Welcome to Sarah's Bookshelves Live.

I'm your host, Sarah Dickinson.

Join me every other week as we get real and sometimes a bit snarky about books and reading.

Let's get rolling.

I talked about Whidbey,

Takira Madden's debut novel in the Winter Preview episode that aired in early January. It was a

four-and-a-half-star read for me, and it's a very dark, atmospheric novel with visceral writing.

While it is emotionally difficult, it explores important topics, including sexual abuse, stalking, and the lack of recourse for victims of sexual abuse.

And I was immersed in the Whidbey Island setting. So I'm thrilled to welcome Takira Madden to the podcast today.

Takira is a native Hawaiian writer and author of the acclaimed memoir Long Live the Tribe of

fatherless girls, which was named a New York Times editor's choice as well as a finalist

for the National Book Critics Circle, John Liner Prize, and the Lambda Literary Award.

She's the founding editor of No Tokens, a magazine of literary and art.

And she's the winner of the 2021 Judith A. Markowitz Award.

She's also an assistant professor at Hamilton College in creative writing in Indigenous

studies and served as the Distinguished Writer in Residence at University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Welcome to Kira. Thank you so much, Sarah. I'm so glad to talk to you. I read

We'd be back at the end of 2024. And when I saw the publisher's marketing materials for it, it was

immediately my most anticipated debut novel of the year and it totally lived up to expectations. So I'm so glad to

get to have you on the show today. I'm really honored to be here. Thank you so much for reading,

and thank you for having me. For those who haven't read it yet, can you give us a brief overview of

Wouldby without spoiling anything? I'll do my best. It's a big book, and this is always a tough prompt for me.

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