Big Books & Bold Ideas with Kerri Miller

Minnesota Public Radio
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Where Readers Meet Writers. Conversations on books and ideas, Fridays at 11 a.m.

  1. 2d ago

    Talking Volumes: Lucy Foley talks ‘Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel’

    Miss Marple rides again in Lucy Foley’s new novel, “Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel.” This time, the beloved spinster sleuth finds herself on holiday, at a glamorous and isolated hotel nestled high in the Swiss Alps — where a body is quickly discovered on the first gondola ride of the day. Thankfully for the hotel guests — and mystery readers — Miss Marple is there, observing from the sidelines and taking it all in. As Foley told Kerri Miller at Talking Volumes, “Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel” is the first full-length, commissioned novel featuring Agatha Christie’s beloved Miss Marple in fifty years. The challenge was translating her into a more modern sensibility.

  2. 5d ago

    Voting rights expert Carol Anderson in conversation with Kerri Miller in Red Wing

    Carol Anderson has been sounding the alarm for years. As a historian at Emory University, she is intimately acquainted with America’s legacy when it comes to voting access. Her book, “One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying our Democracy,” was longlisted for the National Book Award in 2018. She brought her deep knowledge of history and concern about what’s happening to voting access now to Red Wing on Sept. 23. During a conversation at the Sheldon Theatre with MPR News host Kerri Miller, Anderson said she’s worried the Jim Crow-era is beginning anew, thanks to persistent attempts to deny communities of color their right to vote. “I see it as the result of a long-term campaign to undermine the strength of our electoral systems,” she told Miller. “How many times can you hear ‘stolen election, stolen election, voter fraud, voter fraud, voter fraud?’ If you say a lie enough times, it becomes the truth, and there's a nasty long history of hollering ‘voter fraud.’” But while Anderson acknowledged the country’s track record on voting access is grim, she also applauded the only thing that has ever held it at bay: voters who are active and civically engaged. She pointed to the Red Wing audience as evidence. Click here “This is, what, a Wednesday evening? And you’re here listening to a talk about voter suppression and voting rights?” she laughed. “This is where our strength is. It is people getting educated about what’s happening and knowing not to listen to the lies about election integrity and voter fraud.” Subscribe to Big Books and Bold Ideas with Kerri Miller on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, RSS or anywhere you get your podcasts. Subscribe to the Thread newsletter for the latest book and author news and must-read recommendations.

  3. Sep 25

    Author Sarah Longwell says political character counts in ‘How to Eat an Elephant’

    Have Americans given up a sense of virtue in their political leaders? What does character mean when so-called “authenticity” is prized over moral goodness? As publisher of The Bulwark and host of The Focus Group podcast, Sarah Longwell has thought long and hard about these questions. When she was a young conservative growing up in the ‘90s, she applauded Republicans who held then-President Bill Clinton to task for his moral failings. “I was very attracted to the idea that character counted,” she tells Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas. “In the years post-Clinton, that idea of virtue or character really was animating for the right — at least in their rhetoric. So it was deeply shocking to me, when Donald Trump came on the scene, to see every Republican I knew, both personally and who I had admired from afar, fall in line.” Click here Longwell’s new book, “How to Eat an Elephant: One Voter at a Time,” is a call for pro-democracy groups to unite and push back against authoritarianism. Her thesis is built upon hundreds of focus groups she’s conducted since President Trump was elected — with Republicans, Democrats, Independents and the politically homeless — where she’s heard voters say that character just isn’t the deal breaker that it used to be. “But I do think for America to have a better moral line of what we’ll tolerate,” she says. “It will require a [candidate] to come in and — not pretend to be perfect — but they should lean hard into the idea that we can be better than this.” Guest: Sarah Longwell is publisher of The Bulwark and host of The Focus Group podcast. Her new book, “How to Eat an Elephant: One Voter at a Time,” is already a New York Times bestseller. Subscribe to Big Books and Bold Ideas with Kerri Miller on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, RSS or anywhere you get your podcasts. Subscribe to the Thread newsletter for the latest book and author news and must-read recommendations.

  4. Sep 18

    Talking Volumes: Marlon James on his deeply personal novel ‘The Disappearers’

    Marlon James new novel, “The Disappearers,” was published just 18 days ago, and already, this deeply personal novel about gay men in Jamaica has been declared “the novel of the decade, if not the century” by the New York Times. It has also been longlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize National Book Award. James, a part-time Macalester College professor and full-time literary phenomenon, kicked off the 2026 season of Talking Volumes last week. He joined Kerri Miller on the stage of the O’Shaughnessy Auditorium at St. Catherine University in St. Paul on Sept. 12. James told Miller, many of the themes in the book — violence, survival, shame, perseverance, masculinity — are culled from his own life. Talking Volumes: Marlon James Minneapolis singer-songwriter Annie Mack rounded out this moving and intimate evening. Tickets for the rest of the 2026 season of Talking Volumes are still on sale. Up next: Lucy Foley joins Miller on Sept. 25, to talk about her new novel, “Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel,” the brand-new Miss Marple mystery that brings Agatha Christie’s iconic sleuth to a glamorous, snowbound resort in the Swiss Alps.

  5. Sep 11

    Author Edwidge Danticat examines what it means to live after trauma in 'Dèy'

    In December of 2017, Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat was a mall in south Florida when a loud gunshot broke through the holiday shopping chatter. Believing that a mass shooting was underway, Danticat ran with her fellow shoppers in utter terror. Eventually, she learned the shooting was a hoax. But the trauma that experience provoked was very real. She works some of that trauma out in her new novel, "Dèy." Taken from the Creole word for “mourning,” the story follows a young mother, Magnolia, who survives an actual mass shooting. But the story is more about what happens next. How do you carry on when your life is marked by a before and an after? How can trauma be contained when life, inextricably, goes on? “Surviving isn’t the end of the story,” Danticat writes. “It’s where a different one begins.” Click here Danticat returns to Big Books and Bold Ideas this week to talk with Kerri Miller about why she wanted to weave joy into a book about grief and how trauma is processed best with those you love. Guest: Edwidge Danticat is the author of many books, including “Breath, Eyes, Memory” and “Claire of the Sea Light.” Her new novel is “Dèy.” Subscribe to Big Books and Bold Ideas with Kerri Miller on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, RSS or anywhere you get your podcasts. Subscribe to the Thread newsletter for the latest book and author news and must-read recommendations.

  6. Sep 4

    A new coming-of-age novel by Chang-rae Lee examines how we become who we are

    If you remember the first time you left your family to go to summer camp, you probably remember how that time marked you. You leave as a child, but after spending a week or two away from home and all that’s familiar, you return changed. Chang-rae Lee’s new novel, “A Tender Age,” follows a young boy, almost 11, as he begins the shift toward adolescence. A few tumultuous events make Jeon-Gi very aware of his new and growing personhood — and then he leaves for summer camp, where he experiments with different wants to be seen and to act in his suddenly widening world. Told through the now-adult Jeon-Gi’s memories, the story asks questions who how we become who we are. Click here “We’re not just formed by the world,” Lee tells Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas. “There’s part of us that’s ready to be forming on its own. So the world doesn’t only form us, it reveals us. There’s an interplay between those things, that sometimes can go in a direction we didn’t expect.” Guest: Chang-rae Lee is the author of many books, including “Native Speaker,” which won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for first fiction. His new book is “A Tender Age.” When he’s not writing his own work, Lee teaches writing to students at Stanford University. Subscribe to Big Books and Bold Ideas with Kerri Miller on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, RSS or anywhere you get your podcasts. Subscribe to the Thread newsletter for the latest book and author news and must-read recommendations.

  7. Aug 28

    What makes something invasive? A new book explores that, and environmental loss

    If you’ve been near a boat landing in Minnesota this summer, you’ve probably seen dire warnings about zebra mussels. The Department of Natural Resources says about five percent of Minnesota’s more than 11,000 lakes are infested with the fingernail-sized mollusk, and they are always trying to limit spread. That word — infested — hints at what the DNR thinks of invasive zebra mussel. It’s the language of contamination, infection and ruin. In her new book, “Undesirable: Invasive Species, Humans, and Where We All Belong,” science writer Amy Crawford examines how we came to see certain plants and animals as invading and marauding. She writes that, in his age of anxiety, “stories about invasive species tap into widely held feelings about environmental loss.” Click here This week on Big Books and Bold Ideas, Kerri Miller talks with Crawford about invasion biology and the hard questions that surround it: What’s considered native to an ecosystem? What do we do when our own damage of a habitat gives way to new plants, insects and animals? And is it time to reconsider our attempts to control these environments? Guest: Amy Crawford is a Michigan-based freelance journalist. Her new book is, “Undesirable: Invasive Species, Humans, and Where We All Belong.” Subscribe to Big Books and Bold Ideas with Kerri Miller on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, RSS or anywhere you get your podcasts. Subscribe to the Thread newsletter for the latest book and author news and must-read recommendations.

  8. Aug 21

    Paul Yoon's novel 'Etna' is told from a dog's point of view, thanks to Oscar

    There’s a before and an after to Paul Yoon’s writing life, and at the center is Oscar — a floppy, gentle, food-loving, 70-pound yellow Lab. Yoon didn’t grow up with dogs, so it was really his wife — fellow writer Laura van den Berg — who insisted on the addition. She might have known what would happen to their buttoned-up writing life when a puppy entered it. Paul didn’t. But he quickly fell in love with this disruptive and magical creature. It gave him a new way of looking at the world. His sixth novel is the result of that transformation. “Etna” is about a combat dog searching for home after war ravages his unnamed country — and the whole story is told from the dog’s point of view. It’s something Yoon wouldn’t have attempted outside of Oscar. “Part of it was imagining what Oscar might sound like,” Yoon tells Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas. ”I imagine him to be a dignified and empathetic creature. To me, he’s the best — so it was trying to capture what I thought were his best qualities and bring that onto the page.” Guest: Paul Yoon is a writer and a professor who lives in Hudson, New York, with his wife and their dog, Oscar. His new novel is “Etna.” Subscribe to Big Books and Bold Ideas with Kerri Miller on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, RSS or anywhere you get your podcasts. Subscribe to the Thread newsletter for the latest book and author news and must-read recommendations.

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Where Readers Meet Writers. Conversations on books and ideas, Fridays at 11 a.m.

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