London Review Bookshop Podcast

In Transitions, the latest title in MACK’s ‘Discourse’ series writers Sita Balani and Jay Bernard, guided by Stuart Hall’s notion of ‘conjuncture’, draw on literature, social theory, and lived experience to offer an urgent account of our fractured present. Their dialogue takes in Britain’s colonial past, the advent of AI and the legacy of extractive capitalism to ask the urgent question: what does it mean to be human in a political culture determined to devalue the Humanities? Their conversation is chaired by Sana Goyal, editor of Wasafiri. More from the Bookshop: Discover our author of the month, book of the week and more: ⁠https://lrb.me/bkshppod⁠ From the LRB: Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subsbkshppod Close Readings podcast: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/crbkshppod LRB Audiobooks: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobooksbkshppod Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/storebkshppod Get in touch: [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In How to Be Well, journalist and essayist Amy Larocca takes on the behemoth which is the contemporary ‘wellness’ industry, in prose which Joanna Rakoff has described as a ‘magical synthesis of crackerjack reporting, incisive cultural commentary, and, most importantly, elegant, self-reflective memoir’. From active charcoal toothpaste to green juice enemas, Larocca explores the science and history of various controversial treatments, to reckon with the 3.7-trillion dollar industry’s profits and promises. Larocca was in conversation at the Bookshop with journalist and literary critic Gaby Wood. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Haitian-American scholar Edna Bonhomme, now based in Berlin, is well placed to unpick what it means to be Black at home and abroad. In Tending to Our Wounds, part memoir, part history, part polemic, she unlearns the lies that she was told about slavery and colonialism, and charts a breathtaking course between the individual and the collective, between past and future, and between oppression and resistance. She was in conversation with Lola Olufemi, author of Feminism for the World, Feminism Interrupted and Experiments in Imagining Otherwise. You can buy a copy of Tending to Our Wounds from the London Review Bookshop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sophie Robinson, poet and author of Prairie Oyster, and Oluwaseun Olayiwola, poet, critic and choreographer, join Sarah Howe and Sandeep Parmar to explore how poetry writes sex. They discuss explicit language, queer desire, bodily mess, consent, secrecy and power. Readings from Robinson and Olayiwola open into conversations about rhythm, spirituality, performance and the body’s place in contemporary poetry.

Holly Pester’s Cafés (Fitzcarraldo) continues the trajectory which, since her debut Comic Timing, has made her one of the most exciting poets writing. An elegy for lost communal space, and a stylish political intervention, Francesca Wade has described Cafés as embodying ‘a public space or a place to hide; to meet friends and strangers or to be alone; Pester's brilliance builds this cafe up and invites us in to linger’. Pester was in conversation with Luke Roberts, lecturer at King’s College London, co-director of the small press Distance No Object, and author of (most recently) Bad Omens (Book Works). You can buy a copy of Cafés from the London Review Bookshop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Shortly after the pandemic lockdown Sara Baume came across a painting in a pop-up exhibition in a renovated West Cork shed. Fascinated by it, she became determined to make the painter’s acquaintance – although a native of North Dakota the artist Mollie Douthit was now living and working in rural Ireland. Bonded by a common love of nature and a commitment to their respective artistic practices, they began to meet regularly, to talk, to eat and to swim. What would it be like, Baume wondered, to write a book in the style of Mollie’s painting? Opening Night is the result. She was in conversation with Emily LaBarge, author of Dog Days. You can buy a copy of Opening Night from the London Review Bookshop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a series of provocative essays encompassing Marilyn Monroe, the myth of Apollo and Daphne, octopuses and girlbosses, reluctant heterosexuals, lesbian separatists, and anti-work cats, Sophie Lewis, author of Enemy Feminisms, Abolish the Family, and Full Surrogacy Now, seeks to put the femme back into feminism. In Femmephilia, Sophie Lewis makes the case for the vital importance of politicized femme-ness: a feminism that is self-consciously artificial, extravagant in its erotic and political appetites, and staunchly anti-work, abolitionist, and utopian. She was in conversation with novelist and poet, Keiran Goddard, author of Hourglass and I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning. You can buy a copy of Femmephilia from the London Review Bookshop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

To call Elizabeth Bishop one of the greatest female American poets of the 20th century is to make too many qualifications. Increasingly, critical opinion has converged with Dwight Garner’s assertion that she was perhaps ‘the most purely gifted poet of the 20th century’. To mark the publication of his new book, Elizabeth Bishop’s Styles of Writing, Andrew Dickinson was in conversation with the poet and critic Peter McDonald. Poet Mark Ford, actor Juliet Stevenson and writer Lamorna Ash will also read from a selection of Bishop’s work. You can buy a copy of Elizabeth Bishop’s Styles of Writing from the London Review Bookshop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Colin Grant, biographer and oral historian exploring migration and Black British lives. He shares a chorus of migrant voices from across Britain. They discuss identity, belonging and the emotional costs of moving. Short readings and personal stories bring varied journeys to life.

Hannah Dawson, historian of political thought and editor of The Penguin Book of Feminist Writing, and Erin Maglaque, early modern historian and author of Presence, discuss the hidden history of the female body. They assemble fragmentary voices from archives. Topics include childbirth, maternal imagination, erotic spells, sex and the one-sex model, abortion traces, eating and self-starvation, dreams, witch narratives, and care for the dying.