#bookpodcast

Melissa Payne is the bestselling, award-winning author of The Secrets of Lost Stones and Memories in the Drift. For as long as she can remember, Melissa has been telling stories in one form or another—from high school newspaper articles to a graduate thesis to blogging about marriage and motherhood. But she first learned the real importance of storytelling when she worked for a residential and day treatment center for abused and neglected children. There she wrote speeches and letters to raise funds for the children. The truth in those stories was piercing and painful and written to invoke a call to action in the reader: to give, to help, to make a difference. Melissa’s love of writing and sharing stories in all forms has endured. She lives in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains with her husband and three children, a friendly mutt, a very loud cat, and the occasional bear.

Learn more at www.melissapayneauthor.com. 

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Burt Weissbourd is a novelist, screenwriter, and producer of feature films. He was born in 1949 and graduated cum laude from Yale University, with honors in psychology. During his student years, he volunteered at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris and taught English to college students in Thailand. After he graduated, he wrote, directed, and produced educational films for Gilbert Altschul Productions. He began a finance program at the Northwestern University Graduate School of Business but left in his final semester to start his own film production company in Los Angeles. He managed that company from 1977 until 1986, producing films including Ghost Story starring Fred Astaire, Melvyn Douglas, John Houseman, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr, and Raggedy Man starring Sissy Spacek and Sam Shepard, which The New York Times called "a movie of sweet, low-keyed charm." In 1987, he founded an investment business, which he still runs. Burt’s novels include the thrillers Danger in Plain Sight, The Corey Logan Trilogy (Inside Passage, Teaser and Minos), and In Velvet, which is set in Yellowstone National Park. Rough Justice, the sequel to Danger in Plain Sight, is out now. 
For more visit, burtweissbourd.com.

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Vancouver author Jen Sookfong Lee joins the podcast to talk about her latest book Superfan. Jen uses her lifelong obsession with pop culture as a lens to explore family, grief, the power of female rage, Asian fetish, and what it costs to resist the trap of being a “good Chinese girl.” I pines over Andrew McCarthy and Jen muses over whether Kanye West will get a second chance in the court of public opinion.

Listen to a previous interview with Jen here:
The Shadow List, Season 2, Episode 8

Books and Resources discussed:
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
The White Lotus, HBO
Normal People by Sally Rooney
Superfan by Jen Sookfong Lee
The End of East by Jen Sookfong Lee

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Megan Frampton writes historical romance under her own name and romantic women's fiction as Megan Caldwell. She likes the color black, gin, dark-haired British men, and huge earrings, not in that order. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and kid. 

You can find her at meganframpton.com at facebook.com/meganframptonbooks/ and @meganf.

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Lisa has been a paparazzi photographer, an aid worker in Kenya, a script doctor in LA, and a literary publicist at HarperCollins in Toronto. Her stories have been published in The Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, Narrative, The Idaho Review, and others. She holds a BA in Philosophy from The University of Western Ontario, a graduate degree in Portrait Photography from The London Institute, and an MFA from the University of Memphis. She has lived all over the world, but currently resides in Southern California, where she teaches fiction writing at Chapman University.

Learn more at lisacupolo.com.

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Corie Adjmi is the author of the short story collection Life and Other Shortcomings, which won an International Book Award, an IBPA Benjamin Franklin award, and an American Fiction Award. Her prize-winning essays and short stories have appeared in dozens of journals and magazines, including HuffPost, North American Review, Indiana Review, Medium, Motherwell and Kveller. She’s been featured in Travel and Leisure, New York Magazine, The Hollywood Times, Parade and BuzzFeed. Her forthcoming book is a novel titled The Marriage Box, was named a Must-Read New Book of 2022 on Katie Couric Media, and is due out in August 2022. When she is not writing, Corie does volunteer work, cooks, draws, bikes and hikes. She and her husband have five children and a number of grandchildren, with more on the way. She lives and works in New York City.

Learn more at corieadjmi.com. 

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Rebecca Hanover is the New York Times bestselling author of THE SIMILARS duology. After graduating from Stanford University with a BA in English and drama, Rebecca joined the writing team of the CBS daytime drama GUIDING LIGHT, where she earned an Emmy Award. Still, she never lost her love of books—particularly YA. She now writes Young Adult as well as adult novels full-time from her home in San Francisco, where she enjoys matcha lattes and a complete lack of seasons. When she isn’t writing, she can be found in a yoga class or reading anything Dav Pilkey with her husband and three kiddos. Her latest novel is The Last Applicant. 

Learn more at: rebeccahanover.com

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Henriette Lazaridis' novel TERRA NOVA is forthcoming from Pegasus Books in Fall 2022. She is the author of the best-selling novel THE CLOVER HOUSE. Her short work has appeared or is forthcoming in publications including ELLE, Forge, Narrative Magazine, The New York Times, New England Review, The Millions, and Pangyrus, and has earned her a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artists Grant. Henriette grew up in the Boston area as the only child of Greek expats, speaking Greek as her first language. Devoted to storytelling since her childhood bedtime stories from the Odyssey, Henriette earned degrees in English literature from Middlebury College, Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar, and the University of Pennsylvania. Having taught English at Harvard, she now teaches at GrubStreet in Boston. She founded The Drum Literary Magazine and currently runs the Krouna Writing Workshop in northern Greece. She writes the Substack newsletter The Entropy Hotel, about athletic and creative challenges at henriettelazaridis.substack.com. F

Learn more at henriettelazaridis.com.

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My dear friend Alison Schmelke joins the podcast, perhaps a bit reluctantly,  and together we interview our idol author and blogger Catherine Newman. We reminisce about Catherine's column Ben & Birdy and how it got us through the early days of parenthood.  Catherine discusses her poignant, hilarious and nostalgic novel, We All Want Impossible Things. It is the story about two best friends Edi and Ash and Edi's last days in hospice.

Follow Catherine Newman:

Instagram: @catherinewman
Website:  catherinenewmanwriter

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As a child, Elizabeth Winthrop Alsop, along with her five brothers, was raised to revere the tribal legends of the Alsop and Roosevelt families. Her parents’ marriage, lived in the spotlight of 1950s Washington where the author’s father, journalist Stewart Alsop, grew increasingly famous, was not what either of her parents had imagined it would be. Her mother’s strict Catholicism and her father’s restless ambition collided to create a strangely muted and ominous world, one that mirrored the whispered conversations in the living room as the power brokers of Washington came and went through their side door. Through it all, her mother, trained to keep secrets as a decoding agent with MI5, said very little. In this brave memoir, the author explores who her mother was, why alcohol played such an important role in her mother’s life, and why her mother held herself apart from all her children, especially her only daughter. In the author’s journey to understand her parents, particularly her mother, she comes to realize that the secrets parents keep are the ones that reverberate most powerfully in the lives of their children.

Learn more at elizabethwinthropalsop.com

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Steve Phillips is a national political leader, bestselling author, and columnist. He is the author of The New York Times bestseller Brown Is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority and the forthcoming book How We Win the Civil War: Securing a Multiracial Democracy and Ending White Supremacy for Good.

He is a columnist for The Guardian and The Nation, and an opinion contributor to The New York Times. He is also the host of “Democracy in Color with Steve Phillips,” a color-conscious podcast on politics. He is the founder of Democracy in Color, a political media organization dedicated to race, politics and the multicultural progressive New American Majority.

Phillips is a graduate of Stanford University and Hastings College of the Law and practiced civil rights and employment law for many years. Phillips has appeared on multiple national radio and television networks including NBC, CNN, MSNBC and C-SPAN.

Learn more at stevephillips.com

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Geoff and Amy's trip to Europe Part Two. They are back home and reflecting on their recent trip to Paris. They discuss four books set in the City of Light including one book that pushes the podcast's PG rating! 

Books and Resources Discussed:

Ticket to Paradise, movie 2022
Earful Tower https://theearfultower.com/
Marie Antoinette, movie 2006
Henry and June by Anaïs Nin
Murder in Clichy by Cara Black
Jacqueline in Paris: A Novel by Ann Mah
The Margot Affair (debut novel) by Sanaë Lemoine
Atonement by Ian McEwan

Follow Red Fern Book Review:

Website and to leave a voicemail: https://www.redfernbookreview.com
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Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/redfernbookreview/
Newsletter: https://www.redfernbookreview.com/newsletter

Gary Goldstein is an award-winning writer for film, TV, and the theatre with more than thirty produced screen and stage credits. The New York native and longtime L.A. resident has also been a contributing film reviewer and arts feature writer for the Los Angeles Times since 2007. His first novel, the romantic comedy "The Last Birthday Party," won a 2022 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award for Excellence in Fiction. His second novel, the family drama "The Mother I Never Had," will be published October 2022 by Hadleigh House. 

Learn more about Gary at GaryGoldsteinLA.com

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Louise Marburg studied design at the Kansas City Art Institute, is a graduate of New York University’s Gallatin Division, and holds an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University’s School of the Arts.  Her stories have appeared in Narrative, Ploughshares, The Louisville Review, The Carolina Quarterly, The Pinch, The Chicago Quarterly Review, Post Road, and many other publications.  A native of Baltimore, she lives in New York City with her husband, the artist Charles Marburg.

Learn more at: Louisemarburg.com

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Lynne Reeves Griffin is a nationally recognized expert on relationships and family life. Writing as Lynne Reeves, her novel of domestic suspense, The Dangers of an Ordinary Night was described by The New York Times as “a sensitive examination of a dysfunctional family and a full-of-secrets community that claims to be seeking the truth.” Her next novel, Dark Rivers to Cross will be published November 8, 2022.

Lynne is also the author of the acclaimed novels, Girl Sent Away (SixOneSeven Books, 2015),  Sea Escape (Simon & Schuster, 2010), and  Life Without Summer (St. Martin’s Press, 2009). She’s written the nonfiction guides Let’s Talk About It: Adolescent Mental Health (SixOneSeven Books, 2015) and Negotiation Generation: Take Back Your Parental Authority Without Punishment (Penguin, 2007).

Lynne has taught family studies at the undergraduate and graduate levels, and has acted as the visiting scholar of education at Ngee Ann Polytechnic in Singapore and consulted with schools in China about preventive mental health. She teaches writing at Grub Street Writers, and is a developmental editor for writers of fiction and nonfiction.

Lynne has acted as the prose writer-in-residence at the Chautauqua Institution, moderated panels at national conferences such as the Muse & The Marketplace Conference, the Boston Book Festival, and the 2020 & 2022 Key West Literary Workshops.

Her short stories, essays, are articles have appeared in Solstice Literary Magazine; Chautauqua; The Drum Literary Magazine; Brain, Child; The Writer; School Library Journal; Parenting; Boston Globe; Writer Unboxed; Boston Herald; Psychology Today; Huffington Post, and more.

She lives outside Boston, Massachusetts with her family.

To learn more, visit lynnereeves.com

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Sarah McCraw Crow is the author of the novel The Wrong Kind of Woman (MIRA Books). She is a longtime magazine writer, editor, and book reviewer, and her articles, essays, and reviews have run in BookPage, The Christian Science Monitor, Prime Number, Family Circle, Ladies’ Home Journal, Parents, Parenting, American Baby, Baby Talk, and Working Mother, among others. Her short fiction has won prizes from So to Speak and Good Housekeeping, and her stories have been honored as contest finalists by Press 53, New Letters, Yemasee, and Stanford Alumni Magazine.

As a child, Sarah lived in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Texas as her dad finished his medical training and served in the military, but she did most of her growing up in Virginia. For the past twenty years, she has called New Hampshire home. She lives with her husband and three almost-grown children on an old farm, where she gardens in the summer and snowshoes in the winter, if there’s snow. And although she’s a transplanted Southerner, she has come to realize that temperamentally, she’s a northern New Englander.

She is a graduate of Dartmouth College (AB, history), Stanford University (MA, journalism), and Vermont College of Fine Arts (MFA in writing), and she’s a member of Grub Street, Boston, and the National Book Critics Circle.

Learn more at https://sarahmccrawcrow.com

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Friend and music teacher Cynthia Friesen returns to the podcast to discuss two books by French authors: Fresh Water for Flowers by Valérie Perrin and Painting Time by Maylis de Kerangal. We discuss the art of translation and whether decorative art is an art or a science. Cynthia pulls up to the piano and plays a song.

Listen to my previous episode with Cynthia

The Prague Sonata, Season 1, Episode 14

Books and Resources Discussed

The Prague Sonata by Bradford Morrow
Duo Lingo app
Painting Time by Maylis de Kerangal
Mend the Living by Maylis de Kerangal
Fresh Water for Flowers by Valérie Perrin
Birth of a Bridge by Maylis de Kerangal
The Cook: A Novel by Maylis de Kerangal
Three by Valérie Perrin
All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

Follow Red Fern Book Review:

Website and to leave a voicemail: https://www.redfernbookreview.com
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Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/redfernbookreview/
Newsletter: https://www.redfernbookreview.com/newsletter

Season 3 of the Red Fern Book Review kicks off with a review of one of the biggest books of the year: The Candy House by Jennifer Egan. Geoff is back on the podcast with a new job title. Amy and Geoff decide whether or not The Candy House is sci fi and if it surpasses the book's precursor: A Visit from the Goon Squad.

Books and Resources Discussed:
 
The Candy House by Jennifer Egan
Dog (2022), Apple TV
Casual (2015), Netflix
Julia (2022) HBO
Julia (2022) CNN
My Life in France by Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan

Follow Red Fern Book Review:

Website and to leave a voicemail: https://www.redfernbookreview.com
Instagram: @redfernbookreview
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/redfernbookreview/
Newsletter: https://www.redfernbookreview.com/newsletter

Kelly J. Ford is the author of Real Bad Things (summer 2022) and the award-winning Cottonmouths, a novel of “impressive depths of character and setting” according to the Los Angeles Review, which named it one of their Best Books of 2017. An Arkansas native, Kelly writes about the power and pitfalls of friendship, the danger of long-held secrets, and the transcendent grittiness of the Ozarks and their surrounds. She lives in Vermont with her wife and cat. Kelly is also a co-host of the Writer’s Bone podcast Happy Hour episodes. Learn more at KELLYJFORD.COM

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In this episode we have brought back Tony Thompson. The new books discussed this episoder are Elena Knows by Claudia Peneiro and translated by Frances Riddle and Pure Life by Eugene Martin.  When picked we had no idea how much the two books had in common! The Horse's Mouth by Joyce Cary is the old classic for this month.

Side topics include: what books should go on your best of list, why not to play contact sports, and how we look at books now as opposed to then.

Elena Know -From the ‘Hitchcock of the River Plate’ (Corriere della Sera) comes Piñeiro’s third novel, a unique tale that interveaves crime fiction with intimate tales of morality and search for individual freedom.
Pure Life -A harrowing, intense, powerful new novel that reads like a classic, from one of the great writers of his generation.
The Horse's Mouth - The Horse's Mouth, the third and most celebrated volume of Joyce Cary's First Trilogy, is perhaps the finest novel ever written about an artist.

 
Interview with Claudia Peneiro by her translator Frances Riddle
https://southwestreview.com/a-mundane-odyssey-an-interview-with-claudia-pineiro/