This week, Jonathan and Gary are joined by multiple award winning writer and critic Amal El-Mohtar, whose first story collection Seasons of Glass and Iron appeared earlier this year, and whose novella The River has Roots has won Nebula and Locus awards for 2026.

We talk about our favorite stories in the collection, a diverse range of writers including Patricia McKillip, J.R.R. Tolkien, Hope Mirrlees, Virginia Woolf, and Charle de Lint, and about Amal’s own experiences as a writer of Lebanese descent living in Canada and Glasgow.

We hope that what the discussion lacks in focus, it makes up with Amal’s sharp insights as a writer of fiction, poetry, and criticism (in her occasional New York Times Book Review columns).

Many podcasts far more professional than ours have offered discrete segments covering different topics, so this week we decided to carefully organize the episode—wait, no we didn’t; we’re just rambling again. But we do begin with a small tribute to Jane Yolen, both a great writer and a great friend, which leads into some musings on how reputations are made and sustained. We then touch upon the recent Nebula Awards, the role of small presses like Subterranean, and some exciting new books we’re reading, including Jacly Moriarty’s Time Travel for Beginners. By our standards, all this is carefully planned and laser-focused.

Jonathan and Gary are delighted to welcome the wonderful Molly Tanzer, whose new novella And Side by Side They Wander is just out this week.

Although it involves apparently benign alien visitors, a post-apocalyptic post-United States, corporate overreach, and a fair bit of space opera, the novella’s main focus is art, who really owns it, how we interact with it, and whether even a molecularly exact reproduction is ever the same as the original. Molly also shares with us what it’s like to revisit the world of C.L. Moore’s classic pulp hero Jirel of Joiry in a new series of stories, and what she has planned for the future.

As always, it’s a wide-ranging discussion which at times almost gets downright philosophical.

Jeffrey Ford’s eight full length collection, Pandemonium Waltz, was published by Lethe Press back in February. Ever since we’ve been meaning to sit down with him to discuss the new book, his approach to short story writing, how he assembles short story collections, and more.

We’re delighted to have had the chance this week, to discuss the book, how retirement in rural Ohio is reflected in some of his recent fiction, and why some stories may not have shown up in any of his collections so far.

As always, we hope you enjoy the discussion, and our thanks to Jeff for making the time to talk to us.

Order

Order Pandemonium Waltz from the publisher (with extra art!)

This week, Jonathan and Gary sit down and talk some new and forthcoming books, including our mutual choices for favorite book of the year so far.

Gary starts by describing a book which he just finished and found particularly moving: The Illuminated Man: Life, Death and the Worlds of J. G. Ballard, Christopher Priest and Nina Allan, which he says reads more like a novel than a biography, with Priest’s final illness becoming a significant theme in portions written by Allan. They also discuss The Recollections: Fragments from a Life in Writing, a collection of Priest’s writings from Briardene Books.

Gary then goes on to recommend Frances Spufford’s Nonesuch as his book of the year so far, Jonathan recommends S.L. Huang’s new novella The Language of Liars and then talks about what it’s like to reread The Fellowship of the Ring after a long tome.

Of course, there are the usual digressions into things like the New Wave, the popularity of romantasy, the immense length of some literary classics, and other matters.

As always, we hope you enjoy the episode!