In Conversation – Work in Progress

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12.06.18

A Tennis Odyssey

In Conversation

A Tennis Odyssey

In The Circuit, award-winning poet and Paris Review sports columnist Rowan Ricardo Phillips chronicles 2017 as seen through the unique prism of its pivotal, revelatory, and historic tennis season. The annual tennis schedule is a rarity in professional sports in that it encapsulates...

Rowan Ricardo Phillips and Teju Cole In Conversation

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10.26.18

Living in the Time of Being

In Conversation

Living in the Time of Being

Spanning eras, continents, and genres, CoDex 1962—twenty years in the making—is Icelandic author Sjón's epic three-part masterpiece. Josef Löwe, the narrator, was born in 1962—the same year, the same moment, even, as Sjón. Josef’s story, however, stretches back decades in the form of...

Sjón and Laurie Anderson In Conversation

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10.19.18

Finding the Novel

In Conversation

Finding the Novel

Aden Grace Sawyer, the heroine—somehow, the word “protagonist” doesn’t do her justice—of John Wray’s fifth novel, Godsend, has a great deal in common with John Walker Lindh, the “American Taliban,” who was, for a time, the most reviled American traitor since Lee Harvey...

John Wray and Akhil Sharma In Conversation

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10.11.18

The Ethical Challenge of Writing Violence

In Conversation

The Ethical Challenge of Writing Violence

I first came to know Jeff Jackson’s work when I encountered his powerfully original and moving debut novel, Mira Corpora, which Two Dollar Radio published in 2013. You have never read anything like this before, I would tell friends as I pressed the...

Jeff Jackson and Laura van den Berg In Conversation

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09.27.18

The Fictions We Maintain

In Conversation

The Fictions We Maintain

Certain American States is a collection of stories about ordinary people seeking—and failing to find—the extraordinary in their lives. The characters are continually coming to terms with their place in the world, and how to adapt to that place. A woman leaves her...

Catherine Lacey and Alexander Chee In Conversation

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09.20.18

A Dislocation of Reality

In Conversation

A Dislocation of Reality

Laura van den Berg’s beautiful and haunting The Third Hotel brings us to Havana, Cuba, where recent widow Clare has arrived for the annual Festival of New Latin American Cinema. She was supposed to be there with her film scholar husband, Richard, but...

Laura van den Berg and Julie Buntin In Conversation

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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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A Tennis Odyssey

Living in the Time of Being

Finding the Novel

The Ethical Challenge of Writing Violence

The Fictions We Maintain

A Dislocation of Reality

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