Books on the Bed

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
 

Nic Brown

This week we visit with Nic Brown in Clemson, South Carolina. 
Nic Brown is a writer and a musician. He has published several books, including the memoir Bang Bang Crash (Counterpoint 2023), which was named a book of the year by Library Journal and Booklist, and the novels In Every Way (Counterpoint 2015), Doubles (Counterpoint 2010), and Floodmarkers (Counterpoint 2009), which was selected as an Editors' Choice by The New York Times Book Review. His newest book, Violent Femmes' Violent Femmes, will be published by Bloomsbury on May 14, 2026, as part of their 33 1/3 series of books about music. 
Nic's writing has appeared in The New York Times, Oxford American, and the Harvard Review, among many other publications. 
A graduate of Columbia University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Nic has served as the Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi and is now a professor at Clemson University.
He is also a drummer. With his first band, Athenaeum, he released two records on Atlantic Records. The first single off their first album peaked at #14 on the Billboard Alternative Rock charts. He has since recorded and toured with many acts, including Ben Lee, Longwave, Skeleton Key, Kim Richey, Matt Pond PA, and Eszter Balint. 
For more on Nic: nicbrown.net
Nic's Books on the Bed:
Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson
Swimming Studies by Leanne Shapton
Light Years by James Salter
A Man Named Doll by Jonathan Ames
Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel
The Complete Guide to Stonescaping: Dry-Stacking, Mortaring, Paving & Gardenscaping by David Reed
Matt's Gifts for Nic: 
What Doesn't Kill You Open Your Heart by Max Hipp
Streets of Nashville by Michael Amos Cody

Toni Jensen

This week we visit with Toni Jensen in Springdale, Arkansas. 
Toni Jensen’s Carry is a memoir-in-essays about gun violence, land and Indigenous women’s lives (Ballantine 2020). An NEA Creative Writing Fellowship recipient in 2020, Jensen's essays have appeared in Orion, Catapultand Ecotone. She is also the author of the short story collection From the Hilltop. She teaches at the University of Arkansas and the Institute of American Indian Arts. She is Métis.
For more on Toni: tonijensen.com
Toni's Books on the Bed:
Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich
Winter in the Blood by James Welch
Grassland by Richard Manning
Hum by Jamaal May
This Is Not Your City by Caitlin Horrocks
Mongrels by Stephen Graham Jones
Matt's Gifts for Toni:
Silver Box by Natachee Momaday Gray
The Antidote by Karen Russell 
Retablos: Stories from a Life Lived Along the Border by Octavio Solis
 
Graphic Design by Nathaniel Roy Design
Music by Eliza Edens from her album Time Away From Time (2020)
 

Damon Young

This week we visit with Damon Young in his hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Pittsburgh writer DAMON YOUNG’s debut memoir, What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker: A Memoir in Essays (Ecco), won the Thurber Prize for American Humor. His new book, That's How They Get You: An Unruly Anthology of Black American Humor released on June 3rd, 2025. A founder of the culture blog Very Smart Brothas and creator and host of the Crooked Media podcast Stuck with Damon Young, Damon has been a contributing columnist for The Washington Post Magazine, a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, and a columnist for GQ and was the inaugural writer-in-residence at the University of Pittsburgh’s David C. Frederick Honors College.
Buy his new book here!
Damon's Books on the Bed:
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Killing Yourself to Live by Chuck Klosterman
The Broke Diaries by Angela Nissel
Supreme Clientele by Ghostface Killah (Album)
Matt's Gifts for Damon:
Good Women by Halle Hill
English Lit by Bernard Clay
Native Hoops: The Rise of American Indian Basketball, 1895-1970 by Wade Davies
 
Graphic Design by Nathaniel Roy Design
Music by Eliza Edens from her album Time Away From Time (2020)

Kevin Brockmeier

This week we visit with Kevin Brockmeier in his hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas. 
In addition to his latest book, The Ghost Variations: One Hundred Stories, Kevin Brockmeier is the author of the novels The Illumination, The Brief History of the Dead, and The Truth About Celia; the story collections Things That Fall from the Sky and The View from the Seventh Layer; the children’s novels City of Names and Grooves: A Kind of Mystery; and a memoir of his seventh-grade year called A Few Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip. His work has been translated into eighteen languages. He has published his stories in such venues as The New Yorker, The Georgia Review, McSweeney’s, Zoetrope, Tin House, The Oxford American, The Best American Short Stories, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, and New Stories from the South. He has received the Borders Original Voices Award, three O. Henry Awards (one, a first prize), the PEN USA Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an NEA Grant. In 2007, he was named one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists. He teaches frequently at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he was raised.
For more on Kevin: kevinbrockmeier.com
Kevin's Books on the Bed:
The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino
The Cockroaches of Stay More by Donald Harington
The Man Who Fell to Earth by Walter Tevis
Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars by Daniel Pinkwater
Turtle Diary by Russell Hoban
Crash by J.G. Ballard
Matt's Gifts for Kevin:
That's How They Get You: An Unruly Anthology of Black American Humor by Damon Young
Little Worlds by Rob Amberg
Yoke & Feather by Jessie van Eerden
 
Graphic Design by Nathaniel Roy Design
Music by Eliza Edens from her album Time Away From Time (2020)
 

Jen Fawkes

This week we visit with Jen Fawkes in her hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas. 
Jen Fawkes is the author of Daughters of Chaos, a literary alternate history in which a female Union spy discovers a secret society of magical women that spans millennia. Pulitzer Prize finalist Kelly Link called Daughters of Chaos "ferociously, radiantly compelling," and according to Publishers Weekly's starred review, the novel is a "dazzling historical fantasy . . . both the historical and fantastical elements come alive in Sylvie’s suspenseful narration, which is interwoven with the text of the imaginary play. Fawkes wows with this wildly original tale.”
Jen's first book, Mannequin and Wife, was a 2020 Shirley Jackson Award Nominee, the winner of the 2023 Phillip H. McMath Post-Publication Book Award, and a Foreword INDIES gold medalist. Her collection Tales the Devil Told Me was a ForewordINDIES silver medalist, one of Largehearted Boy’s Favorite Collections of 2021, and a finalist for the 2022 World Fantasy Award for Single-Author Story Collection.
Jen's short fiction has won numerous awards, including the 2021 Porter Fund Literary Prize, and has appeared in One Story, Lit Hub, the Iowa Review, swamp pink, Best Small Fictions, and many others. A two-time finalist for the Calvino Prize for fabulist fiction, Jen lives in Little Rock, Arkansas.
For more on Jen: jenfawkes.com
 
Jen's Books on the Bed:
Italian Folktales by Italo Calvino
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
Mrs. Caliban by Rachel Ingalls 
Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez
The Odyssey by Homer (Translated by Robert Fagles)
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Matt's Gifts for Jen:
The Unseen by Roy Jacobsen (Translated by Don Barlett, Don Shaw)
Seawomen of Iceland: Survival on the Edge by Margaret Willson
 
Graphic Design by Nathaniel Roy Design
Music by Eliza Edens from her album Time Away From Time (2020)
 

Amy Le Ann Richardson

This week we visit with Amy Le Ann Richardson in Carter County, Kentucky.
Amy Le Ann Richardson earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Spalding University (‘09) and is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Make Believe Worlds We Built Together (Bottlecap Press, 2023) and Who You Grow Into (Finishing Line Press, 2024), as well as a full collection, Out of Places (Pine Row Press, 2025). Her work has been featured in journals such as Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Kentucky Monthly, Untelling, and Still: The Journal. She currently lives and works on her family farm in Carter County, Kentucky, where she writes, grows food, and engages with her community through art and environmental advocacy.
You can find her artwork at www.chickenhousestudio.com and her farm at www.forgottenfoods.com. Also, see her Etsy store here: https://kymtnwriter.etsy.com
Amy's Books on the Bed:
The Book of Delights by Ross Gay
Where You Come from Is Gone by Annie Woodford
Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place by Neema Avashia
When Stars Rain Down by Angela Jackson-Brown
Strange As This Weather Has Been by Ann Pancake
Gay Poems for Red States by Willie Edward Taylor Carver, Jr. 
Matt's Gifts for Amy:
Glass Jaw by Raisa Tolchinsky
Thunder Song: Essays by Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe
 

Kristen Renee Miller

This week we visit with Kristen Renee Miller in Louisville, Kentucky.
KRISTEN RENEE MILLER is the director and editor-in-chief at Sarabande Books. An award-winning poet and translator, she is a 2023 NEA Fellow and the translator of two books from the French by Ilnu Nation poet Marie-Andrée Gill. She is the recipient of honors from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, AIGA, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Gulf Coast Prize in Translation, and the American Literary Translators Association. Her work can be found widely, including in Poetry Magazine, The Nation, and Best New Poets. She lives in Louisville, Kentucky.
For more about Kristen: kristenreneemiller.com
Read Sarabande Books! sarabandebooks.org
Kristen's Books on the Bed:
Six Memos for the Next Millennium by Italo Calvino
Mots d'Heures: Gousses, Rames: The d'Antin Manuscript by Luis d'Antin van Rooten
Busman's honeymoon by Dorothy Sayers
No one belongs here more than you. Stories by Miranda July
Adverbs by Daniel Handler
Madeleine Is Sleeping by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum
Matt's Gifts for Kristen:
The Song Poet: A Memoir of My Father by Kao Kalia Yang
Daughters of Chaos by Jen Fawkes
Sequoyah: The Cherokee Man Who Gave His People Writing by James Rumford

Isa Arsén

This week we visit with Isa Arsén in San Antonio, Texas.
Isa Arsén is a certified bleeding heart based in South Texas, where she lives with her spouse and a comically small dog.
Her work has been featured in Stone of Madness Press, The McNeese Review, and several independent anthologies and audiovisual projects. Her novels include SHOOT THE MOON (Putnam, 2023), and THE UNBECOMING OF MARGARET WOLF (Putnam, 2025). When not wrangling prose, Isa is a dialogue engineer & writer for interactive media.
For more on Isa: inarsen.com
Isa's Books on the Bed:
H of H Playbook by Anne Carson
The Ring of the Nibelung by P. Craig Russell
The Charioteer by Mary Renault
The Study of Counterpoint: from Johann Joseph Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum (translated and edited) by Alfred Mann
The Art of Writing Nonfiction by Andre Fontaine and William A. Glavin, Jr. 
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy
Matt's Gifts for Isa:
The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather
Lolly Willowes : or the loving huntsman by Sylvia Townsend Warner
Moon Child (album) by Kelley Smith

Naomi Shihab Nye

This week we visit with Naomi Shihab Nye in San Antonio, Texas.
Naomi Shihab Nye describes herself as a “wandering poet.” She has spent more than 40 years traveling the country and the world to lead writing workshops and inspiring students of all ages. Nye was born to a Palestinian father and an American mother and grew up in St. Louis, Jerusalem, and San Antonio. Drawing on her Palestinian-American heritage, the cultural diversity of her home in Texas, and her experiences traveling in Asia, Europe, Canada, Mexico, and the Middle East, Nye uses her writing to attest to our shared humanity.
Naomi is the author and/or editor of more than 30 volumes of poetry, four novels, and an essay and short story collection.
Learn more about Naomi at the American Academy of Poets.
 
Naomi's Books on the Bed:
Garden Time by M.S. Merwin
Every War Has Two Losers by William Stafford
An Ordinary Woman by Lucille Clifton
Does the Land Remember Me? A Memoir of Palestine by Aziz Shihab
Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza by Mosab Abu Toha
The Year I Stopped to Notice by Miranda Keeling
Matt's Gifts for Naomi:
The Listening Skin by Glenis Redmond
George Masa: A Life Reimagined by Janet McCue and Paul Bonesteel
Ways of Being Home by Cecilia Sotelo Cornejo (film)