Reading And Writing Podcast

Susan Wiggs interview – Episode 280

The 280th episode of the Reading & Writing podcast features an interview with Susan Wiggs, New York Times bestselling writer, and the author of the new novel THE LOST AND FOUND BOOKSHOP.

Wiggs’s novels have appeared in the #1 spot on the New York Times Bestseller List, and have captured interest around the globe with translations into more than 20 languages and 30 countries.

Expand Your Reading

Here’s a great list of African-American mystery writers from the Los Angeles Public Library.

Libro.fm – Great audibooks from your local independent bookstores

This episode of the Reading & Writing podcast is sponsored by Libro.fm. Libro.fm is the first and only company which lets you purchase audiobooks directly from your favorite local bookstore. You can pick from more than 125,000 audiobooks, including New York Times best sellers and recommendations from booksellers. You’ll get the same audiobooks at the same price as the largest audiobook company out there (you know the name). But you’ll be part of a different story — one that supports community. Use the code RWPODCAST today to get 2 audiobooks for the price of one.

You can subscribe to the podcast via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or by searching “Reading and Writing Podcast” in your favorite podcast app. My favorite iPhone app for listening to podcasts is Overcast. If you’d like to subscribe to the podcast via email, click here.

Check out these other Reading & Writing podcast interviews that you might enjoy:

Dean Koontz interview

James Lee Burke interview

T. R. Ragan interview

David Ignatius interview

Matt Wallace interview – Episode 279

by JeffR Leave a Comment

The 279th episode of the Reading & Writing podcast features an interview with Matt Wallace, author of the brand new epic fantasy novel SAVAGE LEGION.

Matt Wallace is the Hugo–winning author of Rencor: Life in Grudge City, and the Sin du Jour series. He’s also written over one hundred short stories in addition to writing for film and television.

Expand Your Reading

Here’s a great list of African-American mystery writers from the Los Angeles Public Library.

Samuel R. Delany, Chip Delany to his friends, is an American author and literary critic. His work includes science fiction, memoir, criticism and essays on science fiction, literature, sexuality, and society.

His fiction includes Babel-17, The Einstein Intersection (winners of the Nebula Award for 1966 and 1967 respectively), Nova, Dhalgren, the Return to Nevèrÿon series, and Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders. His nonfiction includes Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, About Writing, and eight books of essays. After winning four Nebula awards and two Hugo Awards over the course of his career, Delany was inducted by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2002.

Libro.fm – Great audibooks from your local independent bookstores

Check out these other Reading & Writing podcast interviews that you might enjoy:

Dean Koontz interview

James Lee Burke interview

T. R. Ragan interview

David Ignatius interview

Kathleen West interview – Episode 278

by JeffR Leave a Comment

The 278th episode of the Reading & Writing podcast features an interview with Kathleen West, author of the debut novel Minor Dramas & Other Catastrophes. Her second novel Are We There Yet? is scheduled for publication in March 2021.

Expand Your Reading

Here’s a great list of African-American mystery writers from the Los Angeles Public Library.

Octavia Butler is an acclaimed African-American science fiction writer. Her novels, among others, include Kindred, Bloodchild, and Parable of the Sower.

Butler was a multiple recipient of both the Hugo and Nebula awards, and she became in 1995 the first science-fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship.

Libro.fm – Great audibooks from your local independent bookstores

Check out these other Reading & Writing podcast interviews that you might enjoy:

Dean Koontz interview

James Lee Burke interview

Allison Pang interview

Richard Knaak interview

T.R. Ragan interview – Episode 277

by JeffR Leave a Comment

The 277th episode of the Reading & Writing podcast features an interview with T. R. Ragan.

T.R. Ragan (Theresa Ragan) is a New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal Bestselling author. Ragan’s latest novel is DON’T MAKE A SOUND.

Expand Your Reading

Here’s a great list of African-American mystery writers from the Los Angeles Public Library.

Charles Saunders is an African-American author and journalist currently living in Canada. He’s best known for his Imaro sword-and-sorcery novels.

From the jacket description of Imaro:

Imaro is heroic fantasy like it’s never been done before. Based on Africa, and African traditions and legends, Charles Saunders has created Nyumbani (which means “home” in Swahili), an amalgam of the real, the semi-real, and the unreal. Imaro is the name of the larger-than-life warrior, an outcast, who travels across Nyumbani, searching for a home.

Libro.fm – Great audibooks from your local independent bookstores

Check out these other Reading & Writing podcast interviews that you might enjoy:

Dean Koontz interview

James Lee Burke interview

Allison Pang interview

Richard Knaak interview

Kyle McCarthy interview – Episode 276

by JeffR Leave a Comment

The 276th episode of the Reading & Writing podcast features an interview with Kyle McCarthy, author of the debut novel EVERYONE KNOWS HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU.

Expand Your Reading

Here’s a great list of African-American mystery writers from the Los Angeles Public Library.

Steven Barnes is an African-American

Steven Barnes is an American science fiction writer, lecturer, creative consultant, and human performance technician.

In addition to his novels, he has written several episodes of The Outer Limits and Baywatch. He has also written the episode “Brief Candle” for Stargate SG-1 and the Andromeda episode “The Sum of Its Parts.” He and his wife Tananarive Due co-wrote the episode “A Small Town” for the new Twilight Zone on CBS All-Access.

Barnes’s first published piece of fiction, the 1979 novelette The Locusts, was written with Larry Niven, and was a Hugo Award nominee. He co-wrote the Dream Park series with Larry Niven. He’s written many other novels, including the Insh’Allah series – Lion’s Blood and Zulu Heart.

Barnes is also an avid practitioner of martial and physical arts.

Libro.fm – Great audibooks from your local independent bookstores

Check out these other Reading & Writing podcast interviews that you might enjoy:

Dean Koontz interview

James Lee Burke interview

Allison Pang interview

Richard Knaak interview

Damyanti Biswas interview – Episode 275

by JeffR Leave a Comment

The 275th episode of the Reading & Writing podcast features an interview with Damyanti Biswas, author of the crime novel YOU BENEATH YOUR SKIN.

Endemol Shine India has optioned YOU BENEATH YOUR SKIN to develop as a multi-part drama series, with all proceeds from the option going towards social enterprises in Biswas’ native New Delhi.

Expand Your Reading

Here’s a great list of African-American mystery writers from the Los Angeles Public Library.

Chester B. Himes (1909-1984), author of the best-selling novel If He Hollers Let Him Go, was the twentieth century’s most prolific black writer. He is best known for his hard-boiled detective stories including Cotton Comes to Harlem, featuring black New York City police detectives Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson.

A film was made of Cotton Comes to Harlem. Himes began writing while incarcerated for seven years in the Ohio State Penitentiary starting at the age of 19. He lived abroad first in Paris and then in Moraira, Spain. Chester B. Himes: a Biography by Lawrence P. Jackson was just published in 2017.

Libro.fm – Great audibooks from your local independent bookstores

Check out these other Reading & Writing podcast interviews that you might enjoy:

Dean Koontz interview

James Lee Burke interview

Allison Pang interview

Richard Knaak interview

Sarah Relyea interview – Episode 274

by JeffR Leave a Comment

The 274th episode of the Reading & Writing podcast features an interview with Sarah Relyea, author of the new novel PLAYGROUND ZERO.

A former academic who has taught at universities in New York and Taiwan, she has long addressed questions of identity in her writing, including in her book of literary criticism, “Outsider Citizens: The Remaking of Postwar Identity in Wright, Beauvoir, and Baldwin.” Sarah lives in Brooklyn and spends time on the Left Coast.

Expand Your Reading

Here’s a great list of African-American mystery writers from the Los Angeles Public Library.

Harvard educated entrepreneur, Pamela Thomas-Graham was the first black woman partner at a New York consulting firm. She’s written the Ivy League Mystery series featuring Nikki Chase, a black economics professor at Harvard who solves murders not just at her university, but while visiting Yale and Princeton as well.

Check out these other Reading & Writing podcast interviews that you might enjoy:

Dean Koontz interview

James Lee Burke interview

Allison Pang interview

Richard Knaak interview

Pamela McCorduck interview – Episode 273 Reading & Writing podcast

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The 273rd episode of the Reading & Writing podcast features an interview with Pamela McCorduck, author of the new non-fiction book This Could Be Important: My Life and Times with the Artificial Intelligentsia.

In the autumn of 1960, twenty-year-old humanities student Pamela McCorduck encountered both the fringe science of early artificial intelligence, and C. P. Snow’s Two Cultures lecture on the chasm between the sciences and the humanities. Each encounter shaped her life. Decades later her lifelong intuition was realized: AI and the humanities are profoundly connected. During that time, she wrote the first modern history of artificial intelligence, Machines Who Think, and spent much time pulling on the sleeves of public intellectuals, trying in futility to suggest that artificial intelligence could be important. Memoir, social history, group biography of the founding fathers of AI, This Could Be Important follows the personal story of one AI spectator, from her early enthusiasms to her mature, more nuanced observations of the field.

Expanding Your Reading
As mentioned in this episode, I’m starting a new segment in the podcast to spotlight an author of color. In the U.S., we’re currently having a long-needed national conversation on systemic racism that still exists for people of color. Consider expanding your reading this year and beyond to include more authors of color.

Here’s a great list of African-American mystery writers from the Los Angeles Public Library.

I interviewed Walter Mosley on Episode 169 of the podcast – click here to listen now.

Walter Ellis Mosley (born January 12, 1952) is an American novelist, most widely recognized for his crime fiction. He has written a series of best-selling historical mysteries featuring the hard-boiled detective Easy Rawlins, a black private investigator and living in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, California.

Check out these other Reading & Writing podcast interviews that you might enjoy:

Dean Koontz interview

James Lee Burke interview

Allison Pang interview

Richard Knaak interview

William Forstchen interview – Episode 272 Reading & Writing podcast

by JeffR Leave a Comment

The 272nd episode of the Reading & Writing podcast features an interview with William Forstchen. Forstchen has a Ph.D. from Purdue University with specializations in Military History and the History of Technology. He is a Faculty Fellow and Professor of History at Montreat College. He is the author of fifty books including the New York Times bestselling series One Second After, the Lost Regiment series, and the award-winning young adult novel, We Look Like Men of War. His latest novel is 48 HOURS.

Check out these other Reading & Writing podcast interviews that you might enjoy:

Dean Koontz interview

James Lee Burke interview

Allison Pang interview

Richard Knaak interview

Sarah Pinsker interview – Episode 271

by JeffR 1 Comment

The 271st episode of the Reading & Writing podcast features an interview with Sarah Pinsker, author of the novel A Song For A New Day.

Sarah Pinsker is the author of over fifty works of short fiction, including the novelette “Our Lady of the Open Road,” winner of the Nebula Award in 2016. Her novelette “In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind,” was the Sturgeon Award winner in 2014. Her fiction has been published in magazines including Asimov’s, Strange Horizons, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Lightspeed, and Uncanny and in numerous anthologies and year’s bests. Her stories have been translated into Chinese, Spanish, French, and Italian, among other languages, and have been nominated for the Nebula, Hugo, Locus, Eugie, and World Fantasy Awards.

Sarah’s first collection, Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea: Stories was published by Small Beer Press in March 2019, and her first novel, A Song For A New Day, was published by Penguin/Random House/Berkley in September 2019. In April 2020, Sarah’s collection Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into The Sea won the Philip K. Dick award.

Check out these other Reading & Writing podcast interviews that you might enjoy:

Dean Koontz interview

James Lee Burke interview

Allison Pang interview

Richard Knaak interview