fiction/non/fiction

Journalist Jacob Silverman joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about his new book, Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley. He discusses the rightward shift in ideology among leading tech giants and their companies, partially attributing the change to an interest in doing business with governments, including the U.S. and Israel. He speaks about the influence of Saudi Arabian wealth on the U.S. tech industry and how Saudi Arabia uses access to cutting-edge technology to remain in power and conduct mass surveillance on its people. Silverman addresses the calculated way today’s tech leaders have taken control of the idea economy as they increasingly interfere with what information the public sees, such as Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter (now X). He gives examples of imagined and attempted tech-utopias, discussing communities such as California Forever and Próspera and their impacts. Silverman also discusses the alliance between the tech right and discontented moderate Democrats in San Francisco, explaining their involvement in recall politics and the transactional nature of tech politics. He reads an excerpt from Gilded Rage. To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/ This podcast is produced by V.V. Ganeshananthan, Whitney Terrell, Emma Baxley, Elleanora Meman, Hope Wampler, and Brianna Wilson.  Jacob Silverman Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley “How Shaun Maguire Became Silicon Valley's Most MAGA Firebrand,” Business Insider Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection Others: California Forever The Diversity Myth by Peter Thiel & David Sacks ‘Go home’: Honduran islanders fight against crypto colonialists| The Guardian  Elon Musk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Poet and essayist Kathryn Nuernberger joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about her new collection of lyric essays, Held: Essays in Belonging, which is about symbiotic mutualisms, and grief and joy in an era of worsening climate change. She discusses COP30, the United Nations climate gathering currently underway in Brazil, and considers the global failure to keep warming below 1.5 °C. She reflects on the nature of symbiotic relationships and offers several examples, noting that over several cycles even parasitic relationships might achieve the balance of mutualism. Nuernberger places her work in the larger tradition of climate and nature writing, which previously tended to celebration and in recent years has turned more elegiac, and also talks about writing personal grief in relation to societal grief. She explains new vocabulary developed to address emerging climate concerns and emotions and identifies several concepts that need new words. She reads an excerpt from Held. To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/ This podcast is produced by V.V. Ganeshananthan, Whitney Terrell, Graham Ballard, Courtenay Kantanka, Katelyn Koenig, and Bayleigh Williams. Kathryn Nuernberger Held: Essays in Belonging The Witch of Eye Rue Brief Interviews with the Romantic Past The End of Pink Rag & Bone Others: The Bureau of Linguistical Reality Cop30 Coverage | The Guardian  The Aquarium by Phillip Henry Gosse John Hickel Raphel Lemkin Annie Dillard  Barry Lopez The End of Nature by Bill McKibben  Edward Abbey Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Translator Ottilie Mulzet joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about her award-winning translations of Nobel Prize winner László Krasznahorkai’s work. Mulzet, who was born in Canada and now lives in the Czech Republic, discusses how she learned Hungarian and began working with Krasznahorkai. She explains the humor in his novels and how his background in music shapes his prose. Mulzet also reflects on the timeliness of his writing and the breadth of his influences, including Europe and Asia more broadly. She considers its political context, including the Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orbán’s recent Kulturkampf, or efforts to control Hungarian cultural production. Mulzet reads an excerpt from Herscht 07769, which takes its title from the protagonist’s decision to write German Chancellor Angela Merkel a letter using only his name and postcode as a return address. To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/ This podcast is produced by V.V. Ganeshananthan, Whitney Terrell, Amelia Fisher, Victoria Freisner, Wil Lasater, and S E Walker. Ottilie Mulzet's Translations of László Krasznahorkai Herscht 07769 A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East Seiobo There Below Destruction and Sorrow beneath the Heavens: Reportage Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming The World Goes On Animalinside Others: Under a Pannonian Sky: Ten Women Poets from Hungary edited by Ottilie Mulzet Satantango George Szirtes "An Angel Passed Above Us" | The Yale Review  Hungarian Translators House "Herscht 07769 by László Krasznahorkai review – sinister cosmic visions" | The Guardian  "Laszlo Krasznahorkai’s Novels Find a U.S. Audience" | The New York Times Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fiction writer Max Delsohn joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss his debut short story collection, Crawl, which features a number of transmasculine characters. Delsohn addresses the Trump administration’s broad and vicious assault on transgender Americans, from advertising misinformation to attacks on higher education. Given pending legislation, he considers how shifting dynamics at the state level affect the decisions trans people and their families are making to find safety. Delsohn also reflects on intra-community violence and trans men’s position as minorities within the queer community. He considers how those with trans identities navigate misinterpretation, explanation, and other social pressures from cisgender people. He recounts how his experiences with the queer community in 2010’s Seattle, where many of his stories are set, have influenced his work. Delsohn talks about the importance of access to gender-affirming care and reads a related excerpt of “The Machine,” from Crawl.  To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/ This podcast is produced by V.V. Ganeshananthan, Whitney Terrell, MaryClaire Dunagan, Emani Guerin, and Sarah Feldmann. Max Delsohn Crawl.  “18 or 34 Miles From Perennial Square,” “We Do Not Belong Everywhere,” “Thinking Like The Knight,” Others: The Tragedy of Heterosexuality  by Jane Ward On Liking Women by Andrea Long Chu Federal Agreement FAQs: Brown’s Sex and Gender Policies and Gender-Affirming Care Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Graphic novelist Ben Passmore joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss his new graphic novel Black Arms To Hold You Up: A History of Black Resistance. Passmore explains the mix of personal reflection and historical storytelling in the book which follows the main character, a version of himself, time-traveling through a century of the Black radical tradition. Passmore talks about imagining a fictional self visiting Black historical figures and spotlights Assata Shakur, a well known member of the Black Liberation Army, who passed away last month. Passmore reflects on Shakur’s life and considers how her story highlights the broader struggles and resilience of Black activists whose work is marginalized in mainstream histories. He emphasizes that the book focuses on less prominent figures within the Black radical tradition, providing a corrective to previous whitewashed narratives. He talks about activists and thinkers interested in goals ranging from liberation to reform, as well as community-based forms of resistance and education. Passmore reads from Black Arms To Hold You Up. To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/ This podcast is produced by V.V. Ganeshananthan, Whitney Terrell, Bri Wilson, Emma Baxley, Hope Wampler, and Elly Meman. Ben Passmore Black Arms to Hold You Up Sports is Hell Your Black Friend and Other Strangers Others: We Will Return In The Whirlwind Black Radical Organizations 1960-1975 by Muhammad Ahmad — Charles H. Kerr Publishing Going to the Territory Assata Assata Shakur, an icon of Black liberation who was exiled to Cuba, dies aged 78 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New Yorker staff writer Jelani Cobb joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss his new essay collection, Three or More is a Riot: Notes on How We Got Here: 2012-2025. Cobb recalls how he began the project by trying to understand how George Zimmerman’s killing of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin in 2012 set the tone for the era to come. Cobb considers how history’s exceptions skew narratives, so that writers miss the bigger picture. He reflects on how discourse about race shifted between the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations and considers the juxtaposition of Martin’s murder with Obama’s presidency. Cobb also speaks on the significance of transparency in journalism, calling for reporters to show their work to reinforce public trust. He explains his preference for a lowercase “b” in “black” as a racial term, given that the word is not a proper noun, does not designate a nationality, and that capitalization may perpetuate inaccurate racial ideologies. Cobb reads from Three or More Is a Riot. To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/ This podcast is produced by V.V. Ganeshananthan, Whitney Terrell, and Bri Wilson, Emma Baxley, Hope Wampler, and Elly Meman. Jelani Cobb Three or More Is a Riot: Notes on How We Got Here: 2012-2025 The Matter of Black Lives: Writing from The New Yorker, edited with David Remnick The Essential Kerner Commission Report, edited with Matthew Guariglia The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress The Devil and Dave Chappelle and Other Essays To the Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic "Lessons of Later-in-Life Fatherhood" | The New Yorker, June 14, 2025 Full text of Jelani Cobb's 2025 Reuters Memorial Lecture: Trust Issues. Credibility, Credulity and Journalism in a Time of Crisis  Others: Lincoln  Django Unchained Gwen Ifill Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Acclaimed fiction writer and essayist Edwidge Danticat joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss her new essay collection We’re Alone. Danticat reflects on misinformation and xenophobic rhetoric, such as Trump’s false 2024 debate claim about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, and how that type of language and propaganda has broadened during Trump’s second term to include even more immigrant communities. She recounts what she has learned about conditions in prisons and detention centers during her visits there and also considers today’s immigration policies, including the Trump administration’s attempts to end Temporary Protected Status for Haitian immigrants and how deliberately humiliating immigrants not only hurts them, but also deters others considering crossing borders. Danticat describes her connection to Haiti and the ways natural disasters can unexpectedly bring people together as well as how these disasters are tied to migration. She reflects on political instability in Haiti, the meaning behind the title of her new book, and how writers like Toni Morrison, Audre Lorde, Jean Rhys and Paule Marshall shaped her thinking and writing process. Danticat reads from We’re Alone.  To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/ This podcast is produced by V.V. Ganeshananthan, Whitney Terrell, Amelia Fisher, Victoria Freisner, Wil Lasater, and S E Walker. Edwidge Danticat We're Alone Create Dangerously Breath, Eyes, Memory Brother, I'm Dying Others: Jamaica kincaid (@virtuouspomona) • Instagram photos and videos Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation | Black Women Writers (1950-1980) The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde Dany Laferrière Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys Immigrants can have ponies | Seinfeld (1989) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fiction writer Yiming Ma joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss his new novel These Memories Do Not Belong To Us. Ma, who was born in Shanghai and visited China frequently after immigrating to the U.S. and Canada, talks about how terrifyingly easy it can be to live in a society in which censorship is the default, and the dangers of self-censorship. Ma, who has an MBA, also reflects on the gap between how the tech and business worlds discuss artificial intelligence versus his peers in the arts. He explains how he developed the protagonist of his novel, a young man who struggles to decide what to do with an inheritance of forbidden memories; reflects on how his book’s structure, which moves between those memories, works as a “constellation novel,” in the tradition of Olga Tokarczuk; and considers how his characters demonstrate survival as a form of resistance. He reads from These Memories Do Not Belong To Us. To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/ This podcast is produced by V.V. Ganeshananthan, Whitney Terrell, and Moss Terrell. Yiming Ma These Memories Do Not Belong to Us "When fear silences the writer" - The Globe and Mail  Others: Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind by Hans Moravec Flights by Olga Tokarczuk “The Purloined Letter” by Edgar Allan Poe "Mirrors, Memories, Rebellions: An Interview with Yiming Ma” Chicago Review of Books  Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 8, Episode 51: Omar El Akkad on Gaza and Western Empire Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Journalist Caleb Gayle joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss his new book Black Moses: A Saga of Ambition and the Fight for a Black State, which recounts the efforts of Edward McCabe, a Black settler who became a prominent politician in the late 1800s and spearheaded a mission to establish a majority-Black state in the American West. Gayle sets the scene of McCabe’s upbringing as a free Black man on the East Coast and his move across the country to majority-Black towns in Kansas and Oklahoma. Gayle also talks about how Black settlers navigated the challenges of the supposed promised land, including bleak weather and the machinations of white politicians. Despite great difficulties, Gayle explains, McCabe persisted, and while his dreamed-of state never came to fruition, his legacy is visible in some Western towns even today. Gayle reads from Black Moses: A Saga of Ambition and the Fight for a Black State.  To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/ This podcast is produced by V.V. Ganeshananthan, Whitney Terrell, and Moss Terrell. Caleb Gayle Black Moses: A Saga of Ambition and the Fight for a Black State We Refuse to Forget: A True Story of Black Creeks, American Identity, and Power What Was the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921? Others: Victor LaValle’s Lone Women Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 6, Episode 25: "Alone on the Range: Victor LaValle on Lone Women’s Homesteaders, History, and Horror" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Writer Omar El Akkad joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss his recent nonfiction book, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, which was just nominated for the National Book Award in nonfiction. El Akkad talks about developing the arc of the book, which addresses how Israel’s genocide in Gaza led to his “breaking away from the notion that the polite, Western liberal ever stod for anything at all.” He explains how he conceptualized the West as a young man moving from Egypt to Qatar to Canada and finally the U.S. He also talks about how he can no longer vote for Democrats simply because they are “the lesser evil.” He reflects on how to talk to children about naming and understanding the world as it really is. El Akkad reads from One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.  To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/ This podcast is produced by V.V. Ganeshananthan, Whitney Terrell, and Moss Terrell. Omar El Akkad One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This What Strange Paradise American War Omar El Akkad on Genocide, Complicit Liberals, and the Terrible Wrath of the West | Literary Hub Omar El Akkad on X: "One day, when it's safe, when there's no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it's too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this." Others: Suzanne Nossel, PEN America Leader, to Leave Embattled Organization - The New York Times (October 31, 2024) A Campus for All | Faculty & Academic Affairs (University of Minnesota) Holocaust Scholar Raz Segal Loses Univ. of Minnesota Job Offer for Saying Israel Is Committing Genocide | Democracy Now! (June 18, 2024) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Novelist Jessica Francis Kane joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss her new novel Fonseca, which fictionalizes writer Penelope Fitzgerald’s 1952 trip to Mexico. Kane talks about imagining Fitzgerald in her mid-thirties, before she had become a novelist, when she was living a financially precarious life and editing a journal with her husband Desmond. Kane reflects on Fitzgerald’s decision to travel to Mexico with her son Valpy, a prospective heir for sisters there who are distantly connected to their family. Kane explains how she came to correspond with Fitzgerald’s children and the choice to use those letters as part of the book; her belief that the trip had a formative effect on Fitzgerald; “following the plot” based on the available facts; and introducing historical speculation, like an acquaintance with painter Edward Hopper, into the storyline. Kane reads from Fonseca.  To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/ This podcast is produced by V.V. Ganeshananthan, Whitney Terrell, and Moss Terrell. Jessica Francis Kane Fonseca Rules for Visiting This Close The Report Bending Heaven Penelope Fitzgerald: "Following the plot" | Penelope Fitzgerald | London Review of Books Our Lives are Only Lent to Us | Penelope Fitzgerald | Granta Magazine The Means Of Escape Offshore The Blue Flower Others: Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life by Hermione Lee "The Peripatetic Penelope Fitzgerald" | Lucy Scholes | Granta Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fiction writer and editor Patrick Ryan joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss his debut novel, Buckeye, which traces two generations of two Midwestern families connected by a secret. Ryan recalls the coincidental conversation that informed his portrayal of one character’s experiences with disability in World War II-era Ohio, and reflects on taking Ann Patchett’s advice to keep the point of view very close when depicting experiences one hasn’t personally had. He explains how a spiritualist character became “the good heart of the book,” as well as his favorite fiction writing experience of all time. He also talks about troubling two fictional marriages and leaving his characters few paths through their woes. Ryan reads from Buckeye.  To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/ This podcast is produced by V.V. Ganeshananthan, Whitney Terrell, and Moss Terrell. Patrick Ryan Buckeye The Dream Life of Astronauts Send Me Saints of Augustine In Mike We Trust Gemini Bites Others: Bel Canto by Ann Patchett The Gilded Age Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New York Times book critics Jennifer Szalai and Alexandra Jacobs join co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss their recent article, “Love Jack Kerouac? Read These Great American Road Trip Books Next,” which they co-authored with their fellow critic Dwight Garner, and which includes books published after Kerouac's On the Road. They talk about road trips as escapism, claustrophobia, exploration, and nostalgia, and reflect on their picks, including Hilma Wolitzer’s 1980 novel Hearts, Gypsy Rose Lee’s 1957 eponymous memoir, Michael Paterniti’s 2000 non-fiction book Driving Mr. Albert, and Jesmyn Ward’s 2017 novel Sing, Unburied, Sing. Szalai and Jacobs talk about developing an expansive conception of what qualifies as a road trip book, leaving Lolita out, and favorite road trip music and games. They read from the article.  To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/ This podcast is produced by V.V. Ganeshananthan, Whitney Terrell, and Moss Terrell. Jennifer Szalai and Alexandra Jacobs "Love Jack Kerouac? Read These Great American Road Trip Books Next." by Dwight Garner, Alexandra Jacobs, and Jennifer Szalai - The New York Times  Others: On the Road by Jack Kerouac Hearts by Hilma Wolitzer Gypsy by Gypsy Rose Lee Driving Mr. Albert by Michael Paterniti Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward Tigerlily by Natalie Merchant The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor Still Here: The Madcap, Nervy, Singular Life of Elaine Stritch by Alexandra Jacobs Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Biographer Nicholas Boggs joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss his groundbreaking new book, Baldwin: A Love Story, the first major biography of James Baldwin to be published in three decades. Boggs recalls how finding Baldwin’s only children’s book in a Yale library as a college student led him to track down the volume’s illustrator, the French artist Yoran Cazac, Baldwin’s last great love. He talks about interviewing people who had never previously spoken about their relationships with the iconic author, including Cazac, whom at least one previous biographer had wrongly guessed was deceased. Boggs reflects on the importance of considering Blackness, queerness, and chosen family as central to Baldwin’s life and art. He discusses Baldwin’s youth in Harlem, his years in Europe and Istanbul, and his relationships with the painters Beauford Delaney and Lucien Happersberger, the actor Engin Cezzar, and Cazac, as well as many others. Boggs considers how Baldwin’s deepest friendships and romances influenced his life and work, including Another Country, Go Tell It on the Mountain, Notes of a Native Son, and Giovanni’s Room. He reads from the book. To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the ⁠Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account⁠, the ⁠Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel⁠, and our show website: ⁠https://www.fnfpodcast.net/⁠ This podcast is produced by V.V. Ganeshananthan, Whitney Terrell, and Moss Terrell. ⁠Nicholas Boggs⁠ ⁠Baldwin: A Love Story⁠ ⁠Little Man, Little Man (ed.)⁠ ⁠“They Will Try to Kill You”: James Baldwin’s Fraught Hollywood Journey | Vanity Fair⁠ ⁠James Baldwin’s Love Stories | Vogue⁠  ⁠James Baldwin⁠ ⁠"Open Letter to the Born Again" | The Nation⁠ “⁠If Black English Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?⁠” | The New York Times ⁠Giovanni’s Room⁠ ⁠Another Country ⁠ ⁠Notes of a Native Son⁠ ⁠Go Tell It on the Mountain⁠ ⁠Everybody’s Protest Novel⁠ Others: ⁠James Baldwin′s Turkish Decade by Magdalena J. Zaborowska⁠  ⁠James Baldwin: A Biography by David Leeming Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Journalist Will Bardenwerper joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss his new book, Homestand: Small Town Baseball and the Fight for the Soul of America, which explores the consequences of Major League Baseball cutting 40 affiliated minor league teams, each one only as expensive as an average Major League salary. He explains how the accessibility and affordability of minor league baseball has made it a unique gathering point for working-class communities like the one in Batavia, New York, where Bardenwerper followed the local team, the Muckdogs, for a season. He celebrates the traditions and resilience of the Muckdogs fans and owners, who revived the team after it was eliminated as a minor league franchise. He also reads from Homestand.  To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/ This podcast is produced by V.V. Ganeshananthan, Whitney Terrell, and Moss Terrell. Will Bardenwerper Homestand: Small Town Baseball and the Fight for the Soul of America “Minor Threat: MLB puts the farm system out to pasture” by Will Bardenwerper |Harper’s Magazine The Prisoner In His Palace: Saddam Hussein, His American Guards, and What History Leaves Unsaid Others: Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 3, Episode 4: Wild Ecologies: So Go the Salmon, So Goes the World: Tucker Malarkey, Will Bardenwerper, and Stan Brewer In Conversation Moneyball by Michael Lewis Field of Dreams (1989) Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Novelist and journalist Mirza Waheed joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V Ganeshananthan to talk about brewing tensions between two nuclear powers: India and Pakistan. Waheed, who was born in Kashmir and previously worked as a journalist, explains how the recent massacre of Indian tourists there at the hands of militants connects to a broader context that includes Partition, the 1947 event that separated the two countries. He reflects on growing up in Kashmir, a place to which both Pakistan and India would like to lay claim. Waheed reads from his debut novel, The Collaborator. Selected Readings: Mirza Waheed Tell Her Everything The Book of Gold Leaves A massacre has reignited the forever war between India and Pakistan – once more, Kashmiri voices are missing | Mirza Waheed | The Guardian Others The Collaborator (2024) | MUBI  The Collaborator (2024) - IMDb An Urdu Epic Puts India’s Partition Into Historical Perspective - The New York Times | By Aditi Sriram, April 8, 2019 Kamila Shamsie Saadat Hasan Manto Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bestselling fiction writer Curtis Sittenfeld joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about her new collection of stories, Show Don’t Tell. Sittenfeld discusses the title story, which depicts graduate students in creative writing competing for funding, and its connections to her time at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, when that practice was common. She also considers how President Trump’s attacks on DEI reveal some people’s true natures, and what it means to write about “the hypocrisy of being a person.” Finally, she explains why she thinks of time as a plot twist, and reflects on returning to the protagonist of her debut novel, Prep, Lee Fiora, who reappears in the new collection’s final story, which features her thirtieth high school reunion. Sittenfeld reads from Show Don’t Tell. To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/. This podcast is produced by Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan. Selected Readings: Curtis Sittenfeld Show Don’t Tell (2025) Romantic Comedy (2023) Rodham (2021) The Best American Short Stories 2020 (ed. with Heidi Pitlor) You Think It, I’ll Say It (2019) Eligible (2016) Sisterland (2013) American Wife (2008) The Man of My Dreams (2006) Prep (2005) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Professor Karen Weingarten joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about a new anthology she has edited, Abortion Stories: American Literature Before Roe v. Wade. Weingarten reflects on the complicated history of abortion, the varied use of abortifacients, abortion’s ties to eugenics and state control of bodies, and the rise of the anti-abortion movement. She discusses how access to abortion facilitates other kinds of resistance, and explains how the book came to include authors like Maria Sybilla Merian, Langston Hughes, Dorothy Parker, Lucille Clifton, and Eugene O’Neill alongside oral histories from formerly enslaved persons and groundbreaking politicians like Shirley Chisholm. She talks about the stories she hopes to see represented in post-Dobbs writing and reads from her foreword to the anthology. To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/. This podcast is produced by Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan. Selected Readings: Karen Weingarten Abortion Stories: American Literature Before Roe v. Wade Pregnancy Test Abortion in the American Imagination: Before Life and Choice, 1880-1940 Others Dirty Dancing Fast Times at Ridgemont High The Cider House Rules The Mothers The Art of Subtext Jessica Valenti Abortion: Our Bodies, Their Lies, and the Truths We Use to Win Peyton Place Men Without Women by Ernest Hemingway (which includes “Hills Like White Elephants” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Canadian authors Suzette Mayr and Kai Thomas join co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to discuss the repercussions of President Trump’s recent threats to annex and tax Canada. They talk about the possible empowerment of the Canadian right as a result of Trump’s extreme remarks, as well as measures their communities are taking to unify in the current political environment. Mayr and Thomas read from their recent novels, The Sleeping Car Porter and In the Upper Country.  To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/ This podcast is produced by Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan. Selected Readings: Suzette Mayr The Sleeping Car Porter  Dr. Edith Vane and the Hares of Crawley Hall Monoceros Venous Hum The Windows Moon Honey  Kai Thomas In the Upper Country Others: 2025 4 Nations Face Off | NHL.com | NHL Justin Trudeau's speech in response to Trump's tariffs | CBC News The Last Black Town in the West |The Daily Yonder Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters  | Library of Congress There's only one winner in a trade war... | This Hour Has 22 Minutes (YouTube) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New York Times reporter Nicholas Fandos, author of a recent article titled “An Emboldened Trump Seeks to Bend New York City to His Will,” joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about why President Trump wants to dismiss corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Officials in Trump’s Department of Justice say they want Adams to be free to aid Trump’s immigration crackdown in the Big Apple, which since 2014 has been a sanctuary city. But conservative federal prosecutors like Danielle Sassoon and Hagen Scotten say this amounts to a quid pro quo and have resigned rather than drop the case against Adams. Fandos reflects on what might happen next and the larger implications for the Department of Justice. To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/. This podcast is produced by Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan. Selected Readings: Nicholas Fandos An Emboldened Trump Seeks to Bend New York City to His Will  Eric Adams Discussed Possible Republican Primary Run with G.O.P. Leader  Jeffries Works With N.Y. Democrats to Weaken G.O.P. Control of the House Others: Who Is Danielle Sassoon, the Prosecutor Who Quit Over Eric Adams’s Corruption Case? | New York Times  Danielle Sassoon’s Letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, Annotated | New York Times  Here Are the Charges Eric Adams Faces, Annotated | New York Times | September 26, 2024 Read the Resignation Letter From Hagan Scotten | New York Times  Read The Letter From Emil Bove Accepting Danielle Sassoon’s Resignation, Annotated | New York Times Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices