LoLT: The Pen America Awards and Two New Books

Strong Sense of Place | Travel Through Books

Melissa & Dave

Books, Arts

5.0 • 559 Ratings

🗓️ 2 May 2025

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode, we get excited about two new books: The Staircase in the Woods by Chuck Wendig and I See You’ve Called in Dead by John Kenney. Then Dave talks about the stellar winners of the 2025 Pen America Awards. Links The Staircase in the Woods by Chuck Wendig Invasive by Chuck Wendig I See You’ve Called in Dead by John Kenney Truth in Advertising by John Kenney Writer’s Digest interview with John Kenney The Boat Who Wouldn’t Float by Farley Mowat Pen America website and Instagram Pen International website Pen American Literary Awards Finalists Dead in Long Beach, California by Venita Blackburn With My Back to the World: Poems by Victoria Chang On Freedom by Timothy Snyder Transcript of this episode. The Library of Lost Time is a Strong Sense of Place Production! https://strongsenseofplace.com Join our FREE Substack to get our (awesome) newsletter and join in chats with other people who love books and travel. Do you enjoy our show? Do you want to make friends with other (lovely) listeners? Please support our work on Patreon. Every little bit helps us keep the show going and makes us feel warm and fuzzy inside - https://www.patreon.com/strongsenseofplace As always, you can find us at: Our site Instagram Substack Patreon Parts of the Strong Sense of Place podcast are produced in udio! Some effects are provided by soundly. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Coming up, a character-driven horror story set in the Pennsylvania woods.
0:06.4	An obituary writer accidentally declares himself dead.
0:10.4	Plus our distraction of the week. I'm Mel.
0:13.0	I'm Dave. This is the Library of Lost Time.
0:16.9	In this house, we are Chuck Wendig fans.
0:19.8	Yeah, both of his work and of his person.
0:22.5	Agreed.
0:23.4	We've talked about several of his books before.
0:25.9	But in case you're not familiar with him or his work, here's a quick overview.
0:30.4	He's an American author from my home state of Pennsylvania and often sets his books there.
0:35.2	He seems to be a genuinely kind, intelligent person,
0:39.4	and he's very generous with other writers. And he writes books that are dark, dark, dark.
0:45.8	Like Stephen King, he has a gift for writing absolutely bat-shit stories, populated with characters
0:52.8	that feel like real people. He creates people you
0:55.7	want to hang out with and then completely mucks up their lives with nasty villains or traumatic
1:02.5	events, often with an uncanny slant to them. Yeah. Every writer kind of takes their hero and throws them
1:08.6	in the dark hole and Chuck really takes that to heart.
1:11.9	He does. He's very good at it.
1:13.4	Yeah.
1:14.3	In his catalog, you'll find a duology about an apocalyptic disease, a supernatural family drama,
1:22.5	an urban fantasy about a girl who can see the death of anyone she touches,
1:27.3	a techno-thriller about killer
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Melissa & Dave, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Melissa & Dave and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.