Poured Over

Latest Episodes:

Nghi Vo on THE CHOSEN AND THE BEAUTIFUL Apr 21, 2022

Show notes

"There's an intense pleasure in viewing the flaws of the people around you and saying, I'm not a part of that, even if maybe at the beginning you want to be or even maybe you still do, but you learn to come from where you stand. And that's part of what Jordan is doing. She's very comfortable in her discomfort…" Nghi Vo won the Hugo Award for Debut Novella with The Empress of Salt and Fortune, the first volume of her Singing Hills Cycle. Nghi's remixed and remastered The Great Gatsby for her new paperback, The Chosen and the Beautiful, and she joins us on the show to talk about re-imagining an American classic with a layer of magic, taking Gatsby out of the male gaze and putting Jordan Baker in the center of everything, the art of Vietnamese paper cutting, interesting arc of her career (starting with the slush pile), her next novel, Siren Queen (based on the life of Anna May Wong) and more with Poured Over's host, Miwa Messer. And we end the episode with a TBR Topoff featuring book recommendations from Margie and Marc.

Featured Books:

The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo

Siren Queen by Nghi Vo

Pussy, King of the Pirates by Kathy Acker

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 bonus episodes Saturdays).

A full transcript of this episode is available here.

Susan Cain on BITTERSWEET: HOW SORROW AND LONGING MAKE US WHOLE Apr 19, 2022

Show notes

"Leonard Cohen is like my all-time favorite musician … I, all my life, have had this reaction to sad music, of not feeling sad at all when I listened to it. Instead, what I feel is a kind of sense of uplift, and a sense of wonder and awe that a musician could take pain and turn it into beauty. And most of all, a kind of sense of connection with the musician and with all the other people who are listening to it. It's a kind of like beautiful acknowledgement that the state of being human involves loss and involves sorrow." Susan Cain changed the way we think about introverts with her first bestseller, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, and now she's going to change the way we approach some difficult feelings with Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole. Susan joins us on the show to talk about the thinkers and poets who influenced the new book, the veneer of effortless belonging, resolving her own grief, impermanence, collective creativity (and shifting our communal thinking), Susan David's concept of Emotional Agility, how writing this book changed her and much more with Poured Over's host, Miwa Messer. And we end the episode with a TBR Topoff segment featuring Margie and Marc.

Featured Books:

Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole by Susan Cain

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain

Gold by Rumi

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 show is available here.

Douglas Stuart on YOUNG MUNGO Apr 16, 2022

Show notes

"I knew that after writing this sweeping family portrait that goes over about 40 years in the Bain family's history, that for my next novel, I wanted to write something that was very focused, that was quite propulsive, and quite edited in the scope and the time that we spend with the characters. And so, for me, it was about romance. It's about that love between these two young men." Douglas Stuart has charmed more than a million and a half readers with his National Booker Award and Booker Prize-winning debut novel, Shuggie Bain. Douglas joins us on the show to talk about his incredible new novel, Young Mungo, optimism, writing about the working class and being gay, masculinity, love, mobility, Margaret Thatcher's legacy, the importance of having a plan before you sit down to write, the writers who inspire him, and much more with Poured Over's host, Miwa Messer. And we end the episode with a TBR Topoff segment featuring Margie and Marc.

Featured Books:

Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart

Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart

How Late It Was, How Late by James Kelman

Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

Poured Over is hosted and produced by Miwa Messer. This episode was mixed by Chris Gillespie. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays).

A full transcript of this show is available here.

Chloé Cooper Jones on EASY BEAUTY Apr 14, 2022

Show notes

"You know, beauty is such an interesting term. I think it's really important how vast and complex it is … we call people beautiful, I call my dog beautiful every day. I call food I eat beautiful, I call bitter, bitter coffee, beautiful, I call an idea beautiful. A mathematical concept can be beautiful, a sunset, the natural world, a performance, a song, certainly works of art, but … I've heard myself say, What a beautiful attempt, a failed attempt, but a beautiful or like a beautiful mistake, what a beautiful mistake that was, a beautiful error or a beautiful cutting remark even, so it's such an interesting term, because we can use it in so many ways."

Easy Beauty is Chloé Cooper Jones' first book, and it's an incredibly smart and provocative combination of memoir, travel essay and philosophical treatise on beauty and our experience with beauty, and it's out now. Chloé joins us on the show to talk about what beauty looks and feels like to her, how it feels to live in a body that people stare at (and touch without invitation), how we talk and think about disability, vulnerability and self-acceptance, and so much more with Poured Over's host, Miwa Messer. And we end the episode with a TBR Topoff segment featuring Margie and Marc.

Featured Books:

Easy Beauty by Chloé Cooper Jones

Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer. This episode was mixed by Chris Gillespie. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional bonus episodes on Saturdays).

A full transcript of the show is available here.

Sara Nović on TRUE BIZ Apr 12, 2022

Show notes

"True Biz is an ASL idiom. It doesn't have one direct translation into English, but a few of the things that it could mean: seriously, literally. Real talk is one that I think gets used a lot. No kidding. Like, if someone says like, No, you made that up, no true biz, you know, and I thought that it was a good title for the book, because it doesn't quite translate directly into English." We've been fans of Sara Nović since her page-turning, coming-of-age debut, Girl at War. Sara's back with a new novel, True Biz, which she calls both a "coming-of-age and a coming-of-middle-age" story set at a school for the Deaf. She joins us on the show to talk about CODA's Oscars, Deaf culture and degrees of Deaf experience, punk rock, the fluidity of ASL and how best to represent it on the printed page, giving her Deaf characters agency and the space to be real teenagers, writing joy into her story and much more with Poured Over's host, Miwa Messer. And we end the episode with a TBR Topoff segment featuring Margie and Marc.

Featured Books:

True Biz by Sara Nović

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer. This episode was mixed by Chris Gillespie. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional bonus episodes on Saturdays).

A full transcript of this episode is available here.

Grace D. Li on PORTRAIT OF A THIEF Apr 09, 2022

Show notes

"I really wrote it for me, I didn't think anything would come about — I wanted something that could bring me a bit of joy, where Asian American characters could live their lives and do something as fun and ridiculous as robbing art museums across the world." Grace D. Li loves a caper flick, and now she's written Portrait of a Thief, a caper novel with a very fun Chinese American cast. Grace joins us on the show to talk about the true story that inspired her debut, the Chinese diaspora, calling Texas home, the movies that inspired her fiction, the books she's reading and recommending now, being a medical student who writes fiction on the side, and much more with Poured Over's host, Miwa Messer. And we end the episode with a TBR Topoff segment featuring Margie and Marc.

Featured Books:

Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li

Chemistry by Weike Wang

Joan is OKAY by Weike Wang

The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka

Searching for Sylvie Lee by Jean Kwok

Fault Lines by Emily Itami

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 bonus episodes on Saturdays).

A full transcript of this episode is available here.

Jennifer Egan on THE CANDY HOUSE Apr 07, 2022

Show notes

"In the end, all the good ideas and sort of fancy craft approaches get you absolutely nothing if there's no emotional content. That's what it is. I mean, fiction is about going inside other people's minds and consciousnesses and looking through their eyes and living their lives in a way and that's all about emotions." Jennifer Egan challenged the way many of us thought about how (but not why) we tell stories in A Visit from the Goon Squad—which went on to win the Pulitzer. She joins us on our 100th episode of the show to talk about her latest, The Candy House, which she describes as a "sibling novel" to Goon Squad, along with truth and time and space and memory and nostalgia, the interplay between tech and story (including finding poetry in elliptical, 140-character tweets), finding inspiration in slightly unexpected places like baseball and Dungeons + Dragons, returning to characters she never really left (including the peripheral ones), and much more with Poured Over's host, Miwa Messer.

Featured Books:

The Candy House by Jennifer Egan

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan

In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust

The Three Pigs by David Weisner

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, introduction by Jennifer Egan

Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis

The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

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

A complete transcript of this episode is available here.

Emily St. John Mandel on SEA OF TRANQUILITY Apr 05, 2022

Show notes

"I love being immersed in the grand project of a novel. When I was a kid, I was drawn to books about secret worlds, like The Secret Garden, or The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe where you disappear to the back of a wardrobe…"

How many times have you re-read Emily St. John Mandel's genre-blending novels Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel? Emily joins us on the show to talk about her latest novel Sea of Tranquility — our April 2022 Barnes & Noble Book Club pick — along with what she loves most about writing, breaking the rules of time + space, how character development makes an imaginary world real, the writers and books who inspire her, and more with Poured Over's host, Miwa Messer. And we end the episode with a TBR Topoff segment featuring Margie and Marc.

Featured Books:

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

The Singer's Gun by Emily St. John Mandel

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon

The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu

The Executioner's Song by Normal Mailer

Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky

White Teeth by Zadie Smith

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 bonus episodes on Saturdays).

A full transcript of this episode is available here.

Viet Thanh Nguyen on THE COMMITTED Apr 02, 2022

Show notes

"…Cynical as he is of the world that he encounters, he's also pretty cynical and critical of himself. And that manifests itself in that sense of humor that you're talking about not a light-hearted sense of humor, but a very cynical and dark sense of humor, a sense of the absurd." Viet Thanh Nguyen, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer and The Committed (now out in paperback), among other books, joins us on the show to riff on the return of his unnamed narrator, why he followed his prize-winning spy thriller with a crime novel set in 1980s Paris, how his novels are in conversation with Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, the American canon, his literary inspirations and much more with Poured Over's host, Miwa Messer.

Featured Books:

Native Speaker by Chang-rae Lee

American Spy by Lauren Wilkerson

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John Le Carré

The Land at the End of the World by António Lobo Antunes

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

The Quiet American by Graham Greene

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

A full transcript of the show is available here.

Maud Newton on ANCESTOR TROUBLE Mar 31, 2022

Show notes

"As you might imagine, over the years, many people heard stories about my family. And they said, Hey, why don't you write a memoir? I really wasn't very interested in writing a memoir as I perceived a memoir to be, so the idea of spending years working on a book about the issues in my immediate family, which I grew up with, and was intimately familiar with, it felt like I would be locked in a closet with that somehow. And then I became sort of interested in looking backward..." Maud Newton used to believe her research into her family's genealogy was just a distraction from the novel she'd been working on. Not so. Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and a Reconciliation is just out, and Maud joins us on the show to talk about where her curiosity took her, DNA sleuthing, facing her family's legacies (genetic + historical + behavioral), epigenetics, what Harry Crews taught her about writing, and much more with Poured Over's host, Miwa Messer.

Featured book: Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and a Reconciliation by Maud Newton

And a few of the books that Maud mentions in hers:

Where I Was From by Joan Didion

The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee by David Treuer

The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee

On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin

The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould

The Mistress's Daughter by AM Homes

Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity and Love by Dani Shapiro

Touched with Fire by Kay Redfield Jamison

The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang

Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth by Sarah Smarsh

Searching for Zion: The Quest for Home in the African Diaspora by Emily Raboteau

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

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

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