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

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

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