If Only – first published in Norway in 2001, and now brought into English by Charlotte Barslund – is viewed in Norway as Vigdis Hjorth’s masterpiece, a story of the devastation wreaked on one woman’s life by an ill-advised affair. Hjorth (whose other novels in English include Is Mother Dead?, Will and Testament and Long Live the Post Horn!) is in conversation about the novel with Lauren Oyler, whose own debut novel, Fake Accounts, was published in 2021, and whose essay collection No Judgement came out earlier this year. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In Mother State (Allen Lane), Helen Charman uses this provocative insight to write a new history of Britain and Northern Ireland. Beginning with Women's Liberation and ending with austerity, the book follows mothers' fights for an alternative future. Here we see a world where motherhood is not a restrictive identity but a state of possibility. ‘Mother’ ceases to be an individual responsibility, and becomes an expansive collective term to organise under, for people of any gender, with or without children of their own. It begins with an understanding: that to mother is a political act. Charman discusses her book with Lola Olufemi, author of Feminism, Interrupted and Experiments in Imagining Otherwise.Find more events at the Bookhsop: https://lrb.me/eventspod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Best known for her novels – most recently, 2021’s The Fell – now Sarah Moss has turned her hand to life-writing. My Good Bright Wolf unflinchingly details her experience of girlhood and anorexia in prose described by Jan Carson as ‘part memoir, part confessional, part dark and feverish fairytale’. Moss was in conversation with Octavia Bright, author of This Ragged Grace. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Why be a slug? Slugs: A Manifesto (Makina Books) explores a creature that survives by being disgusting. Weaving together manifesto, memoir and poetic language, artist Abi Palmer considers the politics of space, iridescent queerness, and shapeshifting viscous ‘slug time’. In the face of a potential apocalypse, Slugs: A Manifesto envisions a future where humanity becomes just a little more sluglike.Palmer was joined in conversation with Zarina Muhammad of The White Pube, co-author of the forthcoming Poor Artists (Particular Books).Find more events at the Bookhsop: https://lrb.me/eventspod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In her first novel Hagstone (Fourth Estate), Sinéad Gleeson – who has, in the words of Anne Enright, ‘changed the Irish literary landscape through her advocacy for the female voice’ – explores the darker side of human nature and the mysteries of faith and the natural world in the setting of a remote island housing a commune of women seeking refuge from the modern world.She was joined in discussion by Booker Prize winner Douglas Stuart, author of Shuggie Bain and Young Mungo.Find more events at the Bookshop: https://lrb.me/eventspodGet Hagstone: https://lrb.me/hagstonepod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In Catherine Lacey’s dystopian thriller, recently published in paperback by Granta, CM Lucca, widow of a recently deceased avant-garde artist, sets out to write a biography of the woman she idolised. Her quest leads her, through a maze of pseudonyms, half-truths and outright fabrications, on a journey into the Southern Territory, a fascist theocracy that seceded from the Union after the Second World War. Lacey, author of three previous novels and one of Granta’s ‘Best of Young American Novelists’, was joined in conversation about her work by Jen Calleja, translator, co-founder of micro-press Praspar and author of Vehicle (Prototype).Find more events at the Bookshop: https://lrb.me/eventspod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Palestinian writer and journalist Yasmin Zaher’s debut novel The Coin (Footnote Press) has been hailed as ‘already a masterpiece’ (Slavoj Žižek), ‘a filthy, elegant book’ (Raven Leilani) and ‘bonkers’ (Elif Batuman). A young Palestinian woman, wealthy but stateless and with no access to her wealth, finds her life and sense of self unravelling as she teaches underprivileged children at a New York middle school, gets involved in a money-making scheme selling Birkin bags and becomes unhealthily obsessed with health and cleanliness.Zaher read from her novel, and was joined for discussion by poet and novelist Sheena Patel (I'm a Fan).Get the book: https://lrb.me/thecoinpodFind more events at the Bookshop: https://lrb.me/thecoinpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

‘There are very few writers with as clear and thrilling a love for the stuff of language as Eley Williams’, writes Jon McGregor. Moderate to Poor, Occasionally Good revels in the same inventiveness and experimentation that made her debut collection of short stories, Attrib. and Other Stories, so beloved; courtroom artists, childhood crushes, scholarly annotators and editors of canned laughter take their place in a joyful panoply exploring the nature of relationships both intimate and transient. Williams was in conversation with So Mayer, author of Truth & Dare (Cipher Press). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Published to coincide with the poet’s 85th birthday, Ash Keys (Jonathan Cape) presents a new selection of Longley’s finest works. Born in Belfast in 1939, his verse inhabits the landscapes Ireland’s west, at the same time occupying a space within a distinctly European tradition, ranging freely across the continent's histories, tragedies and triumphs. ’One of the most perfect poets alive,’ writes Sebastian Barry. ‘There is something in his work both ancient and modern. I read him as I might check the sky for stars.’Michael Longley was joined for this reading and discussion by fellow poet Declan Ryan, whose most recent collection Crisis Actor is published by Faber.Get the book: https://lrb.me/ashkeyspodFind more events at the Bookshop: https://lrb.m/eventspod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Strange Relations (Sceptre) explores the crisis in mid-century masculinity through the lives and works of four bisexual writers who fought to express and embody alternate possibilities. The nonfiction debut of Forward Prize-shortlisted poet Ralf Webb, it considers the ways in which Tennessee Williams, Carson McCullers, John Cheever and James Baldwin, resisted damaging contemporary expectations around gender and sexuality. Will Tosh has described it as ‘wise, humane, hopeful and exquisitely written’. Webb was in conversation with Philippa Snow, author of Which As You Know Means Violence: On Self-Injury as Art and Entertainment (Repeater) and, most recently, Trophy Lives: On the Celebrity as an Art Object (MACK). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.