On this episode, Peter Biello and Orlando Montoya unpack Hot Desk by Atlanta author Laura Dickerman, a witty romantic comedy set inside rival New York publishing houses. You hear how a contested literary estate, a notorious twentieth-century “lion,” and a secret family connection collide with texting, Zoom, and office politics to test what it means to separate art from the artist. Stay for how the book’s dual timelines and workplace satire shape Ben and Rebecca’s love story.

Hot Desk by Laura Dickerman

Credit: Gallery Books

In this episode, the Peter and Orlando open with a frank conversation about the enduring question of separating art from the artist, name-checking figures from David Foster Wallace to Ernest Hemingway and Bill Cosby as they frame the tensions listeners bring to contemporary reading. That framing leads into Hot Desk, which they describe as a rom-com that also functions as workplace satire and literary mystery. The premise centers on two junior editors, Ben and Rebecca, who share a “hot desk” while competing to win the rights to a deceased literary giant’s unpublished novel.

Author Laura Dickerman’s on-tape remarks sketch “the lion” as a composite of charismatic yet harmful men in letters, a figure whose popularity coexists with behavior that particularly hurts women. The unpublished manuscript is described as both poor on the page and troubling in its depiction of women, a marketing and moral problem that forces Ben and Rebecca to persuade the writer’s widow while navigating the son’s fixation on money. The discussion highlights how technology and workplace tools create realistic texture for contemporary relationships, including text blocks and Zoom-era mishaps that ring true.