Yvette Benavides
Managing Editor, TPR NewsYvette Benavides is the managing editor of TPR News and the host of the "Book Public" podcast. She also co-hosts "The Lonely Voice with Peter Orner," a podcast about short stories. She has served as the Spanish-language editor for TPR since 2020. She was the 2024 recipient of the Dobie Paisano fellowship and residency program and is professor emerita of English and creative writing at Our Lady of the Lake University. She served as an editor-at-large with Trinity University Press. She is a founding member of the advisory council of the San Antonio Book Festival and serves on the editorial boards of Story magazine and Asterix journal. She co-authored the book San Antonio 365: On This Day in History with David Martin Davies. Her essays and stories have been published widely, including in the Bellevue Literary Review, Oh, Reader, Creative Nonfiction and Huizache magazines. Her radio commentaries have been recognized with First Amendment awards from the Society of Professional Journalists Fort Worth Chapter and from the Public Media Journalists Association. She was a Scripps Howard fellow in entrepreneurial journalism and a PRX Knight Foundation fellow in podcasting in. With David Martin Davies, she was a 2022 USC Center for Health Journalism fellow in reporting on healthy equity and health systems. She was a longtime book reviewer for the San Antonio Express News.
-
Peter Orner and Yvette Benavides explore the 1959 short story "Asigh" by the incomparable Mary Lavin. They examine this beautiful, poignant story about a protagonist who remains resilient in the face of domestic tension and psychological confinement in rural Ireland. -
What are the mysteries behind the quiet routines of one Artie Dam, a high school history teacher in Elizabeth Strout’s latest novel? The Things We Never Say explores isolation and the painful, fragile truths we keep hidden because we don't have the words to talk about them. And yet, this luminous novel gives us a lexicon of loneliness that challenges the fundamental idea that we can never truly know each other. Turns out, the beauty is in trying. -
Patrick Strickland discusses his story collection "A History of Heartache." These are stories set in North Texas that chart the small moments of grace, and the almost insurmountable mistakes boys inherit. These are gritty, sometimes violent stories, but there is a tenderness, too, and the knife’s edge here bends toward a kind of hope. -
In "The Tea Ceremony" by Gina Berriault, protagonist, Delia, struggles with wanting beautiful things. Her family's hardscrabble life doesn't measure up. She isn't the most beautiful girl in her class. While she is liked, she doesn't have any friends. Beauty becomes closely linked to her ability to imagine her future. But somehow, perhaps, she will finally see that there was always a kind of beauty closer to home. -
Laurie Hertzel's memoir is an open, frank rumination on a brother's death and its reverberations throughout a family. -
This is a special episode of "The Lonely Voice." Hosts Yvette Benavides and Peter Orner welcome guest host Alex Gordon to discuss "Train Dreams" by Denis Johnson — and the Oscar-nominated film adaptation of that novella. -
Yvette Benavides and Peter Orner discuss Roberto Bolaño' short story " Gómez Palacio." A young writer travels to a desolate northern Mexican town to interview for a teaching position during a particularly grim period of his life. Telling the story in hindsight allows us to see the ways the place was actually unforgettable. -
Dan Simon discusses his debut novel, "Ashland." Six characters tell their story about living in this mill town in New Hampshire. They share resonant, unforgettable stories about the place they all have in common. They grapple with life’s mysteries and reveal to readers the sheer beauty in their struggle and their will to live life with meaning. -
Camille Bordas discusses her story collection, One Sun Only. She also shares her thoughts on writing about loss, reading nonfiction for inspiration for writing fiction and balancing humor with the more serious subject matter of her stories. -
Yvette Benavides and Peter Orner discuss "Berries" and other stories from Kolyma Stories by Varlam Shalamov. The author underscores the horrors of totalitarianism and the will to survive of the characters in the stories that are based on all-too real events and situations that the author himself experienced.
