LitHub’s podcast, The History of Literature, features Carlos Allende, author of Coffee, Shopping, Murder, Love.

For tens of thousands of years, human beings have been using fictional devices to shape their worlds and communicate with one another. Four thousand years ago they began writing down these stories, and a great flourishing of human achievement began. We know it today as literature, a term broad enough to encompass everything from ancient epic poetry to contemporary novels. How did literature develop? What forms has it taken? And what can we learn from engaging with these works today?

Hosted by Jacke Wilson, an amateur scholar with a lifelong passion for literature, The History of Literature takes a fresh look at some of the most compelling examples of creative genius the world has ever known.

Filipino American author EP Tuazon has released a short story collection, “A Professional Lola and Other Stories.” CONTRIBUTED

LOS ANGELES — Filipino American EP Tuazon has released “A Professional Lola and Other Stories.”

The book is a collection of short stories that “blend literary fiction with the surreal to present the contemporary Filipino American experience and its universal themes of love, family and identity.”

Helen Benedict, a British-American professor at Columbia University, is the author of seven previous novels, six books of nonfiction, and a play. Her newest novel, The Good Deed (Red Hen Press), is set in a refugee camp in Greece, and comes out of the research Helen conducted for her 2022 nonfiction book, Map of Hope and Sorrow, co-authored with Syrian writer and refugee Eyad Awwadawnan. The novel follows the stories of five women: four women living in an over-crowded, fetid refugee camp on the beautiful Greek island of Samos and an American tourist who comes to Samos to escape her own dark secret.

Listen to the new Constant Wonder podcast episode featuring David Mas Masumoto! Masumoto talks about his new memoir, SECRET HARVESTS: A HIDDEN STORY OF SEPARATION AND RESILIENCE ON A FAMILY FARM.

Listen in to this morning radio show, Hobart Breakfast, where David Mason makes an appearance!

Me: I think there’s a lot of trauma he has to process

Dr. K: Did something happen?!

—“Medical History #2,” The Bearable Slant of Light

In the first intake documents from my son’s first hospitalization, the attending psychiatrist wrote: “On examination, the patient presents as a very poor historian.” In other words, he couldn’t tell a coherent and accurate story of  what had happened that had led him to bolt from the therapist’s office that July afternoon and subsequently be transported to the hospital for psychiatric evaluation.  

Even now, ten years later, it is not clear that he is yet able to tell that story that reflects his truth about what his life is and will be. 

Thank you to the Shelf Unbound Editor for the immense support for our titles!

Mirage by Nahid Rachlin

Sonnets for a Missing Key by Percival Everett

Circle of Animals by Sadie Hoagland

Memento Mori by Eunice Hong

The Curve of Equal Time by Thomas McGuire

Another North by Jennifer Brice

A Punishing Breed by DC Frost

Carrion by Wes Jamison

A Professional Lola by E.P. Tuazon (pg 181)

Dear Edna Sloane by Amy Shearn

The Good Deed by Helen Benedict

Deer Black Out by Ulrich Jesse K Baer

The Bearable Slant of Light by Lynnell Edwards

As the Sky Begins to Change by Kim Stafford

Blue Atlas by Susan Rich

Excerpts from

Annika Rose by Cheri Johnson

Another North by Jennifer Brice

Carrion by Wes Jamison

“Rosemary’s Baby but set in Northern Minnesota” is how author Cheri Johnson describes her latest work. Annika Rose follows the title character as she navigates the early stages of adulthood while understanding a snarl of relationships between friends, her father, and other residents of the remote Lake of the Woods County.

An only-child to a single-parent, Annika’s transition through her formative years was a lonely one. “I was always thinking about what that would have done to her; that social isolation,” says Johnson of her protagonist. As the story follows Annika, we see uncertainty when she meets new neighbors and avoidance tactics when faced with running into peers.