Jo proselytizes about the marvelous medicinal powers of M.W. Craven’s Washington Poe novels before Charlotte (10:30 ) classes up the episode with a recounting of the viral, ugly-cry-inducing Harry Potter fanfiction “Manacled” by SenLinYu. Then the accomplished Sarah Thankam Mathews (28:30 ) expounds on colonization, anger, Dumbo’s opps, and the “short little knife” that is Tayeb Salih’s Seasons of Migrations to the North. 

Also discussed in this episode: Othello, Elif Batuman’s The Idiot, Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, W. Somerset Maughm’s The Razor’s Edge

Sarah Thankam Mathews is the author of All This Could Be Different, which was shortlisted for the Discover Prize, the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and 2022 National Book Award in Fiction. All This Could Be Different was also a New York Times Editor's Choice and named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, Vogue, Vulture, Los Angeles Times, TIME, Slate, and Buzzfeed. Mathews grew up between Oman and India, immigrating to the United States at seventeen.

Send questions, requests, recommendations, and your own thoughts about any of the books discussed today to readingwriterspod at gmail dot com. 

Charlotte is on Instagram and Twitter as @Charoshane. Her most recent book is An Honest Woman: A Memoir of Love and Sex Work. Learn more at charoshane.com

Jo co-edits The Stopgap and their writing lives at jolivingstone.com.

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