Nina McConigley is the guest. Her debut story collection, Cowboys and East Indians, is now available from FiveChapters Books. Antonya Nelson says “What I love about this collection of stories is its wit and warmth. McConigley’s characters are “the wrong kind of Indians living in Wyoming,” and their struggles as exoticized and denigrated community members could be, in a less interesting writer’s hands, yet another scolding tract on America’s guilty conscience. Instead, this book celebrates human pluck and humor, a new sensibility for a new time, when everyone is both at home and utterly alien in the contemporary American west. A terrific read.” And Eleanor Henderson raves “Nina McConigley crafts out of the Wyoming landscape a West few readers have known before–a place where, when you don’t look like everyone else, there aren’t many places to hide. And yet anyone who has ever felt a complicated kind of love for home, country, and family will find pleasure and wisdom in these stunning stories.” Monologue topics: Valentine's Day, hatred of holidays, Presidents Day, love. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.