fiction/non/fiction

Latest Episodes:

S7 Ep. 15: Bookstores Against Bans: Lauren Groff on Opening The Lynx in Florida Jan 11, 2024

Show notes

Novelist Lauren Groff joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss the new independent bookstore she and her husband are planning in Gainesville, Florida. The Lynx, which Groff aims to open this spring, will feature banned books, an act of resistance in a state where more than half of school districts have seen book banning activity over the past two years. Groff reads from her recent novel, The Vaster Wilds.

To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/

This episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf.

Lauren Groff

The Monsters of Templeton

Delicate Edible Birds

Florida

The Lynx, A Bookstore in Gainesville, FL | Indiegogo

Others:

"Gainesville author Lauren Groff hopes new downtown bookstore will 'link' community together” by Lillian Lawson | The Gainesville Sun

"A new report shows how corrosive book banning is. Novelist Lauren Groff is fighting back" by Emily St. Martin | Los Angeles Times

"A Look Ahead to 2024: Laws and Book Bans in Florida, Iowa, and Illinois | Censorship News" | School Library Journal

"Spineless Shelves: Two Years of Book Banning" | PEN America

"Thousands of books were banned in Central Florida in 2023. Here's what to expect in 2024" by Danielle Prieur | NPR

"Nearly 700 books, including celebrity bestsellers, banned in Orange County, Florida" | PEN America

“Why Toni Morrison’s Books Are So Often the Target of Book Bans” by Olivia Waxman |Time |January 31, 2022

“Florida County Bans 673 Books, Including ‘Paradise Lost,’ ‘The Color Purple’ to Comply With State Law” by Alec Dent | The Messenger

“Book Bans Are Rising Sharply in Public Libraries” by Elizabeth A. Harris and Alexandra Alter | The New York Times

Florida Freedom to Read Project

Hernan Diaz

Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 5, Episode 12: “Intimate Contact: Garth Greenwell on Book Bans and Writing About Sex”

Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 6, Episode 52: “Brooklyn Public Library’s Leigh Hurwitz on Helping Young People Resist Censorship”

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S7 Ep. 14: Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, and the Model Minority Myth: Prachi Gupta on the Rise of Indian American Presidential Candidates Jan 04, 2024

Show notes

As Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy vie for the Republican presidential nomination, Indian American reporter and memoirist Prachi Gupta joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan put these politicians into historical perspective. She discusses how the myth of Indian American exceptionalism has been used to further white supremacy and suppress other minority groups, and also analyzes how Haley and Ramaswamy perpetuate the misguided notion of the U.S. as a meritocracy. Gupta discusses the role that class and caste has played in immigration from India; how gender affects diaspora politics; the appeal of assimilation and hierarchy; and the performance of authenticity. She reads from her debut memoir, They Called Us Exceptional: And Other Lies that Raised Us.

This episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf.

Prachi Gupta

They Called Us Exceptional
AOC: Fighter, Phenom, Changemaker
“Vivek Ramaswamy and the lie of the ‘model minority’” | Vox
“Kamala Harris and the Complicated, Burdened Joy of Representation” | Jezebel

Others:

Latest political polls from 538
“The mystery of Vivek Ramaswamy’s rapid rise in the polls” by Steven Shepard, August 12, 2023 | Politico
“Who won the third Republican debate? Winners and losers after things got nasty in Miami” by Karissa Waddick |USA Today
“Despite Nikki Haley’s back and forth, the Civil War was about slavery” by Ben Brasch | The Washington Post
“Nikki Haley's latest campaign ad focuses on her husband Michael's service with the National Guard. Meet their family.” by Talia Lakritz | Business Insider
“Trump referred to Haiti and African nations as 'shithole' countries” by Ali Vitali, Kasie Hunt and Frank Thorp V, January 11, 2018 | NBC News
“Vivek Ramaswamy takes questions about his Hinduism — one Bible verse at a time” by Alex Tabet, Katherine Koretski and Emma Barnett | NBC News
Fiction/Non/Fiction, Season 5 Episode 6, “Nadifa Mohamed on Writing the Convoluted Terrains of Immigration”
South Asian Digital Archive
Desi Wall of Shame
“Ramaswamy Pushes Fringe Idea About Jan. 6 at Town Hall in Iowa” by Anjali Huynh | The New York Times
Rupi Kaur

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S7 Ep. 13: Holiday Archives: Danez Smith on Poetry, Blackness, and Friendship Dec 28, 2023

Show notes

In this holiday re-broadcast of an episode from April 23, 2020, acclaimed poet Danez Smith discusses the role friendship plays in their most recent collection of poetry, Homie. Smith talks to Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell about the isolating effect COVID-19 has had on black communities, using space on the page inventively, and writing about money. This episode is presented in conjunction with the Loft Literary Center’s literary festival, Wordplay, which in 2020 was a virtual event.

To hear the full episode, subscribe to the Fiction/Non/Fiction

podcast through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite

podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen

by streaming from the player below.

This episode was produced by Andrea Tudhope.

Guests:

● Danez Smith

Selected

readings for the episode:

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what was said on the bus stop: a new poem by Danez Smith

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my president

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VS podcast, from the Poetry Foundation, hosted by Danez Smith and Franny Choi

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Others

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Corona Correspondences: #28 by Danielle Evans (The Sewanee Review)

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Review: ‘Homie,’ a Book of Poems That Produces Shocking New Vibrations by Pahrul

Sehgal

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Frank O’Hara

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As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

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Poem for Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer by June Jordan

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Recordings of June Jordan from the Radcliffe

Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University Digitized recordings and more

digitized recordings

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‘Feet’ and ‘Spoon’ from Catalog

of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay

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Mirrors: Stories of

Almost Everyone by Eduardo Galeano

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S7 Ep. 12: The Best Books Machine: Lydia Kiesling on Making the Lists—or Not Dec 21, 2023

Show notes

Novelist and critic Lydia Kiesling joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss the creation and the spirit of year-end book lists. She talks about list culture getting its start at the small, online literary magazine, The Millions, and its eventual spread to seemingly every media outlet. The three grapple with the significance of inclusion on these lists, whether they really sell more books, and the ethics of their construction. Kiesling reads from her new novel, Mobility.

This episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf.

Lydia Kiesling:

The Golden State

Mobility

Others:

Books We Love | NPR

A Year in Reading: 2023 | The Millions

100 Notable Books of 2023 | New York Times

The 10 Best Books Through Time | New York Times

A Year in Reading: 2023 | The Millions

“Crime,” by Marilyn Stasio, August 19, 2001| New York Times

“‘Terrorist’ – to Whom? V.V. Ganeshananthan’s novel ‘Brotherless Night’ reveals the moral nuances of violence, ever belied by black-an-white terminology” by Omar El Akkad, Jan. 1, 2023 | New York Times

Molly Stern

The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding

The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

The Collected Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Stand by Stephen King

A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley

The Poisonwood Bibleby Barbara Kingsolver

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Ali & Nino by Kurban Said

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

1984 by George Orwell

Pod Save America(podcast)

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S7 Ep. 11: The Free and the Freed: Tracy K. Smith on Liberty Dec 14, 2023

Show notes

Pulitzer-Prize winning writer Tracy K. Smith joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss the difference between being “free” and being “freed.” She suggests that citizens of the United States fall into one category or the other. The first appear to have descended from those who were always free. The second descend from those who were acted upon by those in the first category. Smith talks about the research she’s done to understand the roles her forefathers played in this country’s armed conflicts and the connections between the military and our historical understanding of freedom. She reads from her new collection of essays, To Free the Captives.

This episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf.

Tracy K. Smith

Others:

Fiction/Non/Fiction, Season 4 Episode 9: “Tracy K. Smith and Kawai Strong Washburn on Biden’s Debts to His Base (Especially Black Women)”
The 1619 Project
Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture
W.E.B. Du Bois
“The Glaring Contradiction of Republicans’ Rhetoric of Freedom” by Ronald Brownstein |The Atlantic, July 8, 2022
“Trump’s Second-Term Plans: Anti-‘Woke’ University, ‘Freedom Cities’” by Andrew Restuccia | The Wall Street Journal

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S7 Ep. 10: Chicago in Verse: Taylor Byas on Writing About Her Hometown Dec 07, 2023

Show notes

Poet Taylor Byas joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss writing about Chicago, which she does in her Maya Angelou Book Award-winning collection of poetry, I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times. She talks about growing up in the country’s most segregated city, and considers its long traditions of Black, working-class, and ethnic literature, including writers like Nate Marshall, Lorraine Hansberry, Patricia Smith, and Jose Olivarez. She explains how moving away has given her a new perspective on Chicago’s politics, history, crime, and beauty. She reads a poem (“You from “Chiraq”?”) addressing how outsiders view the city, as well as from a crown of sonnets about the South Side.

This episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf.

Taylor Byas

Others:

Richard Wright
Saul Bellow
Gwendolyn Brooks
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
Nelson Algren
Stuart Dybek
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
Nate Marshall
1919 — Eve L. Ewing
Patricia Smith
Promises of Gold by Jose Olivarez
Carl Sandburg
Chi-Raq (film, dir. Spike Lee)
Gordon Parks
Brandon Johnson

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S7 Ep. 9: American Farce: Timothy Schaffert on the Literary Parallels for the House GOP Clusterf**k Nov 30, 2023

Show notes

Novelist Timothy Schaffert joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss how the concept of farce relates to today’s GOP-controlled House of Representatives. Schaffert describes the lack of self-awareness in both fictional and real-life characters, including politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz, and analyzes how it renders them comical, absurd, and maddening to watch. He talks about what observers can learn from those behaviors, and also reads from his forthcoming book, The Titanic Survivors Book Club.

This episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf.

Timothy Schaffert

Others:

The Gashlycrumb Tinies by Edward Gorey
Fiction/Non/Fiction Season One, Episode Three: “The Power of Facebook: How Big is Too Big?”
“The Library of Babel” by Jorge Luis Borges
Fiction/Non/Fiction Season Three, Episode Nine: “All the President’s Henchmen: Susan Choi and Garrett Graff on the Citizens of the Swamp”
Tartuffe by Molière
Beetlejuice
Airplane!
Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco
“The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon” by Karl Marx
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Jean Cocteau

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S7 Ep. 8 Indigenous Imaginations: Native American Writers on Their Communities Nov 22, 2023

Show notes

On Thanksgiving, the show returns to an episode with playwright Rhiana Yazzie and novelist Brandon Hobson, who joined hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell in February 2019 to discuss Native literature. These interviews were recorded in the wake of viral images showing Covington Catholic students disrespecting Native activist Nathan Phillips in Washington, D.C. The episode turns the focus away from the MAGA hats and back to the Indigenous Peoples March and Indigenous writing.

This episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf and Andrea Tudhope.

Rhiana Yazzie

● Nancy

● Ady

● Queen Cleopatre and Princess Pocahontas

● New Native Theatre

Brandon Hobson

● Deep Ellum

● Desolation of Avenues Untold

● Where the Dead Sit Talking

● The Removed

● The Storyteller

Others:

● Mekko and Barking Water by Sterlin Harjo

● Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann

● Stewart O’Nan

● Louise Erdrich

● “The Indigenous Peoples March was about a Lot More than the Kids in MAGA Hats,” by Tekendra Parmar | Washington Post

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S7 Ep. 7: American Precariat: Zeke Caligiuri on the Incarcerated Writers Who Edited An Anthology on Class Nov 16, 2023

Show notes

Writer and editor Zeke Caligiuri joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss American Precariat: Parables of Exclusion, a new collection of essays on class he co-edited along with eleven other incarcerated writers. The volume’s contributors include Eula Biss, Kao Kalia Yang, Lacy M. Johnson, Valeria Luisielli, Kiese Laymon, and many others. Caligiuri, who worked on the book while in Minnesota correctional facilities and is now free, discusses the challenges of creativity and the literary life in prison settings, as well as how the book came to be. He also reflects on the idea that “the history of class hasn't always been written by the powerful, but they have always been its editors,” as he writes in a foreword, which he reads from during the episode.

This episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf.

Zeke Caligiuri

American Precariat: Parables of Exclusion (ed.)
This is Where I Am
Prison Noir (ed. Joyce Carol Oates)
The Sentences That Create Us: Crafting a Writer’s Life in Prison (ed. Caits Meissner)
How a Collective of Incarcerated Writers Published an Anthology From Prison - Electric Literature
“Before I Was Anything” (poem) Literary Hub

Others:

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S7 Ep. 6: Jordan Peele’s Out There Screaming: Lesley Nneka Arimah on Why Black Horror Speaks to Us Now Nov 09, 2023

Show notes

Fiction writer Lesley Nneka Arimah joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss how Black horror writing speaks to our current cultural moment. She talks about editor/director Jordan Peele’s new anthology, Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror, in which her work is included, and how she went from avoiding horror to writing it. Arimah reads from her story “Invasion of the Baby Snatchers,” explains its origins in her own fears, and shares an alternative ending.

This episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf.

Lesley Nneka Arimah