Books on the Bed

Elisa Faison

This week we visit with Elisa Faison in Carrboro, North Carolina. 
Elisa Faison is a writer and freelance editor living in Carrboro, North Carolina with her partner and two-year-old twins. Her debut novel SKIN CONTACT will be published on June 23, 2026. She has published stories in The Missouri Review, Electric Literature, Smokelong Quarterly, and more. Her story “Motherlove” was the recipient of the 2024 Peden Prize, awarded by The Missouri Review and judged by Rachel Yoder. Her story “Group Sex” was the third most-read story in Electric Literature in 2023. Elisa formerly worked as a bookseller at Flyleaf Books and the book reviews editor of The Carolina Quarterly. She holds a PhD in English from The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where she specialized in twenty-first century climate change novels.
ORDER AND READ SKIN CONTACT!
For more on Elisa: elisafaison.com/
Elisa's Books on the Bed:
A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore
Girlhood by Melissa Febos
The Lover by Lily King
Ulysses by James Joyce
Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason
Matt's Gifts for Elisa:
The End of Romance by Lily Meyer
The Computer Room by Emma Ensley
Strange as This Weather Has Been by Ann Pancake

Jacquelyn Zong-Li Ross

This week we visit with Jacquelyn Zong-Li Ross in Vancouver, British Columbia. 
Jacquelyn Zong-Li Ross is a writer and editor based in Vancouver, the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Her fiction, poetry, essays, and art criticism have appeared in BOMB, C Mag, The Ex-Puritan, Fence, Mousse, and elsewhere, as well as in the chapbooks Mayonnaise and Drawings on Yellow Paper (with Katie Lyle). By day, she works as an editor at The Capilano Review. By night, she drafts suspended scenarios and propositions. The Longest Way to Eat a Melon, her debut collection of fictions, was published by Sarabande Books in 2025. She is at work on a novel.
BUY AND READ THE LONGEST WAY TO EAT A MELON
For more on Jacquelyn: jacquelynzross.com
Jacquelyn's Books on the Bed:
Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing by Hélène Cixous
The Importance of Being Iceland by Eileen Myles
The Story of My Teeth by Valeria Luiselli
Pure Colour by Sheila Heti
lettuce lettuce please go bad by Tiziana La Melia
The Cloud Notebook by Ada Smailbegović
Matt's gifts for Jacquelyn:
Little Bird by Claudia Ulloa Donoso (translated by Lily Meyer)
Undermajordomo Minor by Patrick deWitt
Temporary by Hilary Leichter 

Alison Lyn Miller

This week we visit with Alison Lyn Miller in Athens, Georgia.
Alison Lyn Miller grew up in Hartwell, Georgia, and worked as a magazine editor in New York City and Dallas before moving to Athens, Georgia, in 2017. In 2020, she started reporting and writing about independent professional wrestlers around the state and published pieces in Sports Illustrated and Gravy. Her first book, Rough House (W.W. Norton, Jan. ’26), set in Georgia’s small-town professional wrestling scene, explores themes of escapism, self-actualization, performance and violence, and reveals the depth of an often-dismissed American pastime. She has written for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Washington Post, and Garden & Gun, among others, and has been awarded residencies at the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts & Science (2023) and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (2024). She is 2021 graduate of the Narrative Nonfiction MFA program at The University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism & Mass Communication.
BUY AND READ ROUGH HOUSE
For more on Alison: alisonlynmiller.com
Alison's Books on the Bed:
The Last Cowboys: A Pioneer Family in the New West by John Branch
The Last Fine Time by Verlyn Klinkenborg
The Library Book by Susan Orlean
The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit by Michael Finkel
Hiroshima by John Hersey
Dirtbag Queen: A Memoir of My Mother by Andy Corren
Matt's Gifts for Alison:
Bookshop Cats by Daphne Du Meowier
They Said They Wanted Revolution by Neda Toloui-Semnani
A Race to the Bottom of Crazy: Dispatches from Arizona by Richard Grant
Gene Smith's Sink: A Wide-Angle View by Sam Stephenson

Alice Martin

This week we visit with Alice Martin in Waynesville, North Carolina.
Alice Martin is a writer, reader, and teacher from North Carolina. She holds a PhD in Literature from Rutgers University and works as an Assistant Professor of English Studies at Western Carolina University, where she teaches fiction writing and American literature. She lives outside of Asheville, North Carolina with her husband, her son, and too many typewriters. Westward Women is her debut novel.
For more on Alice: alicejmartin.com
BUY WESTWARD WOMEN
Alice’s Books on the Bed:
The Extraordinary Work of Ordinary Writing: Annie Ray's Diary by Jennifer Sinor
Envelope Poems: Poetry by Emily Dickinson (edited by Jen Bervin and Marta Werner)
If I Had Two Wings: Stories by Randall Kenan
The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood
Bad Behaviour by Mary Gaitskill
The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
Matt’s Gifts for Alice:
The Night Journal by Elizabeth Crook
Call It Horses by Jessie van Eerden
Girl’s Girl by Sonia Feldman (forthcoming June 2nd)

Nathaniel Roy

This week we visit with Nathaniel Roy in Ypsilanti, Michigan. 
Nathaniel Roy is a book designer, collage maker, photo taker, self-publisher, and a few other things.
He's a graphic designer who specializes in book design, but for the right cause, he'll design just about anything. He's keenly interested in local, independent, and non-profit projects and is currently an in-house designer at the Ann Arbor District Library and available for freelance opportunities. His clients include Simon & Schuster, W. W. Norton, Wayne State University Press, University of Texas Press, Penn State University Press, Minnesota Historical Society Press.
HIRE THIS GUY: nathanielroy.com
Nate's Books on the Bed:
The Clothing of Books by Jhumpa Lahiri
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
The Dark Interval: Letters on Loss, Grief, and Transformation by Rainer Maria Rilke
Letters of Note: An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience by Shaun Usher
Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, Its Chaotic Founding... Its Purloined Basketball Team, and the Dream of Becoming a World-class Metropolis by Sam Anderson
Matt's Gifts for Nate:
The Salt Stones: Seasons of a Shepherd's Life by Helen Whybrow
American Bulk by Emily Mester
A History of Half-Birds by Caroline Harper New
 

Ashleigh Bryant Phillips

This week we visit with Ashleigh Bryant Phillips in Asheville, North Carolina. 
Ashleigh Bryant Phillips is from rural Woodland, North Carolina. She's a graduate of Meredith College and earned an MFA from the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. Her debut short story collection Sleepovers is the winner of the 2019 C. Michael Curtis Short Story Book Prize, selected by Lauren Groff. Her stories have appeared in The Oxford American, The Paris Review and others. 
For more on Ashleigh: ashleighbryantphillips.com
Ashleigh's Books on the Bed:
Will You Please Be Quiet, Please by Raymond Carver
Portraits and Dreams: Photographs and Stories by Children of the Appalachians  1976-1982, 2009-2018 by Wendy Ewald 
Bambi by Felix Salten, translated by Damion Searls
Free Day by Inès Cagnati, translated by Liesl Schillinger
The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross
The Royal Diaries: Cleopatra VII: Daughter of the Nile, Egypt, 57 B.C. by Kristiana Gregory
Matt's Gifts for Ashleigh:
Where the Roots Reach for Water: A Personal & Natural History of Melancholia by Jeffery Smith
Reading Reconstruction: Sherwood Bonner and the Literature of the Post-Civil War South by Kathryn B. McKee
Room Swept Home by Remica Bingham-Risher

Nilo Tabrizy

This week we visit with Nilo Tabrizy in Brooklyn, New York.
Nilo Tabrizy is the co-author (with Fatemeh Jamalpour) of For the Sun After Long Nights, a moving exploration of the 2022 women-led protests in Iran, as told through the interwoven stories of two Iranian journalists. She is an investigative reporter at The Washington Post working for the visual forensics team, where she covers Iran using open-source methods. Previously, she was a video journalist at The New York Times, covering Iran, race and policing, abortion access, and more. She is an Emmy nominee and the 2022 winner of the Front Page Award for Online Investigative Reporting. She received an M.S. in journalism from Columbia University and a B.A. in political science and French from the University of British Columbia.
For more on Nilo: ntabrizy.com
Nilo's Books on the Bed:
Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám
Women's Voices from Kurdistan: A Selection of Kurdish Poetry (edited by Farangis Ghaderi, Clémence Scalbert Yücel, Yaser Hassan Ali)
Puerto Rico: A National History by Jorell Meléndez-Badillo
An Anthology of the Experiences of Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Victims (Third Collection) by Hiroshima Association for the Success of the Atomic Bomb Exhibition
Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginzburg (must-read afterword by Peg Boyers!)
They Said They Wanted Revolution: A Memoir of My Parents by Neda Toloui-Semnani
Matt's Gifts for Nilo:
As Seeds We Grow: Student Reflections on Resilience (edited by Elise Boulanger)
Heating the Outdoors and Between the Moments: Canadian Aboriginal Voices by Marie-Andrée Gill
Daughters of Palestine by Leyla K. King
 
 
 

Tessa Fontaine

This week we visit with Tessa Fontaine in Asheville, North Carolina. 
Tessa Fontaine is the author of The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts and The Red Grove, her debut novel. Raised outside San Francisco, Tessa teaches in Warren Wilson’s MFA program, started Salt Lake City’s Writers in the Schools program, and has taught in jails and prisons for years. She co-founded and teaches the Accountability Workshops with writer and pal Annie Hartnett, and lives in Asheville, North Carolina, with her daughter, silly dog and sassy cat.
For more on Tessa: tessafontaine.com
Tessa's Books on the Bed:
Sun Under Wood by Robert Hass
Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje
Jazz by Toni Morrison
The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery
All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
We the Animals by Justin Torres
Matt's Gifts for Tessa:
Leaving Biddle City by Marianna Chan
Obit by Victoria Chang
Chooch Helped by Andrea L. Rogers (illustrated by Rebecca Kunz)
 
 

Andrea L. Rogers

This week we visit with Andrea L. Rogers in Mountainburg, Arkansas. 
Andrea L. Rogers is an award-winning author of historical and contemporary fiction across a variety of genres. Her first book, Mary and the Trail of Tears is historical fiction, which is pretty much horror for Native people. It was on both the NPR & American Indians in Children’s Literature best of 2020 lists.
Her critically acclaimed Young Adult Horror Novel, Man Made Monsters, was released by Levine Querido in October 2022. It includes illustrations by Jeff Edwards (Cherokee). The novel received the Walter Award and several other accolades. She also authored a YA novel of Cherokee Futurism called The Art Thieves, released in August 2024. Her debut picture book about Southeastern tribes and wild onion dinners (the opposite of horror) is called When We Gather, illustrated by Madelyn Goodnight (Chickasaw). A second picture book, Chooch Helped, arrived in October 2024, illustrated by Rebecca Kunz(Cherokee). Chooch Helped won the 2025 Caldecott Medal.
Andrea is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She currently attends The University of Arkansas in Fayetteville where she is a doctoral student in English. Andrea graduated with an MFA from the Institute for American Indian Arts. She taught Art and HS English in public schools for 14 years. She has three wonderful children.
Andrea's Books on the Bed:
A Golden Treasury of Song and Lyrics by Francis Turner Palgrave
The Conquest of Texas: Ethnic Cleasing in the Promised Land, 1820-1875 by Gary Clayton Anderson
The Ballad of Black Tom and The Devil in Silver by Victor LaValle
Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History by Erik Larson
Wasteland: The Great War and the Origins of Modern Horror by W. Scott Poole
Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places by Colin Dickey
Fall in Line, Holden! and Herizon by Daniel W. Vandever
Matt's Gifts for Andrea:
Roots of My Fears: Terrifying Stories of Ancestral Horror (Edited by Gemma Amor)
The Ghost Variations by Kevin Brockmeier
The Unsettled by Ayana Mathis

Michael Amos Cody

This week we visit with Michael Amos Cody in Johnson City, Tennessee. 
Michael Amos Cody was born in the South Carolina Lowcountry and raised in the North Carolina highlands. He spent his twenties writing songs in Nashville and his thirties in school. He’s the author of the novels Streets of Nashville (Madville Publishing) and Gabriel’s Songbook (Pisgah Press) and short fiction that has appeared in Yemassee, Tampa Review, Still: The Journal, and elsewhere. His short story collection, A Twilight Reel (Pisgah Press) won the Short Story / Anthology category of the Feathered Quill Book Awards 2022. Cody lives with his wife Leesa in Jonesborough, Tennessee, and teaches in the Department of Literature and Language at East Tennessee State University.
For more on Michael: michaelamoscody.com
Michael's Books on the Bed:
Wieland by Charles Brockden Brown
Merciful Days by Jesse Graves
This House of Sky by Ivan Doig
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko
Dixie City Jam by James Lee Burke
Matt's Gifts for Michael:
Blood Sisters by Vanessa Lillie
The Which Way Tree by Elizabeth Crook