Podcast - Robert Olen Butler "A Small Hotel"

Stephen Usery interviews Pulitzer-Prize winner Robert Olen Butler about his new novel, A Small Hotel. It's the story of the end of a marriage between Michael and Kelly Hays, but travels back in time to their first meeting, their childhoods, and other points along their histories that let us know how their marriage came to be so troubled.

Podcast - Jesmyn Ward "Salvage the Bones"

Stephen Usery interviews Jesmyn Ward about her second novel, Salvage the Bones. It's August of 2005, and as the hurricane season begins heating up, a Mississippi Gulf Coast teenage girl named Esch tries to get by from day to day, as her brother raises pit bulls for fighting, her father obsesses about the coming storms, and the world at large seems to have little to no sympathy for the rural poor. 

Podcast - Clyde Edgerton "The Night Train"

Stephen Usery interviews Clyde Edgerton about his new novel, The Night Train. It's 1963 in a small North Carolina town where two teenagers, one black, one white, strike up a small friendship over music. One wants to become a jazz pianist in order to leave the segregrated south, and the other wants to lead his white bandmates in learning James Brown's Live at the Apollo note for note.

Podcast - Preston Lauterbach "The Chitlin' Circuit and the Road to Rock 'n' Roll"

Stephen Usery interviews Memphian Preston Lauterbach about his first book, The Chitlin' Circuit and the Road to Rock 'n' Roll. The Chitlin' Circuit doesn't just look at the evolution of African-American musical styles in the mid-twentieth century, but it also looks at the money men behind the business of show and all the hurdles they had to overcome to ensure some good rockin' tonight.