Anyone who’s ever had the pleasure of taking a class with Steve Almond, read his novel All the Secrets in the World, or gobbled up Dear Sugars for that matter, knows that Almond practices what he describes as radical empathy….
Christine Simon’s delightful debut novel, The Patron Saint of Second Chances, is a story of survival. Welcome to the southern Italian town of Prometto, a “going nowhere place.” The population is dwindling, there is little to no tax revenue coming…
Meng Jin’s debut, Little Gods (Custom House, 2020), is an elegant, haunting novel that lingers like an eerie song. What starts on a grand stage—in a maternity ward near Tiananmen Square, where a massacre is about to unfold—becomes an intimate…
Long before I was relearning fifth-grade math at our local “faux-school,” I was a fan of writerly podcasts. I devoured audio craft lessons and author interviews with the hopes they would crack open plot issues, shed light on the mysteries…