” Izaac tapped the paper lightly against his thigh. “I don’t know. Come.” He tossed the newspaper...
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Joan Dempsey: The TNB Self-Interview
This is Fresh Air. I’m Terry Gross. My guest today is the acclaimed author, writing teacher and online entrepreneur whose debut novel, This Is How It Begins, is the best novel I’ve ever read in my...
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Excerpt of The House of Erzulie, by Kirsten Imani Kasai
Adelaide Randolph does not meet me at the airport. Instead, she sends the intern, Owen, to fetch me. A scrappy little man-boy who looks as if his mother has just finished scrubbing him up for church...
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Kirsten Imani Kasai: The TNB Self-Interview
The House of Erzulie is, if I may be frank, chock-full of atrocities and lurid trivia. Is it really necessary to include this level of detail? It’s as though you enjoy making your readers squirm. You...
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Excerpt of The Italian Party, by Christina Lynch
2. Michael and Scottie stood out from the moment they strolled down the gangplank of the sleek ocean liner that carried them and their possessions to Italy. They seemed to have stepped right out of an...
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Christina Lynch: The TNB Self-Interview
Your novel The Italian Party is about someone trying to manipulate an election using some very sneaky methods. Are you about to be subpoenaed? I don’t think so, but it’s a pretty weird coincidence....
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Paradise (Not Yet) Lost: A Conversation with Jaimee Wriston Colbert
In Vanishing Acts, Jaimee Wriston Colbert’s new novel and sixth work of fiction, the author takes us to the Big Island of Hawai’i, where she grew up body-surfing, listening to stories about the...
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Natalia Sylvester: The TNB Self-Interview
Your book is dedicated To Ceci. Who’s that? She’s my mom. So why not say, To Mom? My sister and I have always called my parents by their first names. It’s always been the most natural thing for us—I...
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Excerpt of Whirlaway, by Poe Ballantine
As an illustration of what I was up against at Napa State Hospital, what they used to call an asylum for the criminally insane, my fellow inmate Arn Boothby, an angry three-hundred-pound paranoid...
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Poe Ballantine: The TNB Self-Interview
The last time we talked we learned you were born in a log cabin and the illegitimate son of the Queen of England, what good that did anyone is hard to say, but I see you have another book coming out....
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Chaya Bhuvaneswar: The TNB Self-Interview
What, in four words or less, is your debut short story collection all about? Lust. Revenge. Betrayal. Justice. Do you think it’s unusual to have ‘unflattering’ portrayals of women and queer people...
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A Conversation with DeWitt Henry
Sweet Marjoram, your new book, is done up in shades of green, on a velvet-soft matte cover. It’s very tactile, this book. There is this sensation of the flora, moist and juicy, stretching up from...
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Two Stories
Bus Ride We were driving on the bus. I had stolen a curtain rod from Target and was feeling proud despite having still payed twenty some dollars for a curtain and another rod. I texted Henry. He was...
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Vile As I Am
THERE ARE GREAT FIRES that burned everything down that everyone still talks about at all the ruined remaining coffee shops. It’s all everyone still talks about. There are no more wild animals in the...
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Prize
Meg walked home from work through the shortcut of her apartment complex and saw a fire engine out front of building two, where Jodi lived. Jodi was older and had a habit of standing outside with her...
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Memories of my friend Alex, who is dead.
My friend Alex is dead. He was 34 when he died. ****** At our 7th grade talent show, there was a tap-dancer, a magician, and someone who hula-hooped. The talent show seemed like a standard middle...
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Wadi al-Salam
Our first month over there in Najaf, while we were keeping the morning watch, me and Judson would hold our M16s out level with that well-dark sky and count down. The horizon was deep as a mineshaft,...
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1953: I Saw the Light
On the morning of January 1, 1953, country music star Hank Williams was found dead in the back of his 1952 Cadillac in Oak Hill, West Virginia. His energy dispersed. The Light traveled to 50,000-watt...
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