Join us this spring for Season 6 of Check This Out and more in-depth conversations with emerging authors.

Host Rachel Barenbaum and her guests delve deep into the characters and themes as well as the writing process itself.

Rachel has an uncanny knack for spotting future superstars long before they hit the bestseller lists.

Check This Out has featured over 20 authors over the last year and more than half of them are now up for major literary awards. Of the remaining authors, three became major bestsellers and two were chosen for national book clubs.

Here's some of what you have to look forward to this season:

Tolani Akinola - Leave Your Mess at Home - May 23

In the wreckage of a fateful Thanksgiving reunion at their Nigerian-American family’s table, four siblings are forced to reckon with the past, take stock of what really matters, and find a way back to each other.

On the Book Biz we talk with Laura McGrath, an English professor at Temple University and the author of the new book, "Middlemen: Literary Agents and the Making of American Fiction" about the role of agents in publishing today and whether we still need them.

Susan Bernhard — Westerly - May 30 

In a saga of survival and the secrets that haunt us, one desperate decision creates a fault line that spans decades and threatens to break a family wide open.

H.M. Wolfe —  Daggermouth - June 6

A viral dark dystopian romance set in a corrupt surveillance state ruled by the masked elite, following a mercenary who botches the assassination of the president’s son and ends up forced to marry him.

Portia Elan — Homebound - June 20

In this novel of friendship and hard-won hope, four lives are entangled across time by one story, saved to a floppy disk in the 1980s and destined to ripple across the centuries. For fans of punk rock, robots, 80’s nostalgia, and post-apocalyptic pirates.

Yu-Mei Balasingamchow – Names Have Been Changed - June 27

A debut novel about Ophir—not her real name—who starts a confessional podcast about her years on the run around the globe. Filled with danger and twists, it’s ultimately a story about immigration and belonging—one unlike any you’ve seen before.

Check This Out airs Saturdays at 3 p.m. beginning April 11, 2026 on NHPR and NHPR.org.

Check This Out is proud to partner with The PEN/Faulkner Foundation to champion new voices in literature.

Listen to all the back episodes on NHPR.org or download the show as a podcast!

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