The Paris Review

Olga Tokarczuk, Nobel Prize-winning Polish writer, discusses the souls of animals, discovering feminism, and her home in Krajanów where she lived near translators of William Blake.

“We needed erotic touch to tell us what we were.” Robert Glück reads from About Ed, a memoir about his relationship with his former partner Ed Aulerich-Sugai. The performance is paired with excerpts from his Art of Fiction interview with Lucy Ives. This episode was produced by Helena de Groot and John DeLore, and was mixed and sound-designed by Helena de Groot. Our theme song this season is “Shadow,” composed and performed by Ernst Reijseger. Additional Links: https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/8016/the-art-of-fiction-no-260-robert-gluck https://theparisreview.org/miscellaneous/7896/about-ed-robert-gluck Subscribe to the Paris Review

“Nothing reifies a romance like proximate disaster.” Seated at her kitchen table, Jean Garnett reads her essay “Scenes from an Open Marriage” and chats with the Review’s deputy editor, Lidija Haas, and senior producer of the podcast, Helena de Groot. This episode was produced, sound-designed, and mixed by Helena de Groot. Our theme song this season is “Shadow,” composed and performed by Ernst Reijseger. Additional Links: theparisreview.org/blog/2022/06/29/scenes-from-an-open-marriage/ Subscribe to the Paris Review

“The only colors we’re going to use will be blacker than most blacks. Mm-kay.” Terrance Hayes reads his poem, “Bob Ross Paints Your Portrait.” An homage to the iconic host of the PBS show The Joy of Painting, and an exploration of Blackness: “deep-space black, black-hole black … lampblack and ink black, boot black and blackjack and blacker.” This episode was produced by Helena de Groot and John DeLore. It was sound-designed, mixed, and features original scoring by Helena de Groot. Our theme song this season is “Shadow,” composed and performed by Ernst Reijseger. Additional Links: theparisreview.org/poetry/7883/bob-ross-paints-your-portrait-terrance-hayes https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/457422/so-to-speak-by-hayes-terrance Subscribe to the Paris Review

Pulitzer Prize winner Sharon Olds discusses sex, religion, and writing poems women were not supposed to write. She reads three poems, including 'Sisters of Sexual Treasure', and talks about breaking taboos, intense pleasure, childhood radio, and defiance.

Poet Maggie Millner reads her own poem along with works by Toi Dericotte and Rainer Maria Rilke inside IKEA. The discussion includes reflections on IKEA furniture assembly, memories associated with a bed, and the experience of reading poetry in an IKEA closet. The episode also features insights into the poems read, acknowledgments to sponsors, and closing credits.

Actor, producer, and screenwriter Lena Waithe reads Rivers Solomon’s “This Is Everything There Will Ever Be,” which was published in issue no. 243 of the Review. The story, dark and uplifting by turns, is a portrait of “just another late-forties dyke entirely too into basketball, dogs, and memes.” This episode was produced and sound-designed by Helena de Groot. Our theme song this season is “Shadow,” composed and performed by Ernst Reijseger. Additional Links: theparisreview.org/fiction/7963/this-is-everything-there-will-ever-be-rivers-solomon rivers-solomon.com/ Subscribe to the Paris Review

The Paris Review Podcast returns with a new season on November 15, 2023. Selections of interviews, fiction, essays, and poetry from America’s most legendary literary quarterly, brought to life in sound. Catch up now on earlier seasons & then tune in November 15th for the fourth season.

Our Season 3 finale opens with “The Trick Is to Pretend,” a poem by Natalie Scenters-Zapico, read by the singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers: “I climb knowing the only way down / is by falling.” The actor Jessica Hecht plays Joan Didion in a reenactment of her classic Art of Fiction interview with Linda Kuehl. Jericho Brown reads his poem “Hero”: “my brothers and I grew up fighting / Over our mother’s mind.” The actor, comedian, and podcaster Connor Ratliff reads Bud Smith’s “Violets,” the story of two unlikely arsonists rediscovering life in the flames. The episode closes with Bridgers performing “Garden Song.” To hear more from Connor Ratliff, check out his podcast Dead Eyes. To hear Avery Trufelman’s latest show, find the podcast Nice Try! “Hero” by Jericho Brown appears courtesy of the 92nd Street Y Unterberg Poetry Center. This episode was sound designed and mixed by Hannis Brown, and mastered by Justin Shturtz.

In an essay specially commissioned for the podcast, Aisha Sabatini Sloan describes rambling around Paris with her father, Lester Sloan, a longtime staff photographer for Newsweek, and a glamorous woman who befriends them. In an excerpt from The Art of Fiction no. 246, Rachel Cusk and Sheila Heti discuss how writing her first novel helped Cusk discover her “shape or identity or essence.” Next, Allan Gurganus’s reading of his story “It Had Wings,” about an arthritic woman who finds a fallen angel in her backyard, is interspersed with a version of the story rendered as a one-woman opera by the composer Bruce Saylor. The episode closes with “Dear Someone,” a poem by Deborah Landau. To check out Captioning the Archives, the book Aisha Sabatini Sloan created with her father, Lester Sloan, visit McSweeney’s. This episode was sound designed and mixed by John DeLore, and mastered by Justin Shturtz.