Yvette Benavides

On this episode of "The Lonely Voice," Peter Orner and Yvette Benavides discuss the story “Love” by William Maxwell. A man recalls his fifth-grade teacher—a young woman who was kind and thoughtful. She becomes the center of a very hard lesson the protagonist learns in childhood about the impermanence of things.

The Art of Jacques Pépin celebrates the master chef and 99 of his all-time favorite recipes, paired with his signature artwork spanning the last 60 years.

Peter Orner and Yvette Benavides discuss two stories by Lucia Berlin— "Panteón de Dolores" and "Emergency Room Notebook, 1977." In these stories we find family dysfunction and tragedy set against the backdrop of another country and its culture and rituals — or in a hospital, another place with its protocols and routines. Except within all that is expected in these settings there is something totally new to make us pay attention to situations and people to whom we might never have given a second thought.

Ada Limón served as the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States. Her latest book, Startlement: New and Selected Poems, is a retrospective spanning two decades and also includes 21 new poems. The book is the poet's invitation to meet the world with an open mind — but also an open heart. She encourages us to embrace our "strangeness" and our tenderness, and to bear witness to the arc of all we know with hope and compassion.

Nicholas Regiacorte joins Peter Orner and Yvette Benavides to discuss two poems by Zbigniew Herbert.

Marisa Silver joins Yvette Benavides on Book Public to discuss her latest novel, At Last. Helene and Evelyn are two women who are bound together because they happen to be the mothers of two people who marry. We learn about the lives of these women and what it means for them to be in this season of life eager for their grandchild’s love and wanting to figure out the complex relationships one has with the other.

Peter Orner and Yvette Benavides discuss two stories by the German author, Heinrich Böll who is known as a master of the short story. He wrote about World War II and postwar concerns, centered social and political issues, and endowed his characters with decency and hope.

Megha Majumdar's novel, A Guardian and a Thief, is set in the near future in Kolkata amid a climate crisis. There are two families from very different stations in life struggling to survive. But whose story of survival matters more? Who is the guardian and who is the thief?

In Girl Warrior, Joy Harjo shares stories about her own coming of age to bring to light pivotal moments of becoming—among them, forgiveness, failure, falling, rising up, honoring those who came before and making space for those who will come after us.

Paula Saunders discusses her novel Starting from Here. It's a coming-of-age story about 15-year-old René. She leaves a home that is tense and difficult in order to pursue a career in ballet. But the challenges of this displacement are as fraught—and even dangerous.