In Conversation | Work in Progress

FSG | Work in progress

DATE

TITLE

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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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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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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

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