New Books in Biography & Memoir17 Apr 2025

Erica Stern, "Frontier: A Memoir and a Ghost Story" (Barrelhouse Inc., 2025)

Frontier: A Memoir and a Ghost Story (Barrelhouse Inc., 2025) is a genre-bending expedition into childbirth. Seamlessly blending memoir, fiction, and research into the fraught history of birth—from midwives to Victorian-era sedation through the Natural Childbirth Movement and modern L&D suites—Frontier lays bare visceral truths that are too often glossed over, and offers an incisive look at the momentous and terrifying transformations of motherhood. As she prepared to give birth to her first child, Erica Stern envisioned the idyllic experience promised by prenatal classes and diaper commercials. But when unexpected complications arose during labor, she found herself at the threshold of life and death, a liminal space that connected her to generations of mothers before her. From the chaos of the delivery room, Frontier opens into a parallel narrative: a Wild West ghost story. There, a mother who didn’t survive the ordeal of childbirth roams her old homestead, tethered to the family she left behind. In this otherworldly hybrid memoir, Stern careens between this haunted past and the present horror of the hospital as she waits for her own son to wake up in the NICU. Erica Stern’s work has been published in The Iowa Review, Mississippi Review, Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere. She has received support for her writing from the Vermont Studio Center and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. A New Orleans native, she lives with her family in Evanston, Illinois. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

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Episoder(2022)

Abdelwahab Meddeb, "Returns to Marrakesh / Retour à Marrakech" (Syracuse UP, 2026)

Abdelwahab Meddeb’s Returns to Marrakesh, co-translated by Claudia Esposito and Laura Reeck and published by Syracuse University Press in 2026, chronicles Meddeb’s successive visits to the Red City fr...

1 Aug 31min

The Letters of Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson was a letter writer before she was a poet. And it was through letters that she shared prose reflections–alternately humorous, provocative, affectionate, and philosophical–with her exte...

30 Jul 55min

Elisabeth van Houts, "Empress Matilda: Queen of the Romans, Ruler of the English" (Yale UP, 2026)

Born in 1102, Empress Matilda combined the blood of two dynasties: the house of Wessex and their conquerors, the dukes of Normandy. As a widowed German empress, she was named as heir successor by her ...

25 Jul 58min

David Denby, "Eminent Jews: Bernstein, Brooks, Friedan, Mailer" (Henry Holt, 2025)

What made a generation of Jewish artists and intellectuals transform American culture? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with acclaimed cultural critic David Denby to discuss his book Emine...

22 Jul 51min

Gayle F. Wald, "This Is Rhythm: Ella Jenkins, Children’s Music, and the Long Civil Rights Movement" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

Ella Jenkins (1924–2024) was one of the most influential musicians of the twentieth century, although many people have never heard of her. A pioneer in children’s music and an innovative educator, J...

15 Jul 1h

Sarah Kaminsky, "The Forger of Paris" (Doppelhouse Press, 2025)

The Forger of Paris (Doppelhouse Press, 2025) presents Adolfo Kaminsky’s biography in its only authorized edition, expanded with photographs from Kaminsky's 2019 exhibition at the Museum of Jewish ...

15 Jul 55min

Heidegger in Ruins

Martin Heidegger’s sympathies for the conservative revolution and National Socialism have long been well known. As the rector of the University of Freiburg in the early 1930s, he worked hard to reshap...

13 Jul 0s

Rachel Phan, "Restaurant Kid: A Memoir of Family and Belonging" (Douglas & McIntyre, 2025)

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Rachel Phan about her powerful memoir, ⁠Restaurant Kid: A Memoir of Family & Belonging⁠ (Douglas & McIntyre, 2025). A warm and poignant narrativ...

11 Jul 43min