Editor and publisher Brigid Hughes and writer Yiyun Li join co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about reading War and Peace over the course of 85 days with others around the world. The unusually broad and lively Twitter conversation, organized in 2020 by A Public Space and led by Li, is captured in the newly published volume Tolstoy Together. In this episode, Li discusses her love of Russian novels and describes what it was like reading War and Peace in sections at the ends of newspapers when she was growing up in Beijing. Hughes, who read the book for the first time during this project, explains how the community of readers who contributed to the online book club made the experience special.

To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video excerpts from our interviews at LitHub’s Virtual Book Channel and Fiction/Non/Fiction’s YouTube Channel, and don't miss our brand-new website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/

This podcast is produced by Anne Kniggendorf.

Selected readings:

Yiyun Li

Brigid Hughes

A Public Space

Others:

The Translation Wars (The New Yorker)
Her Private Space: On Brigid Hughes, Editor (LitHub)
Everything You’ve Ever Wanted to Know About Lit Mags (and Likely More) (FnF episode)
#APStogether : Events
Infinite Happiness (originally published in A Public Space, by Jamel Brinkley)
Cattle Haul (by Jesmyn Ward)
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
The Raid and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
Matt Gallagher
Dewaine Farria
Alexandra Schwartz
ZZ Packer

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S4 Ep. 25: Tolstoy Forever: Brigid Hughes and Yiyun Li on Retweeting a Russian Classic