New Books in Literature Marshall Poe

Stella St. Vincent, a thirty-something copy editor in 1980s New York, has survived a relationship with her mother, Celia, so complicated that even the words “my daughter” give Stella pause. Celia lived life to the fullest, reinventing herself and discarding anything that no longer pleased her, including Stella’s father, whom Celia refused even to name. And when Stella rebelled by becoming the exact opposite of her mother—disciplined, buttoned-down, reliant on schedules to guarantee safety—Celia did her best to push her daughter out of that comfort zone before distancing herself from Stella as well. So the bequest in Celia’s will is no accident: Stella inherits $8,000, a ticket to Paris, and instructions to spend all the money before returning home.
Stella resists until her employer forces her to take a leave of absence. Even then, Stella spends weeks in Paris scheduling every meal and sightseeing tour—until a strange shopkeeper intent on selling a beautiful dress designed by Yves St. Laurent sends Stella on a journey that will expose her to a lost nineteenth-century painting, the artist who created it, her own past, and the sensory experiences that she has denied herself for so long.
Captivating and beautifully written, The Paris Novel (Random House, 2024) contrasts the eternal story of a young woman finding herself with a historical mystery involving a nineteenth-century artists’ model whose own quest to chart a new course for her life challenged the conventions of her time.
Ruth Reichl—author of numerous books about food, former restaurant critic for the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times, and editor in chief of Gourmet Magazine from 1999 to 2009—has also written two novels: Delicious! (2014) and The Paris Novel (2024).
C. P. Lesley is the author of two historical fiction series set during the childhood of Ivan the Terrible and four other novels. Her latest book—The Merchant’s Tale, cowritten with P.K. Adams—appeared in November 2023.
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Today’s book is: The Things We Didn’t Know (Gallery Books, 2024), by Dr. Elba Iris Pérez’s. A cross-cultural coming-of-age story, The Things We Didn’t Know is inspired by the author’s own experiences growing up between Woronoco, Massachusetts, and Puerto Rico. It explores Andrea Rodríguez’s childhood between Puerto Rico and a small Massachusetts factory town. Andrea Rodríguez is nine years old when her mother whisks her and her brother, Pablo, away from Woronoco, the tiny Massachusetts factory town that is the only home they’ve known. With no plan and no money, she leaves them with family in the mountainside villages of Puerto Rico and promises to return. Months later, when Andrea and Pablo are brought back to Massachusetts, they find their hometown significantly changed. As they navigate the rifts between their family’s values and all-American culture, and face the harsh realities of growing up, they must embrace both the triumphs and heartache that mark the journey to adulthood. An evocative portrait of another side of life in 1950s and 1960s America, The Things We Didn’t Know is Dr. Elba Iris Pérez debut novel.
Our guest is: Dr. Elba Iris Pérez, who is from Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico, and spent her early childhood in Woronoco, Massachusetts. She taught theatre and history at the University of Puerto Rico in Arecibo, and now lives in Houston. Her semi-autobiographical debut novel, The Things We Didn’t Know, was an instant USA TODAY bestseller and the inaugural winner of Simon & Schuster’s Books Like Us First Novel Contest. She is also the author of El teatro como bandera, a history of street theater in Puerto Rico.
Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is the creator and show host of the Academic Life podcast. She holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore what stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell.
Listeners may also be interested in:

Secret Harvests

Whiskey Tender

I Kick and I Fly

Becoming the Writer You Already Are

Night of the Living Rez


Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Join us to learn from experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Please support the show by downloading and sharing episodes.
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In Greg Sarris' book The Forgetters (Heyday Books, 2024), Answer Woman, a crow, cannot come up with a story until she is asked by Question Woman, her sister. But they both want to remember those who forgot the stories – because only by retelling the stories can they learn lessons of the past. From the time before creation to the near future, Answer Woman knows stories about clouds and sky, people who might be animals, storytelling contests of the past, and lessons learned from mistakes. Greg Sarris’s creation stories represent age old Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo Native American storytelling traditions, whose goals are to comfort and inspire while understand human frailty and striving.
Greg Sarris is an accomplished author, university professor, and tribal leader serving his sixteenth term as Chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria. He is the current board chair of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. In 1992, he co-authored the Graton Rancheria Restoration Act which restored federal recognition and associated rights to the Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo Native Americans of California, including the right to reestablish tribal lands.
Sarris graduated summa cum laude with a degree in English from the University of California, Los Angeles and received his Ph.D. in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford. He has taught American and American Indian Literature, and Creative Writing at UCLA, Stanford, Loyola Marymount University, and Sonoma State University. Currently, he serves as a member of the Board of Regents for the University of California and is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
He is also a producer, playwright, and the author of several books, including the award-winning How a Mountain Was Made (2017), starred Kirkus review Becoming Story (2022), and Grand Avenue (1995), which he adapted for an HBO film, and co-produced with Robert Redford. He is co-executive producer of Joan Baez: I Am A Noise (2023) and a recent short story, Citizen (2023), was adapted by San Francisco’s Word for Word theater. He is passionate about riding his horse and remembering to connect with the landscape around him.
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Written by iconic Egyptian novelist Ihsan Abdel Kouddous, this classic of love, desire, and family breakdown smashed through taboos when first published in Arabic and continues to captivate audiences today
It is 1950s Cairo and 16-year-old Amina is engaged to a much older man. Despite all the excitement of the wedding preparations, Amina is not looking forward to her nuptials. And it is not because of the age gap or because of the fact that she does not love, or even really know, her fiancé. No, it is because she is involved with another man.
This other man is Dr Hashim Abdel-Latif, and while he is Amina’s first love, she is certainly not his. Also many years her senior, Hashim is well-known in polite circles for his adventures with women. A Nose and Three Eyes tells the story of Amina’s love affair with Hashim, and that of two other young women: Nagwa and Rahhab.
A Nose and Three Eyes is a story of female desire and sexual awakening, of love and infatuation, and of exploitation and despair. It quietly critiques the strictures put upon women by conservative social norms and expectations, while a subtle undercurrent of political censure was carefully aimed at the then Nasser regime. As such, it was both deeply controversial and wildly popular when first published in the 1960s. Still a household name, this novel, and its author, have stood the test of time and remain relevant and highly readable today.
Ihsan Abdel Kouddous (Author, 1919–1990) is one of the most prolific and popular writers of Arabic fiction of the twentieth century. Born in Cairo, Egypt, Abdel Kouddous graduated from law school in 1942 but left his law practice to pursue a long and successful career in journalism. He was an editor at the daily Al-Akhbar and the weekly Rose al-Yusuf, and was editor-in-chief of Al-Ahram. The author of dozens of books, his controversial writings and political views landed him in jail more than once. A Nose and Three Eyes is his second book to be translated into English, and his first was I Do Not Sleep.
Hanan al-Shaykh (Foreword by) was born and raised in Beirut. She is the author of The Story of Zahra, Women of Sand and Myrrh, Beirut Blues, and Only in London, which was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. She lives in London.
Jonathan Smolin (Translated by) is the Jane and Raphael Bernstein Professor in Asian Studies at Dartmouth College in the US. He is the translator of several works of Arabic fiction, including Whitefly by Abdelilah Hamdouchi, A Rare Blue Bird Flies with Me by Youssef Fadel, and I Do Not Sleep and A Nose and Three Eyes by Ihsan Abdel Kouddous and the author of The Politics of Melodrama: The Cultural and Political Lives of Ihsan Abdel Kouddous and Gamal Abdel Nasser (forthcoming Stanford University Press). He lives in Hanover, NH.
Tugrul Mende holds an M.A in Arabic Studies. He is based in Berlin as a project coordinator and independent researcher.
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“We’re not monsters, Mom. We’re goddesses—smart, fearless, and beautiful.” That’s the voice of Ava, the superpowered protagonist of Katherine Marsh’s captivating novel for children, Medusa (Clarion Books, 2024). Our discussion focuses on Marsh’s feminist retelling of the Medusa myth—and on the wider topic of the direction of children’s literature at a time when it has become a challenge to pull any child (or adult) away from the siren of social media. Marsh recognizes the challenges but remains optimistic that children’s literature, which has always drawn heavily on the eternal allure of myths, has a vibrant future.
Veteran journalist Paul Starobin is a former Moscow bureau chief for Business Week and a former contributing editor of The Atlantic. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and many other publications. His most recent book is Putin’s Exiles: Their Fight for a Better Russia (Columbia Global Reports, 2024).
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In the summer of 1976, an earthquake swallows up the city of Tangshan, China. Among the hundreds of thousands of people scrambling for survival is a mother who makes an agonising decision that irrevocably changes her life and the lives of her children. In that devastating split second, her seven-year-old daughter, Xiaodeng, is separated from her brother and the mother she loves and trusts. All Xiaodeng remembers of the fateful morning is betrayal.
Thirty years later, Xiaodeng is an acclaimed writer living in Canada with a caring husband and daughter. However, her newfound fame and success do little to cover the deep wounds that disrupt her life, time and again, and edge her toward a breaking point. Xiaodeng realises the only path toward healing is to return to Tangshan, find her mother, and get closure.
Spanning three decades of the emotional and cultural aftershocks of disaster, Zhang Ling’s intimate epic Aftershock (Amazon Crossing, 2024) explores the damage of guilt, the healing pull of family, and the hope of one woman who, after so many years, still longs to be saved.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.
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