fiction/non/fiction fiction/non/fiction

As Literary Hub observes July 4, we return to our archives for a 2017 episode that remains relevant today. We will return with a new episode July 11.
In episode 6, V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell talk political betrayal past and present with novelist Jess Walter and poet Kiki Petrosino. Jess Walter once interviewed an ailing Mark Felt, aka "Deep Throat" of Watergate fame, and he gives us the skinny on the literary qualities of Nixon, Trump, Flynn, NY mobsters, and his 2005 novel Citizen Vince. Plus, would John Gotti have liked the president? On the eve of the release of her new book, Witch Wife, Kiki Petrosino talks to us about MacBeth's witches and how Shakespeare can help us decode our current age of political skulduggery. What Trump Administration officials would you cast in Macbeth? Readings: All the President's Men by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward; Citizen Vince by Jess Walter; Witch Wife by Kiki Petrosino; The Tragedy of Macbeth; The Tempest; The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.
In the Stacks: J.J. Cantrell interviews Annie Philbrick of Bank Square Books in Mystic, CT and Savoy Bookshop & Cafe in Westerly, Rhode Island.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Novelist Maxim Loskutoff joins co-host V.V. Ganeshananthan and guest co-host Matt Gallagher to talk about his new novel, Old King, which is about Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, who moved to Montana to withdraw from society. Loskutoff, who grew up in Missoula, Montana, discusses the mythology that draws men like Kaczynski—who sought to be in nature, and to avoid technology and other people—to his home state; the gap between the imaginary American West and its reality; and how these connect to American settler colonialism. He also explains how he positioned the Kaczynski of his novel not as a hero or even an antihero, but as a symbol of this dark and unhealed facet of American society. Loskutoff reads from Old King.
To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/
This episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf.

Maxim Loskutoff

Old King

Ruthie Fear

Come West and See

Opinion | The Unabomber and the Poisoned Dream of the American West - The New York Times


Others

William Kittredge

Richard Hugo 


Lewis and Clark 

Billy the Kid 

Jack Kerouac 


“The Story of Jack and Neal: the friendship that made On the Road—and the Beat Generation—possible” by James Parker, The Atlantic, March 11, 2022


Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Journalist and novelist Nicolás Medina Mora joins co-host V.V. Ganeshananthan and guest co-host Matt Gallagher to talk about Mexico’s president-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, who will be the first woman and first Jewish person to lead the country. Medina Mora explains current president Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s history, his hold on Mexico’s political imagination, and how his connections to Sheinbaum will affect policy moving forward as he uses his last days in office to attempt 18 changes to Mexico’s constitution. Medina Mora, who is an editor at the Mexican magazine Nexos, reflects on writing about Lopez Obrador through both fiction and journalism. He elaborates on a pre-election piece he wrote for The New York Review of Books and also reads from his novel, América del Norte, in which he plays with the relationship between fiction and nonfiction.
To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/
This episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf.
Nicolás Medina Mora

América del Norte

Where Next for Mexico? | Nicolás Medina Mora | The New York Review of Books

Nexos


Others

Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 7, Episode 32: "Claire Messud on Blurring Family History and Fiction"


Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 7, Episode 17: "Ed Park on Korea’s Past, Real and Imagined"



"Mexico’s outgoing president pushes ahead with plan to fire 1,600 judges" by Christine Murray | Financial Times



"Mexico’s bloodiest election in history sends new asylum-seekers to the US border" by Caitlin Stephen Hu, David Culver, Norma Galeana and Evelio Contreras| CNN


The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen


Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this Pride Month episode, Navy veteran and author Karen Solt joins co-host V.V. Ganeshananthan and guest co-host Matt Gallagher to talk about her experience of being gay while serving in the military. Solt, who retired as a senior chief petty officer in 2006 and served both before and during “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” talks about the Clinton-era policy that prohibited the harassment of gay service members while requiring that they stay closeted. Solt explains the impossible position gay military members were in before and during DADT, as they faced questioning from investigators, the threat of losing their jobs if found out, and being separated from their partners rather than being moved together as their straight counterparts often were. Solt reads from her book, Hiding for My Life: Being Gay in the Navy.

To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/

This episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf.

Karen Solt
Hiding for My Life: Being Gay in the Navy

Others

Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 7, Episode 30: “Tracie McMillan on the Myth of Colorblindness”


Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 2, Episode 21: “Elliot Ackerman and Anuradha Bhagwati on the Role of the Military in American Politics”



The Lieutenant by Andrew Dubus

Roger & Me

A Former Marine Looks Back on Her Life in a Male-Dominated Military, by V.V. Ganeshananthan, The New York Times | April 17, 2024
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With summer approaching, Army veteran and long-distance hiker Akuna Robinson joins host V.V. Ganeshananthan and guest co-host Matt Gallagher to talk about the experience of through hiking, or long-distance hiking a trail from end to end. Robinson, the first Black man to complete the Pacific Crest Trail, the Appalachian Trail, and the Continental Divide Trail—the Triple Crown of through hiking—recounts how he was inspired by the movie Wild to attempt the Pacific Crest Trail as a way of managing post-traumatic stress disorder from his military service in Iraq. Robinson reflects on encountering greater diversity on the trail in recent years, seeing the landscape affected by climate change, and the individualized nature of packing for a months-long journey. He also discusses hiking with Gallagher, and reading and writing on the trail. Gallagher reads from his 2021 ESPN profile of Robinson. 
To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/
This episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf.
Akuna Robinson


“Iraq War veteran Will 'Akuna' Robinson is the trailblazing superstar of thru-hiking,” by Matt Gallagher | ESPN | Nov. 11, 2021 

“For first Black man to wear hiking's 'triple crown,' the trails are a place for healing,” by Dakota Kim | Los Angeles Times | Feb. 23, 2023 


Others:


Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed


Wild (movie)


Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character by David Straithairn and Jonathan Shay


Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming by Jonathan Shay, Senator Max Cleland  


Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart: An Adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail by Carrot Quinn


The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 3, Episode 4: “Wild Ecologies: So Go the Salmon, So Goes the World, with Tucker Malarkey, Will Bardenwerper, and Stan Brewer

Pacific Crest Trail

Appalachian Trail

Continental Divide Trail


Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Editor and writer Jonny Diamond joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about Nobel Prize-winning short story writer Alice Munro, who passed away May 13 in the same Canadian town where Diamond’s mother died 12 years earlier. He outlines what made the lives of the two women similar—namely, marrying young and starting families within the parameters of 1950s expectations, and then finding their own voices after divorcing in the 1970s—and discusses how beautifully Munro wrote about the interiority of those who lived that life or an adjacent life. He reads from his Literary Hub essay, “My Mother Will Live Forever in the Stories of Alice Munro.”

To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/

This episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf.

Jonny Diamond

 “My Mother Will Live Forever in the Stories of Alice Munro” | Literary Hub


Others:


Fiction/Non/Fiction: Season 1, Episode 19: “Podcasting Pro-Tips and Jonny Diamond on Creating Lit Hub Radio”


Fiction/Non/Fiction: Season 7, Episode 32: “Claire Messud on Blurring Family History and Fiction”

Alice Munro

Margaret Atwood

Margaret Laurence

Carol Shields

James Baldwin

John Keats

Walt Whitman

Simone de Beauvoir


Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy



Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert



“Inside Alice Munro’s Notebooks” by Benjamin Hedin | Paris Review



“Wood” by Alice Munro | The New Yorker | November 16, 1980

“Kindling The Creative Fire: Alice Munro's Two Versions of ‘Wood'" by Lisa Dickler Awano | New Haven Review | May 30, 2012
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices