Recently I had the chance to speak with acclaimed, debut author Sunil Yapa about his wonderful book, Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist for our Professional Book Nerds Podcast. This story is one of compassion, showing how caring for others, even if their lives do not intersect with yours whatsoever, can change the world. The title is a fictional account set to the backdrop of the 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle and, through seven different narrators, conveys the stories of people on every side of the events.

Sunil shared with us his thoughts on the book, why he had to write the book twice and also discussed some of his fondest memories of growing up around libraries and librarians. As Sunil put it, “Every writer has a great story about a librarian they first knew.”

Your Heart is a Muscle The Size of a Fist has been on “Most Anticipated” lists from the Wall Street Journal, Entertainment Weekly, TIME, Huffington Post, Buzzfeed and a number of other major news sites. He also was recently featured on Late Night with Seth Meyers. The title is available in Marketplace for libraries to add to their digital collection now. It’s a book your readers are sure to love. Thank you to Sunil for taking the time to speak with us and our friends at Hachette for helping connect us with this brilliant new author.