This week we visit with Nathaniel Roy in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

Nathaniel Roy is a book designer, collage maker, photo taker, self-publisher, and a few other things.

He's a graphic designer who specializes in book design, but for the right cause, he'll design just about anything. He's keenly interested in local, independent, and non-profit projects and is currently an in-house designer at the Ann Arbor District Library and available for freelance opportunities. His clients include Simon & Schuster, W. W. Norton, Wayne State University Press, University of Texas Press, Penn State University Press, Minnesota Historical Society Press.

HIRE THIS GUY: nathanielroy.com

Nate's Books on the Bed:

The Clothing of Books by Jhumpa Lahiri

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

The Dark Interval: Letters on Loss, Grief, and Transformation by Rainer Maria Rilke

Letters of Note: An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience by Shaun Usher

Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, Its Chaotic Founding... Its Purloined Basketball Team, and the Dream of Becoming a World-class Metropolis by Sam Anderson

Matt's Gifts for Nate:

The Salt Stones: Seasons of a Shepherd's Life by Helen Whybrow

American Bulk by Emily Mester

A History of Half-Birds by Caroline Harper New

This week we visit with Ashleigh Bryant Phillips in Asheville, North Carolina.

Ashleigh Bryant Phillips is from rural Woodland, North Carolina. She's a graduate of Meredith College and earned an MFA from the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. Her debut short story collection Sleepovers is the winner of the 2019 C. Michael Curtis Short Story Book Prize, selected by Lauren Groff. Her stories have appeared in The Oxford American, The Paris Review and others.

For more on Ashleigh: ashleighbryantphillips.com

Ashleigh's Books on the Bed:

Will You Please Be Quiet, Please by Raymond Carver

Portraits and Dreams: Photographs and Stories by Children of the Appalachians 1976-1982, 2009-2018 by Wendy Ewald

Bambi by Felix Salten, translated by Damion Searls

Free Day by Inès Cagnati, translated by Liesl Schillinger

The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross

The Royal Diaries: Cleopatra VII: Daughter of the Nile, Egypt, 57 B.C. by Kristiana Gregory

Matt's Gifts for Ashleigh:

Where the Roots Reach for Water: A Personal & Natural History of Melancholia by Jeffery Smith

Reading Reconstruction: Sherwood Bonner and the Literature of the Post-Civil War South by Kathryn B. McKee

Room Swept Home by Remica Bingham-Risher

This week we visit with Nilo Tabrizy in Brooklyn, New York.

Nilo Tabrizy is the co-author (with Fatemeh Jamalpour) of For the Sun After Long Nights, a moving exploration of the 2022 women-led protests in Iran, as told through the interwoven stories of two Iranian journalists. She is an investigative reporter at The Washington Post working for the visual forensics team, where she covers Iran using open-source methods. Previously, she was a video journalist at The New York Times, covering Iran, race and policing, abortion access, and more. She is an Emmy nominee and the 2022 winner of the Front Page Award for Online Investigative Reporting. She received an M.S. in journalism from Columbia University and a B.A. in political science and French from the University of British Columbia.

For more on Nilo: ntabrizy.com

Nilo's Books on the Bed:

Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

Women's Voices from Kurdistan: A Selection of Kurdish Poetry (edited by Farangis Ghaderi, Clémence Scalbert Yücel, Yaser Hassan Ali)

Puerto Rico: A National History by Jorell Meléndez-Badillo

An Anthology of the Experiences of Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Victims (Third Collection) by Hiroshima Association for the Success of the Atomic Bomb Exhibition

Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginzburg (must-read afterword by Peg Boyers!)

They Said They Wanted Revolution: A Memoir of My Parents by Neda Toloui-Semnani

Matt's Gifts for Nilo:

As Seeds We Grow: Student Reflections on Resilience (edited by Elise Boulanger)

Heating the Outdoors and Between the Moments: Canadian Aboriginal Voices by Marie-Andrée Gill

Daughters of Palestine by Leyla K. King

This week we visit with Tessa Fontaine in Asheville, North Carolina.

Tessa Fontaine is the author of The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts and The Red Grove, her debut novel. Raised outside San Francisco, Tessa teaches in Warren Wilson’s MFA program, started Salt Lake City’s Writers in the Schools program, and has taught in jails and prisons for years. She co-founded and teaches the Accountability Workshops with writer and pal Annie Hartnett, and lives in Asheville, North Carolina, with her daughter, silly dog and sassy cat.

For more on Tessa: tessafontaine.com

Tessa's Books on the Bed:

Sun Under Wood by Robert Hass

Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje

Jazz by Toni Morrison

The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery

All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews

We the Animals by Justin Torres

Matt's Gifts for Tessa:

Leaving Biddle City by Marianna Chan

Obit by Victoria Chang

Chooch Helped by Andrea L. Rogers (illustrated by Rebecca Kunz)

This week we visit with Andrea L. Rogers in Mountainburg, Arkansas.

Andrea L. Rogers is an award-winning author of historical and contemporary fiction across a variety of genres. Her first book, Mary and the Trail of Tears is historical fiction, which is pretty much horror for Native people. It was on both the NPR & American Indians in Children’s Literature best of 2020 lists.

Her critically acclaimed Young Adult Horror Novel, Man Made Monsters, was released by Levine Querido in October 2022. It includes illustrations by Jeff Edwards (Cherokee). The novel received the Walter Award and several other accolades. She also authored a YA novel of Cherokee Futurism called The Art Thieves, released in August 2024. Her debut picture book about Southeastern tribes and wild onion dinners (the opposite of horror) is called When We Gather, illustrated by Madelyn Goodnight (Chickasaw). A second picture book, Chooch Helped, arrived in October 2024, illustrated by Rebecca Kunz(Cherokee). Chooch Helped won the 2025 Caldecott Medal.

Andrea is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She currently attends The University of Arkansas in Fayetteville where she is a doctoral student in English. Andrea graduated with an MFA from the Institute for American Indian Arts. She taught Art and HS English in public schools for 14 years. She has three wonderful children.

Andrea's Books on the Bed:

A Golden Treasury of Song and Lyrics by Francis Turner Palgrave

The Conquest of Texas: Ethnic Cleasing in the Promised Land, 1820-1875 by Gary Clayton Anderson

The Ballad of Black Tom and The Devil in Silver by Victor LaValle

Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History by Erik Larson

Wasteland: The Great War and the Origins of Modern Horror by W. Scott Poole

Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places by Colin Dickey

Fall in Line, Holden! and Herizon by Daniel W. Vandever

Matt's Gifts for Andrea:

Roots of My Fears: Terrifying Stories of Ancestral Horror (Edited by Gemma Amor)

The Ghost Variations by Kevin Brockmeier

The Unsettled by Ayana Mathis

This week we visit with Michael Amos Cody in Johnson City, Tennessee.

Michael Amos Cody was born in the South Carolina Lowcountry and raised in the North Carolina highlands. He spent his twenties writing songs in Nashville and his thirties in school. He’s the author of the novels Streets of Nashville (Madville Publishing) and Gabriel’s Songbook (Pisgah Press) and short fiction that has appeared in Yemassee, Tampa Review, Still: The Journal, and elsewhere. His short story collection, A Twilight Reel (Pisgah Press) won the Short Story / Anthology category of the Feathered Quill Book Awards 2022. Cody lives with his wife Leesa in Jonesborough, Tennessee, and teaches in the Department of Literature and Language at East Tennessee State University.

For more on Michael: michaelamoscody.com

Michael's Books on the Bed:

Wieland by Charles Brockden Brown

Merciful Days by Jesse Graves

This House of Sky by Ivan Doig

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko

Dixie City Jam by James Lee Burke

Matt's Gifts for Michael:

Blood Sisters by Vanessa Lillie

The Which Way Tree by Elizabeth Crook

This week we visit with Nic Brown in Clemson, South Carolina.

Nic Brown is a writer and a musician. He has published several books, including the memoir Bang Bang Crash (Counterpoint 2023), which was named a book of the year by Library Journal and Booklist, and the novels In Every Way (Counterpoint 2015), Doubles (Counterpoint 2010), and Floodmarkers (Counterpoint 2009), which was selected as an Editors' Choice by The New York Times Book Review. His newest book, Violent Femmes' Violent Femmes, will be published by Bloomsbury on May 14, 2026, as part of their 33 1/3 series of books about music.

Nic's writing has appeared in The New York Times, Oxford American, and the Harvard Review, among many other publications.

A graduate of Columbia University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Nic has served as the Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi and is now a professor at Clemson University.

He is also a drummer. With his first band, Athenaeum, he released two records on Atlantic Records. The first single off their first album peaked at #14 on the Billboard Alternative Rock charts. He has since recorded and toured with many acts, including Ben Lee, Longwave, Skeleton Key, Kim Richey, Matt Pond PA, and Eszter Balint.

For more on Nic: nicbrown.net

Nic's Books on the Bed:

Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson

Swimming Studies by Leanne Shapton

Light Years by James Salter

A Man Named Doll by Jonathan Ames

Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel

The Complete Guide to Stonescaping: Dry-Stacking, Mortaring, Paving & Gardenscaping by David Reed

Matt's Gifts for Nic:

What Doesn't Kill You Open Your Heart by Max Hipp

Streets of Nashville by Michael Amos Cody

This week we visit with Toni Jensen in Springdale, Arkansas.

Toni Jensen’s Carry is a memoir-in-essays about gun violence, land and Indigenous women’s lives (Ballantine 2020). An NEA Creative Writing Fellowship recipient in 2020, Jensen's essays have appeared in Orion, Catapultand Ecotone. She is also the author of the short story collection From the Hilltop. She teaches at the University of Arkansas and the Institute of American Indian Arts. She is Métis.

For more on Toni: tonijensen.com

Toni's Books on the Bed:

Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich

Winter in the Blood by James Welch

Grassland by Richard Manning

Hum by Jamaal May

This Is Not Your City by Caitlin Horrocks

Mongrels by Stephen Graham Jones

Matt's Gifts for Toni:

Silver Box by Natachee Momaday Gray

The Antidote by Karen Russell

Retablos: Stories from a Life Lived Along the Border by Octavio Solis

Graphic Design by Nathaniel Roy Design

Music by Eliza Edens from her album Time Away From Time (2020)