Between The Covers : Conversations With Writers In Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry podcast

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Helpless Hydrangea 6:24

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Grumpy helps a reader choose the best hydrangea for their hometown. Plus, Grumpy’s gripe of the week. You can find us online at southernliving.com/askgrumpy Ask Grumpy Credits: Steve Bender aka The Grumpy Gardener - Host Nellah McGough - Co-Host Krissy Tiglias - GM, Southern Living Lottie Leymarie - Executive Producer Michael Onufrak - Audio Engineer/Producer Isaac Nunn - Recording Tech Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

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Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

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Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

1
Madeleine Thien : The Book of Records 2:00:32

for 10 dager siden2:00:32

2:00:32

The Book of Records is many things: a book of historical fiction and speculative fiction, a meditation on time and on space-time, on storytelling and truth, on memory and the imagination, a book that impossibly conjures the lives and eras of the philosopher Baruch Spinoza, the Tang dynasty poet Du Fu and the political theorist Hannah Arendt not as mere ghostly presences but portrayed as vividly and tangibly as if they lived here and now in the room where we hold this very book. But most of all this is a book about books, about words as amulets, about stories as shelters, about novels as life rafts, about strangers saving strangers, about friendships that defy both space and time, about choosing, sometimes at great risk to oneself, life and love. For the bonus audio Madeleine Thien contributes an incredible reading of the poem “Hold Everything Dear” by Gareth Evans. A poem that Evans himself wrote for John Berger. It joins a trove of bonus material, contributions from everyone from Omar El Akkad to Dionne Brand, Viet Thanh Nguyen to Danez Smith. To learn about how to subscribe to the bonus material and about all the other potential benefits and rewards of joining the Between the Covers community head over to the show’s Patreon page . Finally, here is the BookShop for today’s conversation. The post Madeleine Thien : The Book of Records appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

1
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson : Theory of Water 2:01:04

for 28 dager siden2:01:04

2:01:04

What would it mean for our writing, thinking, and living if we looked to land as pedagogy, or if we thought of theory as something embodied and kinetic? In Theory of Water Leanne Betasamosake Simpson takes us not only outside the academy, and away from our screens, but outside and into the world at large as part of a reconsideration of what and whom we consider teachers and mentors, of where and how we might learn and develop our thoughts, and of what the role of stories and storytelling might really be. Theory of Water ultimately explores what this reorientation might do, not only to our writing and our relation to language, but to our politics, our vision of a future world, and how we might arrive there together. Looking to water, to snow, to ice, to eels, to beavers, to bullfrogs, we explore what the more-than-human world can teach us about resistance and coexistence both. For the bonus audio archive Leanne contributes a sneak peek at a song of hers, “Murder of Crows,” that will be on her upcoming album Live Like the Sky (which will likely be released some time this fall). To learn about the bonus audio archive and all the other potential rewards and benefits of joining the Between the Covers community, head over to the show’s Patreon page . Finally, here is the BookShop for today. The post Leanne Betasamosake Simpson : Theory of Water appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

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Keetje Kuipers : Lonely Women Make Good Lovers 2:25:57

for 6 weeks siden2:25:57

2:25:57

From the craft of writing sex in poetry to the virtues of failing publicly, today’s conversation with poet Keetje Kuipers is not to be missed. We explore everything from storytelling within poems to the dialectic between control and wildness; everything from queerness and wilderness to fantasy as a portal to truth on the page. Keetje’s contribution to the bonus audio archive is unusually generous. Part reading, part teaching meditation, she draws upon many of the themes we discuss in the main interview and finds a poem by another that exemplifies that theme, whether it be an example of what an embodied poem looks like, or who is in her lineage of nature poets of the Mountain West that are also queer women, or poems that exemplify a beautiful dance between control and wildness, and she reads these poems for us and talks about them. To find out how to subscribe to the bonus audio archive and about the other potential benefits and rewards of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter, head over to the show’s Patreon page . Finally, here is the BookShop for today’s episode. The post Keetje Kuipers : Lonely Women Make Good Lovers appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

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Patrycja Humienik : We Contain Landscapes 2:21:31

for 8 weeks siden2:21:31

2:21:31

What does it mean to risk rupture for rapture, on the page, and in one’s life? Or for water to be one’s method, mode or muse? Are inherited forms (of womanhood, of sexuality, of national identity) a gift or are their borders meant to be crossed and breached? Together we look at forms and norms in Patrycja’s poetry, at bringing unruly forces into one’s work—eros, love, solidarity across difference—that, like a river, are summoned to a larger body. If you enjoyed today’s conversation, consider joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter. You can find out about all the potential benefits and rewards of doing so at the show’s Patreon page. Finally, here is the BookShop for today’s conversation. The post Patrycja Humienik : We Contain Landscapes appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

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Torrey Peters : Stag Dance 2:18:27

for 9 weeks siden2:18:27

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Four novellas, in four different genres—science fiction, horror, teen romance, and a western— Stag Dance not only interrogates genre, but gender through genre. Written over a ten year period, Torrey Peters’ new book spans a decade when her own views and insights about gender were themselves changing. Placing these four novellas in conversation with each other like this now, raises all sorts of questions about identity and the construction of a self, as Peters puzzles out, through genre, the inconvenient aspects of what she calls her “never-ending transition—otherwise known as ongoing trans life.” We look at questions of audience and risk, of writing into the taboos within one’s own community, and what it means that Torrey is less interested in exploring the binary between men and women, masculine and feminine, than the one between cis and trans, raising the question whether it is even a binary at all. We discuss the overdetermined transition narrative within trans literature and look at limit cases of cis gender performance from Kim Kardashian to Karl Ove Knausgaard to Ernest Hemingway’s late-in-life exploration of gender fluidity within his work. Whether talking about Shakespeare or Taylor Swift, this boundary-defying conversation explodes the distinctions between high and low culture, and like her work itself, it will make you laugh, make you think, and make you reconsider what is possible. For the bonus audio archive Torrey contributes a reading of the first thing she wrote after she transitioned: “How To Become A Really Really Not Famous Trans Lady Writer,” This joins incredible readings from everyone from Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore to CAConrad and is only one thing to choose from when you join the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter. You can check it all out at the show’s Patreon page. Finally, here is the BookShop for today’s conversation. The post Torrey Peters : Stag Dance appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

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Michelle de Kretser : Theory & Practice 2:02:36

for 11 weeks siden2:02:36

2:02:36

Today’s guest, one of Australia’s most celebrated and daring writers, Michelle de Kretser, discusses her latest uncategorizable book Theory & Practice (one she describes as 80% fiction, 15% essay and 5% memoir). Theory & Practice is a book that is wildly erudite and erotic at the same time, both an engrossing, immersive read and one that is constantly experimenting with and breaking form. A book that dwells in the contradictions between what we believe and what we do. And one that uses, as a lens, the liberatory power of Virginia Woolf’s published words alongside her often snobbish, racist, and antisemitic private ones, not only to explore this contradiction but also questions of gender, race, class and colonialism more broadly. You’d be just as correct, however, to call it a book about love, sex, shame and jealousy, set on a university campus in the 1980s at the height of deconstruction’s hold on the minds of its thinkers there. If you enjoyed today’s conversation consider joining the Between the Covers community, receiving supplemental resources with each and every episode, and being able to choose from a wide variety of other gifts and rewards as well. You can check it all out at the show’s Patreon page . Finally, here is the BookShop for today’s conversation with books from everyone from Ursula K. Le Guin to Shirley Hazzard to Virginia Woolf. The post Michelle de Kretser : Theory & Practice appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

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Omar El Akkad : One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This 2:12:55

for 14 weeks siden2:12:55

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In late October 2023, weeks into Israel’s bombing of northern Gaza, the novelist Omar El Akkad retweeted a video taken by a Gazan man. This video showed a lifeless moonscape with endless empty streets of rubble, every building, one to the next, a hollow blown-out shell of itself. No people, no animals, the only sound the strained breath of this man stumbling through this indiscriminately obliterated city that was once a home. El Akkad captioned his tweet with the words: “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this” a tweet that has now been viewed over ten million times. Despite El Akkad’s past as a journalist, one who reported on some of the most notorious and fraught moments in recent U.S. history—whether embedded in Afghanistan, down at Guantanamo Bay, or reporting from Ferguson, Missouri—it was the aftermath of October 7th that was a turning point for him in relation to the West and its notions of humanism and liberalism. Together we discuss his debut work of nonfiction that resulted from this, that many characterize as his breakup letter to the West. We look at the role of language in providing cover for the middle, the centrist, the well-meaning liberal to look away and the power of language to create a climate of dehumanization, allowing the unspeakable to seem tragic but necessary. For the bonus audio archive Omar contributes a reading of one of his favorite poems by Jorie Graham. This joins everyone from Isabella Hammad reading Walid Daqqa to Roger Reeves reading Ghassan Kanafani, to Zahid Rafiq reading Franz Kafka. If you enjoyed today’s conversation consider joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter. You can find out about all the benefits and rewards of doing so, including how to subscribe to the bonus audio, at the show’s Patreon page . Finally, here is the Bookshop for today’s episode. The post Omar El Akkad : One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

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Hélène Cixous : Rêvoir 1:29:37

for 17 weeks siden1:29:37

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Feminist and literary theorist, playwright, philosopher, memoirist and novelist Hélène Cixous returns to the show to discuss her latest genre-defying hybrid work of prose. Written during the first year of the pandemic, Rêvoir explores the effect of pandemic confinement on time, the effect of pandemic time on writing, and what plagues and confinement show us about the nature of time, memory, dreams, history, language, home, flight, cats, love and death. Struggling to find purchase on her own writing within the timelessness of that year, she conjures and contemplates the works of everyone from Thucydides to Kafka, Shakespeare to Shackleton, to uncover how literature always begins with an ending, always opens with no way forward. What does Cixous mean that language is haunted by writing? That it is not just the writer who writes, but the words themselves? Join us to find out! For the bonus audio, enjoy a long-form conversation with Cixous’ translator, the poet Beverley Bie-Brahic. Given that Cixous breaks the norms of form, syntax and punctuation, not in predictable or consistent ways, but from a place of instinct and intuition, and given that her playful use of homophones in French, an essential quality of her writing that often leads where her writing ultimately goes, Cixous’ writing presents some unusually difficult challenges for a translator. Something we explore with Bie-Brahic in this conversation. To learn how to subscribe to the bonus audio archive and about all the other potential benefits and rewards of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter, head over to the show’s Patreon page . Finally here is the BookShop for today’s episode. The post Hélène Cixous : Rêvoir appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

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Aria Aber : Good Girl 2:10:57

for 19 weeks siden2:10:57

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Poet Aria Aber’s debut novel Good Girl , set in the club scene of Berlin, is a book brimming over with sex and drugs and music, true. But really at its heart it is a book of self-making and unmaking, of self-destruction and self-discovery, where 19 year old Nila navigates the irresolvable dialectics of being a second generation Afghan-German immigrant, finding home neither in the world of her family nor in Germany at large. A book coursing with desire and shame, flight and pursuit, Good Girl is ultimately about the desperate need to find oneself and one’s home, whatever the cost. Where home might not be a place or a people at all, but the world of art and literature itself. For the bonus audio archive Aria contributes a reading from Palestinian writer Yasmin Zaher’s debut novel, The Coin. This joins Isabella Hammad reading from Walid Daqqa’s prison writings, Zahid Rafiq reading Kafka, Rabih Alameddine reading Fernando Pessoa, Dionne Brand reading Christina Sharpe and much more. To learn how to subscribe to the bonus audio and the other potential benefits and rewards available when you join the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter, head over to the show’s Patreon page . Finally, here is the BookShop for today’s conversation. The post Aria Aber : Good Girl appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

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Zahid Rafiq : The World With Its Mouth Open 2:04:14

for 21 weeks siden2:04:14

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Today’s guest Zahid Rafiq discusses his debut short story collection The World With Its Mouth Open , eleven remarkable stories set in modern-day Kashmir. Prior to writing fiction Rafiq was a journalist and we explore the ways the stories he tells now, and the stories he wrote then, differ and overlap, We look at how fiction can contain the unsaid, the unknown even; how it can create space for silence, and, unlike journalism, tell the stories behind the stories. We explore the relationship of art and politics, especially when writing stories about ordinary lives and ordinary days, stories often described as quiet and understated, when they are, at the same time, set in one of the most contested and militarized places on earth. For the bonus audio archive Zahid contributes a reading from the writings of one of the most important writers for him, Franz Kafka. He reads from the chapter “Waiting for Klamm” from his novel The Castle. To learn how to subscribe to the bonus audio archive and about all the other potential rewards and benefits of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter head over to the show’s Patreon page . Finally, here is the BookShop for today’s conversation. The post Zahid Rafiq : The World With Its Mouth Open appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

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Tin House Live : Denis Johnson : 2004 1:10:23

for 22 weeks siden1:10:23

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We started 2024 with an archival recording of Denis Johnson from the first ever Tin House Writers Workshop in 2003. That episode was a three-part episode: Denis Johnson reading from the manuscript of his novella Train Dreams, then being interviewed by Chris Offutt, and finally, Denis, Chris and Charles D’Ambrosio performing the first act of his play Psychos Never Dream . It turns out Denis returned to the Tin House workshop the following year, the summer of 2004. It seems a fitting way to round out the year to have the last episode of 2024 be an archival recording of his return. This episode is a two-part episode. The first half is a reading from the manuscript of what would become his National Book Award-winning novel Tree of Smoke . The second half is an extended interview of Denis by Charles D’Ambrosio. A deep dive into Johnson’s process and philosophy, and into questions of craft and influence. If you enjoy today’s episode, consider joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter. You can find out about all the potential rewards and benefits of doing so at the show’s Patreon page. The post Tin House Live : Denis Johnson : 2004 appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

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Rodrigo Fresán : Melvill 1:57:43

for 24 weeks siden1:57:43

1:57:43

How can a novel set during one brief moment near the end of Herman Melville’s father’s life, a moment lost to history and now fully overshadowed by his son’s enduring literary legacy, become a portal to discuss the world entire? Melvill is a novel about reading and writing, about parenthood and legacy, about madness and memory, about time and ghosts and the dead who never die. Jorge Luis Borges once called Moby Dick an “infinite novel,” one that “page by page, expands and even exceeds the size of the cosmos.” And today’s conversation with Rodrigo Fresán seems animated by this very spirit. Somehow a conversation about Herman Melville’s father not only becomes a deep meditation on Moby Dick but also, at the very same time, at the very same moment, a meditation on Argentinian literature, on imagination and place, on style and plot, on vampires and footnotes, on Borges, Bolaño, Bob Dylan, Vladimir Nabokov, and on and on into the infinite cosmos. For those subscribed to the bonus audio archive, today’s contribution is a long-form conversation with Melvill ‘s translator Will Vanderhyden. We explore Will and Rodrigo’s ongoing collaboration and friendship, the challenges and joys of translating Rodrigo’s work and Will’s own journey as a translator. To learn more about the bonus audio and the other potential benefits of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter head over to the show’s Patreon page . Finally here is the Bookshop for today’s episode. The post Rodrigo Fresán : Melvill appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

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Dionne Brand : Salvage : Readings from the Wreck 2:11:03

for 26 weeks siden2:11:03

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What does it mean that a life can not only be animated by books but destroyed by them? That a self can be not only made by reading, but unmade by it? Dionne Brand’s latest book of nonfiction Salvage: Readings from the Wreck returns to formative texts from her own reading life in order to model a more aware and liberatory way of reading, of thinking, of being, in relation to them. We explore what we can salvage from the wreck, the wreck that is the book before us, the wreck that is us before the book. For the bonus audio archive Dionne reads selections from the work of Canisia Lubrin and Christina Sharpe. This joins readings, craft talks, writing prompts and more from everyone from Danez Smith to Marlon James to Nikky Finney. You can find out how to subscribe to the bonus audio and about all the other potential benefits and rewards of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-support at the show’s Patreon page . Finally here is the BookShop for today. The post Dionne Brand : Salvage : Readings from the Wreck appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

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Danez Smith : Bluff 2:53:11

for 29 weeks siden2:53:11

2:53:11

Danez Smith’s poetry is so many things, a poetry of resistance, of elegy, of joy, of care, of repair. Their poetry is Afrofuturist and Afropessimist. It’s nature poetry, decolonial poetry, queer poetry, a poetry that is archival and documentary. And it is also a poetry that questions poetry itself and even more so, questions the poet, a poetry that is continually in the process of self-remaking and unmaking, of forging and severing allegiances, a shapeshifting poetry, a poetry of mutual aid, a poetry reaching toward, and already singing from, an elsewhere and an otherwise. Nam Le for the New Your Times, speaking of Smith’s new book Bluff, doesn’t just suggest that this book is a major turning point for the poet, a volta within this poet’s evolution, but also suggests that Danez’s volta might also represent a turning point for American poetry at large. This twinning, of the self that is Danez to the poetry collective, feels prescient, as their poetry contains so much, and so much powerful self-examination, that it becomes an examination of all of us, for all of us, of what it means to be an “I” and what it means to be a “we.” Who better to lead us through than a poet like this? For the bonus audio archive, Danez contributes something really special for us. As one of the six members of the Dark Noise Collective (along with Fatimah Asghar, Aaron Samuels, Franny Choi, Nate Marshall, and Jamila Woods), Danez reads a favorite poem from each of their five peers and follows each reading with a writing prompt designed for us and related to the poem just read. After five poems and five writing prompts, Danez reads a poem of their own too. This joins an ever-growing archive of supplemental material from Ross Gay reading Jean Valentine to Dionne Brand reading Christina Sharpe to Nikky Finney reading from the diaries of Lorraine Hansberry. To learn how to subscribe to the bonus audio and about all the other possible benefits of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter head over to the show’s Patreon page . Finally, here is the BookShop for today. The post Danez Smith : Bluff appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

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Kenzie Allen : Cloud Missives 2:33:17

for 31 weeks siden2:33:17

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Today’s conversation with Kenzie Allen, about her debut poetry collection Cloud Missives , is unusually wide-ranging. We look at the influence of archaeology, anthropology and cartography on her poetry, and on her notion of gaze within her work. We explore the fraught colonial history of these fields, and how, as an indigenous poet, she orients herself to her own work in this regard. We look at questions of identity, representation and stereotype both in the realm of language and art-making, and also in the realm of tribal sovereignty, looking at the colonial history of blood quantum and its repercussions today. We also look at questions of form, both inherited forms and the creation of new ones, of both poetry on the page, and multimodal works that live off of it, from visual poetry to literary cartography to the wampum belt as an ancient form of hyper-text. For the bonus audio archive, Kenzie contributes an extended reading of a sequence poem that she calls Love Songs to Banish Another Love Song. By reading this, she gives us a peek behind the curtain of the process of revision, because this sequence is an earlier, very different version of a much shorter poem in Cloud Missives. This joins many other supplemental readings in the archive from everyone from Jake Skeets to Layli Long Soldier, Elissa Washuta to Natalie Diaz, Brandon Hobson to Tommy Pico to Terese Marie Mailhot. You can find out how to subscribe and check out the many other possible benefits and rewards of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter at the show’s Patreon page . Finally, here is the BookShop for today. The post Kenzie Allen : Cloud Missives appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

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Tin House Live : Torrey Peters on Strategic Opacity 45:45

for 33 weeks siden45:45

45:45

Today’s craft talk—by Torrey Peters on “Strategic Opacity”— was recorded at the 2024 Tin House summer writers workshop. Peters explores the elements in works of fiction that actually don’t make sense—from William Shakespeare to Elena Ferrante —and how, paradoxically, it is these very elements, the unexplainable ones, that can make a work of art great. Given that most actual humans make nonsensical choices and can’t be fully known as people, Peters discusses how we might write lifelike characters who don’t make sense either—but in a strategic way—writing them so that they begin to feel like the real people all around us: “the friends who make strange and frustrating decisions in their worst interests, the parents who act with sudden arbitrariness, the lovers who just won’t accept the care they need and want.” Peters then looks at the ways this revelation has deeply changed her own work. If you enjoy today’s conversation consider joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter. Head over to the show’s Patreon page to learn more. Finally, here is the BookShop for today’s talk, which includes many of the books mentioned. The post Tin House Live : Torrey Peters on Strategic Opacity appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

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Jewish Currents Live : Dionne Brand & Adania Shibli in Conversation

for 34 weeks siden

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As part of Jewish Currents Live: A Day of Politics & Culture , I moderated a conversation between Adania Shibli and Dionne Brand this September in New York City. Both Dionne and Adania have been on the show individually, and part of why I was hoping to bring them together this way was because of just how unforgettable my conversations with each of them respectively were. Together we look at questions of home and belonging, nations and mapping, humans and animals, as well as at Dionne and Adania’s shared desire to write against grand narratives and to imagine an otherwise for how we might live together. We do all of this within the aura of the eleven months of genocidal assaults on Palestinian life, and how the resistance to it connects us to other struggles around the world. Jewish Currents is offering two things to entice listeners to become supporters of Between the Covers, one is a Jewish Currents sampler of back issues, the other is their After October 7th compendium of essays, poems and reports with writings by genocide scholar Raz Segal, Peter Beinart’s essay “Teshuvah: A Jewish Case for Palestinian Refugee Return,” poems by Hala Alyan, Fady Joudah and more. To learn about these and the many other things available to choose from when joining the Between the Covers community, head over to the show’s Patreon page . Finally, here is the BookShop for today. The post Jewish Currents Live : Dionne Brand & Adania Shibli in Conversation appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

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Isabella Hammad : Recognizing the Stranger : On Palestine and Narrative 1:56:17

for 35 weeks siden1:56:17

1:56:17

Today’s conversation with Isabella Hammad is truly like no other on the show in its fourteen year history. The main text of her book is the speech she delivered for the Edward Said Memorial Lecture in September of 2023. A remarkable speech called “Recognizing the Stranger” which looks at the middle of narratives, at turning points, recognition scenes and epiphanies; which explores the intersection of aesthetics and ethics, words and actions, and the role of the writer in the political sphere; and which complicates the relationship between self and other, the familiar and the stranger. It does all of this in the spirit of Said’s humanistic vision, reaching for narrative forms that can best reflect Palestinian lived experiences. Hammad delivered this speech, however, nine days before October 7th. The response of Israel, and the West at large, prompted her to write an afterword, an afterword that is a third of the book entire. Hammad herself had had her own turning point, her own recognition scene, where the terms of her own analysis had irrevocably changed. The afterword reflects this change, sitting at a right angle to the speech itself. The book as a whole captures this turning point within a writer in real time, preserving the gap between two selves, and we explore both on their own terms. If you enjoyed today’s conversation, consider joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter. One possible supporter benefit to choose from is access to the bonus audio archive. Isabella Hammad has contributed an extended reading from writer and political prisoner Walid Daqqa’s letter “Parallel Time.” This letter hasn’t been published in English but it was, in 2014, adapted to the stage in Haifa under the same name. The Israeli culture ministry, in response, defunded the theater. To learn how to subscribe to the bonus audio, and about the many other possible rewards to choose from, head over to the show’s Patreon page. Finally here is today’s BookShop . The post Isabella Hammad : Recognizing the Stranger : On Palestine and Narrative appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

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Tin House Live : Frank Bidart 1:10:19

for 38 weeks siden1:10:19

1:10:19

Today’s episode is an archival recording of poet Frank Bidart from the 2008 Tin House Writers Workshop. It begins with an introduction by the poet Brenda Shaughnessy, followed by an extended poetry reading by Frank Bidart. After the reading is a not-to-be-missed substantive and remarkable craft interview of Frank by Brenda. They look at how he approaches revision, the ways teaching students influences his own writing, and about his early years as a student of, and ultimately friend and early reader for, Robert Lowell. If you enjoyed today’s conversation, consider joining the Between the Covers community as a listener supporter. One possible benefit to choose from is the ever-growing bonus audio archive which includes a reading of and meditation on a Frank Bidart poem by Garth Greenwell. To learn more head over to the show’s Patreon page . You can also find a playlist of past conversations with some of the most iconic poets writing today, from Layli Long Soldier to Jorie Graham, Carl Phillips to Dionne Brand, at the show’s YouTube Channel. Finally here is the BookShop for today’s episode. The post Tin House Live : Frank Bidart appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

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Nalo Hopkinson : Blackheart Man 1:50:34

for 38 weeks siden1:50:34

1:50:34

Todays’ guest is Grand Master of science fiction and fantasy Nalo Hopkinson. Together we center her first novel in over a decade, the remarkable Blackheart Man, and look at what it means to not only write an alternate Caribbean history, but within that history conjure an entirely new culture, one with its own language, sexual norms, family and gender dynamics, and racial politics. And yet a culture that remains, for all its invented differences, deeply Caribbean. Blackheart Man is a book exploring the “what-ifs” in the histories of marronage (autonomous fugitive communities of escaped enslaved peoples) and of what can be recovered from the ruptures and erasures in the archive. Nalo’s latest novel becomes the lens through which we explore everything from the use of vernacular speech in one’s work to the reckonings around race that have rocked the SFF community in recent years. Nalo’s appearance on the show joins many archival conversations with touchstone writers of SFF today, from Nnedi Okorafor and N.K. Jemisin to Ted Chiang and Kelly Link, from Kim Stanley Robinson and Jeff Vandermeer, to William Gibson, China Miéville and Ursula K. Le Guin. I’ve created a “Legends of Sci-Fi and Fantasy” playlist on the show’s YouTube channel so they are easily found in one place but you can also sort for “SFF” at the show’s home page as well. If you enjoyed today’s conversation, consider joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter. There are an incredible number of rewards and gifts to choose from when you do. You can check it all out at the show’s Patreon page. Finally, here is the BookShop for today’s episode. The post Nalo Hopkinson : Blackheart Man appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

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Vajra Chandrasekera : Rakesfall 2:25:56

for 41 weeks siden2:25:56

2:25:56

Sri Lankan writer Vajra Chandrasekera’s first novel, The Saint of Bright Doors , was shortlisted for or won nearly every major SFF award there is. Much of the buzz around this book circled the question:”what exactly is this?” Saints not only didn’t fulfill the expected tropes of the genre, but seemed to be actively working against them, subverting them. Vajra’s new book Rakesfall , however, makes his debut, for all its innovation, seem normative by comparison. Rakesfall is set both in an ancient mythic past and a far distant post-human future, calling into question where the past and the future begin and end. Rakesfall is a book with two characters (or maybe one) who are constantly dying and being reborn, changing names, changing bodies, where it isn’t always clear who is who, or where self and other begin and end. Rakesfall is continually changing shape, style and form, with stories within stories within stories, a rabbit hole of stories, a wormhole of stories, where you are never sure you will ever resurface into the “real world” again. Of course, we talk about form and trope and genre, but we also talk at-length about Sri Lankan Buddhism and how, as a political force, it has woven its own story into a mythos of nation-state and race. And how this very storytelling has led to violence, from the everyday and bureaucratic to outright genocide. Vajra’s books can be engaged with and enjoyed without any knowledge of this, but the more we explore his own interrogations of Buddhist hegemony in Sri Lanka the more the subtext of his books feels central, the more his subversion of form and genre feels outright political. In one of his essays he asks ‘how do we write in a monstrous world?’ How do we write toward liberation, toward solidarity, whatever the odds? Today’s conversation provides one great example of just that. For the bonus audio archive Vajra translates an excerpt of a story by an award-winning Sri Lankan writer, a writer who, when he posted this story on his Facebook page, was arrested and imprisoned under the accusation that the story was anti-Buddhist. Vajra translates this excerpt and reads it for us while also contextualizing why he thinks this story was seen as blasphemous. To learn how to subscribe to the bonus audio archive and the other potential benefits of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter head over to the show’s Patreon page . Finally, here is today’s BookShop . The post Vajra Chandrasekera : Rakesfall appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

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Carl Phillips : Scattered Snows, to the North

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Today’s guest is one of the most singular and celebrated Anglophone poets writing today, Carl Phillips. We center his latest collection, Scattered Snows, to the North , his first since winning the 2023 Pulitzer prize in poetry. But we also use his three craft books written over the decades (in 2004, 2014 and 2023 respectively) to look at his body of work across time. We spend time attending to language, to syntax, to form. And equally, we look outward toward questions of voice, community, identity and more. For the bonus audio, Carl contributes a reading of a medley of poems about black swans, poems by James Merrill, Randall Jarrell and Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, which he comments on as he goes. He ends this remarkable reading with a black swan poem of his own. You can find out how to subscribe to the bonus audio and about all the other potential benefits and rewards of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter at the show’s Patreon page . Finally, here is the Bookshop for today’s conversation. The post Carl Phillips : Scattered Snows, to the North appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

1
Shze-Hui Tjoa : The Story Game 1:45:55

for 45 weeks siden1:45:55

1:45:55

Today’s guest, Shze-Hui Tjoa, has written a book that is remarkably unique. Is it an essay collection or a memoir? A detective story or a fantasy? A journey of self-individuation or an examination of power and control? Improbably it is all of these things, and perhaps more than any of them, it is the record of a writer finding her form by breaking form, but doing so in a way that invites us into the process as it unfolds. T Kira Madden declares: “ The Story Game introduces a major debut work from a most astounding talent. Shze-Hui Tjoa’s memoir not only challenges genre, it upends and splits it wide open. In meditations on grief, displacement, mental health, and family, Tjoa will have you wondering how and why we remember, and what we can’t forget. The Story Game is hypnotic, wise, and thunderously innovative. I will teach this book, I will treasure it, and I will continue to learn from its astute and hopeful insights.” For the bonus audio, Tjoa contributes a 30-minute video reading of a favorite childhood picture book that she translates for us from Chinese to English. To learn how to subscribe to the bonus audio archive and to explore the other potential benefits of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter, head over to the show’s Patreon page . Finally, here is the BookShop for today. The post Shze-Hui Tjoa : The Story Game appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

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Cecilia Vicuña : Deer Book 2:10:05

for 47 weeks siden2:10:05

2:10:05

Today’s guest Chilean poet, performance artist, visual artist, activist, and filmmaker Cecilia Vicuña, joins us to discuss her latest work, Deer Book , or Libro Venado. A bilingual collection, with translations by the acclaimed poet and translator Daniel Borzutsky, Deer Book brings together nearly forty years of Vicuña’s poetry and drawings surrounding the cosmologies and mythologies of the deer. Much like her work at large, Deer Book explores the mysteries of translation, interspecies communication, feminism, environmental destruction, the erasure and rupture caused by colonization, and the relationship between image and text, and the written word versus the oral, embodied and spoken one. We also explore how one’s relationship to language changes when one’s work emerges from a different set of epistemologies, when one writes from an indigenous and/or shamanic poetics. For the bonus audio archive Cecilia’s translator, Daniel Borzutsky, joins the show for a forty-five minute conversation to discuss the uniqueness of Cecilia Vicuña’s work, the joys and challenges of translating it, the role she has played in shifting the Spanish-language canon to include more indigenous poetics, and to discuss Daniel’s own journey as a translator, including some great anecdotes about working with another iconic Chilean poet Raúl Zurita. To find out how to subscribe to the bonus audio and about the many other potential benefits of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter, head over to the show’s Patreon page . Finally, the BookShop for today’s episode. The post Cecilia Vicuña : Deer Book appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

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Lance Olsen : Absolute Away & Shrapnel 2:17:59

for 49 weeks siden2:17:59

2:17:59

Lance Olsen returns to Between the Covers to discuss his two new books, his uncategorizable multiverse fiction Absolute Away, and his new collection of philosophical essays and interviews on writing Shrapnel:Contemplations. Lance’s latest novel engages with the life of Edith Metzger, an improbable footnote in two momentous events in history: 1)as the woman in the backseat of Jackson Pollock’s car on the fateful day he crashed it and ended both their lives, and 2)as a German Jewish three-year old at the infamous Nazi book burning. When Hermann Göring mistook her for an Aryan, picking her up, little Edie bit his lip until it bled. Employing the notions of quantum physics as well as the notions of home and exile of Jacques Derrida, Lance imagines many otherwises for Edith Metzger. In this life and others. Together we explore the philosophic underpinnings of Lance’s writing, as evidenced in Shrapnel: Contemplations , and use his novel Absolute Away as the test case. For the bonus audio archive Lance contributes an extended reading from his forthcoming novel about the outsider artist Henry Darger. It’s provisional title is An Inventory of Benevolent Butterflies. You can find out how to subscribe to the bonus audio and all the other potential benefits and rewards of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter at the show’s Patreon page. Here is the BookShop for today’s conversation. The post Lance Olsen : Absolute Away & Shrapnel appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

1
Amitav Ghosh : Smoke and Ashes 1:34:23

for 52 weeks siden1:34:23

1:34:23

For nearly twenty years Amitav Ghosh has been writing about opium and the opium trade, first in his fictional Ibis trilogy, and now in nonfiction with Smoke & Ashes . This is a story that brings together many of the preoccupying themes from Ghosh’s career: the legacies of colonialism and extractive colonial economies, the intelligence of plants and the ways plants are actors and agents within history, and the strategies that can be gleaned from the story of opium in today’s battle to address climate change. But given that he has now engaged with the opium trade in both nonfiction and fiction, we also discuss another of his interests: the factors that led to the rise of realism in fiction, that shaped and defined what we.call the literary novel today. It turns out what shaped the realist literary novel are the same forces that have led to our opium and fossil fuel addiction, and we look at both. If you enjoyed today’s conversation, consider joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter. There are innumerable potential benefits and rewards of doing so. You can explore them all at the show’s Patreon page. Lastly, here is today’s BookShop . The post Amitav Ghosh : Smoke and Ashes appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

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Joyelle McSweeney : Death Styles 1:59:36

for 1 year siden1:59:36

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Today’s guest, poet, playwright, novelist, translator, publisher, editor and critic, Joyelle McSweeney discusses her latest poetry collection Death Styles. She talks about the juxtaposing of “death” and “style” and the seam to the underworld that opens when you do, about style as survival, about writing after and into death, about eyes that spill Art, and ears that make sound, about poetry, performance, prophecy and more. We also do a deep dive into McSweeney’s aesthetics and poetics as exemplified by her landmark book of eco-criticism The Necropastoral: Poetry, Media, Occults. For the bonus audio archive, McSweeney contributes an almost twenty minute incredible performance from her libretto Pistorius Rex, her operatic and Oedipal reimagining of the trial of Oscar Pistorius (the double-amputee Olympic athlete who murdered his girlfriend). This joins bonus audio from many past guests, from Douglas Kearney to C.A. Conrad to Jorie Graham. To find out about how to subscribe to the bonus audio and the other possible benefits and rewards of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter, head over to the show’s Patreon page . Finally, here is the BookShop for today’s conversation. The post Joyelle McSweeney : Death Styles appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

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Danielle Dutton : Prairie, Dresses, Art, Other 2:03:06

for 1 year siden2:03:06

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One might ask, just what is Danielle Dutton’s latest book, Prairie, Dresses, Art, Other? A collection of stories, a philosophical essay, a sequence of nested dreams and memories, an act of loving citation, a one-act play of silent animals, a meditation on the human in the more-than-human world, on the end of the world, on writing, on reading, on visual art, on black holes, on subterranean forests and the landscapes inside us? Somehow, as we leap from one section to the next, from Prairie to Dresses to Art to Other, this book is about all of these things and much more. And yet, mysteriously, magically, improbably it all holds together as one. Everything echoing off of and deepening everything else. We talk about finding form, about creating work that best reflects the unique and weird way one sees the world, about the generative power of making the world strange again, about opening spaces in fiction, and writing into them. Many of the people mentioned today, from Bhanu Kapil to Sabrina Orah Mark to Caren Beilin have contributed readings to the bonus audio archive when they themselves were guests on the show. The bonus audio archive is only one possible benefit of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter. You can find out how to subscribe to it and all the other resources and rewards available at the show’s Patreon page . Lastly, here is the BookShop for today’s conversation. The post Danielle Dutton : Prairie, Dresses, Art, Other appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

1
Alexis Wright : Praiseworthy 1:33:29

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1:33:29

Today’s guest is one of the most important and celebrated writers in Australia today, Alexis Wright. We look together at the ways Wright reshapes the novel form to honor Aboriginal notions of story, of time, and of scale. To find a different sound and voice for the novel, one that is multiple and collective. both ancestral and visionary, one that invites us to walk back into relationship with other beings and the land itself, and shows us where we are headed when we don’t. Her latest novel Praiseworthy is set in a world like ours, of extreme weather events, of unchecked white supremacy, of the inexorable pull toward assimilation, erasure and the demanding present-tense of the internet. But the book is also one of aboriginal invention, adaptation, and vision, a novel of both biting humor and wisdom, as people, in the face of it all, search for Aboriginal sovereignty. For the bonus audio archive Alexis reads a favorite poem of hers by Bei Dao which joins an immense archive of supplemental material—readings, craft talks, long-form conversations with translators—from everyone from Layli Long Soldier to Dionne Brand, Naomi Klein to Richard Powers. You can find out more about the bonus audio archive and the many other potential benefits of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter at the show’s Patreon page . Finally, here is the Bookshop corresponding to today’s episode. The post Alexis Wright : Praiseworthy appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

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Nam Le : 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem 2:24:42

for 1 year siden2:24:42

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Over the past fifteen years, Nam Le has published a book in each genre. Best known for his phenomenal 2009 debut story collection The Boat, he followed it with his 2019 debut nonfiction On David Malouf, and now, this year, his debut poetry collection 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem . What is remarkable about these three books, is how, in a way, they are three different strategies aimed at the same goal—how to avoid the flatness and fixity of representation of identity, how to create enough elbow room, to push back against the assumptions, presumptions and expectations that come with one’s identity, and assert one’s sovereignty as a writer. Nam has suggested that 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem could be viewed as one long poem , one poem that consists of many stand-alone poems, but where each individual poem, through your encounter with it, affects, changes, and deforms all the others, and the long er poem as a whole . We look at his three books in a similar spirit, looking at each through the vantage point of the others, to see what we discover about questions of identity, representation and art-making as we do. If you enjoy today’s conversation consider joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter. To find out about all the possible benefits and rewards of doing so, from the bonus audio archive to the Tin House Early Reader subscription, head over to the show’s Patreon page . Finally, today’s BookShop . The post Nam Le : 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

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Anne de Marcken : It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over 2:11:00

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Writer, interdisciplinary artist, editor and publisher Anne de Marcken discusses her new book It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over . Winner of the Novel Prize, and thus published simultaneously in the U.S., U.K., and Australia, by New Directions, Fitzcarraldo Editions and Giramondo respectively, de Marcken’s new book is a deeply philosophical and metaphysical, heartbreakingly funny book about life and death, love and loss. Join our undead protagonist, in search of herself, as she loses one body part after another, yet fills herself with one thing after another. How much can we lose and still be ourselves? How much of our sense of self is built from what we’ve lost? How much of who we are is really ‘other’? Perhaps the crow inside her chest, dead but communicative, speaking human words but not a human language, can tell us. For the bonus audio archive, Anne contributes a reading from her book The Accident: An Account , which joins supplemental readings from everyone from Dionne Brand to Jorie Graham, Natalie Diaz to Christina Sharpe. To find out how to subscribe to the bonus audio and the other potential benefits of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter head over to the show’s Patreon page . Finally, here is today’s BookShop . The post Anne de Marcken : It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

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Canisia Lubrin : Code Noir 2:26:53

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2:26:53

Award-winning poet Canisia Lubrin talks about her debut fiction, Code Noir. The fifty-nine stories in this collection are each prefaced by one of Louis XIV’s fifty-nine “Black codes,” the rules of conduct in France and its colonies regarding slaves and slavery. And each of these codes, each of these edicts, is also engaged with, manipulated and remade by the abstract artist Torkwase Dyson. Together they unmake history, unmake the edicts, one in language and one with a brush. Canisia tells stories that are as short as a line, or told in footnotes, or that take place one thousand years in the future. Stories that remake other stories, and stories that aren’t stories at all. And ultimately, through storytelling, Canisia asks us how we place ourselves in relation to the stories we’ve inherited, the histories which themselves are fictions, and in the ways she herself does and doesn’t engage with the codes, she enacts a different way of living, sounding a future for Black life. For the bonus audio archive Canisia reads from Dionne Brand’s upcoming book Salvage: Readings from the Wreck , from Christina Sharpe’s remarkable “What Could a Vessel Be?” and more that I will leave as surprise. To learn how to subscribe to the bonus audio and the many other potential benefits of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter head over to the show’s Patreon page. Finally here is today’s BookShop . The post Canisia Lubrin : Code Noir appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

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Diana Khoi Nguyen : Root Fractures 2:39:49

for 1 year siden2:39:49

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Today’s conversation, with poet and multimedia artist Diana Khoi Nguyen, is not to be missed. Both of her books, Ghost Of and Root Fractures , engage with and are shaped by her brother’s absence and the family silence surrounding it. Two years before his suicide, her brother quietly removed the family photos from their frames on the walls, carefully cut himself out of each photo, and returned them to their frames without him. The redacted photos remained on the walls like this for years before and after his death. In different ways, Diana’s books write into and around the empty space that her brother left in these images, and in her family. We talk about her process of radical eulogy, the ways her work outside of language informs her poetry, how she uses photography—redacted by her own sibling—as a form and constraint in her work, about ghosts and hauntings, rivers and bees, about the Vietnamese declarative and the English subjunctive, about alternate lives not-lived and future ones that might be. One of the topics we cover today is how Diana constructed and crafted Root Fractures as a book, distilling a manuscript of over 200 pages of words and images to a book half that size. For the bonus audio archive Diana discusses this further and reads from some of the body-shaped poems that didn’t make it into the final manuscript, and yet were part of it coming into being. To learn more about how to subscribe to the bonus audio and the other potential benefits of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter head over to the show’s Patreon page . Finally, here is today’s Bookshop with not only Diana’s books but many of the books mentioned today. Everyone from Eliot Weinberger and Jenny Erpenbeck to Bhanu Kapil and Victoria Chang. The post Diana Khoi Nguyen : Root Fractures appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

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Álvaro Enrigue : You Dreamed of Empires

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Today’s conversation with Álvaro Enrigue about his latest novel, You Dreamed of Empires, translated by Natasha Wimmer, is set during the relatively undocumented first encounter between Moctezuma and Hernán Cortés. The novel dilates the knife’s edge moment when the Aztec emperor invites the conquistador, with his small band of Spanish soldiers, into the palaces of Tenochtitlan as guests. We talk about writing into the gaps of history, fiction’s influence on the “official” record, histories that are actually fictions, and how writing into erased or distorted histories can be a way to speak to the present moment. We talk of hornless deer, ritual cannibalism, psychedelic tomatoes, and a surprising influence of the indigenous cultures of the Americas on all of our lives today. If you enjoyed today’s conversation, consider joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter. Find out about all the potential gifts and rewards of doing so at the show’s Patreon page . Finally, here is the Bookshop for today’s episode with all the books, fiction and nonfiction, literary and scholarly, that we reference today. The post Álvaro Enrigue : You Dreamed of Empires appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

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Mathias Énard : The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild 1:49:05

for 1 year siden1:49:05

1:49:05

Is Mathias Énard’s latest book formally influenced by the Buddhist Wheel of Time, by Jewish undertaker guilds, by François Rabelais’s scatological and philosophical prose and linguistic wordplay, by Catholic altarpiece polyptych panel paintings, and by the scandalous diaries of a Polish anthropologist? The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild is dedicated to les pensées sauvages, to the wild thinkers, and today’s conversation is an exploration of Énard’s latest wild book, and of wild thinking itself. If you enjoy today’s conversation consider joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter. There are many potential benefits and rewards of doing so. You can find out about them all at the show’s Patreon page . In the spirit of Énard’s latest book and our conversation about it, today’s Bookshop is just as wide-ranging—with classics of anthropology, Buddhism, modern Arabic and French literature, and of course, Énard’s own books as well. The post Mathias Énard : The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

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Tin House Live : Denis Johnson : 2003 1:30:33

for 1 year siden1:30:33

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We are kicking off the new year with a serious blast from the past. A recording from the very first Tin House writers workshop in the summer of 2003 with novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, and screenwriter Denis Johnson. This three-part episode includes a remarkable reading from Johnson’s novella Train Dreams, an interview of Johnson by writer Chris Offutt that is an unforgettable exploration of a writer’s process and philosophy, and finally, after Denis takes a cigarette break, Johnson, Offutt and Charles D’Ambrosio perform the first act of Johnson’s play Psychos Never Dream. Books by all three of today’s writers can be found in this episode’s Bookshop . And you can find out more about all the potential benefits and rewards of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter at the show’s Patreon page . The post Tin House Live : Denis Johnson : 2003 appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

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Elle Nash : Deliver Me 1:47:07

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Perhaps it is fitting that today’s episode, with writer and founding editor of Witch Craft Magazine , Elle Nash, is launched on the shortest day of the year, the longest night of darkness. Nash’s new novel Deliver Me explores the ways society tries to keep the light and the dark separate, to hide our unasked questions and forbidden desires in the shadows. Nash’s writing insists on bringing them uncomfortably together and we explore what it means to transgress in one’s writing, to risk oneself on the page, to write dangerously and with a burnt tongue. Whether engaging with motherhood under capitalism, industrial animal slaughter, or cross-species kink, Deliver Me leads us into the darkness, crosses the borders of the acceptable, and then looks back at the well-lit world to see it anew. For the bonus audio archive Elle reads the opening of Elizabeth V. Aldrich’s Ruthless Little Things. To find out how to subscribe to the bonus audio, and about the countless other potential benefits and rewards of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter, head over to the show’s Patreon page . Finally, here is today’s Bookshop . The post Elle Nash : Deliver Me appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

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Naomi Klein : Doppelganger : Part Two 2:28:12

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Today’s part two of the conversation with Naomi Klein about Doppelganger highlights the Jewish elements in the book, and looks at them through the lens of Palestine and Israel. We discuss Zionism, Marxism, and the Jewish Labor Bund’s notion of “hereness.” We look at the battles over the definition of antisemitism and the ways accusations of antisemitism have been weaponized to silence legitimate political speech. And together, as two people who’ve both been involved in Jewish activism in relation to Palestinian solidarity, we take stock of the current upsurge in organizing, direct action, and civil disobedience on the Jewish Left in relation to Palestine. For the bonus audio archive Naomi reads for us from Philip Roth’s Operation Shylock , a book that features prominently in her book. She reads a letter that fake Philip Roth (his doppelganger) writes to the real Philip Roth. It is not to miss. To find out how to subscribe to the bonus audio archive and explore the other potential benefits and rewards of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter head over to the show’s Patreon page . Finally here is the Bookshop for today’s conversation, full of the books we reference but also additional books by Palestinian authors on the topics we discuss today. The post Naomi Klein : Doppelganger : Part Two appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

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Kate Zambreno & Sofia Samatar : Tone 2:30:10

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2:30:10

In Kate Zambreno & Sofia Samatar’s Tone they construct a shared voice, that of the “Committee to Investigate the Atmosphere.” Yes, they do this to investigate tone, in the writings of everyone from Nella Larsen to Clarice Lispector, W. G. Sebald to Franz Kafka, Renee Gladman to Bhanu Kapil. But in chasing the ever-elusive notion of tone, discovering its relational and atmospheric qualities, Zambreno & Samatar end up troubling the notion of selfhood and the individual, and in doing so, they trouble the notion of literary form as well. Tone becomes an investigation not just of tone, but of the collective, of the communal, of the collaborative, and reveals the ways all writing is collaboration. In the spirit of their collaboration they have created a wonderfully robust 40-minute call & response contribution for the bonus audio archive. One where Kate discusses and reads from works important to their project (everything from Bhanu Kapil’s How to Wash a Heart to Renee Gladman’s Calamities ) and after each reading/meditation by Kate, Sofia responds with a reading of her own, speaking to Kate’s reading through her choices (from Nella Larsen’s Quicksand to writing by H. Bustos Domecq, the pseudonym of the collaborative writing of Borges and Casares). The bonus audio archive is only one possible benefit of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter. Every supporter gets the resource email with each episode and can join our collective brainstorm of who to invite on the show going forward. And then there are many other things to choose from as well, from the bonus audio to the Tin House Early Reader subscription. You can check it all out at the show’s Patreon page . Lastly, because Tone is engaging with and indebted to so many books, this is the largest Bookshop ever! The post Kate Zambreno & Sofia Samatar : Tone appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

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Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore : Touching the Art 2:34:18

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Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore returns to Between the Covers to talk about her remarkable new book, Touching the Art . A mixture of memoir, biography, criticism, and social history, Touching the Art is above all a complicated love letter to Mattilda’s grandmother, abstract artist Gladys Goldstein. Through an exploration of Mattilda’s love for Gladys’ art, Touching the Art becomes a book about so many things—women in abstract expressionism, queer identity and homophobia, structural racism and white flight, antisemitism and Jewish assimilation into whiteness, family gaslighting and middle class norms, and dreams and visions of solidarity and liberation both in the world of art and in the world. For the bonus audio archive, Mattilda contributes a reading of the first chapter of their future book Terry Dactyl. To find out how to subscribe to the bonus audio and about the many other potential benefits of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter, head over to the show’s Patreon page. And here is today’s Bookshop . The post Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore : Touching the Art appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

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Bhanu Kapil : Incubation : A Space for Monsters 2:34:20

for 2 years siden2:34:20

2:34:20

Bhanu Kapil’s postcolonial feminist road novel Incubation: A Space for Monsters has long been out of print. The book of hers that most engages with the mythos and reality of America, Incubation follows Laloo, a British woman of Indian descent, who arrives in the US to give birth to a monster. This fictional story parallels Bhanu’s own arrival in the United States, a move that was meant to be a permanent one, a leaving behind of England forever. And yet, now, as Incubation has a second renewed life in the US and arrives for the first time in the UK, Bhanu herself is, decades later, living again in England. We talk about questions of migration, immigration, home, hospitality, performance, ritual, memory, family, and gendered, racialized, and institutional violence, in light of Bhanu’s own return to the place she thought she never would. “What is a monster?” is a question that animates this book and animates our conversation today. How do monsters relate to writing and form, to identity and belonging, and to Bhanu’s own writing and teaching? We talk about all this and more. For the bonus audio archive Bhanu contributes an extended reading for us: of Annie Ernaux, Eunsong Kim, Kate Zambreno, Sofia Samatar, and recent writings from Bhanu’s own notebook. To find out how to subscribe to the bonus audio and the other potential benefits of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter head over to the show’s Patreon page . Finally here is today’s Bookshop . The post Bhanu Kapil : Incubation : A Space for Monsters appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

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Colleen Burner : Sister Golden Calf 57:35

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57:35

Colleen Burner’s novella Sister Golden Calf is the story of two sisters on the road set in a world without men. Inspired, in part, by Vanessa Veselka’s essay “Green Screen: The Lack of Female Road Narratives and Why it Matters,” Sister Golden Calf by its very existence interrogates the road novel tradition it now becomes a part of. As Leni Zumas says: “In shiveringly beautiful prose, Colleen Burner maps a wild voyage into grief, love, and radical forms of kinship. Their novel unstitches the fixed seams of self and stranger, inviting us to touch the peculiar, precise commotions that link one creature to another. A truly extraordinary book.” If you enjoy today’s conversation, consider joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter. Find out all the potential rewards and benefits of doing so at the show’s Patreon page . Finally here is today’s Bookshop . The post Colleen Burner : Sister Golden Calf appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

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Kate Briggs : The Long Form 2:21:51

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2:21:51

Essayist and translator Kate Briggs’ first novel The Long Form is a book about, and happening within, the relationship between Helen and her infant daughter, Rose. What does making a novel baby-centric, not a novel about babies, but where the baby is a main character, a vital actor that shapes the story that unfolds, that shapes the experience of time and duration, what does that do to the novel? And what does it tell us about the history of novels, of the biases baked into the ways we traditionally tell stories? What gets considered worthy of characterization and why? What is considered dramatic or utterly banal, and what are the implications of these long-standing sensibilities? The Long Form meditates deeply on what a novel is thanks to baby Rose. And invites us to do so alongside her. If you enjoyed today’s conversation, consider joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter. Every supporter gets the resource-rich email with each episode and can participate in shaping who comes on the show going forward and there are many other potential rewards and gifts to choose from. You can check it all out at the show’s Patreon page . And here is the Bookshop for today’s conversation. The post Kate Briggs : The Long Form appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

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Lydia Davis : Our Strangers 1:58:06

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Today’s conversation with Lydia Davis about her latest story collection, Our Strangers, a collection of 143 stories, is a deep dive into storytelling. These stories, whether incredibly short or quite long, often eschew backstory, exposition, context, or psychological interiority. Sometimes they even comment on other stories within the collection, or revise themselves, becoming something else entirely. Regardless of their length or style, they often raise the questions “is this a story?” and “if it isn’t a story, what is it?” In that spirit, you could consider today’s conversation a deep dive into poetry (syntax and the poetics of the sentence), into nonfiction (the ways autobiographical and found materials are incorporated into her fiction), and into translation as well. And all along the way, we get to hear Lydia read her singular stories of varying shapes and styles. For the bonus audio archive, Davis contributes a discussion of the work of Swiss writer Peter Bichsel and then reads one of her translations of his stories. If you enjoyed today’s conversation consider joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter. There are a wealth of potential benefits and rewards of doing so, including the bonus audio archive. You can check it all out at the show’s Patreon page. Finally, here is today’s Bookshop . The post Lydia Davis : Our Strangers appeared first on Tin House .…

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

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Naomi Klein : Doppelganger : Part One 2:18:24

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Naomi Klein’s new book, Doppelganger, is a departure for her. One some of her closest friends even cautioned her against. On the one hand, it is what we’ve come to expect from Klein, a brilliant framing, through the coining of new language, of our current political moment. And yet Doppelganger is decidedly more personal, more vulnerable, more inward-looking than her previous books. And not only does it have a strain of a more literary nonfiction running through it, it also centers literature and the ways the literary history of doubles and doppelgangers can help us make sense of the doubling we are encountering in our lives—whether fake news narratives for everything from COVID to climate change; or AI; or the avatars that we create to represent us on social media; or the friends we’ve lost to what Klein calls “the mirror world” since the pandemic, over vaccines and masks. And the new political terms she is engaging with, from sacrifice zones to shadowlands, are deeply relevant to the choices we make as writers and art-makers as well. And writers from China Miéville to Kim Stanley Robinson are some of the many luminaries singing Doppelganger ‘s praises. For the bonus audio archive Naomi reads for us from Philip Roth’s Operation Shylock, a book that features prominently in her book. She reads a letter that fake Philip Roth (his doppelganger) writes to the real Philip Roth. It is not to miss. To find out how to subscribe to the bonus audio archive and explore the other potential benefits and rewards of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter head over to the show’s Patreon page . Finally, here is the Bookshop corresponding to today’s episode. The post Naomi Klein : Doppelganger : Part One appeared first on Tin House .…

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