Kirstin Valdez Quade’s most recent book is the novel The Five Wounds (W.W. Norton & Co., 2021), which Kirkus Reviews called “a brilliant meditation on love and redemption.” She is the author of the prize-winning short story collection Night at the Fiestas (W.W. Norton & Co., 2015), winner of the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize and a “5 Under 35” award from the National Book Foundation. It was a New York Times Notable Book, and was named a best book of 2015 by the San Francisco Chronicle and the American Library Association. Quade is also the recipient of the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award and the 2013 Narrative Prize. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Narrative, Guernica, The Southern Review, The Best American Short Stories, and The O. Henry Prize Stories. She has received fellowships from Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony, as well as a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation.

NADIA OWUSU is a Ghanaian and Armenian-American writer and urbanist. Her first book, Aftershocks, A Memoir, topped many most-anticipated and best book of the year lists, including The New York Times, Vogue, TIME, Vulture, and the BBC. It was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice. 

Nadia is the recipient of a 2019 Whiting Award. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The New York Times, The Lily, Orion, Granta, The Paris Review Daily, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, Slate, Catapult, Bon Appétit, Travel + Leisure, and others.

Kirstin Valdez Quade on The Five Wounds with Nadia Owusu