Work Lunch

Atlanta writer Justin Haynes tells the story of a daughter trying to find her lost mother in a story that delves into big issues, like immigration, human trafficking and the legacy of colonization.  Peter and Orlando talk about his debut novel, “Ibis” and how it becomes a metaphor and an omen: Birds migrate freely. Why don’t people? 

Musician Lee Bains (Lee Bains & the Glory Fires) has been writing songs about the American south and the working class for years. He’s now written his debut collection of poetry. In Work Lunch, Bains uses food to shed light on the horrors of capitalism, the erosion of a sense of place, the loss and rebuilding of human connection, and the life of the American worker.   

Journalist Justin Glawe has spent years reporting from scenes of violence, protest, and national upheaval, from Ferguson to the aftermath of mass shootings and the killing of Ahmaud Arbery. Peter Biello and Orlando Montoya explore Glawe’s book, If I Am Coming to Your Town, Something Terrible Has Happened, and what his career reveals about journalism, trauma, addiction, recovery, and the responsibility to bear witness.

Peter Biello sits down with The Help author Kathryn Stockett to discuss her new novel, The Calamity Club, a Depression era story set in Mississippi. Stockett talks about the historical research that transformed the novel, the friendships at its center, her writing process, and how the praise and criticism surrounding The Help shaped her return to fiction.

What happens when four estranged people gather for a funeral on a fictional Georgia island and discover that Saturday keeps repeating? This episode explores Paige Harbison’s Destination Funeral, a magical realism novel that uses a Groundhog Day-style time loop to examine grief, friendship, family conflict, forgiveness, and the bonds that survive years apart.

Historian Keri Leigh Merritt joins the conversation around An Inconvenient Woman: The Extraordinary Life of Lillian Smith, the Southerner Who Defied Jim Crow America, her biography of Georgia writer and civil rights advocate Lillian Smith. Peter Biello and Orlando Montoya explore Smith’s relationship with Paula Snelling, her work at Laurel Falls Camp, the literary magazine South Today, and books including Strange Fruit and Killers of the Dream.

Georgia Poet Laureate Chelsea Rathburn explores family history, financial instability, and the emotional meaning of home in her poetry collection, Broken Houses. Peter and Orlando consider how Rathburn transforms childhood memories, vanished buildings, and complicated family relationships into intimate narrative poems that reveal what our homes continue to hold long after we leave them.

The Leg in Question is the debut short story collection by Savannah writer K.W. Oxnard. Peter and Orlando discuss stories about HIV and AIDS, an apparently healthy leg a patient wants amputated, a grieving dog, and a Savannah morgue worker, while considering how Oxnard uses compressed scenes and unexpected endings to examine medicine, mortality, and human connection. Oxnard also reflects on the writers who shaped her work and on how the COVID era intensified her fascination with the body.

What happens when lifelong beliefs collide with lived experience? Georgia author Taylor Brown joins us to discuss Wolvers, his novel set in New Mexico's Gila Wilderness. We explore the history of Mexican gray wolves, the research behind the story, and how a tale of survival becomes a powerful meditation on empathy, conservation, and the landscapes that shape us.

Was the American Revolution really Americans versus the British, or was it a civil war between neighbors, families, and lifelong friends? This episode explores Greg Brooking's From Empire to Revolution: Sir James Wright and the Price of Loyalty in Georgia, examining the life of Georgia's last royal governor, the Loyalist perspective, and the complicated history of the Revolution in Georgia.