Podcast
Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry
Hosted by David Naimon, Milkweed Editions · EN
BOOKS ∙ WORKSHOPS ∙ PODCAST
18episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Valeria Luiselli : Beginning Middle End
2w ago02:44:35Tap to summarizeWe welcome back Valeria Luiselli—who first appeared on the show eleven years ago—to discuss her new and truly marvelous novel Beginning Middle End. Much like the shapeshifting god Proteus, who figures prominently in this story, Beginning Middle End is many things at once: a road novel, a family drama, a work of climate fiction, a feminist retelling of classical mythology, a novel about writing, about borders and migration, and perhaps even a field guide for the apocalypse, enacting a way to live and love in a time of rupture and unimaginable change. Join Valeria, Proteus, and a host of pre-Socratic philosophers as we follow the novel’s make-shift family, broken apart and now coming back together anew, in a Sicily beset by metamorphic forces, mythic, geologic, and more. If you enjoy today’s conversation, consider shapeshifting from a listener to a listener-supporter by joining the Between the Covers community. You can find out about all the benefits and rewards of doing so at the show’s Patreon page. Finally, to explore the many books discussed and referenced in today’s conversation check out the Between the Covers BookShop specific for today’s episode. In addition, don’t miss Milkweed Editions BookShop bookstore as well.
Transcribe →From the Archives : Cristina Rivera Garza : The Taiga Syndrome & The Iliac Crest
Jul 901:50:33Tap to summarizeToday’s archival conversation, recorded in 2019, is Cristina Rivera Garza’s first unforgettable appearance on the show. We discuss two works of fiction by her, The Taiga Syndrome and The Iliac Crest. Poet Daniel Borzutsky says of the first, “If The Taiga Syndrome is a book of illness, it’s also about exile, disappearance, borders, love, language and translation, desire, capitalism and its discontents, fairy tales, and what it means to be possessed by the madness of others and the madness of ourselves…There is no one writing novels as phantasmagorically exquisite as Cristina Rivera Garza’s. The Taiga Syndrome, which is both quietly poetic and narratively unhinged, is a crucial addition to her distinguished oeuvre.” And Yuri Herrera says of the second, “An intelligent, beautiful story about bodies disguised as a story about language disguised as a story about night terrors. Cristina Rivera Garza does not respect what is expected of a writer, of a novel, of language. She is an agitator.” For the bonus audio archive we have an extended conversation with acclaimed translator Suzanne Jill Levine. We explore the pleasures and challenges of translating Cristina’s work; what the collaboration between Suzanne, Cristina and Suzanne’s doctoral student in translating The Taiga Syndrome together looked like; what to expect when pursuing a degree in translation, and more. To learn how to subscribe to the bonus audio, and about the many other potential benefits of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter, head over to the show’s Patreon page.
Transcribe →Eleni Sikelianos : Memory Rehearsal
Jun 2902:06:21Tap to summarizeToday’s guest is writer, poet and translator Eleni Sikelianos. We discuss her hybrid-genre, ancestral memoir Memory Rehearsal, a work that moves between poetry and prose, image and text, human and animal, history and mythology, and perhaps most of all tells the story of a poet’s self-discovery, finding her voice within a dual poetic lineage, within a chorus of remarkable voices, past and present. As Anne Waldman says: “Sikelianos’s voyage is a spiritual quest to untangle a history that only she and only poetry can accomplish. It is a meditation on gender, place, and reclamation, a struggle for a whole vision and version for the writer of her own self and purpose. The genius of this pursuit is staggering. . . .The intricate weaving and array of image and language to get there leaves me breathless. There is nothing like it that I have seen.” For the bonus audio archive Eleni contributes an electrifying reading from book one of H.D.’s Trilogy, called “The Walls Do Not Fall.” This joins many unforgettable contributions, whether Lisa Robertson reading her translation of the long Baudelaire poem “Hags,” Jorie Graham reading Robert Creeley, Jen Bervin reading Paul Celan, a late night whispered reading by Bhanu Kapil from her writing journal, and much more. To find out how to subscribe to the bonus audio, and about 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. Finally here is the BookShop for today’s conversation. [Author photo by Laird Hunt]
Transcribe →Lisa Robertson : Riverwork
Jun 802:25:41Tap to summarizeLisa Robertson’s Riverwork twins the mysterious disappearance of the great aunt of our protagonist, Lucy Frost, and that same aunt’s interest in a long-disappeared river, buried under the streets of Paris. As Lucy searches for traces of her aunt, by attempting to inhabit and complete her work on this long-forgotten river, erased histories about both come to the surface. Today’s unforgettable conversation—whether when talking about laundry or linguistics, text or textile, dust or menses, archivists or troubadours—floods designation, spills over with newly daylighted significations. For the bonus audio archive Lisa introduces us to and reads her translation of “Hags,” the long poem by Charles Baudelaire that is a germ for both of her novels, The Baudelaire Fractal and Riverwork. This joins many contributions from past guests including Dionne Brand, Christina Sharpe, Canisia Lubrin, Sheila Heti, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Bhanu Kapil, Kate Zambreno, Sofia Samatar and many more. To learn how to subscribe to the bonus audio and about the many other potential benefits and rewards of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener support, head over to the show’s Patreon page. Finally here is the robust and wide-ranging BookShop for today’s conversation.
Transcribe →From the Archives : Richard Powers : The Overstory
Jun 101:32:08Tap to summarizeToday’s archival episode with Richard Powers, about The Overstory, was recorded in 2019 in the studios of KBOO community radio in Portland, Oregon. Unusually, that same night I appeared with Richard at a live ticketed event at Revolution Hall to discuss the same book. Beyond the differences between an intimate one-on-one in-studio conversation (which today’s episode is), and a public-facing live event, where the presence of the audience is palpable and becomes part of the collective rapport we establish, I also developed two discrete lines of inquiry for each conversation respectively. So if you haven’t heard the live conversation (aired in 2023), I highly recommend it as well. Barbara Kingsolver for the New York Times Book Review declares The Overstory—winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction—a book that accomplishes “what few living writers from either camp, art or science, could attempt. Using the tools of story, he pulls readers heart-first into a perspective so much longer-lived and more subtly developed than the human purview that we gain glimpses of a vast, primordial sensibility.” What does it mean to de-center humans in a story written for a human readership? We explore that together today. For the bonus audio archive Richard discusses a collaborative tree cantata between musicans and writers, where writers pick their favorite text about trees and the musicians compose music to accompany it. Richard then reads his selection for the project, “Native Trees” by W.S. Merwin. This joins an ever-growing archive of material contributed by past guests, whether Forrest Gander reading poems in collaboration with a lichen scientist or Jorie Graham reading poems about rain by others; whether writing exercises by Lucy Ives, Lily Dunn or Will Alexander, or craft talks by Jeannie Vanasco and Marlon James. To learn how to subscribe to the bonus audio and about the other potential benefits and rewards of joining the Between the Covers community, head over to the show’s Patreon page.
Transcribe →Giada Scodellaro : Ruins, Child
May 2502:10:39Tap to summarizeDionne Brand says of Giada Scodellaro debut novel, winner of the prestigious Novel Prize: “Ruins, Child takes us to the crumbling architecture of a future past; a future past that is possibly now. In this work of fractal seeing, we encounter women in lives that are simultaneously lived, reenacted, and observed. Ruins, Child is conceptually rich, prismatic, and choral, embodied, and surreal, cinematic and textual. Giada Scodellaro writes us Black life watching Black life.” In today’s conversation with Giada we look at this singular novel, one that moves less by story than by sound and by image; we look at the politics and poetics of the gaze, at the grammar of film and dance in relation to the the way Giada’s language gestures and flows; at Black artistic lineages, and at this community in her novel, of largely Black women, who film themselves living, and watch themselves on film alive. For the bonus audio archive, Giada contributes a reading from Dionne Brand’s touchstone collection of poetry Ossuaries. This joins contributions from many past guests including Dionne herself, Christina Sharpe, Nikky Finney, Ada Limón, Lydia Davis, Viet Thanh Nguyen and many others. To learn how to subscribe to the bonus audio and about the many other potential benefits and rewards of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter, head over to the show’s Patreon page. Finally, here is the BookShop for today.
Transcribe →Saul Williams : Martyr Loser King
May 802:42:46Tap to summarizeMartyr Loser King, the debut graphic novel of poet, musician, actor and director Saul Williams, with art by Morgan Sorne, not only exists in the same world as his feature film Neptune Frost, but also that of three of his albums, one of his poetry collections and a touring dance performance called The Motherboard Suite. All of these works, in their respective disciplines, explore the distribution of power, the intersection of technology and race, and how our digitally-mediated lives are sustained by the crudest and cruelest of analog exploitations. In Martyr Loser King we follow two Central African protagonists—a miner of coltan, the trace mineral that powers our smart phones and laptops, and an intersex hacker with designs on the system extracting wealth from their country and people. To borrow words from Saul’s song and poem “Coltan as Cotton,” in today’s conversation we hack into land rights and ownership, faith and morality, masculinity, femininity and sexuality. We hack into the rebellious gene, the storyboard, and the history of revolutions. We hack into the database and the panel marked “survival.” If you enjoy today’s conversation consider joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter. One of the many benefits and rewards you can choose from is access to the bonus audio archive, with contributions from everyone from Dionne Brand to Isabella Hammad, N.K. Jemisin to Danez Smith, Naomi Klein to Viet Thanh Nguyen. You can find out more at the show’s Patreon page. Finally, here is the BookShop for today’s conversation.
Transcribe →From the Archives : Zadie Smith : Grand Union
May 100:56:50Tap to summarizeToday’s classic episode from the archives with Zadie Smith was recorded in 2019 at the studios of KBOO community radio to discuss her story collection Grand Union. The conversation ranges wildly—from the politics of representation, of being “free to imagine,” to the freedoms we’ve surrendered to surveillance capitalism. It ranges widely because her collection is, in the words of the San Francisco Chronicle an “unusual creature…Between the covers of one book, readers will find such disparate forms as allegory, parable, speculative thriller and satire, as well as shorter incarnations of Smith’s characteristic social comedy . . . Smith’s voracious intellect is on full display.” If you enjoy today’s conversation consider joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter. Find out about all the potential benefits and rewards of doing so at the show’s Patreon page.
Transcribe →Molly Crabapple : Here Where We Live Is Our Country : The Story of the Jewish Bund
Apr 1702:29:56Tap to summarizeOne of the elements that makes Molly Crabapple’s latest book so remarkable is, not only the remarkable stories it unearths and retells, but more specifically how she tells these stories, these erased stories, these stories meant to be forgotten. Not only does she tell them in a dynamic, often thrilling, way, she also does so in a way that somehow opens up the history and gifts it to contemporary movements, organizers and their artists. You can feel how alive to the moment Molly’s book of history is in the words of everyone who praises it. Whether Naomi Klein calling it a “gripping, human story of love, idealism and betrayal” or Tareq Baconi “a road map for our revolution today” and we explore this together—how to write, in whatever genre, in a way that offers one’s work to anti-colonial movements of liberation. A great conversation to pair today’s with is the recent episode with Jordy Rosenberg, who asks many of these same questions, but within the realm of fiction. After Jordy and my conversation had aired, Jordy sent me a second contribution to the bonus audio archive, a reading of the Palestinian writer and performance artist Fargo Tbakhi’s “Notes on Craft: Writing in the Hour of Genocide.” This joins many contributions from past guests whether from Naomi Klein, Dionne Brand, Isabella Hammad, or Omar El Akkad. You can check out all the potential rewards and benefits of joining the Between the Covers community, including access to the bonus audio archive, at the show’s Patreon page. Finally here is the BookShop for today.
Transcribe →Lily Brooks-Dalton : Ruins
Apr 802:12:55Tap to summarizeLily Brooks-Dalton’s Ruins is both a cleverly plotted page-turner, and an emotionally engaging, character-driven novel with an unforgettable protagonist; it’s both erudite and a wild ride, inviting and yet mysterious, only slowly revealing its cards. Through the lens of archaeology, Ruins explores how cultures construct history and shape memory, and through our prickly protagonist Ember, the difficulties and rewards of questioning the beliefs we’ve inherited. Today’s conversation, beyond delving into the themes and narrative of Ruins, also is a deep dive into craft, particularly exploring a writer’s considerations when it comes to plotting. As part of that discussion, we not only discuss Lily’s sensibilities when it comes to her three successful novels, but we also talk about two completed novels that never coalesced and why that might be. For the bonus audio archive, Lily contributes a reading from the opening of one of these novels we will never see. This joins bonus readings from everyone from Ted Chiang to N.K. Jemisin, adrienne maree brown to Dionne Brand. You can find out how to subscribe to the bonus audio, and about all the other potential benefits of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter, at the show’s Patreon page. Finally, here is the BookShop for today’s conversation.
Transcribe →