Welcome to the Jennyverse.

The release of every new chapter in the serialization of What the Dead Can Say will be accompanied by a brief audio excerpt, each one read by a different author. And so, as the weeks pass, the Jennyverse Chorus of voices will continue to grow.

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Chapter 1, "Jenny, Interrupted" excerpt: read by Mary Cappello
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Mary Cappello, a queer nonfictionist, former Guggenheim and Berlin Prize Fellow, is the author of seven books.


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Chapter 2, "The Daily Willa" excerpt: read by Kate McCahill
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Kate McCahill is the author of Patagonian Road: A Year Alone through Latin America. She teaches writing and chairs the English department at the Santa Fe Community College in New Mexico. 


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Chapter 3, "Jenny, Invisible Friend" excerpt: read by Alizah Holstein
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Alizah Holstein is the author of My Roman History (Viking Press). She holds an MFA in Creative Writing & Literary Translation from Vermont College of Fine Arts’ “International MFA” program, and a PhD in medieval Italian history from Cornell University.


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Chapter 4, "Windows" excerpt: read by Samuel Harps
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Samuel Harps is an award-winning playwright, with recent productions on Captain Paul Cuffe, and playwright William Henry Brown, who created the first known all-black theater company established in New York in 1821. Samuel is the artistic director of Shades Repertory Theater.


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Chapter 5, "Jenny, Sliver" excerpt: read by Katherine Scott Nelson
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Katherine Scott Nelson (Scott, they/them) writes fiction and creative nonfiction. Scott’s novella, Have You Seen Me, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards. They have an MFA in creative writing from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and their work has been featured in Brevity, Confrontation and elsewhere. Born and raised in the Chicago area, Scott lives in Los Angeles.


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Chapter 6, "Rewind" excerpt: read by Richard Hoffman
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Richard Hoffman is the author of nine books, including the Massachusetts Book Award winning Noon until Night, and the recent People Once Real. He is Emeritus Writer-in-Residence at Emerson College and nonfiction editor of Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices.


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Chapter 7, "Jenny, Cartographer" excerpt: read by Janice Harrington
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Janice N. Harrington is the author of four collections of poetry, including the award-winning Even the Hollow My Body Made Is Gone, the newly released Yard Show (BOA Editions), and eight celebrated children’s books. A Cave Canem and Guggenheim Fellow, she teaches creative writing at the University of Illinois.


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Chapter 8, "Grrrls Underground" excerpt: read by Michele Morano
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Michele Morano is the author of the essay collections Grammar Lessons: Translating a Life in Spain, and Like Love. Her work has appeared in Best American Essays, WaveForm: Twenty-First-Century Essays by Women, Fourth Genre, Brevity, and many others. She teaches creative writing at DePaul University in Chicago.


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Chapter 9, "Jenny, Teacher's Pet" excerpt: read by Elizabeth Kostova
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Elizabeth Kostova is the author of three novels—The Historian, The Swan Thieves, and The Shadow Land. She is co-founder of the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation for Creative Writing, which offers opportunities for writers in Bulgarian and in English. Kostova lives with her family in North Carolina.


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Chapter 10, "Bird with Stone" excerpt: read by William Gillespie
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William Gillespie has published 14.75 books under six different names, most notably Keyhole Factory by William Gillespie.