Welcome, Alison Stewart. We are so happy to have you on Selected Chords.

Thank you so much. I'm really happy to be here.

So all of it on WNYC Radio is such an important arts and culture show.

And you really give literature a big boost, which is something that we also aim to do here on Selected Chords.

And it seems to me that you are someone who wears the sandwich board for fiction as I like to put it.

Do you agree with that?

So true. We tried it in so many different ways.

Just get people to understand how much you can get out of reading a book of fiction.

I think everybody these days is immediately going to the news and information aisle and memoirs,

which are all great love to read those, love to have those guests on our shows too.

But there's something about fiction and going into another world.

I really admire fiction writers who who world build.

I think I have great admiration for that.

And as just a fan of fiction, I love being taken somewhere.

There was a kind of heated conversation on Twitter recently.

Can you believe it? A heated conversation on Twitter?

Have you heard of such a thing?

It was about the role of fiction when the world is in such a terrible crisis.

And there was a sort of argument for the necessity of nonfiction overfiction by one person

who seemed to think that fiction didn't matter as much now.

And then as you might also guess, lots of people vehemently disagreed.

So I'm curious what you think the role of fiction is during troubling times.

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