WYPL Book Talk

 

 

Melissa Ginsburg teaches English and creative writing at the university of Mississippi, having received her MFA from the prestigious Iowa Writers' Workshop. As a writer, she is a poet and a novelist having published the collection of poems, Dear Weather Ghost, and Ecco/Harper Collins has recently published her debut novel, Sunset City.

 

Megan Miranda has enjoyed a lot of success in writing novels for young adults like Hysteria, Fracture, and The Safest Lies. Today we'll be talking about her first novel for the adult market, All the Missing Girls, about a woman returning to her small North Carolina hometown to face a new mystery and some old lies.

Rheta Grimsley Johnson has received the Ernie Pyle Memorial Award and the National Headliner Award for her newspaper work. She's also written five books, including a biography of Charles Schultz and a trio of memoirs: Poor Man's Provence: Finding Myself in Cajun Louisiana, Enchanted Evening Barbie and the Second Coming, and in this episode, she and Linda Loyd will be talking about the newest of the three, The Dogs Buried over the Bridge: A Memoir in Dog Years.

Richard Zacks has been writing lively non-fiction for over 20 years now with books like History Laid Bare, An Underground Education, The Pirate Coast, and Island of Vice. This time around, Richard takes an in-depth look at Mark Twain's final international lecture tour in Chasing the Last Laugh: Mark Twain's Raucous and Redemptive Round-the-World Comedy Tour.

John Hart is a former criminal defense attorney who turned into one of America's most popular and respected writers of literary crime fiction. 2006 saw the publication of his debut novel, The King of Lies, his next two novels 2007's Down River and 2009's The Last Child each won the Edgar Award for Best novel, and Iron House followed in 2011. 2016 sees the publication of his fifth novel, Redemption Road, which is published by Thomas Dunne Books.

Kate DiCamillo to the program today. She is one of America's most successful writers of children's literature, having won two Newberry Medals, one for  and the other for Flora and Ulysses.  Her novels and chapter books for younger reader are perennial best sellers. And her most recent novel, Raymie Nightingale, debuted at number one on the New York Times best-sellers list for children.

 

Anna Drezen and Todd Dakotah Briscoe are actors and entertainers in New York who had day jobs as concierges at hotels in Manhattan. They started a blog recounting some of the weird and hilarious interactions with hotel guests called How May We Hate You, and now there is a companion book which is filled with these interactions, as well as brand new exclusive content not available online. 

 

William Joyce is an extraordinarily talented writer and artist. His illustrations have appeared in multiple publications, including several covers for the New Yorker. He's worked extensively in film and television, and his picture books and novels for younger readers, including the best-selling Guardians of Childhood series, have captured imaginations all around the world. Today we'll be talking about his newest book, Ollie's Odyssey, where a young boy and his favorite stuffed animal become separated, and they must undertake perilous journeys to find each other again.

Stuart Gibbs is a veteran screenwriter who has moved to the world of fiction for younger readers. He started off with the Last Musketeer series, and is now juggling three different series, Fun Jungle, Spy School, and Moonbase Alpha. Today Stuart and I will talk about the second entry into the Moonbase Alpha mystery series, Spaced Out.

Adam Silvera's debut novel More Happy Than Not was first published in 2015 to glowing reviews from seemingly every publication, it hit the New York Times Bestsellers list for Young Adult fiction, and also made the New York Times list of the 100 notable books of the year. More Happy Than Not just came out in paperback on SOHO Teen.

V.E. Schwab writes for the YA market as Victoria Schwab. Her first novel for adults, Vicious, was published in 2013 under the name V.E. Schwab. In 2015 she introduced us to worlds of magic stacked onto London with the book A Darker Shade of Magic. Tor Books has recently published the second book in the series, A Gathering of Shadows, which debuted on the New York Times Best Sellers list.

Jeff Crook is a veteran writer of fantasy novels, but in 2011 he broke into crime fiction scene with The Sleeping and the Dead, a novel starring a heroin addicted crime scene photographer who got her hands on a haunted camera. 2016 sees the publication of the second book in the series, The Covenant, published by Minotaur.

Chris Offutt has written short stories, novels, screenplays, as well as three memoirs. In this episode, we'll be talking about the most recent of these memoirs, in which he examines the impact of his own father's literary work, My Father the Pornographer. 

Julia Claiborne Johnson is a former journalist for Glamour and Mademoiselle. She's recently published her hilarious debut novel, Be Frank with Me, in which a publishing industry assistant is dispatched to Los Angeles to keep an eye on a reclusive genius author and her unusual son, Frank.

Jesse J. Holland is a political reporter for the Associated Press in Washington. He's written two books, the first, Black Men Built the Capitol: Discovering African-American History in and around Washington, D.C. and today we'll be discussing his latest history title, The Invisibles: The Untold Story of African-American Slaves in the White House, which is published by Lyons Press.

Katy Simpson Smith received rave reviews for her debut novel set in coastal Carolina during the Revolutionary War, The Story of Land and Sea, when it was published in 2014. 2016 welcomes the publication of her second novel, Free Men, set in the 1780s in what would become the state of Alabama.

 

 

 

Stephen Usery talks to Rashod Ollison about his memoir, Soul Serenade: Rhythm, Blues & Coming of Age Through Vinyl. Ollison, the critic for The Virginian Pilot, and veteran of The Dallas Morning News, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Baltimore Sun, writes candidly about growing up gay in a working-class African-American family in Arkansas and the music that his father gave him when his parents divorced.

Michael Bible's work has appeared in Oxford American, The Paris Review Daily, Al Jazeera America, and ESPN: The Magazine. In this episode, we'll talk about his novella Sophia, where a Mississippi man of god is having all sorts of problems.

Bob Mehr is the music writer for The Commercial Appeal. He has also written for the Chicago Reader, Spin, and The Village Voice. Da Capo Press has just published his book, Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements, about the legendary 1980s indie rock band who were known for shambolic performances, incredible songs, and self-destruction.

Mark Greaney has been at the top of best-seller lists for co-authoring several of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan novels, as well as writing several Ryan novels after Mr. Clancy's passing. However, Mark got his publishing start with his own original series about burned CIA operative, Court Gentry. Back Blast is the fifth installment in the series, which has Gentry returning to America to find out why the CIA wants him dead.