Episode #15: "Some Words Are Just Better Than Others"
On this episode, we're excited to bring you
Lauren Aliza Green and Melissa Pritchard
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Lauren Aliza Green is a novelist, poet, and musician. Her debut novel, The World After Alice, is out now from Viking (US) and Penguin Michael Joseph (UK). Her chapbook, A Great Dark House, won the Poetry Society of America's Chapbook Fellowship. Her writing has appeared in Lit Hub, Virginia Quarterly Review, Threepenny Review, American Short Fiction, and elsewhere. Other recognitions include the Eavan Boland Award, sponsored by Poetry Ireland and Stanford University, and a spot on Forbes' 2024 30 Under 30 list. ​
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Melissa Pritchard was born in San Mateo, California. She has published eight award-winning books of fiction, a biography and collection of essays. Among other prizes, she has received the University of Georgia’s Flannery O’Connor Award, the University of Rochester’s Janet Heidinger Kafka Award, Chicago’s Carl Sandburg Literary Award, and a Barnes and Noble Discover Great Writers Prize. A five-time winner of Pushcart and O. Henry Prizes and frequently shortlisted in Best American Short Stories, her fiction and essays appear in The Paris Review, Agni, Ploughshares, Conjunctions, Ecotone, LitMag, A Public Space, O, The Oprah Magazine, the Wilson Quarterly and other venues. WordTheatre has performed her short stories in New York and Los Angeles; two of her books were named New York Times “Editor’s Choice,” and “Notable Books of the Year.” Others, receiving starred reviews from Library Journal and Publisher’s Weekly, have been named as O, The Oprah Magazine “Top Titles” and “Book of the Week,” and as “Best Book of the Year” by The San Francisco Chronicle and the Chicago Tribune. Her essay collection, given a starred review by Library Journal, was included in Publishers Weekly “Top Ten in Essays, Literary Biography and Criticism,” and praised by Lit Hub as a “Best Book about Books,” and by Poets and Writers as a “Best Book for Writers.”
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Pritchard’s writing has been anthologized in Mothers: Stories of Contemporary Motherhood, The Literary Ghost: Great Contemporary Ghost Stories, American Gothic Tales, The New Mortality: Thirty Writers Confront the Inevitable, Best of the West, Hingston and Olsen’s Short Story Advent Calendar, among other anthologies and textbooks.
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Awarded fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians, the Howard Foundation at Brown University, the Ledig-Rowohlt Foundation in Switzerland, the Hawthornden Foundation in Scotland and the Bogliasco Foundation in Italy, Melissa currently lives in Columbus, Georgia. Flight of the Wild Swan, her fifth novel, was published in March 2024 by Bellevue Literary Press. The Carnation Milk Palace, her fifth short story collection, will be published by Bellevue Literary Press in January 2027.
Read Along!
“The World After Alice is a lovely debut novel that glimmers with fine writing and notes of human insight. There's a quiet beauty to Lauren Aliza Green's work, and I am now a fan.”
—Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Hello Beautiful
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A gorgeous and gripping story of two families brought together to celebrate an unexpected marriage, twelve years after a devastating tragedy upended their lives
When Morgan and Benji surprise their families with a wedding invitation to Maine, they’re aware the news of their clandestine relationship will come as a shock. Twelve years have passed since the stunning loss of sixteen-year-old Alice, Benji’s sister and Morgan’s best friend, and no one is quite the same. But the young couple decide to plunge headlong into matrimony, marking the first time their fractured families will reunite since Alice’s funeral.
As the arriving guests descend upon the tranquil coastal town, they bring with them not only skepticism about the impromptu nuptials but also deep-seated secrets and agendas of their own. Peter, Morgan’s father, may be trying to dissuade his daughter from saying “I do,” while Linnie, Benji’s mother, introduces a boyfriend who bears a tumultuous past of his own. Nick, Benji’s father, is scheming to secure a new job before his wife—formerly his mistress—discovers he’s lost his old one. Morgan, too, carries delicate secrets that threaten to jeopardize the happiness for which she has so longed. And as for Benji—well, he’s just trying to make sure the whole weekend doesn’t implode.
As the whirlwind weekend unfolds, old passions reignite, deep wounds resurface, and unearthed secrets threaten to shatter the fragile peace the wedding promises. With each new revelation, the to-be-weds and their complicated families are forced to question just how well they know the ones they hold dear.
A majestic novel of Florence Nightingale, whose courage, self-confidence, and resilience transformed nursing and the role of women in medicine
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Sweeping yet intimate, Flight of the Wild Swan tells the story of Florence Nightingale, a brilliant, trailblazing woman whose humanity has been obscured beneath the iconic weight of legend. From adolescence, Nightingale was determined to fulfill her life’s calling to serve the sick and suffering. Overcoming Victorian hierarchies, familial expectations, patriarchal resistance, and her own illness, she used her hard-won acclaim as a battlefield nurse to bring the profession out of its shadowy, disreputable status and elevate nursing to a skilled practice and compassionate art.
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In lush, lyrical detail, Melissa Pritchard reveals Nightingale as a rebel who wouldn’t relent—one whose extraordinary life offers a grand lesson in inspired will.
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