Between the Covers

  Rob Schlegel has a voice you’d follow into the dark woods, knowing full well it’s hard, awful, daily, plain, living truth you’re running toward. The speaker in this book is a heartbreaker of a storyteller—a synesthesiac of mixed feelings, bad news, and wordsmithery. I fe... Read more

  Xuan Juliana Wang’s remarkable debut introduces us to the new and changing face of Chinese youth. From fuerdai (second-generation rich kids) to a glass-swallowing qigong grandmaster, her dazzling, formally inventive stories upend the immigrant narrative to reveal a new e... Read more

Host Ken Jones talks with Lawrence Shainberg, author of the new book Four Men Shaking: Searching for Sanity with Samuel Beckett, Norman Mailer, and My Favorite Zen Teacher from Shambhala Publications. Lawrence is author of the memoir Ambivalent Zen: One Man's Adventures on ... Read more

  “Ayşe Papatya Bucak's stories are wide-ranging and capacious, formally playful, and moving.  They speak on behalf of women who are subject to fate and the tides of history. They speak of overcoming, of falling prey, of overcoming again.  They convey history's full force,... Read more

  "In this memoir, Brandon Shimoda, an American poet of Japanese descent, tells the story of his family, starting with his grandfather, who was transformed into an 'enemy alien' by World War II; and in doing so, tells a universal story of the horrors of war both physical a... Read more

Michelle Peñaloza’s ambitious and remarkable debut searches for a place to anchor in spite of a rancorous world where we might have “began as crumbs ferried in the beak of waxwings.” These poems read mythic yet contemporary in their burst of bloom-song and bright blood stro... Read more

  "Wilk's debut novel is a strange, vivid thought experiment. In a near-future Berlin, scientist Anja lives in an eco-settlement on an artificial mountain . . . Anja’s quiet, shy analysis turns a critical eye to our future, asking daring questions of how the desire to chan... Read more

  Host Jenna Yokoyama spoke with two members of the team behind the They Called Us Enemy (Top Shelf, 2019), a graphic novel that tells the biographical story of George Takei's experience with Japanese American concentration camps. Featured are graphic artist Harmony Becker... Read more

  “Max Porter's innovative hybrid of fairy tale, fable, and myth cunningly evokes the freewheeling fantasies of children at play. . . .The result is a puckish celebration of imagination and free spirits rising above the buzz of societal scolds and the anxieties of parental... Read more