Listen Up! November 2023 on Poured Over

Kicking off a month of episodes on our Poured Over podcast featuring some of our favorite award-winning authors, from a former U.S. Poet Laureate to winners and finalists of the Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence, the National Book Award, Pulitzer Prize and even the Grammys.

Alice McDermott (The Ninth Hour and Charming Billy, among other novels) takes us behind the scenes of her new novel, Absolution, and the inspiration she found in Graham Greene’s classic novel, The Quiet American. Bestseller and B&N Favorite Alix Harrow — The Once and Future Witches was one of our early Monthly Speculative Fiction picks — talks about her new novel, Starling House, available in a B&N Exclusive Edition. Viet Thanh Nguyen delivers a searing memoir that brings new perspective to his novels The Sympathizer and The Committed; his episode is the first we taped at our Los Angeles flagship at The Grove. Stephanie Land never imagined her memoir Maid, would become a bestseller or the basis for a hit Netflix show; she just wanted to tell her story, which continues in Class. Percival Everett isn’t alone in his admiration of Gabriel Bump‘s second novel, The New Naturals. Melissa Broder (The Pisces) takes on love and grief in the desert in Death Valley. Michael Cunningham‘s Day is high-concept (the same day in three different years) and full of the heart and lapidary sentences readers look to him for; we’re talking George Elliott, Charles Dickens and more, in his episode of the show. Sigrid Nunez rounds out her unofficial trilogy that started with The Friend and What Are You Going Through with The Vulnerables, and she joins us on the show to talk about the connection between her debut, A Feather on the Breath of God and The Friend, among other things. Merlin Sheldrake‘s episode on Entangled Life: Illustrated drops just before Thanksgiving; Jeff Tweedy (friend of previous Poured Over guests George Saunders and Nick Offerman) riffs on World Within a Song on Thanksgiving Day. Tracy K. Smith‘s episode starts with her new luminous, open-hearted, sharp-sighted memoir, To Free the Captives, but covers much of her poetry, her thoughts on craft and more. Australian legend Helen Garner joins us from the road on her first American book tour for The Children’s Bach and This House of Grief. And we end the month back in New York with another live taping, with Ed Park (Personal Days) and his epic novel Same Bed, Different Dreams, this time from our newly renovated store on the Upper West Side.

You can catch Poured Over wherever you listen to pods or stream from our blog, B&N Reads, or watch on our YouTube channel if that’s how you prefer your pods.