For this fourth season, Check This Out is expanding to 12 episodes, offering more opportunities for in-depth exploration of the work of diverse and emerging authors.
Host Rachel Barenbaum and her guests go beyond the pages of each book, discussing not only the characters and themes, but the writing process itself—from finding writing groups to navigating the evolving world of publishing.
Check out the show page for each episode to discover downloadable PDF discussion questions for readers and book clubs.
Check This Out is proud to partner with The PEN/Faulkner Foundation to champion new voices in literature.
Check This Out airs Saturdays at 3 p.m. through June 21 on NHPR and NHPR.org.
Subscribe to the podcast: Apple | Amazon | Spotify
Upcoming episodes:
Emma Pattee, Tilt - Saturday, May 31 at 3 p.m.
Annie is nine months pregnant and shopping for a crib when a massive earthquake hits Portland, Oregon. All she can do is try to walk home. We follow her journey across a transformed city as she reflects on her life and re-considers hope for the future.
Rob Franklin, Great Black Hope - Saturday, June 7 at 3 p.m.
A young Stanford graduate caught between worlds of race and class, glamour and tragedy, a friend’s mysterious death and his own arrest. Pulled into the court system and mandated treatment, he finds himself in an absurd but dangerous situation: his class protects him, but his race does not.
Aaron John Curtis, Old School Indian - Saturday, June 14 at 3 p.m.
A coming-of-middle-age novel full of humor and grief. When Abe Jacobs is faced with an unthinkable diagnosis, he follows his fragile hope for a cure to the Mohawk Rez where he grew up. In his family’s hands, Abe just might find hope.
Lucas Schaefer, The Slip - Saturday, June 21 at 3 p.m.
A novel about a missing teenage boy, cases of fluid and mistaken identity, and the transformative power of boxing.
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An exploration of family bonds in turn-of-the-millennium Singapore. Two estranged sisters must weigh the value of ambition versus familial love and home. -
A coming-of-age novel set in the schoolyards, nightclubs, and alleyways of a gritty, post-industrial town in Yorkshire, England. Three girls are inseparable, but as they grow up and away from one another, a long-festering secret threatens to rip the trio apart. -
Three star players on a high school football team are accused of violence by another student. Their secrets, and the secrets of their parents, threaten to shatter the community in a novel of race, class, and privilege. -
Based on a true story of murder for hire, this novel examines the extent to which one family will go in order to protect their own. -
A tightly-bound Nigerian family living in Florida and their struggle with the trauma of war as it ripples through the generations. -
Two brothers in dire straits, living on the edge of Yellowstone, agree to a desperate act of survival. -
A novel about marriage and ambition, sexuality and secrecy, and the true costs of building an empire, set in the early 1900s in New York City. -
This debut novel is a story of family, sacrifice, and loyalty, and of the power of love to endure beyond distance and time. -
"The Wedding People" is a novel about depression, love, one unexpected wedding guest and the surprising people who help her start anew. -
"The Safekeep" is a story of desire, suspicion, and obsession between two women staying in the same house in the Dutch countryside during the summer of 1961; an exploration of the legacy of WWII and the darker parts of our collective past.
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