Podcast
Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry
Hosted by David Naimon, Milkweed Editions · EN
BOOKS ∙ WORKSHOPS ∙ PODCAST
19episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
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 →From the Archives : Ted Chiang : Exhalation
Apr 101:13:26Tap to summarizeExcited to share this classic episode from the archives with one of the great short storytellers of our time, Ted Chiang. This conversation happened in 2019 at the studios of KBOO community radio in Portland, Oregon. Blake Crouch speaking of Exhalation, the book we discuss today, says “Ted Chiang has no contemporary peers when it comes to the short story form. His name deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Carver, Poe, Borges, and Kafka. Every story is a universe. Every story is a diamond. You will inhale Exhalation in a single, stunned sitting, because true genius doesn’t come along nearly as often as advertised. This is the real thing.” For the bonus audio archive Ted contributed a reading of his essay “Silicon Valley Is Turning into its Own Worst Fear,” first published at Buzzfeed, an essay exploring the reasons why Silicon Valley might particularly fear superintelligent A.I. and how credible those fears really are. This joins contributions from everyone from N.K. Jemisin to Daniel Jose Older to Vajra Chandrasekera. You can find out how to subscribe to the bonus audio, and about the other potential rewards and benefits of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter, at the show’s Patreon page.
Transcribe →Jordy Rosenberg : Night Night Fawn
Mar 2702:26:44Tap to summarizeToday’s conversation with Jordy Rosenberg is many things but at its heart it explores the question of what it means to write revolutionary literature (or as Trotsky would call it “October literature”). Whether we are talking about trans horror or a Marxist surreal, the originating violence of early capitalism or writing toward utopian horizons; whether we are getting granular on the level of craft and form or looking more broadly at the role of art and artists, the question of how our writing can lend itself toward conjuring an elsewhere and otherwise is, I think, the animating force behind it all. Jordy’s provocative choices in his latest novel Night Night Fawn bring these questions urgently to the fore as it centers and is narrated by someone whose worldview Jordy strongly opposes. Night Night Fawn is an opioid-addled, deathbed rant by one Barbara Rosenberg, a transphobic Zionist woman modeled after Jordy’s own mother. Barbara holds court not only on her life’s disappointments, but on Marxism and gender delivered through her cracked lens. All while her greatest disappointment, her transgender son, who may or may not want to kill her, visits her at her bedside. What opportunities, challenges and dangers does this approach create for a writer with revolutionary aims? How can looking back at originary violences, within a family or a nation or an ideology, be a liberatory act? And when confronting structural or familial violence, what is the role of humor and satire? Perhaps it is best summed up by Book Page in its starred review when they say Night Night Fawn is “comedic fiction as political firepower.” For the bonus audio archive Jordy contributes a reading of Kay Gabriel & Andrea Abi-Karam’s “What is the Project of Trans Poetics Now?” This joins supplemental readings by Torrey Peters, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, Rickey Laurentiis, Randa Abdel-Fattah, Isabella Hammad, Naomi Klein, Dionne Brand, Christina Sharpe, Layli Long Soldier, Natalie Diaz 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. Given Jordy’s generous citational practice, it is more robust than most.
Transcribe →Joan Naviyuk Kane : with snow pouring southward past the window
Mar 1202:39:03Tap to summarizeWhen Cynthia Cruz describes Joan Naviyuk Kane’s latest collection as a series of poems that “both shows and enacts how a self is brought to being through the abyss,” I think of Kane’s own words about poetry: as “a place of refuge and possibility, a generative space. Not a space of loss, but contingence.” What is a home in the face of dispossession? Inheritance in the face of rupture and colonial erasure? And what is the role of language on behalf of continuity and continuation? We explore all of these questions and much more, both generally, but also quite granularly within the context of the indigenous circumpolar North. For the bonus audio archive, Joan contributes the reading of a long poem, one that she is still working on, called “Provisionally.” She grants us a sneak peek of a poem that she has been drafting and revising for a year, in its current provisional form. This joins many remarkable contributions— from everyone from Layli Long Soldier to Dionne Brand, Isabella Hammad to Arthur Sze, Jorie Graham to Danez Smith. Find out how to subscribe to the bonus audio, and about the other potential benefits and rewards 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 →From the Archives : Brandon Shimoda : The Grave on the Wall
Mar 201:55:54Tap to summarizeToday’s episode is a classic from the archives, a conversation from 2019 with Brandon Shimoda about his book The Grave on the Wall. While the book centers on an exploration of Shimoda’s grandfather’s internment at Fort Missoula during World War II, it is really an interrogation of America that extends both directions in time from that moment. Forts such as these, that imprisoned Japanese and Japanese-Americans during the war, were also previously used to fight the Indian wars that established white dominance over Native lands, and are now today being used as detention centers/concentration camps for the refugees and immigrants from our southern border. The Grave on the Wall is also an engagement with photography and (mis)representation, memory and memorialization and asks the question of what it means to memorialize something that is ongoing, that has never ended. For the bonus audio archive Brandon Shimoda contributes a reading from Etel Adnan’s long poem “Fog,” a poem she dedicated to him. This joins contributions from everyone from Isabella Hammad to Dionne Brand, Natalie Diaz to Kaveh Akbar and more. To learn how to subscribe to the bonus audio and about all the other potential rewards and benefits of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter head over to the show’s Patreon page.
Transcribe →Báyò Akómoláfé : Selah
Feb 2502:14:41Tap to summarizeWhat if we were to take seriously that we, as humans, aren’t the sole authors of our world, that there are other intelligences at play, that we are only one of many agents of change and transformation, and that “we” aren’t even entirely ourselves given that “we” are composed of many “others,” many strangers that nevertheless make up what we call a “self”—what would a philosophy and politics emerging from this look like, one where we weren’t the center or central agent of the story? And what would we do if we discovered that the way we’ve been responding to the things we want to change—colonialism, racism, fascism, environmental devastation, and more—what if something about the way we oppose these forces actually reinscribes them, where the very way we are responding to the crisis becomes part of the crisis? We explore these animating philosophical questions of Báyò Akómoláfé today and take them also into the realm of words— from what it means when Báyò says “poetry precedes language” to how to tell stories while recognizing, in their remarkable power, their danger and limitations. We talk koans and tricksters, monsters and fugitives, shifting shape, following cracks, making sanctuary and much more. If you enjoy today’s conversation consider transforming yourself from a listener to a listener-supporter by joining the Between the Covers community. Find out more about all the potential benefits and rewards of doing so at the show’s Patreon page. Finally the BookShop for today.
Transcribe →Milkweed Live : Canisia Lubrin : The World After Rain
Feb 1101:10:57Tap to summarizeCanisia Lubrin returns to Between the Covers for a live conversation in downtown Portland, at Powell’s Bookstore, about her latest poetry collection The World After Rain. A private book, that Canisia never intended to publish, we explore what it means to write elegy beyond personal biography, what it means that “metaphors unmake the too-made,” what it means to write against the literal, with a folk sensibility and consciousness, and much more. How does elegy relate, formally and aesthetically, to water? What is the utility of poetry, its effect in the world? How can autobiography be a way to move beyond the self? Join Canisia for a deep exploration of these animating questions in her latest work. The first time Canisia was one the show, to discuss her book Code Noir, her contribution to the bonus audio archive was a reading of as-of-yet-unpublished works by Christina Sharpe and Dionne Brand, and a soundscape she stitched together from six years of touring, from Canada to Europe to the Caribbean. This joins an immense and ever-growing archive of supplemental material and is only one of many possible things to choose from when you join the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter. You can find out more at the show’s Patreon page. Finally, here is the BookShop for today.
Transcribe →From the Archives : Jake Skeets : Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers
Feb 501:58:22Tap to summarizeToday’s episode is a classic from the archives, a conversation from 2019 with current Navajo Nation Poet Laureate Jake Skeets about his debut poetry collection Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers. Winner of the Whiting Award in poetry and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, there is no better time to revisit this remarkable collection, and this unforgettable conversation with Skeets, as we await his new book Horses coming this March from Milkweed Editions. For the bonus audio archive Jake contributed a reading and analysis of a poem by the first Navajo Nation Poet Laureate, Luci Tapahonso, a poem called “Hills Brothers Coffee.” He talks about it in relation to his thoughts on Diné or Navajo poetics. This joins supplemental readings by many past guests including Tommy Pico, Layli Long Soldier, Brandon Hobson, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Natalie Diaz, Elissa Washuta, Morgan Talty 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.
Transcribe →Ross Gay : Be Holding
Feb 16, 2021Tap to summarizeToday’s Between the Covers conversation is with the poet Ross Gay about Be Holding, his book-length poem that emerges from a sustained meditation on a mere few seconds of the basketball career of Julius Erving (aka Dr. J). Be Holding is a finalist for this year’s PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, given to a work “which has broken new ground by reshaping the boundaries of its form and signaling strong potential for lasting influence.” (This year’s judges are Vievee Francis, Fred Moten, and Tommy Orange). Whether you love basketball or break out in hives at the mention of sports, do watch the video of Dr. J’s move, a move that is akin as much to dance or song or even poetry, as it is to athletics. How is joy inseparable from death? Flight connected to entanglement? Looking to growing? Dr. J to mushrooms and trees, fathers and gardens, birds and cameras? What can we learn about the act of looking, the act of beholding, when it comes to the making of art, to the writing of poems? Join us to find out all of this and much more. For the bonus audio archive Ross Gay reads a poem by Jean Valentine and talks to us about her. To find out more about how to subscribe to the bonus audio and to explore the wealth of potential gifts and rewards and benefits of becoming a listener-supporter of Between the Covers head over to the show’s Patreon page here.
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