Sam Thomas

Sam Thomas has a PhD in history with a focus on Reformation England and recently leaped from the tenure track into a teaching position at a secondary school near Cleveland, Ohio.

His new novel is The Midwife's Tale.

From his Q & A at The Fiction Reboot:
On your webpage you say The Midwife’s Tale was inspired by a real midwife named Bridget Hodgson. What made you decide to take on this

Read More

Holly Goddard Jones

Holly Goddard Jones's new novel is The Next Time You See Me.

Form her Q & A at the Mourning Goats blog:

Your first book was a short story book, back in 2009; in February, your first novel, The Next Time You See Me will be published, how was writing and publishing the books different?

I was a grad student when I was working on the stories in Girl Trouble, and the book went through a few

Read More

Emily Raboteau

Emily Raboteau's new book is Searching for Zion: The Quest for Home in the African Diaspora.

From her Q & A with Mindy Farabee for The Daily Beast:You write a lot about the historical link African-Americans felt with Jews of the biblical exodus. How does this concept of Zion resonate today?

Barack Obama used the Zion metaphor in the 2008 election, in particular when speaking to faith-based

Read More

George Saunders

George Saunders's fourth collection of stories is Tenth of December.

From the transcript of his dialogue with Jacki Lyden for NPR:
LYDEN: Let's go to a story that I think is really accessible, George, and that would be the title story of this collection, "Tenth of December." I quite loved it, and I thought, you know, there's almost a '50s feeling in here. This is about a boy who goes into the

Read More

Joy Castro

Joy Castro is the author of the thriller Hell or High Water, which received a starred review from Booklist for its “exquisite New Orleans background, intriguing newsroom politics and atmosphere, a flawed but plucky heroine, and skillfully paced suspense.” Also the author of two memoirs, The Truth Book and Island of Bones, she lives with her husband in Lincoln, Nebraska and teaches

Read More

Ali Smith

Ali Smith's latest book is Artful.

From her Q & A with Noah Charney for The Daily Beast:
Do you have a writer friend who helps and inspires you?

I'm blessed in my good friends, and some of them happen to be writers, though that's almost never what our friendships are about. And every writer I've ever read, living or dead, has in one way or another helped and inspired. I have a feeling it’s

Read More

Lawrence Wright

Lawrence Wright's new book is Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief.

From his Q & A with Mark Guarino for Printers Row Journal:
Q: The church contradicts most of your reporting, and in one moment of the book, its attorneys show up at The New Yorker with 48 binders of material stretching about 7 linear feet, a tactic you suggest was intended to intimidate you into

Read More

Ben Schrank

Ben Schrank published his first novel, Miracle Man, in 1999. The New Yorker selected it as one of six debut novels in that year’s fiction issue, saying “As the ethical lines blur, Schrank makes New York seem sharp and new.” Time Magazine called it a “brilliantly observed story about the desire to live in an egalitarian world.” In 2002 Schrank published his second novel, Consent. Leonard

Read More

Amber Dermont

Amber Dermont is the author of the novel, The Starboard Sea, and the short story collection, Damage Control. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Dermont received her PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston.

From her Q & A with Lucy Walton at Female First:Which writers can you credit as being an influence to your own work?

In terms of the great dead, the

Read More

Laurie Lynn Drummond

From a Q & A with Laurie Lynn Drummond, author of Anything You Say Can and Will Be Used Against You:
Q: There seems to be a rather striking spiritual/mystical element in some of the stories, when the officers feel the presence of a victim. Katherine wonders "how dead we ever really are." How should a reader understand these encounters in the larger context of the collection? Does constant

Read More

Rebecca Wells

From a Q & A with Rebecca Wells, author of Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and Ya-Yas in Bloom:
You grew up in Louisiana, and ... your books have dealt with that state and the Walker family and friends. What first prompted you to create the Ya-Yas? Are they based on real women you knew or your own childhood?

I grew up in a tiny kingdom of bayous and cotton fields, a big extended family,

Read More

Mark Harrison

Mark Harrison is professor of the history of medicine and director of the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, University of Oxford. His books include Medicine and Victory: British Military Medicine in the Second World War, The Medical War: British Military Medicine in the First World War, and the newly released Contagion: How Commerce Has Spread Disease.

From his Q & A at The Daily Beast:

Read More

Julie Powell

Julie Powell was on the verge of turning 30, trapped in a series of unfulfilling temp jobs, and living in a dreadful apartment in Queens, New York. That’s when she decided to break the monotony by attempting to make all 524 recipes in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. One year later, Powell had achieved her goal, documented her experiences on one of the most popular blogs on the

Read More

Marilyn Yalom

Marilyn Yalom was educated at Wellesley College, the Sorbonne, Harvard and Johns Hopkins. She has been a professor of French and comparative literature, director of an institute for research on women, a popular speaker on the lecture circuit, and the author of numerous books and articles on literature and women's history. In 1991 she was decorated as an Officier des Palmes Académiques by the

Read More

Joan Didion

Joan Didion's many books includes such nonfiction as The Year of Magical Thinking (2006) and Blue Nights (2011). From her interview by Hilton Als for The Paris Review:INTERVIEWER

By now you’ve written at least as much nonfiction as you have fiction. How would you describe the difference between writing the one or the other?

JOAN DIDION

Writing fiction is for me a fraught business, an occasion

Read More

Lesley Hazleton

Lesley Hazleton's new book is The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammad.

From a Q & A at her website:What inspired you to write The First Muslim?

Basically, frustration! I’d read several biographies of Muhammad as background for my previous book, After the Prophet, but though they seemed to tell me a lot about him, they left me with little real sense of the man himself. There was a certain

Read More

Rosie Schaap

Rosie Schaap is the author of Drinking with Men: A Memoir.

From her Q & A with Leah at Drinking Diaries:
Drinking Diaries: How old were you when you had your first drink and what was it?

Rosie Schaap: I couldn’t have been more than six. My parents had thrown a party on Christmas Eve, and I was first to rise on Christmas morning. They hadn’t cleaned up after the party, and there were snifters on

Read More

Peter Robinson

Peter Robinson is the author of Watching the Dark, the 20th novel to feature Robinson’s popular series sleuth, Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks, along with Banks’ colleague and former lover, Annie Cabbot.

From his Q & A with J. Kingston Pierce at The Rap Sheet:
JKP: Unlike some other series, your 20 books about Alan Banks have allowed the character to change and evolve in significant ways

Read More

Beth Raymer

From Vivian Chum's interview with Beth Raymer, author of Lay the Favorite: A Memoir of Gambling:
To place a bet, you can either lay the favorite or take the underdog. Of all the gambling phrases out there, why did you choose to title your memoir Lay the Favorite?

There’s something ironic about the title. What it’s saying is bet on the team most likely to win and invest yourself in the outcome

Read More

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Doris Kearns Goodwin's books include Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, which served as the basis of Steven Spielberg’s movie Lincoln.

From her Q & A with Erik Spanberg for the Christian Science Monitor:
Q: How does it feel to have “Team of Rivals” back in the headlines?

It’s been a wild ride.... I finished the book in 2005 and [Steven] Spielberg got the rights to it in

Read More

Melanie Challenger

Poet Melanie Challenger's nonfiction debut is On Extinction: How We Became Estranged from Nature.

From her Q & A with Bridget Potter at Publishers Weekly:
How did you come to believe that we have become "estranged from nature"?

I had a clamoring love of nature, but when I immersed myself in the natural world, I realized how much of my life and knowledge was derived solely from the manufactured

Read More

Eric Jay Dolin

Eric Jay Dolin is the author of Leviathan: The History of Whaling In America, which was chosen as one of the best nonfiction books of 2007 by the Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe, and also won the 2007 John Lyman Award for U. S. Maritime History; and Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America.

His latest book is When America First Met China: An Exotic History

Read More

Jennifer McMahon

Jennifer McMahon's new novel is The One I Left Behind.

From her Q & A with Pam Lambert at Publishers Weekly:
What inspired this novel?

I was looking at a milk carton one morning and—my mind goes funny places sometimes—I’m like, “Wow, wouldn’t it be really creepy if you just found a milk carton and opened it and there was a hand inside?” And then my mind continued to work, and I thought maybe it

Read More

Melanie Benjamin

Melanie Benjamin is the author of Alice I Have Been, Mrs. Tom Thumb, and her latest, The Aviator's Wife, about Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

From her Q & A with Caroline Leavitt:You’ve focused on some of the most startling and original women in history, including Alice of Alice in Wonderland Fame, and Mrs. Tom Thumb. What drew you to Anne Morrow Lindbergh?

I'm always interested in finding women whom

Read More

Sara Gran

Sara Gran's latest novel is Claire Dewitt and the City of the Dead.

From her Q & A with Randy Dotinga at the Christian Science Monitor:
Q: For people who haven't read the book, who's Claire DeWitt?

A: Claire DeWitt is in her mid-30s and from Brooklyn. She's "the world's greatest detective," but no one believes her. We'll find out if it's true as the series goes on.

She's been been through a

Read More

Vanessa Veselka

Vanessa Veselka is the author of the novel Zazen.

From her Q & A with Melissa Seley at Guernica:
Guernica: When you accepted your PEN debut fiction award, you thanked the translators in the room for allowing you to read some of the books that have most influenced you. What books are those?

Vanessa Veselka: I have seven bookshelves, but only half of one of those shelves is dedicated to American

Read More

Jeremy Dean

Jeremy Dean's new book is Making Habits, Breaking Habits: Why We Do Things, Why We Don't, and How to Make Any Change Stick.

From his Q & A with Jasmine Elist for the Jacket Copy blog:

What inspired your book "Making Habits, Breaking Habits"?

It's got to be one of the oldest questions we ask about ourselves: why is it so difficult to change? Say you want to change your diet, start practicing

Read More

Andy McNab

Andy McNab joined the infantry as a boy soldier. In 1984 he was 'badged' as a member of 22 SAS Regiment and was involved in both covert and overt special operations worldwide. During the Gulf War he commanded Bravo Two Zero, a patrol that, in the words of his commanding officer, 'will remain in regimental history for ever'. Awarded both the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM) and Military Medal (MM

Read More

Susanna Sonnenberg

Susanna Sonnenberg's new book is She Matters: A Life in Friendships.

From her Q & A with Jasmine Elist at the Jacket Copy blog:
This is the second memoir you have written -- what drives your impulse toward memoir?

Memoir requires a rugged honesty of the self, which I feel is the only thing I have completely within my power — the truth of the self. Memoir appeals to me because it forces us to

Read More

Cathy Marie Buchanan

Cathy Marie Buchanan's new novel is The Painted Girls.

From a Q & A with the author:
Question: Did you always intend The Painted Girls as a tribute to sisterhood?

Cathy Marie Buchanan: I once heard the great Canadian writer Alistair MacLeod comment that he did not so much buy into the old adage “write what you know” as a broader notion of writing about one’s obsessions. I’d take it a step

Read More

Gary Shteyngart

Gary Shteyngart's latest novel is Super Sad True Love Story.

From his Q & A with Noah Charney at The Daily Beast:
Describe your routine when conceiving of a book and its plot, before the writing begins.

I’ll read something by a better writer, and I’ll be, like, “Hmm, what if I made this, you know, more Russian?”

Do you have any unusual rituals when you write?

I write in bed while blasting

Read More