Book Banter with Rayna

Book Banter with Rayna Featuring Marguerite Sheffer

Listen to this conversation with Marguerite Sheffer about her new short story collection, The Man in the Banana Trees. Spanning the Gulf South to the far reaches of space, these inventive tales introduce us to teachers and ghosts, aliens and ice cream consultants, each grappling with the uncanny edge between the ordinary and the extraordinary. Tune in as we talk with Marguerite about blending the familiar with the fantastic, bending genres, and exploring the strange wonders that shape our lives.

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About the Guest

Marguerite Sheffer’s collection, The Man in the Banana Trees, won the 2024 Iowa Short Fiction Award, was named a “Best Debut Book of 2024” by Debutiful and a “Most Exciting Debut Story Collection” by Electric Literature and a finalist for the 2025 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize. Her short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Epiphany, BOMB, LitHub and others. At Tulane University she teaches courses in design thinking and speculative fiction as tools for social change.

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About the Book

PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection 2025, Finalist A Debutiful "Most Anticipated Debut Book of 2024" One of Electric Literature's Most Exciting Debut Short Story Collection of 2024 Named a Best Book of 2024 by Debutiful and Electric Literature.

The stories in The Man in the Banana Trees take place in the past, present, and future--from the American Gulf South to the orbit around Jupiter. We meet teachers and students, ghosts and aliens. An ice cream consultant in the year 2036 predicts a devastating flavor trend and a disgruntled New England waiter investigates a mysterious tanker crash. Although wildly varied in setting, length, and genre, a thread of the fantastic unites these stories, as characters struggle to understand that thing lurking at the edge of their perception: something sinister, or maybe--miraculous.

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📚 Purchase a copy of The Man in the Banana Trees here: http://bit.ly/3Ii3Qnd

🎧 Book Banter is a cozy conversation series with authors, illustrators, and other literary creators. Let’s talk books!

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Subscribe to Book Banter with Rayna wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new content on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/@Book_Banter 

Book Banter with Rayna Featuring Christopher Romaguera

Settle in for a fascinating conversation with Christopher Romaguera as we explore his translation of Charras: A True Novel of the Assassination that Roiled the Yucatán. This gripping work brings to life the political tensions and human dramas surrounding a real assassination that shook the region, and Romaguera’s translation opens the story to an entirely new audience. Join us as we discuss what drew him to this project, the delicate art of translating voice and history, and the enduring impact of a tale rooted in memory, justice, and place.

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About the Guest

Christopher Louis Romaguera is a Cuban-American writer who lives in New Orleans, Louisiana. He was born in Hialeah, Florida and graduated from Florida International University in Miami, Florida. He has an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) at the University of New Orleans. Romaguera has been published in Passages North, New Orleans Review, Pleiades Magazine, Catapult, Massachusetts Review and other publications. He was a monthly columnist at The Ploughshares Blog from 2018-2023 and was the Poetry Editor at Peauxdunque Review. Romaguera was an Editorial Intern at Electric Literature. He is a VONA alum and was a 2023 Periplus Fellow.

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About the Book

Charras is the true story of Efraín "El Charras" Calderón Lara, a twenty-six-year-old union leader and student activist, and the Yucatean government's successful plot to kidnap and murder him. Acclaimed Mexican novelist Hernán Lara Zavala combines real-life newspaper articles and interviews with renderings of key events, laying the state-sanctioned narrative of Charras's death beside the actual experiences of those involved. To kaleidoscopic effect, Zavala enters not only the mind of the hero but also those in his orbit: the governor of the Yucatán, Charras's bureaucrat brother-in-law, even the mercenary hired to carry out the kidnapping--the chilling "you" whose point-of-view the reader must inhabit to unravel what took place during that fateful spring of 1974.

📚 Purchase a copy of Charras: A True Novel of the Assassination that Roiled the Yucatán here: http://bit.ly/4nk7uM7

🎧 Book Banter is a cozy conversation series with authors, illustrators, and other literary creators. Let’s talk books!

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Subscribe to Book Banter with Rayna wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new content on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/@Book_Banter 

Book Banter with Rayna Featuring Ciera Horton McElroy

Pull up a chair and join us for an illuminating episode of Book Banter! Rayna sits down with Ciera Horton McElroy, author of Atomic Family, a gripping Cold War drama that explores how one family’s secrets and sacrifices ripple through generations. With vivid historical detail and emotional depth, McElroy’s debut shines a light on the human side of nuclear anxiety. Tune in for a fascinating chat about family, fallout, and finding hope amid the tension of the atomic age.

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About the Author

Ciera McElroy is the author of Atomic Family (2023), the Southern Literary Book of the Year. She is also the founder and CEO of Clover and Bee Communications, a boutique agency specializing in film marketing, serving clients like Kingdom Story Company, Lionsgate, and Sony Pictures. Ciera serves on the Board of Directors for the Kerouac Project, a residency that allows writers to work in Jack Kerouac’s Orlando home.

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About the Book

A South Carolina family endures one life-shattering day in 1961 in a town that lies in the shadow of a nuclear bomb plant. It’s November 1, 1961, in a small town in South Carolina, and nuclear war is coming. Ten-year-old Wilson Porter believes this with every fiber of his being. He prowls his neighborhood for Communists and studies fallout pamphlets and the habits of his father, a scientist at the nuclear plant in town. Meanwhile, his mother Nellie covertly joins an anti-nuclear movement led by angry housewives—and his father, Dean, must decide what to do with the damning secrets he’s uncovered at the nuclear plant. When tragedy strikes, the Porter family must learn to confront their fears—of the world and of each other.

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📚 Purchase a copy of Atomic Family here: http://bit.ly/4ma6gT3

🎧 Book Banter is a cozy conversation series with authors, illustrators, and other literary creators. Let’s talk books!

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Subscribe to Book Banter with Rayna wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new content on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/@Book_Banter 

Book Banter with Rayna Featuring Rob Renzetti

Pull up a cozy chair and get ready for a spine-tingling good time! In this episode of Book Banter, Rayna chats with Rob Renzetti author, animator, and the creative mind behind My Life as a Teenage Robot and Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends. His latest book, The Cursed Cloak of the Wretched Wraith, is packed with eerie fun, magical mayhem, and a dash of dark humor that fans of spooky adventures will love.

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About the Author

Rob Renzetti is a veteran of TV animation whose work on Cartoon Network’s Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends earned him an Emmy. He created the Nickelodeon show My Life as a Teenage Robot, acted as the supervising producer for Disney’s Gravity Falls, and served as executive producer on the first two seasons of Disney’s Big City Greens, among other projects. Recently, he has published four books for Disney Publishing, including the New York Times #1 Best Seller Gravity Falls: Journal 3 and Onward: Quests of Yore.

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About the Book

From the creator of My Life as a Teenage Robot comes the epic finale to the middle-grade horror series about a horrible bag, the spine-chilling world hidden within it, and a terrifying adventure into the world of GrahBhag.

Perfect for fans of Coraline, the Spiderwick Chronicles, and Small Spaces.

With a combination of dry, absurdist humor and no-holds-barred horror, Rob Renzetti has crafted a delightfully imaginative fantasy world that will hook readers as surely as it will send chills down their spines.

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📚 Buy The Cursed Cloak of the Wretched Wraith here
🎧 Book Banter is a cozy conversation series with authors, illustrators, and other literary creators. Let’s talk books!

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Subscribe to Book Banter with Rayna wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new content on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/@Book_Banter 

Book Banter with Rayna Featuring Brad Richard, Mona Lisa Saloy, Alison Pelegrin & Karisma Price

This episode brings together four acclaimed poets to reflect on the state of the New Orleans and the world of poetry in the years since Hurricane Katrina. We will begin the evening with Brad Richard to discuss the new edition of his collection Motion Studies. Throughout the hour poets Mona Lisa Saloy, Alison Pelegrin and Karisma Price will join the conversation to share their work and insights.

Together, these poets will share work that grapples with memory, loss, survival, and the role of poetry in giving voice to what cannot be forgotten. Through verse and conversation, they will explore how the storm shaped not only their writing, but also the larger story of New Orleans and its communities.

About the Poets

• Brad Richard’s most recent book is Turned Earth (Louisiana State University Press, 2025). He is also the author of Habitations (Portals Press, 2000), Motion Studies (The Word Works, 2011), Butcher’s Sugar (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2012), Parasite Kingdom (The Word Works, 2019). A second edition of Motion Studies, with additional poems and a foreword by Skye Jackson, was published by The Word Works in March, 2025. His 2022 chapbook, In Place, was chosen for the Robin Becker Series from Seven Kitchens Press. He has taught creative writing at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, The Willow School (whose creative writing program he founded and directed), Louisiana State University, and Tulane University, and for the Kenyon Review summer workshops. Series editor of the Hilary Tham Capital Collection from The Word Works, he lives, writes, and gardens in New Orleans. More at bradrichard.org.

• Mona Lisa Saloy Ph.D, Louisiana Poet Laureate 2021-2023, is author, folklorist, Louisiana Folklife Commissioner, educator, and scholar of Creole culture in articles, documentaries, and poems about Black New Orleans before and after Katrina, is currently Conrad N. Hilton Endowed Professor of English, Dillard University. Books: Red Beans & Ricely Yours (has a banned poem “The N Word”), won the T.S. Eliot Prize and the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award. Second Line Home, on New Orleans Black Creole culture. Recent pubs: The Chicago Quarterly Review, Vol 33; “Introduction” to Black Fire!!! This Time II; Southern Voices: fifty contemporary poets, (Tom Mack & Andrew Geyer eds.) Literary Press, Lamar University, Fall 2024.  LMNL Poetry Anthology, fall 2024. Black Creole Chronicles: Poems (UNO Press 2023), choice for ONE BOOK ONE NEW ORLEANS 2024, & Book of the Month, The Whitney Plantation Museum. Saloy was named Louisianian of the Year in Literature: 2024 in Louisiana Life Magazine. Mentioned in “Read your way through New Orleans,” by Maurice Carlos Ruffin, NYT Book Review, Oct. 2024.

• Alison Pelegrin is the recipient of fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Louisiana Board of Regents, the Foundation for Louisiana, and the Academy of American Poets, who awarded her a Poets Laureate Fellowship to support the Lifelines Poetry Project, which supports her work offering poetry workshops in Louisiana Prisons. Alison's two most recent poetry collections are Our Lady of Bewilderment (2022) and Waterlines (2016), both with LSU Press. Alison is Writer-in-Residence at Southeastern Louisiana University, and served as Louisiana Poet Laureate from 2023-2025.

• A native New Orleanian, Karisma Price is an assistant professor of English at Tulane University. A poet and screenwriter, she is the author of I'm Always So Serious (Sarabande Books, 2023) which was a New York Times Editors' Choice Pick. Her work has appeared in publications including Poetry, Indiana Review, Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day Series, and elsewhere. She is a 2025 Whiting Award Winner in Poetry, a Cave Canem Fellow, a 2023 winner of the Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from the American Poetry Review, and was awarded the 2020 J. Howard and Barbara M. J. Wood Prize from the Poetry Foundation. She holds an MFA in poetry from New York University.

📚 Purchase these poet's books at BookBanterBooks.com or your favorite indie bookstore.
🎧 Book Banter is a cozy conversation series with authors, illustrators, and other literary creators. Let’s talk books!

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Subscribe to Book Banter with Rayna wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new content on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/@Book_Banter 

Book Banter with Rayna Featuring Robert Fieseler

This episode of Book Banter with Rayna takes you right into the buzz of a live event at Blue Cypress Books! We had the joy of sitting down with award-winning author Robert Fieseler to dive into his riveting new book, American Scare: Florida’s Hidden Cold War on Black and Queer Lives. It was an unforgettable night of history, storytelling, and community.

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About the Author

Robert W. Fieseler is a journalist investigating marginalized groups and a scholar excavating forgotten histories. A National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association "Journalist of the Year" and recipient of the Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship, his debut book Tinderbox won seven awards, including the Edgar Award, and his reporting has appeared in Slate, Commonweal, and River Teeth, among others. Fieseler graduated co-valedictorian from the Columbia Journalism School and is pursuing a PhD at Tulane University as a Mellon Fellow. His highly anticipated second book, American Scare: Florida's Hidden Cold War on Black and Queer Lives, has been declared a "masterwork" by ALA Booklist, and he lives with his husband on the gayest street in New Orleans.

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About the Book

A vital exposé for both our history and our present day, American Scare tells the riveting story of how the Florida government destroyed the lives of Black and queer citizens in the twentieth century. Fieseler describes the heartbreaking ramifications for citizens of Florida whose lives were imperiled, profiling marginalized residents with compassion and a determination to bring their devasting experiences to light at last. A propulsive, human-centered drama, with fascinating insight into Florida politics, American Scare is a page-turning reckoning of our racist and homophobic past—and its chilling parallels to today.

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📚 Buy American Scare here.
🎧 Book Banter is a cozy conversation series with authors, illustrators, and other literary creators. Let’s talk books!

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Subscribe to Book Banter with Rayna wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new content on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/@Book_Banter 

Book Banter with Rayna Featuring Darby Baham

What if choosing love meant risking the friendship you’ve always relied on? In this episode of Book Banter, we talk with Darby Baham about A Risk Worth Taking—a charming and emotionally layered friends-to-lovers romance that throws a love triangle into the mix. Set in New York, this novel explores connection, loyalty, and the complicated choices we make when the heart and head don’t quite agree.

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About the Author

Darby Baham is an author and storyteller on a mission to make women like herself feel seen and believe that love is possible for them, yes them. The former Times Picayune and Washington Post contributor often uses her doubts, hopes, and fears to connect with her readers and inform the themes in her Harlequin romance series, The Friendship Chronicles. The sixth book in the series, A Risk Worth Taking, releases July 29, 2025, continuing her love letter to female friendships and offering an intimate look into the dynamic love lives of Black women.

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About the Book

Her Best Friend...
...Her Secret Crush

After years of failed romances, Giselle Lewis has decided to play it safe. She's given up on getting swept off her feet or falling head over heels. These days, she'd much rather keep her feet on the ground as she tiptoes cautiously into love with someone sensible. Someone reliable and predictable. Someone who definitely isn't Brandon Clark, her friend and secret crush. Taking a chance on something more with Brandon could end in disaster, ruining their friendship. On the other hand...turning her back on all they could have together might be the biggest risk of all.

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📚 Buy A Risk Worth Taking on Bookshop.org
🎧 Book Banter is a cozy conversation series with authors, illustrators, and other literary creators. Let’s talk books!

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Subscribe to Book Banter with Rayna wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new content on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/@Book_Banter 

 

Book Banter with Rayna Featuring Margie Fuston

What if finding a vampire was your last shot at saving someone you love? In this episode of Book Banter, we sink our teeth into Margie Fuston’s emotionally charged and darkly magical YA novel Vampires, Hearts, and Other Dead Things. It’s a story about grief, girlhood, and the desperate hope that maybe—just maybe—the impossible might be real.

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About the Author
Margie Fuston grew up in the woods of California where she made up fantasy worlds that always involved unicorns. In college, she earned undergraduate degrees in business and literature and a master’s in creative writing. Now she’s back in the woods and spends all her time wrangling a herd of cats and helping her nephews hunt ghosts, pond monsters, and mermaids. She’s the New York Times bestselling author of VAMPIRES, HEARTS & OTHER DEAD THINGS, CRUEL ILLUSIONS, and THE REVENANT GAMES duology.

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About the Book
Victoria’s dad is dying, and she’s willing to believe in anything—even vampires—if it means she might save him. So she heads to New Orleans in search of something (or someone) immortal. But when she meets a mysterious boy who promises to help, she must prove her willingness to risk it all. This YA debut is equal parts aching, atmospheric, and unforgettable.

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📚 Buy Vampires, Hearts, and Other Dead Things on Bookshop
🎧 Book Banter is a cozy conversation series with authors, illustrators, and other literary creators. Let’s talk books!

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Subscribe to Book Banter with Rayna wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new content on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/@Book_Banter