"Eudora Welty once said one place understood helps us understand all other places better. And I chose to be that kind of writer."
-- NPR interviews Ron Rash on his brilliant new collection of short stories set in Appalachia, Nothing Gold Can Stay.
Emily Rapp’s memoir about her dying son (The Still Point of the Turning World) fascinates Katie Roiphe at Slate, who wonders: Why do we like to read tragic stories about children?
On Reader's Digest, A Book We Love (And You Should Read) Earns a Well-Deserved Nomination. The book? Kristen Iversen's Full Body Burden.
"[John Brown] would probably find us depressing: doing nothing to change the world, sitting in comfortable cafes, living our—for the most part—comfortable lives, and not being awake to the evils of our day."
-- Tony Horwitz interviewed by Robert Birnbaum
Benediction by Kent Haruf is among Publishers Weekly's Best New Books of the Week.
And in case you missed it we published a new interview with Vanessa Veselka.