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

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 […] The post Madeleine Thien : The Book of Records appeared first on Tin House.

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 […] The post Leanne Betasamosake Simpson : Theory of Water appeared first on Tin House.

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 […] The post Keetje Kuipers : Lonely Women Make Good Lovers appeared first on Tin House.

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 […] The post Patrycja Humienik : We Contain Landscapes appeared first on Tin House.

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 […] The post Torrey Peters : Stag Dance appeared first on Tin House.

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 […] The post Michelle de Kretser : Theory & Practice appeared first on Tin House.

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 post Omar El Akkad : One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This appeared first on Tin House.

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 post Hélène Cixous : Rêvoir appeared first on Tin House.

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 […] The post Aria Aber : Good Girl appeared first on Tin House.

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 […] The post Zahid Rafiq : The World With Its Mouth Open appeared first on Tin House.

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 […] The post Tin House Live : Denis Johnson : 2004 appeared first on Tin House.

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 […] The post Rodrigo Fresán : Melvill appeared first on Tin House.

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 […] The post Dionne Brand : Salvage : Readings from the Wreck appeared first on Tin House.

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 […] The post Danez Smith : Bluff appeared first on Tin House.

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 […] The post Kenzie Allen : Cloud Missives appeared first on Tin House.

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. […] The post Tin House Live : Torrey Peters on Strategic Opacity appeared first on Tin House.

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 […] The post Jewish Currents Live : Dionne Brand & Adania Shibli in Conversation appeared first on Tin House.

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 […] The post Isabella Hammad : Recognizing the Stranger : On Palestine and Narrative appeared first on Tin House.

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 […] The post Tin House Live : Frank Bidart appeared first on Tin House.

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 […] The post Nalo Hopkinson : Blackheart Man appeared first on Tin House.

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 […] The post Vajra Chandrasekera : Rakesfall appeared first on Tin House.

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 […] The post Carl Phillips : Scattered Snows, to the North appeared first on Tin House.

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 […] The post Shze-Hui Tjoa : The Story Game appeared first on Tin House.

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 […] The post Cecilia Vicuña : Deer Book appeared first on Tin House.

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 […] The post Lance Olsen : Absolute Away & Shrapnel appeared first on Tin House.

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 […] The post Amitav Ghosh : Smoke and Ashes appeared first on Tin House.

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 […] The post Joyelle McSweeney : Death Styles appeared first on Tin House.

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 […] The post Danielle Dutton : Prairie, Dresses, Art, Other appeared first on Tin House.

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 accommodate 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 […] The post Alexis Wright : Praiseworthy appeared first on Tin House.

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 […] The post Nam Le : 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem appeared first on Tin House.

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 […] The post Anne de Marcken : It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over appeared first on Tin House.

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 […] The post Canisia Lubrin : Code Noir appeared first on Tin House.

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 post Diana Khoi Nguyen : Root Fractures appeared first on Tin House.

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 Hernan 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.

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 & 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.

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 […] The post Tin House Live : Denis Johnson : 2003 appeared first on Tin House.

Perhaps it is fitting that today's episode, with writer and founding editor of Witchcraft 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 […] The post Elle Nash : Deliver Me appeared first on Tin House.

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 & 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.

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, […] The post Kate Zambreno & Sofia Samatar : Tone appeared first on Tin House.

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 […] The post Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore : Touching the Art appeared first on Tin House.

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 U.S. to give birth to a monster. This fictional story parallels Bhanu's own […] The post Bhanu Kapil : Incubation : A Space for Monsters appeared first on Tin House.

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 […] The post Colleen Burner : Sister Golden Calf appeared first on Tin House.

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 […] The post Kate Briggs : The Long Form appeared first on Tin House.

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. […] The post Lydia Davis : Our Strangers appeared first on Tin House.

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 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, […] The post Naomi Klein : Doppelganger appeared first on Tin House.

You 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.

Poet 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.

Five 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'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.

Today'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.

Poet 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.