For today's episode, YA author Erik J. Brown sits down with TW Creative Director John Vogel for Banned Books Week. Erik’s books have been banned in many school libraries around the US for LGBTQ+ themes, and just this past year the Malaysian government banned two of his books for the entire country.

The action and settings of Erik J. Brown’s books are all very different, but they all have one aspect in common: teenagers learning how to navigate romantic feelings towards a member of the same gender.

His bestseller All That’s Left in the World and its sequel The Only Light Left Burning take place in a post-apocalyptic world that’s been decimated by a Superflu, Lose You to Find Me is more of a basic rom-com, and Better the Devil is a thriller where the main characters are trying to solve the 10-year-old case of a missing child.

These books are all geared towards a young adult audience, a time period that can be very confusing for relationships in general. Finding affirmation — even within a book — surrounding feelings that might be guarded for social self-preservation could be a lifeline for kids that age.

Unfortunately, not everyone agrees with that tact.

For this episode best-selling author K'wan Foye sits down with TW Creative Director John Vogel to talk about his new book, House of the Rising Sun (Akashic Books, 2026). K’wan Foye gained major publishing attention after the success of his first novel, Gangsta (Triple Crown Publications, 2002), led to the beginning of a run with St. Martin’s Press, releasing over a dozen books. He has since authored over two dozen bestsellers, including the Animal series from Iceberg Slim’s Simon and Schuster imprint, Cash Money Content, and the Black Lotus series from Akashic Books.

While Gangsta was a gritty and somewhat realistic novel, K’wan started out writing stories with more of a supernatural bent. Being adopted by mainstream publishing, he was originally pigeonholed into thriller and crime drama. When he took a detour with Black Lotus, incorporating horror and the supernatural, his publishers weren’t having it.

Luckily, K’wan linked up with Akashic Books, who were excited to give his Black Lotus books a publishing home, leading to a very successful two-book release.

House of the Rising Sun also veers into the domain of horror and a hinted-at backstory that would be at home in old kung-fu movies. It represents the first book of K’wan’s Brotherhood of Blood series. One month after its release, K'wan put out Troubleman with Auwa Books, Questlove’s imprint under Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

For this episode we have a recording from the author reading with Juliet Diaz, Athena Dixon, and Tom McAllister that we held last November at Big Blue Marble bookstore in Philadelphia.

In order, Tom McAllister read from his collection of essays It All Felt Impossible, Juliet Diaz read from her revised second edition of The Altar Within, and Athena Dixon read an essay from a forthcoming collection. After the readings there was a Q&A with the authors where we discussed healthy anger, humor in writing, and the authors’ experiences with various levels of publishing and agents.

A huge thank you to all the authors for joining us, for everyone who came out for the event, and to Big Blue Marble for hosting us.