Narrative Edge

In this episode, Peter and Orlando explore Momma May Be Mad, a powerful memoir by Kerry Neville that examines mental health, addiction, and recovery. They discuss her journey through anorexia, alcoholism, bipolar disorder, and electroconvulsive therapy, and how writing became her anchor. This conversation highlights resilience, the complexity of healing, and the possibility of hope after crisis.

Explore the harsh realities of Civil War prison camps, including Andersonville, in this episode featuring historian Fitzhugh Brundage and his book A Fate Worse Than Hell. Hosts Peter Biello and Orlando Montoya examine how prisoner exchanges broke down, why Black Union soldiers were excluded, and how these decisions reshaped the war. This episode reveals the human cost of incarceration during the Civil War and its lasting political and emotional impact.

In this episode, Peter Biello and Orlando Montoya explore In the Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man by Tom Junod. They discuss the author’s complex relationship with his charismatic and deeply flawed father, and how family secrets shape identity. This conversation examines masculinity, memory, and the lasting influence of fathers across generations.

In this episode, Peter and Orlando explore Kin by Tayari Jones. They discuss how the friendship between Annie and Niecy anchors the novel, along with Jones’ ideas about story “budget,” point of view, and why the first pages of a novel are the most valuable real estate. Plus, Author Tayari Jones shares practical creative writing advice about storytelling, character building, and narrative structure. If you love literary fiction or want insight into how great novels are crafted, this conversation offers both.

Author Ace Atkins joins us to discuss Everybody Wants to Rule the World, a Cold War spy novel set in 1985 Atlanta. We explore how real espionage history, including the story of KGB defector Vitaly Yurchenko, inspired this coming-of-age thriller about a teenager who believes his mother’s boyfriend is a Russian spy. If you love spy fiction, 1980s nostalgia, and Atlanta history, this episode reveals the surprising secrets behind the novel.

In this episode, Peter and Orlando explore The Pain Brokers by Elizabeth Chamblee Burch, a gripping investigation into how call centers, lenders, lawyers, and doctors exploited women harmed by pelvic mesh implants. The book uncovers a scheme fueled by mass tort litigation, high-interest loans, and unnecessary surgeries that left victims financially and medically devastated. If you want to understand how America’s lawsuit industry can be manipulated, this conversation brings clarity and outrage in equal measure.

Peter and Orlando explore Rough House: A Father, a Son, and the Pursuit of Wrestling Glory, a deeply reported look at Georgia’s independent professional wrestling scene. Host Orlando Montoya explains how following a young wrestler from Barrow County changed his view of wrestling, revealing the physical risks, emotional toll, and fragile dreams behind the spectacle. If you are curious about indie wrestling, performance, and ambition, this conversation pulls back the curtain.

In this episode, we discuss Scarlett: Slavery’s Enduring Legacy in an American Family, a work of creative nonfiction that traces one white family’s deep ties to slavery on Georgia’s coast. By linking plantation history to present-day violence in Brunswick, the book shows how the legacy of slavery continues to shape life in Georgia today.

Explore Angels at the Gate by Atlanta author Sherri Joseph, a campus novel that blends coming-of-age, mystery, and class tension. Listen in as Peter and Orlando unpack a student’s fatal fall, the secrets that ripple through a Southern college, and why this story resonates with anyone shaped by their college years.

In this episode of Narrative Edge, you join hosts Peter Biello and Orlando Montoya to explore The Fight of His Life: Joe Louis’s Battle for Freedom During World War II by sports historians Johnny Smith of Georgia Tech and Randy Roberts. We trace how Joe Louis’s rise from boxing superstar to wartime goodwill ambassador collided with Jim Crow segregation, and how the postwar backlash against Black veterans helped push him toward more outspoken civil rights advocacy.

This episode explores Winning the Earthquake: How Jeannette Rankin Defied All Odds to Become the First Woman in Congress by historian Lorissa Rinehart. We trace Jeannette Rankin's path from a Montana ranch to Congress, her lonely votes against two world wars, and her decades of quiet work for peace on a small farm near Athens, Georgia. Along the way, you hear how this new biography brings to life a woman whose courage still speaks to your moment.

In this episode of Narrative Edge, you join Peter Biello and Orlando Montoya for a conversation about Dark Sisters, the new horror novel by Atlanta writer Kristi DeMeester. Set across the 1700s, the 1950s, and 2007 in and around Atlanta, the story follows women trapped in oppressive Christian communities and bound by a generational curse that causes their mouths to rot when they hide their true selves. You hear how DeMeester weaves folk horror, queer love, and questions of personal freedom into a Southern gothic that feels hauntingly close to home.

In this episode of Narrative Edge, you join hosts Peter Biello and Orlando Montoya for a deep dive into John T. Edge’s memoir House of Smoke: A Southerner Goes Searching for Home, a book that braids Southern food, family, and history into one candid narrative. Together, we explore how Edge, founding director of the Southern Foodways Alliance and host of the TV series TrueSouth, uses dishes from turnip greens to catfish stew to examine race, class, and belonging across the modern South. If you love Southern food writing, cultural history, and memoirs that are honest without being self-indulgent, this conversation will give you plenty to chew on.

Dive into Charles Sumner’s life and legacy, from his abolitionist roots in Boston to the “Crime Against Kansas” speech and the caning by Preston Brooks that galvanized the North. You hear how Sumner’s constitutional arguments shaped Republican thought, echoed in phrases like “freedom national, slavery sectional,” and how his ideas later surfaced in the Brown v. Board fight.

On this episode, Peter Biello and Orlando Montoya unpack Hot Desk by Atlanta author Laura Dickerman, a witty romantic comedy set inside rival New York publishing houses. You hear how a contested literary estate, a notorious twentieth-century “lion,” and a secret family connection collide with texting, Zoom, and office politics to test what it means to separate art from the artist. Stay for how the book’s dual timelines and workplace satire shape Ben and Rebecca’s love story.

Peter and Orlando talk with Georgia writer and longtime teacher Alan Caldwell to discuss his first poetry collection, The Only Verse. You hear Caldwell read “Running for No Reason” and we explore how his work faces depression, grief, marriage, and memory with clarity and care. We also trace his path from fiction to the Carrollton Just Poetry group and discuss how story and image power his poems.

This episode explores Masquerade by O.O. Sangoyomi, a sweeping historical novel that reframes the Persephone myth in a reimagined fifteenth-century West Africa. You’ll hear why Ododo, a young blacksmith from Timbuktu, is one of the podcast's most compelling protagonists and how palace intrigue, shifting loyalties, and questions of agency drive this story. Peter and Orlando talk setting, character, and the real history behind the fiction to help you decide if this book belongs on your list.

If we knew that Coca-Cola was one of the deadliest products in the American diet, would we keep drinking it? In this episode, journalist Murray Carpenter joins Peter and Orlando to uncover the story behind his book Sweet and Deadly. You learn how soda corporations spent decades funding research, building shadow networks, and spreading disinformation to obscure the links between sugary drinks and chronic disease. 

On this episode of Narrative Edge, Peter and Orlando dive into Colleen Oakley’s witty and fast-paced novel Jane and Dan at the End of the World. What begins as a tense dinner where Jane plans to ask for a divorce quickly turns into a chaotic hostage situation that feels ripped straight from the pages of her own failed book. With humor, heart, and unexpected twists, Oakley explores love, second chances, and what it takes to keep a marriage alive when the world feels like it’s falling apart.

Orlando Montoya and Peter Biello explore Spitfires by Becky Aikman, the story of American women who ferried aircraft for Britain’s Royal Air Force during World War II, including Georgia pilot Hazel Jane Raines, whose daring flights and survival stories reveal the courage and skill of the “Atta Girls.”

Michael Hardwick had no idea that when a police officer stood at his bedroom door on August 3, 1982, he would become a face of the gay rights movement. Arrested for sodomy, Hardwick sued for his right to privacy to the Supreme Court, even as the HIV/AIDS epidemic began to take its toll. When he lost, his era-defining case inspired a half-million people to protest, and the ruling became one of the most reviled of its time.

The Fantasies of Future Things is set in the rapidly changing landscape of Atlanta on the eve of the 1996 Olympics. On this episode of Narrative Edge, Peter and Orlando delve into this powerful debut novel, which tells the story of two Black men working for a real estate development firm that is responsible for uprooting the very communities they call home.

In this episode, Peter Biello and Orlando Montoya dive into Seven Islands of the Ocmulgee: River Stories by Gordon Johnston, a haunting collection of short stories set along Georgia’s Ocmulgee River. With themes of mystery, class, and transformation, the river becomes both setting and character in tales that linger long after they end.

LISTEN: In this episode of Narrative Edge, Peter and Orlando explore the Georgia story at the heart of Brad Snyder’s book You Can’t Kill a Man Because of the Books He Reads. The book follows Angelo Herndon, a Black labor activist arrested in Atlanta during the 1930s for possessing political literature. His case, rooted in Georgia law and courtroom drama, helped shape the national understanding of First Amendment rights.

In this episode, Peter Biello and Orlando Montoya dive into In the Rhododendrons: A Memoir with Appearances by Virginia Woolf by Heather Christle. The memoir blends personal trauma, family history, and literary obsession, as Christle explores her past through the lens of Virginia Woolf’s life and work. The hosts discuss Christle’s emotional journey, from revisiting the site of a childhood assault to breaking into the grounds of a historic house tied to Woolf’s novel Orlando. It’s a thoughtful, surprising read about healing, memory, and the power of art to make sense of pain.

Peter Biello and Orlando Montoya explore The Way You Want to Be Loved by Aruni Kashyap, a short story collection that tackles identity, displacement, and resilience. Through conversations about folklore, campus life, and queer love, the episode highlights how Kashyap’s writing confronts cultural blind spots with depth and sensitivity.  

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Levering Lewis turns his lens inward in The Stained Glass Window, tracing his family's journey from slavery to the Great Migration and beyond. Hosts Peter Biello and Orlando Montoya explore how personal history and public record intertwine to reveal the deeper currents of the American story.

In this episode, Peter Biello and Orlando Montoya explore Love Sick Century, a poetry collection by Atlanta writer Elly Bookman that finds meaning in life’s everyday contrasts. Through poems that blend the personal and political, the hosts reflect on how Bookman’s work captures both the beauty and complexity of being human.

Inspired by a real-life scandal that was shocking even for the tumultuous Roaring Twenties, this captivating novel tells the story of a pioneering Black journalist, a secret interracial marriage among the New York elite, and the sensational divorce case that ignited an explosive battle over race and class. Join Peter and Orlando as they dive into this riveting tale from Savannah resident Denny Bryce. 

Inspired by painting, poetry, and jazz, poet Tony Whedon says he "can't wait to get to that computer every morning to see what's going to happen." Join Peter and Orlando as they explore Blue Ray, a collection of poems by Tony Whedon of Darien, Ga. 

Aspiring musician Ruby Tucker has had enough of her small rural town and dysfunctional family. But a falling out with her best friend and bandmate has killed her dreams of escaping and making it big in the Atlanta punk scene. Evil in Me is bestselling author Brom's novel of possession, damnation, and rock-n-roll where one woman must get the world singing in order to save her soul.    

When Annie Brown dies suddenly, her husband, her children, and her closest friend are left to find a way forward without the woman who has been the lynchpin of all their lives. Recorded live at the Savannah Book Festival, this special bonus episode of Narrative Edge features Peter Biello's full conversation with author Anna Quindlen. 

A groundbreaking account of Sherman’s march to the Sea — the critical Civil War campaign that destroyed the Confederacy — told for the first time from the perspective of the tens of thousands of enslaved people who fled to the Union lines and transformed Sherman’s march into the biggest liberation event in American history.

Peter and Orlando explore this rich, intimate biography, from critically acclaimed author Peter Ames Carlin. This book looks beyond the sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll to open a window into the fascinating lives of four college friends — Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, and Bill Berry — who stuck together at any cost, until the end.

Killer Mike, a Black man from Atlanta, Ga., and El-P, a white man from Brooklyn, N.Y., have transformed what should have been the twilight of their careers as rappers into their biggest spotlight yet. Known as the hip-hop duo Run The Jewels, they have headlined festivals worldwide, become action figures and Marvel comic book characters, spearheaded a worldwide countercultural movement, and played a significant role in the last two presidential elections.

At nine years old, on her first visit to a museum, Emily fell in love with Breakfast, a painting by Henri Matisse. Now a single mother, she lives in the world of art and can barely find time for her two daughters, much less for Mark, the man she loves. Her days are a jumble—she’s lost the thread of her life—but a contest at the museum where she’s the registrar gives her hope. The Art of Her Life shows the power of art to transform an ordinary life.

Peter and Orlando discuss this powerful memoir from Neesha Powell-Ingabire. In it, she chips away at coastal Georgia’s facade of beaches and golden marshes to recover under-told Black history alongside personal and family stories.

Unstuck is the inspiring firsthand account of Stephanie Stuckey’s rise to CEO upon suddenly acquiring her family’s beloved yet struggling brand, which had become a fading memory for most Americans. Peter and Orlando discuss this captivating and inspiring memoir of the beloved, Georgia-based roadside icon. 

Athens resident Rebecca McCarthy creates an intimate portrait of Norman Maclean, drawing on her long friendship with the author from when she became a student at the University of Chicago through the rest of his life. Norman Maclean: A Life of Letters and Rivers is a well-researched glimpse into the life of a compelling author that benefits from the insights provided by the author's personal accounts and interactions.  

In this episode, Peter and Orlando explore the comprehensive, authoritative biography of civil rights icon John Lewis, “The Conscience of the Congress.” The 700-page volume draws on interviews with Lewis and approximately 275 others who knew him at various stages of his life and never-before-used FBI files and documents. 

Peter and Orlando discuss Erin Carlyle’s Girl at the End of the World, a collection of poetry that considers the complex grief of a parent lost to Opioids. In the book, the speaker works through her father's death with a sharp focus on place, expanding into the realms of science fiction and mythmaking.     

We're all a little bit broken, aren't we? Young widow Tracie Shaw may be more than most. She spends her days hidden away making beautiful treasures out of other people's trash. Her life changes when she finds someone's abandoned ashes in a storage bin auction. When she meets a woman who might have a clue as to where the ashes came from and what they mean, her life turns upside down. 

In this episode of Narrative Edge, hosts Peter Biello and Orlando Montoya explore Flight of the Wild Swan by Melissa Pritchard, a novelization of Florence Nightingale’s life. They discuss Nightingale's pioneering role in nursing, her complex personal journey, and the challenges she faced during the Crimean War. The hosts delve into her groundbreaking use of statistics to improve healthcare and her intense dedication to her calling, while reflecting on the novel’s portrayal of her remarkable legacy.

LISTEN: The coming-of-age story of Philbet, gay and living with a disability, battles bullying, ignorance, and disdain as he makes his way in life as an outsider in the Deep South — before finding acceptance in unlikely places. Fueled by tomato sandwiches and green milkshakes, and obsessed with cars, Philbet struggles with life and love as a gay boy in rural Georgia. Join Peter, Orlando, and author Jeffrey Dale Lofton as they share some personal insights and reflections on this impactful story.

The 1987 murder of Lita McClinton Sullivan sent shockwaves through the affluent Atlanta suburb of Buckhead. The neighborhood, with its stately mansions and top-tier schools, was not the kind of place where women were gunned down in cold blood in broad daylight. In A Devil Went Down to Georgia, author Deb Miller Landau details the shocking events that followed Lita’s murder in 1987, including the surprising lack of evidence, racial bias in the justice system, and the international manhunt for Lita’s killer. Full of twists and turns, legal battles, and the McClinton family’s unrelenting dedication to justice, Landau's rigorous investigation is the first complete account of this tragic American crime.

Jessica Leigh Lebos describes herself as a writer, adopted Southerner, anti-socialite and Camellia Thief. On this episode of Narrative Edge, Orlando introduces Peter to the award-winning local columnist and community builder who has published two popular books, Savannah Sideways and The Camellia Thief & Other Tales.

Winner of the AWP Prize for the Novel, Parul Kapur’s "Inside the Mirror" is set in the aftermath of colonialism, as an impoverished India struggles to remake itself into a modern state. Jaya’s story encompasses art, history, political revolt, love, and women’s ambition to seize their own power. In this episode, Peter and Orlando discuss this relatable and timeless pursuit of dreams by Atlanta's Kapur.

In this epic novel, New York Times bestselling author Denene Millner explores the lives of three generations of women tied together by love, hope, dreams, ambition — and family secrets. Potent, poetic, powerful, told with deep love, and spanning from the Great Migration to the civil unrest of the 1960s to the quest for women’s equality in the early 2000s, Denene Millner’s beautifully wrought novel explores three women’s intimate, and often complicated, struggle with what it truly means to be family.

Violence haunts 1915 Atlanta and so does the golem a group of girls creates. A dark, lyrical blend of historical fiction and magical realism, "The Curators" examines an underexplored event in American history through unlikely eyes. All of Atlanta is obsessed with the two-year-long trial and subsequent lynching of Jewish factory superintendent Leo Frank in 1915. None more so than thirteen-year-old Ana Wulff and her friends, who take history into their own hands—quite literally—when they use dirt from Ana’s garden to build and animate a golem in Frank’s image.

Join hosts Orlando Montoya and Peter Biello as they dive into the fascinating life of Asa 'Buddy' Candler Jr., the eccentric son of Coca-Cola founder Asa Candler, in this episode of Narrative Edge. Discover the bizarre yet captivating story of Buddy Candler, whose life of inherited wealth led to a series of spectacular ventures and notorious failures, from racing cars and airplanes to launching a prep school on a ship and contributing to Atlanta's major institutions. Sara Butler, author of Fortune and Folly: The Weird and Wonderful Life of an Eccentric Millionaire, shares insights into Buddy’s audacious ideas and the lasting impact of his unconventional legacy.