Bookpod

What, you think it’s nothing to walk in on your wife making it with your boss — in your bed? Think it’s nothing to lose your father too and then get to spend a week with your newly lesbian mom and your scrabbling brothers and sisters?

Listen to Jonathan Tropper talk about This Is Where I Leave You, his novel about the craziness of family when your life goes off the rails.

You and your dad always scoffed at religious fanatics. Time passes and suddenly he gets a little too interested in Judaism. What’s a nice Jewish girl to do?

Listen to Risa Miller talk about My Before and After Life in Bookpod, a weekly podcast that features writers of lasting value.

How’s it feel to expose your humiliation to your family? Jonathan Tropper has written a novel called This Is Where I Leave You on this very subject. 

Listen to Tropper talk about his fifth novel in this latest installment of Bookpod (7 min. mp3; pdf available).

Doris Betts talks about the influences on her writing, notably the Old Testament stories in Hurlbut’s Bible:

“Real stories were about King Saul and they were about the burning bush, which nobody understood, and me included. But they were on a large scale and they involved people either doing good or doing evil or doing both. When you’re able to look at things on a large scale, you elevate who human beings really are.”

This 7-minute audio essay is part of Bookpod, a weekly podcast about writers of lasting value.