Poured Over
Episodes
Alison Espach on NOTES ON YOUR SUDDEN DISAPPEARANCE
14 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"For me, part of the fun of coming-of-age novels, both reading and writing, is getting to have that adult perspective on these youthful moments and ki...
Jennifer Weiner on THE SUMMER PLACE
12 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"I was thinking about caretaking. And I was thinking about mothers because I lost my mom last year, but just the places that feel familiar and how the...
Heather Walter on MISRULE
10 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"…It's like if Tim Burton decorated Versailles for Halloween…" Heather Walter's queer retelling of Sleeping Beauty kicked off with Malice, whic...
Monica Ali on LOVE MARRIAGE
07 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"For me, the novel form is the greatest expression because it has that room, that latitude to really explore for the full complexity of human existenc...
Hernan Diaz on TRUST
05 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"And the title, of course, has this double meaning, the financial meaning of trust, and let's call it, emotional meaning of trust … To what extent c...
Vaishnavi Patel on KAIKEYI
03 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"I grew up hearing The Ramayana over lunch. My grandma would tell me little bits and pieces to me and my younger sister, she would tell us little bi...
Viola Davis on FINDING ME
28 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"And so then, I felt like that's when I had to go back to the beginning of telling my story of sort of rediscovering the young Viola, who definitely m...
Bonnie Garmus on LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY
26 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"And I think it's just overall her humanity and her recognition of what other people could accomplish. If you just say the right things, if you create...
Margo Jefferson on CONSTRUCTING A NERVOUS SYSTEM
23 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"I didn't want that more traditional kind of arc of childhood to a certain stance of wisdom or resignation or triumph. I wanted—partly because I fel...
Nghi Vo on THE CHOSEN AND THE BEAUTIFUL
21 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"There's an intense pleasure in viewing the flaws of the people around you and saying, I'm not a part of that, even if maybe at the beginning you wan...
Susan Cain on BITTERSWEET: HOW SORROW AND LONGING MAKE US WHOLE
19 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"Leonard Cohen is like my all-time favorite musician … I, all my life, have had this reaction to sad music, of not feeling sad at all when I list...
Douglas Stuart on YOUNG MUNGO
16 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"I knew that after writing this sweeping family portrait that goes over about 40 years in the Bain family's history, that for my next novel, I wanted ...
Chloé Cooper Jones on EASY BEAUTY
14 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"You know, beauty is such an interesting term. I think it's really important how vast and complex it is … we call people beautiful, I call my dog ...
Sara Nović on TRUE BIZ
12 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"True Biz is an ASL idiom. It doesn't have one direct translation into English, but a few of the things that it could mean: seriously, literally. Rea...
Grace D. Li on PORTRAIT OF A THIEF
09 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"I really wrote it for me, I didn't think anything would come about — I wanted something that could bring me a bit of joy, where Asian American char...
Jennifer Egan on THE CANDY HOUSE
07 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"In the end, all the good ideas and sort of fancy craft approaches get you absolutely nothing if there's no emotional content. That's what it is. I me...
Emily St. John Mandel on SEA OF TRANQUILITY
05 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"I love being immersed in the grand project of a novel. When I was a kid, I was drawn to books about secret worlds, like The Secret Garden, or The L...
Viet Thanh Nguyen on THE COMMITTED
02 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"…Cynical as he is of the world that he encounters, he's also pretty cynical and critical of himself. And that manifests itself in that sense of hum...
Maud Newton on ANCESTOR TROUBLE
31 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"As you might imagine, over the years, many people heard stories about my family. And they said, Hey, why don't you write a memoir? I really wasn't ...
Francesca May on WILD AND WICKED THINGS
29 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"They're not all villains and all heroes, I think a lot of people are very morally gray…" The atmospheric and haunting Wild and Wicked Things is a ...
Jane McGonigal on IMAGINABLE: HOW TO SEE THE FUTURE COMING AND FEEL READY FOR ANYTHING — EVEN THINGS THAT SEEM IMPOSSIBLE TODAY
24 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"We should call no future unthinkable and no future unimaginable. We have to be willing to think about the hard things and ready ourselves for them...
John Cho on TROUBLEMAKER
22 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"The original impulse to write a book for this age was knowing that this is a time of identity formation for me, curiosity about the outside world. An...
Peter Swanson on NINE LIVES
17 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"My book starts in my brain with me telling myself a story. And I choose not to write it down, as I'm thinking about it. Sometimes for months, sometim...
NoViolet Bulawayo on GLORY
15 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"And within that time, I realized that the story needed to be about regular citizens. But because so much had been written, I found myself needing a n...
Lee Kravetz on THE LAST CONFESSIONS OF SYLVIA P.
10 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"The thing that really sort of blew me away, one of the reasons why we have sort of the type of poetry that we have today and the type of literature t...
Hanif Abdurraqib on A LITTLE DEVIL IN AMERICA: NOTES IN PRAISE OF BLACK PERFORMANCE
08 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"The book's title comes from Josephine Baker's speech at the March on Washington … she was speaking to a crowd that was younger, and maybe did no...
Jeff Yang, Phil Yu & Philip Wang on RISE: A POP HISTORY OF ASIAN AMERICA FROM THE 90s TO NOW
03 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"…A big part of this book is to have a more whole picture of our history here. It is the last 30 years, 90s to now, but we do devote a big chunk ...
Olivie Blake on THE ATLAS SIX
01 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"If you want to create art, and you want to create art the way you want to, and it's just for you, that's fine. But if you want to have a writing care...
Gal Beckerman on THE QUIET BEFORE: ON THE UNEXPECTED ORIGINS OF RADICAL IDEAS
26 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"I'm writing about group creativity, which is not something we often do … what's interesting to me is what happens in the friction between people's...
Julie Otsuka on THE SWIMMERS
24 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"I sketched out some of these pool scenes a long, long time ago, maybe 15 years ago, but just you know, a few paragraphs. And then I don't know, I put...
Debbie Millman on WHY DESIGN MATTERS
22 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"It's a great question. And no one has ever asked me that question. I think it's taught me about how to construct the arc of a narrative." We've learn...
Erik Larson on THE SPLENDID AND THE VILE
19 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"Believe me, there probably was not a day that went by where I didn't say to myself, What on earth am I doing? And why did I take this on? Early on ...
Marlon James on MOON WITCH, SPIDER KING
17 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"There's a reason why all our old stories are fantastical and mythological, and why our fairy tales are so old. Because I think there is something in ...
Sarah J. Maas on HOUSE OF SKY AND BREATH
15 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"...It means the world to me to witness any kind of massive scale love of books." Sarah J. Maas knows how to build worlds that readers never want to ...
Heather McGhee on THE SUM OF US
12 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"I wrote The Sum of Us in the hopes that people would read it together, that people from all walks of life, different backgrounds, whether they're co...
Tara Westover on EDUCATED
10 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"You know, when I wrote the book, I sort of thought it would resonate with a fairly narrow… I was writing it for people who are more or less like me...
Chuck Klosterman on THE NINETIES
08 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"The Nineties were the last decade that we're ever going to talk about as a decade…" Chuck Klosterman has been challenging how we think, see and hea...
Chang-rae Lee on MY YEAR ABROAD
05 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"And fiction is all about obstacles. It's all about misapprehension, misunderstanding, lack of information, lack of connection, and the problems that ...
Lan Samantha Chang on THE FAMILY CHAO
03 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"But I do feel like I was on a quest as a writer, for my work to get bigger. I just wanted it to contain a larger portion of the world than it started...
Dana Schwartz on ANATOMY: A LOVE STORY
01 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"It's about people following their passions, and it's about falling in love for the first time whether that love is romantic, or with a professional i...
Wajahat Ali on GO BACK TO WHERE YOU COME FROM
29 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"If you aren't writing your story in America, your story is being written for you. And if you're not telling your story, your story is being told to y...
Isabel Allende on VIOLETA
27 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"I want my readers to be entertained. And if possible, to take a look at that period of that century that was so fascinating, a time of violence, and ...
Imani Perry on SOUTH TO AMERICA
25 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"…I read every day. Reading feels like part of my identity…[it] feels essential as a writer to be reading always." Imani Perry is the acclaimed au...
John Darnielle on DEVIL HOUSE
22 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"…Try reading it out loud. That's what I do. I read the whole book out loud, seven or eight times…four or five times… before it ever goes to edi...
Weike Wang on JOAN IS OKAY
20 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"…So much of American media is, As long as we have each other, it doesn't matter what happens, we're going to be fine. I don't always think that'...
Bernardine Evaristo on MANIFESTO: ON NEVER GIVING UP
18 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"Well, this is the thing about being an overnight success after forty years." Bernardine Evaristo made history when Girl, Woman, Other won the 2019 ...
Jami Attenberg on I CAME ALL THIS WAY TO MEET YOU: WRITING MY WAY HOME
15 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"I think bookstores are really magical places, and not to be too idealistic about it, I really think that they're so important, they're cornerstones...
Anna Malaika Tubbs on THE THREE MOTHERS
13 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"This is not just for us to say, 'How interesting' now we know three more people, it's for us to say, 'What can we do now that we know their stories?...
Hanya Yanagihara on TO PARADISE
11 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"And when you are lucky enough as a writer to have your book be found, and then have it be a source of someone's passion, someone who is not normally ...
Xochitl Gonzalez on OLGA DIES DREAMING
08 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"You know, there's something that we don't talk about, which I think is like the underside of success and ambition, which is that for every step that ...
Jessamine Chan on THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD MOTHERS
06 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"One thing that I was interested in doing is making literal the surveillance that parents feel every day, because there is the sense that you're being...
Noah Hawley on ANTHEM
04 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"I describe it as a fantasy novel about the real world we live in, or a realistic novel about the fantasy world we live in." Anthem is Noah Hawley's...
Poured Over: David Mitchell and Aleksandar Hemon From Page to Screen
16 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"And so we wouldn't be here without Natalie Portman, which isn't a sentence I was expecting to say this evening. But if you ever watched this, Natalie...
Mary Beard on TWELVE CAESARS
14 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"And imagine what did it feel like to think this was new? Their life, all kinds of different images as time goes on, and people in the Renaissance and...
Juhea Kim on BEASTS OF A LITTLE LAND
09 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"I went running in Fort Tryon Park in the northern reaches of Manhattan. And it was snowing. And during that run, I had this vision of a hunter lost ...
Michelle Zauner on CRYING IN H-MART
07 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"But at the end of the day, so many people have lost a loved one. This story is about mothers and daughters. It's about parents and children. It's abo...
Rachel Smythe on LORE OLYMPUS
02 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"Making connections with people has often been quite difficult for me, you know, this can be really isolating, but it's so incredible to make this boo...
Brené Brown on ATLAS OF THE HEART
30 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"We're going to have to learn to be cartographers in our own lives." Brené Brown is the author of five number one New York Times bestsellers, includi...
Louise Penny on THE MADNESS OF CROWDS
23 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"I'm constantly surprised by the books. Because I think about books a lot before I start writing them, I don't write structure and a formal outline. B...
Jung Yun on O BEAUTIFUL
20 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"…And I had arrived at McDowell, with about 200 pages in the summer of 2018…And the great thing about these writing retreats is that they give you...
T.J. Klune on UNDER THE WHISPERING DOOR
18 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"I love bookstores, with all of my heart for everything that they've done for me and my stories, but it is the booksellers that are at the front putti...
Nikole Hannah-Jones on THE 1619 PROJECT
16 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"But we all want to see ourselves in a story of our country. And we call this a new origin story, not the origin story for reason. There are many ...
Natashia Deon on THE PERISHING
11 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"I don't remember my dreams a lot. But when I remember them, I stand up and pay attention." Both of Natashia Deon's novels, NAACP Image Award nominee ...
Louise Erdrich on THE SENTENCE
09 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"I'd always wanted to write a ghost story. And I always wanted to write about what it was like to be haunted, because I feel that so many of us are." ...
Neal Shusterman & Jarrod Shusterman on ROXY
06 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"One of the comments that I've often gotten from parents who say, my son read Scythe, or my daughter read, Unwind, and made me read it, because they...
Kal Penn on YOU CAN'T BE SERIOUS
04 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"I wanted to tell my story in a way that made you feel like you were having a beer with me. And…even though I delve into things like identity and po...
Gary Shteyngart on OUR COUNTRY FRIENDS
02 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"I'm here to have a dialogue with a person. And if I'm just gonna sit there and look down at my lap, well, speaking profoundly into my lap. That's not...
Drew Magary on THE NIGHT THE LIGHTS WENT OUT
28 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"And so, what was to me a relatively — at least in terms of storytelling — a tidy story of me collapsing and having my wife and my co-workers save...
Alice Hoffman on THE BOOK OF MAGIC
26 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"And I had a great, great professor named Albert Guerard when I was starting out, and he said to me, 'Some people will tell you to write what you know...
Joshua Ferris on A CALLING FOR CHARLIE BARNES
21 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"I love it, when, as a reader, I am surprised by the way people behave, you know that you're aghast and shocked and standing back a little bit. And I ...
Elizabeth Strout on OH WILLIAM!
19 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"I'm so interested in people. I have been fascinated by people since I was just my first memory. I just think people are, for me, they are the most in...
Andrea Elliott on INVISIBLE CHILD
14 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"Because for every kid who makes it out, there are thousands more who are just as capable, who don't. And I think we need to shift the conversation aw...
Nick Offerman on WHERE THE DEER AND THE ANTELOPE PLAY
12 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"I'm so grateful to be part of the world of books. And that's what makes me work so hard on them because it's possibly the greatest privilege I've bee...
Beth Macy on DOPESICK
09 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
America's opioid crisis shows no signs of slowing down, and if you want to know how we got where we are, Beth Macy's 2018 bestseller Dopesick is co...
Alix E. Harrow on THE ONCE AND FUTURE WITCHES
07 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"Suffragettes, but witches." That was the three-word pitch that Alix E. Harrow used to sell her very fun and very smart second novel, The Once and Fu...
Naomi Novik on THE LAST GRADUATE
05 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"One of the ways you make magic work is by believing it's going to work." Readers love Naomi Novik's series set at the mysterious (and deadly) Scholom...
Wiley Cash on WHEN GHOSTS COME HOME
02 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"You never know what's going to happen in a bookstore." Wiley Cash joins us on the show to talk about the story about a too-big aircraft and a too-sho...
Phoebe Robinson on PLEASE DON'T SIT ON MY BED IN YOUR OUTSIDE CLOTHES
30 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"I was honing my writing voice before anyone knew anything or cared about me as a writer." Phoebe Robinson's a force of nature with her standup shows,...
Anthony Doerr on CLOUD CUCKOO LAND
28 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"But if you say today, I'm just working on this little monologue by this one character, you can trick yourself into making something bigger…" Anthon...
Ruth Ozeki on THE BOOK OF FORM AND EMPTINESS
25 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Ruth Ozeki's new novel, The Book of Form and Emptiness, is a beautiful story about books and libraries, life and love. Ruth joins us on the show for ...
Brendan Kiely on THE OTHER TALK
23 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Brendan Kiely's an award-winning author of YA fiction, including All-American Boys, which he co-wrote with Jason Reynolds. His fifth book is a bit of...
Richard Powers on BEWILDERMENT
21 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Richard Powers is the author of 13 novels, including The Overstory, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. His new novel, Bewilderment, shortliste...
Mary Roach on FUZZ
16 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We've seen what death and dying do to the human body and we've investigated the afterlife thanks to Mary Roach. We've gone to space and to war with he...
Colson Whitehead on THE HARLEM SHUFFLE
14 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Two Pulitzers, a National Book Award, and a MacArthur Genius Grant: Colson Whitehead is one of the greatest novelists working today. From The Intuitio...
Qian Julie Wang on BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY
12 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Qian Julie Wang's unforgettable memoir, Beautiful Country, belongs on the shelf next to modern classics like Educated by Tara Westover, When I Was Pu...
Joy Harjo on POET WARRIOR
09 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"My ears were bent for stories." Poet Warrior is the indelible new memoir by Joy Harjo, Poet Laureate of the United States. Joy joins us on the show ...
Lauren Groff on MATRIX
07 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A new book from Lauren Groff is always a hit with us, from her early novels, The Monsters of Templeton and Arcadia, to her massive 2015 bestseller, Fa...
B.B. Alston on AMARI AND THE NIGHT BROTHERS
02 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We love B.B. Alston and his Supernatural Investigation series—his debut novel for Middle Readers, Amari and the Night Brothers, is the Overall Winne...
Min Jin Lee on THE GREAT GATSBY
31 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Love it or hate it (and there really seems to be no middle ground), The Great Gatsby still speaks volumes about us, our society, and the American Drea...
Linden Lewis on THE SECOND REBEL
26 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A fun, spoiler-free conversation with Linden Lewis about her fabulous new novel The Second Rebel, the sequel to The First Sister, our first Speculativ...
Kat Chow on SEEING GHOSTS
24 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Grief, trauma and tragedy run through Kat Chow's family tree, with everything coming together in 1980s Connecticut. Kat joins us on the show to talk a...
Miranda Cowley Heller on THE PAPER PALACE
19 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
If you were offered a life-changing do-over, would you take it? That's the central question at the heart of Miranda Cowley Heller's stunning debut no...
Silvia Moreno-Garcia on VELVET WAS THE NIGHT
17 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We stayed up impossibly late one night because we just had to know how Silvia Moreno-Garcia's The Gods of Jade and Shadow ends. (Sleep is overrated w...
Kristin Hannah on FOUR WINDS
12 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Vianne and Isabelle, Leni, Elsa: Millions of readers have fallen head-over-heels for the heroines of Kristin Hannah's most recent blockbusters, each o...
Naomi Hirahara on CLARK AND DIVISION
10 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Chicago, 1944. Aki Ito and her parents arrive in town, expecting to be met by Rose, their oldest daughter. But tragedy has struck, and now Aki Ito is ...
Charlotte McConaghy on ONCE THERE WERE WOLVES
05 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Everyone has a secret to protect in a small Scottish Highlands town in Charlotte McConaghy's new novel, Once There Were Wolves, the follow-up to her h...
Ash Davidson on DAMNATION SPRING
03 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Prepare to have your heart broken in all the best ways by Ash Davidson's miraculous debut novel, Damnation Spring — our August Discover Pick. She jo...
Ben Macintyre on AGENT SONYA
29 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
If you love reading pulse-pounding stories about fictional spies, you'll love Ben Macintyre's thrilling true (and bestselling) stories about real-worl...
Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. on BEGIN AGAIN
27 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
James Baldwin died in 1987, but his work still speaks to us — as if it was written last year, or last month, or even last week. Eddie S. Glaude, Jr....
Carolyn Ferrell on DEAR MISS METROPOLITAN
22 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This is what we talk about when we talk about voice: Fern, Gwin and Jesenia are the heart of Carolyn Ferrell's acclaimed new novel, Dear Miss Metropol...