UpperPen Podcast

Interviews and Book Reviews

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Author: UpperPenPodcast

  • From Mickey 7 to After the Fall: Edward Ashton on Dark Comedy & Power

    About After the Fall Humans must be silent. Humans must be obedient. Humans must be good. All his life, John has tried to live by those rules. Most days, it’s not too difficult. A hundred and twenty years after The Fall, and a hundred years after the grays swept in to pick the last dregs…

  • The Astral Library

    Interview with author Kate Quinn About The Astral Library Alexandria “Alix” Watson has learned one lesson from her barren childhood in the foster-care system: unlike people, books will never let you down. Working three dead-end jobs to make ends meet and knowing college is a pipe dream, Alix takes nightly refuge in the high-vaulted reading…

  • The Vanishing Bookstore: Salem, Witches, and Mystery with Helen Phifer

    author Helen Phifer chats about her new book The Vanishing Bookstore About The Vanishing Bookstore 1692. On the outskirts of Salem, a bookstore stands covered in overgrown vines. Inside, a young woman hides a linen-wrapped journal under a loose floorboard and runs away, panicked by the sound of hounds barking in the distance. The bookstore vanishes…

  • Inside Akira Kurosawa’s Mind

    Translator Anne McKnight talks about the difficulties of the well loved filmmaker About Long Take A multifaceted portrait of the great Japanese director For years, Akira Kurosawa resisted writing about himself. “It would turn out to be nothing but talk about movies,” he said. “In other words, take myself, subtract movies, and the result is zero.” The memoir he finally…

  • From Book One to Book Two: Raising the Stakes in The Breaking Annwn

    The Longwinded One and narrator Chris Tucci talk about book 2 of The Four Treasures Saga About The Breaking of Annwn, The Four Treasures Saga Book 2 After uncovering the truth about his origins, Bren begins a desperate effort to rally the scattered forces of the Celtic Otherworld against the Overking. But he’s not the…

  • Monsters, Murder, and Women’s Power in Victorian England

    Interview with Suzannah Rowntree on Rewriting the Past About The Werewolf of Whitechapel Murder, monsters…and a disreputable Victorian lady’s maid. A killer stalks the grimy streets of Whitechapel—but Scotland Yard seems determined to turn a blind eye. With one look at her best friend’s corpse, Liz Sharp already knows the truth: the killer is a…

  • Inside Mothra: Kaiju and post WWII Japan

    Interview with Jeffrey Angles, translator of The Luminous Fairies and Mothra About The Luminous Fairies and Mothra The original story that hatched Mothra, one of the most beloved monsters in the “kaijuverse”—available in English for the first time Mystical and benevolent, the colossal lepidopteran Mothra has been one of the most beloved kaiju since 1961,…

  • What are editors looking for?!

    Interview with R.B. Wood editor of Ruadán Books About Spring in the City Spring. Even in the shadows of skyscrapers, spring sees an awakening in the concrete jungle that we call “the city.”Spring in the City: A Collection of Dark Speculative Fiction is the next anthology in Ruadán Books’ “…In the City” series that takes…

  • Why You Should Read The Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy

    edited by John Joseph Adams About The Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy The Best American series is the premier annual showcase for the country’s finest short fiction and nonfiction. Each volume’s series editor selects notable works from hundreds of magazines, journals, and websites. A special guest editor—a leading writer in the field—then chooses the…

  • Brooke Fast

    author of To Cage a Wild Bird About To Cage a Wild Bird Enter the brutal world of Endlock, a prison where the wealthy hunt the inmates for sport. The first novel in an electrifying dystopian romance series, this high-octane debut about forbidden love, found family, and a fight for survival will leave you breathless.…