Ken Kalfus | 2 A.M. in Little America

In conversation with Nathaniel Popkin The ''rare writer who can combine keen, grounded, psychological observation with visionary headiness'' (Salon), Ken Kalfus is the author of the novels The Commissariat of Enlightenment, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; A Disorder Peculiar to the Country, a National Book Award finalist; and Equilateral. His short story collections include Coup de Foudre, Thirst, and PU-239 and Other Russian Fantasies. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Pew Fellowship for the Arts, Kalfus's works have been translated into more than 10 languages. In 2 A.M. in Little America, Kalfus imagines a plausibly dystopian future in which young people from the United States are forced to emigrate to other countries because of large-scale civil unrest. Nathaniel Popkin's many books of fiction and nonfiction include Everything is Borrowed, The Year of the Return, and To Reach the Spring: From Complicity to Consciousness in the Age of Eco-Crisis. He is co-editor of the literary anthology Who Will Speak for America?, was the fiction editor of Cleaver Magazine, and the writer/editor of the Emmy-winning documentary film series Philadelphia: The Great Experiment.  (recorded 5/11/2022)