The Ex Talk

Rachel Lynn Solomon's The Ex Talk, published in 2021, is set in a public radio station in Seattle. Shay Goldstein has spent close to ten years producing programmes there and cannot imagine working anywhere else. Her newest colleague, Dominic Yun, has just finished a journalism master's degree and is sure he knows how public radio should be made, and the two of them clash every day over how the work should be done.

With the station struggling, Shay puts forward a concept: two exes giving relationship advice live on air, and her boss approves the idea enthusiastically. The complication is that the boss also decides who should present it: Shay and Dominic, who can barely be in the same room together, will play the former couple on the programme, on the grounds that they already despise each other so thoroughly. Neither of them is comfortable lying to listeners, but the alternative is unemployment, and the audience starts to take an interest almost immediately, which means the fiction has to grow along with the show.

The Ex Talk was published in 2021, and Solomon's other Seattle novel, Weather Girl, is set in the same fictional newsroom world. Solomon is from Seattle and worked in her early adulthood at the public radio station KUOW-FM, which was the inspiration for the book.