Poured Over

Latest Episodes:

Sequoia Nagamatsu on HOW HIGH WE GO IN THE DARK Oct 11, 2022

Show notes

"I think the knee-jerk reaction to pandemic literature — that I think a lot of readers might have as well, I don't want to read that because it's going to be triggering, it's going to be about, you know, CDC scientists brushing against the clock — there are actually very few pandemic novels that I can think of that actually operate on that level. They're thinking about Hollywood, probably, and not about literature. Most plague literature that I can think of, or dystopian literature generally, is about hope. It's about relationships, and family and the tiny little movements that occur in the wake of some sort of tragedy, the search for connection."

Sequoia Nagamatsu's novel-in-stories, How High We Go in the Dark, is an absolute delight, even when the darkness shows (think Sea of Tranquility or Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel or Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell). He joins us on the show to talk about hope and love and grief, being a Bad Asian, music (and other soundtracks) connecting characters and story points, what surprised him as he was writing, his literary inspirations (starting with Italo Calvino) and more with Poured Over's host, Miwa Messer. And we end this episode with TBR Topoff book recommendations from Marc and Becky. Featured Books (Episode):

How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu

The Dead Fish Museum by Charles D'Ambrosio

Featured Books (TBR Topoff):

On Such a Full Sea by Chang-rae Lee

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays).

Morgan Talty on NIGHT OF THE LIVING REZ Oct 08, 2022

Show notes

"I want to tell stories. I hate the whole, don't tell, show mantra because it's not true—it has its like moments like, you know, when the reader finishes something of mine, I want them to feel as if it's something they had experienced, as if it's like a memory for them. Because like, for me, that's always been the best stuff. And like that can be so hard to do." If you haven't yet read Morgan Talty's debut linked story collection Night of the Living Rez, you're in for an exceptional read; think There There by Tommy Orange or Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson or The Candy House by Jennifer Egan. Morgan—who quotes Jane Austen and Audre Lorde in the course of this conversation—joins us on the show to talk about story structure and inspiration, representation and colonialism (in all its forms), the importance of humor, what he's been reading and recommending, and more with Poured Over's host, Miwa Messer. And we end this episode with TBR Topoff book recommendations from Marc and Becky.

Featured Books (Episode)

Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty

A Calm and Normal Heart by Chelsea T. Hicks

Where the Dead Sit Talking by Brandon Hobson

The Last Catastrophe by Allegra Hyde

The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters

Featured Books (TBR Topoff)

The Nick Adams Stories by Ernest Hemingway

My Monticello by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson

Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays).

Celeste Ng on OUR MISSING HEARTS Oct 06, 2022

Show notes

"He thinks of himself as a character in a fairy tale in a way who's going on a quest. And there's so many stories like that about a character who's going in search of a lost loved one, whether it's a daughter, a mother, a son, there's this sense of I'm going off to find you. And that's really powerful." Celeste Ng follows her massive hit Little Fires Everywhere with a novel set in a world that "looks like ours, but with the volume kind of turned up to 11" in Our Missing Hearts, an indelible story about family and identity, art and connection. Celeste joins us on the show to talk about the novel she never planned to write, mothers and sons, coming-of-age (for adults and children), Asian American history, pushing against our ideas of hero figures, being a word nerd and her love of Shakespeare, her literary influences and more with Poured Over's host, Miwa Messer. And we end this episode with TNR Topoff book recommendations from Marc and Becky.

Featured Books (Episode):

Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison Beloved by Toni Morrison The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston China Men by Maxine Hong Kingston Tripmaster Monkey by Maxine Hong Kingston Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu Featured Books (TBR Topoff):

Things We Lost to the Water by Eric Nguyen The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa

Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays).

Jess Kidd on THE NIGHT SHIP Oct 04, 2022

Show notes

"I want to escape into these like incredible, immersive situations, really. But I think I try and balance this kind of creation of a world or this world building with the dialogue. And that's where things like the humor come in. And particularly with this one, because it's quite a gritty subject. But it was really important to have that joy and have that humor. And to my mind that comes very akin with the bravery in the book and the courage in the book, there is this kind of ability, even under these immense pressures, to have these moments of joy…" Jess Kidd's ghostly and gothic novels — including Things in Jars and now, The Night Ship, our latest B&N Book Club pick — are some of our absolute favorites. She joins us on the show to talk about the true story behind The Night Ship, the places her research took her, connecting her characters, how writing flash fiction and short stories influence her novels, The Epic of Gilgamesh and much more with Poured Over's host, Miwa Messer.

Featured Books (Episode):

The Night Ship by Jess Kidd

Mr. Flood's Last Resort by Jess Kidd

Things in Jars by Jess Kidd

The Epic of Gilgamesh (Andrew George, translator)

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays).

Sarah Thankam Mathews on ALL THIS COULD BE DIFFERENT Oct 01, 2022

Show notes

"So you know, something that is a big part of my project…is actually this idea that we deserve pleasure. I think that pleasure and care, these are antidotes against various kinds of violence and degradation that we're all beset with. And so for me, when I wrote this novel, I did not write it for a critic at The New York Times, you know. I wrote it for the past version of me. And I wrote for someone who would need to read this, who would be reading this book after work on the subway." Sarah's Thankam Mathews is making a terrific debut with All This Could Be Different—longlisted for the 2022 National Book Award for Fiction and a finalist for our own Discover Prize—and she joins us on the show to talk about channeling her characters, subverting the coming-of-age novel, challenging the expectations of the immigrant experience, queerness, finding our people and much more with Poured Over's host, Miwa Messer.

Featured Books (Episode):

Normal People by Sally Rooney

Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid

Luster by Raven Leilani

The New Me by Halle Butler

Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays).

A complete transcript of this episode is available here.

Hua Hsu on STAY TRUE: A MEMOIR Sep 29, 2022

Show notes

"I think I figured a lot of things out literally as I was writing the book. I'm usually an obsessive methodical writer, or I have everything, if not mapped out, I kind of know spatially, what's going to happen in a piece of writing. But with this, I just kind of had to write it to figure out what it was. For years, friends knew that I was working on this — friends who were in the book, actually. But I could never explain what it was nor could they imagine what it might be. You know, I would just say, I'm writing the story of us, I'm writing a story about Ken." Whether he's riffing on music or sports or Asian American icons like Maxine Hong Kingston, Hua Hsu's work in The New Yorker is a joy to read. Now he's turning inward in his new book, Stay True, a beautifully written story of unexpected friendship, shocking loss, and his own coming of age. Hua joins us on the show to talk about grief and growing up, inside jokes, his literary influences, changing the conversations we're having about Asian America, and much more with Poured Over's host, Miwa Messer.

Featured Books (Episode)

Stay True: A Memoir by Hua Hsu

A Floating Chinaman: Fantasy and Failure across the Pacific by Hua Hsu

The Hanging on Union Square by H. T. Tsiang

Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book by Maxine Hong Kingston

Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays with occasional Saturdays. A complete transcript of this episode is available here.

Laura Warrell on SWEET, SOFT, PLENTY RHYTHM Sep 27, 2022

Show notes

"I feel like very often when we have stories about womanizing characters, whether we piece those stories out, so we see each woman—individually or not, they don't really have stories. They don't really have lives except as they relate to that main character. So, it was always going to be each woman steps forward, each woman gets a chapter." Laura Warrell takes us behind the scenes of her smart, sharp and deeply resonant debut novel Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm. She joins us on the show to talk about flipping the script, the women she writes about (and letting her characters be who they are), love and loneliness, her writing process and much more with Poured Over's host, Miwa Messer. And we end this episode with TBR Topoff book recommendations from Marc and Becky.

Featured Books (Episode):

Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm by Laura Warrell

Gorilla, My Love by Toni Cade Bambara

Featured Books (TBR Topoff):

Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby

Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell

Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays) here and on your favorite podcast app.

A complete transcript of this episode is available here.

Hafizah Augustus Geter on THE BLACK PERIOD: ON PERSONHOOD, RACE, AND ORIGIN Sep 24, 2022

Show notes

"I did nothing but read the entire time I was writing this….literally every waking moment, I was doing some type of research and a lot of research I did for this book was on joy and celebration and on community. Because, yes, we're going through all of these things, but there's a reason the cover is bright and celebratory, because that's also where the book goes, where the journey goes." Hafizah Augustus Geter covers an incredible amount of ground in her memoir The Black Period: On Personhood, Race, and Origin: past and present, able-bodied and disabled, home and away, grief and love. She joins us on the show to talk about her family's story, her father's art (which appears in full color throughout the book), who gets to make history and why, her literary influences and more with Poured Over's host, Miwa Messer.

Featured Books:

The Black Period: On Personhood, Race, and Origin by Hafizah Augustus Geter

Little Devil in America by Hanif Abdurraqib

The Yellow House by Sarah Broom

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Year of The Tiger by Alice Wong

Border and Rule by Harsha Walia

Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays).

A complete transcript of this episode is available here.

Bobby Finger on THE OLD PLACE Sep 22, 2022

Show notes

"Ever since we left, when I was 13, it's a place that I think about constantly. I think about it in hypothetical terms. It's something that I just sort of lose myself in all the time. I left before things really got complicated. I left when I was 13. What if I had stayed until now? And what if I had left and gone back? You know, the book kind of stemmed from this story that I had been working through in my mind, all of these hypothetical versions of myself. And then it turned into this." Bobby Finger, writer and co-host of the celebrity and entertainment podcast Who? Weekly, breaks new ground in his debut novel, The Old Place. Inspired by his real-life roots in Texas, Finger explores the consequences of love and loss in this small-town narrative centered around a retired schoolteacher burdened by a decade-old secret. Bobby discusses his journey to writing a novel, his literary influences and creative process—and more with Poured Over's host, Miwa Messer. And we end this episode with TBR Topoff book recommendations from Marc and Becky.

Featured Books (Episode):

The Old Place by Bobby Finger Where'd You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

Featured Books (TBR Topoff):

Mrs. Fletcher by Tom Perotta A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays).

A complete transcript of this episode is available here.

Andrew Sean Greer on LESS IS LOST Sep 20, 2022

Show notes

"I already had a kind of Don Quixote set up in mind. And so I was like, Wouldn't it be funny if Arthur was the sort of Sancho Panza in this? I'll just barely touch on it and see where it goes. And I thought he needs someone totally full of himself to shake him up…" Readers fell in love with Arthur Less — and Andrew Sean Greer took home a Pulitzer Prize for Less, the novel that introduced us to Arthur. Andrew joins us on the show to talk about his new novel, the not-really-a-sequel, Less Is Lost, turning tragedy into comedy, rewrites, what scares him as a writer, his literary influences, the writing advice that he still relies on and much more with Poured Over's host, Miwa Messer. And we finish this episode with TBR Topoff book recommendations from Marc and Becky.

Featured Books (Episode):

Less (winner of the Pulitzer Prize) by Andrew Sean Greer The Confessions of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells by Andrew Sean Greer Story of a Marriage by Andrew Sean Greer

Chéri by Colette

Don Quixote by Cervantes A Boy's Own Life by Edmund White

Travels with My Aunt by Graham Greene Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Featured Books (TBR Topoff):

A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood

Bucky F*cking Dent by David Duchovny

Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays).

A full transcript of this episode is available here.