In Conversation | Work in Progress

FSG | Work in progress

DATE

TITLE

KIND
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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09.13.19

The Cartoon Introduction to Calculus

In Conversation

The Cartoon Introduction to Calculus

Grady Klein and Yoram Bauman are the co-authors of The Cartoon Introduction to Calculus. They collaborated previously on the two-volume Cartoon Introduction to Economics, on The Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change, and on a pamphlet called The Cartoon Introduction to Digital Ethics.

Grady Klein and Yoram Bauman, Ph.D. In Conversation

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08.23.19

A Bit of Unfinished Business

In Conversation

A Bit of Unfinished Business

Karen Olsson’s stirring and unusual third book, The Weil Conjectures, tells the story of the brilliant Weil siblings—Simone, a philosopher, mystic, and social activist, and André, an influential mathematician—while also recalling the years Olsson spent studying math in college. As she delves into...

Karen Olsson & Emily Bell In Conversation

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08.15.19

Slipping into Imagined Worlds

In Conversation

Slipping into Imagined Worlds

When I first read Lian Hearn’s novel, Across the Nightingale Floor (2002), it was a snow day. I sat in my apartment with my feet against the radiator, my heart thudding—not so much over the story, though it was suspenseful, but over the...

H. S. Cross & Lian Hearn In Conversation

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08.02.19

Narrative Frames

In Conversation

Narrative Frames

In Adam Ehrlich Sachs's The Organs of Sense, the year is 1666 and an astronomer makes a prediction shared by no one else in the world: at the stroke of noon on June 30 of that year, a solar eclipse will cast all...

Adam Ehrlich Sachs & Andrew Martin In Conversation

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07.25.19

The Weight of an Object

In Conversation

The Weight of an Object

Fifteen years ago, Kathryn Scanlan found a stranger’s five-year diary at an estate auction in a small town in Illinois. The owner of the diary was eighty-six years old when she began recording the details of her life in the small book. The diary...

Kathryn Scanlan and Sarah Rose Etter In Conversation

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07.17.19

Cleanness

In Conversation

Cleanness

I loved Garth Greenwell’s debut, What Belongs to You. It tells the story of a romance between two men, an American teacher and a charismatic hustler he propositions in a public bathroom in Sofia. The New York Times said: “A rich, important debut,...

Garth Greenwell & Mitzi Angel On Writing About Sex

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07.11.19

Why Don’t We Talk About Menopause?

In Conversation

Why Don’t We Talk About Menopause?

Menopause hit Darcey Steinke hard. First came hot flashes. Then insomnia. Then depression. As she struggled to express what was happening to her, she came up against a culture of silence. Throughout history, the natural physical transition of menopause has been viewed as something...

Darcey Steinke and Elissa Schappell In Conversation

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06.28.19

I’m Your Biggest Fan

In Conversation

I’m Your Biggest Fan

Adam Foulds presents readers with a stunning and terrifying vision of the damage done between a fan and a celebrity in his new novel, Dream Sequence. It follows Henry, who has become famous starring in the fictional television drama The Grange, and whose...

Adam Foulds and John Wray In Conversation

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06.05.19

Out of the Shadows

In Conversation

Out of the Shadows

It goes without saying that even today, it’s not easy to be gay in America. While young gay men often come out more readily, even those from the most progressive of backgrounds still struggle with the legacy of early-life stigma and a deficit of...

Walt Odets and Jonathan Galassi In Conversation

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05.17.19

Gesturing Toward Unreality

In Conversation

Gesturing Toward Unreality

In Chia-Chia Lin’s debut novel, The Unpassing, we meet a Taiwanese immigrant family of six struggling to make ends meet on the outskirts of Anchorage, Alaska. The father, hardworking but beaten down, is employed as a plumber and repairman, while the mother, a loving,...

Chia-Chia Lin and D. Wystan Owen In Conversation

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05.10.19

An Exclusive Gateway to the Secrets of Life

In Conversation

An Exclusive Gateway to the Secrets of Life

After reading The Light Years by Chris Rush, musician and songwriter Carl Broemel, a member of the band My Morning Jacket, felt inspired to write the song "Face of the Earth." The song appears on his new EP Brokenhearted Jubilee. Rush...

Carl Broemel and Chris Rush In Conversation

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05.03.19

A Woman’s Place

In Conversation

A Woman’s Place

What happens when you let your strong female characters step outside their boxes? Writers Katrina Carrasco (The Best Bad Things), Madeline ffitch (Stay and Fight), Tessa Fontaine (The Electric Woman), Chia-Chia Lin (The Unpassing), Ling Ma (Severance), and Lydia...

Lydia Kiesling, Ling Ma, Katrina Carrasco, Chia-Chia Lin, Tessa Fontaine, and Madeline ffitch In Conversation

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04.26.19

Liberating the Literary Mexican Voice

In Conversation

Liberating the Literary Mexican Voice

Native Country of the Heart is, at its core, a mother-daughter story. The mother, Elvira, was hired out as a child, along with her siblings, by their own father to pick cotton in California’s Imperial Valley. The daughter, Cherríe Moraga, is a brilliant,...

Cherríe Moraga and Rigoberto González In Conversation

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04.04.19

Writing to a Single Listener

In Conversation

Writing to a Single Listener

In those days I began to see light under every bushel basket, light nearly splitting the sides of the bushel basket. Light came through the rafters of the dairy where the grackles congregated like well-taxed citizens untransfigured even by hope. Understand I was the one underneath the basket. I was...

Katie Peterson and Louise Glück In Conversation

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03.22.19

Saving Yourself from Time

In Conversation

Saving Yourself from Time

"David Means is a master of tense, distilled, quintessentially American prose...Each story by Means which I have read is unlike the others, unexpected and an unnerving delight." —Joyce Carol Oates Following the publication of his widely acclaimed, Man Booker-nominated novel Hystopia, David Means now...

David Means and Tara Westover In Conversation

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The Terrain of Truth

Theaters of Speech

What Is Missing

Strangers in Their Homelands

The Era of Climate in Fiction

The Cartoon Introduction to Calculus

A Bit of Unfinished Business

Slipping into Imagined Worlds

Narrative Frames

The Weight of an Object

Cleanness

Why Don’t We Talk About Menopause?

I’m Your Biggest Fan

Out of the Shadows

Gesturing Toward Unreality

An Exclusive Gateway to the Secrets of Life

A Woman’s Place

Liberating the Literary Mexican Voice

Writing to a Single Listener

Saving Yourself from Time