Books on the Bed

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)
 

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
 

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

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

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)
 

This week we visit with Elizabeth Crook in Austin, Texas. 
Elizabeth Crook is the author of six novels: The Raven’s Bride and Promised Lands, The Night Journal, Monday, Monday, The Which Way Tree, and The Madstone. In 2023 Elizabeth received the prestigious Texas Writer Award from the Texas Book Festival and in 2025 the Texas Medal of Arts in Literary Arts and the Texas Institute of Letters' prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award.
Elizabeth lived in Nacogdoches, Texas and then San Marcos, Texas with her parents and brother and sister until age seven when the family moved to Washington D.C., where her father was director of Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) for Lyndon Johnson. Two years later her father was appointed Ambassador to Australia and the family moved to Canberra. When they returned to Texas Elizabeth attended public schools in San Marcos, graduating from San Marcos High School. She attended Baylor University for two years and graduated from Rice University in 1982.
Elizabeth's Books on the Bed:
Silver Pennies (and More Silver Pennies) by Blanche Jennings Thompson 
Precious Bane by Mary Webb
A Tale of Two Cities and A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
True Grit by Charles Portis
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
Now You Hear My Horn: The Journal of James Wilson Nichols, 1820-1887 by James Wilson Nichols
Matt's Gifts for Elizabeth:
The House Is on Fire by Rachel Beanland
Gorilla by Lee Stockdale
Call It Horses by Jessie van Eerden

This week we visit with Henry Wise in Staunton, Virginia.
Henry is a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute and the University of Mississippi MFA program. A writer across multiple genres, his poetry has been published in Shenandoah, Radar Poetry, Clackamas, Nixes Mate Review, and elsewhere. His nonfiction and photography have appeared in Southern Cultures. "Holy City" is his first novel.
For more on Henry: henrywise.com
Henry's Books on the Bed: 
Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
My Antonia by Willa Cather
Legends of the Fall by Jim Harrison
Go Down, Moses by William Faulkner
West with the Night by Beryl Markham
Joe by Larry Brown
Matt's Gifts for Henry:
Shutter and Exposure by Ramona Emerson
Honeybee by Naomi Shihab Nye

This week we visit with Glenn Taylor in Morgantown, West Virginia.
Glenn Taylor’s fourth novel, "The Songs of Betty Baach" won the 2023 Juniper Prize in Fiction. His first novel, "The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart" was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award. Glenn’s work has appeared in such venues as the Oxford American, The Guardian, Gulf Coast, and Huizache. Born and raised in Huntington, West Virginia, he now resides with his family in Morgantown, where he is at work on a new novel.
For more on Glenn: glenntaylorbooks.org
Glenn's Books on the Bed:
The Milkweed Ladies by Louise McNeill
good woman: poems and a memoir by Lucille Clifton
Gringos by Charles Portis
Trampoline by Robert Gipe 
Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone by Eduardo Galeano
Road-side Dog by Czeslaw Milosz
Matt's Gifts for Glenn:
God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer by Joseph Earl Thomas
The Way the Moon by Holly Haworth

This week we visit with Ann Pancake in Reedsville, West Virginia. 
Ann Pancake grew up in Summersville and Romney, West Virginia and graduated from WVU with a Bachelor of Arts in English. After teaching English in Japan, American Samoa and Thailand, she earned a Masters degree in English from the University of North Carolina and a doctorate in English Literature from the University of Washington.
Pancake is—publicly and fervently—a West Virginia writer. She is the author of two story collections set in West Virginia: “Given Ground,” winner of the Bakeless Prize, and “Me and My Daddy Listen to Bob Marley,” a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. Her novel “Strange as This Weather Has Been” features a southern West Virginia family struggling with a mountaintop removal mine. It was named one of Kirkus Review’s Top Ten Fiction Books of the year, was a New York Times Editor’s Choice, won the 2007 Weatherford Prize and was a finalist for the 2008 Orion Book Award. “Strange as This Weather Has Been” is now cited and taught as a key piece of literature about Appalachian coal country.
Ann's Books on the Bed:
Braiding Sweetgrass and The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Deer Man: Seven Years of Living in the Wild by Geoffroy Delorme
The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Mind and Our World by Max Fisher
Country Queers: A Love Letter by Rae Garringer
The Chaneysville Incident by David Bradley
Bloodroot by Bill King
Matt's Gifts for Ann:
Groundglass by Kathryn Savage
Trinity by Zelda Lockhart
 

This week we visit with Meredith McCarroll in Portland, Maine. 
Meredith McCarroll was born and raised in Waynesville, North Carolina. She is the author of “Unwhite: Appalachia, Race, and Film” (2018) and co-editor of “Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy” (2019). She graduated from Appalachian State University, and later earned a Masters from Simmons College and a PhD from University of Tennessee. She lives now in Portland, Maine where she writes and teaches writing.
For more on Meredith: meredithmccarroll.com
Meredith's Books on the Bed:
Heavy by Kiese Laymon
Sleepovers: Stories by Ashleigh Bryant Phillips
Cane by Jean Toomer
Trampoline by Robert Gipe
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
The Laramie Project by Moises Kaufman and the Members of Tectonic Theater Project
Matt’s Gifts for Meredith:
The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty
Cinema Ann Arbor by Frank Uhle
Three Rivers Cornmeal Mix