(This podcast contains explicit content.) Acclaimed for his in-depth and engaging cultural studies, the novelist Kurt Andersen is the host of the Peabody Award-winning public radio program Studio 360 and a contributing editor to Vanity Fair, New York and Time whose journalism and essays also appear in the New York Times. Previously he was co-founder of the legendary Spy magazine, a staff writer for The New Yorker and editor-in-chief of New York. Andersen’s bestselling novels are Turn of the Century, a New York Times Notable Book of the year, and Heyday, which won the 2008 Langum Prize for historical fiction. His new novel, True Believers, features a celebrated lawyer who withdraws from consideration for a Supreme Court seat because of secret events from her youth.

Director of the Creative Writing MFA program at Temple University, Don Lee is the author of the novels Wrack and Ruin and Country of Origin, which won an American Book Award and the Edgar Award for Best First Novel. Founder of the Temple graduate student-run literary magazine TINGE, Lee is a former editor of the literary journal Ploughshares, and the recipient of the Sue Kaufman Prize for his story collection Yellow, as well as an O. Henry Award and a Pushcart Prize. His work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, GQ, Harvard Review, The Village Voice and elsewhere. The Collective is the story of three aspiring Asian artists who negotiate racism and the sacrifices of art, commerce, and idealism.