Listen Up! April 2024 on Poured Over
If you’re looking for poets on Poured Over, check out this post.
April showers bring May flowers — along with more time for reading (and listening). We have a terrific lineup of writers riffing on their new books, what drives their work, and more on the show this month.
Leif Enger (Peace Like a River, Virgil Wander) joins us to talk about his new book, I Cheerfully Refuse, a big-hearted, hopeful novel that’s part adventure story, part love story, and a delight to read. The dialogue, characters and sense of place are unforgettable. Not to be missed by fans of Emily St. John Mandel‘s Sea of Tranquility or Station Eleven. Julia Alvarez blazed a trail with novels like How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents and In The Time of The Butterflies; her latest, The Cemetery of Untold Stories, is a funny, life-affirming novel about storytelling and canon, friendship, death —and legacy.
Speaking of legacy, Xochitl Gonzalez (Olga Dies Dreaming) joins us live from our store on the Upper West Side of New York, to talk about her sophomore novel, Anita de Monte Laughs Last, a pointed and often laugh-out-loud funny story about making art—and reputations. Clear by Carys Davies (West) is beautifully written short novel about the price of isolation and the desire for community and connection that’s perfect for fans of one of our fiction monthly picks, Paul’s Harding’s This Other Eden. If you love novels about language — and it’s power, this is one you don’t want to miss. One of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 authors, Crystal Hana Kim (If You Leave Me) discusses her latest, The Stone Home, set in a turbulent 1980s Korea that is new to many readers.
Space. Murder. Romance. Tradition and technology collide in Elaine Cho’s Ocean’s Godori, an impressive debut perfect for fans of Gideon the Ninth, and Shannon Chakrabourty joins us to talk about The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi (now in paperback), retired pirate, ship’s captain, mother — and your new favorite protagonist.
Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird) and Maggie Nelson (The Argonauts) are two of the most insightful, stylish prose writers working today, and they join us to talk about Somehow: Thoughts on Love and Like Love: Essays and Conversations. We’re going off of our regular schedule the week of the 15th and airing our conversation about Once Upon a Prime (now in paperback) with mathematician Sarah Hart. The Age of Magical Overthinking by Sarah Montell, host of the hit podcast Sounds Like a Cult, is a playful and smart exploration of all our very human foibles and the stories we tell ourselves as we try to make sense of the world. (Think of Amanda as a new best friend who will only tell you the truth.)
Beloved, bestselling — and like Julia Alvarez, trailblazing — author Amy Tan brings us into her home with a delightful and surprising book about birdwatching, pencil miles and more in The Backyard Bird Chronicles. People will be talking about Salman Rushdie‘s new memoir, Knife: Meditations After An Attempted Murder, and he joins us to talk about this unforgettable story of resilience and survival, art and freedom of speech.