Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal. You are a very special breed, for you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

From KCRW, Santa Monica, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today I'm very pleased to have, as my guest, two first book authors, first fiction book authors.

Vendl Vida, the author of the novel, and Now You Can Go, and Julie Oringer, the author of the Book of Stories, How to Breathe Underwater.

Both books are published by Alfred A. Knapp, and they are both the author's first

published books of fiction, although Vendela did a book of, are they sketches?

Nonfiction essays about female initiation rituals in America.

And in a certain way,

the subject matter of initiation rituals and female initiations

follow through both books.

Both authors are now living in San Francisco.

They're both products of various writing programs and writing teachers.

And I began by wondering, because this weekend I saw for the first time that movie 13,

and it seemed as if, almost as if America is going to be gearing up for that story,

the story of a child variously neglected

and finding ways of educating herself, making a lot of mistakes, the movie going much

further than you expect a movie to be able to go.

And I wondered whether you have a sense of bringing,

since this has become your subject matter here,

these voices to the page in a significant way for the first time.

...