New Books in Literature
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.
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1726
John Jodzio, “Knock Out” (Soft Skull Press, 2016)
John Jodzio, oft and rightly compared to George Saunders, is lauded by Chuck Klosterman as “the best best kind of modern fiction writer: a thematic traditionalist who feels totally new.” It’s no wonder this hilarious and profound Minneapolis writer has...
51 min
1727
Amy Wright, “Cracker Sonnets” (BrickRoad Poetry...
My grandmother, who’s now ninety-eight, lived most of her life in a little town in Southwestern Ohio called Waynesville. The town has reinvented itself in the last few years as a destination for antiquers wiling to pay top-dollar for what she might cal...
47 min
1728
Mark R. E. Meulenbeld, “Demonic Warfare: Daoism...
Mark R. E. Meulenbeld’s new book looks closely at the relationship between vernacular novels and vernacular rituals in Ming China. Focusing on a particular novel called Canonization of the Gods (Fengshen yanyi),
60 min
1729
John Alba Cutler, “Ends of Assimilation: The Fo...
In Ends of Assimilation: The Formation of Chicano Literature (Oxford University Press, 2015), John Alba Cutler provides a literary history of Chicano/a literature that tracks the fields formation and evolution from the 1960s forward.
62 min
1730
Bert Ashe, “Twisted: My Dreadlock Chronicles” (...
What’s missing from contemporary discussions of aesthetics and representation within the natural hair movement? Bert Ashe generously offers a response in Twisted: My Dreadlock Chronicles, an unprecedented account of black male identity as seen through ...
40 min
1731
Fox Frazier-Foley and Erin Elizabeth Smith, “Po...
Readers gather around: Political Punch: Contemporary Poems on the Politics of Identity (Sundress Publications, 2016) is an anthology for a new era. As Cathy Park Hong states at the end of her New Republic essay,
49 min
1732
Pi-Ching Hsu, “Feng Menglong’s ‘Treasury of Lau...
The Treasury of Laughs was compiled by Feng Menglong in the 1610s. It includes more than 700 humorous skits and jokes from elite and popular sources, rewriting some of them to give the volume a kind of aesthetic and stylistic coherence.
58 min
1733
Ramez Naam, “Apex” (Angry Robot, 2015)
In the fictional battles between humans and machines, the divide between good and bad is usually clear. Humans, despite their foibles (greed, impulsiveness, and lust for revenge, to name just a few), tend to find redemption,
25 min
1734
Kristen Harnisch, “The California Wife” (She Wr...
Sara Thibault and her new husband, Philippe Lemieux, grew up in Vouvray, amid the French vineyards that dot the Loire Valley. But when the phylloxera blight of the 1870s devastates their families business, Philippe decides to try his luck in California...
48 min
1735
Janice A. Lowe, “LEAVING CLE: Poems of Nomadic ...
“Poems of Nomadic Dispersal” This latter phrase in the title of Janice A. Lowe‘s new book–LEAVING CLE: Poems of Nomadic Dispersal (Miami University Press, 2016)– has hung around me, following me through my home,
44 min
1736
Rodrigo Toscano, “Explosion Rocks Springfield” ...
What is explosion? What does language look like when it mimics a gas leak, a bang, or rubble? What does language look like when it orbits other sounds, mediums, and musicality? How can it then react to and converse with itself?
47 min
1737
Robert S. Boynton, “The Invitation-Only Zone: T...
The inspiration for Robert S. Boynton‘s new book began with a photograph in the New York Times in October 2002. In the photo, two middle-aged Japanese couples and a single woman descending from a plane at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. The headline read,
65 min
1738
Adam Rakunas, “Windswept” (Angry Robot, 2015)
Padma Mehta, the hero of Adam Rakunas’ Philip K. Dick Award-nominated novel Windswept, is part Philip Marlow, part Norma Rae, part Jessica Jones. Theres no question that Mehta needs the skills of a union leader, noirish sleuth and action hero.
39 min
1739
Diane McKinney-Whetstone, “Lazaretto” (Harper, ...
A hundred years before Ellis Island became a processing center for immigrants wishing to enter the United States, Philadelphia had the Lazaretto, a quarantine hospital where every ship entering the harbor from June to September had to stop while those ...
56 min
1740
Laini Giles, “The Forgotten Flapper: A Novel of...
A ghost haunts the New Amsterdam Theatre, near Times Square in New York. She wears a green outfit in flapper style, and she’s just a little annoyed to realize that no one is scared of her, even though she mostly rearranges the scenery rather than clank...
47 min
1741
Matthew Quirk, “Cold Barrel Zero” (Mulholland B...
The next time you head to the beach or settle in for a long plane ride, you may not want your imagination filling with images of rogue operatives planting traps or terrorist organizations plotting against unsuspecting victims.
45 min
1742
Minsoo Kang, trans. “The Story of Hong Gildong”...
Minsoo Kang‘s new translation of The Story of Hong Gildong (Penguin Classics, 2016) is a wonderful rendering of a text that is arguably the “single most important work of classic…prose fiction of Korea.” Though Hong Gildong is a popular figure in mod...
64 min
1743
Marguerite Reed, “Archangel” (Arche Press, 2015)
Marguerite Reed‘s Archangel (Arche Press, 2015) introduces a hero not often found at the center of science fiction: a mother, who takes cuddling responsibilities as seriously as she does the fate of her planet. Of course,
21 min
1744
Weina Dai Randel, “The Moon in the Palace” (Sou...
In four thousand years of Chinese history, Empress Wu stands alone as the only woman to rule in her own name. She died in her eighties after decades of successful governance, but her sons could not hold the kingdom she established for them and the dyna...
58 min
1745
Eubanks, Abel and Chen, eds., “Verge: Studies i...
Verge: Studies in Global Asias is an inspiring and path-breaking new journal that explores innovative forms for individual and collaborative scholarly work. I had the privilege of talking with Charlotte Eubanks, Jonathan E. Abel,
63 min
1746
PJ Manney, “(R)evolution” (47North, 2015)
PJ Manney‘s fast-action novel (R)evolution (47North, 2015) has all the ingredients of a Hollywood thriller: a terrorist attack using nanotechnology, a military-industrial conspiracy, a scientist who augments his brain – plus, of course, romance,
33 min
1747
Patrick Madden, “Sublime Physick: Essays” (U of...
After I read Patrick Madden‘s fascinating new collection of essays, entitled Sublime Physick: Essays (University of Nebraska Press, 2016), I found myself struggling with the best way to describe it. Madden’s subjects range from the nature of time to sp...
55 min
1748
Mary Doria Russell, “Epitaph: A Novel of the O....
The Wild West of Zane Grey and John Wayne movies, with its clear divisions between good guys and bad guys, cowboys and Indians (never called Native Americans in this narrative), bears little resemblance to the brawling,
63 min
1749
James D. Stein, “L.A. Math: Romance, Crime, and...
Romance. Crime. Mathematics. These things do not go together. Or do they? James D. Stein thinks they do, and he admirably shows us how in his wonderful collection of stories L.A. Math: Romance, Crime, and Mathematics in the City of Angels (Princeton Un...
57 min
1750
Will Buckingham, “Sixty-Four Chance Pieces: A B...
Will Buckingham‘s new book is a wonderful cycle of stories that are inspired by and speak back to the Chinese Yijing, the Classic of Changes. Sixty-Four Chance Pieces: A Book of Changes (Earnshaw Books, 2015) collects 64 stories,
58 min