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

Latest Episodes:

Sophia Shalmiyev : Mother Winter Jun 03, 2019

Show notes

“Shalmiyev stubbornly, brilliantly pursues loss in this psycho-geography of immigration, grief displacement, and damage. A mother herself, Shalmiyev’s narrator channels the ghosts of Dorothy Richardson, Anaïs Nin, Frances Farmer and the sad, bad stories of Aileen Wuornos and Amy Fisher, who could never be the right kind of girls. Like the great modernist writers, Shalmiyev writes from, not about, trauma but at a pitch that’s witty, dry, sad, and laconic. I love America, her narrator declares. It’s broken, like me.”—Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick

Morgan Parker : Magical Negro May 14, 2019

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“Morgan Parker’s latest collection, Magical Negro, is a riveting testimony to everyday blackness. . . . It is wry and atmospheric, an epic work of aural pleasures and personifications that demands to be read—both as an account of a private life and as searing political protest.”—Glory Edim, Time Magazine

Cristina Rivera Garza : The Taiga Syndrome May 01, 2019

Show notes

“If The Taiga Syndrome is a book of illness, it’s also about exile, disappearance, borders, love, language and translation, desire, capitalism and its discontents, fairy tales, and what it means to be possessed by the madness of others and the madness of ourselves. The murmurs that haunt the detective in The Taiga Syndrome evoke the history of Mexican fiction, most notably Juan Rulfo. But this is not a religious state of purgatory. It’s more like Apocalypse Now fused with the worlds of Clarice Lispector and Jorge Luis Borges. In other words, there is no one writing novels as phantasmagorically exquisite as Cristina Rivera Garza’s. The Taiga Syndrome, which is both quietly poetic and narratively unhinged, is a crucial addition to her distinguished oeuvre.”—Daniel Borzutzky

Lacy M. Johnson : The Reckonings Apr 16, 2019

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Rebecca Solnit says Lacy M. Johnson’s The Reckonings gives us something essential: “a vision of who and where we are that’s both scathing and generous.” Kiese Laymon says “I don’t know that I’ve ever been happier to be alive after reading any book. In this weird way that probably says way too much about the smallness of my life, I felt like everything would be okay — like we will make and sustain justice — because a book I needed but never imagined reading was in the world.” Lacy joins David on Between the Covers to talk about justice and art, justice as art, about #metoo accountability, about what it means to be against whiteness and accountable to one’s complicity in white supremacy, about making art in a time of global climate apocalypse, and how joy is an essential part of the equation.

Christine Schutt : Pure Hollywood Apr 01, 2019

Show notes

In eleven captivating tales, Pure Hollywood brings us into private worlds of corrupt familial love, intimacy, longing, and danger. From an alcoholic widowed actress living in desert seclusion to a young mother whose rejection of her child has terrible consequences, a newlywed couple who ignore the violent warnings of a painter burned by love to an eerie portrait of erotic obsession, each story in Pure Hollywood is an imagistic snapshot of what it means to live and learn, love and hurt.

Mitchell S. Jackson : Survival Math Mar 18, 2019

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“A vibrant memoir of race, violence, family, and manhood . . . Jackson recognizes there is too much for one conventional form, and his various storytelling methods imbue the book with an unpredictable dexterity. It is sharp and unshrinking in depictions of his life, his relatives (blood kin and otherwise), and his Pacific Northwest hometown, which serves as both inescapable character and villain. . . . It’s Jackson’s history, but it’s also a microcosm of too many black men struggling both against their worst instincts, and a society that often leaves them with too few alternatives. . . . His virtuosic wail of a book reminds us that for a black person in America, it can never be that easy.”—Boston Globe

Marlon James : Black Leopard, Red Wolf Mar 01, 2019

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“Black Leopard, Red Wolf is the kind of novel I never realized I was missing until I read it. A dangerous, hallucinatory, ancient Africa, which becomes a fantasy world as well-realized as anything Tolkien made, with language as powerful as Angela Carter’s. It’s as deep and crafty as Gene Wolfe, bloodier than Robert E. Howard, and all Marlon James. It’s something very new that feels old, in the best way. I cannot wait for the next installment.” —Neil Gaiman

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore : Sketchtasy Feb 12, 2019

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“Sycamore paints an unsparing and unsentimental portrait of survival in a homophobic era, and her writing is beyond beautiful. Sketchtasy is a powerful firecracker of a novel; it’s not just one of the best books of the year, it’s an instant classic of queer literature.”—Michael Schaub, NPR Books

Alicia Jo Rabins : Fruit Geode Feb 01, 2019

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“How does a body do what it does: make love, mistakes, create life, exist after life; how does a body evolve, celebrate, regret, reconsider its big and small moments: these are the passionate concerns of Alicia Rabins’ Fruit Geode, a book that I could not stop reading once I started, a book that drew me in with intimacy and force and then grabbed my heart hard, which is to say, if you have a body, this book is a must read.”—Lynn Melnick

Genevieve Hudson : Pretend We Live Here Jan 13, 2019

Show notes

“A terrific collection of stories. There are echoes here of Flannery O’Connor, Barry Hannah, and Denis Johnson, but Genevieve Hudson is her own writer—impressively and gloriously so. Her eye for the clinching detail is unnerving and her sympathies are fascinatingly conflicted. I hope, and suspect, this book will be the start of a long and inspiring career.” —Tom Bissell “Full of blood and dust and stars and light, Hudson captures the beauty and horror of the everyday and makes it all seem like magic.” —Leah Dieterich