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Podcast: Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry
Episode: Jesse Ball : How to Set a Fire and Why
Description: Jesse Ball’s blistering novel tells the story of a teenage girl who has lost everything—and will burn anything. Lucia’s father is dead, her mother in a mental hospital, and now she’s been kicked out of school—again. She makes her way through the world with only a book, a zippo lighter, a pocketful of stolen licorice, a biting wit, and the striking intelÂligence that she tries to hide.
“Lucia details a philosophy that smartly parallels the novel’s own–namely, that writing literature is, like arson, an act of creation and destruction . . . A song of teenage...