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Ruthy Ramirez, the 13-year-old middle child of a Puerto Rican family in Staten Island, vanished without a trace. But more than a decade later, as the family still feels the weight of her absence, one of her sisters spots a woman who she thinks might be her sister on a reality TV show. In her new novel, What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez, author Claire Jimenez explores the way loss, violence and spectacle impacts the women in the Ramirez family. And as she tells NPR's Ayesha Rascoe, there's a big divide in the way reality tv treats white women and women of color.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Margaret Atwood has been writing for a long time – and as she tells NPR's Leila Fadel, the world looks very different today than it did when she started. Her new collection of short stories, Old Babes in the Wood, provides different approaches to the passing of time. There's a couple that's facing the realities of aging; there's a conversation with George Orwell, who Atwood says drastically changed her life; and there's even a parallel reality to the author's 1985 dystopian novel, The Handmaid's Tale, where men are the ones being controlled.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Today's episode focuses on two pretty different graphic memoirs. First, artist Kendra Neely – who survived the 2015 shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon – speaks to NPR's Juana Summers about processing the trauma and grief following that day's events in her new memoir, Numb to This. Through illustrations, Neely captures the oversaturation she still feels every time news of a shooting breaks. Then, NPR's Eyder Peralta asks Dan Santat about his memoir First Time for Everything, which recounts his coming-of-age trip across Europe with his eighth grade class.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy