Harperaudio Presents

Neil Gaiman, arguably the most embracing author of audiobooks, takes a break while recording his new book NORSE MYTHOLOGY to discuss his twenty-five year love affair with spoken word recording, as well as his lifelong fascination with myth and folklore.

It took Teresa Messineo seven years to research and pen her debut novel about World War Two nurses, THE FIRE BY NIGHT. The problem? Many of the nurses returning from the Pacific Theatre were forced to sign an oath of secrecy with the US Government hiding their wartime service for a 60-year period. Today, Teresa discusses tracking down first-hand accounts from the few 90-year-old WW2 nurses still remaining in order to collect accurate information for the novel. She also recalls her childhood growing up home-schooled on an organic farm in the '70s, deciding to go to a Catholic high school so she could play basketball, and fabricating her report card - with the help of her father - to get her into an Honors-level English class.

Debbie Cenziper and Jim Obergefell, the co-authors of Love Wins, join us to explain how the story of marriage equality is as much a love story and legal thriller as it is a political tale.

Gene Stone penned an earnest response to our presidential election, The Trump Survival Guide, in 12 days. Learn why (and how) he did it.

Patricia Wells left a career at the New York Times for a two-year writing assignment in France and has remained there for over 35 years. A self-taught cook, Patricia has multiple James Beard Award nominations and wins for her cookbooks, and wrote the much-lauded Food Lover's Guide to Paris. Today, she takes Ana Maria Allessi through her writing career, life as a French food celebrity, and the only thing she uses the microwave for.

Complete with merrily drunken Aunties and sleeping Uncles, Dylan Thomas’s “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” evokes the snowy, cozy Christmas of everybody’s memory or fantasy. Hear the narrative brought to life by its author in this classic recording.

Nearly 30 years after her untimely death, Kathleen Collins’ fiction is gaining exposure and earning the admiration of Zadie Smith, Roxane Gay, and Miranda July – to name just a few. Her daughter, Nina Collins, assembled the forthcoming collection, “Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?” Here, she discusses life with her dynamic mother.

Jason Diamond's unstable young life in Chicagoland split between divorced parents helped drive his obsession with the tragicomic movies of John Hughes, such as The Breakfast Club and Home Alone. When life eventually led Diamond to New York City in the pursuit of authoring a Hughes biography, his eventual book editor persuaded him to write his memoirs instead – focusing on the impact Hughes' movies had on the author. Today, Jason Diamond talks with Ana Maria Allessi about failure, Florida, Cubs fandom, and the book writing process.

It is harvest season 1881 in a Little Town on the Prairie. Laura Ingalls is 15, and in the midst of what Ma describes as “a whirl of gaiety.” In celebration of Thanksgiving, Harper Audio presents the award-winning actress Cherry Jones narrating a holiday scene from the 7th book of the classic Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

In Wally Lamb's new novel I'LL TAKE YOU THERE, Felix, a film scholar who runs a Monday night movie club, encounters the ghost of a movie director from Hollywood's silent era who invites him to relive scenes from his past projected on the movie screen. It should come as no surprise that in today's interview, Mr. Lamb discusses the impact that myths retold in a modern light have had on his creative process. Also listen to Wally touch upon his decades as both an educator and student, his fear of starting each novel from a blank slate, and what invigorates him about today's publishing industry.

In Jyotsna Hariharan's debut audio-original drama REBUTTAL, the author weaves her introverted upbringing as a literature geek into an radio drama about two high school students from imperfect homes and the debate team that brought them together. Listen as Jyotsna weaves her path from a marketing career in India to a being a published playwright in New York, and the process of having actors collaborate to bring her vision of REBUTTAL to life.

"Some showed courage throughout the whole of their political lives. Others sail with the wind until the decisive moment when their conscience and events propel them into the center of the storm." – John F. Kennedy On the week of the most divisive presidential elections in modern times, we take a moment to contemplate the words of then Senator John F. Kennedy from his Pulitzer Prize winning book Profiles in Courage, and hear excerpts from the audiobook recording made by his children, John F. Kennedy, Jr. and Caroline Kennedy.

Who was the monster in middle school and who was the nerd? Beth Newell and Sarah Pappalardo, co-founders of the satirical website Reductress, talk about extending their online collaboration into the book format.

Mister Monkey, Francine Prose’s latest novel, is as humorous, poignant and spiritual as an onstage monkey with a halo slipping on a banana. The author tells us which autobiographical elements had to be disguised to protect the guilty.

Andrew Harwell, senior editor at HarperCollins Children’s Books, describes how the graphic novel NIMONA became a full cast audiobook. He also reveals what book he rereads every year, and what being an author taught him about being an editor.

Fourteen years after the New York Times bestselling anthology THE BITCH IN THE HOUSE ushered in an unfiltered voice for a generation of young women, Cathi Hanauer has returned with a more mature, wiser, and "less angry" follow-up in THE BITCH IS BACK. Hanauer discusses her selection of this collection's 16 new contributors - ranging from a transgender middle-aged woman to one who was in an arranged marriage - and follows up with 9 authors from the first volume whose lives have changed dramatically in the generation between books.

Pen Oliviera is a badass gamer girl and a gender-nonconforming teen, stuck in a small town outside Toronto. Listen as M-E Girard, first-time author, reveals the one thing she refused to give up and the one thing she had to give up in order to have her young adult novel accepted by a major American publisher.

Danielle Trussoni, author of THE FORTRESS, tells us how a google search for “paradise” yielded her a fortress and how 25 rejections yielded her a bestseller.

Gilly Macmillan, bestselling author of WHAT SHE KNEW, joins us this week to chat about her upcoming thriller THE PERFECT GIRL. Listen in as Gilly tells us about writing one ending instead of three, the music genre equivalent of a thriller novel (you’ll never guess), and which novel she thinks about the most.

Summerland is our favorite vacation spot that we're not quite ready to part with. It’s also a fantasy novel for all ages by the Pulitzer Prize winning author, Michael Chabon. This week we feature a clip of Summerland (the novel), performed by Michael Chabon himself.