Since publishing his first book of fiction in 1980, Richard Bausch has produced ten collections of stories and thirteen novels. The tenth of those story collections, The Fate of Others, appeared this year. Already, he is working on his next novel. Here, he discusses the stories in this most recent collection, the novel he is working on, and a few of the stories from previous collections, revealing along the way how he does his work, where his stories come from, and the elements of craft he employs to achieve the level of success he aims for.

Over the course of his career, Richard Bausch has won numerous awards, including the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story, the REA Award for Influence on the Short Story as a Form, two National Magazine awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

His work has appeared numerous times in The Best American Short Stories volumes, The Pushcart Prize anthologies, and The O.HenryAwards collections. His earliest stories first appeared in publications like The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, and Harper’s. Three feature-length motion pictures have been made from his writings. Currently, he teaches at Chapman University in Orange, California. Earlier, he taught at George Mason University and then at the University of Memphis.

Key Takeaways:

• How playful first lines can spark entire stories
• Why context matters more than “one true sentence” in short fiction
• The role of surprise in deepening the bond between writer and reader
• Themes of fate, love, and resilience that shape The Fate of Others

#UpstartCrowPodcast #RichardBausch #ShortStoryFiction

“In almost every good story, there is a moment that it all really turns on. And sometimes you don’t even know what it is until a reader points it out later. That’s the intimacy of fiction—the writer is as surprised writing it as the reader is discovering it.” - Richard Bausch

Hosted by William Miller

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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: https://upstartcrow.org/

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

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Copyright 2025 - Upstart Crow Podcast - All Rights Reserved

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Recorded & Produced by Jon D PodCom

Veteran journalist Jerry Mitchell discusses his work that led to four reopened murder cases from the Civil Rights era including those of Medgar Evers and the three men whose story was told in the movie Mississippi Burning, with the resulting trials leading to convictions of the murderers.

Historian Robert Luckett joins to discuss the sorts of changes in society, public awareness, and the justice system that allowed for the trials’ outcomes—including the addition to the juries of blacks, both men and women, and on the white side, the addition of women. They also discuss another well-known case from that time that stands out for its lack of a conviction, the 1955 murder of Emmett Till, a case many liken to the George Floyd case of modern times.

As the Till case nears its 70th anniversary, Jerry and Robert discuss what these outcomes and situations mean for the country’s future and what might determine the course of that future.

Jerry Mitchell, a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius” award, worked for three decades for the Clarion-Ledger Mississippi newspaper and in his book Race Against Time details the reporting he did while with the Clarion-Ledger that led to re-opening four major murder cases from the Civil Rights era, and the trials that ended with convictions. He founded the non-profit Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, dedicated to exposing injustices, investigating cold cases, and giving voice to the voiceless. Currently he is associated with Mississippi Today, an on-line non-profit news outlet that boasts one of the largest newsrooms in Mississippi.

Robert E. Luckett Jr. is a history professor at Jackson State University in Jackson, Miss., where he also directs the Margaret Walker Center and the COFO Civil Rights Education Center. He is the author of numerous scholarly articles and carefully researched works, including a book that focuses on Joe T. Patterson, the Mississippi attorney general from 1956 to 1969. Robby and his work on Patterson were the focus of Upstart Crow episode No. 21. The book, Joe T.

Patterson and the White South’s Dilemma: Evolving Resistance to Black Advancement, offers a close read on the life and work of a dedicated white segregationist.

Hosted by William Miller

“To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi.”

–William Faulkner

Special thanks to Liz Egan of Millsaps College for the introductions and help with logistics.

#CivilRightsJustice

#EmmettTillLegacy

#InvestigativeJournalism

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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: https://upstartcrow.org/

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

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Copyright 2025 - Upstart Crow Podcast - All Rights Reserved

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Recorded & Produced by Jon D PodCom

David Baldacci – What is A Calamity of Souls?

The title of his most autobiographical novel occurred to David Baldacci the day he penned the first words. And it was literally penned—he started the book in a blank notebook his wife gave him on Christmas Day, 2011. He wrote that title and about 150 pages. He wasn’t even sure himself what the phrase a calamity of souls meant. He set it aside. Several years and novels later, he came back to this unfinished work. In the swirling events of 2020, he picked up the manuscript to finish it and ready the book for publication.In this episode of Upstart Crow, David joins host William Miller to talk about this novel, how it connects to and springs from his own life.

This hugely successful writer talks candidly and quite personally about his youth in the Richmond, Va., area, examples of racism he has witnessed, and, in very personal terms, what it was like to be among the busloads of White children bused to a formerly all-Black school in order to achieve integration some 20 years after the U.S. Supreme Court first ruled for it in its landmark Brown decision. He speaks of the confusion, the uncertainty—the fights he got into nearly every day. Why he set the novel in 1968. And the connection between this novel and his reading of James Baldwin while he wrote it.

David Baldacci is a global number-one bestselling novelist who began scribbling stories as a child in a notebook his mother gave him to keep him engaged and quiet, in order to give herself a break. Now, his total number of works is quickly approaching 60 titles, which have sold more than 150 million copies, in more than 45 languages, in more than 80 countries. His books have been turned into feature films as well as television adaptations.

He and his wife have cofounded the Wish You Well Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to supporting literacy efforts across America—reading being an activity that he believes builds empathy and enriches the lives of those who practice it.

He lives in his native Virginia, where he graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of Virginia Law School, two noteworthy public institutions. He was a practicing lawyer with a DC firm before beginning his career as a writer.

“I've always thought that books were body armor against bigotry.” — David Baldacci

#DavidBaldacciInterview

#ACalamityOfSouls

#BooksAgainstBigotry

Where to Buy David Baldacci’s Books:

A Calamity of Souls on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Calamity-Souls-David-Baldacci/dp/1538750634

David Baldacci’s full catalog on Bookshop.org (supports independent bookstores):

https://bookshop.org/contributors/david-baldacci

All titles by David Baldacci on Barnes & Noble:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/b/contributor/david-baldacci/_/N-2k0b

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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: https://upstartcrow.org/

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

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Copyright 2025 - Upstart Crow Podcast - All Rights Reserved

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Recorded & Produced by Jon D PodCom

Journalist and writer Catherine Nixey and host William Miller discuss her books that focus on early church history and some of the other men who lived lives not unlike that of Jesus—men whose deeds are recorded in ancient texts.

Catherine studied classics at Cambridge University and works as a journalist at The Economist. Her writing also has appeared in The Times and the Financial Times. Her two books are: The Darkening Age, which was an international bestseller and a New York Times notable book and which won a Royal Society award for non‑fiction; and, her more recent one, the first U.S. edition of which was published last year, Heretic: Jesus Christ and the Other Sons of God.

The daughter of a former nun and a former monk, Catherine was reared a Catholic. She developed a deep curiosity about religion and the nature of the church and its teachings. In her books, she draws on the research and writings of scholars, philosophers, primary text investigators—and she identifies big questions.

The Gospel of John begins, “In the beginning was the Word,” but while this sentence and the others in the four Gospels are central to the teachings of the Christian church, the truth is, there was not one word in the years right after the death of Jesus. There was not “one word” for centuries after the death of Jesus. Indeed, there were different Jesuses. One who challenged his parents and the norms of their community. One who sold a twin into slavery. One who had someone else crucified in his stead. And there were other men who, though their names were not Jesus, wandered that same part of the world before, after and during his time, doing a lot of the same things he is reported to have done. Those others also healed the sick, restored sight to the blind, raised the dead. Their stories did not make it into the main record, the Bible. While they didn’t completely fall out of history, one has to look hard to find their traces. As Catherine notes, history has been compared to fishing. What you pull out depends on where you drop the line.

“History has been compared to fishing. What you pull out depends on where you drop the line.” - Catherine Nixey

Available at major booksellers Amazon or Barnes & Noble:

https://a.co/d/ikUa2ri

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/heretic-catherine-nixey/1145064532

#EarlyChristianity #HereticBook #UpstartCrow

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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: https://upstartcrow.org/

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

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Copyright 2025 - Upstart Crow Podcast - All Rights Reserved

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Recorded & Produced by Jon D PodCom

A professor at Jackson State University in Mississippi, Robert T. Luckett Jr. discusses his book analyzing the career of Joe T. Patterson, the attorney general of Mississippi from 1956 to 1969. While the book focuses on Patterson, the study behind it looks at the larger scale of the effort to achieve equality for all.

Patterson, an avowed segregationist, tried to preserve the system of white hegemony by allowing some compromises with the civil rights movement but fighting with every legal means against others. During his time, the civil rights movement grew in power and form, and pulled the United States government and court system into a campaign to compel Mississippi and other Southern states to accept Black advancement.

But many years later, how much advancement has there been? And what of Southern exceptionalism? How has that idea born out? Robert Luckett discusses all of this and more in this episode with host William Miller.

“We are watching people today try to do the same things that Patterson and his ilk tried to do in the 1950s and ‘60s.” — Robert T. Luckett Jr.

Dr. Robert Luckett discusses how Joe T. Patterson and other segregationists used legal and political systems to block civil rights progress — and how those same strategies are being revived today.

He explains how the past isn’t just history, but a roadmap some leaders are following to suppress voting, dismantle public education, and silence communities of color.

Robbie also highlights the resilience of Jackson, Mississippi — a city pushing back against these efforts through activism, education, and a refusal to forget the truth of its history.

#CivilRightsLegacy

#MississippiPolitics

#HistoryRepeats

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Purchase a copy of Joe T. Patterson and the White South’s Dilemma on Amazon here: https://a.co/d/39ssxYw

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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: https://upstartcrow.org/

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

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Copyright 2025 - Upstart Crow Podcast - All Rights Reserved

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Edited & Produced by Jon D PodCom

Dinaw Mengestu is the author of four novels—Someone Like Us (2024), All Our Names (2014), How to Read the Air (2010), and The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears (2007)— each of which was named a New York Times notable book. He was chosen as a MacArthur Fellow and has received a Lannan Literary Fellowship for Fiction, National Book Foundation 5-Under-35 Award, Guardian First-Book Award, Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and he recently was chosen by the Alan Cheuse International Writers Center to deliver the 2025 Cheuse Lecture.

His articles and fiction have appeared in the New York Times, New Yorker, Harper’s, Granta and Rolling Stone. As a journalist, Dinaw has reported on life in Darfur, Northern Uganda and eastern Congo. Dinaw is himself a native of Ethiopia who immigrated to the US with his parents when he was two years old.

In this episode of Upstart Crow, Dinaw talks with host William Miller in a wide-ranging conversation about the ways his own life story inform his fiction, how his work has developed over the years he has written, and the significance of many of the elements within each of the four novels.

"Lives are rarely good or bad. You know, we don't live in binaries. But what he is able to do is accept that he is here... and to kind of let go of this impossible return. That ability to accept—'this is my life'—still feels pretty profound to me."

— Dinaw Mengestu

The Power of Absence: Mengestu explores how silence and absence—especially of country, culture, and family—shape identity and narrative, allowing readers to feel the haunting spaces between what’s said and unsaid.

Immigrant Narratives Reimagined: His characters wrestle with displacement, the myth of return, and the trauma of migration, often facing the complex reality of accepting a new life while holding onto a lost one.

Violence and Perspective: Dinaw examines political and personal violence, not through spectacle but through subtlety—what is implied, withheld, and felt across generations.

#DinawMengestu #ImmigrantStories #UpstartCrowPodcast

Connect with Dinaw on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dinaw_mengestu/

Find out more about his books and where you can purchase them here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/170308/dinaw-mengestu/

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Be sure to visit the Upstart Crow website for more information about our guests, hosts, and ways you can support the podcast: https://upstartcrow.org/

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

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Copyright 2025 - Upstart Crow Podcast - All Rights Reserved

Recorded & Produced by Jon D PodCom

JonDpodcom@gmail.com

Dr. Rina Bliss, an associate professor of sociology at Rutgers University, discusses her most recent book, What’s Real About Race?, with Upstart Crow host William Miller.

In her scholarship, Dr. Bliss researches, writes about, and speaks about—as she puts it on her website—“the personal and social significance of new genetic sciences.” Her work “is centered at the intersection of sociology, psychology, and technology, offering a full-spectrum understanding of how our social worlds shape our personal worlds, affecting the health and quality of our lives.”

She brings her years of scholarship and observations to What’s Real About Race?

Published recently by W.W. Norton, the book looks at historic perspectives on race, views of race currently, and factors shaping the future view of race.

In the year 2000, President Bill Clinton and a half-dozen other world leaders joined to celebrate the finding of a science research project—an effort to map the genome of humans from around the world determined, as Dr. Bliss says, that “humans were 99.9 percent (genetically) the same.” Because people had conflated race and DNA, this finding challenged a lot of thinking.

But did it change minds? Following that declaration by scientists, there came another—“if race is not biological, what is? A social construct.” What does that even mean? Dr. Bliss answers that question, as well as what race being a social construct means given that people observe differences between themselves and other people. Where do those differences come from? What is the reality of race?

For the future, Dr. Bliss says we need “a new paradigm of race as well as a new language for talking about race”—but where would that come from, and how would those elements solve the race-related problems we see around us? She has ideas, which she discusses here.

One thing, she says, stop calling race a “social construct” and think of it as a “social reality.”

"We are all one family. So this idea of continental difference or division... it really cancels out any ability for us to recognize that we are all brothers and sisters." — Dr. Rina Bliss, author of What’s Real About Race

Check out Dr. Bliss’s website: https://www.drrinabliss.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr.rinabliss/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rina-bliss-28263714/

Visit Upstart Crow on the web for more information about our hosts, guests, and how you can support the show: https://upstartcrow.org/

Copyright 2025 - Upstart Crow Podcast - All Rights Reserved

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Edited & Produced by Jon D PodCom

JonDpodcom@gmail.com

In this episode, first-time novelist Carol Mitchell discusses the ideas and experiences out of which grew this novel, What Start Bad A Mornin’.

The story she tells us of Amaya Lin, a Jamaican living and working in the United States, who is leaving the office where she works with her lawyer husband and his partner, rushing off to gather in her elderly aunt for the evening, when a younger woman approaches Amaya’s car, saying she is Amaya’s sister.

But Amaya thinks that is not possible. Since she was 17, she has had no family other than after she married - her husband and their son.

Why would this woman say that? Who was she really? She did have a familiar look, but, still—

Thus is Amaya - launched onto a journey into her past, a past she had forgotten, or suppressed. This is the novel Carol spins for readers, weaving three narrative lines through the U.S., Jamaica and Trinidad—the immigration experience; the challenge of constructing a successful life in a complex, sometimes tragic world; experiences of loss and rediscovery.

Hosted by William Miller

“I wanted to write a woman who wasn’t perfect. Who didn’t know everything. Who had to go back and recover parts of herself she didn’t even know she’d lost.” – Carol Mitchell

#CaribbeanFiction

#WhatStartBadAMornin

#WomenWhoWrite

Find out more about Carol on her website: https://carolmitchellbooks.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/writewithcarol/?hl=en

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Visit Upstart Crow on the web for more information about our hosts, guests, and how you can support the show: https://upstartcrow.org/

Copyright 2025 - Upstart Crow Podcast - All Rights Reserved

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Edited & Produced by Jon D PodCom

JonDpodcom@gmail.com