Portland author, Alexis Smith,  talks with host David Naimon about Glaciers, her debut novel from Tin House books. Glaciers follows Isabel through a day in her life in which work with damaged books in the basement of a library, unrequited love for the former soldier who fixes her computer, and dreams of the perfect vintage dress move over a backdrop of deteriorating urban architecture and the imminent loss of the glaciers she knew as a young girl in Alaska.  Glaciers was a Publishers Weekly pick of the week,  received its coveted starred review, and was selected by Indie Booksellers for the January 2012 Indie Next List.

“An Alaska childhood and dreams of faraway cities such as Amsterdam inform Alexis M. Smith’s Glaciers, a delicate debut novel set in Portland, Oregon—“a slick fog of a city…drenched in itself”—that reveals in short, memory-soaked postcards of prose a day in the life of twentysomething library worker Isabel.”—Lisa Shea, ELLE Magazine

 Host David Naimon talks with Jess Walter about his sixth novel, Beautiful Ruins, a deeply human, roller coaster of a novel, spanning fifty years and nearly as many lives.  

"...a blockbuster, with romance, majesty, comedy, smarts, and a cast of thousands. There’s lights, there’s camera, there’s action. If you want anything more from a novel than Jess Walter gives you in Beautiful Ruins, you’re getting thrown out of the theater.” (Daniel Handler, author of Why We Broke Up and creator of Lemony Snicket )

“A novel with pathos, piercing wit and, most important, the generous soul of a literary classic. . . . Walter has planted himself firmly in the first rank of American authors.” (Boston Globe )

Walter is also the author of the national bestseller The Financial Lives of the Poets, the National Book Award finalist The Zero, the Edgar Award-winning Citizen Vince, Land of the Blind, and the New York Times Notable Book Over Tumbled Graves. He lives in Spokane, Washington, with his family. 

 Is How Should a Person Be? a novel, a memoir, a self-help manual, or a book of philosophy? It is all of these things and more. Host David Naimon talks with Sheila Heti about her new book, "a raw, startling, genre-defying novel of friends, sex, and love in the new millennium--a compulsive read that's like 'spending a day with your new best friend.' (Bookforum).

Canadian writer, Sheila Heti is the author of five books, all very different in form and style. She has written a collection of modern fables entitled The Middle Stories, a historical novella calledTicknor and an illustrated book for children, We Need a Horse. Recently she ventured into nonfiction with her book of “conversational philosophy,” The Chairs Are Where the People Go, written with Misha Glouberman, which the New Yorker chose as one of the best books of 2011. Sheila Heti also works as Interviews Editor at The Believer magazine.

Host Jim Schumock speaks with writer Ron Rash about his new book The Cove, a tale of the beauty of nature and love—and the darkness of superstition and fear. With The Cove, Rash, the author of Serena, returns to the Appalachian milieu of his previous novels. This is a story of a love affair doomed in the rising turmoil of WWI. At the same time The Cove explores often dangerous notions of patriotism during wartime.

Ron Rash is the author of three prize-winning novels: One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River, and The World Made Straight; three collections of poems; and two collections of stories. A recipient of the O. Henry Prize, he holds the John Parris Chair in Appalachian Studies at Western Carolina University.