This week we visit Kristen Gentry in Louisville, Kentucky.

Kristen is the author of Mama Said, longlisted for the 2024 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection. She received her M.F.A. from Indiana University. Her award-winning fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and appeared in Electric Literature, Crab Orchard Review, and other journals. She is a VONA and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference alumna, former Director of Creative Writing at SUNY Geneseo, and a member of the inaugural Poets & Writers publicity incubator for debut writers. She lives and writes in her hometown of Louisville, Kentucky.

For more about Kristen and Mama Said: kristengentry.com

Kristen's Books on the Bed:

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf by Ntozake Shange

Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by ZZ Packer

Gorilla, My Love by Toni Cade Bambara

Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts by Crystal Wilkinson

Matt's Gifts for Kristen:

Rattlebone by Maxine Clair

Fifth Born by Zelda Lockhart

This week we visit Gerry Wilson in Jackson, Mississippi.

A seventh generation Mississippian, Gerry Wilson grew up in the red clay hills of the north that she writes about in her debut novel, THAT PINSON GIRL, released by Regal House Publishing in February 2024. A story, “Tell Me Anything,” appeared in Persimmon Tree in June 2024. Another story, “A Language of Their Own,” was runner-up for The Porch Fiction Prize 2024. “Life Line” was a finalist in decembermagazine’s Curt Johnson Prose Award for Fiction and was published in december in the spring of 2023. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous other journals. Gerry is a 2025 Mississippi Arts Commission Literary Artist Fellowship recipient.

Gerry has a new Substack publication, “Stories I’m Old Enough to Tell,” where she writes—well—basically whatever is on her mind, but mostly about her writing journey.

For more about Gerry: gerrywilson.com

Gerry's Books on the Bed:

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

Can't Quit You, Baby by Ellen Douglas

Music of the Swamp by Lewis Nordan

A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor

Light in August by William Faulkner

A Curtain of Green & Other Stories by Eudora Welty

Matt's Gifts for Gerry:

The Five Wounds by Kirstin Valdez Quade

Room Swept Home by Remica Bingham-Risher

This week we visit Natachee Momaday Gray in Coyote, New Mexico. Natachee is a New Mexican poet and artist whose work focuses on the melding of art and myth, ancestry and nostalgia, food and prayer, glamour, frivolity, and time. A native of Santa Fe, she has many artistic talents as a poet, hand fashioned bookmaker, fiction writer, Chanteuse, and film maker. In her uniquely creative voice, she draws on her Kiowa and Apache heritage to create compelling stories that transcend designation.

Her debut poetry collection, Silver Box, can be found here and on my Staff Picks shelf at City Lights Bookstore (Sylva, NC).

Natachee's Books on the Bed:

The Ancient Child by N. Scott Momaday

Martin & Meditations on the South Valley by Jimmy Santiago Baca

Historic Cookery: Authentic New Mexican Food by Fabiola de Baca Gilbert

Hazards of Grace by Gary Worth Moody

Earth Keeper: Reflections on the American Land by N. Scott Momaday

A Book of Days by Patti Smith

Matt's gifts for Natachee:

The Animals of My Earth School by Mildred Kiconco Barya

Moonrise Over New Jessup by Jamila Minnicks