This week we visit with Nathaniel Roy in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

Nathaniel Roy is a book designer, collage maker, photo taker, self-publisher, and a few other things.

He's a graphic designer who specializes in book design, but for the right cause, he'll design just about anything. He's keenly interested in local, independent, and non-profit projects and is currently an in-house designer at the Ann Arbor District Library and available for freelance opportunities. His clients include Simon & Schuster, W. W. Norton, Wayne State University Press, University of Texas Press, Penn State University Press, Minnesota Historical Society Press.

HIRE THIS GUY: nathanielroy.com

Nate's Books on the Bed:

The Clothing of Books by Jhumpa Lahiri

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

The Dark Interval: Letters on Loss, Grief, and Transformation by Rainer Maria Rilke

Letters of Note: An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience by Shaun Usher

Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, Its Chaotic Founding... Its Purloined Basketball Team, and the Dream of Becoming a World-class Metropolis by Sam Anderson

Matt's Gifts for Nate:

The Salt Stones: Seasons of a Shepherd's Life by Helen Whybrow

American Bulk by Emily Mester

A History of Half-Birds by Caroline Harper New

This week we visit with Ashleigh Bryant Phillips in Asheville, North Carolina.

Ashleigh Bryant Phillips is from rural Woodland, North Carolina. She's a graduate of Meredith College and earned an MFA from the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. Her debut short story collection Sleepovers is the winner of the 2019 C. Michael Curtis Short Story Book Prize, selected by Lauren Groff. Her stories have appeared in The Oxford American, The Paris Review and others.

For more on Ashleigh: ashleighbryantphillips.com

Ashleigh's Books on the Bed:

Will You Please Be Quiet, Please by Raymond Carver

Portraits and Dreams: Photographs and Stories by Children of the Appalachians 1976-1982, 2009-2018 by Wendy Ewald

Bambi by Felix Salten, translated by Damion Searls

Free Day by Inès Cagnati, translated by Liesl Schillinger

The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross

The Royal Diaries: Cleopatra VII: Daughter of the Nile, Egypt, 57 B.C. by Kristiana Gregory

Matt's Gifts for Ashleigh:

Where the Roots Reach for Water: A Personal & Natural History of Melancholia by Jeffery Smith

Reading Reconstruction: Sherwood Bonner and the Literature of the Post-Civil War South by Kathryn B. McKee

Room Swept Home by Remica Bingham-Risher

This week we visit with Nilo Tabrizy in Brooklyn, New York.

Nilo Tabrizy is the co-author (with Fatemeh Jamalpour) of For the Sun After Long Nights, a moving exploration of the 2022 women-led protests in Iran, as told through the interwoven stories of two Iranian journalists. She is an investigative reporter at The Washington Post working for the visual forensics team, where she covers Iran using open-source methods. Previously, she was a video journalist at The New York Times, covering Iran, race and policing, abortion access, and more. She is an Emmy nominee and the 2022 winner of the Front Page Award for Online Investigative Reporting. She received an M.S. in journalism from Columbia University and a B.A. in political science and French from the University of British Columbia.

For more on Nilo: ntabrizy.com

Nilo's Books on the Bed:

Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

Women's Voices from Kurdistan: A Selection of Kurdish Poetry (edited by Farangis Ghaderi, Clémence Scalbert Yücel, Yaser Hassan Ali)

Puerto Rico: A National History by Jorell Meléndez-Badillo

An Anthology of the Experiences of Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Victims (Third Collection) by Hiroshima Association for the Success of the Atomic Bomb Exhibition

Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginzburg (must-read afterword by Peg Boyers!)

They Said They Wanted Revolution: A Memoir of My Parents by Neda Toloui-Semnani

Matt's Gifts for Nilo:

As Seeds We Grow: Student Reflections on Resilience (edited by Elise Boulanger)

Heating the Outdoors and Between the Moments: Canadian Aboriginal Voices by Marie-Andrée Gill

Daughters of Palestine by Leyla K. King