In Conversation – Work in Progress

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09.07.18

Violating the Form

In Conversation

Violating the Form

In Kudos, a woman writer visits a Europe in flux, where questions of personal and political identity are rising to the surface. Rachel Cusk's unique approach to storytelling builds action through vivid, precise encounters and monologues that explore the nature of family and...

Rachel Cusk and Alexandra Schwartz In Conversation

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08.24.18

Opening Up a Life

In Conversation

Opening Up a Life

Named an NPR Best Book of the Year, Anne Fadiman’s poignant memoir The Wine Lover's Daughter examines her relationship with her father, Clifton Fadiman. Though he was a renowned literary critic, editor, and radio host, his greatest love was wine. The book explores...

Anne Fadiman and Jenny Allen In Conversation

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08.10.18

Putting the Medicine in the Applesauce

In Conversation

Putting the Medicine in the Applesauce

With her newest essay collection Look Alive Out There, Sloane Crosley brings us her trademark humor, wit, and charm. Yet there is also a new maturity to these essays: they are full of punch-packing observations and emotional insight, whether ruminating on fertility or...

Sloane Crosley and Zadie Smith In Conversation

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07.27.18

The Lingering Colonial Presence

In Conversation

The Lingering Colonial Presence

Caryl Phillips’s A View of the Empire at Sunset is a biographical novel of the life of Jean Rhys, the author of Wide Sargasso Sea, which she wrote as a prequel to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. Born Ella Gwendolyn Rees Williams in Dominica...

Caryl Phillips and Hilton Als In Conversation

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07.20.18

A Life in Letters

In Conversation

A Life in Letters

Thom Gunn has been described as “one of the most singular and compelling poets in English during the past half-century” (Times Literary Supplement). Gunn was an Elizabethan poet in modern guise, though there’s nothing archaic or quaint about his poetry. His method was dispassionate...

August Kleinzahler and Clive Wilmer On Thom Gunn's Legacy

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07.13.18

Malzberg Reading Daniels Reading Malzberg

In Conversation

Malzberg Reading Daniels Reading Malzberg

In Champaign, Illinois, in the summer of 2011, in a closet in a bookstore consecrated to science fiction (the closet, that is, not the bookstore), I came upon a shelf of pocket paperbacks all attributed to one Barry N. Malzberg. I’m not sure what...

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06.29.18

Amity and Prosperity

In Conversation

Amity and Prosperity

In Amity and Prosperity, prize-winning poet and journalist Eliza Griswold draws on seven years of reporting to tell the story of the energy industry’s impact on a small town at the edge of Appalachia, and one woman’s transformation from a struggling single parent...

Eliza Griswold and Alex Kotlowitz In Conversation

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06.14.18

The Terrain Between Art and Science

In Conversation

The Terrain Between Art and Science

Evolutions brings to life the latest scientific thinking on the birth of the universe and the solar system, the journey from a single cell all the way to our human minds. Reawakening our sense of wonder and terror at the world around us...

Oren Harman and Alan Lightman In Conversation

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06.01.18

The Superpowers of Akil Kumarasamy

In Conversation

The Superpowers of Akil Kumarasamy

A startlingly beautiful debut, Akil Kumarasamy's Half Gods brings together the exiled, the disappeared, the seekers. Following the fractured origins and destinies of two brothers named after demigods from the ancient epic the Mahabharata, we meet a family struggling with the reverberations of...

Akil Kumarasamy and Sara Novic In Conversation

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05.25.18

The Tangled Threads of Narrative

In Conversation

The Tangled Threads of Narrative

In Mark Sarvas's Memento Park, Matt Santos becomes aware of a painting that he believes was looted from his family in Hungary during the Second World War. To recover the painting, he must repair his strained relationship with his harshly judgmental father,...

Mark Sarvas and Maud Newton In Conversation

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05.11.18

A Woman Whose Power Was Underground

In Conversation

A Woman Whose Power Was Underground

New York Times bestselling author David Duchovny reimagines the Irish mythological figure of Emer with Miss Subways, a darkly comic fantasy love story set in New York City. Emer is just a woman living in the city, taking the subway, dreaming of...

David Duchovny and Sam Roberts In Conversation

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05.04.18

Underground Language

In Conversation

Underground Language

Graffiti Palace, A. G. Lombardo’s debut novel, is a contemporary reimagining of The Odyssey set during the 1965 Watts Riots. Los Angeles is scorching and Americo Monk, a street-haunting graffiti aficionado, is frantically trying to return home. Yet his trek is constantly...

A. G. Lombardo and David Ulin In Conversation

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04.13.18

Look Alive Out There

In Conversation

Look Alive Out There

Sloane Crosley is back, returning to the form that made her a household name in really quite a lot of households. With her newest essay collection Look Alive Out There, she brings us her trademark humor, wit, and charm. Yet there is...

Sloane Crosley In Conversation

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03.30.18

Where No Voices Existed

In Conversation

Where No Voices Existed

Whiskey author Bruce Holbert met author Elizabeth McCracken in their Iowa MFA program, where they became close friends. Though their careers have taken vastly different tracks, they have supported each other's work for decades, and each appreciates the subtleties of the other's characterization,...

Bruce Holbert and Elizabeth McCracken In Conversation

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03.23.18

The Areas of Gray

In Conversation

The Areas of Gray

On March 11, 2011, an earthquake sent a twelve-foot-high tsunami crashing into the coast of northeast Japan, setting off a national crisis and the meltdown of a nuclear plant. Award-winning foreign correspondent Richard Lloyd Parry was there to feel the destabilizing first shakes and...

Richard Lloyd Parry & Ian Buruma In Conversation

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03.02.18

What Are We Doing Here?

In Conversation

What Are We Doing Here?

Marilynne Robinson has plumbed the human spirit in her renowned novels, including Lila, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Gilead, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Robinson’s peerless prose and boundless humanity are...

Marilynne Robinson and Paul Elie In Conversation

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02.23.18

Happiness Is a Choice You Make

In Conversation

Happiness Is a Choice You Make

In 2015, John Leland wrote a revelatory series of articles for The New York Times about the city’s oldest residents—those eighty-five and up. The profiles upended conventional notions of aging, revealing the late stages of life as unexpectedly rich and the elderly as incomparably...

John Leland and Sarah Crichton In Conversation

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02.16.18

Making Eye Contact with Ourselves

In Conversation

Making Eye Contact with Ourselves

Katherine Faw's dark new novel Ultraluminous takes us into the life of K, a high-end, girlfriend-experience prostitute whose routine includes everything from Duane Reade sushi to gallery shows to heroin. The New Yorker called the book "a damning, often hilarious account of...

A Feminist Discussion Inspired by Katherine Faw’s Ultraluminous

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12.01.17

Jeffrey Eugenides

In Conversation

Jeffrey Eugenides

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jeffrey Eugenides, whose short story collection Fresh Complaint was published this fall, discusses volunteering with Mother Teresa, the time he played golf with Philip Roth in a dream, and his writing vices. What was your first experience of writing as a...

On Writing and Reading

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12.01.17

Surprised by the Past

In Conversation

Surprised by the Past

The visual artist Joyce Kozloff and I were surprised to discover that we have both completed projects inspired by the material leavings of our childhood worlds—in Joyce’s case found, in my case (mostly) lost. Girlhood was Joyce’s recent exhibition at the D.C. Moore...

Michael Frank and Joyce Kozloff In Conversation

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Welcome to Work in Progress, a compendium of original works, exclusive excerpts, and interviews with authors from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

@2017 Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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Violating the Form

Opening Up a Life

Putting the Medicine in the Applesauce

The Lingering Colonial Presence

A Life in Letters

Malzberg Reading Daniels Reading Malzberg

Amity and Prosperity

The Terrain Between Art and Science

The Superpowers of Akil Kumarasamy

The Tangled Threads of Narrative

A Woman Whose Power Was Underground

Underground Language

Look Alive Out There

Where No Voices Existed

The Areas of Gray

What Are We Doing Here?

Happiness Is a Choice You Make

Making Eye Contact with Ourselves

Jeffrey Eugenides

Surprised by the Past