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

Latest Episodes:

Tin House Live : Writing Pop Culture with Shayla Lawson & Hanif Abdurraqib Nov 25, 2020

Show notes

Join poet-essayists Hanif Abdurraqib & Shayla Lawson for an extended conversation on writing pop culture (and so much more). This conversation was recorded at the 2020 Tin House Writers Workshop. Shayla’s most recent book is This is Major: Notes on Diana Ross, Dark Girls and Being Dope & Hanif’s next book is A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance.

Don’t miss Hanif’s first appearance on Between the Covers as well, for his most recent poetry collection from Tin House Books, A Fortune for your Disaster, a great follow-up to today’s episode.

Elisa Gabbert : The Unreality of Memory Nov 14, 2020

Show notes

“Amid impending disasters too vast even to be perceived, what can we do―cognitively, morally, and practically? Gabbert, a tenacious researcher and a ruthless self-examiner, probes this ultimate abstraction in her essays, goes past wordless dread and comes up with enough reasoned consideration to lead us through. Do you feel―and how can you not―as if your emotional endurance is exhausted by horrors already well underway? Then you should read this book.” ―Sarah Manguso

Ayad Akhtar : Homeland Elegies Nov 01, 2020

Show notes

“An urgent, intimate hybrid of memoir and fiction, Homeland Elegies lays bare the broken heart of our American dream turned reality TV nightmare. The book . . . brilliantly captures how we got to this exact moment in time and at what cost. Stunning.” —A. M. Homes

“An unflinchingly honest self-portrait by a brilliant Muslim-American writer, and, beyond that, an unsparing examination of both sides of that fraught hyphenated reality. Passionate, disturbing, unputdownable.” —Salman Rushdie

Natalie Diaz : Postcolonial Love Poem : Part One Oct 23, 2020

Show notes

Today’s conversation is with poet Natalie Diaz, author of the National Book Award shortlisted collection Postcolonial Love Poem. We talk today about questions of postcoloniality, about love and postcolonial love, about writing poetry under occupation, the fine line between participation and complicity, about empathy and what cannot be translated and about the sensuality that arises from what can’t be known of another.

For the bonus audio archive Natalie talks about and reads from Jorge Luis Borges’ Book of Imaginary Beings. To find out how to subscribe to the bonus audio archive and the other rewards and benefits of becoming a listener-supporter of Between the Covers head over to: patreon.com/betweenthecovers

Tin House Live : Getting Past the Gatekeepers with Mira Jacob & Kaitlyn Greenidge Oct 14, 2020

Show notes

In “Getting Past the Gatekeepers: How to Keep Writing in an Industry that Excludes Us,” Kaitlyn Greenidge and Mira Jacob discuss their combined 30+ years of experience navigating literary publishing. From the first feedback to the final copyedits, they discuss strategies to stay sane and keep writing when your story doesn’t fit the industry’s narrow bookshelf.

Jenny Erpenbeck : Not a Novel : A Memoir in Pieces Oct 02, 2020

Show notes

“This collection of essays, memoirs and critical pieces forms an intellectual biography of Europe’s most history-obsessed writer. Beginning with her childhood in East Berlin in the early ’60s and ’70s, the book moves in concentric circles, from the intimate and understatedly moving to the moment History collides with her life. A powerful voice singing the past into the present’s melody.” —John Freeman, Lit Hub

Mary-Kim Arnold : The Fish & The Dove Sep 23, 2020

Show notes

“In The Fish & The Dove, Mary-Kim Arnold’s lyrical scope sweeps across intersecting terrains, moving through time to capture the history of occupation and legacy war in Korea, through the delicate tethers between biological mother, adoptive mother, motherland and daughter, and through the permeable membranes which exist between person and place. . . . With this fiercely tender offering, she lays bare multiple wars: ones between countries, in memory, within a family, as well as the ones between women and men. . . . ʻ[T]ime is a robe stitched through with ash’ that Arnold keeps ʻtrying to shake off.’ And it is an astonishing sight to behold.” —Diana Khoi Nguyen

Tin House Live : Queer Beatitudes with Brandon Taylor & Garth Greenwell Sep 12, 2020

Show notes

A conversation between Brandon Taylor & Garth Greenwell about queer aesthetics, “problematic art,” representation, and much more.

Jeannie Vanasco : Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl Sep 03, 2020

Show notes

“It’s hard to overstate the importance of this gorgeous, harrowing, heartbreaking book, which tackles sexual violence and its aftermath while also articulating the singular pain of knowing—or loving, or caring for, or having a history with—one’s rapist. Vanasco is whip-smart and tender, open and ruthless; she is the perfect guide through the minefield of her trauma, and ours.” —Carmen Maria Machado

“I wish everyone in this country would read it.” —Melissa Febos

Tin House Live : Bassey Ikpi & Melissa Febos on the Anatomy of Melancholy Aug 27, 2020

Show notes

“Anatomy of Melancholy” is a conversation between Melissa Febos & Bassey Ikpi at the 2020 Tin House Summer Writers Workshop. Febos & Ikpi talk about making narrative (and aesthetic) sense out of the darkest parts of one’s past.

Bassey Ikpi is the New York Times bestselling author of I’m Telling the Truth But I’m Lying and founder of The Siwe Project, a worldwide non-profit dedicated to promoting mental health awareness throughout the global black community.

Melissa Febos is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir Whip Smart, the beloved essay collection Abandon Me (for which she first appeared on Between the Covers), and her upcoming second essay collection Girlhood. She teaches in the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa.

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