"...I’m a novelist who wants to be a musician. This is obvious from all my books but this one in particular."
Anna Dorn shared a playlist for her novel American Spirits at Largehearted Boy largeheartedboy.com/2026/04/19/a...
"'You're about to get hit by a hurricane.' That's the best advice I got about what it's like when a baby makes landfall in your life."
Eric LeMay shared a playlist for his essay collection The First 649 at Largehearted Boy largeheartedboy.com/2026/04/17/e...
"I do most of my writing in coffee shops, so my playlists are often selected by baristas."
Zach Powers shared a playlist for his novel The Migraine Diaries at Largehearted Boy largeheartedboy.com/2026/04/16/z...
"The music herein may take you a place you may not want to go: to a graveside perhaps, or a deathbed, or simply to a wasted day."
Pamela Ryder shared a playlist for her novel Daybreak Birdsong Always Wakes Him at Largehearted Boy largeheartedboy.com/2026/04/15/p...
"...I wanted this list to capture something else — something deliberately accessible. Something glossy. Something you’d hear leaking from a car window at night. Something catchy enough to carry a body."
Luke Goebel shared a playlist for his novel Kill Dick largeheartedboy.com/2026/04/14/l...
"I read that Daniel Day-Lewis would listen to Eminem’s 'The Way I Am' every day on the set of Gangs of New York to get amped up for his role as Bill the Butcher..."
Edward Salem shared a playlist for his collection Intifadas largeheartedboy.com/2026/04/12/e...
“These songs were routes to the elemental, helping me get down to different scales of existence and see through the lens of a French Bulldog...”
Morgan Day shared a playlist for her debut novel The Oldest Bitch Alive largeheartedboy.com/2026/04/10/m...
"My new collection of short fiction, King the Wonder Dog: and Other Stories...is my love letter to the healing power of animals."
Eleanor Lerman shared a playlist for her story collection King the Wonder Dog at Largehearted Boy largeheartedboy.com/2026/04/08/e...
"To write incisively about events that happened forty to fifty years ago, finding music to evoke those times was key."
Stephanie Weaver shared a playlist for her memoir Bitter, Sweet at Largehearted Boy largeheartedboy.com/2026/04/07/s...
"People ask me if I ever get writers' block, and I say 'Never!' If you feel like you can't get anything creative done, throw on 'Born to Go' by Hawkwind."
Ed Lin shared a playlist for his novel The Dead Can't Make a Living at Largehearted Boy largeheartedboy.com/2026/04/07/e...
"When I lived in Sac City, Iowa, in my early twenties, the time in my life that Surety draws from, I was in the habit of starting a new playlist on the first of each month."
Anna Zumbahlen shared a playlist for her poetry collection Surety at Largehearted Boy largeheartedboy.com/2026/04/06/a...
"Miranda Lambert and I might have made quite a team back in the day when I still drank tequila, smoked roll-your-own cigarettes, and danced with strangers."
Patricia Henley shared a playlist for her story collection Apple & Palm at Largehearted Boy largeheartedboy.com/2026/04/03/p...
"I wrote red, white, and blues because I believe poetry can still tell the truth when other forms have failed us."
Sean Murphy shared a playlist for his poetry collection red, white, and blues at Largehearted Boy largeheartedboy.com/2026/04/02/s...
"I love loud music in desert bars, especially on a jukebox, and throughout the '90s, which was when I worked on this book, such establishments were plentiful."
Deanne Stillman shared a playlist on the 25th anniversary of the publication of Twentynine Palms largeheartedboy.com/2026/04/01/d...
"It is my great pleasure to share with you the music that soothed me and influenced me, that gave me the confidence to listen to my inner voice."
Lisa Lee shared a playlist for her debut novel American Han at Largehearted Boy largeheartedboy.com/2026/03/31/l...
"The book is divided into five sections of three essays each, and I’ve picked one song (and occasionally a bonus track) to accompany each essay."
Elizabeth Zaleski shared a playlist for her essay collection The Trouble with Loving Poets at Largehearted Boy largeheartedboy.com/2026/03/29/e...
"Music is woven throughout the book, as it is woven through my life..."
Alicia Jo Rabins shared a playlist for her memoir, When We're Born We Forget Everything, at Largehearted Boy largeheartedboy.com/2026/03/27/a...
"I think Horses is a response to pressure. I imagine the book opening with sound, disrupted, distorted, but oddly in sync as it rises slowly from the dark."
Jake Skeets shared a playlist for his poetry collection Horses at Largehearted Boy largeheartedboy.com/2026/03/26/j...
"The sonic quirk started in St. Louis, in my early teens. As the act of stringing sentences together moved beyond pleasure into something earnest, even sacred, it became harder to write without music..."
Matthew Pitt shared a playlist for his novel Tear Here largeheartedboy.com/2026/03/25/m...
"Because my beautiful doomed daughter Anna loved music so much—it was her balm, her joy—music is a thread through my memoir, A Ribbon for Your Hair."
Stephen Policoff shared a playlist for his memoir A Ribbon For Your Hair at Largehearted Boy largeheartedboy.com/2026/03/24/s...
"The narrator of HOVEL is trying to defamiliarize the familiar world; she’s trying to see the world anew by probing it from as many strange angles as possible."
Ailsa Ross shared a playlist for her debut novel Hovel at Largehearted Boy largeheartedboy.com/2026/03/22/a...
"Concentric Macroscope is about transmissions—about radio waves and about communication, what’s said and unsaid. It’s about the transmission of information..."
Kelly Krumrie shared a playlist for Concentric Macroscope at Largehearted Boy largeheartedboy.com/2026/03/20/k...
"...the issue is maybe that I love music so much that sometimes I can’t cope with it. I am, like a lot of elder millennials, arrested in the '90s indie scene I first fell in love with."
Luke Kennard shared a playlist for his novel Black Bag at Largehearted Boy largeheartedboy.com/2026/03/19/l...
"...the book’s method is musical: questions of tone, rhythm, pitch, and volume drive the unnamed first-person narrator’s torrential, obsessive voice."
Wayne Koestenbaum shared a playlist for his novel My Lover, the Rabbi at Largehearted Boy largeheartedboy.com/2026/03/18/w...
"OK, I can’t I say I recommend this as traditional playlist in the style of old mix tapes where you listen to ‘em all the way through— unless you’re down with some serious genre hopping!"
Casey Scieszka shared a playlist for her debut novel The Fountain largeheartedboy.com/2026/03/17/c...
"I had far more training as a violinist than as a writer, and the curious forms of my fiction and the rhythm of my sentences are best understood as coming from a musicality expressed through words."
Angela Woodward shared a playlist at Largehearted Boy largeheartedboy.com/2026/03/15/a...
"The stories are filled with nostalgia for a simpler time, so this playlist reflects a ‘90s and Aughts sensibility."
Kim Samek shared a playlist for her story collection I Am the Ghost Here at Largehearted Boy largeheartedboy.com/2026/03/13/k...
"Writing fiction has been surprisingly transformative to my relationship with music, though, because I use playlists to work through questions of character and theme..."
Avery Curran shared a playlist for her debut novel Spoiled Milk at Largehearted Boy largeheartedboy.com/2026/03/12/a...
"So, if you’re heart-broken, filled with rage over your disappointing ex and his bad behavior, here’s a playlist to see you through."
Lisa Unger shared a playlist for her novel Served Him Right at Largehearted Boy largeheartedboy.com/2026/03/11/l...
"Music is such a time capsule for me, and this playlist reminds me of the person I was in 2001, as well as the people I wrote about in my forthcoming book."
Jung Yun shared a playlist for her novel All the World Can Hold at Largehearted Boy largeheartedboy.com/2026/03/10/j...