A debut novel about a Nigerian-American family reckoning with a decade of accumulated secrets, a Thanksgiving dinner that becomes a reckoning, and the question of what we owe to the people who raised us: this is the book at the center of the latest episode of NHPR’s literary interview program, and it is the kind of story that arrives with the quiet confidence of a writer who has been waiting a long time to tell it.

New Hampshire Public Radio’s “Check This Out” aired its most recent episode on May 23, featuring host Rachel Barenbaum in conversation with Tolani Akinola, whose debut novel “Leave Your Mess at Home” was published on April 14, 2026 by Pamela Dorman Books. The episode also turned its attention to the economics of independent bookselling, a subject with particular resonance in a state where locally owned bookshops have become gathering places for literary communities from the Seacoast to the North Country.

A Novel Built Around What Families Don’t Say

“Leave Your Mess at Home” follows four adult siblings from the Longe family, each at a pivotal moment in their lives, as an unexpected reunion at their Nigerian immigrant parents’ Thanksgiving table in Chicago forces a reckoning with years of silence, resentment, and unspoken love. Akinola, writing with a precision and warmth that reviewers have noted, does not allow any of her four protagonists to be simply a victim or a villain. Each one is carrying something, and each one has contributed to the family’s fractures.

The siblings arrive at the novel already mid-crisis. Sola, the eldest, has returned from a period of absence after her career as a social media influencer collapsed. Her brother Ola, the family’s golden child in most conventional respects, is expecting a baby and quietly questioning both his marriage and what it will mean to raise a Black son in America. Karen, the youngest, is a college junior navigating her sexuality and her sense of self in ways she has not yet found language to explain to her family. And Anjola is in love with her best friend, who has just become engaged to someone else.

When Sola comes back, she sets off a chain reaction. The Longe family’s carefully maintained separations, the polite distances that have allowed everyone to avoid the hardest conversations, can no longer hold. Akinola lets the confrontation happen slowly and then all at once, the way family ruptures actually work, not with a single dramatic revelation but with a series of smaller breaks that finally become too numerous to paper over.

The novel draws on the specific textures of Nigerian-American family life in ways that feel observed rather than constructed. The pressure of immigrant parents’ expectations, the complexity of first-generation identity when children raised in America carry values and desires that do not map cleanly onto their parents’ frameworks, the way upward mobility can become both a gift and a burden passed from one generation to the next: all of this moves through the book without ever becoming a lecture or a thesis. Akinola trusts her characters to embody these themes, and they do.

The Writer Behind the Book

Tolani Akinola’s path to a debut novel published by one of the country’s most respected imprints was not a straight line. Her biography as a writer includes periods of development and support that reflect both her talent and the kind of sustained institutional backing that increasingly distinguishes writers who break through from those who do not.

In 2023, she was named a fellow by Reese’s Book Club’s LitUp program, an initiative created by Reese Witherspoon specifically to discover and support emerging authors from underrepresented backgrounds. The LitUp fellowship provided not just financial support but industry visibility, connecting Akinola with editors, agents, and readers at a stage when she was still developing the manuscript that would become “Leave Your Mess at Home.”

She also spent time as an artist-in-residence at MacDowell in 2024. MacDowell, the prestigious New Hampshire-based artists’ colony in Peterborough, has been providing writers, composers, filmmakers, and visual artists with uninterrupted time to work since 1907. For a novelist, a MacDowell residency means weeks in a private studio in the New Hampshire woods, meals delivered to the door so that nothing interrupts the work, and the quiet company of other artists equally absorbed in their own projects. The connection between MacDowell and NHPR’s interest in Akinola is natural: her residency in New Hampshire made her work part of the state’s literary story before the book was even finished.

The combination of fellowship support, residency time, and institutional backing from Pamela Dorman Books, a Penguin imprint with a strong track record for literary fiction, meant that “Leave Your Mess at Home” arrived in bookstores with a level of preparation and positioning that debut novels do not always receive. The result is a book that reads with the confidence of a writer who has had time to understand exactly what she was trying to do.

Rachel Barenbaum and the Art of the Literary Interview

NHPR’s “Check This Out” is built around the conviction that readers in New Hampshire deserve the same access to conversations with emerging literary talent that listeners in major metropolitan markets take for granted. Host Rachel Barenbaum, herself an author, brings a particular sensibility to her interviews: she reads deeply, asks questions that go beyond plot summary, and creates the kind of conversation where writers feel genuinely engaged rather than merely publicized.

The program launched in its current form in late 2024, and since then it has featured a consistent string of debut and early-career writers whose work merits attention. Barenbaum’s approach is to identify writers who are doing something genuinely new, writers who are using the novel form to investigate questions of identity, family, and community in ways that feel urgent without being didactic. Akinola fits that profile precisely.

For a state that takes its literary culture seriously, from the Bookery Manchester to Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord to the Water Street Bookstore in Exeter, having a program on public radio that actively introduces new writers to Granite State audiences is a public good. “Check This Out” serves a function that used to be filled by local newspaper book sections and has been largely absent from media landscapes across the country since those sections were cut: it tells readers what is worth paying attention to before the book disappears from bookstore shelves.

Independent Bookselling and the “Book Biz” Segment

The episode also dedicated time to the economics of independent bookselling, a topic that has taken on new urgency as the retail landscape continues to shift. Independent bookstores have shown remarkable resilience over the past decade, confounding predictions that online retail would make physical bookshops obsolete. In New Hampshire, independent stores have become community anchors, hosting author events, book clubs, children’s programs, and readings that bring people together around literature in ways that no algorithm can replicate.

But the economics remain challenging. Independent bookstores operate on thin margins, relying on a combination of book sales, sideline merchandise, event revenue, and customer loyalty programs to stay viable. The rise of audiobooks, ebooks, and online retail continues to pressure the market for physical books, even as overall consumer interest in reading has remained strong.

The discussion of the “Book Biz” on the NHPR program reflects a genuine shift in how the publishing industry is thinking about its own health. Publishers increasingly recognize that independent bookstores are not just retail partners but cultural infrastructure, places where readers discover books they would never have found through online recommendation engines, where authors build relationships with communities, and where the experience of browsing and talking about books maintains a social dimension that digital retail cannot provide.

For New Hampshire readers, the state’s independent bookstores represent a particular kind of community investment. When a local bookshop hosts a debut novelist or features a small-press title that a national chain would never stock, it is performing a curation function that matters enormously to the health of literary culture. The conversations happening in these stores, and on programs like “Check This Out,” are where the next generation of readers discovers that books still have the power to tell them something true about their own lives.

Why This Book Matters for New Hampshire Readers

“Leave Your Mess at Home” is not a New Hampshire novel in any geographic sense. Its Chicago setting and its Nigerian-American family are not part of the Granite State’s particular landscape. But the themes Akinola explores, questions of what we inherit from our parents, what we owe to our siblings, how we build identities that honor our origins without being imprisoned by them, are universal enough to resonate across any geography.

The MacDowell connection gives New Hampshire readers a specific claim on Akinola’s story: some part of this book was written in a studio in Peterborough, in the same New England quiet that has shaped the work of writers from Thornton Wilder to Michael Chabon. That lineage matters, not as a marketing point but as a genuine reminder that the creative conditions New Hampshire provides, through institutions like MacDowell and cultural programs like NHPR’s literary coverage, contribute to the literature that gets made and read across the country.

For readers looking for their next book, “Leave Your Mess at Home” is available at independent bookstores across New Hampshire and nationwide. Those interested in more coverage of New Hampshire’s literary and cultural scene can explore NHPR’s ongoing arts and culture programming, which has consistently featured writers and thinkers who deserve wider audiences.

The Cosmically Curious series on NHPR offers a sense of the range of the station’s programming: from literary interviews to science education, NHPR has built something that functions as a genuine cultural service for the state. The work of introducing a debut novelist to Granite State audiences, and of taking seriously the economics of the bookshops where that novelist’s work will be sold, is exactly the kind of programming that makes public radio worth supporting. The broader context matters here too: New Hampshire’s legislature has been actively debating bills affecting what books can be taught and displayed in schools, making conversations about literary culture and access to diverse voices more than merely academic.

What is "Leave Your Mess at Home" about?

"Leave Your Mess at Home" is Tolani Akinola's debut novel, published April 14, 2026. It follows four adult Nigerian-American siblings, each at a turning point in their lives, who reunite at their immigrant parents' Thanksgiving table in Chicago and are forced to confront a decade's worth of family secrets, resentments, and unspoken truths. The novel explores themes of diaspora identity, family obligation, forgiveness, and the tension between individual desire and communal belonging.

Who is Tolani Akinola?

Tolani Akinola is a debut novelist whose work has been supported by Reese's Book Club's LitUp fellowship program (2023) and a MacDowell Artist-in-Residence award (2024). Her novel "Leave Your Mess at Home" was published by Pamela Dorman Books, a Penguin imprint, in April 2026. Her MacDowell residency was in Peterborough, New Hampshire.

What is NHPR's "Check This Out" program?

"Check This Out" is a New Hampshire Public Radio literary program hosted by Rachel Barenbaum that features conversations with emerging and debut authors. The show focuses on writers who may not yet be widely known but whose work deserves attention, giving New Hampshire listeners access to literary voices that are reshaping American fiction.

Where can New Hampshire readers find "Leave Your Mess at Home"?

The novel is available at independent bookstores across New Hampshire, including Gibson's Bookstore in Concord, the Bookery in Manchester, and Water Street Bookstore in Exeter, as well as through national retailers online and in audio format.

What is MacDowell and what is its connection to New Hampshire?

MacDowell is a prestigious artists' colony and residency program located in Peterborough, New Hampshire. Founded in 1907, it provides writers, composers, filmmakers, and visual artists with uninterrupted time and studio space to develop their work. Tolani Akinola was a MacDowell resident in 2024, working on "Leave Your Mess at Home" during her time there.

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