In Conversation | Work in Progress

FSG | Work in progress

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11.13.20

The Details of What It Feels to Be Alive

In Conversation

The Details of What It Feels to Be Alive

Long before he became one of the most renowned literary critics of our time, Dwight Garner started the practice of keeping a 'commonplace book' of literary quotations that spoke to him. His new book, Garner's Quotations, is a reflection of that lifelong attention—and celebration—of...

Dwight Garner and Jonathan Galassi In Conversation

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11.13.20

The Courage in Remaining

In Conversation

The Courage in Remaining

Jonas Hassan Khemiri is a 2020 finalist for the National Book Award in Translated Literature for his book, The Family Clause, a singular novel hailed by The Times Literary Supplement as a "complex portrait of a family that is both identifiable and distinctive,...

Jonas Hassen Khemiri

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07.31.20

A Certain Clarity

In Conversation

A Certain Clarity

Lawrence Joseph’s A Certain Clarity brings together poems selected from throughout his career, spanning his first book—1983’s Shouting at No One—to his most recent, So Where Are We? (2017). Joseph’s poetry has always grappled with the defining moments of our age, from...

Lawrence Joseph and Paul Elie In Conversation

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05.15.20

Transforming Consciousness

In Conversation

Transforming Consciousness

Sharks in the Time of Saviors is a groundbreaking debut novel that folds the legends of Hawaiian gods into an engrossing family saga; a story of exile and the pursuit of salvation from debut author Kawai Strong Washburn. In this interview, transcribed from a...

Kawai Strong Washburn and Marlon James In Conversation

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05.08.20

Man of My Time

In Conversation

Man of My Time

Bound galleys of Dalia Sofer’s Man of My Time happened to go out just as political tensions started to escalate between the US and Iran over the killing of Major General Qasem Soleimani. Some weeks later, as we publish this novel, the entire...

Dalia Sofer and Ileene Smith

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04.03.20

Translating Time

In Conversation

Translating Time

If Men, Then, Eliza Griswold’s second poetry collection, charts a radical spiritual journey through catastrophe. Alternately searing and hopeful, funny and fraught, the poems explore the world’s fracturing through the collapse of the ego, embodied in a character named “I”—a soul attempting to...

Eliza Griswold, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, and Jonathan Galassi In Conversation

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03.13.20

Clearing Space for Resonances

In Conversation

Clearing Space for Resonances

Reminiscent of a lost Victorian classic in miniature, yet taking equal inspiration from such modern authors as Jean Rhys, Octavia Butler, Clarice Lispector, and Jean Genet, Amina Cain's Indelicacy is at once a ghost story without a ghost, a fable without a moral, and...

Amina Cain and Patty Yumi Cottrell In Conversation

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02.27.20

Unfinished Business

In Conversation

Unfinished Business

I sometimes think I was born reading...I can’t remember the time when I didn’t have a book in my hands, my head lost to the world around me. In Vivian Gornick's new book, Unfinished Business, she brings us a celebration of passionate reading, of...

Vivian Gornick & Alexandra Schwartz In Conversation

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02.13.20

The Cactus League

In Conversation

The Cactus League

Jason Goodyear is the star outfielder for the Los Angeles Lions, stationed with the rest of his team in the punishingly hot Arizona desert for their annual spring training. Handsome, famous, and talented, Goodyear is nonetheless coming apart at the seams. And the coaches,...

Emily Nemens & David Duchovny In Conversation

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01.30.20

Laying Bare the Dignity of Queer Desire

In Conversation

Laying Bare the Dignity of Queer Desire

In Cleanness, the highly anticipated follow-up to his beloved debut, What Belongs to You, Garth Greenwell deepens his exploration of foreignness, obligation, and desire. Sofia, Bulgaria, a landlocked city in southern Europe, stirs with hope and impending upheaval. In this atmosphere of...

Garth Greenwell & Andrea Lawlor In Conversation

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12.04.19

Expanding Our Language

In Conversation

Expanding Our Language

For John Freeman—literary critic, essayist, editor, poet—it is the rare moment when words are not enough. But in the wake of the election of 2016, words felt useless, even indulgent. Action was the only reasonable response. He took to the streets in protest, and...

John Freeman & Valeria Luiselli In Conversation

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11.22.19

Writing Sensory Experience

In Conversation

Writing Sensory Experience

If a rolling stone gathers no moss, the poems in Devin Johnston’s Mosses and Lichens attend to what accretes over time, as well as to what erodes. They often take place in the middle of life’s journey, at the edge of the woods,...

Devin Johnston & Robyn Creswell In Conversation

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11.08.19

The Passage of Time

In Conversation

The Passage of Time

No novel in recent memory has spoken more movingly to contemporary readers about the nature of love than André Aciman’s Call Me by Your Name. First published in 2007, the book recently became an Academy Award–winning film starring Timothée Chalamet as the young...

André Aciman & Tomi Obaro In Conversation

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11.01.19

Cognitive Dissonance

In Conversation

Cognitive Dissonance

At the age of five, Megan Phelps-Roper began protesting homosexuality and other alleged vices alongside fellow members of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas. Founded by her grandfather and consisting almost entirely of her extended family, the tiny group would gain worldwide notoriety...

Megan Phelps-Roper & Jon Ronson In Conversation

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10.25.19

On Division

In Conversation

On Division

In Williamsburg, Brooklyn, just a block or two up from the East River on Division Avenue, Surie Eckstein is soon to be a great-grandmother. Her ten children range in age from thirteen to thirty-nine. Her in-laws, postwar immigrants from Romania, live on the first...

Goldie Goldbloom & Cheryl Sucher In Conversation

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10.18.19

The Terrain of Truth

In Conversation

The Terrain of Truth

"This is a powerful, timely, and troubling book. Boyer's unflinching account of the market-driven brutality of American cancer care sits beside some of the most perceptive and beautiful writing about illness and pain that I have ever read." —Hari Kunzru, author of White Tears A...

Anne Boyer & Hari Kunzru In Conversation

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10.11.19

Theaters of Speech

In Conversation

Theaters of Speech

From the award-winning author of 10:04 and Leaving the Atocha Station, Ben Lerner's new book The Topeka School is a tender and expansive family drama set in the American Midwest at the turn of the century: a tale of adolescence, transgression,...

Ben Lerner & Sally Rooney In Conversation

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10.03.19

What Is Missing

In Conversation

What Is Missing

Costanza Ansaldo, a half-Italian and half-American translator, is convinced that she has made peace with her childlessness. A year after the death of her husband, an eminent writer, she returns to the pensione in Florence where she spent many happy times in her youth....

Michael Frank and Ileene Smith In Conversation

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09.27.19

Strangers in Their Homelands

In Conversation

Strangers in Their Homelands

In We, the Survivors, award-winning and critically acclaimed author Tash Aw presents a compelling depiction of a man’s act of violence, set against the backdrop of Asia in flux. Ah Hock is an ordinary man of simple means—so what brings him to kill...

Tash Aw & Chimamanda Adichie In Conversation

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09.20.19

The Era of Climate in Fiction

In Conversation

The Era of Climate in Fiction

Two writers grapple with climate change in fiction, nonfiction—and real life. Amitav Ghosh, the award-winning author of the Ibis Trilogy returns with his new novel, Gun Island. When a Bengali legend from childhood comes to haunt the lonely life of a rare books...

Amitav Ghosh & Nathaniel Rich In Conversation

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The Details of What It Feels to Be Alive

The Courage in Remaining

A Certain Clarity

Transforming Consciousness

Man of My Time

Translating Time

Clearing Space for Resonances

Unfinished Business

The Cactus League

Laying Bare the Dignity of Queer Desire

Expanding Our Language

Writing Sensory Experience

The Passage of Time

Cognitive Dissonance

On Division

The Terrain of Truth

Theaters of Speech

What Is Missing

Strangers in Their Homelands

The Era of Climate in Fiction