Marginalia

In her timely novel, Kirstin Valdez Quade introduces readers to a family in a small New Mexico town. Beginning and ending in Holy Week, The Five Wounds spans a year in which 33-year-old Amadeo tries to redeem himself, his martyr-ish mother, Yolanda, hides an illness, and his 15-year-old daughter, Angel, becomes an unwed mother who out-matures all characters combined.

There is a blurb from Mat Johnson on the back of How I Learned to Hate in Ohio that reads: “David Stuart MacLean is a writer who can break your heart, terrify you, and make you laugh, all on the same page.” I’m typically not a blurb reader, but this was such a good description of MacLean’s writing that I had to include it.

If you’re a Marginalia listener, you know that this podcast features interviews with authors of the newest releases in publishing. When I first learned about The Ex Talk, it was described as a novel set in public radio. My worlds collided and I believe my reaction was, “yes please.”

The Big Door Prize, the new novel by M.O. Walsh, poses this question to its readers: What would you do if you knew your life’s potential? Characters in the small town of Deerfield, Louisiana, are faced with this question when a mysterious machine appears in the local grocery store, reading and analyzing DNA, and inevitably challenging residents to gaze inward, searching for unrealized potential.

At the beginning of 2019, NPR, Publishers Weekly, Lit Hub, and other national media flagged at Jericho Brown's new poetry collection as one to watch. The book was released last week during Brown's visit to Wichita as WSU's 2019 Distinguished Visiting Poet. He stopped by the KMUW studios to talk with Beth Golay about his work.

David Baron’s new book, American Eclipse: A Nation’s Epic Race to Catch the Shadow of the Moon and Win the Glory of the World, is about the history and the players involved in the total solar eclipse of 1878.

Sir William Herschel was an astronomer who is best known for discovering Uranus and several moons while compiling a catalog of more than 2,500 celestial objects that is still in use today.

He was assisted for decades by his younger sister and fellow astronomer, Caroline Herschel. When he collected her from the family home in Germany to assist him in England, he liberated her from an awful existence , and she was forever grateful--and indebted--to him.

Welcome to Marginalia… a look beyond the pages of a book.

Our first episode features an interview with Hannah Rothschild… a Renaissance woman of sorts. She is a documentary filmmaker, a nonfiction author… and she’s the chairwoman for the National Gallery in London. I caught up with her recently to talk about her latest project, her first work of fiction .