In this episode, we sit down with Michael Thomas, the acclaimed novelist behind Man Gone Down and winner of the International Dublin Literary Award, to discuss his powerful memoir The Broken King. In a raw and deeply personal conversation, Thomas reflects on fatherhood without the polish often found in parenting narratives, confronting the trauma, racism, and family history that shaped his upbringing in 1970s Boston and resurfaced as he tried to become a different kind of father to his own sons. Drawing inspiration from a line in Little Gidding, The Broken King explores the lives of the men who shaped him—his absent father, his estranged brother, his children, and ultimately himself—while reckoning with generational trauma, artistic struggle, and the difficult journey toward healing and self-understanding. Michael Thomas is the author of the national bestseller Man Gone Down, winner of the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and a New York Times Top Ten Novel of the Year. His writing has appeared in A Public Space, the New Yorker, the New York Times, and in Ben George's anthology The Book of Dads. He is a professor of English at Hunter College. He lives in Brooklyn.

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