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Interfaith minister Becker’s Heartwood (Flatiron, May 11.) uses her experiences in hospice work to look deeply into what it means to be mortal.

What made you want to write a novel? This is a love story, and it is also an ode to the places that have formed a lot of who I am and the art that provided me with solace in times of loss and joy. With photography and music, there’s something sensual in that kind of work. You can look at a photo and have an immediate reaction, or you can hear music and feel something. I was trying to transcribe that kind of sensuality toward literature. Art in general almost becomes a third character to accom...

In Reopening Muslim Minds (St. Martin’s Essentials, Apr.), New York Times opinion writer Akyol argues for an Islamic universalism.

By Brooke Warner | Jan 08, 2021 It is not uncommon for authors of memoir to wrestle with whether to publish a book as memoir or fiction. “It’s all true,” an author I’m publishing in the spring told me on a phone call intended to sort out this very question, “but I took some liberties.” “So it’s fiction,” I concluded. “But it could be memoir,” she countered. “I could easily make those parts true.” She told me that she’d intended for the book to be aut...