(This podcast contains explicit content.) A master of dark satire and a purveyor of quick, witty language, Sam Lipsyte "shows off the prose equivalent of three chords on a one-string guitar" (Kirkus Reviews). His short story collection Venus Drive was named one of the top 25 books of the year by the Voice Literary Supplement, and his latest novel, Home Land, was awarded the first annual Believer Book Award and was a 2005 New York Times Notable Book. In The Ask, development officer Milo Burke struggles to keep his job by courting a former classmate for a donation.

Adam Haslett’s first collection of short stories, You Are Not a Stranger Here, was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize and won the 2003 L.L. Winship PEN New England Award. A reviewer in the New York Times Book Review called the collection the “herald of a phenomenal career.” Union Atlantic, Haslett’s debut novel, tells of the legal struggle between a banker and a retired schoolteacher over rights to build on land that the schoolteacher’s grandfather donated to her town. Characterizing Haslett’s stories in a Salon.com review, Laura Miller wrote, “The twist in an Adam Haslett story is often a revelation about who is actually the stronger in a pair of characters.”