Amy Shearn

Amy Shearn's first novel, How Far Is the Ocean from Here, was published in 2008. Her latest novel is The Mermaid of Brooklyn.

From the author's Q & A at Traveling With T:Amy, how did the idea of The Mermaid of Brooklyn happen?

I was shopping with my grandmother for shoes to wear at my wedding when she told me the story of how a pair of shoes saved my great-grandmother’s life. My

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Virginia Morell

Virginia Morell's latest book is Animal Wise: The Thoughts and Emotions of Our Fellow Creatures.

From her Q & A with Ed Battistella at Welcome to Literary Ashland:EB: You’ve written about Africa’s natural treasures, about the Nile, and about the Leakey family. What brought you to the idea of animal minds?

VM: For my biography about the fossil-hunting Leakey family, I traveled to Tanzania to

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Alissa Nutting

Alissa Nutting's new novel is Tampa.

From her Q & A with Roxane Gay at The Daily Beast:
Are you nervous about this book in wide release or am I projecting?

Yes … realizing I’m running low on dish soap is enough to give me a panic attack, so you can imagine what the publication of my explicit novel about a taboo-breaking sexual psychopath does to my heart rate. It’s inevitable that the book

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Rhonda Riley

Rhonda Riley is a graduate of the creative writing program at the University of Florida.

Her recently released debut novel is The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope.

From the author's Q & A with Jaime Boler:
JB: Please describe The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope in ten words or less.

RR: Ten words! Okay, here goes: A woman finds a unique stranger who changes her world.

JB: How did you come up with the

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Tiffany Hawk

Tiffany Hawk is writer living near Washington D.C. whose work has appeared in such places as The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, National Geographic Traveler and on NPR’s “All Things Considered.” Her debut novel, Love Me Anyway, is a darkly funny look into the emotional heart of the airline industry, with all its allure, loneliness, and ever-present temptations.

From the author's Q &

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Reza Aslan

Reza Aslan is the author of Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. From his Q & A with Christopher John Farley for the Wall Street Journal's Speakeasy blog:
In the book you say that Jesus was “very likely” illiterate, and there’s “no reason to think” he could read or write. But a lot of Biblical scholars disagree. In Luke 4:16, we see Jesus reading. [“And he came to Nazareth, where he

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Pawan Dhingra

The sociologist Pawan Dhingra is the author of Life Behind The Lobby: Indian American Motel Owners and the American Dream.

From the author's 2012 conversation with Aarti Virani for the Wall Street Journal’s India Real Time:WSJ: What sparked your interest in this particular demographic?

Mr. Dhingra: At first, I was caught by the numbers of it all: 40% of all motels in the United States are

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Laura Lippman

Laura Lippman's latest novel is And When She Was Good.

From her Q & A at Robb Cadigan's blog:
Hi Laura. Thanks for being here. Why don’t we start off with this: When did you know you wanted to be a writer? When did you know you were one?

Laura: I was four when I first attempted to write a book, I was 12 when I made a run at it, but I think I knew I was going to be a writer when I took some

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Jessica Anya Blau

Jessica Anya Blau's books include the nationally bestselling novel The Summer of Naked Swim Parties and the critically acclaimed Drinking Closer to Home.

Her new novel is The Wonder Bread Summer.

From the author's Q & A with Greg Olear at the Huffington Post:The opening scene of The Wonder Bread Summer takes place in the dressing room of a dress shop, when a coked-up coed is made to display her

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Adelle Waldman

Adelle Waldman’s writing has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, the New Republic, The Wall Street Journal, Slate, The Village Voice and other publications. She worked as a reporter at the New Haven Register and the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and wrote a column for the Wall Street Journal’s website before turning to fiction.

The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. is her first novel.

From

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Caroline Leavitt

Caroline Leavitt is the New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You, which sold to six countries, went into five printings, and was a San Francisco Chronicle Lit Pick, a Costco "Pennie's Pick" and a NAIBA bestseller. Pictures of You is also a USA Today ebook bestseller and is on the Best Books of 2011 List from the San Francisco Chronicle, Providence Journal, Kirkus Reviews and Bookmarks

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Paul Yoon

Paul Yoon's new novel is Snow Hunters.

From a Q & A at the publisher's website:You were born in New York City in 1980. How did you prepare to recreate the setting in post-war Brazil that your Korean protagonist, Yohan, inhabits in Snow Hunters?

Colum McCann once said that he’s always interested in writing about “the other.” William Trevor said something similar when he was asked why he often

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Matthew Specktor

Matthew Specktor is the author of the novels American Dream Machine and That Summertime Sound, as well as a nonfiction book about the motion picture The Sting. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Paris Review, The Believer, Tin House, Black Clock, and Salon.com, among other publications. He is a senior editor and founding member of the Los Angeles Review of Books.

From Specktor's Q

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Philippa Gregory

Philippa Gregory, whose series of novels based on the Wars of the Roses has been adapted into the BBC television drama The White Queen. Her latest book in the series is The White Princess.

From her Q & A with Noah Charney for The Daily Beast:
The White Queen has recently appeared as a television series. Tell me about how that particular book was chosen and what the process of preparing the

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Ed Gorman

Ed Gorman's latest novel is Flashpoint.

From his Q & A with J. Kingston Pierce at The Rap Sheet:
JKP: Like your fellow mystery writers Dorothy L. Sayers and Philip Kerr, you started out doing advertising work. Can you tell us what you did in that field?

EG: I started out as a copywriter in Des Moines, then worked by phone and mail for a small group in Chicago, then went back to Cedar Rapids

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Stephen King

Stephen King's new novel, Doctor Sleep, will be published in September by Scribner. The author calls it a "return to balls-to-the-wall, keep-the-lights-on horror." Doctor Sleep, the sequel to 1977's The Shining, catches up with the now middle-aged Dan Torrance and finds him working at a hospice where he uses his innate supernatural powers to ease the suffering of the dying.

From King's Q & A

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Richard Lange

Richard Lange is the author of the story collection Dead Boys, which received an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the novel This Wicked World. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and his fiction has appeared in Best American Mystery Stories 2004 and 2011. He lives in Los Angeles.

Lange's latest novel is Angel Baby.

From his conversation with George Pelecanos

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Leighton Gage

Leighton Gage’s books are crime novels set in Brazil. The author has lived in Australia, Europe, and South America and traveled widely in Asia and Africa. He visited Spain in the time of Franco, Portugal in the time of Salazar, South Africa in the time of apartheid, Chile in the time of Pinochet, Argentina in the time of the junta, Prague, East Germany, and Yugoslavia under the

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Gerard Jones

Gerard Jones is the author of Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book.

From his Q & A with Randy Dotinga for the Christian Science Monitor:Q: How did comic books first come into being?

A: They came out of the newspaper comic strips, which were mostly humor along with things like Tarzan and Dick Tracy.

The first comic books were just reprints of the newspaper comics,

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Karen E. Bender

Karen E. Bender is the author of the novel Like Normal People, which was a Los Angeles Times bestseller, a Washington Post Best Book of the Year, and a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection.

A Town of Empty Rooms, her second novel, was published earlier this year.

From the author's Q & A with David Ulin for the Los Angeles Times:“A Town of Empty Rooms” takes place in 2002, a

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