Story Made Project

NEW EPISODE! 🎧 BOOKS ON THE BED with the wonderful Reena Shah 📚

Listen to us talk all about Reena’s splendid 6 BOTB selections + her unforgettable debut novel EVERY HAPPINESS, her *first* first book and the legendary life of Kumudini Lakhia, coming out of hiding from fiction to write about Connecticut, the various methods and reasons for lying, family mythology and memory, the value of reading expansively, the beauty of good writing friends, and much more. Go listen now!!

Reena’s Books on the Bed 📚

Ghachar Ghochar by Vivek Shanbhag

The Story of a Brief Marriage by Anuk Arudpragasam

We the Animals by Justin Torres

Carryout by Hasan Dudar

We Pretty Pieces of Flesh by Colwill Brown

Make Your Way Home by Carrie R. Moore

Reena Shah This week we visit with Reena Shah on Roosevelt Island in New York City. Reena Shah is the author of Every Happiness, her debut novel. Her work has been featured in the Masters Review, Electric Literature, Joyland, BBC, the American Prospect, National Geographic, and the Guardian, among other public...

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NEW EPISODE! 🎧 BOOKS ON THE BED with Helen Whybrow 📚

Listen to us talk all about Helen’s delightful BOTB selections + her award-winning memoir, THE SALT STONES (paperback and audio out 8/4!), the 22-year influence of Jean Giono, cultivating a shepherd’s mind (even if you’re not a shepherd), connecting the mundane to the mystical, belonging and longing, creating a refuge in rural Vermont, and much more. Go listen now!!

Helen’s Books on the Bed 📚

The Serpent of Stars by Jean Giono

IWÍGARA: The Kinship of Plants and People by Enrique Salmón

Sprout Lands: Tending the Endless Gift of Trees by William Bryant Logan

Rehearsing with Gods: Photographs and Essays on the Bread & Puppet Theater by Ronald T. Simon and Marc Estrin

House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday

Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape by Lauret Savoy

Helen Whybrow This week we visit with Helen Whybrow at Knoll Farm in Fayston, Vermont. Helen Whybrow is the author of The Salt Stones: Seasons of a Shepherd's Life (Longlisted for the National Book Award & Winner of the Vermont Book Award), A Man Apart: Bill Coperthwaite’s Radical Experiment in Living and D...

One of the greatest gifts of 2026 was finding my way to Lily Meyer’s novels and translations. I hadn’t even heard of Lily four months ago and that quickly she has become an “Everything Author” for me. She’s one of the most intelligent and hilarious writers in the world, and her work will expand your mind and heart in lasting ways. Everything she writes begins a new and endless thread of revelation, and that’s the highest compliment I can give to a writer.

I would read literally anything Lily tells me to read, which is why I had to visit her for Books on the Bed. I left with way more than 6 books to consider and another new friend. I’m lucky to have met Lily and can’t wait to share our conversation with y’all soon!

NEW EPISODE! 🎧 BOOKS ON THE BED with Elisa Faison 📚 her splendid debut novel SKIN CONTACT hits the shelves June 23rd!!

Listen to us talk all about Elisa’s fantastic BOTB selections + her debut novel SKIN CONTACT, domesticating the apocalypse, the joys of motherhood/marriage and the fear of disappearing, writing the *not* mid-life crisis male adultery novel, telling a different story about an open marriage, the influence of Elisa’s mother and reading Ulysses together, the greatness of Rose Byrne & the necessity of friendship, the delights of reading about girlhood, and much more. Go listen now!!

Elisa’s Books on the Bed 📚

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore

Girlhood by Melissa Febos

The Lover by Lily King

Ulysses by James Joyce

Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason

Elisa Faison This week we visit with Elisa Faison in Carrboro, North Carolina. Elisa Faison is a writer and freelance editor living in Carrboro, North Carolina with her partner and two-year-old twins. Her debut novel SKIN CONTACT will be published on June 23, 2026. She has published stories in The Missouri Revie...

In June 2021 I stayed just 2 miles down the road from Helen Whybrow’s Knoll Farm in Waitsfield, Vermont, never thinking I’d return. Then last year I read Helen’s magnificent memoir, THE SALT STONES: Seasons of a Shepherd’s Life, and could not believe how close I was to her homeplace without seeing it. So I obviously had to reach out and make a return visit for Books on the Bed to experience the land and feel closer to the stories Helen writes.

“You don’t have to become a sheep farmer to cultivate a shepherd’s mind, which is about finding a way to listen, to tend, and to immerse in the living world. Sheep may be one way. Most importantly, may you find your own”.

This is what I leave with: a greater resolve to listen, tend, and immerse in my own way, and strengthen the resolve in others to do the same. And to remember to connect the mundane to the mystic every day. I truly believe Helen’s life and book show us a way forward to live better, deeper, and more just lives. I still can’t believe life brought me back here and I’m so grateful to have gained another new friend.

I also got to explore the wonderful Tempest Bookshop, the place where Helen found a book in 2004 that eventually shaped her own. You’ll have to listen to her episode to learn about how much that book has continued to mean throughout the years.

Thank you for everything, Helen. I can’t wait to share our BOTB conversation later this month! 📚