Kaveh Akbar’s second collection, Pilgrim Bell: Poems, takes its readers on a spiritual journey of disavowal, fiercely attendant to the presence of divinity where artifacts of self and belonging have been shed. Akbar responds with prayer as an act of devotion to dissonance – the infinite void of a loved one’s absence, the indulgence of […]
In Asylum: A Personal, Historical, Natural Inquiry in 103 Lyric Sections, Jill Bialosky considers the oppositions that govern us: our reason and unreason, our need to preserve and destruct, building a narrative sequence that examines her nascent calling as a writer; her sister’s suicide and its still unfolding aftermath; the horror unleashed by World War […]
Kaitlyn Greenidge's Libertie: A Novel follows the coming of age of Libertie Sampson in a free Black community in Reconstruction-era Brooklyn, as she tries to parse what freedom means for a Black woman. The story, rich with historical detail, is inspired by the life of one of the first Black female doctors in the United […]
The Island of Missing Trees: A Novel by Elif Shafak tells a story of young love, war, and the trees of a place, rooted on the ground beneath and inextricably entwined within our histories. Moderated by Ellen Book, Miami-Dade Public Library System.
In Bryan Christy’s thriller In the Company of Killers: A Novel, Tom Klay is an investigative reporter leading a double life as a CIA spy. But when his closest friend is murdered, his carefully constructed double life unravels – and the deeper he digs the more he realizes that everything he thought he knew about […]
In A Line to Kill: A Novel, former Detective Inspector Daniel Hawthorne and his sidekick, author Anthony Horowitz, are invited to an exclusive literary festival. They never expected to find themselves in the middle of a murder investigation there – or to be trapped with a cold-blooded killer. Moderated by author and editor Otto Penzler.
The changing lives of the teenage girls at the center of We Run the Tides: A Novel are a mirror to the story of pre-tech boom San Francisco. Vendela Vida’s book is a portrait of a place on the brink of radical transformation. Moderated by essayist and critic Maris Kreizman, host of The Maris Review […]
In telling the story of the Echota family, Brandon Hobson's The Removed: A Novel also offers a meditation on family, grief, home, and the power of stories on both a personal and ancestral level. Moderated by author Kelli Jo Ford.
The Butterfly Lampshade: A Novel is Aimee Bender’s poignant tale of a mother, a daughter, mental illness, and the continuously shifting barrier between the mind and the world. Moderated by Mitzi Rapkin, host of the podcast First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing.
In Ha Jin's A Song Everlasting: A Novel, famous Chinese singer Yao Tian, in the U.S. on a state-supported tour, takes a private gig in New York to pick up extra cash for his daughter’s tuition fund. There’s nothing to it – until the government finds that supporters of Taiwan’s secession sponsored the event, placing […]
Paras, short for “Perestroika,” is a racehorse at a track west of Paris. When she finds the door of her stall open, she wanders off all the way to the great city, finding adventure and an unlikely cast of characters with which to share it. From Jane Smiley, Perestroika in Paris: A Novel celebrates curiosity, […]
In O Beautiful: A Novel, Jung Yun tells the story of Elinor Hanson, a fortysomething former model struggling to reinvent herself as a freelance writer, returns on assignment to the town in North Dakota where she spent her unhappy childhood. It's decades later, yet Elinor finds her past intertwining with the story she’s trying to […]