Listen Up! February 2023 on Poured Over

It’s the perfect time of the year to curl up with a good book—and keep that New Year’s resolution to read more.

We have a terrific group of writers joining us on Poured Over this month, including a pair of wonderful coming of age stories, both debut novels from writers you won’t forget, starting with Jessica George’s big-hearted, comic Maame, perfect for fans of Queenie by Candice Carty WIlliams or Really Good, Actually by Monica Heisey. Drop into the California desert with A Country You Can Leave by Asale Angel-Ajani (think Caucasia by Danzy Senna meets Battleborn by Claire Vaye Watkins). Hilary Mantel was a huge fan of Kevin Jared Hosein’s novel, Hungry Ghosts, saying, “This is a deeply impressive book, and I think an important one. Its intensity, its narrative attack, the fascinations of its era and setting, make it impossible to tear the attention away. Energy and inventiveness distinguish every page.” We weren’t the only readers dazzled by Ayobami Adebayo’s debut, Stay With Me; The New York Times says it’s firmly “in the lineage of great works by Chinua Achebe and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.” Ayobami joins us on the show to talk about her new novel, A Spell of Good Things.

Some of our most favorite writers return this month, too. Leave the lights on and the doors locked while you read Stephen Graham Jones’s latest, Don’t Fear the Reaper. Isabel Wilkerson, the acclaimed and bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns, joins us on the show to talk about the paperback of her equally lauded second book, Caste—one of our best books of 2020. You won’t want to put down I Have Some Questions For You from Rebecca Makkai, whose last novel, The Great Believers, was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Rachel Joyce takes us back the world of her bestselling Harold Fry novels (The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy), with Maureen (a trade paperback original). We have a B&N Exclusive edition of A Day of Fallen Night, the latest from Samantha Shannon, author of the massive hit, The Priory of the Orange Tree.

Here’s hoping you discover your new favorite writer on an episode of Poured Over this month.