Author Jennifer Givhan joins DVBR contributor Kimberly Lau to discuss The Sleeping Sisters, a genre-blending novel of magical realism, crime, and horror inspired by New Mexico’s landscape and the unresolved West Mesa murders. Their conversation explores Indigenous and Latina ancestry, myth, motherhood, violence against women, cultural reclamation, and the power of storytelling to confront darkness while creating space for justice, resilience, and hope.

Jennifer Givhan is a Mexican American and Indigenous poet and novelist from the Southwestern desert and the recipient of poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and PEN/Rosenthal Emerging Voices. Givhan is the author of five full-length poetry collections and the novels River Woman, River Demon, Jubilee, Trinity Sight, and Salt Bones.

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On this episode of Diverse Voices Book Review, host Hopeton Hay speaks with Vanessa S. Williamson, author of The Price of Democracy: The Revolutionary Power of Taxation in American History. Their wide-ranging conversation revisits the Boston Tea Party as a protest against a corporate tax break, explores taxation as a tool for Black freedom during Reconstruction, and examines how Franklin D. Roosevelt connected paying taxes with civic duty during World War II.

Vanessa Williamson is a senior fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings, and a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. She studies taxation and democracy in America. She is also the author of Read My Lips: Why Americans Are Proud to Pay Taxes,and with Harvard professor Theda Skocpol, The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism.

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In this episode of Diverse Voices Book Review, host Hopeton Hay talks with Tomas Moniz about his new novel, The King of Aloe Vera. Moniz discusses Ray, a 75-year-old widower whose unexpected friendship with a young woman named Q draws him out of grief and back into community. Set in San Francisco, the novel explores aging, identity, housing insecurity, intergenerational connection, and the challenge of addressing social issues.

Tomas Moniz is an East Oakland–based writer whose novels also include Big Familia, and All Friends Are Necessary. He also edited the Rad Dad and Rad Families anthologies and teaches creative writing.

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