The B&n Podcast

Today's episode is a fascinating and timely conversation that comes to us courtesy of Barnes & Noble's Discover Great New Writers program, featuring Kiese Laymon the author of Heavy: an American Memoir, and Shane Bauer, the author of American Prison: A Reporter's Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment. Heavy and American Prison were, respectively, the first and second place recipients of the 2018 Discover Great New Writers Award for Nonfiction, and both are works that urgently grapple with the state of America today, winning deep praise from critics and readers alike. In Heavy, Laymon takes readers with him on an unforgettable journey from his Mississippi childhood to life as a university professor and acclaimed writer - an odyssey in which racism, sexual violence, trauma and other monstrosities of 21st-century America are challenged by love and a spirit of questing intelligence. And in American Prison, investigative journalist Shane Bauer sought out the real experience of Americans living in