John Kessel Shares His Book, The Baum Plan for Financial Independence: And Other Stories
On UNC-TV’s North Carolina Bookwatch, Sunday, October 18, at 5 PM

The Baum Plan for Financial Independence: And Other Stories is John Kessel’s long-awaited collection of fourteen stories that intersect imaginatively with Pride and Prejudice, Frankenstein, The Wizard of Oz, and Flannery O’Connor. In The Baum Plan for Financial Independence: And Other Stories, Kessel, whose story A Clean Escape was filmed as part of ABC's Masters of Science Fiction, ranges through genres with a lean, graceful style that incorporates everything from future autobiography, alternate history, phone sex, perpetual motion, and his modern classic sequence of four stories about life on the moon.

In an all-new episode of UNC-TV’s local literary series, North Carolina Bookwatch with D.G. Martin, premiering Sunday, October 18, at 5 PM, Kessel shares his first collection in a decade full of what Publisher’s Weekly described as “well-crafted stories, full of elegantly drawn characters, deliver[ing] a powerful emotional punch.”

John Kessel's stories have won the Nebula, Sturgeon, Locus and Tiptree Awards. His books include Good News from Outer Space, Corrupting Dr. Nice and the collection The Pure Product and Meeting in Infinity (a New York Times Notable Book). Kessel and his family live in Raleigh, NC, where he co-directs the creative writing program at North Carolina State University.

Don’t miss D.G. Martin’s all-new interview with John Kessel on North Carolina Bookwatch, Sunday, October 18, at 5 PM, only on UNC-TV!

During the 26-week season of North Carolina Bookwatch, guests will also include:  John Shelton Reed and Dale Volberg Reed (Holy Smoke), Justin Catanoso (My Cousin the Saint), Todd Johnson (The Sweet By and By), Michael Walden (North Carolina in the Connected Age), Barbara Fredrickson (Positivity), Michael Davis (Street Gang), Dan Ariely (Predictably Irrational), Howard Lee (The Courage to Lead), Marianne Gingher (Adventures in Pen Land), Dan Barefoot (Hark the Sound of Tar Heel Voices), John Hart (The Last Child),  Elizabeth Edwards (Resilience), Brett Friedlander (Chasing Moonlight) and  Michael Malone (The Four Corners of the Sky).

For additional information about series guests and airdates, plus links to Bookwatch on Facebook, please visit: www.unctv.org/ncbookwatch.

Funding for North Carolina Bookwatch is provided by UNC-TV members and by Quail Ridge Books and Music, Raleigh’s independent, full service bookstore, bringing readers and writers together since 1984.

North Carolina Bookwatch is part of UNC-TV’s ongoing commitment to produce programs for and about North Carolina. UNC-TV is the statewide 11-station broadcast network of the University of North Carolina. For more information, please visit www.unctv.org/ncbookwatch.

For more information about North Carolina Bookwatch and UNC-TV’s other original productions, please visit our website at www.unctv.org.