Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry
David Naimon, Tin House Books
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Top 10 Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry episode by adding your comments to the episode page.
Jenny Offill : Weather
Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry
03/11/20 • 106 min
“Novelists don’t need to dream the end of the world anymore—they need to wake up to it. Jenny Offill is one of today’s few essential voices, because she writes about essential things, in sentences so clipped and glittering it’s as if they are all cut from one diamond.” –Jonathan Dee
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Tin House Live : Getting Past the Gatekeepers with Mira Jacob & Kaitlyn Greenidge
Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry
10/14/20 • 62 min
In “Getting Past the Gatekeepers: How to Keep Writing in an Industry that Excludes Us,” Kaitlyn Greenidge and Mira Jacob discuss their combined 30+ years of experience navigating literary publishing. From the first feedback to the final copyedits, they discuss strategies to stay sane and keep writing when your story doesn’t fit the industry’s narrow bookshelf.
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Ross Gay : Be Holding
Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry
02/16/21 • 121 min
Today’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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Tin House Live : Writing On Your Own Terms with Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry
08/19/21 • 42 min
Originally delivered at the 2021 Tin House Summer Writers Workshop, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore’s electrifying talk “Writing On Your Own Terms” explores what it means to write against the canonical imperative, to write against the world as it is, to instead write on your own terms, toward community, and specifically toward the community of people who might truly appreciate and understand your work.
Sycamore is the author and editor of many books and anthologies. Most recently she is the editor of Between Certain Death and a Possible Future: Queer Writing on Growing Up with the AIDS Crisis (forthcoming in October 2021) and the author of the 2021 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award finalist, The Freezer Door. Wayne Koestenbaum’s assessment of The Freezer Door seems particularly relevant to the theme of writing on one’s own terms: “Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore puts sex and gender, suffering and gentrification, encounter and solitude, at the center of a book that defies borders and uses language to dive directly into mystery. I admire Sycamore’s gossamer refusal ever to land anywhere definitive; the sentences travel further and further into trauma’s backyard, where complex ideas find a habitat among the simplest formulations. Sycamore, by breathing into the prose, treats the act of book-building as a practice strange and organic as sleeping, walking, bathing, eating. The Freezer Door delves into the philosophy of the sexual meetingplace with a virtually unprecedented aplomb.”
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore first appeared on the show for a deep dive into her last novel Sketchtasy. So if you are hungry for more Sycamore after this talk, as I’m confident you will be, this is a great place to go next. If you appreciate the show, consider becoming a supporter of Between the Covers. Check out the benefits and rewards of doing so at the Between the Covers Patreon page.
The post Tin House Live : Writing On Your Own Terms with Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore appeared first on Tin House.
Shze-Hui Tjoa : The Story Game
Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry
07/20/24 • 105 min
Today’s guest, Shze-Hui Tjoa, has written a book that is remarkably unique. Is it an essay collection or a memoir? A detective story or a fantasy? A journey of self-individuation or an examination of power and control? Improbably it is all of these things, and perhaps more than any of them, it is the record of a writer finding her form by breaking form, but doing so in a way that invites us into the process as it unfolds. T Kira Madden declares: “The Story Game introduces a major debut work from a most astounding talent. Shze-Hui Tjoa’s memoir not only challenges genre, it upends and splits it wide open. In meditations on grief, displacement, mental health, and family, Tjoa will have you wondering how and why we remember, and what we can’t forget. The Story Game is hypnotic, wise, and thunderously innovative. I will teach this book, I will treasure it, and I will continue to learn from its astute and hopeful insights.”
For the bonus audio, Tjoa contributes a 30-minute video reading of a favorite childhood picture book that she translates for us from Chinese to English. To learn how to subscribe to the bonus audio archive and to explore the other potential benefits 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.
The post Shze-Hui Tjoa : The Story Game appeared first on Tin House.
Morgan Parker : Magical Negro
Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry
05/14/19 • 117 min
“Morgan Parker’s latest collection, Magical Negro, is a riveting testimony to everyday blackness. . . . It is wry and atmospheric, an epic work of aural pleasures and personifications that demands to be read—both as an account of a private life and as searing political protest.”—Glory Edim, Time Magazine
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Carl Phillips : Scattered Snows, to the North
Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry
08/02/24 • -1 min
Today’s guest is one of the most singular and celebrated Anglophone poets writing today, Carl Phillips. We center his latest collection, Scattered Snows, to the North, his first since winning the 2023 Pulitzer prize in poetry. But we also use his three craft books written over the decades (in 2004, 2014 and 2023 respectively) to look at his body of work across time. We spend time attending to language, to syntax, to form. And equally, we look outward toward questions of voice, community, identity and more.
For the bonus audio, Carl contributes a reading of a medley of poems about black swans, poems by James Merrill, Randall Jarrell and Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, which he comments on as he goes. He ends this remarkable reading with a black swan poem of his own. You can 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 at the show’s Patreon page.
Finally, here is the Bookshop for today’s conversation.
The post Carl Phillips : Scattered Snows, to the North appeared first on Tin House.
Álvaro Enrigue : You Dreamed of Empires
Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry
01/21/24 • -1 min
Today’s conversation with Álvaro Enrigue about his latest novel, You Dreamed of Empires, translated by Natasha Wimmer, is set during the relatively undocumented first encounter between Moctezuma and Hernán Cortés. The novel dilates the knife’s edge moment when the Aztec emperor invites the conquistador, with his small band of Spanish soldiers, into the palaces of Tenochtitlan as guests. We talk about writing into the gaps of history, fiction’s influence on the “official” record, histories that are actually fictions, and how writing into erased or distorted histories can be a way to speak to the present moment. We talk of hornless deer, ritual cannibalism, psychedelic tomatoes, and a surprising influence of the indigenous cultures of the Americas on all of our lives today.
If you enjoyed today’s conversation, consider joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter. Find out about all the potential gifts and rewards of doing so at the show’s Patreon page.
Finally, here is the Bookshop for today’s episode with all the books, fiction and nonfiction, literary and scholarly, that we reference today.
The post Álvaro Enrigue : You Dreamed of Empires appeared first on Tin House.
Tin House Live : Katie Holten on The Language of Trees
Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry
06/01/23 • 52 min
In Early Medieval Ireland there was a language called Ogham that was sometimes referred to as the “Celtic Tree Alphabet'” because its letters each corresponded to and depicted a different tree. At one point Ireland, now one of the most deforested countries in Europe, was largely covered in forest, its culture deeply entwined with the life of trees. Irish visual artist Katie Holten has created a new contemporary tree alphabet, gathered the voices, thoughts, poems, and meditations of some of the great thinkers about trees and the natural world, and translated their writings into “tree.” A book of image and a book of text, the wisdom of Ursula K. Le Guin and Richard Powers, Ross Gay and Robert Macfarlane, Amitav Ghosh, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Ada Limón, and many more, is transformed into tree language as they each, in their own way, evoke the complex beings that are trees, and argue, as Richard Powers does, that “this is not our world with trees in it. It’s a world of trees, where humans have just arrived.”
If you enjoy today’s conversation consider joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter. Find out about all the potential rewards and benefits of doing so at the show’s Patreon page.
Today’s conversation was recorded at Powell’s Books in downtown Portland before a live audience.
The post Tin House Live : Katie Holten on The Language of Trees appeared first on Tin House.
Georgi Gospodinov : Time Shelter
Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry
01/01/23 • 113 min
Today’s guest, Bulgarian novelist, storyteller, poet, essayist, and more, Georgi Gospodinov, is the perfect writer to bring in the new year. Gospodinov is a writer obsessed with beginnings and endings, with time, history, imagination, and memory. A writer raised on the stories of his grandmother, on the fantastical tales of Márquez and Borges, on the notion that stories themselves can not only comfort and console, but sometimes save a life. His latest novel, Time Shelter, translated by Angela Rodel (who is part of today’s conversation), is about the comforts and dangers of the past, of nostalgia, and what happens to a country, to a world, when the future feels canceled and we look backward for somewhere to live. As Bulgarian translator Izidora Angel said in her review of the book: “Beneath the book’s speculative façade, it’s also clear the author is meditating on his own legacy as a man of words within it. Real, bloody conflict exists but something else is eating away at us too—a critical depletion of empathy, a critical mass of meaninglessness, as Gospodinov has called it, and it is the job of writers to counter these metaphysical but no less real dangers. Words are time shelters too—living, breathing portals to memory, experience, and history, archives and blueprints all at once.”
For subscribers to the bonus audio archive, there is a supplementary interview with Georgi’s translator, Angela Rodel, about the questions and conundrums of translation that arose with Time Shelter, about how Gospodinov’s work is distinct within Bulgarian literature, and about her own artistic pursuits beyond translation, from starring in Bulgarian films and television to performing in a Bulgarian folk-rock band and more. This joins other long-form conversations with translators of other previous guests including Megan McDowell translating Alejandro Zambra, Ellen Elias-Bursać translating Dubravka Ugrešić, and more. To learn how to subscribe to the bonus audio and the other potential benefits of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter head over to the show’s Patreon page.
Finally here is today’s Bookshop.
The post Georgi Gospodinov : Time Shelter appeared first on Tin House.
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FAQ
How many episodes does Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry have?
Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry currently has 307 episodes available.
What topics does Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry cover?
The podcast is about Podcasts, Books and Arts.
What is the most popular episode on Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry?
The episode title 'Jenny Offill : Weather' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry?
The average episode length on Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry is 92 minutes.
How often are episodes of Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry released?
Episodes of Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry are typically released every 13 days, 22 hours.
When was the first episode of Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry?
The first episode of Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry was released on Dec 14, 2010.
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