Podcast Summary

Podcast: What Should I Read Next?

Episode 499: Weird, nerdy, and totally delightful: our conversation with Kevin Wilson
Host: Anne Bogel
Guests: Kevin Wilson (author), Ginger Horton (Book Club Community Manager)
Original Air Date: October 21, 2025

Overview

In this episode, Anne Bogel and Ginger Horton welcome author Kevin Wilson for a wide-ranging, quirky, and heartfelt discussion about his writing, his latest novel Run for the Hills, and the delightfully nerdy community of Modern Mrs. Darcy Book Club. The conversation delves into Wilson’s origins as a writer, his creative process, his affection for weirdness in fiction, and the enduring importance of family—biological and found—both as literary subject and lived reality. The episode is sprinkled with Wilson’s humor, humility, and profound warmth, as well as lots of fun bonus details for book-loving nerds everywhere.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Book Club’s Role & Delightfully Nerdy Culture

• [04:12] Ginger shares that engaging directly with authors is a central joy for book club members:
  “When I think book club, I think authors and writers.”
• [11:05] Anne and Ginger emphasize that their readers crave in-depth, “nerdy” insights—including quirky process details, writing habits, and even preferred pens.

2. Kevin Wilson: A Weird, Awkward, Family-Focused Writer

• [18:44] On describing his work in a nutshell:

  “Usually I just say I teach, and then I don’t have to talk about anything with writing... But if I say what I write, I usually just say I write fiction about families. And then I can kind of feel out the person for just how weird those families are and how I can reveal that...” —Kevin Wilson ([18:44])

• [23:53] On why family is his main subject:

  "Planner O’Connor said, you know, all stories are either about money or family. And I was like, well, I don’t really know what it’s like to have money, but I know what it’s like to have a family. So I’m going to go with family." —Kevin Wilson ([23:53])

3. The Genesis and Tone of Run for the Hills

• [25:47] Inspiration: Combines found and biological family; drawn from Wilson’s own family history (mother’s estranged father, wife’s adoption story).
• [28:41] Balancing lightness with emotional weight:

  "I just knew my way into stories is weirdness, silliness, lightness. And I just thought, if I can start light, then I can get the audience with me and they’ll trust me, and we can build up this kind of relationship so that when I turn it down and get darker or the subject matter gets heavier, we’ve built up a kind of trust..." —Kevin Wilson ([28:41])

4. Structural Choices and Backstage Details

• [30:26] The origin of the novel’s prologue was editorial suggestion, added after a draft that originally began with the PT Cruiser’s entrance.
• [31:36] Why a PT Cruiser?

  "What’s the ugliest, weirdest car I can think of? And it’s a PT Cruiser... it would be so lovely to write a novel where the PT Cruiser is the focal point of the story." —Kevin Wilson ([31:36])

5. Settings, Easter Eggs, and the “Wilson Cinematic Universe”

• [33:35] On the recurring town “Coalfield”: Name borrowed from an Ann Patchett novel, eventually became a flexible stand-in for his Tennessee childhood home—a magical, shifting literary space across his works.

  "Coalfield, Tennessee is not Coalfield, Tennessee. It’s mine." —Kevin Wilson ([33:35])

• [36:31] On inter-novel connections and self-referencing plot devices: Sometimes one-off jokes or background details in one novel inspire full stories in the next.

6. Character Development & Thematic Purpose

• [42:27] The four siblings are purposely distinct, held together by loose remnants of shared paternity and strengthened by the journey—each representing facets of familial experience.

• [52:23] On the father character’s unchanging nature and lack of redemption:

  "His punishment is to never linger long enough to truly know what it means to be a part of something, and his punishment is that he doesn’t change or grow because he just becomes a new person. And I felt really sad for him." —Kevin Wilson ([52:23])

• [43:53] On his overall goal writing about family:

  "How can we hold on to other people and survive and be stronger because we have each other?" —Kevin Wilson ([43:53])

7. Writing, Teaching, and Process

• [21:03] Kevin shares how his novel-writing class focuses on reading and analyzing just the first 80 pages of diverse novels to understand structure and setup—a method readers found intriguing.

• [57:16] On keeping novels short and weird:

  "Maybe what you are is weird, a little bit of silly, a lot of heart, and a short time span. And I just started to say, I don’t want a ton of characters, I just want a few. I want a little bit of time." —Kevin Wilson
  Lessons learned the hard way from writing 500 pages about babies in Perfect Little World.

• [58:30] Ultimately, he writes to make himself happy—there’s no predicting readers’ reactions once a book is out in the world.

8. Reading Recommendations & Literary Loves

• [61:19] Recent favorites as a reader:
  • Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano
  • Emma Straub’s forthcoming book about boy bands and cruises
  • Lloyd McNeil’s Last Ride by Will Leach
• Kevin describes reading as a transformative experience and says he’d give up writing before he’d give up being a reader:

  "Books were the safest way for me to realize that maybe the world is not as scary as I think that it is." —Kevin Wilson ([59:45])

Memorable Quotes

• On finding your place and family in fiction:

  "The relationships that we hold onto in order to survive, but also the relationships that made us the person that we are. How can you not, you know, how can you not, like, find something to say in that world?" —Kevin Wilson ([23:53])

• On the small, shifting world of Coalfield:

  "For me, Coalfield is this constantly shifting, magical world that can expand and retract..." —Kevin Wilson ([00:00], repeated at [33:35])

• On crafting tone:

  “I need that weirdness at the beginning to convince myself I can do it, but also to convince the reader, hey, I'll get us there if you come with me. And it will get heavy, but I can get us back where we need to go.” —Kevin Wilson ([28:41])

• On the legacy of absent fathers:

  "His punishment is to never linger long enough to truly know what it means to be a part of something..." —Kevin Wilson ([52:23])

Notable Listener Questions

• [29:54] Insightful process queries about the function and timing of the prologue.
• [38:52] Specificity of settings (e.g., Southeast Missouri State basketball) and cultural references—Wilson loves inserting authentic details, some inspired simply by research and fun.
• [45:00] Why Mad’s perspective anchors the book: rooted, sensible, and inspired by classic American literary protagonists (especially Matty Ross of True Grit).

Notable Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:00 | Wilson reveals the origin and meaning of Coalfield | | 18:44 | Wilson talks about describing his work, focusing on families and 'weirdness' | | 23:53 | Why Kevin chooses family (not money) as his narrative focus | | 28:41 | How tone balances humor, weirdness, and poignancy | | 30:26 | The prologue’s editorial origins | | 31:36 | The PT Cruiser as comic centerpiece and setting | | 33:35 | 'Coalfield, Tennessee is not Coalfield, Tennessee. It's mine.' | | 43:53 | The core question: how to hold onto and help each other as family | | 52:23 | The “punishment” of the absentee father | | 57:16 | The need for brevity and weirdness in his storytelling style | | 61:19 | Kevin’s current must-read recommendations | | 63:30 | Sneak peek into Wilson’s new work-in-progress |

Overall Tone & Language

• The conversation is heartfelt, gently witty, and welcomingly nerdy. Wilson is candid, vulnerable, and honest about both his personal quirks and fictional preoccupations. Both Anne and Ginger approach reading and Wilson's novels with warmth and genuine intellectual curiosity, creating an inviting space for other book lovers who share an affection for the weird, the charming, and the emotionally resonant.

Final Thoughts

Fans of Wilson’s fiction—and anyone who loves family stories, literary quirks, and the process of writing—will find this episode rich, funny, and genuinely moving. The discussion is filled with insightful reflections on what it means to be made by a place, a family, and a lifetime of reading, plus plenty of practical inspiration for readers and writers alike.

For further details or to connect with the Modern Mrs. Darcy Book Club, visit their website or Instagram.