These two novels explore the gulf between expectation and reality, ambition and opportunity, and what happens when life veers off from your carefully planned path. Kashana Cauley and Matthew Salesses each give us indelible casts of characters to follow as they face career upheaval, challenges to their identities and find new love in unexpected ways. Listen to this Double Shot episode with both authors in conversation separately with Poured Over’s host, Miwa Messer.     Matthew Salesses combines professional basketball, K-dramas, and young love in his novel The Sense of Wonder. Salesses joins us to talk about the effect of Jeremy Lin, the structure of a novel vs. a K-drama, his teaching career and what he’s reading now.     In Kashana Cauley’s The Survivalists, a young Black lawyer meets a man who thoroughly changes her life through love, coffee and doomsday prepping. Cauley talks with us about how she developed her characters, social class and real estate in New York City, the authors who influenced her and more.     Featured Books (Episode):  The Sense of Wonder by Matthew Salesses  The Survivalists by Kashana Cauley  Craft in the Real World by Matthew Salesses The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston  No-No Boy by John Okada  American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang  Our Country Friends by Gary Shteyngart     Featured Books (TBR Topoff):  Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu   The Sellout by Paul Beatty    Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays with occasional Saturdays.