POPULARITY
Categories
Min Jin Lee joins Deborah Treisman to discuss “Helen on Eighty-Sixth Street,” which was published in The New Yorker in 1997. A recipient of the Fitzgerald Prize for Literary Excellence, Lee is the author of three novels: “Free Food for Millionaires;” “Pachinko;” which was a finalist for the National Book Award, in 2017, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, in 2018; and “American Hagwon,” which was excerpted in The New Yorker and will be published in September. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Marlon James is the author of the novel The Disappearers, now available from Riverhead Books. It has been longlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize. James is the Booker Prize-winning and New York Times bestselling author of A Brief History of Seven Killings; the bestselling and National Book Award finalist Black Leopard, Red Wolf; as well as the bestselling Moon Witch, Spider King; The Book of Night Women; and John Crow's Devil. In addition to the Booker Prize, James's novels have won the American Book Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, and the Los Angeles Times Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, and have been finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the NAACP Image Award. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and named in 2019 one of Time magazine's one hundred most influential people in the world, James lives in New York City. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Please enjoy this Summer Salon Series episode of Breaking Form Selects: Ai Support Breaking Form by reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts here.Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. Notes:Toi Derricotte was born in Hamtramck, Michigan, on April 12, 1941. She earned her BA in special education from Wayne State University and her MA in English literature from New York University. Derricotte's books of poetry include I: New & Selected Poems (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019), which was a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award in Poetry; The Undertaker's Daughter (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011); and Tender (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997). She is also the author of a literary memoir, The Black Notebooks (W. W. Norton, 1997), which won the 1998 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Nonfiction.Together with Cornelius Eady, Derricotte cofounded the Cave Canem Foundation in 1996, a national poetry organization committed to cultivating the artistic and professional growth of African American poets.For more about Derricotte (and her poems) go here and here. Watch Toi Derricotte give a reading here (2015; ~30 min)Watch Toi Derricotte talk about reading and writing long poems here. Read excerpts in Kenyon Review from Derricotte's Black Notebooks here.Read this Bettina Judd essay on Derricotte (from Poetry Northwest).Poems we read include:"Not Forgotten""In Knowledge of Young Boys""Touching/Not Touching: My Mother""The Undertaker's Daughter"
Téa Obreht has built a career on novels where history, myth and the uncanny have a way of colliding. Her debut, 'The Tiger's Wife,' won the Orange Prize for Fiction and was a finalist for the National Book Award.Her new novel, 'Sunrise,' takes us to a mysterious Wyoming ghost town across three different moments in time. A plane crash in 2024, a historical reenactment in 2003, and the return of a legendary gunslinger in 1902 gradually become part of the same story.
Please enjoy this Summer Salon Series episode of Breaking Form Selects: Ai Support Breaking Form by reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts here.Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. Notes:The poet Ai was noted for her uncompromising poetic vision and dramatic monologues which give voice to marginalized, poor, and abused speakers. She legally changed her name to Ai which means “love” in Japanese. Ai self-identified as Japanese, Choctaw-Chickasaw, Black, Irish, Southern Cheyenne, and Comanche. Her collections include: Cruelty (1973), Killing Floor (1978), Sin (1986), Fate (1991), Greed (1993), Vice: New and Selected Poems (1999) which was awarded the National Book Award for Poetry, and Dread (2003).Read more about her (as well as poems by her) here. Read her obituary in the New York Times here, and this recollection essay by Tamiko Beyer in Kenyon Review here.Watch Ai read from her first book here (~6 min; recording made in November 1974).We discussed Ai in our episode "We Can Shift the Canon"Poems we read by Ai include:"The Hitchhiker" - hear Ai read it here. "Twenty-Year Marriage""James Dean""True Love"
Storycomic Presents: Interviews with Amazing Storytellers and Artists
#ShifaSafadi #ShifaSaltagiSafadi #SistersAlone #MiddleGradeBooks #NovelInVerse #VerseNovel #KidsLit #ChildrensBooks #SurvivalStory #Sisterhood #GriefInKidLit #SyrianAmericanStories #NationalBookAward #WeMakeChildrensBooks #Storycomic On this episode of We Make Children's Books, I'm joined by Shifa Saltagi Safadi, the National Book Award–winning author of Kareem Between, to talk about her new middle-grade novel in verse, Sisters Alone. Sisters Alone follows two Syrian American sisters, Rama and Leena, who are trapped alone in their rural home during a deadly blizzard. With their father away for work, the storm leaves them without power, food, shelter, and anyone to rely on except each other. But this is more than a survival story. Rama and Leena are grieving their mother's death, and each sister carries that loss differently. Rama is fiery, angry, and trying to take responsibility for everyone. Leena is quiet, withdrawn, and silently blaming herself. As the blizzard grows more dangerous, the sisters have to face not only the storm outside, but the pain and misunderstandings between them. We talk about writing in verse, balancing suspense with emotional truth, creating Syrian American representation in middle grade, and how stories about survival can also become stories about love, grief, and healing. The Title sequence was designed and created by Morgan Quaid. See more of Morgan's Work at: https://morganquaid.com/ Storycomic Logo designed by Gregory Giordano See more of Greg's work at: https://www.instagram.com/gregory_c_giordano_art/ Want to start your own podcast? Click on the link to get started: https://www.podbean.com/storycomic Follow us: Are you curious to see the video version of this interview? It's on our website too! www.storycomic.com www.patreon.com/storycomic www.facebook.com/storycomic1 https://www.instagram.com/storycomic/ For information on being a guest or curious to learn more about Storycomic? Contact us at info@storycomic.com Thank you to our Founders Club Patrons, Michael Winn, Higgins802, Von Allan, Stephanie Nina Pitsirilos, Marek Bennett, Donna Carr Roberts, Andrew Gronosky, Simki Kuznick, John Holland, Maureen Devlin, and Matt & Therese. Check out their fantastic work at: https://marekbennett.com/ https://www.hexapus-ink.com/ https://www.stephanieninapitsirilos.com/ https://www.vonallan.com/ https://higgins802.com/ https://shewstone.com/ https://www.simkikuznick.com/ https://www.dieboldcomics.com/ https://www.maureendevlinauthor.com/ https://benjaminhunting.com/ https://www.rootstockpublishing.com/ https://www.pigmacast.com/ Also to Michael Winn who is a member of our Founders Club!
In this episode of the New Books Network, we talk with Jeremy Tiang about his English translation of The Formosa Exchange (Honford Star, 2026)—which will be released on September 18, 2026 (but is available for preorder).Tiang is a novelist, playwright, and translator based in New York. He has translated more than thirty books from Chinese to English—including Zou Jingzhi's Ninth Building, longlisted for the 2023 International Booker Prize—and has served as a judge for the National Book Award for translated literature. Beyond translation, his novel State of Emergency won the Singapore Literature Prize in 2018, and his play Salesman之死 won a Obie Award for Outstanding New Play in 2023. Originally published in Mandarin in 2021 as 新寶島 and winner of that year's Taiwan Literature Award, The Formosa Exchange is a work of speculative fiction by Taiwanese novelist Huang Chongkai (黃崇凱). The novel kicks off with a fantastical occurrence: one night, the entire populations of Taiwan and Cuba swap places, with Taiwanese people ending up on the island of Cuba and Cuban people on the island of Taiwan. This “Great Exchange” becomes a lens for examining national identity, indigeneity, and colonialism, especially with reference to Taiwan's and Cuba's shared position in the shadow of their much larger neighbors of China and the United States. Scholars and learners across history, political science, anthropology, literature, and beyond will find much food for thought in The Formosa Exchange. The novel is dense with allusions—it nods to Western thinkers like John Mearsheimer and Claude Lévi-Strauss, while also weaving in references to Taiwanese and Cuban literature, art, and film. Anthony Kao is a writer who intersects international affairs and cultural criticism. He founded/edits Cinema Escapist—a publication exploring the sociopolitical context behind global film and television—and also writes for outlets like The Guardian, Al Jazeera, The Diplomat, and Eater. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
In this episode of the New Books Network, we talk with Jeremy Tiang about his English translation of The Formosa Exchange (Honford Star, 2026)—which will be released on September 18, 2026 (but is available for preorder).Tiang is a novelist, playwright, and translator based in New York. He has translated more than thirty books from Chinese to English—including Zou Jingzhi's Ninth Building, longlisted for the 2023 International Booker Prize—and has served as a judge for the National Book Award for translated literature. Beyond translation, his novel State of Emergency won the Singapore Literature Prize in 2018, and his play Salesman之死 won a Obie Award for Outstanding New Play in 2023. Originally published in Mandarin in 2021 as 新寶島 and winner of that year's Taiwan Literature Award, The Formosa Exchange is a work of speculative fiction by Taiwanese novelist Huang Chongkai (黃崇凱). The novel kicks off with a fantastical occurrence: one night, the entire populations of Taiwan and Cuba swap places, with Taiwanese people ending up on the island of Cuba and Cuban people on the island of Taiwan. This “Great Exchange” becomes a lens for examining national identity, indigeneity, and colonialism, especially with reference to Taiwan's and Cuba's shared position in the shadow of their much larger neighbors of China and the United States. Scholars and learners across history, political science, anthropology, literature, and beyond will find much food for thought in The Formosa Exchange. The novel is dense with allusions—it nods to Western thinkers like John Mearsheimer and Claude Lévi-Strauss, while also weaving in references to Taiwanese and Cuban literature, art, and film. Anthony Kao is a writer who intersects international affairs and cultural criticism. He founded/edits Cinema Escapist—a publication exploring the sociopolitical context behind global film and television—and also writes for outlets like The Guardian, Al Jazeera, The Diplomat, and Eater. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature
In this episode of the New Books Network, we talk with Jeremy Tiang about his English translation of The Formosa Exchange (Honford Star, 2026)—which will be released on September 18, 2026 (but is available for preorder).Tiang is a novelist, playwright, and translator based in New York. He has translated more than thirty books from Chinese to English—including Zou Jingzhi's Ninth Building, longlisted for the 2023 International Booker Prize—and has served as a judge for the National Book Award for translated literature. Beyond translation, his novel State of Emergency won the Singapore Literature Prize in 2018, and his play Salesman之死 won a Obie Award for Outstanding New Play in 2023. Originally published in Mandarin in 2021 as 新寶島 and winner of that year's Taiwan Literature Award, The Formosa Exchange is a work of speculative fiction by Taiwanese novelist Huang Chongkai (黃崇凱). The novel kicks off with a fantastical occurrence: one night, the entire populations of Taiwan and Cuba swap places, with Taiwanese people ending up on the island of Cuba and Cuban people on the island of Taiwan. This “Great Exchange” becomes a lens for examining national identity, indigeneity, and colonialism, especially with reference to Taiwan's and Cuba's shared position in the shadow of their much larger neighbors of China and the United States. Scholars and learners across history, political science, anthropology, literature, and beyond will find much food for thought in The Formosa Exchange. The novel is dense with allusions—it nods to Western thinkers like John Mearsheimer and Claude Lévi-Strauss, while also weaving in references to Taiwanese and Cuban literature, art, and film. Anthony Kao is a writer who intersects international affairs and cultural criticism. He founded/edits Cinema Escapist—a publication exploring the sociopolitical context behind global film and television—and also writes for outlets like The Guardian, Al Jazeera, The Diplomat, and Eater. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language
This week on Sinica, I welcome back Evan Osnos of The New Yorker, whose marvelous new essay, “The Future, Made in China,” chronicles a tech-focused return trip to Beijing, where he lived from 2005 to 2013 — first for the Chicago Tribune, then as The New Yorker's China correspondent. Evan is the author of Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China, which won the National Book Award, as well as Wildland: The Making of America's Fury and The Haves and Have-Yachts.His essay is far more than another breathless account of China's advances in robotics and electric vehicles. It's a meditation on what China's technological ascent means for the United States, for how both societies are organized, and for the rest of us, whose futures increasingly seem to be wagered by two small circles of powerful men in Beijing and Washington. We talk about the Xiaomi Hyperfactory, “Chinamaxxing,” the export control debate, and the deeper contest Evan identifies: not democracy versus authoritarianism, but humanism versus scientism.3:04 – Walking Beijing's streets again: quieter, richer, more surveilled11:26 – The Xiaomi Hyperfactory: choreography, awe, and what's actually real18:10 – Doomed to coexist: Evan's message for the American reader24:15 – Schrödinger's China: joke or juggernaut?27:16 – The limits of knowability in an increasingly opaque system31:56 – Threat narratives vs. “Chinamaxxing”: America's two China conversations43:20 – “Thank Trump”: America's self-inflicted wounds47:29 – Revisiting the Sullivan doctrine and export controls53:10 – Mankind 2000: humanism, scientism, and rival oligarchies1:02:48 – Convergence: arriving at dystopia from opposite directions1:07:21 – Self-strengthening redux: Levenson and America's meum-verum gap1:17:53 – The other Sputnik moment: the backlash against tech oligarchyPaying It ForwardYi-Ling Liu, author of The Wall Dancers: Searching for Freedom and Connection on the Chinese Internet — Evan admires how her work grapples with the competition between scientism and humanism across national borders.Chang Che, who writes for The New Yorker and The Guardian — watching China's technological developments up close, “creating history in real time.”RecommendationsEvan: How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University by Theo Baker — the youngest-ever Polk Award winner on how a rising generation at Silicon Valley's feeder school perceives its opportunities and obligations. Also True Grit by Charles Portis — splendid, sentence-savoring dialogue.Kaiser: Butcher's Crossing by John Williams, author of Stoner — a Western with the same sentence-level craft; for fans of Melville and Cormac McCarthy.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Please enjoy this Summer Salon Series episode of Breaking Form Selects: Lucie Brock-Broido.Support Breaking Form by reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts here.Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. Notes:Lucie Brock-Broido was born in Pittsburgh. Her collections include: A Hunger (1988), The Master Letters (1995), Trouble in Mind (2004), and Stay, Illusion (2013), which was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Books Critics Circle Award. Read more about her, and more poems, here. Read this interview with Elizabeth Metzger on Brock-Broido.Read Askold Melnyczuk's eulogy for LBB here. And read Joelle Biele's review of Stay, Illusion in Harvard Review here.Read LBB"s poem "After the Grand Perhaps"Read about the evolution of the Lady Godiva story here. Poems we read include:"Jessica, from the Well" (Jstor / Virginia Quarterly Review subscription required) -- this version is slightly different than the published version included in A Hunger."Domestic Mysticism""After Raphael""Dove, Interrupted"
This is a special compilation devoted to a subject very close to my heart and currently consuming a large percentage of my waking hours: writing. Over the years, I've asked some of the writers I admire most questions like: How do you choose a project and stay with it? How do you begin when inspiration refuses to show up? How do you build a practice that reliably produces pages? And how do you keep going when you fear your pages are terrible? Listen in to some of my favorite authors answer these and other questions. Please enjoy this special compilation on the craft of writing.This episode is brought to you by:ProLon science-backed Fasting Mimicking Diet that helps activate cellular renewal through fasting, while still eating nourishing mealsAG1 all-in-one nutritional supplementTimestamps:00:00 — Introduction01:52 — Elizabeth Gilbert: Choosing and committing to a project06:25 — Anne Lamott: Shitty first drafts and taking it bird by bird13:04 — Joyce Carol Oates: Don't wait for inspiration15:47 — Jerry Seinfeld: Building a writing system26:27 — Mary Karr: Revision and throwing out 1,200 pages35:08 — Brandon Sanderson: Consistency, word counts, and output45:04 — Seth Godin: Fear of bad writingElizabeth Gilbert is the author of Eat, Pray, Love; Big Magic; and City of Girls. Her ten books have sold more than 25 million copies worldwide. Anne Lamott is the author of 20 books, including Bird by Bird, Operating Instructions, and Help, Thanks, Wow, and co-author—with her husband Neal Allen—of Good Writing.Joyce Carol Oates has written more than 70 books, including Blonde and We Were the Mulvaneys, and won the National Book Award for her novel them.Jerry Seinfeld co-created and starred in the sitcom Seinfeld—which ran nine seasons and won 10 Emmys—and later created Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee and wrote Is This Anything? Mary Karr wrote the bestselling memoirs The Liars' Club, Cherry, and Lit and her book on writing, The Art of Memoir. Brandon Sanderson created the Mistborn and Stormlight Archive series, completed Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, and raised more than $41 million on Kickstarter for four secret novels. Seth Godin has written 21 bestsellers published in 40 languages—including Purple Cow, Linchpin, and The Practice—and a daily blog of more than 10,000 posts. *For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast.For deals from sponsors of The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast-sponsorsSign up for Tim's email newsletter (5-Bullet Friday) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Discover Tim's books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissYouTube: youtube.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/timferrissSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Julia Ioffe left the USSR as a child and came back as an adult journalist to find that the confident, credentialed women she remembered from her Soviet childhood had largely been supplanted by those chasing marriage and domesticity instead. That disorienting reversal is the engine of her book Motherland, a National Book Award finalist that reconstructs modern Russian history almost entirely through its women. Her account, drawn from her own family's history as well as the archives, keeps returning to one plain observation: Soviet policy pushed women into the workforce, the medical schools, and even into combat, while asking so little of men that low expectations became self-fulfilling—and Russia is still living with the results. Julia joined Tyler to discuss why so many of Russia's great constructivist painters were women, why the tsarist government established women's medical courses in 1872, changing attitudes towards abortion and birth control in the 20th century, why the Soviet regime turned prudish, how Khrushchev's plan to "replace the dead" institutionalized single motherhood, Russian superwomen, why Jewish men were a prized commodity amid rampant antisemitism, the cultural significance of flowers, why a few Russian names still dominate, why Russian women think Western feminists have their priorities backwards, how gender attitudes and autocracy feed into each other, three underrated Russian novels, what she wants to write about next, and more. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on YouTube. Recorded April 7th, 2026. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Follow Julia on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here. Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:06:38 - Bolshevik feminism 00:08:41 - Birth control, abortion, and prudery 00:14:48 - The Russian mating market 00:23:06 - Russian superwomen 00:32:02 - The importance of flowers 00:37:35 - Common Russian names 00:39:51 - Russian vs. American feminism 00:44:23 - Gender attitudes and Russian politics 00:49:54 - Russian novels 00:54:33 - Outro Photo credit: Max Avdeev
Welcome to part two of my interview with Allegra Goodman, author of the brand new "This Is Not About Us" (which the NY Times called "deliciously readable"), “Isola” (a Reese's Book Club pick), and “Katterskill Falls” (nominated for the National Book Award).We covered:- Why starting a new project is the hardest part–and how she gets herself through it- How she trusts her inner critic to offer constructive criticism- How she got past being pigeon-holed as a writer of a certain genre and built a career on writing many different types of stories- Making the shift from being intimidated by studying the great works of literature to being inspired by them- Why now is the best time of her career- How living to be older than her mother was when she died influences Allegra's work and her lifeConnect with Allegra on Instagram @allegragoodmanwriter.For full show notes with links to everything we discuss, plus bonus photos!, visit katehanley.substack.com.Thank you for listening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This week on You Are What You Read, we are joined by Jayne Anne Phillips to talk about her new memoir, Small Town Girls. Jayne is the author of Black Tickets, Machine Dreams, Fast Lanes, Shelter, MotherKind, Lark and Termite, Quiet Dell, and Night Watch, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2024. Jayne's work has been a finalist once for the National Book Award and twice for the National Book Critics Circle Award. The recipient of Guggenheim, National Endowment for the Arts, Howard, Bunting, and Rockefeller Foundation Fellowships, she is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This week I'm replaying my interview with Allegra Goodman in honor of the release of her newest book, "This Is Not About Us," which the New York Times called "deliciously readable." She's also the author of "Isola,” which was a Reese's book club selection, and her first, “Katterskill Falls,” which was a National Book Award finalist, as well as multiple other books.We covered:- Getting "discovered" as a freshman in college by an encouraging editor- How it's a love of writing, and not a drive to be published, that will sustain you over the long-term- Learning to build patience and endurance by writing novels- Her case for setting very low daily writing goals- Why she doesn't ascribe to the “shitty first draft” school of thought- Her daily and weekly writing routines- How having grown children makes those routines possible- The specific times when she'll listen to a podcast—and when she'll choose to keep her ears podcast-free- The nightly ritual that helps her get started on work the next day- How non-digital activities feed her creative process- The benefits and mechanics of writing two books at the same timeConnect with Allegra on Instagram @allegragoodmanwriter.For full show notes with links to everything we discuss, plus bonus photos!, visit katehanley.substack.com.Thank you for listening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
RE-RELEASE In honor of the Booker Prize 2026 Longlist announcement, we're re-releasing the conversation with Katie Kitamura, shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2025 for Audition. Jason talks to Katie about learned behaviors, the nature of intimacy, the art of performance, and her immersive process of writing. Perhaps most importantly, they talk at length about french fries. This episode originally aired on April 8, 2025.Katie Kitamura is the author of Audition, which has been a finalist for the 2025 Pulitzer Prize, 2025 Booker Prize, the 2025 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and the Gotham Book Prize, and has been longlisted for the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. Her five previous novels include A Separation and Intimacies, which was longlisted for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award and was a finalist for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. She is a recipient of the Rome Prize in Literature, a Lannan fellowship, and many other honors, and her work has been translated into twenty-one languages. She teaches in the creative writing program at New York University.Sign up for the Gays Reading Book Club HERESUBSTACK! MERCH! WATCH! CONTACT! hello@gaysreading.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
On today's show, we talk about the power and potential of language and how the state uses it against us, our opportunities to utilize it in liberatory struggle and the importance of speaking truth to power with Camonghne Felix. Camonghne Felix is a poet, essayist and former political communications strategist, is the author of Dyscalculia and Build Yourself a Boat, which was longlisted for the 2019 National Book Award in Poetry. Her latest book is the author of Let the Poets Govern: A Declaration of Freedom. —- Subscribe to our podcast: https://plinkhq.com/i/1637968343?to=page Get in touch: lawanddisorder@kpfa.org Follow us on socials @LawAndDis: https://twitter.com/LawAndDis; https://www.instagram.com/lawanddis/ The post The Revolutionary Power of Language appeared first on KPFA.
Kevin Powers' books, including The Yellow Birds, A Line in the Sand, A Shout in the Ruins and poetry collection Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting, have been translated into more than a dozen languages. He has been a finalist for the National Book Award and a recipient of the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Guardian First Book Award, the Prix littéraire du Monde prix étranger, and the Grand Prix de Littérature Américaine, among other recognitions. He was a James A. Michener Fellow in Poetry at the University of Texas at Austin from 2009-2012 and later held a Guggenheim Fellowship in Fiction. Powers is a U.S. Army veteran of the war in Iraq. His new novel is Children of the Wild. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Fernanda Rossini"Diari"Matematica avanzata e Diario di preghiera.Flannery O'ConnorEdizioni Areswww.edizioniares.itPrefazione di Benedetta CentovalliTraduzione di Fernanda Rossini e Alessandro Matone«Voglio vivere – non funzionare». Sono diari di lotta, come li definisce Benedetta Centovalli nella sua Prefazione, i due quaderni che Flannery O'Connor tiene durante gli anni di studio prima a Milledgeville poi a Iowa City e che sono riuniti per la prima volta in questa edizione a cura di Fernanda Rossini e Alessandro Matone.Il primo quaderno, pubblicato negli Stati Uniti nel 2017 e finora inedito in Italia, corre lungo quaranta giorni, tra dicembre 1943 e febbraio 1944, e si intitola Higher Mathematics. Due anni separano questo primo diario da A Prayer Journal sulla cui copertina campeggiano le due date “Gennaio 1946 – Settembre 1947”.In questi diari la “lotta” di Flannery O'Connor si esprime in un dialogo libero e serrato con Dio in cui dalle vicende normali della quotidianità emergono desideri, delusioni e mortificazioni, la volontà di far coincidere il suo essere cattolica e artista, e una tensione all'infinito che il limite della vita insieme sconfessa ed esalta.E proprio nel senso della dipendenza da Dio e nella consapevolezza che la sua vita fa parte di un disegno più grande, il suo essere scrittrice trova significato e bellezza: «Caro Dio, voglio scrivere un romanzo, un buon romanzo».Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964) cresce tra Savannah e Milledgeville, in Georgia. In contatto con alcune delle figure letterarie più importanti del Novecento, la sua vocazione artistica, che si manifesta con sorprendente precocità, matura nel corso di scrittura creativa alla University of Iowa. Il 1952 è l'anno in cui esordisce con il suo primo romanzo Wise Blood (La saggezza nel sangue) e in cui le viene diagnosticato il lupus, una malattia che eredita dal padre. La sua carriera letteraria prende rapidamente il volo grazie ai racconti raccolti nel 1955 in A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories (Un brav'uomo è difficile da trovare ed altre storie). La seconda raccolta di racconti sarà pubblicata postuma nel 1965 con il titolo Everything That Rises Must Converge (Punto Omega); mentre il suo secondo romanzo, The Violent Bear It Away (Il cielo è dei violenti), è pubblicato nel 1960. L'edizione dei suoi Collected Works vince il National Book Award (1972) e nel 1979 esce il film Wise Blood diretto da John Huston e tratto dall'omonimo romanzo. Oggi Flannery O'Connor è considerata una delle più grandi scrittrici americane del Novecento. In catalogo Ares anche Flannery O'Connor. Vita, opere, incontri di Fernanda Rossini, con un invito alla lettura di Daniele Mencarelli.Diventa un supporter di questo podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/il-posto-delle-parole--1487855/support.IL POSTO DELLE PAROLEascoltare fa pensarehttps://ilpostodelleparole.it/
「臺灣漫遊錄」(Taiwan Travelogue)在2024年美國國家圖書獎(National Book Awards)獲得翻譯文學類最高獎項;又在2026年獲得2026年英國國際布克獎(International Booker Prize)兩項都是臺灣第一次入圍並獲得這些國際獎項譯者金翎(Lin King)的得獎感言,更是受到了很大的迴響許多感言片段都在網路上被大量分享,被大量討論而在這一切看似光鮮亮麗的榮耀背後,譯者長年來其實一直受到不被重視,甚至是忽視的對待這也是為什麼英國版花費了好一段時間才得以順利出版。今天再一次邀請到Lin來和我們聊聊得獎後的影響和生活上的改變以及譯者所會面臨到的不平等對待《臺灣漫遊錄》https://www.eslite.com/product/1001309482832604?srsltid=AfmBOoou-zSCnkxv5EDUK8-gyCGYXM78zrBEG9M8X6avn_A0m4gz9UUc 【製作團隊】 拍攝|Stephen 剪輯|Stephen Podcast 合作&影片授權信箱peggyfoshow@pressplay.cc |未經同意,請勿轉載| Powered by Firstory Hosting
What really happened to hatred in America after World War II?Most of us were taught that defeating Hitler marked a turning point — that America emerged from the war more tolerant, more unified, more committed to its democratic ideals. Historian Steven J. Ross is here to tell us that story is a myth. And he has the documents to prove it.In this episode, Rabbi Yoshi sits down with one of America's most compelling Jewish historians to discuss Ross's new book, The Secret War Against Hate: American Resistance to Antisemitism and White Supremacy — a USA Today bestseller that uncovers a hidden chapter of postwar American history. When the war ended, antisemitism and racism didn't recede. They surged. Organized hate groups more than doubled between 1940 and 1946, and a network of domestic terrorists set about — in their own words — finishing the job Hitler had begun.But that's only half the story. The other half is about the people who fought back: the citizen-spies recruited by the ADL, the American Jewish Committee, and the Anti-Nazi League, who infiltrated these groups at great personal risk and brought their dangerous work to light. Their names have been largely forgotten. Ross gives them back to us.Rabbi Yoshi and Steve talk about the history, what it illuminates about this moment in American Jewish life, and — in true Search for Meaning fashion — where a man who has spent his career in some of the darkest chapters of human experience still finds hope and meaning.About Steven J. RossSteven J. Ross is Dean's Professor of History at the University of Southern California and the Myron and Marian Casden Director of the Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life. The first person in his family to go to college, he holds degrees from Columbia, Oxford, and Princeton.His books include Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and Los Angeles Times bestseller; Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics, winner of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Film Scholars Award; and Working-Class Hollywood: Silent Film and the Shaping of Class in America, nominated for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.His latest book is The Secret War Against Hate: American Resistance to Antisemitism and White Supremacy (Bloomsbury, 2026).More at his USC Dornsife faculty page: https://dornsife.usc.edu/profile/steve-ross/Learn about the book at https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/secret-war-against-hate-9781635578003/
The New Yorker: The Writer's Voice - New Fiction from The New Yorker
Min Jin Lee reads her story “Testing,” from the July 27, 2026, issue of the magazine. Lee is the author of the novels “Free Food for Millionaires” and “Pachinko,” which was a National Book Award finalist in 2017. Her third novel, “American Hagwon,” from which this week's story was adapted, will be published in September. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 491, my conversation with Carmen Maria Machado, author of the award-winning debut story collection Her Body and Other Parties. Air date: November 8, 2017. Carmen is also the author of the bestselling memoir In the Dream House and the graphic novel The Low, Low Woods. She has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the winner of the Bard Fiction Prize, the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction, the Brooklyn Public Library Literature Prize, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize. In 2018, the New York Times listed Her Body and Other Parties as a member of "The New Vanguard," one of "15 remarkable books by women that are shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st century."Her essays, fiction, poetry, and criticism have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Granta, Vogue, This American Life, Harper's Bazaar, Tin House, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, The Believer, Guernica, Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the Guggenheim Foundation, The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. She is the former Abrams Artist-in-Residence at the University of Pennsylvania. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Please enjoy this Summer Salon Series episode of Breaking Form Selects: Tommye Blount.Support Breaking Form by reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts here.Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. Notes:Tommye Blount was born and raised in Detroit. He holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College and is the author of Fantasia for the Man in Blue (Four Way Books, 2020), a finalist for the National Book Award, and the chapbook What Are We Not For (Bull City Press, 2016). Blount is the recipient of scholarships and fellowships from Kresge Arts in Detroit and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. In 2023, he received a Whiting Award in Poetry. A Cave Canem Fellow, Blount lives in Novi, Michigan.Visit Tommye's website: https://www.tommyeblount.com/homeBuy the book Fantasia for the Man in Blue from Four Way Books.Poems we mention include:"Fantasia for the Man in Blue" (one of four title poems in the book). Watch Tommye read this poem here. "Leroy Auditions for the Fame School""Ku Klux Klan Robe and Hood, Circa 1925" in Massachusetts Review "Palmer Park""Karl Lagerfeld's Line of Beauty"Read two poems by Tommye in Four Way Review here.See Tommye read his poem "Grand Dragon" at the Whiting Awards here (~1 min)Watch Leroy Johnson's audition in Fame here!Read this interview with Tommye in Adroit Journal
E. Lockhart is the author of the New York Times bestselling series that includes We Were Liars, Family of Liars, and We Fell Apart. We Were Liars is also a TV series on Prime Video. Lockhart invented a superhero for DC Comics: Whistle: A New Gotham City Hero. Her other books include Again Again, Genuine Fraud and The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks. She has been a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize and the National Book Award, and an honoree for the Printz Award. She has a Ph.D in English literature from Columbia University. Visit her online at emilylockhart.com. IG and TikTok: elockhartbooks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Molly Crabapple joins Michael Stauch to discuss the history of the Jewish Labor Bund, the subject of her new book, Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund (Random House, 2026). Once the most influential Jewish political force in Eastern Europe, the Bund was secular, socialist, and uncompromisingly anti-Zionist. The Bundists fought for dignity and equality, not in an imagined homeland in Palestine but “here where we live.” In the first popular history of the Bund, Crabapple re-creates their extraordinary world through dramatic portraits of insurgent poets and antireligious rebels, clandestine revolutionaries and lovers on the barricades. The Bundists live deeply within this violent, volatile, and somehow hopeful period, as their stories interweave with the Russian Revolution and the Holocaust. The Bund's rise and fall raises the vital question: What can we learn from a movement that, for all its toughness, imagination, and moral clarity, was largely destroyed? Highlights include: Crabapple's personal connection to the Bund through her great-grandfather, Sam Rothbort; How the Bund built a vibrant youth counterculture amid harsh anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe; The significance of “Hereness” to the Bund's politics and how it distinguished the group from Zionist groups advocating the colonization of Palestine; A discussion of “theory-pilled nerds” and how Crabapple's activism and journalism since Occupy Wall Street shaped her insights into the inner life of the Bund; The future of anti-Zionism in the context of Israel's ongoing destruction of Palestine. Molly Crabapple is an artist and writer based in New York. She is the author of two books, Drawing Blood and Brothers of the Gun (with Marwan Hisham), which was longlisted for a National Book Award. She was a 2020 New America Fellow and her reportage is the winner of the Bernhard Labor Journalism Award, and has been published in The New York Times, New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. Her animations have won two Emmys and an Edward R. Murrow Award. Her art is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art. Michael Stauch is an associate professor of history at the University of Toledo and the author of Wildcat of the Streets: Detroit in the Age of Community Policing, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2025. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
Molly Crabapple joins Michael Stauch to discuss the history of the Jewish Labor Bund, the subject of her new book, Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund (Random House, 2026). Once the most influential Jewish political force in Eastern Europe, the Bund was secular, socialist, and uncompromisingly anti-Zionist. The Bundists fought for dignity and equality, not in an imagined homeland in Palestine but “here where we live.” In the first popular history of the Bund, Crabapple re-creates their extraordinary world through dramatic portraits of insurgent poets and antireligious rebels, clandestine revolutionaries and lovers on the barricades. The Bundists live deeply within this violent, volatile, and somehow hopeful period, as their stories interweave with the Russian Revolution and the Holocaust. The Bund's rise and fall raises the vital question: What can we learn from a movement that, for all its toughness, imagination, and moral clarity, was largely destroyed? Highlights include: Crabapple's personal connection to the Bund through her great-grandfather, Sam Rothbort; How the Bund built a vibrant youth counterculture amid harsh anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe; The significance of “Hereness” to the Bund's politics and how it distinguished the group from Zionist groups advocating the colonization of Palestine; A discussion of “theory-pilled nerds” and how Crabapple's activism and journalism since Occupy Wall Street shaped her insights into the inner life of the Bund; The future of anti-Zionism in the context of Israel's ongoing destruction of Palestine. Molly Crabapple is an artist and writer based in New York. She is the author of two books, Drawing Blood and Brothers of the Gun (with Marwan Hisham), which was longlisted for a National Book Award. She was a 2020 New America Fellow and her reportage is the winner of the Bernhard Labor Journalism Award, and has been published in The New York Times, New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. Her animations have won two Emmys and an Edward R. Murrow Award. Her art is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art. Michael Stauch is an associate professor of history at the University of Toledo and the author of Wildcat of the Streets: Detroit in the Age of Community Policing, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2025. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies
Molly Crabapple joins Michael Stauch to discuss the history of the Jewish Labor Bund, the subject of her new book, Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund (Random House, 2026). Once the most influential Jewish political force in Eastern Europe, the Bund was secular, socialist, and uncompromisingly anti-Zionist. The Bundists fought for dignity and equality, not in an imagined homeland in Palestine but “here where we live.” In the first popular history of the Bund, Crabapple re-creates their extraordinary world through dramatic portraits of insurgent poets and antireligious rebels, clandestine revolutionaries and lovers on the barricades. The Bundists live deeply within this violent, volatile, and somehow hopeful period, as their stories interweave with the Russian Revolution and the Holocaust. The Bund's rise and fall raises the vital question: What can we learn from a movement that, for all its toughness, imagination, and moral clarity, was largely destroyed? Highlights include: Crabapple's personal connection to the Bund through her great-grandfather, Sam Rothbort; How the Bund built a vibrant youth counterculture amid harsh anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe; The significance of “Hereness” to the Bund's politics and how it distinguished the group from Zionist groups advocating the colonization of Palestine; A discussion of “theory-pilled nerds” and how Crabapple's activism and journalism since Occupy Wall Street shaped her insights into the inner life of the Bund; The future of anti-Zionism in the context of Israel's ongoing destruction of Palestine. Molly Crabapple is an artist and writer based in New York. She is the author of two books, Drawing Blood and Brothers of the Gun (with Marwan Hisham), which was longlisted for a National Book Award. She was a 2020 New America Fellow and her reportage is the winner of the Bernhard Labor Journalism Award, and has been published in The New York Times, New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. Her animations have won two Emmys and an Edward R. Murrow Award. Her art is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art. Michael Stauch is an associate professor of history at the University of Toledo and the author of Wildcat of the Streets: Detroit in the Age of Community Policing, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2025. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies
Molly Crabapple joins Michael Stauch to discuss the history of the Jewish Labor Bund, the subject of her new book, Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund (Random House, 2026). Once the most influential Jewish political force in Eastern Europe, the Bund was secular, socialist, and uncompromisingly anti-Zionist. The Bundists fought for dignity and equality, not in an imagined homeland in Palestine but “here where we live.” In the first popular history of the Bund, Crabapple re-creates their extraordinary world through dramatic portraits of insurgent poets and antireligious rebels, clandestine revolutionaries and lovers on the barricades. The Bundists live deeply within this violent, volatile, and somehow hopeful period, as their stories interweave with the Russian Revolution and the Holocaust. The Bund's rise and fall raises the vital question: What can we learn from a movement that, for all its toughness, imagination, and moral clarity, was largely destroyed? Highlights include: Crabapple's personal connection to the Bund through her great-grandfather, Sam Rothbort; How the Bund built a vibrant youth counterculture amid harsh anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe; The significance of “Hereness” to the Bund's politics and how it distinguished the group from Zionist groups advocating the colonization of Palestine; A discussion of “theory-pilled nerds” and how Crabapple's activism and journalism since Occupy Wall Street shaped her insights into the inner life of the Bund; The future of anti-Zionism in the context of Israel's ongoing destruction of Palestine. Molly Crabapple is an artist and writer based in New York. She is the author of two books, Drawing Blood and Brothers of the Gun (with Marwan Hisham), which was longlisted for a National Book Award. She was a 2020 New America Fellow and her reportage is the winner of the Bernhard Labor Journalism Award, and has been published in The New York Times, New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. Her animations have won two Emmys and an Edward R. Murrow Award. Her art is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art. Michael Stauch is an associate professor of history at the University of Toledo and the author of Wildcat of the Streets: Detroit in the Age of Community Policing, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2025. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
In this week's episode, both of our storytellers come face to face with one of their deepest fears: the ocean. Part 1: When the children's TV show host Carly Ciarrocchi is assigned a scuba diving episode, she's forced to confront a lifelong fear of the ocean.Part 2: Growing up, Darcie Little Badger was wary of the ocean. But when she takes an oceanography class in college, she begins to question her fears.Carly Ciarrocchi (she/her) is an Emmy-nominated host, writer, musician, and producer. A true multi-hyphenate, she has spent most of her career in children's media, making and hosting TV shows and podcasts with collaborators like Universal Kids, Disney+, Nick Jr, Nat Geo Kids, Sprout, Tinkercast, Sesame Workshop and the LEGO Foundation. She's a Moth Story Slam winner and has told tales with Stories from the Stage (PBS), Generation Women, the Artichoke, The Tell, Soup and Stories and more. She teaches clown-theatre classes at the Brooklyn Comedy Collective. In everything she does, she hopes to create the conditions for people of all ages to access their most authentic state of play. www.carlyciarrocchi.com Darcie Little Badger is a Lipan Apache writer with a PhD in oceanography. Her critically acclaimed debut novel, Elatsoe, was featured in Time Magazine as one of the best 100 fantasy books of all time. Her second fantasy novel, A Snake Falls to Earth, received a Newbery Honor and is on the National Book Awards longlist. Her third novel, Sheine Lende, is the prequel to Elatsoe and has received six starred reviews. Darcie is married to a veterinarian named Taran.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
In 'Tyrants and Rogues: Understanding the Declaration of Independence,' Robert Parkinson argues that the document's often-overlooked list of grievances against King George III reveals what truly drove the Revolution and why independence became inevitable.Annette Gordon-Reed is a 'New York Times'–bestselling historian and the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University. Her books include 'The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family,' which won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award and 'Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy.' Her latest is a volume she edited, 'Jefferson on Race: A Reader.'
Ben Fountain's work has received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, the Barnes & Noble Discover Award for Fiction, the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize, the PEN-Cerulli Award for Excellence in Sports Writing, and a Whiting Writers Award, and has been a finalist for the National Book Award and runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. His works include Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, Beautiful Country Burn Again, Devil Makes Three, and Rasputin Swims the Potomac. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Douglas Stuart is one of those unicorn authors who seemed to have appeared out of thin air and took the literary world by storm. His 2019 debut novel, Shuggie Bain, would be rejected 44 times before winning the Booker Prize, becoming a finalist for the National Book Award and being named the Sunday Time's 25 Best Novels of the 21st Century. Then would come Young Mungo in 2022, which sealed Douglas's standing as a literary genius. He has since been published in the New Yorker at least three times. John of John came out in May. It was an instant Oprah pick and another literary masterpiece. He joins Marrie Stone to talk about it. They chat about Douglas's unlikely path to success and how he taught himself the craft. They discuss his research process and how he immersed himself in a part of the world – and a part of his own country – that he didn't know. And he shares how his approach to every novel has differed, what his 20 years in the textile industry taught him about writing, why he feels unqualified to offer any advice, and so much more. For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It's stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you'll find an album's worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. It's perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website. (Recorded on June 23, 2026) Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett Host: Marrie Stone Music: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)
For more than half a century, Gail Godwin has earned acclaim for novels that blend emotional depth with intellectual curiosity, receiving three National Book Award nominations along the way. In 'The Art of Becoming a Citizen: A Memoir,' she shifts from fiction to reflection, tracing the experiences that shaped her understanding of democracy, belonging, and public life.Part personal history, part meditation on the responsibilities of citizenship, the memoir explores how private lives intersect with national ideals. Written with the grace and insight that define Godwin's work, it offers a timely and thoughtful perspective on America's current political moment.
The Author Events Series presents Namwali Serpell | On Morrison In Conversation with Angela Flournoy Toni Morrison, Nobel Laureate and one of our most beloved writers, has inspired generations of readers. But her artistic genius is often overshadowed by her monumental public persona, perhaps because, as Namwali Serpell puts it, ''she is our only truly canonical black, female writer-and her work is highly complex.'' In On Morrison, Serpell brings her unique experience as both an award-winning writer and professor who teaches a course on Morrison to illuminate her masterful experiments with literary form. This is Morrison as you've never encountered her before, a journey through her oeuvre-her fiction and criticism, as well as her lesser-known dramatic works and poetry-with contextual guidance and original close readings. At once accessible and uncompromisingly rigorous, On Morrison is a primer not only on how to read one of the most significant American authors of all time, but also on how to read great works of literature in general. This dialogue on the page between two black women artist-readers is stylish, edifying, and thrilling in its scope and intelligence. Namwali Serpell was born in Lusaka and lives in New York. Her debut novel, The Old Drift, won an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Science Fiction, and the Los Angeles Times's Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Her second novel, The Furrows, was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and was selected as one of The New York Times Ten Best Books of the Year. Her book of essays, Stranger Faces, was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. She is a recipient of the Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction, the Caine Prize for African Writing, and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Award. She is a professor of English at Harvard University. Angela Flournoy is the author of The Turner House, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, an Indie Next pick, and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, and she has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Flournoy has taught at the University of Iowa, Princeton University, and UCLA. She lives in New York. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation when you register for this event to ensure that this series continues to inspire Philadelphians. Books will be available for purchase at the library on event night! All tickets are non-refundable. (recorded 2/25/2026)
The Author Events Series presents M Lin | The Memory Museum: Stories In Conversation with 'Pemi Aguda Stretching from the present day to the near future, from China to America and beyond, M Lin's piercing and melodious debut captures the spirit of China's One-Child Generation as its characters navigate homes and cultures, hopes and contradictions, survival and resistance. These frank, tender, and playful stories offer profound insight into the ambivalence of migration, the perverse ways race and class can operate, and what it means to be Chinese today. The collection begins with ''Scenes from Childhood,'' in which a lonely, elderly woman in a dystopian reality remembers her grandfather's village. In ''Magic, or Something Less Assuring,'' a politically divided couple goes on a divorce honeymoon in Morocco. ''You Won't Read This in the News'' features four migrant workers during one night of petty theft and connection. In ''Tough Egg,'' a filmmaker thwarted by censorship untangles her fraught relationship to motherhood. Other stories portray a photographer reuniting with her first love in Beijing; the historic White Paper protests that ended the zero-COVID policy; and generations into the future, a newly instated Memory Museum where two sensory architects share their vision for a utopian world. With daring political and creative commitment, The Memory Museum brims with joy even as Lin exposes the knife's edge between powerlessness and agency, pain and intimacy, our memories and our futures. M Lin is a Chinese writer living in the US. Her stories have appeared in Ploughshares, Swamp Pink, Joyland, Epiphany, Fence, and Best Debut Short Stories 2023, and her nonfiction can be read in The New York Times, Guernica, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. 'Pemi Aguda is the author of One Leg on Earth, and Ghostroots, a finalist for the National Book Award, the LA Times First Fiction Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award. She is from Lagos, Nigeria. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation when you register for this event to ensure that this series continues to inspire Philadelphians. Books will be available for purchase at the library on event night! All tickets are non-refundable. (recorded 4/29/2026)
The Author Events Series presents Annette Gordon-Reed | Jefferson on Race: A Reader In Conversation with Patrick Spero, Ph.D Among America's Founding Fathers, none was more deeply, personally, or controversially entangled with race and slavery than Thomas Jefferson. The man whose Declaration of Independence proclaimed that ''all men are created equal'' enslaved more than 600 people of African descent even as he acknowledged the injustice of slavery, saw himself as its opponent, and condemned it in his writings. How is this possible? In Jefferson on Race, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Annette Gordon-Reed gathers Jefferson's most revealing writings about African Americans, slavery, and Native Americans, enabling readers as never before to directly explore his complex and contradictory thoughts, feelings, and decisions on these subjects-the most hotly debated aspect of his legacy. These selections come from Jefferson's public and private writings, letters, and plantation records, as well as accounts by contemporaries, including his son Madison Hemings and three other people formerly enslaved at Monticello. The book documents Jefferson's ideas about-and self-image in relation to-African Americans, slavery, and Native Americans, as well as his conduct, including interactions with individual Black and Native people. The writings show how Jefferson responded to living in a multiracial slave society while professing progressive ideals, and how his views on race and slavery were shaped by his experiences with enslaved Black people. Jefferson on Race is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand Jefferson's conflicted attitudes-and the impact of race and slavery on American history. Annette Gordon-Reed is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University. Gordon-Reed won 16 book prizes, including the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, for The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (2008). She is the author of six books, and editor of two. She was the Vyvyan Harmsworth Visiting Professor of American History at the University of Oxford (Queen's College) 2014-2015, and was appointed an Honorary Fellow at Queen's in 2021. Gordon-Reed served as the 2018-2019 President of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, and is currently president of the Organization of American Historians. Her honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations, and the National Humanities Medal. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the British Academy. Patrick Spero, Ph.D., is the Chief Executive Officer of the American Philosophical Society and a scholar of early American history. Dr. Spero is the author of four books on the era of the American Revolution. They are Frontier Country: The Politics of War in Early Pennsylvania (2016), which was named a staff pick by the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2017, Frontier Rebels: The Fight for Independence in the American West, 1765-1776 (2018), winner of the Philadelphia Athenaeum's Literary Award and a finalist for the Journal of the American Revolution's best book of the year, The Scientist Turned Spy: Andre Michaux, Thomas Jefferson, and the Kentucky Conspiracy of 1793 (2024), and The Other Presidency: Thomas Jefferson and the American Philosophical Society (2024). Because you love Author Events, please make a donation when you register for this event to ensure that this series continues to inspire Philadelphians. Books will be available for purchase at the library on event night! All tickets are non-refundable. (recorded 5/7/2026)
Zinzi Clemmons was raised in Philadelphia by a South African mother and an American father. Her debut novel, What We Lose was named “Debut Novel of the Year” by Vogue, and received praise from the Atlantic, the Guardian, the New York Times, The New Yorker, and others. What We Lose was a finalist for the Aspen Words Literary Prize, the California Book Award, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Leonard Prize. She is a 2017 National Book Award 5 Under 35 Honoree. She wrote the foreword to a new edition of Jean Toomer's Cane, published by Penguin Classics in 2019. Her new collection of essays is called Freedom. Listen to First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing ad-free, pitch-free and with monthly extras by becoming a patron at https://www.patreon.com/firstdraftwriters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In this episode of The Archive Project, we feature a discussion on late writer Ursula K. Le Guin's legacy of pacifism and environmentalism. Our moderator is Theo Downes-Le Guin, Ursula's son and literary executor. Theo is in conversation with Oregon-based writers Juhea Kim, author of the novel Beasts of a Little Land, a finalist for the 2022 Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and Michelle Ruiz Keil, author most recently of the young adult novel Summer in the City of Roses, which was a finalist for the inaugural Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction. In her speech at the 2014 National Book Awards, accepting the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, Ursula said: “Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine some real grounds for hope.” Juhea Kim and Michelle Ruiz Keil are two of those voices that we need now. In this conversation, Juhea and Michelle discuss how they came—and returned—to Le Guin's work, her influence on their writing, and how they are carrying her legacy forward, including the responsibility of the artist as a humanitarian. This conversation was recorded in front of a live audience at Literary Arts on July 15, 2022. “It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.” ― Ursula K. Le Guin Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018) was a celebrated author whose body of work includes 23 novels, 12 volumes of short stories, 11 volumes of poetry, 13 children's books, five essay collections, and four works of translation. The breadth and imagination of her work earned her six Nebula Awards, seven Hugo Awards, and SFWA's Grand Master, along with the PEN/Malamud and many other awards. In 2014 she was awarded the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, and in 2016 joined the short list of authors to be published in their lifetimes by the Library of America. Michelle Ruiz Keil is an author, playwright, and tarot reader with an eye for the enchanted and way with animals. She is the author of the critically acclaimed young adult novels All of Us With Wings and Summer In The City of Roses. Her writing for adults can be found most recently in Bitch, Cosmonauts Avenue, and the anthology Dispatches From Anarres: Tales in Tribute to Ursula K. Le Guin. She is a 2021 Tin House Scholar and the recipient of residencies from Hedgebrook, The Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, and the Bloedel Reserve. Born in San Francisco, Michelle has lived in Portland, Oregon for many years where she curates the fairytale reading series All Kinds of Fur and lives with her family in a cottage where the forest meets the city. Juhea Kim is a writer, artist, and advocate based in Portland, Oregon. Her bestselling debut novel Beasts of a Little Land was named a finalist for the 2022 Dayton Literary Peace Prize and a Best Book of 2021 by Harper’s Bazaar, Real Simple, Ms., and Portland Monthly. Her writing has been published in Granta, Slice, The Massachusetts Review, Zyzzyva, Guernica, Catapult, Times Literary Supplement, The Independent, Sierra Magazine, and elsewhere. She is the founder and editor ofPeaceful Dumpling, an online magazine at the intersection of sustainable lifestyle and ecological literature. She has received fellowship support from the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers' Conference, the Regional Arts & Culture Council, and Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University. She earned her BA in Art and Archaeology from Princeton University.
Historian Ibram X. Kendi says that in order to understand the rise of authoritarianism, we need to understand great replacement theory. It's the racist idea that “powerful elites are enabling peoples of color to steal the lives, livelihoods, cultures and electoral power and freedoms of white people,” Kendi writes in his new book, “Chain of Ideas: The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age.” We talk to the National Book Award-winning author about how politicians are using great replacement theory to justify authoritarian power and how it has moved from the fringes to the mainstream. Guests: Ibram X. Kendi, professor of history, Howard University and founding director of the Howard University Institute for Advanced Study; author, "Chain of Ideas: The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age"; his previous books include "How to Be an Antiracist" and "Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Artist and writer Molly Crabapple joins This Is Hell! to talk about her new book, “Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund." Molly is the author of two books, her 2015 memoir, "Drawing Blood," and "Brothers of the Gun: A Memoir of the Syrian War," which is written and Illustrated by Molly and Marwan Hisham. "Brothers of the Gun" was long-listed for a National Book Award. She was a 2020 New America Fellow and her reportage was the winner of the Bernhard Labor Journalism Award, and has been published in The New York Times, New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker and elsewhere. Her animations have won two Emmys and an Edward R. Murrow Award. Her art is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art. We will have new installments of Rotten History and Hangover Cure. We will also be sharing your answers to this week's Question from Hell! from Patreon. Help keep This Is Hell! completely listener supported and access bonus episodes by subscribing to our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thisishell
Ben Fountain is the author of the novel Rasputin Swims the Potomac, available from Flatiron Books. It is the official June pick of the Otherppl Book Club. Fountain's work has received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Los Angeles Book Prize for Fiction, and a Whiting Writers Award, and has been a finalist for the National Book Award and runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. He lives in North Carolina. *** Today's episode is brought to you by Rula. Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that's actually covered by insurance. Visit www.rula.com/otherppl to get started. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The ladies are joined by Richie Hofmann for one hell of a Breaking Form interview!Support Breaking Form by reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts here.Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. Notes:Visit Richie Hofmann's website here: https://www.richiehofmann.com/ which includes links to many of the poems Richie reads for us in the episode.Purchase The Bronze Arms Check out a reading Richie gave at LA's Hammer Museum in April 2022 here (~45 minutes)Watch Bette Middler sing "Rose's Turn" from Gypsy here. To see the clip from Absolutely Fabulous we reference in the show, go here. For more about the recent sandals Chanel showed in their 2027 resort collection, read this article in Vogue.Read Richie's essay remembering Louise Glück, published in CNN, here. REduardo Corral published Guillotine with Graywolf in 2020; it was Longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award for Poetry and was a Finalist for the 2021 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. Buy it here! Richie references the Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) poem "Whoso List to Hunt"Carl Phillips wrote on Instagram about The Bronze Arms: "Novelistic, cinematic…It's been more than a moment since I read a book of poems so accomplished not only poem by poem but as a book with a sensibility so clear and at the same time so layered in different shades of mystery — as if torn between withholding, craving, and demanding intimacy, all three at once…Congratulations @richiehof — I read the whole book last night, and here I am, starting all over —"Read more about the poet Kara van de Graaf, author of Spitting Image (SIU Press, 2018) on her website here: https://www.karavandegraaf.comLearn more about the poet Will Brewer via his website: https://www.williambrewer.netAnne Carson's translations of Sappho are collected in her book If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho first published in 2002. It contains Greek text on facing pages, based on Eva-Maria Voigt's 1971 critical edition. Carson's translation closely follows the word-order of Sappho's Greek, and marks lacunae in the manuscripts with square brackets.
While the podcast team is taking a Radical Sabbatical, Kim is interviewing authors of the books that have had a big impact on her in the past two years. In this episode, Kim speaks with Heather McGhee, the author of The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together, a New York Times bestseller. Heather takes Kim on a journey through US history, demonstrating how efforts to exclude some of us from public goods harm all of us, starting with public swimming pools in the United States. As Heather describes in The Sum of Us, “By World War II, the country's two thousand pools were glittering symbols of a new commitment by local officials to the quality of life of their residents, allowing hundreds of thousands of people to socialize together for free…A Pennsylvania county recreation director said, “Let's build bigger, better, and finer pools. That's real democracy. Take away the sham and hypocrisy of clothes, don a swimsuit, and we're all the same.” These swimming pools were remarkable public resources. The Fairground Park Pool had a sandy beach, elaborate diving boards, and a capacity of 10,000 people. However, when cities across the country were forced to integrate these pools, they chose to fill them in with dirt instead. Nobody got to swim–except people wealthy enough to join private clubs. Starting in the late 1960s, the same illogic was applied to more consequential areas of life than swimming pools. As the public began to perceive that government programs like welfare, healthcare, education, and infrastructure funding would benefit Black and Brown Americans, political support for these public goods collapsed. For example, when Texas rejected Obamacare, its rural hospitals began going bankrupt, resulting in medical deserts and economic devastation in rural Texas towns. Today, we have a choice: the solidarity dividend that results from public goods that benefit everyone; or the devastation for everyone that results from the kind of zero-sum thinking that would cause a community to destroy public goods rather than make them available to everyone. Guest Background: Heather McGhee designs and promotes solutions to inequality in America. The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together spent 10 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and was long-listed for the National Book Award and Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, among numerous other awards. In the summer of 2022, The Sum of Us was adapted into a Spotify podcast by Higher Ground, the production company of Barack and Michelle Obama. The Sum of Us was adapted into a young adult readers' version by Random House Children's in February 2023. The adaptation for middle and high-school students received starred reviews from School Library Journal and Booklist, and Kirkus named it a Best Young Adult Book of the Year. CHAPTERS (00:00) Introduction to Radical Sabbatical and Bacon's Rebellion (02:05) Bacon's Rebellion: A Historical Perspective on Race Relations (04:49) The Economic Impact of Racism on Society (06:34) The Race Class Narrative Project and Its Implications (16:30) Education: The Cost of Inequality (22:09) Healthcare: The Consequences of Drained Public Goods (24:37) Racialized Healthcare Politics (26:32) The Impact of Medicaid Expansion (28:38) The Mortgage Crisis and Racial Discrimination (31:24) The Canary in the Coal Mine (34:58) Unionization and Economic Power (38:54) Cross-Racial Solidarity in Labor Movements (42:18) Environmental Justice and Collective Action Connect with the Radical Candor team: Website LinkedIn YouTube Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
For two-time National Book Award winner Jesymn Ward, the deep South is the only place she can call home. The author talks with host Krys Boyd about the pain and heartbreak she's felt in rural Mississippi, why the draw of family keeps hope alive, and why she writes for anyone experiencing loss or grief. Her book of essays is “On Witness and Respair.” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Zayd Ayers Dohrn's mother, Bernardine Dohrn, was a leader of SDS, a student group protesting the Vietnam War. She also led a faction that broke away and became the Weather Underground, advocating armed resistance against the government. His father, Bill Ayers, was also an activist-turned-revolutionary. In a new memoir, Zayd wrestles with questions he had growing up, like if his parents were living underground and on the run from the FBI, why did they have kids? He spoke with Terry Gross. Also, two-time National Book Award winning writer Jesmyn Ward (‘Salvage the Bones,' ‘Sing, Unburied, Sing') has a new essay collection on grief, motherhood, and survival. It's called ‘On Witness and Respair.' She spoke with Tonya Mosley. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy
Jesmyn Ward learned the term "respair" — the recovery of hope after despair — in 2020, shortly after her partner died suddenly. Her new book, ‘On Witness and Respair,' is an essay collection on grief, motherhood and survival. She spoke with Tonya Mosley about writing through painful things and why she returned to her native Mississippi. Her previous National Book Award-winning novels are ‘Sing, Unburied, Sing' and ‘Salvage the Bones.' Also, jazz critic Martin Johnson reviews an album from Tomeka Reid. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy
Mea Culpa welcomes back one of the most dialed-in journalists of the last several decades, Jane Mayer. Mayer has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1995. As the magazine's chief Washington correspondent, she covers politics, culture, and national security. Previously, she worked at the Wall Street Journal, where she covered the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, the Gulf War, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1984, she became the paper's first female White House correspondent. She is the author of the 2016 Times best-seller “Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right,” She also wrote the 2008 Times best-seller “The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals,” which was named a National Book Award finalist. She is the co-author, with Jill Abramson, of “Strange Justice,” also a National Book Award finalist, and, with Doyle McManus, of “Landslide: The Unmaking of the President 1984-1988.” She has won numerous prizes and awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Nellie Bly Award for Investigative Reporting. Michael and Jane dig into Clarence Thomas and the Supreme Court, GOP's scary policies, and Trump's legal woes.
Today, we're sharing our conversation with poet Ross Gay, who reminds us that joy isn't denial—it's connection. Not a way out of the world, but a way back into it. Together, we explore how to keep noticing what's still beautiful, how to rebuild our “delight muscle,” and why witnessing someone else's joy might be exactly what brings us back to ourselves. - Why joy is evidence of connection—not escapism - How to rebuild your “delight muscle” (even when it feels gone) - The surprising power of witnessing someone else's joy - Why “unknowing” the people you love can deepen connection - Small, daily practices to feel less alone and more alive About Ross: Ross Gay is an American poet, essayist, and professor committed to healing the world through observing and articulating joy, delight and gratitude. He won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for his 2014 book, Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, which was also a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry. A devoted community gardener, Ross is a founding board member of the Bloomington Community Orchard, a non-profit, free-fruit-for-all food justice and joy project. A college football player, he is a founding editor of the online sports magazine Some Call it Ballin'. Follow We Can Do Hard Things on: Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/wecandohardthings