Zach Powers – The Migraine Diaries: A singular, first-person novel.

This story goes into the interior life of a thirty-something man who has just lost the best friend he ever had, a man he has known for ten years, a man he has seen most every day of those ten years as they pursued their separate creative projects and shared a social life, a man who knew to kick the narrator’s butt when it needed kicking and offer the right encouraging words when it was words and not a kick the narrator needed. All of that, suddenly gone. Told in the form of a headache journal, the novel renders the first year of loss starting with the beachside funeral/ash spreading of the friend’s remains, and captures the mix of headache hopelessness with the need to carry on, building to the final resolve. In this way, it is like life itself. Not all bleak. Filled with humor. Even offering moments of weirdness.

Zach Powers is the author of the short story collection Gravity Changes, winner of the BOA Short Fiction Prize; and also a prior novel, First Cosmic Velocity, which combines history and fiction to look at the sham of the Soviet space program in 1964 and earlier. His writing also has appeared in American Short Fiction, Lit Hub, and other publications. He is the executive and artistic director of The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland, and Poet Lore, the nation’s oldest poetry journal. He is originally from Savannah, Georgia, and now lives in Arlington, Virginia.

Hosted by William Miller

• Zach Powers discusses how The Migraine Diaries functions not just as a grief novel, but also as a chronic illness narrative and, most importantly, a story about friendship and surviving loss together.
• The conversation explores the ethics of writing chronic illness narratives, especially avoiding the traditional “everything gets resolved” story arc that doesn’t reflect real-life experiences with migraines or grief.
• Zach shares deeply personal inspirations behind the novel, including the deaths of close friends and his own struggles with chronic migraines, while emphasizing the book is fiction rather than autobiography.
• A major theme of the interview is how friendship can become the emotional anchor of a story, sometimes even more powerful than romance.
• Zach explains his fascination with experimental storytelling, layered narratives, fragmented structure, and allowing readers to interpret meaning rather than over-explaining themes.
• The discussion dives into the surreal “corgi” sequences in The Migraine Diaries, which blend grief, hallucination, memory, and imagination into symbolic emotional journeys.
• Zach reflects on his earlier novel First Cosmic Velocity and how his writing evolved from more traditional narrative structures into more expansive and unconventional literary forms.
• The episode also explores Zach’s acclaimed short story collection Gravity Changes, including his philosophy that fiction does not need to explain every surreal or impossible element to the reader.

“You don’t have to explain the sheep.” — Zach Powers on discovering the freedom of literary fiction and surreal storytelling.

“The friendship aspect is the actual thing driving everything in the background — how to be a good friend and maintain that in the face of adversity.”

Find out more about Zach Powers on his website.

This entire interview is also available to watch on our YouTube channel.

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Recorded & Produced by Jon D PodCom

Be sure to check out our website for more information about our hosts, guests, and ways you can support the show: UpstartCrow.org

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Thank you for listening to Upstart Crow, a part of Watershed Lit Radio.

© 2026 - Upstart Crow Podcast – All Rights Reserved

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Olufunke Grace Bankole – The Edge of Water

In an immigration novel not like others, a Nigerian daughter wants to try life in America, and so once more she enters the visa sweepstakes. Her mother says nothing, though she has been forewarned by a conduit of the oracle, “this time, the order of things will be shaken. The souls will lose their own way.” These are the tensions within Olfunke Grace Bankole’s first novel, The Edge of Water.

There are matters here of faith in self and faith in matters larger than the self, as well as events that outstrip all planning and vision—including the failure to envision some real possibilities. What comes from this is a novel with a linear narrative constructed across an arc whose parts are anything but linear—where the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts.

The Edge of Water was a finalist for the New American Voices Award given by the Institute for Immigration Research, which is presented at the Fall for the Book festival.

Olufunke Grace Bankole is a Harvard-educated lawyer and recipient of the Soros Justice Advocacy Fellowship, and her original writing has appeared in Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, AGNI, Michigan Quarterly Review, New Letters, the Antioch Review and Stand. Her work won first place in the Glimmer Train Short Story Award for New Writers, and she was a Bread Loaf-Rona Jaffe Scholar in Fiction at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She also has been awarded an Oregon Literary Fellowship in Fiction, a Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation grant, a residency-fellowship from the Anderson Center at Tower View, and a Pushcart Special Mention for her writing. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

Find out more about Grace on her website.

Connect with Grace on Instagram.

Purchase a copy of The Edge of Water on Bookshop.org.

• A powerful exploration of fate vs free will, and how belief systems shape the choices we make.
• Redefines “home” in immigrant stories—less about place, more about identity, community, and peace.
• Moves beyond the typical American Dream narrative, showing the emotional and psychological realities of immigration.
• Highlights women’s resilience and agency, especially within patriarchal and cultural expectations.
• Examines how generational trauma and relationships between mothers and daughters shape identity.
• Shows how small decisions during major life moments can completely alter someone’s path.
• Blends spirituality, Yoruba tradition, and modern life, creating a layered, immersive world.

“We like to think we’re in control—until life reminds us how much of it was never ours to decide.” - Olufunke Grace Bankole

#UpstartCrowPodcast #BookPodcast #AuthorInterview #OlufunkeGraceBankole #TheEdgeOfWater #ImmigrantExperience #AfricanAuthors #WomenWriters #LiteraryFiction #BookRecommendations #ReadersOfInstagram #WritersOfInstagram #Storytelling #FateVsFreeWill #MotherDaughterStories

This episode is also available for viewing on our YouTube channel.

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Recorded & Produced by Jon D PodCom

Be sure to check out our website for more information about our hosts, guests, and ways you can support the show: UpstartCrow.org

Follow us on Facebook here.

Thank you for listening to Upstart Crow, a part of Watershed Lit Radio.

© 2026 Upstart Crow Podcast – All Rights Reserved

Jung Yun – All the World Can Hold

It is Sunday, Sept. 16, 2001. The Sunday after 9/11. Five days after the Tuesday when hijacked planes are flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in DC, and a field in Pennsylvania. As searchers still comb through smoldering wreckage, a cruise ship that should have left from New York’s Passenger Ship Terminal in Manhattan instead sets off from Boston for a cruise to Bermuda. Aboard are more than 600 passengers, and in Jung Yun’s new novel, All the World Can Hold, we follow three passengers in particular. Three who, as they travel on this voyage that is anything but mundane, undergo experiences that will leave them never the same again.

Jung Yun joins host William Miller to talk about the origins of the novel, her writing of it, her own insights into the characters, and how the book is different from yet similar to her previous two novels.

Jung Yun was born in Seoul, Korea, and grew up in Fargo, North Dakota. Prior to All the World Can Hold, she published Shelter (2016) a finalist for the Barnes & Noble Great New Writers Award and also long-listed for the Center for Fiction’s First-Novel Prize; and O Beautiful (2021), a New York Times Editor’s Choice book as well as a Times Group Read book, and a San

Francisco Chronicle Book of the Year choice. Currently, Jung Yun lives in Maryland and teaches in the George Washington University creative writing program.

1. Turning personal history into fiction

Author Jung Yun discusses how her novel All the World Can Hold was inspired by her own experience taking a cruise shortly after the September 11 attacks. Rather than focusing directly on the tragedy, the novel explores how ordinary people process and move forward after a world-altering event.

2. A cruise ship as a literary “crucible”

The story follows three strangers whose lives intersect aboard a cruise ship headed to Bermuda. By placing characters in an enclosed environment where they cannot escape their pasts or their choices, Yun builds tension and explores how people confront regret, ambition, and unresolved relationships.

3. Characters shaped by their own flaws and decisions

Yun explains her fascination with flawed characters who carry the seeds of their own undoing. Across her novels—from Shelter to O Beautiful—she often writes about disasters people create for themselves and how those pressures reveal their deepest motivations.

4. Writing about disasters—personal and societal

A recurring theme in Yun’s work is how individuals react when systems or circumstances collapse, whether it’s the housing crisis, an oil boom, or national trauma. Her stories focus less on the event itself and more on the human responses that follow.

“I’m always writing about disaster… the disasters we create for ourselves and how people respond when you put them into these pressurized situations.” - Jung Yun

#JungYun

#AllTheWorldCanHold

#AuthorInterview

#LiteraryFiction

#UpstartCrowPodcast

Learn more about Jung Yun and her books here.

Purchase a copy of All the World Can Hold or any of Jung's other books here.

This entire episode is available to view on our YouTube channel.

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Recorded & Produced by Jon D PodCom

Be sure to check out our website for more information about our hosts, guests, and ways you can support the show: UpstartCrow.org

Follow us on Facebook here.

Thank you for listening to Upstart Crow, a part of Watershed Lit Radio.

© 2026 Upstart Crow Podcast – All Rights Reserved

Cristina Jimenez – Dreaming of Home

The subtitle of Cristina Jimenez’s memoir is, “How we turn fear into pride, power, and real change.” In the book, she defines “home” as a place of self-acceptance, which was not an easy place for her to find after she, her parents and her brother, fled the chaos of her hometown in Ecuador and settled in New York in 1998. She tried to be a “good” immigrant, but because she was undocumented, what is sometimes called an “illegal” immigrant, it didn’t matter how hard she worked, how much she studied, how well she did in school, how observant she was about rules and regulations, she was not accepted, not acceptable. But she kept at it. She endured. She persevered. Dreaming of Home tells the story.

Cristina Jimenez is the cofounder and, for a time, was executive director of United We Dream, the largest immigrant-youth-led organization in the country. She played a leading role in getting approval of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. She also received a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, was named to Time’s annual list of the 100 most influential people, and became a distinguished lecturer at City University of New York.

With host William Miller, she discusses her memoir and the life experiences that led her to write it, including what it’s like to be an unwelcome immigrant, and what compelled her family to go to such a length.

Find out more about Cristina Jimenez on her website.

This entire episode is also available to watch on our YouTube channel.

1. The meaning of “home” goes beyond geography.

Cristina Jimenez reflects on how immigrating from Ecuador forced her to rethink the concept of home. Over time she came to see home not just as a place, but as a sense of belonging found in community, self-acceptance, and the people who make you feel seen and valued. UC - Christina Jimenez

2. Personal stories are central to social movements.

Cristina discusses how undocumented immigrant youth built a powerful movement by sharing their stories publicly, organizing together, and advocating for policy change—including helping push forward protections like DACA.

3. Economic and political forces often drive migration.

Her family’s journey from Ecuador was shaped by poverty, political instability, and the influence of international corporate and political decisions that affected working-class families and forced many to leave their homes.

4. The U.S. economy relies heavily on immigrant labor.

The conversation highlights the contradiction of industries depending on undocumented workers while those same workers face exploitation, wage theft, and the threat of deportation.

#ImmigrantStories

#ImmigrationPolicy

#DreamingOfHome

#SocialJusticeVoices

#UpstartCrow

#Author Podcast

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Recorded & Produced by Jon D PodCom

Be sure to check out our website for more information about our hosts, guests, and ways you can support the show: UpstartCrow.org

Follow us on Facebook here.

Thank you for listening to Upstart Crow, a part of Watershed Lit Radio.

© 2026 Upstart Crow Podcast – All Rights Reserved

Shubha Sundra – Optional Practical Training

In 2006, when this novel is set, American immigration law allows students, scholars, trainees, teachers, etc., on temporary visas to have a year of practical training not required by the person’s basic program. Optional Practical Training. The novel covers just such a year in the life of Pavitra, a young woman from Bangalore, India, who has finished her bachelor’s degree in physics and gotten a job teaching at a private high school near Cambridge, Massachusetts. Told through a series of conversations Pavitra has with various people as she shapes her life, the novel provides a more nuanced portrait of the immigrant experience than that often featured in novels.

Optional Practical Training (Graywolf Press) is Shubha Sundra’s first novel. It won the 2025 New American Voices Award sponsored by the Institute for Immigration Research and presented at the annual Fall for the Book festival. She also is the author of an earlier short story collection, Boomtown Girl, set in her hometown of Bangalore, India. That book won the 2021 St. Lawrence Book Award.

Her individual stories and essays have appeared in Catapult, The Common, New Letters, Crazyhorse, and Narrative Magazine. Her work has received notable mentions in the Best American Short Stories anthology. She teaches in the creative writing MFA program at UMass Boston.

Borders are made without our permission and we really don’t have control over border crossing — we’re essentially at the mercy of the border guards.” - Shubha Sunder

Hosted by William Miller

Find out more about Shubha Sunder on her website.

You can purchase a copy of Optional Practical Training from Bookshop.org here. Or you can buy a copy at on independent bookseller near you. Check out the link here.

This episode is also available on our YouTube channel.

1. Immigration as a Liminal State

The novel explores the precarious “in-between” status of Optional Practical Training (OPT), where identity, stability, and future plans all hinge on visa structures beyond one’s control.

2. Free Will vs. Systems of Power

Through the historical case of Bhagat Singh Thind, the book examines how institutions shape identity — and how personal agency often exists within forces much larger than the individual.

3. Home Is Situational — Borders Are Not

While home can feel portable and internal, legal borders are rigid realities. The novel powerfully contrasts the emotional idea of home with the political reality of border enforcement.

4. Identity Is Formed in Conversation

Structured around pivotal conversations, the novel shows how what others say to us — and assume about us — shapes our evolving sense of self, especially as immigrants navigating unfamiliar systems.

#OptionalPracticalTraining

#LiteraryFiction

#ImmigrationStories

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Be sure to check out our website for more information about our hosts, guests, and ways you can support the show: UpstartCrow.org

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Thank you for listening to Upstart Crow, a part of Watershed Lit Radio.

© 2026 Upstart Crow Podcast – All Rights Reserved

Margaret Hutton – If You Leave

With the intrusive, catalytic forces of two wars, World War II and Vietnam, Margaret Hutton’s debut novel, If You Leave, tells of two women who mother one baby girl into her own young womanhood. Each of the three discovers the strength of herself as an individual as well as the strength of unity. Thus does this quietly vibrant story illustrate the way one life impacts others, decisions made either quickly or slowly can have similarly devastating consequences, and the need of the human heart for love competes with the need to find meaning.

Margaret Hutton’s short fiction has appeared in numerous journals and magazines, including The Sun, The South Carolina Review, The Chattahoochee Review, the Antioch Review, and Abundant Grace. She earned an undergraduate degree with honors from UNC-Chapel Hill and an MFA from George Mason University. She is a native of North Carolina and formerly was an environmental reporter. She divides her time between Washington, DC, and her art studio in Chester County, PA. If You Leave was published by Regal House Publishing and is available wherever books are sold.

Hosted by William Miller

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1. War as a Turning Point for Women
2. If You Leave examines how World War II and Vietnam temporarily expanded women’s independence and opportunity—while exposing how fragile those gains could be.
3. Art, Agency, and Interruption
4. Through Audrey’s life as a painter, the novel explores how women’s creative ambitions are often disrupted, underestimated, or constrained by social expectations.
5. The Power and Cost of Leaving
6. Every major character is shaped by acts of leaving—home, relationships, or identity—revealing how personal choices ripple across generations.
7. Interiority and Empathy in Fiction
8. Margaret highlights fiction’s ability to reveal inner lives, inviting readers to understand characters beyond surface-level judgment.

#LiteraryFiction

#HistoricalFiction

#WomenWriters

Find out more about Margaret Hutton on her website.

Purchase her book here.

Follow her on Instagram.

This entire episode is available to watch on our YouTube channel.

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Be sure to check out our website for more information about our hosts, guests, and ways you can support the show: UpstartCrow.org

Follow us on Facebook here.

Thank you for listening to Upstart Crow, a part of Watershed Lit Radio.

© 2026 Upstart Crow Podcast – All Rights Reserved

Linda Chavez – A Novel of the Spanish Inquisition: The Silver Candlesticks

Linda Chavez began working on The Silver Candlesticks after appearing on the PBS series Finding Your Roots during which she discovered that members of her family were Converso Jews who fled Spain in 1597. Using details the PBS researchers uncovered as well as her own work on the Spanish Inquisition, she created a fictional weave of love and faith, and the perils of ardent religious faith transformed by the obdurate endurance of a persecution.

Earlier, Linda spent decades in politics and the media, having served as a White House official in the Reagan administration and been a syndicated columnist. She is the author of three previously published nonfiction books and individually published short stories. She earned her MFA from George Mason University.

“No matter how good you think your life is, it isn’t unless you are actually free.” — Linda Chavez

Hosted by William Miller

The Silver Candlesticks is published by Wicked Son, an imprint of Post Hill Press. You can purchase a copy on their website here, or anywhere that books are sold.

1. History brought to life through fiction
2. Linda Chavez discusses how The Silver Candlesticks uses meticulous historical research to humanize the Spanish Inquisition, revealing how fear, power, and persecution shaped everyday lives.
3. Hidden identity and inherited trauma
4. The novel explores the dangers faced by Jewish converts in 16th-century Spain and how secrecy, forced assimilation, and inherited identity ripple across generations.
5. Villains, morality, and belief systems
6. Chavez unpacks the challenge of writing morally complex antagonists—especially religious figures who commit atrocities while believing they are acting righteously.
7. Personal history as creative catalyst
8. The story is rooted in Chavez’s own family history, uncovered through archival research and her appearance on Finding Your Roots, demonstrating how personal discovery can inspire powerful storytelling.

This episode is also available to watch on our YouTube channel.

Check out more about Linda on her Substack.

#HistoricalFictionPodcast

#SpanishInquisitionHistory

#AuthorInterview

#TheSilverCandlesticks

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Be sure to check out our website for more information about our hosts, guests, and ways you can support the show: UpstartCrow.org

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Thank you for listening to Upstart Crow, a part of Watershed Lit Radio.

© 2025 Upstart Crow Podcast – All Rights Reserved