NHPR is thrilled that season four of Check This Out will premiere on April 5, 2025! This season, Check This Out is expanding to 12 episodes, offering more opportunities for in-depth exploration of diverse and emerging authors. You can learn more about season four here.
NHPR's Community Engagement Manager, Zoë Kay sat down with host Rachel Barenbaum to chat about the season and learn a little bit more about the team behind the podcast.
It’s so exciting to have Check This Out on NHPR’s airwaves! How did you start this podcast?
Zoë, thanks so much for having me! I’m thrilled to be here and really excited to chat with you.
At this point, I have recorded over 130 author interviews. Check This Out started as a passion project in 2020. Back then the interviews were 10 minutes. I published them on YouTube and through A Mighty Blaze. My early shows were a little rough. I studied other podcasts and interviewers, listened to a lot of Rick Ganley, Terry Gross, and Ari Shapiro, and got better. Eventually, I expanded interviews to 30 minutes.
In 2022, the Howe Library Director, Rubi Simon, asked if the Howe could sponsor the show and make it a Howe Library program. I jumped at the chance!
Suddenly, I had a real team of producers, a group of people excited to help and eager to help find more listeners. Jared Jenisch and Megan Coleman were the librarians dedicated to the show and they worked wonders with the tech side and social media, making it seamless for me. In 2023, I approached NHPR and asked the Program Director, Emily Quirk, if she would be interested in airing the show.
Emily Quirk asked me to expand Check This Out to a one-hour interview and gave me a trial run season. That trial-run turned into more and more shows with successive seasons. It was a dream come true!
Ever since, I’ve been working hard to put out more and more shows with my producer, Jessica Hunt. Jessica produces Something Wild and Outside/In and having her help and expertise has been incredible. I learn more about interviewing and books with every single show.
How does being a published author impact your perspective on these books/authors?
Being a published author means I know what it takes to write a book, get an agent, sell a book, and publish a book. There are a lot of highs and lows, and a lot of steps in between. Knowing all of this helps me understand what other authors have been through, which in turn helps me find better stories to share with listeners. I think I have a better sense of where to start and where to push in each interview because I’ve been in the trenches.
For example, Colwill Brown will be one of my guests this season. I interviewed her about her debut, We Pretty Pieces of Flesh. She wrote her entire novel in a working class Yorkshire dialect. I’ve never read a book written like that before and I can’t imagine how hard it was to get that published. Our interview kicks off with me asking about that voice, why she chose it and how she convinced an editor it had to be published. That voice made the book and brought me into a world I’d never known - and I couldn’t wait to talk to her about it.
Talking to authors is a shot of adrenaline for me. It inspires me and pushes me to write more, to read more, and to ask the harder questions so we can all learn from the amazing new voices on my show.
What types of stories do you hope to read in the upcoming year?
I feature emerging and diverse authors on my show. That means I spotlight new voices, writers who aren’t famous. Often Check This Out is a writer's very first big media hit. It’s always an amazing experience for me and the author when that happens. Many, many authors I’ve featured have gone on to bigger stages and to win all kinds of awards. Watching them take off is amazing.
The very first thing I look for is an intensely personal story. I look for personal connections, personal passions. This always makes for good conversation.
The other thing I look for is a big hook or theme. I want an idea that I can’t stop thinking about, something I want to talk about for an hour. I know I’ve found it when I bring it up with my friends or family and just can’t drop it. I knew I found it, for example, with Sameer Pandya’s new book, Our Beautiful Boys. In his novel he has a character who was born as Veronica Matthews, and marries and becomes Veronica Cruz. Her entire life changed with that name change and I knew I had to talk to Sameer all about that and what it means. We could have talked about that for two hours.
What is something you would like folks to know about the upcoming season of Check This Out?
This is Season 4 of Check This Out on NHPR! Each season gets better and better and this will be the best yet. The big news for this season is our brand new partnership with the PEN/ Faulkner Foundation. PEN/Faulkner champions the breadth and power of fiction and administers major literary awards and public programs including the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.
Now when I spotlight emerging authors, I am not only holding them up to NHPR listeners, but also to PEN/Faulkner fans, and that is huge. I could not be more excited to be working with PEN/Faulkner and hope that together we can expand the reach of both organizations. There is much, much more to come.
What brought you to NHPR in the first place?
NHPR rocks. I have listened to NHPR for years. While my kids were all at the Ray School in Hanover, NH we listened to Rick Ganley every morning. It felt like he was right there at the table with us, like we knew him. We didn’t, of course, but he and the rest of NHPR were just that good. Ever since I started Check This Out I dreamt about having it air on NHPR - and meeting Rick!
I pitched Emily Quirk as soon as I thought the show was good enough. When she picked up the show, she introduced me to Rick, and he sat down with me, went through some of my old interviews and gave me all kinds of pointers. It was a dream come true! Like I said, NHPR rocks.
I agree, NHPR does rock. Are you originally from New Hampshire?
I am not from New Hampshire, but I lived in Hanover for nine years and love it. I LOVE skiing and all winter sports in general and really miss living so close to the mountains. I also miss being close to the Howe Library which is one of my all time favorite libraries because of their collection and their librarians.
Facts: You can walk into the Howe, describe a plot you want to read (be specific: female main character who is a witch and falls in love with a vampire set in contemporary London) and the staff can find two or three books that are pretty darn close to what you want. Rubi Simon, the Director, hires and trains the best. They are that good. I miss them. Librarians are superheroes.
Outside of work & writing, what are some of your passions?
Reading. I pretty much read and read and read. When I’m not reading, I’m picking up discarded furniture off the streets and painting it, restoring it. I love spray paint and stencils and spray painting and stenciling found furniture. Banksy stencils are my favorites.
This hobby, by the way, makes for a lot of crazy things in my house.
What’s one thing you recommend everyone do or see in New Hampshire?
Everyone should eat at Lou’s in Hanover and ski at Whaleback. And, of course, everyone should visit their local library and check out all the books I recommend on my show! If you’re in Hanover, go to the Howe.
