iRead New Writers

Hear new writers talking about their books, from some of the top book and author podcast shows.

Live: J. Ryan Stradal Podcasts Kitchens of the Great Midwest

Stradal reads from and discusses his bestselling debut novel Kitchens of the Great Midwest, the story of a young woman with a once-in-a-generation palate who becomes the iconic chef behind the country’s most coveted dinner reservation. By turns quirky, hilarious, and vividly sensory, Kitchens of the Great Midwest is an unexpected mother-daughter story about the bittersweet nature of life, its missed opportunities, and its joyful surprises.

Live: Bonnie Jo Campbell Podcasts Mothers, Tell Your Daughters

Named by the Guardian as one of our top ten writers of rural noir, Campbell is a keen observer of life and trouble in rural America, and her working-class protagonists can be at once vulnerable, wise, cruel, and funny. The strong but flawed women of Mothers, Tell Your Daughters must negotiate a sexually charged atmosphere as they love, honor, and betray one another against the backdrop of all the men in their world.

Live: Kennedy Odede & Jessica Posner Podcast Find Me Unafraid: Love, Loss, and Hope in an African Slum

Kennedy Odede is one of Africa’s best-known community organizers and social entrepreneurs, and among the first from Kibera, a Kenyan slum, to get a degree from an elite American university, Wesleyan University. Jessica Posner is a nationally recognized, award-winning social entrepreneur and activist and is the cofounder, with Kennedy, and chief operating officer of Shining Hope for Communities, which provides a school for girls in Kibera, as well as clean water, health care, and more for over seventy-thousand people.

Live: Jena Lee Nardella & Dan Haseltine Podcast One Thousand Wells

Jena Lee Nardella, accompanied by Dan Haseltine, the lead singer of the Grammy Award-winning band Jars of Clay, discusses her memoir One Thousand Wells: How an Audacious Goal Taught Me to Love the World Instead of Save It, in which she shares how her passion for saving the world grew into a humbler long-term calling of loving the world in all its brokenness.

Interview: Forget Me Not by Jacqueline Falcomer

Alex, the storyteller in Forget Me Not unfurls the multicolored banner that is his family history. In vivid and rich narration, from his grandfather’s bull fighting ranch in Mexico and his father’s chiropractic education in Iowa, to his own search for self and the women he cannot forget, Alejandro is both guide and lost soul.
Through three generations and across four continents, this tale of yearning, searching, loss and forgiveness grabs the reader on every level and yanks you through turmoil, depravity, tenderness and awakening.

Live: Scott Ian Podcasts I’m the Man: The Story of That Guy from Anthrax

Scott Ian discuss his new book I’m the Man: The Story of That Guy from Anthrax, his fast-paced, humorous, and revealing memoir of the band that proved to the masses that brutality and fun didn’t have to be mutually exclusive. I’m the Man is a blistering hard rock memoir, one that is astonishing in its candor and deftly told by the man who’s kept the institution of Anthrax alive for more than thirty years.

Live: Charlie Burrell & Mitch Handelsman Podcast The Life of Charlie Burrell

A Denver jazz legend, Charlie Burrell joined the Denver Symphony in 1949 as the first person of color under contract with a major orchestra. In 1959 he moved to San Francisco to become the first person of color in the San Francisco Orchestra. In his more than 60 years as a professional musician, he played for conductors including Arthur Fiedler and Pierre Monteux, and worked with a who’s who of jazz greats – appearing on stage with the likes of Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, and Lionel Hampton.