The Life of a Jazz Age Madam

Keza MacDonald, the video games editor at The Guardian and author of the new book “Super Nintendo: The Game-Changing Company That Unlocked the Power of Play,” chose to write her first book about Nintendo because it has been so central for so long to the culture of games. “It was ... Show More

Xenobe Purvis’s slim but powerful debut novel, “The Hounding,” opens with a jolt: “The girls, the infernal heat, a fresh-dead body. Marching up the river path, the villagers.”How did we get here, with five young sisters living in 1700s England being hunted by an angry mob that su ... Show More

The journalist, novelist and cultural critic Chuck Klosterman is best known for writing about rock music and pop culture in astute essay collections like “The Nineties,” “X” and “Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs.” But Klosterman got his start in college as a sports journalist, and with ... Show More

With her new memoir, The Critic's Daughter (Norton), Priscilla Gilman explores her relationship with her father, Theater Critic and Yale Drama professor Richard Gilman (as well as with her mom, literary agent Lynn Nesbit). We get into the perils of literary-kid memoir, the NYC bo ... Show More

Historical fiction is the genre this week, and it centers around a lesser WWII phenomenon. During the Blitz, many British families sent their children abroad to live with families in Canada or the United States to keep them safe until the war was over. Beyond That, the Sea by deb ... Show More

In this week’s episode, Kendra talks with Kristen Arnett about her most recent novel, With Teeth, which out now from Riverhead. Check out our Patreon page to learn more about our book club and other Patreon-exclusive goodies. Follow along over on Instagram, join the discussion in ... Show More

Zadie Smith grew up in north west London and studied English at Cambridge University. After a publisher’s bidding war when she was just 21, her debut novel White Teeth became a huge critical and commercial hit on publication in 2000 and won several awards including the Orange Pri ... Show More

Charmian Kittredge London (1871-1955) may be best known as the wife of the famous American writer Jack London, but she was herself a literary trailblazer - and the epitome of a modern woman. In this episode, Jacke talks to biographer Iris Jamahl Dunkle (Charmian Kittredge London ... Show More

Fearless and fiercely intelligent, the nineteenth-century American feminist Margaret Fuller was "the radiant genius and fiery heart" of the Transcendentalists, the group of New Englanders who helped launch a fledgling nation onto the world's cultural and literary stage. In this e ... Show More

Martha Beck is a Harvard-trained sociologist (she has three degrees from Harvard!) and a world-renowned coach (most famously she's been Oprah's life coach) and New York Times bestselling author. She has published nine non-fiction books, one novel, and more than 200 magazine artic ... Show More

Joining us on Backlisted this week is novelist and memoirist Susie Boyt (My Judy Garland Life, Loved and Missed). The book Susie has chosen for us to discuss is The Dream Songs (1969) by John Berryman, the publication of which briefly made its author the most famous poet in Ameri ... Show More