Bookworm

Sarah Shun-lien Bynum discusses writing her stories as a means of imagining black and brown characters that don’t conform to easy categorization or simple understanding. An entire lifetime can be compressed within the frame of a short story, and no life is easy or simple. She says that we can’t bring our preconceptions to these stories of complexity and mystery. “Likes” is a layered book of nine short stories. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/s/322b23c0/podcast/sponsor/acugj9/url/https%3A%2F%2Fanchor.fm%2Fapp

Mark Z. Danielewski’s The Little Blue Kite is a generous and big-hearted children’s book about creating a spacious mind, with room for others. A kind and decent protagonist, a kid aware of his own moods, learns to recognize and fly above fear; Danielewski says he wants his book to fly above words. It is a personal book that operates in its own cycle, with a universal theme. It is a children’s book by the writer of House of Leaves (parents should enjoy it too). --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/s/322b23c0/podcast/sponsor/acugj9/url/https%3A%2F%2Fanchor.fm%2Fapp

Fowzia Karimi speaks about the art of the novel, and designing Above Us the Milky Way. The storytelling structure is twenty-six letters, the alphabet, with each letter allowing the story to unfold piece by piece, stories weaving in and out; Karimi says a formal structure inspires an experience of the ecstatic --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/s/322b23c0/podcast/sponsor/acugj9/url/https%3A%2F%2Fanchor.fm%2Fapp

The co-producer of Bookworm, Shawn Michael Sullivan, was able to rebroadcast one of his favorite conversations, between Michael Silverblatt and Horacio Castellanos Moya, regarding Senselessness. Not even difficult to imagine in America these days: Senselessness is about a person’s psychology impacted through reading about a nation’s atrocities. Senselessness depicts a complicated mentality that contradicts itself: it’s discussed that it’s easier to appreciate literature than to endure the factual reports of torture and terror. The psychology created by terrorism is difficult to judge—Castellanos Moya says that perhaps the more we suffer the more we learn about the life that we are losing.

Brit Bennett pushes questions of race and color to their extremes in her new novel, The Vanishing Half. A three-generational novel that is anything but old-fashioned, a central topic concerns identity fused with acting and lying. The main characters wonder what defines happiness. In this book’s case, it makes for great reading. Bennett discusses creating real people and not just types—forging a kaleidoscopic story about people and communities.