Mandi Fugate Sheffel was born and raised in Red Fox, KY. She owns and operates Read Spotted Newt, an independent bookstore in the coalfields of eastern Kentucky, and is currently the Sycamore Fund Project Coordinator at The Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky. She is the board vice chair of the Appalachian Arts Alliance and a Mountain Association board member. Mandi is a graduate of Eastern Kentucky University.

Visit Read Spotted Newt! readspottednewt.com

Read some of Mandi's recent writing:

Appalachia deserves more than coal or cages. - Lexington Herald Leader

We will rebuild in EKy. Then we must ask why 100-year floods are happening so often.

Interview location: Hazard, KY

Mandi’s Books on the Bed:

The Beatinest Boy by Jesse Stuart

Christy by Catherine Marshall

Clay’s Quilt by Silas House

Trampoline by Robert Gipe

Fair and Tender Ladies by Lee Smith

Kinfolks: The Wilgus Stories by Gurney Norman

Matt’s gifts for Mandi:

O Pioneers! By Willa Cather

Outlawed by Anna North

Kathryn Savage’s Groundglass: An Essay (Coffee House Press), explores topics of environmental justice and links between pollution and public health. Groundglass was named a best read of the year by the Sydney Morning Herald, a Yale Review Favorite Cultural Artifact of 2022, and was showcased in Orion Magazine, Lit Hub, and selected by EcoLit Books as a Best Environmental Book of 2022.

Recipient of the Academy of American Poets James Wright Prize, her writing across forms has been supported by the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Jerome Foundation, Minnesota State Arts Board, Ucross Foundation, and Tulsa Artist Fellowship. Savage has studied creative writing at The New School, holds an MFA in fiction from Bennington College, and an MFA in poetry from the University of Minnesota.

Recent writing appears or is forthcoming in American Short Fiction, BOMB Magazine, Ecotone Magazine, Guernica, VQR, World Literature Today, and the anthology Rewilding: Poems for the Environment.

Currently she is an assistant professor of creative writing at The Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD). She is at work on a collection of short stories.

To learn more about Kathryn: kathrynsavage.com

Interview location: Minneapolis, MN

Kathryn's Books on the Bed:

Escapes by Joy Williams

The Dry Heart by Natalia Ginzburg

An Ideal Presence by Eduardo Berti

What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah

Fixer by Edgar Kunz

Dear Memory by Victoria Chang

Second Stack:

Sing to It: Stories by Amy Hempel

Wonderlands by Charles Baxter

Matt's gifts for Kathryn:

A History of Half-Birds by Caroline Harper New

Return the Innocent Earth by Wilma Dykeman

Episode timeline:

0:00-5:29 — Intro

5:30-29:22 — Kathryn's story, history in Minneapolis, & Groundglass

29:23-1:59:47 — Kathryn's Books on the Bed & Second Stack

Remica Bingham-Risher, a native of Phoenix, Arizona, is an alumna of Old Dominion University and Bennington College. She is a Cave Canem fellow and Affrilachian Poet. Among other journals, her work has been published in the New York Times, the Writer’s Chronicle, New Letters, Callaloo and Essence. She is the author of Conversion (Lotus, 2006) winner of the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award, What We Ask of Flesh (Etruscan, 2013) shortlisted for the Hurston/Wright Award and Starlight & Error (Diode, 2017) winner of the Diode Editions Book Award. Her first book of prose, Soul Culture: Black Poets, Books and Questions that Grew Me Up, was published by Beacon Press in 2022. Her next book of poems, Room Swept Home, was published by Wesleyan in February 2024. She is currently the Director of Quality Enhancement Plan Initiatives at Old Dominion University and resides in Norfolk, VA with her husband and children.

Learn more about Remica: remicabinghamrisher.com

Interview location: Norfolk, VA

Remica’s Books on the Bed:

If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin

Home by Toni Morrison

The Book of Light by Lucille Clifton

Joe Turner’s Come and Gone by August Wilson

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

Fast Animal by Tim Seibles

Matt’s gifts for Remica:

To ‘Joy My Freedom by Tera Hunter

Somerset Homecoming by Dorothy Spruill Redford

Episode timeline:

0:00-3:33 — Intro

3:34-28:17 — Remica's family history, new book Room Swept Home, reading poems

28:18-42:10 — Matt presents gifts to Remica

42:11-1:38:59 — Remica's Books on the Bed

Welcome to Books on the Bed!

Logo design by Nathaniel Roy - nathanielroy.com

Theme music: Eliza Edens - "Ramble" (Instrumental) from Time Away From Time (2020)

More about Eliza: eliza-edens.com