Horse Racing and "Lord of Misrule" from On Point with Tom Ashbrook Podcast

We speak with 2010 National Book Award winner Jaimy Gordon about her novel "Lord of Misrule" -- and ride into the world of horse racing. William Nack, author of "Secretariat," joins.

Download that On Point podcast here. She's a Brown University alum, and The Brown Daily Herald had this to say about the author and her recent win for Lord of Misrule:

In fact, her decision to attend Brown for graduate school instead of the University of Iowa was partly due to the fact that there was a racetrack nearby. The other deciding factor was novelist John Hawkes, who was on the faculty at the time. "I'm very proud to say I went to Brown when people ask me where I went to graduate school," Gordon said. "As graduate programs go, this one has a very special character. It welcomes idiosyncrasies." At Brown, she interacted with students and faculty who were "powerful influences." It is also where she met McPherson, then an undergraduate, with whom she worked at Hellcoal, a student-run literary press. Through Hellcoal, they published three books written by prisoners whom Gordon taught creative writing in Cranston.

Read that Brown Daily Herald article here. The New York Times also covered the writer and her publisher, really well; they did well to put in a lot of good context here. It turns out that the publisher, McPherson, is an indie; expected. But they're a special company, with the sole proprietor of the publishing business Bruce McPherson, being its lone full time employee. The publisher is the sort that "the kind of publisher who sometimes seems more concerned with how his books look than how they sell. “Lord of Misrule,” for example, has a full cloth cover and a stitched binding, which is practically unheard of these days." If you believe in "you are what you read," and if you believe in reading well in the same way that people eat well to live well, then you should check out McPherson's catalog. Here's the publisher's website. Here's that NYT piece. Gordon also wrote: She Drove without Stopping: A Novel, Shamp of the City-Solo: A Novel, Bogeywoman (Sun & Moon Classics), Circumspections from an Equestrian Statue