New Podcast Location

Book Talk podcasts are available for download at their new home wyplbooktalk.podbean.com

Podcast - Gail Godwin

I was recently invited to be in conversation with one of America's greatest writers Gail Godwin at Parnassus books in Nashville, TN. Ms. Godwin was on tour with her latest novel, Grief Cottage, which is published by Bloomsbury. I had some technical difficulties with my recording microphone, so the sound isn't as good as we normally have on Book Talk, but it is a wonderful conversation with Ms.  Godwin. - Stephen Usery

Podcast - Vickie Fee

Vickie Fee was a long-time journalist in western Tennessee but now calls the Upper Peninsula of Michigan home. To help with home sickness, she began writing the Liv and Di in Dixie Mystery series, and today we'll be talking about the third installment, One Fete in The Grave, which is published by Kensington.

Podcast - Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich

Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich to the program today. Alexandria has received fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts, MacDowell, and Yaddo, and a Rona Jaffe Award. Also, she teaches at Grub Street and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. In this episode, we will talk about her book, The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir.

Podcast - D.J. Donaldson

Harry Freeman talks to Memphian D.J. Donaldson about the latest installment of his New Orleans Forensic Mysteries series starring Andy Broussard and Kit Franklin, Assassination at Bayou Sauvage.

Podcast - Ann Patchett

Ann Patchett has written several books of non-fiction, including 2013's This is the Story of a Happy Marriage, but she is best known for her novels, including Bel Canto which won the PEN/Faulker and Orange prizes, and 2012's State of Wonder. Today we'll be talking about her latest novel, Commonwealth, which was recently released in paperback.

Podcast - Edan Lepucki

Edan Lepucki is a contributing editor for themillions.com and the founder of Writing Workshops Los Angeles. She is also the author of the novella If You're Not Yet Like Me and the New York Times best-selling novel, California. Today we'll be talking about her second novel, Woman No. 17, which was recently published by Crown.

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Podcast - Lisa Wingate

Linda Lloyd talks to bestselling author author Lisa Wingate about her latest hit novel, Before We Were Yours, which looks at the infamous Tennessee Children's Home Society adoption scandal, and how it could have affected the children and their birth and adopted families.

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Podcast - Peter Cooper

Peter Cooper was a long-time music writer for The Tennessean newspaper. In addition to teaching at Vanderbilt University, and being a performing and recording artist, Peter is now a Senior Director, Producer, and Writer at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. Today we'll be talking about his new book, Johnny's Cash and Charley's Pride: Lasting Legends and Untold Adventures in Country Music which is published by Spring House Press.

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Podcast - David Wiesner

David Wiesner has a tremendously successful career as a picture book author and artist, having won three Caldecott Medals. But today we'll be talking about his first foray into graphic novels. It's entitled Fish Girl, and he did the art and co-authored it with award-winner author and scholar Donna Jo Napoli.

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Podcast - Julie Buntin

Julie Buntin is the director of writing programs at Catapult and her work has appeared in The Atlantic, Cosmopolitan, and Slate among others. Today we'll be discussing her debut novel, Marlena. It's the story of a friendship between two teenage girls in rural Michigan and the decades long effects that it has on one of them.

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Podcast - Holly Tucker

Dr. Holly Tucker is a professor at Vanderbilt University in Italian and French, as well in their medical school's Center for Biomedical Ethics & Society. Dr. Tucker is author of Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine & Murder in the Scientific Revolution and Pregnant Fictions: Childbirth & the Fairy Tale in Early-Modern France. Today we will be talking about her most recent book, City of Light, City of Poison: Murder, Magic, and the First Police Chief of Paris, which is published by W.W. Norton. 

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Podcast - C.J. Box

C.J. Box won the Edgar Award for best novel for Blue Heaven in 2008, but he is best known for his long-running and award-winning series featuring Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett. The series began in 2001 with Open Season and today, we'll talk about the seventeenth installment, Vicious Circle.

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Podcast - Linda Williams Jackson

Linda Williams Jackson has many contributions to the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, but today we'll be talking about her debut novel, Midnight Without a Moon. While the book is for readers ages 10 and up, it deals with the all too dangerous realities of growing up African-American in the Jim Crow south of the 1950s.

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Podcast - Michael Knight

Michael Knight's published two novels, The Typist and Divining Rod. He has also published four story/novella collections. Today we'll be talking about his latest, Eveningland which includes six stories and a novella, and it is published by the Atlantic Monthly Press.

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Podcast - Greg Iles

Greg Iles is of course one of the biggest thriller writers in America, having written eighteen books which routinely hit the best- sellers lists. We last spoke with Greg about the first installment of his Natchez Burning trilogy about Mayor Penn Cage fighting against a Klan splinter group called the Double Eagles. We missed chatting with him about the second part, The Bone Tree, but he stopped back by to chat about wrapping it up with book three, Mississippi Blood.

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Podcast - Michael Farris Smith

Mississippi native Michael Farris Smith's first book was the novella, The Hands of Strangers. In 2013 he broke out with the near future ecological dystopian novel, Rivers, which won the 2014 Mississippi Author Award. Today we talk about his new novel, Desperation Road, which is published by Lee Boudreaux books.

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Podcast - Donna Everhart

Linda Lloyd talks with Donna Everhart about her debut novel, The Education of Dixie Dupree. Set in 1969 down in Alabama, eleven year old Dixie Dupree is an expert liar who does so to protect herself and her family. Her mother is from New Hampshire and longs to return north, creating anxiety in the home, as more familial secrets come to the fore and threaten a new generation of damage.

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Podcast - Reed Farrel Coleman

Reed Farrel Coleman is probably best known for his long-running Moe Prager series which he ended in 2014 after nine installments. He has also carried on Robert B. Parker's Jessie Stone series, with his fourth contribution coming out in September 2017. But today we'll be talking about his new series featuring retired long island beat cop, Gus Murphy. The first book in the series Where It Hurts was published in 2016 and is a finalist for the 2017 Edgar Award for best novel. The second title has just been published by G.P. Putnam Sons, and it's called What You Break.

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Podcast - Chanelle Benz

(photo: Christine Jean Chambers)

Chanelle Benz's short stories have appeared in Guernica, Granta.com, The American Reader, and The Cupboard, and she has received an O. Henry Prize. In this edition of Book Talk, we will be talking about her debut collection of stories, The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead, which is published by Ecco/Harper Collins.

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Podcast - Tim Gautreaux

Tim Gautreaux is one of the most respected writers of fiction in America. His novels are The Clearing, The Next Step in the Dance, and The Missing. He's had four short story collections, the newest of which is Signals, which includes new and selected stories.

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Podcast - Susan Rivers

Linda Lloyd interviews Susan Rivers about her debut novel, The Second Mrs. Hockaday. From susanriverswriter.com: 

It's 1865 and the Civil War is over.  For some survivors, however, the suffering is just beginning.  A Confederate field officer walks home from a Union prison to reunite with his teen-aged bride, only to discover that she birthed a child while he was away and buried it somewhere on their South Carolina farm.  Through a narrative that unfolds in letters, diary entries and inquest reports, the wife's painful story is eventually revealed, while the far-reaching repercussions of war are explored.  We see how the damage incurred by Gryffth and Placidia Hockaday has the power to dismantle and transform the lives of ensuing generations, white as well as black, and are witness to the healing powers of love.

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Podcast - Mark Greaney

Mark Greaney back on the program today. Mark is a New York Best Times bestselling author of international thrillers. He co-authored several Jack Ryan novels with Tom Clancy, and has recently concluded his involvement with the series, with his last solo effort being True Faith and Allegiance. Mark is also the author of the Gray Man series starring for CIA goon Court Gentry. Today, we'll talk about book six in that series, Gun Metal Gray.
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Podcast - Chanan Tigay

Chanan Tigay's journalism has appeared in publications including Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal, New York magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle and The Jerusalem Post. He's an assistant professor of creative writing at San Francisco State University, and today we'll be talking about his first book, The Lost Book of Moses: The Hunt for the World's Oldest Bible, which is now available in paperback from Ecco/Harper Collins.

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Podcast - Kevin Wilson

Kevin Wilson's story collection Tunneling to the Center of the Earth won an Alex Award and the Shirley Jackson Award. His first novel, The Family Fang was turned into a major motion picture directed by Jason Bateman, but today we'll be talking about his recently published second novel, Perfect Little World.

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Podcast - Lydia Peelle

Lydia Peelle first appeared on Book Talk to discuss her short story collection Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing, the collection making such an impression to earn her a spot on the National Book Foundation's 5 under 35 list in 2009. Today we'll be talking about her debut novel, The Midnight Cool, set mainly in the years before America's entry into World War One, in which a young man in middle Tennessee makes a living by selling mules to British Army and tries to make a normal life for himself.

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Podcast - Elizabeth McKenzie

Elizabeth McKenzie who is a respected novelist having already published the novel-in-stories, Stop That Girl, and the novels MacGregor Tells the World and the new in paperback, The Portable Veblen, which was named to the longlist for the National Book Award and shortlisted for the 2016 Baileys Prize.

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