Podcast - Lisa Patton - "Yankee Doodle Dixie"

Stephen Usery interviews former Memphian Lisa Patton about her second novel Yankee Doodle Dixie. A sequel to Whistlin' Dixie in a Nor'Easter, Yankee Doodle Dixie finds Leelee Satterfield back in Memphis and having trouble readjusting to home after having run an inn in Vermont for over a year. A new job in radio makes things more interesting than Leelee could have ever imagined.

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.

Podcast - Kevin Wilson "The Family Fang"

Stephen Usery interviews Kevin Wilson about his debut novel, The Family Fang. It's the story of Annie and Buster Fang, the children of noted performance artists who were used extensively in their parents' works and the effect it had on the family dynamic, as well as the career choices they made when they grew up. Both hilarious and heartbreaking, The Family Fang is already one of the most talked about debut novels of the year.

Podcast - Jenny Wingfield "The Homecoming of Samuel Lake"

Stephen Usery interviews Jenny Wingfield about her debut novel, The Homecoming of Samuel Lake. Set in South Arkansas in the mid-1950s, Samuel Lake is a Methodist minister without a church who moves his wife and kids into his in-laws' home, which features a general store up front and an illegal bar out back, and his daughter becomes friends with a neighbor which puts the entire family at risk.

Podcast - Megan Abbott "The End of Everything"

Stephen Usery welcomes back Edgar Award winner Megan Abbott to talk about her new novel The End of Everything. Known as the the Crown Princess of Noir, Abbott has shifted her view to a more contemporary setting as a teenage girl goes missing and we see the effect it has on her family, best friend, school, and community.

Podcast - Adam Ross "Ladies and Gentlemen"

Stephen Usery interviews Adam Ross about his short story collection Ladies and Gentlemen. Coming on the heels of his critically-acclaimed first novel, Mr. Peanut, Ross continues his investigations into the choices we make every day, especially the ones which lead us to hurting others and ultimately, ourselves.

Podcast - Sandra Beasley "Don't Kill the Birthday Girl"

Stephen Usery interviews award-winning poet Sandra Beasley about her memoir, Don't Kill the Birthday Girl. Beasley has suffered from multiple extreme food allergies all of her life, and she looks back at the effect it has had on her and her family, as well as investigating the science behind food allergies and their treatment.

Podcast - Oscar Hijuelos "Thoughts Without Cigarettes"

Stephen Usery interviews Pulitzer Prize winner Oscar Hijuelos about his new memoir, Thoughts Without Cigarettes. It follows his parents' leaving Cuba and moving to New York, his fight with kidney disease and a long hospital stay as a child that alienated him from his mother tongue Spanish, and up until he won the Pulitzer in 1990 for his novel, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. 

Podcast - Bill Loehfelm "The Devil She Knows"

Stephen Usery interviews Bill Loehfelm about his third crime novel, The Devil She Knows. Maureen Coughlin is tough Staten Island waitress coming up on 30 who wants to get her life on track, but when she sees something that she shouldn't have, surviving the next few days means much more than choosing a new career path.

Podcast - David Schmahmann

Stephen Usery interviews David Schmahmann about his two recent novels, The Double Life of Alfred Buber and Ivory From Paradise.

Podcast - Karen White "The Beach Trees"

Stephen Usery interviews Karen White about her latest best-selling novel, The Beach Trees, where a woman in New York becomes guardian of her recently-deceased friend's son and goes to New Orleans and the Mississippi coast in order to untie her friend's secrets.

Podcast - Ace Atkins "The Ranger"

Stephen Usery welcomes back Alabama native and current Mississipian Ace Atkins to discuss his new series about Army Ranger Quinn Colson. The Ranger is the first book, and in it, Sergeant Colson comes back to Jericho in Northern Mississippi for his uncle's funeral, and it seems there are more than a few questions lingering about this county sheriff's death.

Podcast - Kyran Pittman "Planting Dandelions"

Stephen Usery interviews Kyran Pittman about her memoir Planting Dandelions: Field Notes from a Semi-Domesticated Life. It's the story of a young woman from the Canadian Province of Newfoundland whose marriage blows apart as she runs off with a man from Arkansas and finds herself soon raising a family of three boys in Little Rock as she begins her writing career.

Podcast - Jim Shepard "You Think That's Bad"

Stephen Usery interviews National Book Award Finalist Jim Shepard about his newest collection of short stories, You Think That's Bad. Not one to limit himself historically or geographically, Shepard's stories range from Joan of Arc's compatriot Gilles de Rais, to the man responsible for the first Godzilla suit, and black ops scientists who work at Area 51.

Podcast - Rita Mae Brown "Hiss of Death"

Stephen Usery interviews Rita Mae Brown about her newest Mrs. Murphy mystery, Hiss of Death. Strange things are afoot at the new medical center in Crozet, Virginia and our feline detective Mrs. Murphy, corgi Tucker, and the somewhat rotund cat Pewter, all try to help their human Harry track down who is behind a string of suspicious deaths.

Podcast - Daniel J. Sharfstein "The Invisible Line"

Stephen Usery interviews Vanderbilt Law School professor Daniel J. Sharfstein about his book The Invisible Line: Three American Families and The Secret Journey From Black to White. It's a fascinating look at the evolution of America's legal views of people who have both Caucasian and sub-Saharan African ancestors and the implications it had on them when dealing with slavery, reconstruction and Jim Crow.

Podcast - River Jordan "Praying for Strangers"

 
Stephen Usery interviews novelist and playwright River Jordan about her memoir, Praying for Strangers. It's a look at the year when Jordan undertook a New Year's resolution to pray for a different stranger each and every day and the impact that it it made on her normally introverted tendencies.

Broadcast - May 7, 2011 - River Jordan

Tune into Book Talk this week as Stephen Usery interviews novelist and playwright River Jordan about her memoir, Praying for Strangers. It's a look at the year when Jordan undertook a New Year's resolution to pray for a different stranger each and every day and the impact that it it made on her normally introverted tendencies. River Jordan on this week's Book Talk, Saturday evening at 6:00 p.m. on FM89.3 WYPL Memphis.

Podcast - Mark Childress "Georgia Bottoms"

Stephen Usery interviews Mark Childress about his new novel Georgia Bottoms. Georgia Bottoms is a special woman who provides a special service to the important men of Six Points, Alabama, all while trying to maintain her family's stately home with her mother's slide in to dementia, complicated by old-school racism, and her brother's small-time criminal inclinations making things more and more difficult.

Podcast - Keith Thomson "Twice a Spy"

Stephen welcomes Keith Thomson back to the program to talk about his new comedic international thriller Twice a Spy. Picking right up after Once a Spy, Charlie Clark and his former-spy and Alzheimer-patient father Drummond are searching for a nuclear weapon to save both one life in particular and many others in general.

Podcast - Les Standiford and Joe Matthews "Bringing Adam Home"

Stephen Usery interviews Les Standiford and Joe Matthews about their book Bringing Adam Home: The Abduction that Changed America. It's the story of the kidnapping and murder of six year-old Adam Walsh in Hollywood, Florida in 1981, the bungled investigation and the movement to bring the plight of missing children to national attention.

Podcast - Kim Severson "Spoon Fed"

Stephen Usery interviews New York Times Atlanta bureau chief, Kim Severson. Her memoir Spoon Fed:How Eight Cooks Saved My Life is new in paperback, and it looks back at her career as a food and dining writer in Alaska, San Francisco, and New York, as well as her family's food traditions rooted in her mother's Italian heritage.