WYPL Book Talk

Sloane Crosley - The Clasp

Sloane Crosley has enjoyed a great deal of success for her humorous essays, including being a finalist for The Thurber Prize. Her collections, I Was Told There Would Be Cake and How Did You Get This Number were both NY Times bestsellers. Today, we'll be talking about her debut novel, The Clasp, which was inspired by the Guy de Maupassant short story, "The Necklace."

Lauren Groff - Fates and Furies

Lauren Groff has been on Book Talk twice before to talk about her previous novels, The Monsters of Templeton and Arcadia. Today we'll be discussing her latest novel Fates and Furies, which has already been named a finalist for the National Book Award.

Matthew Guinn - The Scribe

When last in our studio, Matthew Guinn and I talked about his debut novel, The Resurrectionist, which went on to be a finalist for the Edgar Award for best first novel. W.W. Norton has recently published his second novel, The Scribe, where a madman terrorizes the African-American citizens of Atlanta in the early 1880s.

Garth Stein - A Sudden Light

Playwright and best-selling novelist Garth Stein recently stopped by the Book Talk studios. Garth is probably best known for his smash best-seller, The Art of Racing in the Rain. We start the conversation with his most recent novel, A Sudden Light, which was recently released in paperback by Simon and Schuster.

Dennis Bryon - You Should Be Dancing: My Life with the Bee Gees

Dennis Bryon first tasted pop chart success as the drummer for the Welsh blue-eyed soul band The Amen Corner. A few years later, he joined another band and got to travel the world and enjoy incredible success, which he writes about in his memoir You Should Be Dancing: My Life with the Bee Gees.

Andre Malan Milward - I Was a Revolutionary

Andrew Malan Milward, who is the editor-in-chief of Mississippi Review and professor of creative writing at the University of Southern Mississippi. His first collection of short stories, The Agriculture Hall of Fame won the Juniper Prize, and his second collection, I Was a Revolutionary, was recently published by Harper.

Tiffany Quay Tyson - Three Rivers

Linda Lloyd talks to Mississippi native Tiffany Quay Tyson about her debut novel Three Rivers. Melody Mahaffey is unsatisfied as a keyboard player in a Christian pop band. She returns home to Mississippi as her mother abandons Melody's dying father and handicapped brother. A local man Obi tries to outrun a terrible mistake, and as the rivers rise, the stories converge.

John Scalzi - The End of All Things

John Scalzi is a journalist, blogger and writer of non-fiction, and he has enjoyed a great deal of success as a science fiction novelist. He's written several stand-alone novels, like the Hugo Award-winning Redshirts, but today we talk about the sixth entry into his Old Man's War series, The End of All Things.

Adam Johnson - Fortune Smiles

 

Credit: Tamara Beckwith

Adam Johnson back to the program today. Adam was last on Book Talk for his novel, The Orphan Master's Son which would go on to win the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and well as the Dayton Peace Prize. He's also previously published the novel Parasites Like Us, and the short story collection, Emporium. Today we discuss his success as well as his new collection of short stories, Fortune Smiles, which is published by Random House.

Barry Wolverton - The Vanishing Island

Barry Wolverton enjoyed a good deal of success for his debut novel for younger readers, Neversink. On this episode, we talk about the first book in his new series Chronicles of the Black Tulip. Book one is The Vanishing Island, and it's published by Walden Pond Press.

Amy Stewart - Girl Waits with Gun

Amy Stewart might be best known as a writer of lively non-fiction about the natural world, with several books including Flower Confidential, Wicked Plants, and The Drunken Botanist, but today we talk about her fiction debut, Girl Waits with Gun, which is published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Katy Simpson Smith - The Story of Land and Sea

 

Katy Simpson Smith earned a Ph.D in history from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and an MFA from Bennington. She's published one non-fiction work, We Have Raised All of You: Motherhood in the South, 1750-1835, and last year her debut novel, The Story of Land and Sea was released, and is now available in paperback from Harper Perennial.

Carrie Bebris - The Suspicion at Sanditon

Carrie Bebris is the author of the seven book series of mystery novels starring Elizabeth and Mister Darcy from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, the newest of which is The Suspicion at Sanditon, set in the world of Sanditon, the unfinished novel Austen had had worked on just prior to her death.

Jefferson Bass - The Breaking Point

Our guest for this edition is Jon Jefferson, one half of the Jefferson Bass writing team. Together with Dr. Bill Bass, who founded the famous Body Farm forensic research facility at the University of Tennessee, Jon has published two works of nonfiction, and nine novels featuring forensic genius Dr. Bill Brockton. The newest of which is The Breaking Point.

Susan Elizabeth Phillips - Heroes Are My Weakness

 

Susan Elizabeth Phillips is the only writer to the Romance Writers of America favorite book award five times. She's also been elected to their hall of fame and has received their lifetime achievement award. She's written the popular Wynette, Texas and Chicago Stars series, but she stopped by the Book Talk studios to talk to Linda Lloyd about her latest stand-alone novel, Heroes Are My Weakness, which is new in paperback.

Susan Crandall - The Flying Circus

Susan Crandall was last on to talk about her breakthrough best-selling novel, Whistling Past the Graveyard. This time, we'll be discussing her new historical novel, The Flying Circus, which is published by Gallery Books.

Martin Clark - The Jezebel Remedy

The Honorable Martin Clark is a circuit court judge from the Commonwealth of Virginia, but we'll only be talking about the law as it is in the confines of his fourth novel, The Jezebel Remedy, which is published by Knopf.

Ace Atkins - The Redeemers

Ace Atkins is a former newspaper journalist and current writer of crime fiction. He started off with a series about the New Orleans private eye Nick Travers. Then he moved on to a quartet of critically acclaimed novels based on historic true crimes. Currently, he is continuing the Spenser series for the Robert B Parker estate, as well as writing his own series based in the northern Mississippi county of Tibbeha, the newest of which is The Redeemers.

Dolen Perkins Valdez - Balm

After reading This Republic of Suffering by Harvard president and historian Drew Gilpin-Faust, a book which chronicles the Civil War’s legacy of death and destruction, New York Times-bestselling novelist Dolen Perkins-Valdez decided her next novel should investigate the possibilities of healing the personal and national trauma caused by the war. Balm looks not at the soldiers’ suffering but at the very real pain of widows, former slaves, and others.

Harrison Scott key - The World's Largest Man

Harrison Scott Key is a humorist whose writings have appeared in The New York Times, Reader's Digest, and The Oxford American. Harper has recently published his memoir, The World's Largest Man.