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Front Row Classics welcomes back our friend, Mayukh Sen and author, Charlotte Druckman. The two have penned a fascinating cultural analysis and celebration of the art of soap operas. "Love in the Afternoon, and Evening: Essay and Conversations on Soap Operas" is a love-letter to an often misunderstood genre. Brandon, Mayukh and Charlotte discuss how soaps helped to establish the current trend of serialized storytelling along with its classic film origins. Charlotte Druckman is an award-winning writer, author of Skirt Steak, and creator of the collection Women on Food. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and New York Magazine, among others. She lives in New York, where she was born and raised. Mayukh Sen is the author of Love, Queenie―a finalist for the 2025 National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography―and Taste Makers. He is a 2026 United States Artists Fellow and teaches film and television reporting and criticism at New York University. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Elizabeth Alexander is a prize-winning and New York Times best-selling author, renowned poet, educator, scholar, and cultural advocate. Her memoir, The Light of the World, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award. She composed and recited "Praise Song for the Day" for President Barack Obama's 2009 inauguration and is currently president of the Mellon Foundation, the nation's largest funder of the arts, culture, and humanities. Her new work is called Signals Across Vast Distances: Essays and Tales. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jason is joined by Marlon James to talk about his Booker Prize longlisted novel, The Disappearers. They cover topics like Dolly Parton, growing up gay in Jamaica, the ballet that changed his life, and much more. Marlon 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.SUBSTACK! MERCH! WATCH! CONTACT! hello@gaysreading.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The New Yorker: The Writer's Voice - New Fiction from The New Yorker
Hisham Matar reads his story “New Shoes,” from the September 14, 2026, issue of the magazine. Matar is the author of five books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir “The Return” and the novels “Anatomy of a Disappearance” and “My Friends,” which won the 2025 National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Award-winning novelist Lily King on finding the emotional arc of a novel, writing the scene you keep avoiding, and making peace with ambition, self-criticism and the long road to a first book.You'll learnWhy the scene you most want to avoid is usually the one your book needs.How a small change in the final pages of one section can rebuild an entire novel.What it means to think in emotional arc rather than theme.The difference between being hard on yourself about writing and being hard on yourself while you write.Why giving yourself permission to write about your own life can unlock everything that follows.When a middle section goes flat, and how to find the engine it's missing.How ambition shows up differently for women writers, and the shame that can come with it.A notebook method built on margins, timelines, and a daily writing log.Why a bad review can be more useful than praise.What nine years on a first novel teaches you about patience.Resources & Links
Who was Anne Frank as a historical person, and how does her life relate to the global icon she has become? Ruth Franklin speaks with Arnon Grunberg on her book The Many Lives of Anne Frank. Anne Frank's diary has come to represent a universal message against hatred and prejudice. Meanwhile, her image has been drawn into widely differing and sometimes controversial political contexts, including comparisons between Jewish suffering during the Holocaust and Palestinian suffering in Gaza today. What is lost when Anne becomes a symbol for many causes at once? How do we balance the universal power of her words with the historical reality of her life as a Jewish girl targeted for extermination by the Nazis? A conversation about how Anne Frank has been understood, misunderstood, and continually reinterpreted since the publication of her diary. How has her legacy been reshaped in an increasingly divided world, and what does it mean for a life to become a moral symbol?Ruth Franklin is a book critic and former editor at The New Republic. Her biography Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life (2016) won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was named one of the year's best nonfiction books by The New York Times, Time, and NPR, among others. Her writing appears in The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The New York Review of Books, and Harper's. Franklin has received several major fellowships and awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her earlier book, A Thousand Darknesses (2011), was a finalist for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature.Yael van der Wouden is a writer and lecturer in creative writing and storytelling. She made her debut in 2024 with her novel The Safekeep, which was translated into Dutch as De Bewaring. The novel won the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2025 and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2024. In 2018, she wrote the essay On (Not) Reading Anne Frank, about growing up Jewish in the Netherlands, which was named on the list of Best American Essays. She is currently working on her second novel, about control, separation, and the closure of the Zuiderzee.Programme editor: Britt van RossumModerator: Arnon GrunbergIn collaboration with: PrometheusZie het privacybeleid op https://art19.com/privacy en de privacyverklaring van Californië op https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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
Vol. 16 of Story Time, featuring an author reading aloud from her work. In this episode, Deb Olin Unferth reads from her new novel, Earth 7, now available from Graywolf Press. Deb is the author of six books, including Barn 8 and Wait Till You See Me Dance. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and three Pushcart Prizes, and was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. Her work has appeared in Granta, Harper's, McSweeney's, and The Paris Review. *** 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
Daniel Mason is the author of six books of fiction, including The Piano Tuner, the story collection A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth — which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize — and North Woods, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Dublin Literary Award. He's also a physician and a professor in Stanford's Psychiatry Department. His latest is Country People, published by Random House and out last month. It's a Good Morning America summer book club pick and a NYT bestseller. It's contemporary, it's hilarious and, for us procrastinators who would rather fall down research rabbit holes than write, it's very relatable. It also gives writers a bunch of craft lessons to sink our teeth into. How to use your text to teach readers how to read your novel. Embedding content into form (this novel is a master class in that). Using different textures and kinds of writing to enhance your storyline, and 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 August 13, 2026) Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett Host: Marrie Stone Music: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)
In the words of the Los Angeles Times, “A new book by (Patrick Radden) Keefe means drop everything and close the blinds; you'll be turning pages for hours.” Keefe is an award-winning investigative journalist, a staff writer at the New Yorker, the creator of a popular podcast, and the author of six books, including the bestsellers Rogues, Empire of Pain, and Say Nothing. “When I go out looking for a good story,” says Keefe, “I almost never find one. Instead, the really good ones tend to fall in my lap.” Say Nothing was prompted by reading an obituary. A wild-seeming rumor about the 90's heavy metal band The Scorpions led to the podcast Wind of Change, a sweeping tale of government secrets, Soviet spies, propaganda, and 90's power ballads. To call his research “meticulous” is an understatement. Keefe's book, Snakehead, required over 300 interviews to complete. Say Nothing found him speaking to thousands of sources. While writing about the opioid epidemic in EMPIRE OF PAIN, Keefe was blocked from speaking to the Sackler family, so instead, he amassed thousands of correspondences from personal emails to Bar Mitzvah announcements. Though Keefe's doggedness recalls the detective stories that inspired him early on, he is perhaps more hopeful than hardboiled. By approaching those forces that appear too vast to unravel, he proves that even institutions and systems that seem unassailable can, in fact, be broken down and examined—one interview, one receipt, one wedding invitation at a time. Like all the great whodunnits, his books contain breathtaking plot twists. Though he has, on at least one occasion, solved a murder mystery, Keefe is less interested in pointing to a perpetrator and more interested in holding up a mirror. The question at the heart of his work is one that pertains to everyone: What does it mean to be human? His newest book, London Falling, is an investigation into the mysterious death of 19-year-old Zach Brettler and its connection to both London's criminal underworld and its elite circles. The author Katherine Rundell says, “Nobody writes like Patrick Radden Keefe; nobody makes achieving something so powerfully complex and difficult look so easy. It's a form of intellectual generosity and, I think, a form of genius.” Patrick Radden Keefe is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of the New York Times bestsellers Rogues, Empire of Pain, and Say Nothing, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, was selected as one of the ten best books of 2019 by The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and The Wall Street Journal, and was named one of the top ten nonfiction books of the decade by Entertainment Weekly. His previous books are The Snakehead and Chatter. His work has been recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing and the Orwell Prize for Political Writing. He is also the creator and host of the eight-part podcast Wind of Change.
Tricia Rose Burt spent nearly fifteen years doing everything right — director of corporate communications, a career built inside Fidelity Investments and Harvard Business School, the whole stable, predictable life she was raised to want. Then a career counselor told her she needed freedom and art, and within a year she'd quit the job, sold the car, ended the marriage, and moved to an artist's studio in Ireland for what was supposed to be six months. She stayed four. Now she's a Moth storyteller, a TEDx speaker, and the host of No Time to Be Timid — a podcast built entirely around one idea: the riskiest thing you can do is play it safe.In this conversation, Tricia and Bill dig into what it actually costs to become someone else on purpose — and why fear, boredom, and failure aren't obstacles to the creative life, they're the price of admission.Three reasons to listen:The week she blew up her old life. Job, car, marriage — gone in seven days, on the strength of one priest's line: "Everyone will tell you the cost of going. No one will tell you the cost of staying."Even the pros get scared. Why a 22-time Grammy winner joining the Eagles and a Nashville hitmaker turned wheelchair-tech founder both told Tricia, on record, that fear never actually goes away — you just get better at using it.A 10-point manifesto for getting unstuck. From "practicality is overrated" to "constraints are opportunities" — the field-tested rules Tricia now hands to everyone from artists to executives.Notable MentionsNo Time to Be Timid — Tricia Rose BurtPeopleTricia Rose Burt — Speaker, storyteller, and podcast host who left a corporate career at Fidelity Investments and Harvard Business School to become an artist; host of No Time to Be Timid and a longtime storyteller and instructor for The Moth.Vince Gill — Grammy-winning country musician who joined the Eagles in 2017 following Glenn Frey's death; discussed on No Time to Be Timid the fear he still feels performing, including tackling the Beach Boys' notoriously difficult "Surf's Up."Barry Dean — Nashville hit songwriter ("Heartache Medication," "Pontoon") who co-founded the smart wheelchair technology company LUCI with his brother Jered after his daughter Katherine was born with cerebral palsy.Devin Finigan — Self-taught chef-owner of Aragosta at Goose Cove in Deer Isle, Maine, trained through stints at Per Se, Blue Hill at Stone Barns, and The French Laundry; her restaurant was named among Food & Wine's top U.S. dining destinations in 2024 and 2025.Laura Wilson — American documentary photographer inducted into the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in 2019, known for her decade-plus access to photograph Montana's Hutterite communities; mother of actors Owen, Luke, and Andrew Wilson.Nell Painter — Princeton historian who, in her mid-60s, left academia to earn a BFA and MFA in painting, chronicled in her memoir Old in Art School; she is a past guest on Tricia's own podcast.The War and Treaty (Michael & Tanya Trotter) — Husband-and-wife Americana duo; Michael, an Army veteran who served in Iraq, found his voice singing at the funerals of fellow soldiers before he and Tanya began performing together.Amy Grant — Six-time Grammy-winning singer-songwriter and friend of Tricia's; discussed anticipating the excitement rather than the anxiety of returning to the stage after a decade away from releasing new music.Organizations & InstitutionsThe Moth — Global nonprofit dedicated to live, unscripted personal storytelling; Tricia is a longtime storyteller and instructor for the organization.Fidelity Investments — Boston-based financial services firm where Tricia worked in corporate communications before her career pivot into the arts.Harvard Business School — Part of Tricia's original corporate career track before she left the business world for art school in Ireland.Aragosta at Goose Cove — Devin Finigan's destination restaurant and inn on Deer Isle, Maine, ranked among Food & Wine's top U.S. culinary destinations.LUCI Mobility — Smart technology company founded by songwriter Barry Dean and his brother Jered, building collision- and tip-prevention sensors for power wheelchairs.Books, Talks & MediaNo Time to Be Timid — Tricia's award-winning podcast (a Signal Award winner in Arts & Culture) featuring artists, entrepreneurs, and everyday people who made a bold creative leap.The No Time to Be Timid Manifesto — Tricia's 10-point guide to living more creatively, including principles like "the riskiest thing you can do is play it safe" and "constraints are opportunities."Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over — Nell Painter's memoir of leaving a celebrated academic career to earn a BFA and MFA in her 60s; a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist."How I Redeemed 35 Years of Regret" — Tricia's TEDxPortsmouth talk built around the idea that the biggest risk in life is playing it safe.Acknowledgements (FreeSound.org)Sounds from the forest by GirlWithSoundRecorder -- https://freesound.org/s/636921/ -- License: Attribution NonCommercial 4.0Horses Whinnying.wav by LeandiViljoen -- https://freesound.org/s/502084/ -- License: Attribution NonCommercial 3.0Pulse Breath with Bells_version 1.wav by phylobates -- https://freesound.org/s/493559/ -- License: Creative Commons*******Art Is CHANGE is a podcast that chronicles the power of art and community transformation, providing a platform for activist artists to share their experiences and gain the skills and strategies they need to thrive as agents of social change.Through compelling conversations with artist activists, artivists, and cultural organizers, the podcast explores how art and activism intersect to fuel cultural transformation and drive meaningful change. Guests discuss the challenges and triumphs of community arts, socially engaged art, and creative placemaking, offering insights into artist mentorship, building credibility, and communicating impact.Episodes delve into the realities of artist isolation, burnout, and funding for artists, while celebrating the role of artists in residence and creative leadership in shaping a more just and inclusive world. Whether you're an emerging or established artist for social justice, this podcast offers inspiration, practical advice, and a sense of solidarity in the journey toward art and social change.
Deb Olin Unferth is the author of the novel Earth 7, available from Graywolf Press. Unferth is the author of six books, including Barn 8 and Wait Till You See Me Dance. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and three Pushcart Prizes, and was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. Her work has appeared in Granta, Harper's, McSweeney's, and The Paris Review. *** 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
Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry
Today’s conversation with poet Morgan Parker was recorded in-person in 2019 and was Morgan’s second appearance on the show. Both conversations with Morgan are unforgettable, so don’t miss her first appearance in 2017 after you enjoy today’s episode about Magical Negro. Later that same year Magical Negro won the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry. Danez Smith, another past guest of this show, said this about it: “2019 justly belongs to Morgan Parker. Her poems shred me with their intelligence, dark humor and black-hearted vision. Parker is one of this generation's best minds, able to hold herself and her world, which includes all of us, up to impossible lights, revealing every last bit of our hopes, failings, possibilities and raptures.” For the bonus audio archive Morgan contributed a reading from her YA novel Who Put this Song on? which joins contributions from Kaveh Akbar, Tommy Pico, Dionne Brand, Nikky Finney, Natalie Diaz and more. To find out about how to subscribe to the bonus audio archive and all the other potential benefits and rewards of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener supporter, head over to the show’s Patreon page. And don’t miss Milkweed Editions bookstore BookShop for even more books to explore.
Robert Wright joins Michael Shermer to discuss his new book, The God Test: Artificial Intelligence and Our Coming Cosmic Reckoning, and why he thinks the AI revolution may be moving much faster than most people realize. Wright argues that deep learning is not just a new way of programming computers. In an important sense, it resembles evolution: neural networks discover solutions for themselves, sometimes recreating cognitive functions that natural selection built into human brains. That helps explain why AI capabilities have advanced so quickly, and why increasingly autonomous systems and recursive self-improvement could accelerate the process even further. Shermer presses Wright on what all of this actually means. Does an AI understand what it says? Could it be conscious? Why would a superintelligence ever seek power? Is human extinction a realistic possibility, or science-fiction doomerism? They discuss AI deception and theory of mind, John Searle's Chinese Room, bioweapons and cyberattacks, the risk of a U.S.-China AI arms race, regulation, surveillance, and the growing concentration of power in governments and tech companies. The conversation ends with Wright's larger philosophical question: if humanity really is building something with godlike power, what kind of god are we going to build, and are we mature enough to survive it? Robert Wright is the New York Times bestselling author of The Evolution of God (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), Nonzero, The Moral Animal, and Three Scientists and their Gods (a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award). He has taught at the University of Pennsylvania and at Princeton University, where he also created the popular online course "Buddhism and Modern Psychology." He is currently Visiting Professor of Science and Religion at Union Theological Seminary in New York.
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
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.
Irish writer Doireann Ní Ghríofa on turning archival fragments into living narrative, writing across the borders of genre, and giving voice to the forgotten lives of women committed to a Victorian asylum. You'll learn Why the greatest gatekeeper between a writer and the page is often the writer themselves. How a single word buried in clinical notes can become a bridge to a silenced voice. What poetry can teach prose writers about immediacy and the shock of a strong opening. The case for pointing at the gaps in the record rather than papering over them. When a fleeting curiosity is worth following, and what happens once you treat it as real. How third person can give a writer just enough distance to keep going. A sense of fidelity to the reader you imagine standing at your shoulder. How the drowsy space between sleep and waking can become an engine for ideas. The ethics of using real names, and the difference between the dead and the long dead. How the act of leaving things out turns even “fact” into a story. Resources & Links Said the Dead by Doireann Ní Ghríofa A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa About Doireann Ní Ghríofa Doireann Ní Ghríofa is an Irish writer devoted to exploring how the past makes itself felt within the present. 'A Ghost in the Throat' finds an 18th century poet haunting a young mother, leading her through visions of blood, milk, lust, and murder. Written on the roof of a multi-storey car park in Ireland, it went on to be described as "powerful" (New York Times), "captivatingly original" (The Observer), and a "masterpiece" (Sunday Business Post). 'A Ghost in the Throat' won the James Tait Black Prize and was voted overall Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards, while the US edition was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. It was translated into 20 further languages worldwide. Doireann is also the author of seven critically-acclaimed books of poetry, each a deepening exploration of birth, death, desire, and domesticity. Awards for her writing include a Lannan Literary Fellowship (USA), the Ostana Prize (Italy), a Seamus Heaney Fellowship, and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, among others. Her new book, Said the Dead, distils hundreds of hours of archival research into a polyphonic portrayal of a single institution — a derelict Victorian asylum in Cork, and the women once committed within its walls. For show notes, transcripts and to attend our live podcasts visit: podcast.londonwriterssalon.com.For free writing sessions, join free Writers' Hours: writershour.com.*FOLLOW LONDON WRITERS' SALONTwitter: twitter.com/WritersSalonInstagram: instagram.com/londonwriterssalonFacebook: facebook.com/LondonWritersSalonIf you're enjoying this show, please rate and review this show!
Because of the US's war with Iran, people around the world are experiencing food and price shocks. On today's show, guest host Patty Peltekos is in conversation with environmental historian Kate Brown, author of the new book Tiny Gardens Everywhere: The Past, Present, and Future of the Self-Provisioning City, to talk about how people living in cities can contribute to their own food sovereignty. Modern zoning laws too often prevent people from creating gardens in cities. Brown talks about how it once was: people farming the commons using what we would now call regenerative agriculture. That was before the invention of private property, consumer culture, and the enclosure movement in Europe that transformed land and labor. But people are pursuing tiny gardens as an antidote to industrial agriculture. From Washington, DC to Berlin, Brown profiles the ingenious ways people are growing tomatoes instead of turf grass, defying unjust laws, and sharing their bounty with neighbors. And states as different as Maine and Florida are creating legislation to make it easier for people to create their own tiny gardens. If you want to start gardening, Brown says the first thing to do is find a friend to garden with. They also talk about migrant labor in the US, how Brown decolonized her research, and how industrial equipment, fertilizers, and insecticides are waging war on the environment. Kate Brown is the Thomas M. Siebel Distinguished Professor in the History of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is the author of several prize-winning histories, including Plutopia: Nuclear Families in Atomic Cities and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters (Oxford 2013) and A Biography of No Place: From Ethnic Borderland to Soviet Heartland (Harvard 2004). Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future (Norton/Penguin Lane, 2019), translated into eight languages, won the Marshall Shulman and Reginald Zelnik Prizes for the best book in East European History, plus the Silver Medal for Laura Shannon Book Prize. It was also a finalist for the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pushkin House Award and the Ryszard Kapuściński Award for Literary Reportage. Brown was a Guggenheim Fellow in 2009, a Carnegie Fellow and winner of the American Academy's Berlin Prize in 2016. Her latest book, Tiny Gardens Everywhere: The Past and Present of Urban Self-Provisioning was published by Norton in February 2026. Brown's work on Tiny Gardens has been supported by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies. She has published a short segments from this work in the New Yorker, Mother Jones and Lithub. Featured image of the cover of Tiny Gardens Everywhere: The Past, Present, and Future of the Self-Provisioning City. Did you enjoy this story? Your funding makes great, local journalism like this possible. Donate hereThe post What If Urban Gardeners Could Feed Us? appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.
Our summer salon series is here! Please enjoy this episode of Breaking Form Selects: Lynda HullSupport 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:Lynda Hull was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1954. Her collections include Ghost Money (1986), recipient of the Juniper Prize; Star Ledger (1991), which won the 1991 Carl Sandburg and 1990 Edwin Ford Piper awards; and The Only World: Poems, published posthumously in 1995 and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry. In 2006, Graywolf Press published her Collected Poems, edited by her husband, David Wojahn. We read these Lynda Hull poems:"Night Waitress""Adagio" from Star Ledger (the poem is dedicated to Mark Doty)"Chiffon" "Midnight Reports" (which was first published in Agni, alongside "Black Mare" and "Visiting Hour") also from Star Ledger.And check out this video of Erika Meitner reading Hull's poem "At Thirty" and Gary Jackson reading "Magical Thinking"
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
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)
Robert Wright is the New York Times bestselling author of The God Test: Artificial Intelligence and Our Coming Cosmic Reckoning. His previous books include: The Evolution of God (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), Nonzero, The Moral Animal, Three Scientists and their Gods (a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award), and Why Buddhism Is True. He is the cofounder and editor-in-chief of the widely respected Bloggingheads.tv and MeaningofLife.tv. He has written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, Time, Slate, and The New Republic. He has taught at the University of Pennsylvania and at Princeton University, where he also created the popular online course “Buddhism and Modern Psychology.” He is currently Visiting Professor of Science and Religion at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Tangentially Speaking with Chris Ryan is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.This has been another commercial-free episode, financed by folks who toss a few bucks into the hat every month here. If you don't want to subscribe, but would like to support this podcast with a one-time donation, please click here.Intro music “Brightside of the Sun,” by Basin and Range. Outro: “Losing My Religion,” by REM.If you buy from Amazon, my link is here. (You can click on it once, then bookmark that as your go-to Amazon link so it'll always work.)Buy some merch from my mom here.Grab a copy of my books: Sex at Dawn, Civilized to Death, Tangentially Reading, Talking Drugs, and Talking Sex here.Find other Tangentialistas around the world!Instructions for getting the paid RSS feed in apps is here. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrisryan.substack.com/subscribe
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
Ruth Ozeki is a novelist, filmmaker, and Zen Buddhist priest. Her new short story collection is called The Typing Lady and Other Fictions. Her novels — My Year of Meats , All Over Creation, A Tale for the Time Being, and The Book of Form and Emptiness — have been translated and published in over thirty countries. Her third novel, A Tale for the Time Being, won the LA Times Book Prize, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. The Book of Form and Emptiness was the winner of the 2022 Women's Prize for Fiction as well as the 22nd Annual Massachusetts Book Award, the BC Yukon Book Prize, and the Julia Ward Howe Prize for Fiction. She is Professor Emerita of English Language & Literature at Smith College, where she was the Grace Jarcho Ross 1933 Professor of Humanities. Support First Draft and listen ad-free and pitch-free with monthly extras at www.patreon.com/firstdraftwriters. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Melisa Febos joins Let's Talk Memoir for a conversation about romantic obsessions, celibacy as a portal to freedom, living her way into a corner and having to fight her way out, leading with scene and story and plot, taking back the sovereignty of her own mind and body, approaching oneself as a protagonist, leaving out what isn't central to the story, remembering memoir is not a transcription of a time lived, radical feminists, exercising agency and self-reclamation, living an examined life, integrating memories that were indigestible to us in the moment, the project of looking at ourselves honestly, and her most recent book, now in paperback The Dry Season: A Memoir of Pleasure in a Year Without Sex. Ronit's upcoming workshop: Writing Dynamic Memoir: From Lived Experience to Gripping Story https://www.lmcmurtrylitcenter.org/workshops/writing-dynamic-memoir-from-lived-experience-to-gripping-story Also in this episode: -deepending friendships -memoir-plus digressions -writing about our obsessions Books mentioned in this episode: Will and Attention by Meghan O'Gieblyn Canon by Paige Lewis Fat Swim by Emma Copley Eisenberg Melissa Febos is the national bestselling author of five books, including Abandon Me, Girlhood—which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative, and, most recently, The Dry Season. Her awards and fellowships include those from the Guggenheim Foundation, LAMBDA Literary, the National Endowment for the Arts, The British Library, The Black Mountain Institute, MacDowell, the Bogliasco Foundation, The American Library in Paris, and others. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, The Sun, The New York Times Magazine, The Best American Essays, Vogue, The Best American Travel and Food Writing, and New York Review of Books. Febos is a Roy J. Carver Professor at the University of Iowa, where she teaches in the Nonfiction Writing Program. She lives in Iowa City with her wife, the poet Donika Kelly. Connect with Melissa: Website: https://www.melissafebos.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melissafebos Purchase book via bookshop: This is for the pre-order paperback for The Dry Season https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-dry-season-a-memoir-of-pleasure-in-a-year-without-sex-melissa-febos/f1c8367d8e351d91?ean=9780593685150&next=t - Ronit Plank bio and links: Ronit Plank is a writer, teacher, and editor whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, Poets & Writers, River Teeth's Beautiful Things, The Rumpus, Salon, Hippocampus, The New York Times, and elsewhere, earning Best of the Net, Best Microfiction, and multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her memoir When She Comes Back was a Book Riot Best True Crime Book and Kirkus Reviews calls it, “An intimate, intuitive, emotionally vivid family account that finds hope in reconciliation". Ronit is also the author of the award-winning short story collection Home is a Made-Up Place, and her work has been anthologized in Selected Memories, Vol. 2: 15 Years of Hippocampus Magazine and Manna Songs: Stories of Jewish Culture and Heritage. Ronit is the Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, teaches memoir at a host of venues including the University of Washington's Continuum Program, Antioch University, and 92NY's Roundtable, and is host of the podcast Let's Talk Memoir and the Substack Let's Talk Memoir. Find her on social media @ronitplank Website: www.ronitplank.com Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ When She Comes Back: https://ronitplank.com/when-she-comes-back/
Ross Gay is the author of four books of poetry: Against Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; Be Holding, winner of the PEN American Literary Jean Stein Award; and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. His first collection of essays, The Book of Delights, was released in 2019 and was a New York Times bestseller. His new collection of essays is called Inciting Joy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Ada Limón is likely best known for her role as the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States. Her signature project, "You Are Here," focused on connecting poetry with the natural world, including installations in seven National Parks. She also wrote "In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa," which was engraved on NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft which launched in 2024 to explore Jupiter's icy moon. Ada is the author of seven collections of poetry, including Startlement, The Hurting Kind, which was a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize, The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was a finalist of the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and Bright Dead Things, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, The National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. She is also the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and a Guggenheim and was named a 2024 Time Woman of the Year. Against Breaking: On the Power of Poetry, is the speech she delivered when she left her post as Poet Laureate last year. She joins Marrie Stone to talk about her work as Poet Laureate and how she used her platform to talk back against this political moment. She discusses her job as a creative and her job as an advocate and gives us a glimpse behind her process. She also reads and discusses her poem, “The Endlessness,” which appeared in The New Yorker in 2023. 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 May 12, 2026) Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett Host: Marrie Stone Music: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)
Patrick Radden Keefe is a staff writer for The New Yorker and the New York Times bestselling author of London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth (Doubleday). Patrick's other books include the New York Times bestsellers Rogues, Empire of Pain (winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction), and Say Nothing, which received a National Book Critics Circle Award and was named one of the Twenty Best Books of the Twenty-First Century by The New York Times Book Review. He is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Magazine Award, and the Orwell Prize for Political Writing. He served as an executive producer on the awardwinning FX series Say Nothing and is also the creator and host of the podcast Wind of Change, which The Guardian and Entertainment Weekly named the #1 podcast of 2020. *** 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
Whether you know her from her short stories in The New Yorker or The Atlantic or from one of her bestselling novels, Lauren Groff is arguably one of the leading literary voices in the U.S. Groff will share from her new collection of short stories, Brawler, which reflects upon humanity's ceaseless battle between our dark and light angels. Ranging from the 1950s to the present day and moving across age, class, and region––from New England to Florida to California––the nine stories in Groff's newest collection dive into the animal and the divine within us all. The characters paint a different picture of the same theme: a young woman suddenly responsible for her disabled sibling; a hot-tempered high school swimmer in need of an adult; a mother blinded by the loss of her family; and a banking successor with a different kind of inheritance. Motivated by love, challenged by the double edges of other people's good intentions, they all try to do the right thing for as long as they can. It's through these stories that Groff illuminates what it means to be human. Groff's popularity comes from her insight into human nature. Through her various stories, Brawler offers specific turning points in people's lives, highlighting all of our thin boundaries between love and fear, compassion and violence, reason and instinct, altruism and what it takes to survive. Lauren Groff is a three-time National Book Award finalist and the New York Times bestselling author of the novels The Monsters of Templeton, Arcadia, Fates and Furies, Matrix, and The Vaster Wilds, and the celebrated short story collections Delicate Edible Birds and Florida. She has won the Story Prize and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2024, she was named one of the "TIME 100 most influential people." Groff's work regularly appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. Her work has been translated into thirty-six languages. She lives in Gainesville, Florida, where she and her husband run an independent bookstore, The Lynx. Amber Flame is an interdisciplinary artist garnering residencies with Hedgebrook, Baldwin for the Arts, Millay Arts, and more. A former church kid from the Southwest, Flame's first collection of poetry, Ordinary Cruelty, published in 2017 through Write Bloody Press. Flame's second book, apocrifa, a love story told in verse, launched May 2023 from Red Hen Press. Flame is Deputy Publisher at Generous Press, a new romance venture publishing inclusive love stories, and Program Director for Hedgebrook, a literary organization serving women. Amber Flame is a queer Black dandy mama who falls hard for a jumpsuit and some fresh kicks. Buy the Book Brawler: Stories Elliott Bay Book Company
In the words of the Los Angeles Times, “A new book by (Patrick Radden) Keefe means drop everything and close the blinds; you'll be turning pages for hours.” Keefe is an award-winning investigative journalist, a staff writer at the New Yorker, the creator of a popular podcast, and the author of six books, including the bestsellers Rogues, Empire of Pain, and Say Nothing. “When I go out looking for a good story,” says Keefe, “I almost never find one. Instead, the really good ones tend to fall in my lap.” Say Nothing was prompted by reading an obituary. A wild-seeming rumor about the 90's heavy metal band The Scorpions led to the podcast Wind of Change, a sweeping tale of government secrets, Soviet spies, propaganda, and 90's power ballads. To call his research “meticulous” is an understatement. Keefe's book, Snakehead, required over 300 interviews to complete. Say Nothing found him speaking to thousands of sources. While writing about the opioid epidemic in EMPIRE OF PAIN, Keefe was blocked from speaking to the Sackler family, so instead, he amassed thousands of correspondences from personal emails to Bar Mitzvah announcements. Though Keefe's doggedness recalls the detective stories that inspired him early on, he is perhaps more hopeful than hardboiled. By approaching those forces that appear too vast to unravel, he proves that even institutions and systems that seem unassailable can, in fact, be broken down and examined—one interview, one receipt, one wedding invitation at a time. Like all the great whodunnits, his books contain breathtaking plot twists. Though he has, on at least one occasion, solved a murder mystery, Keefe is less interested in pointing to a perpetrator and more interested in holding up a mirror. The question at the heart of his work is one that pertains to everyone: What does it mean to be human? His newest book, London Falling, is an investigation into the mysterious death of 19-year-old Zach Brettler and its connection to both London's criminal underworld and its elite circles. The author Katherine Rundell says, “Nobody writes like Patrick Radden Keefe; nobody makes achieving something so powerfully complex and difficult look so easy. It's a form of intellectual generosity and, I think, a form of genius.” Patrick Radden Keefe is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of the New York Times bestsellers Rogues, Empire of Pain, and Say Nothing, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, was selected as one of the ten best books of 2019 by The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and The Wall Street Journal, and was named one of the top ten nonfiction books of the decade by Entertainment Weekly. His previous books are The Snakehead and Chatter. His work has been recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing and the Orwell Prize for Political Writing. He is also the creator and host of the eight-part podcast Wind of Change.
Ada Limón's poems expertly combine brilliant observations of our complex world with a tender sincerity. As a two-term Poet Laureate of the United States, Limón focused on using poetry to connect us more strongly with the natural world. She is the author of seven books of poetry, including Startlement: New & Selected Poems; The Hurting Kind, The Carrying; and Bright Dead Things. Her newest book, Against Breaking, is an expanded version of her final talk as Poet Laureate - and a celebration of poetry's ability to heal and connect us. Her awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and a MacArthur Fellowship. Limón was raised in Sonoma, California. On April 14, 2026, Ada Limon came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco for an on-stage conversation with KQED host Alexis Madrigal, which was a co-presentation with Litquake.
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
In this episode of What Are You Reading?, Jason sits down with Pulitzer Prize–winning author Jayne Anne Phillips to discuss books she's been reading and her highly anticipated memoir-in-essays, Small Town Girls, which Oprah named her #1 most anticipated read of the year.Jayne Anne Phillips 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. Her 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. She lives in Boston and New York.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.
There aren't many contemporary poets who have name recognition beyond poetry circles, but Ada Limón, a MacArthur fellow and former two-term poet laureate of the United States, certainly does. Limón is one of the most decorated poets working today. A winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, a finalist for the National book Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award as well as the Griffin Poetry Prize. Her latest project is the book ‘Startlement: New and Selected Poems' and it is published by Milkweed Editions.
Ada Limón is the author of Against Breaking: On the Power of Poetry, available from Scribner. She served as the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States. Ada Limón is the author of seven books of poetry, including Startlement: New & Selected Poems; The Hurting Kind, which was a finalist for the Griffin Prize; The Carrying, which won the National Books Critics Circle Award and was a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award; and Bright Dead Things, which was named a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Award. Limón is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and was named a 2024 Time Woman of the Year. She is the author of two picture books, In Praise of Mystery as well as And, Too, The Fox, and was the editor of the anthology You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World. *** 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
Host Jason Blitman talks to acclaimed journalist Patrick Radden Keefe about his latest book, London Falling. London Falling is the April 2026 Late Show with Stephen Colbert Book Club pick. Conversation highlights include:
Karen Hao es periodista estadounidense, autora del bestseller del New York Times Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI (Penguin Press, 2025), ganadora del National Book Critics Circle Award, reconocida por la revista Time en su lista TIME100 AI, y una de las voces más rigurosas del mundo sobre el impacto social de la inteligencia artificial. Fue la primera periodista en perfilar a OpenAI, editora sénior de IA en MIT Technology Review, corresponsal del Wall Street Journal en China, y hoy escribe para The Atlantic y lidera el AI Spotlight Series del Pulitzer Center.En este episodio de Paredro, grabado en Medellín durante su visita a Colombia, Karen Hao habla con Camilo sobre su libro —publicado en español por Editorial Ariel como El Imperio de la IA: Sam Altman y su carrera por dominar el mundo— y sobre las preguntas que ese libro nos obliga a hacernos: ¿Estamos estructuralmente condenados a no entender nuestros propios avances tecnológicos? ¿Qué tiene en común el desarrollo de la IA con el colonialismo? ¿Por qué la IA, lejos de multiplicar las lenguas del mundo, está acelerando su desaparición? ¿Qué une a Silicon Valley con el proyecto político de Trump?Hao traza un mapa de los cuatro rasgos del imperialismo tecnológico: extracción de recursos, explotación laboral, monopolización del conocimiento y una cuasi-religión ideológica en torno a la AGI. Comparte el momento exacto en que dejó de creer en la narrativa de OpenAI como fuerza para el bien. Propone la metáfora de la bicicleta frente al cohete para repensar qué tipo de IA queremos construir. Y termina con un llamado a la resistencia colectiva: los únicos que pueden torcer el rumbo somos nosotros.Una conversación grabada mitad en inglés, mitad en el español que Karen Hao está aprendiendo porque, como ella misma dice, su esposo es colombiano —y Colombia aparece más de una vez en las páginas de su libro.
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 (Hogarth, 2026), Serpell brings her unique experience as both an award-winning writer and a 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 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. Derek Adams is Associate Professor of African American literature at Ithaca College and is currently teaching an upper-level seminar on Toni Morrison titled Across the Decades that challenges the origins of an assumed mythic status generally applied to her. Recommended Books: Maya Binyam, Hangmen Akwaeke Emezi, Freshwater Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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 (Hogarth, 2026), Serpell brings her unique experience as both an award-winning writer and a 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 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. Derek Adams is Associate Professor of African American literature at Ithaca College and is currently teaching an upper-level seminar on Toni Morrison titled Across the Decades that challenges the origins of an assumed mythic status generally applied to her. Recommended Books: Maya Binyam, Hangmen Akwaeke Emezi, Freshwater Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. 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
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 (Hogarth, 2026), Serpell brings her unique experience as both an award-winning writer and a 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 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. Derek Adams is Associate Professor of African American literature at Ithaca College and is currently teaching an upper-level seminar on Toni Morrison titled Across the Decades that challenges the origins of an assumed mythic status generally applied to her. Recommended Books: Maya Binyam, Hangmen Akwaeke Emezi, Freshwater Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies
Dion and Richard read and discuss "Dream Song 14," by John Berryman and then read from his newest book, I Do Know Some Things, a finalist for the National Book Award. We also discuss how one can become insufferable upon learning they have won or placed in a prize. Richard Siken is a poet, painter, and author of several books. His book Crush won the 2004 Yale Series of Younger Poets prize, selected by Louise Glück, a Lambda Literary Award, a Thom Gunn Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His other books are War of the Foxes (Copper Canyon Press, 2015) and I Do Know Some Things (Copper Canyon Press, 2025), which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Siken is a recipient of fellowships from Lannan Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.
Why Translate Homer Again? Daniel Mendelsohn on his new OdysseyThis conversation explore's Daniel Mendelsohn's new translation of The Odyssey. Mendelsohn reflects on why this endlessly retranslated text still invites fresh interpretation, describing Odysseus as a “proto-author” whose storytelling shapes reality itself.The discussion delves into the craft of translation; balancing precision with poetic vitality, preserving the strangeness of Homeric Greek while remaining readable, and making deliberate choices about line length, diction, and even spelling. Mendelsohn also highlights the influence of teaching and lifelong engagement with the text, emphasising close reading and the role of students in deepening understanding.Beyond technique, the conversation explores why The Odyssey endures. its themes of homecoming, identity, storytelling, and time continue to resonate across generations, making it both an ancient epic and a strikingly modern work.Buy The Odyssey: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/the-odyssey-51Memoirist, critic, translator, and frequent contributor of essays to The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, where he is Editor-at-Large, Daniel Mendelsohn is the author of ten books, including the international bestsellers The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, winner of the National Jewish Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic, an NPR and Kirkus Best Book of the Year. His other honors include the Prix Médicis in France and the Premio Malaparte, Italy's highest honor for foreign writers. In 2022 he was made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the Republic of France. He is currently the Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities at Bard College.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company.Listen to Alex Freiman's latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Ada Limón is the author of seven books of poetry, including Startlement: New & Selected Poems; The Hurting Kind, which was a finalist for the Griffin Prize; The Carrying, which won the National Books Critics Circle Award and was a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award; and Bright Dead Things, which was named a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Award. She is the author of two picture books and was the editor of the anthology You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World. She served as the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Host Jason Blitman talks to Lauren Groff about her new story collection, Brawler. This conversation was recorded live at Warwick's in San Diego. Conversation highlights include:
In this episode of The Archive Project, we feature poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong from Portland Arts & Lectures in January 2022. Hong became nationally famous in the spring of 2020 for her essay collection Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, a book so searing and powerful it landed her on the cover of Time magazine's 2021 issue featuring the 100 most influential people in the world. Minor Feelings is a collection of seven essays is both a deeply personal account of Hong becoming—and being—an artist, and is also an account of her and her family's experience as Korean Americans in this country. But she has emphasized that this is a book about America, not necessarily about being Asian. It is also a book infused with her sensibility as a poet, as someone who is fascinated with the endless mutability and power of language. Hong has published three acclaimed collections of poetry, and many listeners who know and have read Minor Feelings might be surprised to learn she primarily identifies as a poet not as an essayist. The theme of her talk is “community and belonging” and she threads a narrative through pop culture, religion, autobiography, and 20th century history, in order to try to understand the rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans during the pandemic, and the broader discrimination so many Americans experience in their daily lives. That she does this with anger, humor, and tenderness speaks to her remarkable powers as a writer and speaker. Cathy Park Hong is the author of three poetry collections and Minor Feelings, a New York Times bestselling book of creative nonfiction which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography and was longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence. Hong is a recipient of the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Her poems have been published in Poetry, The New York Times, The Paris Review, McSweeney's, and other journals. She is the poetry editor of The New Republic and full professor at Rutgers University–Newark.
Alan Khazei, founder of City Year, discusses the value of public service.Alex Green talks about his book A Perfect Turmoil: Walter E. Fernald and the Struggle to Care for America's Disabled, which is a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Senator Ed Markey zooms in to discuss the cost of war with Iran.Harvard national security expert Juliette Kayyem discusses AI-assisted warfare, and the bomb threat near Gracie Mansion in New York City. Then, Juliette sticks around for our conversation about popcorn.
Namwali Serpell is the author of On Morrison, available from Hogarth Press. 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. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. This episode is sponsored by Ulysses. Go to ulys.app/writeabook to download Ulysses, and use the code OTHERPPL at checkout to get 25% off the first year of your yearly subscription." 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
Too many of us left high school thinking that a poem could be taken seriously only if it was difficult to understand, subdued in its use of rhyme and alliteration, and addressed lofty topics. Harryette Mullen's saucy, suggestive “LVTOFU” bulldozes through convention, all the while revelling in its own rhythms, references, and humor. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig's weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes. Harryette Mullen is the author of eight books of poetry, including Urban Tumbleweed, Recyclopedia, and Sleeping with the Dictionary, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She is Professor of English and African American Studies at the University of California-Los Angeles.Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 562, my conversation with Ingrid Rojas Contreras from 2019. Contreras was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia. Her memoir The Man Who Could Move Clouds was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, and National Book Critics Circle Award, and her debut novel Fruit of the Drunken Tree was the silver medal winner in First Fiction from the California Book Awards. Her essays and short stories have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The Believer, and Zyzzyva, among others. She lives in California. I spoke with Ingrid as she was on tour in support of his debut, Fruit of the Drunken Tree. Air date: December 11, 2019. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc. Subscribe to Brad Listi's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch @otherppl Instagram YouTube TikTok 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