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

Mandi Fugate Sheffel was born and raised in Red Fox, KY. She owns and operates Read Spotted Newt, an independent bookstore in the coalfields of eastern Kentucky, and is currently the Sycamore Fund Project Coordinator at The Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky. She is the board vice chair of the Appalachian Arts Alliance and a Mountain Association board member. Mandi is a graduate of Eastern Kentucky University.

Visit Read Spotted Newt! readspottednewt.com

Read some of Mandi's recent writing:

Appalachia deserves more than coal or cages. - Lexington Herald Leader

We will rebuild in EKy. Then we must ask why 100-year floods are happening so often.

Interview location: Hazard, KY

Mandi’s Books on the Bed:

The Beatinest Boy by Jesse Stuart

Christy by Catherine Marshall

Clay’s Quilt by Silas House

Trampoline by Robert Gipe

Fair and Tender Ladies by Lee Smith

Kinfolks: The Wilgus Stories by Gurney Norman

Matt’s gifts for Mandi:

O Pioneers! By Willa Cather

Outlawed by Anna North

Kathryn Savage’s Groundglass: An Essay (Coffee House Press), explores topics of environmental justice and links between pollution and public health. Groundglass was named a best read of the year by the Sydney Morning Herald, a Yale Review Favorite Cultural Artifact of 2022, and was showcased in Orion Magazine, Lit Hub, and selected by EcoLit Books as a Best Environmental Book of 2022.

Recipient of the Academy of American Poets James Wright Prize, her writing across forms has been supported by the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Jerome Foundation, Minnesota State Arts Board, Ucross Foundation, and Tulsa Artist Fellowship. Savage has studied creative writing at The New School, holds an MFA in fiction from Bennington College, and an MFA in poetry from the University of Minnesota.

Recent writing appears or is forthcoming in American Short Fiction, BOMB Magazine, Ecotone Magazine, Guernica, VQR, World Literature Today, and the anthology Rewilding: Poems for the Environment.

Currently she is an assistant professor of creative writing at The Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD). She is at work on a collection of short stories.

To learn more about Kathryn: kathrynsavage.com

Interview location: Minneapolis, MN

Kathryn's Books on the Bed:

Escapes by Joy Williams

The Dry Heart by Natalia Ginzburg

An Ideal Presence by Eduardo Berti

What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah

Fixer by Edgar Kunz

Dear Memory by Victoria Chang

Second Stack:

Sing to It: Stories by Amy Hempel

Wonderlands by Charles Baxter

Matt's gifts for Kathryn:

A History of Half-Birds by Caroline Harper New

Return the Innocent Earth by Wilma Dykeman

Episode timeline:

0:00-5:29 — Intro

5:30-29:22 — Kathryn's story, history in Minneapolis, & Groundglass

29:23-1:59:47 — Kathryn's Books on the Bed & Second Stack

Remica Bingham-Risher, a native of Phoenix, Arizona, is an alumna of Old Dominion University and Bennington College. She is a Cave Canem fellow and Affrilachian Poet. Among other journals, her work has been published in the New York Times, the Writer’s Chronicle, New Letters, Callaloo and Essence. She is the author of Conversion (Lotus, 2006) winner of the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award, What We Ask of Flesh (Etruscan, 2013) shortlisted for the Hurston/Wright Award and Starlight & Error (Diode, 2017) winner of the Diode Editions Book Award. Her first book of prose, Soul Culture: Black Poets, Books and Questions that Grew Me Up, was published by Beacon Press in 2022. Her next book of poems, Room Swept Home, was published by Wesleyan in February 2024. She is currently the Director of Quality Enhancement Plan Initiatives at Old Dominion University and resides in Norfolk, VA with her husband and children.

Learn more about Remica: remicabinghamrisher.com

Interview location: Norfolk, VA

Remica’s Books on the Bed:

If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin

Home by Toni Morrison

The Book of Light by Lucille Clifton

Joe Turner’s Come and Gone by August Wilson

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

Fast Animal by Tim Seibles

Matt’s gifts for Remica:

To ‘Joy My Freedom by Tera Hunter

Somerset Homecoming by Dorothy Spruill Redford

Episode timeline:

0:00-3:33 — Intro

3:34-28:17 — Remica's family history, new book Room Swept Home, reading poems

28:18-42:10 — Matt presents gifts to Remica

42:11-1:38:59 — Remica's Books on the Bed

Welcome to Books on the Bed!

Logo design by Nathaniel Roy - nathanielroy.com

Theme music: Eliza Edens - "Ramble" (Instrumental) from Time Away From Time (2020)

More about Eliza: eliza-edens.com