Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry
306 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 1 month ago - ★★★★★ - 252 ratingsBOOKS ∙ WORKSHOPS ∙ PODCAST
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Episodes
Nam Le : 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem
March 17, 2024 21:33 - 2 hours - 133 MBOver 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 […] The post Nam Le : 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem appeared first on Tin House.
Anne de Marcken : It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over
March 04, 2024 01:32 - 2 hours - 120 MBWriter, 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 […] The post Anne de Marcken : It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over appeared first on Tin House.
Canisia Lubrin : Code Noir
February 26, 2024 05:32 - 2 hours - 135 MBAward-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 […] The post Canisia Lubrin : Code Noir appeared first on Tin House.
Diana Khoi Nguyen : Root Fractures
February 05, 2024 00:19 - 2 hours - 146 MBToday’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 post Diana Khoi Nguyen : Root Fractures appeared first on Tin House.
Álvaro Enrigue : You Dreamed of Empires
January 21, 2024 04:15 - 5 MBToday’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 […] The post Álvaro Enrigue : You Dreamed of Empires appeared first on Tin House.
Mathias Énard : The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild
January 10, 2024 02:10 - 1 hour - 99.9 MBIs 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, […] The post Mathias Énard : The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild appeared first on Tin House.
Tin House Live : Denis Johnson : 2003
January 05, 2024 02:10 - 1 hour - 83 MBWe 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 […] The post Tin House Live : Denis Johnson : 2003 appeared first on Tin House.
Elle Nash : Deliver Me
December 21, 2023 22:06 - 1 hour - 98.1 MBPerhaps 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 […] The post Elle Nash : Deliver Me appeared first on Tin House.
Naomi Klein : Doppelganger : Part Two
December 08, 2023 02:59 - 2 hours - 136 MBToday’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 […] The post Naomi Klein : Doppelganger : Part Two appeared first on Tin House.
Kate Zambreno & Sofia Samatar : Tone
December 01, 2023 14:11 - 2 hours - 138 MBIn 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 […] The post Kate Zambreno & Sofia Samatar : Tone appeared first on Tin House.
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore : Touching the Art
November 09, 2023 23:31 - 2 hours - 141 MBMattilda 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 […] The post Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore : Touching the Art appeared first on Tin House.
Bhanu Kapil : Incubation : A Space for Monsters
November 01, 2023 13:02 - 2 hours - 141 MBBhanu 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 […] The post Bhanu Kapil : Incubation : A Space for Monsters appeared first on Tin House.
Colleen Burner : Sister Golden Calf
October 23, 2023 03:07 - 57 minutes - 52.8 MBColleen 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 […] The post Colleen Burner : Sister Golden Calf appeared first on Tin House.
Kate Briggs : The Long Form
October 14, 2023 05:05 - 2 hours - 130 MBEssayist 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 […] The post Kate Briggs : The Long Form appeared first on Tin House.
Lydia Davis : Our Strangers
October 02, 2023 15:26 - 1 hour - 108 MBToday’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. […] The post Lydia Davis : Our Strangers appeared first on Tin House.
Naomi Klein : Doppelganger
September 20, 2023 06:00 - 2 hours - 127 MBNaomi 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 […] The post Naomi Klein : Doppelganger appeared first on Tin House.
Naomi Klein : Doppelganger : Part One
September 20, 2023 06:00 - 2 hours - 127 MBNaomi 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 […] The post Naomi Klein : Doppelganger : Part One appeared first on Tin House.
Tin House Live : Matthew Zapruder on Story of a Poem
September 12, 2023 04:39 - 1 hour - 62.2 MBYou could say that Matthew Zapruder’s Story of a Poem is about the revision of a poem, that it follows the life of one poem, from its first phrase to its final draft, and invites us, in the most mesmerizing way, behind the curtain of the creative process of composition. And you wouldn’t be wrong. […] The post Tin House Live : Matthew Zapruder on Story of a Poem appeared first on Tin House.
Major Jackson : Razzle Dazzle
September 04, 2023 04:02 - 2 hours - 141 MBPoet and host of the The Slowdown podcast Major Jackson joins us to talk about Razzle Dazzle, his collection of new and selected poems that captures two decades in the life of a poet. Last year Major also released a book his selected prose, A Beat Beyond, his meditations on poetry and its relation to […] The post Major Jackson : Razzle Dazzle appeared first on Tin House.
JoAnna Novak : Contradiction Days
August 21, 2023 02:04 - 1 hour - 107 MBFive months pregnant, fearful of the future, and creatively blocked, JoAnna Novak becomes obsessed with the life, writings, and paintings of Agnes Martin. She fashions a three-week intensive writing regimen in northern New Mexico, where Martin lived and painted (and where Novak writes this book we discuss today). The structure of this retreat is inspired […] The post JoAnna Novak : Contradiction Days appeared first on Tin House.
Jorie Graham : To 2040
August 09, 2023 05:46 - 3 hours - 165 MBJorie Graham’s first appearance on the show in 2021, to discuss her collection Runaway, is one of the most relistened to episodes in the show’s history, a conversation that, with each revisitation, seems to reveal something new about how to will oneself into presence as an artist and as a human. And it is a […] The post Jorie Graham : To 2040 appeared first on Tin House.
Tin House Live : Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah on Surrealism
August 04, 2023 13:18 - 41 minutes - 37.6 MBToday’s craft talk, “Why So Surrealism” by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, was recorded at the 2022 Tin House Summer Workshop. Prompted by a journalist who asked him to talk about how surrealistic and speculative conceits operated in and informed Black fiction, in this craft talk Adjei-Brenyah looks at the tropes of surrealist and speculative fiction within […] The post Tin House Live : Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah on Surrealism appeared first on Tin House.
Roger Reeves : Dark Days
July 26, 2023 23:54 - 2 hours - 125 MBPoet Roger Reeves calls the essays in his debut book of prose “fugitive essays.” And we explore what it means to write fugitively, to write into and from and toward fugitivity. If, as Fred Moten says, fugitivity is “a desire for and a spirit of escape and transgression of the proper and the proposed. . […] The post Roger Reeves : Dark Days appeared first on Tin House.
Isabella Hammad : Enter Ghost
July 08, 2023 14:16 - 1 hour - 96.6 MBIsabella Hammad’s latest book Enter Ghost is about a Palestinian theater group attempting to put on a production of Hamlet in the West Bank. The actors come from many different Palestinian experiences, one to the next. Some have Israeli citizenship. Others live in refugee camps or Ramallah or in the diaspora in Europe. But why […] The post Isabella Hammad : Enter Ghost appeared first on Tin House.
Tin House Live : Max Porter on Shy
July 01, 2023 13:01 - 1 hour - 67.8 MBEven though each of Max Porter’s books is a stand-alone book, some have called Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, Lanny, and his latest, Shy, a “trilogy of boyhood,” a framing Max himself embraces. After a truly electrifying short reading from Shy, Max and I explore his impulse to examine and evoke boyhood across these three […] The post Tin House Live : Max Porter on Shy appeared first on Tin House.
Megan Fernandes : I Do Everything I’m Told
June 20, 2023 04:43 - 1 hour - 110 MBSpareness, economy, and distillation are often put forth as obvious virtues in poetry. But what if there were a politics undergirding this aesthetic preference? In today’s conversation with poet Megan Fernandes we look at questions of poetics and aesthetics in relation to capitalism and colonialism and how a messier, more unruly poetics can trouble borders […] The post Megan Fernandes : I Do Everything I’m Told appeared first on Tin House.
Johanna Hedva : Your Love Is Not Good
June 10, 2023 05:17 - 2 hours - 153 MBWhat if you gave your fictional main character all of your own biographical details and family history but had them, at every point, choose “wrong”? At every point do the thing you yourself would be against? Johanna Hedva does just that, and their novel Your Love Is Not Good is not just full of sex […] The post Johanna Hedva : Your Love Is Not Good appeared first on Tin House.
Tin House Live : Katie Holten on The Language of Trees
June 01, 2023 13:14 - 52 minutes - 47.7 MBIn Early Medieval Ireland there was a language called Ogham that was sometimes referred to as the “Celtic Tree Alphabet'” because its letters each corresponded to and depicted a different tree. At one point Ireland, now one of the most deforested countries in Europe, was largely covered in forest, its culture deeply entwined with the […] The post Tin House Live : Katie Holten on The Language of Trees appeared first on Tin House.
Tin House Live: Richard Powers on The Overstory
May 19, 2023 20:40 - 1 hour - 86.5 MBBack in 2019, when Richard Powers was a guest on Between the Covers for The Overstory, we also appeared together that very same night, in conversation again. This time, an onstage ticketed event at Revolution Hall before a live audience. I’ve wanted to share this second conversation ever since. Not only because I prepared two […] The post Tin House Live: Richard Powers on The Overstory appeared first on Tin House.
Melanie Rae Thon : As If Fire Could Hide Us
May 10, 2023 05:04 - 2 hours - 116 MBMelanie Rae Thon’s latest book, As If Fire Could Hide Us, is described not as a novel with three chapters, nor as a collection of three stories, but as “a love song in three movements.” What does it mean to see a story as song, to sing from or toward love, to experience a book’s […] The post Melanie Rae Thon : As If Fire Could Hide Us appeared first on Tin House.
Christina Sharpe : Ordinary Notes
May 01, 2023 13:02 - 2 hours - 127 MBThere may be no writer, no thinker, who has shaped my conversations on the show more than Christina Sharpe. Whether her work is explicitly part of a conversation (in episodes with Ross Gay, Solmaz Sharif, Natalie Diaz, and Dionne Brand, to name a few) or whether her thought and vision provide a foundation and subtext […] The post Christina Sharpe : Ordinary Notes appeared first on Tin House.
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o : The Language of Languages
April 11, 2023 21:53 - 1 hour - 103 MBToday’s guest, novelist, storyteller, essayist, playwright, scholar, translator, and perennial front-runner for the Nobel Prize in Literature Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, is an iconic figure in postcolonial thought. His latest book, The Language of Languages, is the first book dedicated to his writings on translation and the status of African languages, globally and in Africa today, […] The post Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o : The Language of Languages appeared first on Tin House.
Charif Shanahan : Trace Evidence
April 01, 2023 14:08 - 2 hours - 147 MBEarly in poet Charif Shanahan’s latest collection, Trace Evidence, we encounter the lines: “I want to tell you what for me it has been like. // To speak at all / I must occupy a position // In a system whose positions / I appear not to occupy.” How does one connect to others, be […] The post Charif Shanahan : Trace Evidence appeared first on Tin House.
Sabrina Orah Mark : Happily
March 14, 2023 13:51 - 2 hours - 119 MBToday’s guest is poet, storyteller, and now essayist Sabrina Orah Mark. Her latest book, Happily: A Personal History—with Fairy Tales, is an intriguing blend of two radically different forms, memoir and fairy tale. Much as fairy tales are feral, forever escaping a simple, reductive meaning, forever changing shape and being retold, forever out of fashion […] The post Sabrina Orah Mark : Happily appeared first on Tin House.
Monica Youn : From From
March 03, 2023 05:36 - 2 hours - 123 MBIn today’s conversation with poet Monica Youn we explore what it means to write from a poetics of difference rather than of authenticity, a poetics of deracination rather than identity. Youn’s latest poetry collection From From engages with the history of anti-Asian violence in the United States but is always conscious of the ways this […] The post Monica Youn : From From appeared first on Tin House.
Jai Chakrabarti : A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness
February 20, 2023 05:14 - 1 hour - 93.3 MBToday’s conversation with novelist and story writer Jai Chakrabarti is unusually wide-ranging, touching on everything from classical Indian aesthetics to Jewish ritual, from poetry to cognitive science, from Tagore’s plays to Buber’s philosophy, from sublimating the self to writing the other. Chakrabarti’s new story collection, A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness, engages with complex […] The post Jai Chakrabarti : A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness appeared first on Tin Ho...
Mariana Enriquez : Our Share of Night
February 01, 2023 14:51 - 2 hours - 124 MBToday’s guest, Argentinian novelist, short story writer, and journalist Mariana Enriquez has been called the queen of Latin American gothic horror. She is in the vanguard of a generation of Latin American women writers breaking new ground in the horror genre. We look at the ways her work extends Argentina’s long and storied tradition of […] The post Mariana Enriquez : Our Share of Night appeared first on Tin House.
Gabrielle Bates : Judas Goat
January 20, 2023 05:13 - 2 hours - 111 MBToday’s conversation is with poet, visual artist, editor, and podcast host Gabrielle Bates. The poems in Bates’ debut poetry collection Judas Goat feel both personal and mythic, violent and tender, human and much more than human, with an effect that haunts the reader long after closing the book. They also have a fascinating relationship to […] The post Gabrielle Bates : Judas Goat appeared first on Tin House.
Georgi Gospodinov : Time Shelter
January 01, 2023 15:06 - 1 hour - 104 MBToday’s guest, Bulgarian novelist, storyteller, poet, essayist, and more, Georgi Gospodinov, is the perfect writer to bring in the new year. Gospodinov is a writer obsessed with beginnings and endings, with time, history, imagination, and memory. A writer raised on the stories of his grandmother, on the fantastical tales of Márquez and Borges, on the […] The post Georgi Gospodinov : Time Shelter appeared first on Tin House.
Lucy Ives : Life Is Everywhere
December 22, 2022 19:41 - 2 hours - 134 MBNovelist, short story writer, poet, and critic Lucy Ives’ new novel Life Is Everywhere has been heralded by some of our most formally inventive and playful writers today, from Jesse Ball to Alejandro Zambra to Percival Everett. No wonder as Life Is Everywhere, a book that contains other books, is hard to categorize. Some have […] The post Lucy Ives : Life Is Everywhere appeared first on Tin House.
Crafting with Ursula: Neil Gaiman on Word Magic & The Power of Telling Stories
December 10, 2022 05:31 - 1 hour - 91.4 MBWho better to talk about the unique power of telling stories than one of our great contemporary storytellers, Neil Gaiman? One deep way Neil Gaiman and Ursula K. Le Guin are kindred spirits is how they both share an abiding interest in the strange, uncanny relationship between truth and fiction, truth and myth, the imagination […] The post Crafting with Ursula: Neil Gaiman on Word Magic & The Power of Telling Stories appeared first on Tin House.
Sawako Nakayasu : Pink Waves
December 01, 2022 14:04 - 2 hours - 153 MBOf Sawako Nakayasu’s many literary endeavors—poetry, translation, performance art—it is hard to know where one begins and another ends. They each seem to not only be talking to each other but Sawako’s work also blurs the boundaries between them, nesting each within the next in a way that illuminates something about all three. Her latest […] The post Sawako Nakayasu : Pink Waves appeared first on Tin House.
Ama Codjoe : Bluest Nude
November 20, 2022 00:17 - 2 hours - 122 MB“On Seeing and Being Seen” is the title of an Ama Codjoe poem but it could just as easily be a description of her debut collection Bluest Nude as a whole. Bluest Nude is a book that engages with ways of seeing, and its poems often engage with visual art—poems that look at art forms made […] The post Ama Codjoe : Bluest Nude appeared first on Tin House.
Crafting with Ursula : Gabrielle Bellot on The Power of Names & Naming
November 10, 2022 06:03 - 2 hours - 142 MBWriter and editor Gabrielle Bellot joins Crafting with Ursula to discuss the power of names and naming across Le Guin’s work. From the very beginning, with Ged in Earthsea, a boy-wizard who is named in three very different ways, names have contained both power and an elusive mysterious quality for Le Guin. The ways names […] The post Crafting with Ursula : Gabrielle Bellot on The Power of Names & Naming appeared first on Tin House.
Hélène Cixous : Well-Kept Ruins
November 01, 2022 14:10 - 1 hour - 82.1 MBToday’s guest is poet, novelist, playwright, feminist theorist, literary critic, and philosopher Hélène Cixous. Perhaps best known for her iconic 1976 essay “The Laugh of the Medusa,” Cixous thought for much of her writing life that she would never write about her birthplace and childhood in Algeria, that she would never write about her mother, […] The post Hélène Cixous : Well-Kept Ruins appeared first on Tin House.
Billy-Ray Belcourt : A Minor Chorus
October 19, 2022 04:33 - 1 hour - 94.3 MBPoet Billy-Ray Belcourt has already transformed the memoir form, remaking it—strange, fresh, and new, in A History of My Brief Body. He does something similarly unexpected with his first novel, A Minor Chorus. Deeply aware of the history of the novel, of the sociopolitical forces that shaped what we consider a novel today, a form whose […] The post Billy-Ray Belcourt : A Minor Chorus appeared first on Tin House.
Crafting with Ursula : Maria Dahvana Headley on Feminist Translation & Classical Retellings
October 10, 2022 23:33 - 2 hours - 118 MBOne of Le Guin’s lesser known but lifelong practices was that of a translator. Her translations of the first Latin American Nobel Prize Laureate in literature (and the only Latin American woman to receive the award), Gabriela Mistral, were the first truly substantive presentations of her work in both English and Spanish. She’s translated other […] The post Crafting with Ursula : Maria Dahvana Headley on Feminist Translation & Classical Retellings appeared first on Tin House.
Dionne Brand : Nomenclature — New and Collected Poems
October 01, 2022 12:15 - 2 hours - 148 MBToday’s guest Dionne Brand, to borrow the words of John Keene, “is without question one of the major living poets in the English language.” Kamau Brathwaite called Brand “our first major exile female poet.” Adrienne Rich described her as “a cultural critic of uncompromising courage, an artist in language and ideas, and an intellectual conscience […] The post Dionne Brand : Nomenclature — New and Collected Poems appeared first on Tin House.
Elaine Castillo : How to Read Now
September 18, 2022 05:22 - 2 hours - 154 MB“White supremacy makes for terrible readers” says today’s guest Elaine Castillo, arguing that we are all overeducated in a set of fundamentally terrible reading techniques, ones that impoverish us as readers and thinkers, ones that diminish the availability of meaning and meaningfulness in our lives. When Castillo says “read,” and suggests that how we read […] The post Elaine Castillo : How to Read Now appeared first on Tin House.
Crafting with Ursula : Lidia Yuknavitch on The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction
September 08, 2022 13:48 - 1 hour - 92.6 MBToday’s conversation is about one of Ursula K. Le Guin’s most iconic and influential essays: The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, an essay that deserves an entire episode to itself. And who better to discuss it than Lidia Yuknavitch, whose latest novel Thrust follows a character who herself is a “carrier.” Because this essay has influenced […] The post Crafting with Ursula : Lidia Yuknavitch on The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction appeared first on Tin House.