Castle Hill Author Talks is a podcast of lively, smart, interviews with today's most exciting writers. Host Karen Dukess, the best-selling author of Welcome to Murder Week and The Last Book Party, chats with authors you may know and authors she thinks you ought to know. A project of Truro Center for the Arts on Cape Cod, the Castle Hill Author Talks are for readers and writers. It's a podcast that will guide you and inspire you, help you choose your next great read, and might even spur you to finish your own novel. For more from Karen Dukess, follow her at karendukess.substack.com or @karendukess on instagram. Find more on her website www.karendukess.com
Deesha Philyaw on The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman
In The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman, prize-winning short story writer Deesha Philyaw tells the outrageous, daring, and ultimately triumphant story of Scharisse Freeman, the wife of a popular and powerful megachurch pastor who upends her charmed “rags-to-Rolex” life when her secret past comes roaring into the spotlight. It's a satirical wild ride of a novel that packs an emotional punch, touching on many of the same issues Philyaw addressed in The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, but in a radically different package. Philyaw joins us to talk about the long path to finishing this novel, lying pastors and the lengths they'll go to protect the church at the expense of women and girls, and why she believes that books that are funny and sexy can be serious too.
1 Sept 2026
A True Story About Fake AI
This week, host Karen Dukess tells an unfortunately true story about what AI fabricated about her and a recently published novel. After an end-of-summer break, we'll be back with more author interviews later this month.
18 Aug 2026
Emilee Hackney on ALL THAT'S UNSEEN
In her instant NYT bestselling memoir, Emilee Hackney offers a blisteringly honest, loving and unflinching portrait of her native Appalachia and the tumultuous adolescence that took her from radical Pentecostalism to the classrooms of Harvard. Emilee joins us to talk about the nuances of the Appalachian region and people, the life of submission and repentance she would have had if not for a shocking discovery about her fiancé, and how writing helped her find her voice and her place in the world.
4 Aug 2026
Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney on LAKE EFFECT
The NYTimes bestselling author (The Nest, Good Company) discusses her fascination with the 1970s, when divorce came to her hometown of Rochester, New York: why it's great to be a late-blooming author; and what she does when the writing starts to feel like a slog.
21 Jul 2026
NYT Bestselling Author Annabel Monaghan
Annabel Monaghan, the NYT best-selling author of such runaway hits as Dolly All The Time and Nora Goes Off Script, is the queen of smart, witty, grown-up romance. In this wide-ranging interview, she talks about why she loves writing about women in their late thirties; how she copes with that inevitable panicky stage when her drafts feel disastrous; the novel she’d love to write, but never will; and the rule-breaking book that first made her think she could be a writer.
7 Jul 2026
Shannon Sanders on THE GREAT WHEREVER
A brilliant and gripping debut, Shannon Sanders' The Great Wherever is about a heartbroken and financially strapped millennial who inherits her father's share of a Tennessee farm purchased by her great-grandfather, one of the first Black landowners in his community. Shannon joins us to talk about the family farm that inspired the novel, the value of having a homestead even if no one lives there, and why the novel is narrated by a gossipy clan of family ghosts.
23 Jun 2026
Heather Abel on The Emilys
Truly a novel for our times, The Emilys is about motherhood, friendship, marriage, and community and how to navigate these things in a world that is forcing us to reckon with the physical environment in unsettling ways. If you're looking for a smart, speculative, literary page-turner, this episode is for you.Heather Abel’s second novel, The Emilys (Random House), came out inJune, 2026. Her debut novel, The Optimistic Decade (Algonquin) was published in May, 2018. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, the Los Angeles Times, and the online Paris Review among other places. She worked as a reporter and editor in California and Colorado before moving to New York where she received an MFA in fiction writing from the New School University. She lives in Northampton, MA and currently teaches creative writing at Smith College. Follow her on instagram here and find her website here.
9 Jun 2026
Chris Hayes on The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource
If you’ve ever bemoaned the lure of your I-phone, you’re not alone. In this interview, Emmy-winning MSNOW host Chris Hayes explains how our attention is being extracted against our will for corporate gain. His NYT best-selling book The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource is a powerful reckoning with how the assault from attention capitalism on our minds and our hearts has reordered our politics and the very fabric of our society. This episode was recorded as a live zoom interview in February 2026.
26 May 2026
The Kindness of Strangers with Emma Garman
London 1953: A boarding house, a dead body, and so many secrets. Reading Emma Garman's debut novel, The Kindness of Strangers, is like discovering a forgotten classic from the 1950s that was written with a surprisingly modern sensibility. An ingeniously plotted and moving story, this one's a must for mystery lovers.
12 May 2026
Christina Baker Kline on THE FOURSOME
Christina Baker Kline’s THE FOURSOME is a riveting novel based on the true story of the author’s distant relatives, sisters in 19th-century North Carolina who married conjoined twins, Chang and Eng Bunker, with whom they had 21 children. Christina Baker Kline joins us to discuss how she blended imagination and historical research, why she thinks this is ultimately a novel about slavery and complicity, and how she tackled the daunting issue of writing about the sisters’ intimate lives with their conjoined husbands.
28 Apr 2026
Virginia Evans on The Correspondent
Virginia Evans’ debut novel, THE CORRESPONDENT, was the breakout novel of 2025, and is now clocking 25 consecutive weeks on The New York Times bestseller list. In honor of the one-year anniversary of its publication, we’re running this live interview from last year, in which Virginia talks about why she wrote a novel in letters, how she survived years of rejection, and what inspired her to create her retiree protagonist, the prickly but very funny Sybil van Antwerp.
24 Apr 2026
John Kenney on I See You've Called in Dead
John Kenney may not consider himself a humor writer, but his novel about a divorced obituary writer who accidentally posts his own obituary is very funny. In this interview, Kenney talks about why he loves writing about “middle-aged, slightly broken men,” the role of humor in coping with grief, how he became a contributor to The New Yorker after years of trying, and what contemporary novel he’s read four times and will probably read again.
14 Apr 2026
Welcome to The Castle Hill Author Talks!
Welcome to The Castle Hill Author Talks, a podcast celebrating great writers and great books. I'm your host, Karen Dukess, a bestselling author and a complete and total bookworm. For each episode, I interview a writer with a new book, maybe one you've heard about, and definitely one I think you should know about. My interviews are lively and fun with no spoilers. They're for readers and for writers. This is a podcast that will guide you and inspire you, helping you choose your next great read and maybe even spurring you to get on with your own writing. The Castle Hill Author Talks are a project of Truro Center for the Arts on Cape Cod. I like to say that they're one of the few good things to come out of the pandemic. They started on Zoom in 2021 when authors found themselves unable to go on tour to promote their books. Since then, we've had great conversations with an amazing lineup of bestselling and prize-winning authors. We love talking about books, and we have a great lineup of author interviews coming. We hope you'll join the conversation
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