Olufunke Grace Bankole – The Edge of Water

In an immigration novel not like others, a Nigerian daughter wants to try life in America, and so once more she enters the visa sweepstakes. Her mother says nothing, though she has been forewarned by a conduit of the oracle, “this time, the order of things will be shaken. The souls will lose their own way.” These are the tensions within Olfunke Grace Bankole’s first novel, The Edge of Water.

There are matters here of faith in self and faith in matters larger than the self, as well as events that outstrip all planning and vision—including the failure to envision some real possibilities. What comes from this is a novel with a linear narrative constructed across an arc whose parts are anything but linear—where the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts.

The Edge of Water was a finalist for the New American Voices Award given by the Institute for Immigration Research, which is presented at the Fall for the Book festival.

Olufunke Grace Bankole is a Harvard-educated lawyer and recipient of the Soros Justice Advocacy Fellowship, and her original writing has appeared in Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, AGNI, Michigan Quarterly Review, New Letters, the Antioch Review and Stand. Her work won first place in the Glimmer Train Short Story Award for New Writers, and she was a Bread Loaf-Rona Jaffe Scholar in Fiction at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She also has been awarded an Oregon Literary Fellowship in Fiction, a Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation grant, a residency-fellowship from the Anderson Center at Tower View, and a Pushcart Special Mention for her writing. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

Find out more about Grace on her website.

Connect with Grace on Instagram.

Purchase a copy of The Edge of Water on Bookshop.org.

• A powerful exploration of fate vs free will, and how belief systems shape the choices we make.
• Redefines “home” in immigrant stories—less about place, more about identity, community, and peace.
• Moves beyond the typical American Dream narrative, showing the emotional and psychological realities of immigration.
• Highlights women’s resilience and agency, especially within patriarchal and cultural expectations.
• Examines how generational trauma and relationships between mothers and daughters shape identity.
• Shows how small decisions during major life moments can completely alter someone’s path.
• Blends spirituality, Yoruba tradition, and modern life, creating a layered, immersive world.

“We like to think we’re in control—until life reminds us how much of it was never ours to decide.” - Olufunke Grace Bankole

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Recorded & Produced by Jon D PodCom

Be sure to check out our website for more information about our hosts, guests, and ways you can support the show: UpstartCrow.org

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Thank you for listening to Upstart Crow, a part of Watershed Lit Radio.

© 2026 Upstart Crow Podcast – All Rights Reserved

Jung Yun – All the World Can Hold

It is Sunday, Sept. 16, 2001. The Sunday after 9/11. Five days after the Tuesday when hijacked planes are flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in DC, and a field in Pennsylvania. As searchers still comb through smoldering wreckage, a cruise ship that should have left from New York’s Passenger Ship Terminal in Manhattan instead sets off from Boston for a cruise to Bermuda. Aboard are more than 600 passengers, and in Jung Yun’s new novel, All the World Can Hold, we follow three passengers in particular. Three who, as they travel on this voyage that is anything but mundane, undergo experiences that will leave them never the same again.

Jung Yun joins host William Miller to talk about the origins of the novel, her writing of it, her own insights into the characters, and how the book is different from yet similar to her previous two novels.

Jung Yun was born in Seoul, Korea, and grew up in Fargo, North Dakota. Prior to All the World Can Hold, she published Shelter (2016) a finalist for the Barnes & Noble Great New Writers Award and also long-listed for the Center for Fiction’s First-Novel Prize; and O Beautiful (2021), a New York Times Editor’s Choice book as well as a Times Group Read book, and a San

Francisco Chronicle Book of the Year choice. Currently, Jung Yun lives in Maryland and teaches in the George Washington University creative writing program.

1. Turning personal history into fiction

Author Jung Yun discusses how her novel All the World Can Hold was inspired by her own experience taking a cruise shortly after the September 11 attacks. Rather than focusing directly on the tragedy, the novel explores how ordinary people process and move forward after a world-altering event.

2. A cruise ship as a literary “crucible”

The story follows three strangers whose lives intersect aboard a cruise ship headed to Bermuda. By placing characters in an enclosed environment where they cannot escape their pasts or their choices, Yun builds tension and explores how people confront regret, ambition, and unresolved relationships.

3. Characters shaped by their own flaws and decisions

Yun explains her fascination with flawed characters who carry the seeds of their own undoing. Across her novels—from Shelter to O Beautiful—she often writes about disasters people create for themselves and how those pressures reveal their deepest motivations.

4. Writing about disasters—personal and societal

A recurring theme in Yun’s work is how individuals react when systems or circumstances collapse, whether it’s the housing crisis, an oil boom, or national trauma. Her stories focus less on the event itself and more on the human responses that follow.

“I’m always writing about disaster… the disasters we create for ourselves and how people respond when you put them into these pressurized situations.” - Jung Yun

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Learn more about Jung Yun and her books here.

Purchase a copy of All the World Can Hold or any of Jung's other books here.

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Recorded & Produced by Jon D PodCom

Be sure to check out our website for more information about our hosts, guests, and ways you can support the show: UpstartCrow.org

Follow us on Facebook here.

Thank you for listening to Upstart Crow, a part of Watershed Lit Radio.

© 2026 Upstart Crow Podcast – All Rights Reserved

Cristina Jimenez – Dreaming of Home

The subtitle of Cristina Jimenez’s memoir is, “How we turn fear into pride, power, and real change.” In the book, she defines “home” as a place of self-acceptance, which was not an easy place for her to find after she, her parents and her brother, fled the chaos of her hometown in Ecuador and settled in New York in 1998. She tried to be a “good” immigrant, but because she was undocumented, what is sometimes called an “illegal” immigrant, it didn’t matter how hard she worked, how much she studied, how well she did in school, how observant she was about rules and regulations, she was not accepted, not acceptable. But she kept at it. She endured. She persevered. Dreaming of Home tells the story.

Cristina Jimenez is the cofounder and, for a time, was executive director of United We Dream, the largest immigrant-youth-led organization in the country. She played a leading role in getting approval of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. She also received a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, was named to Time’s annual list of the 100 most influential people, and became a distinguished lecturer at City University of New York.

With host William Miller, she discusses her memoir and the life experiences that led her to write it, including what it’s like to be an unwelcome immigrant, and what compelled her family to go to such a length.

Find out more about Cristina Jimenez on her website.

1. The meaning of “home” goes beyond geography.

Cristina Jimenez reflects on how immigrating from Ecuador forced her to rethink the concept of home. Over time she came to see home not just as a place, but as a sense of belonging found in community, self-acceptance, and the people who make you feel seen and valued. UC - Christina Jimenez

2. Personal stories are central to social movements.

Cristina discusses how undocumented immigrant youth built a powerful movement by sharing their stories publicly, organizing together, and advocating for policy change—including helping push forward protections like DACA.

3. Economic and political forces often drive migration.

Her family’s journey from Ecuador was shaped by poverty, political instability, and the influence of international corporate and political decisions that affected working-class families and forced many to leave their homes.

4. The U.S. economy relies heavily on immigrant labor.

The conversation highlights the contradiction of industries depending on undocumented workers while those same workers face exploitation, wage theft, and the threat of deportation.

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Recorded & Produced by Jon D PodCom

Be sure to check out our website for more information about our hosts, guests, and ways you can support the show: UpstartCrow.org

Follow us on Facebook here.

Thank you for listening to Upstart Crow, a part of Watershed Lit Radio.

© 2026 Upstart Crow Podcast – All Rights Reserved