Ducks, Newburyport: LIVE! A NovelClass Podcast Taping at Porter Square Books

Join Porter Square Books for a special live podcast taping with NovelClass, featuring NovelClass’s Dave Pezza, Writer’s Bone host Daniel Ford, and Porter Square Books’ own booksellers Josh Cook and Kate Mikell, discussing Lucy Ellmann’s Ducks, Newburyport, shortlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize.

“For most of its 1,000 pages, Lucy Ellmann’s brilliantly ambitious seventh novel follows the unspooling consciousness of an Ohio housewife circa 2017, and does so almost entirely in one long, lyrical, constantly surprising sentence … Whatever strangeness it presents has to do with the fact that, notwithstanding Ellmann’s great skills in narrative and character development, the overall effect is less plot-driven drama than vast existential collage. This is a novel, but it is also, fundamentally, a very long and meaningful list … as accumulative, as pointed, as death-addled, as joyous, as storied, as multitudinous and as large as life.”–New York Times Book Review

NovelClass is a bi-monthly book club podcast.  If you’ve had the book club blues like us, then NovelClass is the right podcast for you. There are no rubber stamps, no shameless plugs, only friendly banter and constructive criticisms.  At the end of each episode, NovelClass announces next month’s novels, so you can read along  or simply tune in to hear our thoughts, critiques, and praises.

Dave Pezza is a writer and editor based in Providence, RI.  He is the creator and host of NovelClass, a bi-monthly book club podcast that is part of Writer’s Bone Podcast Network.”

Daniel Ford is the author of Black Coffee and Sid Sanford Lives!  He’s the co-founder of Writer’s Bone, a literary podcast and website that champions aspiring and established authors. He also produces a number of shows on the Writer’s Bone Podcast Network, including NovelClass, Pop Literacy, and Film Freaks Forever! A Bristol, Conn., native (and longtime Queens, N.Y., transplant), Ford now lives with his wife Stephanie in Boston’s North End, where coffee and cannoli are always within arm’s reach.

Josh Cook is a bookseller at Porter Square Books in Somerville, Massachusetts. His fiction, criticism, and poetry have appeared in numerous leading literary publications, including The Rumpus, The Millions, and Bookslut, and he is the blogger for Porter Square Books’ blog. This is his first novel.