Book Public: Recent Episodes
Yvette Benavides
Book Public is a Texas Public Radio podcast about books. At Book Public we believe books have the power to enlighten and entertain us. Listen in as we talk to authors about their books and why and how they wrote them. At Book Public we’re committed to connecting listeners to books that help us understand today’s world—and each other—a little bit better.
Readers of Geoff Dyer’s books have come to expect his trademark humor and incisive cultural commentary. His new book, Homework, shows us that the more success he had in school, the further he diverged from his parents. But his telling of this story brings us up close to share in his profound appreciation of his past.
In the novel Endling, by Maria Reva, protagonist Yeva joins guided romance tours in Ukraine to help pay for her research as a snail conservationist. Somehow, she becomes part of a kidnapping caper. Then Russia invades Ukraine. And the book shifts to a work of nonfiction with the author herself telling her story. Fiction and reality collide—beautifully.
Richard Bausch discusses his latest story collection, The Fate of Others. This may be the author’s 24th book, but it is a fresh, powerful collection of stories for today’s world with all its resonances of loss and isolation—but also of hope.
The flaws and follies of Cupolo’s characters teach us something about what it means to be human when we make mistakes or when we allow each other mercy. Lisa Cupolo discusses her award-winning story collection.
The Bright Years by Sarah Damoff is a multigenerational family saga that underscores the ways that a family tries to navigate and survive addiction, grief, shame and the losses that loving deeply can bring to our lives. Secrets and regrets, forgiveness and grace—all figure in this tender story about love in its many forms.
Jock Heidenstein. Anita Lasker. Chana Zumerkorn, Regina Feldman. These young women did not know each other. They never met—not before or after their respective experiences during the Holocaust. What connects their incredible stories? A red sweater. Lucy Adlington discusses her book Four Red Sweaters.
The Imagined Life is a novel about memory, music and longing—and about the bonds between a father and a son. Andrew Porter discusses his latest novel on the latest episode of Book Public.
For author Lauren K. Watel, “potions” are part poem and part fiction. There are 75 prose-like vignettes with the density and intensity of poems in her "Book of Potions."
The novel is set in 2038 in Three Rivers, Texas. A corrupt industrialist is the mayor. Women are indentured laborers in a fish cannery. Reading books is against the law. Protagonist Neftalí is the last literate citizen of the town. What can she do to reclaim and help her city?
The novel is about race and class and about parents trying to raise their sons in our fraught times.
The protagonist is a supremely talented man who is also deeply troubled. He must emerge from his isolation to help a blind, wounded, helpless horse—but can he also save himself?
Edwidge Danticat discusses her essay collection, We're Alone. The essays cover subjects like environmental catastrophe, the traumas of colonialism, motherhood, and the complexities of resilience.
In the novel, Back After This, a podcast producer in Washington D.C. becomes the host of a new podcast—about dating. It’s a break she’s been waiting for. But will this new opportunity destroy her chances at love instead? Linda Holmes discusses her latest novel on the next episode of Book Public.
A young, pregnant mother tries to leave an abusive husband. Obstacles are everywhere for her and her children. Yvette Benavides reviews Nesting—a tense and emotional novel by Roisín O'Donnell.
Tod Lending joins Yvette Benavides for a discussion about The Umbrella Maker’s Son. This World War II novel is a powerful and poignant story about survival and hope in the face of terror and violence. It's an important addition to modern works of Holocaust literature.
A new Little Golden Book biography immortalizes the story of Selena Quintanilla for a new generation of young readers.
Blues in Stereo is a collection of Langston Hughes' very early works—some penned when he was just a teenager and in his early 20s. The collection, curated by Danez Smith, portends the sublime talent and abilities of Langston Hughes, a master poet who went on to help define American literature.
Carys Davies' latest novel is set in Scotland in the 1840s— a time when tenant farmers were moved off their Scottish coastal lands. John Ferguson must evict a man named Ivar from his remote home. When John injures himself in a bad fall from a cliff, Ivar saves him, nurses him back to health, and the two men form an unexpected bond.
In Bruna Dantas Lobato's Blue Light Hours, when a daughter and mother live 4,000 miles apart, they both come of age, feeling a deep longing for the past but also learning about how their bond deepens because of the independence each one is learning to live with.
A fixer for journalists covering Haiti, Jean Marseille becomes the subject—and the teller—of his own story of displacement in The Four Deportations of Jean Marseille. He shares the harrowing stories of the struggle to survive the chaos and violence of Haiti and his search for a better life—for himself and his family.
Jenny Minton Quigley is the editor of the series. Amor Towles is this year's guest judge.
Severo Perez’s Filmmaker’s Journey recounts Perez’s story from his humble beginnings on San Antonio’s West Side to 2024—and a celebration of his film “...and the Earth did not Swallow Him” being nominated to the National Film Registry by Congressman Joaquín Castro.
'The Disappeared' by Rebecca J. Sanford is a debut novel inspired by the real mothers and grandmothers who spoke out against Argentina's military dictatorship.
Many works of fiction feature cataclysmic weather events. In "God's Gonna Trouble the Water" by Randall Kenan, the effects of a hurricane don't always affect diverse communities the same way.
A young girl must come to terms with her role in a tragic loss—and work to reshape the narrative of her own life in the aftermath. A review of Poor Deer by Claire Oshetsky.
What is an emotional history? What of the “emotional history” of the United States? This is what historian Andrew Burstein investigates—and answers— in his latest book, Longing for Connection: Entangled Memories and Emotional Loss in Early America. The book covers the period from America’s founding through the Civil War.
In his latest book, Truth is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow, Steve Almond explores the trials and myths that influence our writing lives.
Lilly Gonzalez is the executive director of the San Antonio Book Festival. She discusses this year's exciting author line-up at the April 13 all-day event.
Book Public: Lynn Schmeidler discusses her story collection, Half-Lives, with Book Public host, Yvette Benavides.
Rowan Beaird discusses her novel The Divorcées. It’s set in the 1950s on a divorce ranch, a place where women could live for six weeks to establish residency in order to be able to file for divorce in a Nevada court.
Tommy Orange discusses Wandering Stars. The novel traces the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School through three generations of a family.
Leslie Jamison discusses her memoir, 'Splinters: A Kind of Love Story' with Yvette Benavides.
Book Public podcast host Yvette Benavides interviews Margot Livesey about her latest novel, 'The Road from Belhaven.'
Book Public host Yvette Benavides interviews Kristin Hannah about her latest novel, "The Women."
The author Katherine Min passed away in 2019. Her daughter, Kayla Min Andrews, discusses her mother's posthumously published novel, The Fetishist.
In All the Little Bird-Hearts, debut novelist Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow has created a richly drawn psychological drama set in the late 1980s about a woman, Sunday Forrester, who is autistic. The author is also autistic. The novel was longlisted for the Booker Prize for 2023.
Elizabeth Crook's latest novel, The Madstone, is a thrilling story set in Texas in the late 1860s. Protagonist Benjamin Shreve sets out on a long journey to help a pregnant mother and her little son evade a murderous gang.
At 95 years old, Lore Segal is at the top of her game with her latest story collection, Ladies’ Lunch.
In James McBride’s The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, we are in Pottstown, Pennsylvania in 1972. A human skeleton has been discovered at a construction site. Who holds the secrets of this discovery? The answer might be found among the residents of Chicken Hill, a neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans have lived side by side for decades, sharing life’s sorrows and joys—and looking out for each other.
Richard Russo won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel Empire Falls and millions have followed the saga of Donald “Sully” Sullivan. Richard Russo discusses Somebody’s Fool, the third book in his North Bath trilogy.
Cristina García discusses her latest novel, Vanishing Maps. The novel follows the del Pino family we first met in García's first novel, Dreaming in Cuban.
Isabel Allende's novel traces the ripple effects of war and immigration on one child in Europe in 1938 and another in El Salvador in 2019. Each finds refuge in the U.S.
Luis Alberto Urrea's latest novel is based on his mother’s experiences working with the Red Cross behind the front lines during World War II.
When a mall that has been the town’s gathering place for decades is scheduled to close down, the community must face the ways they live their lives. Karin Lin-Greenberg discusses her novel, You Are Here.
Nicole Chung discusses her book, A Living Remedy—a profound ode to her parents that also shows the failures of our country's health-care system.
The Kudzu Queen by Mimi Herman is a novel set in Cooper County, North Carolina in 1941. When a handsome stranger comes to town touting the powers of kudzu crops, everyone falls for his charms. No one realizes the negative side of the invasive plant or the dark side of the stranger.
Peter Orner and Yvette Benavides discuss ‘With Reference to an Incident at a Bridge’ by William Maxwell.
John Hendrickson discusses how he made peace with his stutter in this candid and beautiful memoir.
Manuel Muñoz discusses his story collection 'The Consequences' with Book Public's Yvette Benavides.
'Three Muses' is Martha Anne Toll's debut novel about a Holocaust survivor who is bereft by past trauma and struggling to find his way to a kind of hope.
Dionne Irving discusses her short story "The Cape" from the story collection "The Islands."
In "Dancing After Hours" by Andre Dubus, main character Emily is convinced she will never find love. At the tavern where she tends bar, she sees clearly the loneliness of other people. One night, that perception changes in the most unlikely of ways.
Peter Orner and Yvette Benavides discuss "Ivy Day in the Committee Room" by James Joyce
Peter Orner’s new memoir-in-essays is an ode to other books. He helps us see the ways they contain the stories of our lives, too, and understand that reading is essential.
Book Public's Yvette Benavides talks to Sandra Cisneros about her new book of poetry ‘Woman Without Shame.'
Book Public: ‘Math for the Self-Crippling” Ursula Villarreal Moura’s slim chapbook of flash fiction makes a big impression
In this episode of Book Public - Que Esperanzas: Yvette Benavides speaks with author Kali Fajardo-Anstine about her short story “Sabrina & Corina."
Yvette Benavides interviews author Dana Johnson about her short story “Because That’s Just Easier.”
A reunion of the Dulaney girls' school is the setting for this story by Louise Marburg.
“Que Esperanzas” is a new series from Book Public that focuses on short stories with protagonists who are women surviving catastrophic injustice in their everyday lives with a thin measure of hope. This week's story is “Nature Exchange” by Sindya Bhanoo.
In the story "No Place for You, My Love" by Eudora Welty, a woman from Toledo and a man from Syracuse who’ve only just met drive south of New Orleans through rural Louisiana.
Yevgenia Belorusets is the Ukrainian author of the story collection Lucky Breaks. First published in 2018, it was published in English in March of 2022.
‘Olga Dies Dreaming’ Xochitl Gonzalez’s debut novel is a story about family and betrayal.
‘The Everybody Ensemble’ : Amy Leach celebrates the natural world in her new collection of whimsical essays.
'A Most Remarkable Creature': Jonathan Meiburg reveals the curiosity and charisma of the caracara.
Laura Van Prooyen is the author of Frances of the Wider Field. It’s published by Lily Poetry Review. She is also the founder of Next Page Press.
Mark Oppenheimer’s latest book is “Squirrel Hill: The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood.”
Barbara Ras shares poems from her latest poetry collection The Blues of Heaven. These are poems that are tender and wise, measured and uproarious, somber and celebratory.
In Sandra Cisneros’ latest book, Corina is living her life in Chicago when she finds a letter she’d long forgotten. This and other ephemera of bygone days when she was young, single and following her dreams to become a writer in Paris lead Corina to respond to her friend Martita through this epistolary work.
At 91, the beloved author is back to writing stories after the death of her husband to COVID-19. Her new collection is called “Today A Woman Went Mad In The Supermarket.”
Alexander Nemerov brings us the story of pioneering artist Helen Frankenthaler and a look into New York’s 1950s art scene.
In Marisol Cortez’s novel “Luz at Midnight,” offers a world of insights on environmental justice with a setting in San Antonio, Texas.
Katie Crouch’s new novel is set in Namibia where two central characters, American women, are “embassy wives” who have transplanted their lives to follow their husbands to their diplomatic roles.
In her debut memoir, Chloe Shaw guides us on an emotional journey that anyone who has ever loved and lost a dog will appreciate.
Jessica Hopper is a pioneer in the field of music criticism. She examines the music of women — in many contexts, from songwriters to producers — through an intersectional feminist lens.
In her new collection of essays, "Broken (In the Best Possible Way)," Jenny Lawson shares her experiences with anxiety and depression.
Families play a big part in Elizabeth McCracken’s latest story collection, The Souvenir Museum.
Poems give language and voice to the things that are sometimes incommunicable. Edward Hirsch knows something about this.
Daisy Hernández embarks on a journey that takes her all over the country to reveal the problem of Chagas, the kissing bug disease that ravages the human body and destroys families.
Claire Fuller is back with a new novel. This time, in Unsettled Ground, she brings us a darkly poignant tale about 51-year-old twins who still live at home with their mother and whose lives are devastated by her untimely death — and the secrets she left behind.
A new anthology of the modern American short story offers a wonderfully varied collection of voices, forms and styles.
Two little girls in 1973 St. Louis are at the heart of Marisa Silver’s latest novel, "The Mysteries."
John Edgar Wideman has published some 20 books. His latest, "You Made Me Love You," is a collection of 57 stories selected from previously published collections.
In Jo Ann Beard's latest collection, she brings us nine stories, most of which are based on real people and events. The collection itself reveals again the author's ability to build a story that grabs us from the beginning and never lets us go.
In Gregory Curtis' memoir of losing his beloved spouse, the longtime editor of Texas Monthly returns alone to Paris.
Anthony Bourdain was planning to write a new travel book with his assistant, Laurie Woolever, before he passed away in 2018. But Woolever made good on the implicit promise to make the book a reality.
Father James Martin talks about learning to pray in his latest book "Learning to Pray: A Guide for Everyone."
Kristin Hannah’s latest novel, The Four Winds, is set during the Great Depression when drought, famine and the devastation of the Dust Bowl converged at once for the folks living in the Great Plains.
Gabriela Garcia’s debut novel, “Of Women and Salt,” is about the choices mothers make and the burden of that legacy for their daughters.
This week on Book Public, Te-Ping Chen discusses her debut collection of short stories, "Land of Big Numbers."
Elizabeth Miki Brina’s new memoir “Speak Okinawa” delves into topics of family, identity and forgiveness.
On this "Pop-Up Book" episode we learn all about the 9th Annual San Antonio Book Festival from executive director Lilly Gonzalez and literary director Clay Smith.
This week on "The Lonely Voice" from Book Public, Peter Orner and Yvette Benavides welcome special guest, author Thomas O'Malley, to discuss "Irish Revel" by Edna O'Brien.
"The Lowering Days": Gregory Brown's Debut Novel of Contention and Compassion in Maine Community
“Homo Irrealis”: André Aciman’s Essay Collection Parses the Meanings of the Paradoxes and Contradictions of Time
"Mike Nichols: A Life": Mark Harris Chronicles Mike Nichols' Complex Life and Brilliant Career
In the novel Landslide, author Susan Conley tells the story of a fishing accident that leaves protagonist Jill’s husband, Kit, hospitalized in Canada. Jill is left to look after her two sons. Then Jill suspects her husband has been unfaithful.
“The National Road: Dispatches from a Changing America”: Tom Zoellner’s Essay Collection A Roadmap through Contradictory American Histories,
The Lonely Voice with Peter Orner discusses Edna O’Brien's short story “The Love Object.” O’Brien is an award-winning Irish novelist, memoirist, playwright, poet and writer of short stories.
"Walking with Ghosts": Gabriel Byrne's Memoir Is Mesmeric Reflection on Family, Memory, and Loss.
Book Public host Yvette Benavides reviews “Dancing with the Octopus: A Memoir of a Crime” by Debora Harding.
Texas Public Radio's Yvette Benavides, host of Book Public, speaks to author Aimee Bender about her latest novel, "The Butterfly Lampshade."
Texas Public Radio's Book Public host Yvette Benavides and Peter Orner discuss the joy of reading.
Book Public host Yvette Benavides speaks with Jess Walter about his historical novel "The Cold Millions."
Book Public host Yvette Benavides reviews “Things You Would Know If You Grew Up Around Here” by Nancy Wayson Dinan.
“The Lonely Voice with Peter Orner” from Book Public on Texas Public Radio with Host Yvette Benavides discusses “Remember” by Juan Rulfo with writer Peter Orner and guest Alberto Reyes Morgan.
TPR Book Public's Yvette Benavides speaks with Louise Erdrich about her novel "The Night Watchman."
TPR Book Public “The Lonely Voice with Peter Orner” with host Yvette Benavides, with a special guest, Alberto Reyes Morgan, discussing Juan Rulfo's story Luvina” from the collection "El Llano en Llamas."
“Why We Can’t Sleep: Women’s New Midlife Crisis”: Ada Calhoun Explores the Complicated Lives of Gen X Women
Stephen Graham Jones’ latest novel, The Only Good Indians, takes us to the Blackfeet Nation in Montana’s fertile forests and the undeniable mystery and allure they hold for hunters of elk. This is the backdrop for a stunning horror story where four Native American men come face to face with the karmic forces that will exact revenge on them for disrespecting the land and its sacred creatures.
A discussion of the short story "It's Because We're So Poor" by Juan Rulfo with Yvette Benavides and Peter Orner.
Texas Public Radio's Book Public with Yvette Benavides: “Olive Again”: Elizabeth Strout on the Return to Crosby, Maine and Olive—Again
Lee Gutkind is the author of My Last Eight Thousand Days: An American Male in His Seventies It’s published by The University of Georgia Press. He is also the professor and writer-in-residence in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society at Arizona State University.
In the short story collection To Be a Man, Nicole Krauss helps us decipher the puzzle of what it means to be a man—and woman—in various roles and stages of life.
The Lonely Voice: The third in our series celebrating the stories of Gina Berriault, is “Works of the Imagination.”
“Kant’s Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write” : Claire Messud On Her Life as a Writer and Reader
In Dennis Mahoney’s novel Ghostlove, protagonist William Rook is a reluctant occultist who falls in love with a ghost named June.
'Tomboy': Lisa Selin Davis Explores the Complex Evolution of Tomboyism and Gender Nonconformity
“The Lonely Voice” #1 features acclaimed author Peter Orner and Yvette Benavides discussing The Overcoat by Gina Berriault ,
"How to Fly (In Ten Thousand Easy Lessons)": Barbara Kingsolver's Passion for Poetry Shines in Latest Collection
This week on "Book Public," the mid-pandemic release of the paperback edition of "Maggie Brown & Others" by Peter Orner.
In two of his previous books, Randall Kenan created the town of Tims Creek, North Carolina. His stories of the goings-on of Tims Creek continue in his latest collection "If I Had Two Wings."
In Sue Miller’s latest novel, "Monogamy," Annie is a happy wife. Her husband, Graham, is a man with a magnetic personality and big appetites. One day, he seems preoccupied and distant, but her anxiety dissolves when he presents her with flowers.
Likes is the latest short story collection by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, featuring nine stories.
Joshua Bennett’s latest poetry collection is Owed. That’s O-W-E-D. The book is a series of odes — lyric poetry in the form of an address to a particular subject — but it is also about what is owed to Black Americans during this time of racial reckoning.
Fifteen stories make up the debut collection by Jenny Bhatt, and each story is as different from the next as it can be, featuring diverse settings, characters, and conflicts. Points of view vary as well. Flash fiction pieces are interspersed here among the much longer stories, but you’ll luxuriate for as long in a story that spans a couple of pages and be haunted by its lingering lessons.
When Sarah Menkedick was a new mother, she openly shared the expected details of her life about sleepless nights or day-care waiting lists. The only taboo topic was the fear that consumed her waking life.
The first thing you notice when you pick up this slim volume is the image on the cover featuring a young girl facing one way, standing on a shore by the water’s edge. In the foreground, a man wearing a mask walks in the other direction.
In Callan Wink’s novel, August, we follow the title character, August, from ages 12 to 19. His parents divorce. He observes the many ways their union was illogical. He is quiet and unassuming like his father, but he has a natural curiosity and hunger to learn like his mother. He lives with one parent in Michigan and then the other in Montana. Eventually, a dramatic and violent situation makes him strike out on his own where he continues to discover that people in small, quiet spaces live complicated lives. The experiences lead him to conclusions about his own parents and his own future.
The Heart and Other Monsters is a grief memoir, one that also intersects with a murder mystery. The first thing we learn when we read the first page of the book is that Rose Andersen’s sister has been murdered, but Andersen has no proof. She admits this up front before guiding us through a plausible series of events that implicate a number of people in bringing Sarah’s short life to a sad end.
In Matthew Salesses’ Disappear Doppelgänger Disappear, protagonist Matt Kim is battling himself in a world that would rather have his double if it suits their expectations of what makes the model minority Asian American. When Matt Kim discovers his double has vanished, he fears he will be next. He sets off on to find out what happened to the other Matt and discover himself.
This week’s Pop-Up Book! is Gangs of the El Paso-Juárez Borderland: A History by Mike Tapia. The book offers a 100-year history of the subcultures of the El Paso-Juárez Borderland.
When Alice King is murdered in her home in the South Side of Chicago, her daughter, Ruby, despairs at the thought of being left to live with her father in a house that holds a silenced history of dysfunction and abuse. Her goal is to flee and start fresh in new place. But the path will not be an easy one.
In "Someone's Listening" by Seraphina Nova Glass, protagonist Faith Finley seems to have everything going for her. She’s a psychologist with a thriving practice, a bestselling author, and the host of a popular radio program. Her handsome husband, Liam is a successful food critic.
In Sameer Pandya’s Members Only, Raj Bhatt is an immigrant now well immersed in his life in California. He has a wonderful wife and children, a good job as a professor at a large university and membership at an exclusive tennis club. Raj appears to have it all, but we quickly learn that while he might outwardly seem to live a charmed life, he’s plagued by instances of racism and discrimination and comes face to face with cultural insensitivity on a regular basis. One day, Raj himself utters something offensive and we see the tenuous nature of all the good things he has worked so hard for and the ways his worst fears are about to consume his life.
Deborah Paredez’s new poetry collection is a haunting collage of photographs and poems that carry us from 1970 to the present. This daughter of the Vietnam War focuses on the ways that women’s voices are at the center of the elegiac tradition, decrying violence and the trauma of oppressive systems.
Jacob Soboroff was working as a correspondent for NBC and MSNBC at the end of 2015, covering immigration on the US-Mexico border. On the occasion of a press tour inside a detention facility in Brownsville where 1500 young boys were being held and where reporters were not allowed to bring in recording equipment, Jacob Soboroff put pen to paper, writing notes and filling the pages of a small notebook. Those notes became the seedbed of Separated: Inside an American Tragedy, an expansive, complex, and multi-layered story about the immigration crisis and the policy that separates families seeking asylum in the United States.
Jivan is a young Muslim woman who posts a message on Facebook that criticizes the Indian government. She shares the post, seeking affirmation from her online friends, but things snowball and Jivan is thrown in jail. On this week’s episode of Book Public, we’ll talk to novelist Megha Majumdar about her debut novel, A Burning. Heralded by major media outlets as the book of the summer, the book illustrates the ways we can hold dreams close even when institutions and systems conspire to defeat us.
Texas Public Radio is launching a new podcast hosted by Yvette Benavides that introduces listeners to authors of influential books, from bestsellers to emerging authors.