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

Dec 08 2024 300 ep. 92 mins 4.9k

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

Author interviews with today's best writers — established & up-and-coming — in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Hosted by David Naimon & Tin House in Portland, Oregon. --The Guardian's 10 Best Book Podcasts --Book Riot's 15 Outstanding Podcasts for Book Lovers --the most intense and awesome podcast I've ever been a part of–Gary Shteyngart

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Rodrigo Fresán : Melvill

Dec 08 2024 117 mins

How can a novel set during one brief moment near the end of Herman Melville’s father’s life, a moment lost to history and now fully overshadowed by his son’s enduring literary legacy, become a portal to discuss the world entire? Melvill is a novel about reading and writing, about parenthood and legacy, about madness and memory, about […]

Dionne Brand : Salvage : Readings from the Wreck

Nov 25 2024 131 mins

What does it mean that a life can not only be animated by books but destroyed by them? That a self can be not only made by reading, but unmade by it? Dionne Brand’s latest book of nonfiction Salvage: Readings from the Wreck returns to formative texts from her own reading life in order to model […]

Danez Smith : Bluff

Nov 08 2024 173 mins

Danez Smith’s poetry is so many things, a poetry of resistance, of elegy, of joy, of care, of repair. Their poetry is Afrofuturist and Afropessimist. It’s nature poetry, decolonial poetry, queer poetry, a poetry that is archival and documentary. And it is also a poetry that questions poetry itself and even more so, questions the […]

Kenzie Allen : Cloud Missives

Oct 24 2024 153 mins

Today’s conversation with Kenzie Allen, about her debut poetry collection Cloud Missives, is unusually wide-ranging. We look at the influence of archaeology, anthropology and cartography on her poetry, and on her notion of gaze within her work. We explore the fraught colonial history of these fields, and how, as an indigenous poet, she orients herself […]

Tin House Live : Torrey Peters on Strategic Opacity

Oct 11 2024 45 mins

Today’s craft talk—by Torrey Peters on “Strategic Opacity”— was recorded at the 2024 Tin House summer writers workshop. Peters explores the elements in works of fiction that actually don’t make sense—from William Shakespeare to Elena Ferrante —and how, paradoxically, it is these very elements, the unexplainable ones, that can make a work of art great

Jewish Currents Live : Dionne Brand & Adania Shibli in Conversation

As part of Jewish Currents Live: A Day of Politics & Culture, I moderated a conversation between Adania Shibli and Dionne Brand this September in New York City. Both Dionne and Adania have been on the show individually, and part of why I was hoping to bring them together this way was because of just […]

Isabella Hammad : Recognizing the Stranger : On Palestine and Narrative

Sep 24 2024 116 mins

Today’s conversation with Isabella Hammad is truly like no other on the show in its fourteen year history. The main text of her book is the speech she delivered for the Edward Said Memorial Lecture in September of 2023. A remarkable speech called “Recognizing the Stranger” which looks at the middle of narratives, at turning […]

Tin House Live : Frank Bidart

Sep 06 2024 70 mins

Today’s episode is an archival recording of poet Frank Bidart from the 2008 Tin House Writers Workshop. It begins with an introduction by the poet Brenda Shaughnessy, followed by an extended poetry reading by Frank Bidart. After the reading is a not-to-be-missed substantive and remarkable craft interview of Frank by Brenda. They look at how […]

Nalo Hopkinson : Blackheart Man

Sep 01 2024 110 mins

Todays’ guest is Grand Master of science fiction and fantasy Nalo Hopkinson. Together we center her first novel in over a decade, the remarkable Blackheart Man, and look at what it means to not only write an alternate Caribbean history, but within that history conjure an entirely new culture, one with its own language, sexual […]

Vajra Chandrasekera : Rakesfall

Aug 17 2024 145 mins

Sri Lankan writer Vajra Chandrasekera’s first novel, The Saint of Bright Doors, was shortlisted for or won nearly every major SFF award there is. Much of the buzz around this book circled the question:”what exactly is this?” Saints not only didn’t fulfill the expected tropes of the genre, but seemed to be actively working against […]