Category: my reading life

Interviews, my reading life

My Reading Life: Happiness & Love author Zoe Dubno thinks Martin Amis can get boys hooked on reading

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My Reading Life: Happiness & Love author Zoe Dubno thinks Martin Amis can get boys hooked on reading

In her debut novel, Happiness & Love, Zoe Dubno follows a young woman who, after returning to New York for her former best friend’s funeral, is drawn into a downtown dinner party that spirals into chaos. Prior to releasing her debut novel, her fiction has appeared in Granta and Muumuu House and NY Tyrant. She’s published nonfiction in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, The Nation, Vogue, and BOMB.

We asked Dubno to answer our recurring My Reading Life Q&A so readers could get to know the books that shaped her life and what influenced her debut novel.

Continue reading “My Reading Life: Happiness & Love author Zoe Dubno thinks Martin Amis can get boys hooked on reading” →
Interviews, my reading life

My Reading Life: Fetishized author Kaila Yu reads and writes about body

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My Reading Life: Fetishized author Kaila Yu reads and writes about body

In her debut memoir-in-essays, former model Kaila Yu writes about being an object of Asian fetish with a sharp eye and eye-opening candor. Throughout Fetishized: A Reckoning with Yellow Fever, Feminism, and Beauty, Yu peels back the curtain on the personal, cultural, and historical forces that shaped her self-image, exposing how pop culture, colonialism, and desire intertwined to distort both her sense of beauty and her sense of self.

We asked her to answer our My Reading Life questionnaire so readers could get to know the books that shaped her life and influenced her debut book.

Continue reading “My Reading Life: Fetishized author Kaila Yu reads and writes about body” →
Interviews, my reading life

My Reading Life: The Book of I Author David Greig Is Always Learning

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My Reading Life: The Book of I Author David Greig Is Always Learning

David Greig has a long-storied career on the Scottish stage. His theatre work includes The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart, Touching the Void, Midsummer, The Events, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Local Hero, and Dunsinane. Now, his debut novel, The Book of I, has now been published. The debut is a historical-philosophical novel set in 825 CE on a remote Scottish isle in the aftermath of a brutal Viking raid.

We asked Greig to answer our recurring My Reading Life questionnaire to give readers insight into the books that shaped the writer throughout his life and the titles that influenced his debut book.

Continue reading “My Reading Life: The Book of I Author David Greig Is Always Learning” →
Interviews, my reading life

My Reading Life: The Death and Life of August Sweeney author Samuel Ashworth was forever changed by Macbeth

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My Reading Life: The Death and Life of August Sweeney author Samuel Ashworth was forever changed by Macbeth

Samuel Ashworth‘s writing has appeared in the Washington Post Magazine, Longreads, Eater, Hazlitt, Gawker, and the Rumpus. He published his debut novel, The Death and Life of August Sweeney, in March 2025. In it, an autopsy gives readers a glimpse into a legendary chef’s flavorful career.

We asked Ashworth to answer our recurring My Reading Life questionnaire to give readers insight into the books that shaped the writer throughout his life and the titles that influenced his debut book.

Continue reading “My Reading Life: The Death and Life of August Sweeney author Samuel Ashworth was forever changed by Macbeth” →
Interviews, my reading life

My Reading Life: Vulture author Phoebe Greenwood believe the birthplace of stories are The Greek Myths

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My Reading Life: Vulture author Phoebe Greenwood believe the birthplace of stories are The Greek Myths

Phoebe Greenwood is a London-based journalist who was a freelance correspondent in Jerusalem covering the Middle East for the Guardian, Daily Telegraph, and Sunday Times between 2010 and 2013. From 2013 to 2021, she was an editor and correspondent at the Guardian specialising in foreign affairs.

Her debut novel, Vulture, is a war satire akin to Catch-22, where an ambitious young journalist is sent to Gaza to cover the war. Throughout it, her writing bites at how tragedy feeds the Western media machine.

We asked Greenwood to answer our recurring My Reading Life Q&A so readers could get to know the books that influenced her life and inspired her debut book.

Continue reading “My Reading Life: Vulture author Phoebe Greenwood believe the birthplace of stories are The Greek Myths” →
Interviews, my reading life

My Reading Life: The Other Wife author Jackie Thomas-Kennedy is inspired by Judy Blume, Toni Morrison, and John Cheever

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My Reading Life: The Other Wife author Jackie Thomas-Kennedy is inspired by Judy Blume, Toni Morrison, and John Cheever

Jackie Thomas-Kennedy‘s writing has been selected for NPR’s Selected Shorts, and she was a 2014 Stegnar Fellow as well as the winner of the 2019 Stella Kupfer­berg Memorial Short Story Prize. Her debut novel, The Other Wife, follows Zuzu, a biracial woman in her late thirties, as she reflects on the choices that shaped her life, including her career and marriage to Agnes. A sudden loss sends her back to her hometown where she must confront her past and face the what could have beens face to face.

We asked Thomas-Kennedy to answer our recurring My Reading Life Q&A so readers could get to know the books that influenced her life and inspired her debut book.

Continue reading “My Reading Life: The Other Wife author Jackie Thomas-Kennedy is inspired by Judy Blume, Toni Morrison, and John Cheever” →
Interviews, my reading life

My Reading Life: Oddbody author Rose Keating will always read vampire stories

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My Reading Life: Oddbody author Rose Keating will always read vampire stories

Rose Keating is an Irish writer who studied creative writing at the University of East Anglia, where she was a recipient of the Malcolm Bradbury Scholarship and the Curtis Brown Prize. She also won the Marian Keyes Young Writer Award, the Hot Press Write Here, Write Now Prize, and the Ted and Mary O’Regan Arts Bursary. In 2022, she received an Agility Award from the Irish Arts Council.

Her debut short story collection, Oddbody, features ten stories that feature women who defy societal norms in bizarrely satisfying and mind-bending ways.

We asked Keating to answer our recurring My Reading Life Q&A so readers could get to know the books that influenced her life and inspired her debut book.

Continue reading “My Reading Life: Oddbody author Rose Keating will always read vampire stories” →
Interviews, my reading life

My Reading Life: The Hounding author Xenobe Purvis admires the toughness of Jane Eyre

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My Reading Life: The Hounding author Xenobe Purvis admires the toughness of Jane Eyre

Xenobe Purvis is a British-based writer who was born in Tokyo. She’s studied at the University of Oxford and Royal Holloway. Purvis was part of the London Library’s Emerging Writers Programme. Her debut novel The Hounding, is billed as The Crucible meets The Virgin Suicides as it follows five sisters in a small village in eighteenth-century England whose neighbors are convinced they’re turning into dogs.

We asked the writer to answer our recurring My Reading Life Q&A so readers could get to know the books that influenced her life and inspired her debut book.

Continue reading “My Reading Life: The Hounding author Xenobe Purvis admires the toughness of Jane Eyre” →
Interviews, my reading life

My Reading Life: The Sunflower Boys author Sam Wachman wants to shoutout Cindy, his neighborhood librarian

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My Reading Life: The Sunflower Boys author Sam Wachman wants to shoutout Cindy, his neighborhood librarian

In Sam Wachman‘s debut novel, The Sunflower Boys, brothers Artem and Yuri embark on a journey after war kills their family in rural Ukraine. As the journey unfolds, so does a beautifully constructed character study of Artem’s identity, loss of innocence, and blossoming love for his best friend.

Before writing his debut novel, Wachman taught English to primary schoolers in central Ukraine and worked with refugee families in Europe and the United States.  His work has also appeared in Sonora Review, Berkeley Fiction Review, and New England Review.

We asked him to answer our recurring My Reading Life Q&A so readers could get to know her and the books that shaped his story.

Continue reading “My Reading Life: The Sunflower Boys author Sam Wachman wants to shoutout Cindy, his neighborhood librarian” →
Interviews, my reading life

My Reading Life: Unfinished Acts of Wild Creation Author Sarah Yahm is always inspired by Grace Paley

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My Reading Life: Unfinished Acts of Wild Creation Author Sarah Yahm is always inspired by Grace Paley

Sarah Yahm’s debut novel, Unfinished Acts of Wild Creation, follows Louise Rackoff as she meets Leon Rosenberg at a Rosh Hashanah dinner in 1974. This sparks a decades-long journey of marriage, motherhood, and meaning. But when Louise is diagnosed with the same degenerative disease that claimed her mother, she makes the radical decision to disappear rather than put her family through her decline. What follows is a deeply moving exploration of grief, connection, and what it means to find beauty in the broken.

Drawing on personal experience and years of work exploring the social meaning of illness, a former educator, oral historian, and documentarian, she lives in Vermont, and her work has appeared in Slate, Bellevue Literary Review, and on NPR.

We asked her to answer our recurring My Reading Life Q&A so readers could get to know her and the books that shaped her story.

Continue reading “My Reading Life: Unfinished Acts of Wild Creation Author Sarah Yahm is always inspired by Grace Paley” →