The B&n Podcast

When Debbie Macomber decided to become a novelist in the late 1970s, she rented a typewriter and worked away at a kitchen table while raising four children at the same time.  Four manuscripts and five years later, she sold her first romance — which would become the novel Heartsong — and started a career that would lead to a raft of bestsellers and over 200 million books in print, including the Cedar Cove and Rose Harbor novels, the knitting-themed series that began with The Shop on Blossom Street and many others.  On this episode, Debbie Macomber talks with Amanda Cecil about her special love for the holidays and her latest heartwarming story, Merry and Bright.

Today we're bringing you a pair of conversations that are all about invention, and about the lies that reveal the truth.  First Kevin Young joins Bill Tipper for a conversation about America’s love affair with frauds and his new book Bunk: the Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts and Fake News.  Then, the Pulitzer-winning writer Jeffrey Eugenides walks with us through the stories in his new collection Fresh Complaint and reveals the places where fragments of his own experience took on strange new life in his fictional creations.

Ever since her sweeping family and political epic The House of the Spirits was published to acclaim in 1982, the Chilean-born writer Isabel Allende has been weaving the output of her apparently limitless imagination into stories that engage deeply with the struggles of ordinary people.  Allende is the author of internationally bestselling novels such as Of Love and Shadows, Eva Luna, and Daughter of Fortune, and in 1994 she published the acclaimed memoir Paula, which chronicled with heartbreaking candor the loss of her adult daughter.  This week, the author joined us in the studio to talk about her timely new novel In the Midst of Winter (and to tell us a bit about what it’s like to get a Presidential Medal of Freedom).

In this episode, Miwa Messer interviews two novelists about the power of memory and imagination.  First, Andre Aciman joins us in the studio to talk about his elegant, atmospheric love story Call Me By Your Name – recently adapted as a critically acclaimed film by Luca Guadagnino – and the meeting point between his works of memoir and fiction.  Then she sits down with Amor Towles, author of the bestsellers Rules of Civility and A Gentleman in Moscow for a conversation about the art of making the past come to almost magical life.

In this episode of the podcast, we talk with two very different writers about how one kind of art can fuel another.  First, the actor and writer Krysten Ritter talks with our interviewer Josh Perilo about her psychological thriller Bonfire – whose main character shares some character traits with the detective Ritter plays on the Netflix series Jessica Jones.  Then, Miwa Messer is joined by the award-winning young adult author Jason Reynolds in a conversation about his new novel Long Way Down, and how Reynolds uses poetry to make a page-turning story sing.

For the creator of Jack Reacher, writing a thriller is an act of improvised discovery — a suitable method for the writer whose beloved hero has, through twenty-two books, chosen to surprise both readers and the bad guys he goes up against through his unpredictable, unstoppable life-in-the-moment.  On this episode, Lee Child talks about his new book The Midnight Line, how he went from the world of television to becoming one of the world's most widely read authors, and what makes a hero in the 21st century.

Massimo Bottura is the chef and proprietor of the celebrated Osteria Francescana in Modena, Italy, a restaurant that was named the best in world in 2016 and highlighted in an episode of Netflix's Chef's Table series.  He joins Jim Mustich on this episode to talk about his new book Bread is Gold, and his ambitious globe-spanning efforts to bring a sense of social justice and environmental responsibility to the world of cooking.  

In 1976, a 29-year-old writer published a debut book called The Thomas Berryman Number that went on to capture the Edgar Award for Best First Novel. But James Patterson didn't quit his day job until two decades later — after he'd launched his series starring detective Alex Cross, and set out to work full time as the architect of the modern blockbuster.  More than 350 million books sold later, he's now indubitably one of the most widely read fiction writers on the globe, writing and co-writing a vast array of propulsive stories  — not only thrillers but middle-grade humor, dystopian fantasy, and even picture books for the youngest readers.  On the occasion of his new thriller The People vs. Alex Cross, James Patterson sat down with Bill Tipper to talk about where his astonishing career started.

In this episode we talk first with the world-renowned photographer Annie Leibovitz, about her new collection, Portraits: 2005-2016.   There is perhaps no photographer whose distinctive style is so familiar — but her latest collection, which takes in Barack Obama in the White House, the singer Rihanna in a romantic Havana setting, and Kim Kardashian and Kanye West in a homemade hall of mirrors — offers a catalog of surprises.  She spoke with us about the challenge of shaping the story of a decade out of these individual moments.  Later in the episode Lisa Lucas, Executive Director of the National Book Foundation, joins us to celebrate a special day we’ve been waiting for— the arrival of the 2017 National Book Awards.  

There may be no writer closer to the center of our national conversation about race, equality, justice, and how racism divides and disorders our society than Ta-Nehisi Coates.  His 2015 book Between the World and Me, an anatomy of the ongoing power of racism in America in the form of a letter to his teenage son, brought him global acclaim, a National Book Award for Nonfiction, and a Macarthur fellowship.  In this episode of the podcast, Ta-Nehisi Coates talks with Bill Tipper about his new book, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy.  Knitting together some of the most vital essays the author has published over the past decade —  including a profile of President Barack Obama,  a searing indictment of destruction of the black family via the justice system, and Coates's landmark "The Case for Reparations,” We Were Eight Years in Power takes readers along with Coates into a deep consideration of nothing less urgent than the fate of the nation.  

If you’re one of those people who thinks of 2016 as a uniquely tumultuous and unpredictable year in American politics, the writer and MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell would like to draw your attention to a presidential contest not quite half a century ago.  His new book Playing with Fire: The 1968 Election and the Transformation of American Politics takes a dramatist’s approach to history, revisiting the year in which President Johnson declined to run again, assassins cut down two of the most iconic leaders of the moment, and fight for one party’s nomination pitted protestors against the police in an American metropolis.  The result, says the author, permanently altered the state of American politics.  In this episode, Lawrence talks with Bill Tipper about how he melded memoir and history to render a portrait of a year that he believes is still shaping our society.

When you're talking with the writer and performer John Hodgman, it doesn't seem like any page, or chapter or volume, could contain his restlessly inventive mind.  It’s impossible to find a subject that Hodgman isn't curious about, eloquent about, or really funny about – sometimes all within the same sentence.  And a conversation with him is like being part of a piece of improv comedy in which you had better be on your toes if you want to keep up.  While you might know John Hodgman best from his appearances on The Daily Show or elsewhere on television and film, the former literary agent has his roots in books: he’s the author of three bestselling works of absolutely, hilariously not-true anti-facts, including The Areas of My Expertise, More Information than You Require, and That Is All.  He joins Bill Tipper on this episode to talk about his quite different new book, Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches.  He spoke about what it’s like setting aside the ”expert” character he's made so famous, to spea

If you’re one of the writer Michael Connelly’s friends — especially if you’re connected to the world of law enforcement — you might find yourself fielding requests for information at just about any time of day.  That’s because, as the creator of the dogged detective Harry Bosch explains, Connelly never knows when a research question will pop up.  Fortunately for readers, the award-winning, bestselling writer takes his training as a reporter and folds it into addictively propulsive and painstakingly detailed stories of crime and punishment.  On this episode, Bill Tipper caught up with Michael Connelly to talk about his new novel Two Kinds of Truth, in which the writer explores the human cost of the opioid epidemic, and Harry Bosch finds himself facing the sort of legal jeopardy he usually reserves for his quarry.

Think of one of the first times you encountered the pleasure of a truly spine-tingling story: the kind of book you felt uneasy about reading after dark, but it compelled you to keep turning pages in that way only scary fiction does. Maybe it was Stephen King, or Bram Stoker, or one of the legions of paperback horror-scribes of the 1980s. On this special pre-Halloween episode, we talk with authors about writing — and reading — the books that turn fear and dread into pleasure and (sometimes) enlightenment.  Sarah Schmidt, author of the chilling new novel See What I Have Done, tells Miwa Messer about her stay overnight in the house where Lizzie Borden’s family was murdered. And Benjamin Percy (The Dark Net) and Victor LaValle (The Changeling) talk about writing into darkness — and their early encounters with a certain clown in the sewer.  

"Everybody is a migrant," says the novelist Mohsin Hamid.  In this episode, Miwa Messer interviews the award-winning author of pathbreaking works of fiction like Moth Smoke, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, and his celebrated new novel Exit West, which combines a modern love story, a quirky fable, and a wryly hopeful look at the possibilities for a world in which borders are not walls.  They begin the conversation with a lesson from Douglas Adams, about the secret of flying.

Readers who had followed Walter Isaacson from his life of Benjamin Franklin to his record-setting biography Steve Jobs could already discern a pattern – a fascination with personalities who embody the spirit of irreverent and unpredictable creativity. Is it any wonder, then, that Walter Isaacson now delivers the sumptuously illustrated and provocatively structured Leonardo Da Vinci – a portrait of the Renaissance genius highlighting the childlike curiosity and wonder that may, according to his biographer, may be the key to Leonardo's bewitching works of art and invention. In this episode, he talks with Bill Tipper about what we can learn from this restless mind.

Ron Chernow had already written multiple award-winning biographies of figures like George Washington and J.P. Morgan when he decided to take up the life of the Founding Father least understood today. One bestselling book and one world-famous musical adaptation by Lin-Manuel Miranda later, the subject of his biography Alexander Hamilton has been reborn as the fascinating, dynamic figure whose career inspires schoolchildren and captivates millions.  What historian could be prouder?  But rather than sit on his Broadway laurels, the author has  returned with an epic-scale life of another American whose misunderstood genius transformed his country.  This week on the podcast, Ron Chernow talks with Bill Tipper about his sweeping new book, Grant (and — yes — about Hamilton, too).

Sometimes inspiration arrives by accident.  As the novelist Hannah Tinti explains to Miwa Messer in this episode, that was particularly true in the case of the author’s second novel, The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley, a literary page-turner that follows her prize-winning 2008 bestseller The Good Thief.  Tinti joins us to talk about the unlikely circumstances that propelled her into the story of a parent whose good intentions clash with his life story  — and the strange New England ritual that introduced her to the book’s title character. 

There’s no place better place to meet up with a voracious reader than in a bookstore, and if there’s one thing we learned from Dan Brown, it’s that he never stops reading.  So we decided to leave the studio and get out among the shelves at a nearby Manhattan Barnes & Noble, where we met up with the author whose breakout book — remember The Da Vinci Code? — took on the impossible task of making the most famous painting in the world seem even more mysterious and fascinating. In no particular order, Dan Brown talked with Bill Tipper about the following: Charles Darwin, modern art, musical inspiration, and Brown’s latest Robert Langdon thriller, Origin.  Spoiler alert: there are no spoilers.

Whether Roxane Gay is writing fiction or essays and memoir, it often seems as if there’s no territory she can’t make her own, turning her sharp insight and wry humor from feminism and gender politics and sex to literary criticism and television and movies and other points of pop culture.  The title of her acclaimed, bestselling essay collection, Bad Feminist, started as a joke for her — but soon became something of a badge of honor, and a touchstone for a generation of readers. In her work she uses candor to pull into the light of day a familiar but often repressed jumble of desires, insecurities, anxieties, fears, and feelings — the messy stuff of life that some might prefer to shove in a box under the bed.  She joined Miwa Messer on the podcast to talk about what drove her to write her first book-length memoir, Hunger.