CHARLES BAXTER is the author of the novels The Feast of Love(nominated for the National Book Award), First Light, Saul and Patsy, Shadow Play, The Soul Thief, and The Sun Collective, and the story collections Believers, Gryphon, Harmony of the World, A Relative Stranger, There’s Something I Want You to Do, and Through the Safety Net. His stories have appeared in several anthologies, including The Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and The O. Henry Prize Story Anthology. He has won the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story. Baxter lives in Minneapolis.

Charles Baxter | Penguin Random House

Conversation location: Minneapolis, Minnesota

Charles' Books on the Bed:

"The Night of the Hunter" by Davis Grubb

"The Master and Margarita" by Mikhail Bulgakov

"If I Survive You" by Jonathan Escoffery

"The Collected Stories Katherine Anne Porter"

"So Long, See You Tomorrow" by William Maxwell

"The Widow's Children" by Paula Fox

Matt's gifts for Charles:

"The Librarianist" by Patrick deWitt

"The Mountains Have Come Closer" by Jim Wayne Miller

Episode timeline:

0:00 - 4:05 — Intro

4:06 - 31:47 — GIfts for Charles, Backstory to "The Soul Thief", and discussing Charles' new book "Blood Test"

31:48 - 1:24:51 — Charles' Books on the Bed

Jim Minick is the author or editor of eight books, including Without Warning: The Tornado of Udall, Kansas (nonfiction), “The Intimacy of Spoons” (poetry), Fire Is Your Water, (novel), and The Blueberry Years: A Memoir of Farm and Family. Minick’s work has appeared in many publications including The New York Times, Poets & Writers, Oxford American, Orion, Shenandoah, The Sun, Conversations with Wendell Berry, Appalachian Journal, Wind, and The Sun. He serves as co-editor of Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel.

Minick’s honors include the Jean Ritchie Fellowship in Appalachian Writing and the Fred Chappell Fellowship at UNC-Greensboro. Minick has also won awards from the Southern Independent Booksellers Association, Southern Environmental Law Center, The Virginia College Bookstore Association, Appalachian Writers Association, Radford University, and elsewhere. His poem “I Dream a Bean” was picked by Claudia Emerson for permanent display at the Tysons Corner/Metrorail Station. He’s garnered grants from the Virginia Commission for the Arts, the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, Augusta University, Georgia Humanities Council, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

To learn more about Jim: jim-minick.com

Interview Location: Smyth County, Virginia

Jim’s Books on the Bed:

The Meadow by James Galvin

I Am One of You Forever by Fred Chappell

Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers by Frank X Walker

The Mountains Have Come Closer by Jim Wayne Miller

Harper Single Volume American Literature, Third Edition

Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier

Matt’s gifts for Jim:

The Song of Everything by Glenis Redmond

The Good Lord Bird by James McBride

Refuge by Terry Tempest Williams

Jim's Bedside Books:

Our Southern Birds by Emma Bell Miles

The French Broad by Wilma Dykeman

Waking by Ron Rash

Divine Right’s Trip: A Novel of the Counterculture by Gurney Norman

The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture by Wendell Berry

Suttree by Cormac McCarthy

The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje

Episode timeline:

0:00 - 6:45 — Introduction

6:46 - 41:10 Matt's gifts for Jim and Jim's story

41:11 - 1:55:05 — Jim's Books on the Bed

Glenis Redmond is the First Poet Laureate of Greenville, South Carolina. She is a Kennedy Center Teaching Artist, and a Cave Canem alumni. She has authored six books of poetry: Backbone (Underground Epics, 2000), Under the Sun (Main Street Rag, 2002), and What My Hand Say (Press 53, 2016), Listening Skin (Four Way Books), Three Harriets & Others (Finishing Line Press), and Praise Songs for Dave the Potter, Art by Jonathan Green, and Poetry by Glenis Redmond (University of Georgia Press).

Glenis was born on Shaw AFB in Sumter, South Carolina. She presently resides in Greenville. She was the founder of the Greenville Poetry Slam in the early 90’s. She received her MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson College while touring full-time as a poet and mother-of-twins, Amber, and Celeste Sherer. She is now a Gaga to three grandchildren Julian and Paisley and newborn, Quinn.

Glenis has spent almost three decades touring the country as a poet and teaching artist. Since 2014, she has served as the mentor poet for the National Student Poets Program through Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. In the past she has prepared these exceptional youth poets to read at the Library of Congress, the Department of Education, and for First Lady Michelle Obama at The White House.

For more about Glenis: glenisredmond.com

Interview location: Greenville, South Carolina

Glenis' Books on the Bed:

Generations: A Memoir by Lucille Clifton

The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010

Gullah Spirit and Gullah Images by Jonathan Green

Kindred by Octavia Butler

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

In Search of Color Everywhere by E. Ethelbert Miller (Editor) & Terrance Cummings (Illustrator)

June Jordan's Poetry for the People

Matt's gifts for Glenis:

Call It Horses by Jessie van Eerden

Searching for Dr. Harris by Margaret Humphreys

Episode timeline:

0:00-4:52 — Intro

4:53-58:19 - Glenis' story

58:20-1:58:28 - Glenis' Books on the Bed