Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

Today’s “Crafting with Ursula,” a conversation with nature writer Isaac Yuen, explores Le Guin’s writing of the nonhuman other in her fiction. Why might we consider decentering the human within our stories and how do we do so? How does one evoke a truly alien intelligence (i.e. that of a plant or an insect) but using human language for a human readership? Looking closely at three of Le Guin’s short fictions, “The Direction of the Road,” “Bones of the Earth,” and “The Author of the Acacia Seeds and Other Extracts from the Journal of Therolinguistics,” Isaac and David discuss the various strategies Le Guin uses to evoke a world that is more than human, and that stretches past human comprehension. We place these stories alongside stories and essays of Isaac’s to find the ways Le Guin and Yuen’s work speak one to another. This episode’s Bookshop contains all the Le Guin books mentioned in today’s conversation along with Yuen’s  favorite touchstone books of nature writing in both fiction and nonfiction. If you enjoyed today’s conversation, consider becoming a supporter of the show. Check out all the potential benefits and rewards, including Le Guin collectibles, bonus audio from iconic SFF guests, and more at the Between the Covers Patreon page. The post Crafting with Ursula : Isaac Yuen on Writing Nature & Nature Writing appeared first on Tin House.

It’s been five years since Solmaz Sharif’s first appearance on Between the Covers, for her National Book Award–finalist debut collection Look. Since then, many listeners have pointed to this conversation as one of the most memorable episodes to date. Solmaz returns today to discuss her much-anticipated follow-up, Customs. We talk about belonging, exile and language, about what it means to write against goodness, to write uncivilly, to write against language even. We look at the ways her poetry has changed from one book to the next, and the vulnerability and fear of writing from a single voice, in the first person, rather than through the poly-vocal conceptual frame of Look. We also take some of Solmaz’s animating questions into the world of the classroom, into poetry pedagogy, as well as out into the world, as a lens into the lives of political poets, and into what poems can (and can’t) do. Check out today’s Bookshop, where the works of writers we engaged with today, from June Jordan to Dionne Brand to Forough Farrokhzad, can be found. Also if you enjoyed today’s program consider becoming a listener-supporter of the show. There are many potential benefits and rewards of doing so, including becoming an early reader for Tin House, receiving twelve books over the course of a year months before they are available to the general public, rare collectibles from past guests (from Ursula K. Le Guin to Nikky Finney), and the bonus audio archive with contributions from Kaveh Akbar, Rabih Alameddine, Phil Metres, Layli Long Soldier, Alice Oswald, Jorie Graham, and more. These and many other things can be found at the show’s Patreon page.   The post Solmaz Sharif : Customs appeared first on Tin House.

Writer and performance artist Gabrielle Civil talks about her latest book the déjà vu: black dreams & black time, as well as her chapbook ( ghost gestures ), chosen by Bhanu Kapil for the Gold Line Press Nonfiction prize. What does Civil mean by “Black time” and how does she enact this in the déjà vu? What is “performance writing” or “performance memoir” and how do her work on the stage and on the page speak to each other across forms? What does it mean to consider one’s ancestry, one’s lineage, one’s generation, and future ones, in the “now” of your work? Civil discusses all of this and much more in today’s conversation. Today’s episode touches on the work of everyone from bell hooks to Dionne Brand to Ntozake Shange to Alexis Pauline Gumbs. This abundance of referred-to books, as well as Gabrielle Civil’s own, have been collected in this episode’s Bookshop (a great way to support today’s guest, other writers, independent booksellers and the show all at one time). For the bonus audio archive Gabrielle adds a reading and discussion of one of her favorite American sonnets by Wanda Coleman. To find out more about how to subscribe to the bonus audio and the many other potential benefits of becoming a listener-supporter of the show, check out the Between the Covers Patreon page. The post Gabrielle Civil : the déjà vu appeared first on Tin House.

Today’s guest on the second episode of Crafting with Ursula, Molly Gloss, the acclaimed writer of both award-winning science fiction and fantasy as well as feminist Westerns, has a particular insight into the work and writing life of Le Guin. Gloss’ writing career began as a student of Le Guin’s in a workshop in the 1980s. And yet they soon became friends, were friends and writing peers for thirty-five years, and were in peer writing groups together in both poetry and prose during that time, critiquing each other’s work. Today’s episode focuses on something Ursula herself loved to think about, the meanings that lie beneath the words we write, the music (or lack of music) in a line or sentence that make our stories or our poetry gurgle or sing. And, of course, how to create this meaning from below and why. While this conversation begins at the level of the line, at the level of the sentence, we do come to talk about the unusual way Le Guin employs technology in her work, a sensibility that informs Gloss’ writing, particularly in The Dazzle of Day. We talk about her different relationship to fiction and to poetry, and perhaps most notably we get to hear a long, never-before-seen, unpublished poem of Le Guin’s that was brought to one of their shared poetry peer groups, a poem about the practice of writing itself. The Bookshop for today’s episode is particularly robust: Gloss’ most iconic SFF works, Le Guin’s craft books, her poetry, and more. It is just one way to support writers, independent bookstores, and the show all at the same time. If you enjoyed today’s program, consider transforming yourself from a listener to a listener-supporter. There are many potential benefits of doing so, from the bonus audio archive to rare collectibles from past guests including from Ursula K. Le Guin herself. Check it all out at the show’s Patreon page. The post Crafting with Ursula : Molly Gloss on Writing the Clear, Clean Line appeared first on Tin House.

Writer, critic, performer, & visual artist James Hannaham talks about his latest and most uncategorizable book Pilot Impostor. This book slips between the borders of prose and poetry, fiction and nonfiction, image and text, facts and fake news, selfhood and persona, pretending and privilege. And Pilot Impostor comes into being piece by piece through an engagement with the work, poem by poem, of Fernando Pessoa, a writer who created and wrote from over seventy (!!!) different heteronyms (personas that interacted with each other and had full biographies, from a bisexual naval engineer in Scotland to an uneducated Portuguese shepherd trying to unlearn even more). And yet this book of Hannaham’s is also somehow about Trump, air disasters, the nature of selfhood, and the ongoing legacy of colonialism and slavery. How is this all possible? Well, listen in to find out! Here is the Bookshop for today’s conversation, with all of the books mentioned today, where you can support writers, independent bookstores, and the podcast all in one act. If you enjoy today’s episode, consider becoming a listener-supporter of Between the Covers. Many past guests, from Nikky Finney to Ursula K. Le Guin, have donated collectibles for future supporters. There is also the possibility of becoming a Tin House early reader, receiving twelve books over the course of a year, months before they are available to the general public. And every supporter joins a community that is helping shape the future of the show, as well as receiving a resource-rich email with each conversation. Check it all out at the Between the Covers Patreon page.   The post James Hannaham : Pilot Impostor appeared first on Tin House.

Rabih Alameddine talks about his new novel The Wrong End of the Telescope, which is set on the island of Lesbos amidst the medical personnel and tourist-volunteers involved with helping the arriving Syrian refugees. Interestingly, the writer, one suspiciously similar to Rabih himself, is a secondary character in this novel, a character who asks Mina, a Lebanese-American doctor, to tell this story, to be the narrator, because the writer is too undone by the situation to do so. We talk about narrative distance, about how to find what Rabih calls “the Goldilocks distance” not too enmeshed, not to detached, to be able to effectively tell a story that needs to be told. We talk about the power and limits of literature, of empathy, of volunteerism, about why each of Rabih’s books is a rebellion against the one before, about how to write without relying on the reader’s preexisting emotions and why one might want to do so. The Bookshop for this episode contains most of the books mentioned today (from Vivian Gornick to Elisa Gabbert to Italo Calvino, and of course most of Rabih’s books that we talk about today too). It is a nice way to support the show, the writer, and independent bookstores, all in one gesture. For the bonus audio archive Rabih contributes a brief discussion and reading of a favorite poem of his by Fernando Pessoa. To find out about how to subscribe to the bonus audio and about the other potential benefits of becoming a supporter of the show head over to the Between the Covers Patreon page. The post Rabih Alameddine : The Wrong End of the Telescope appeared first on Tin House.

Today’s guest, Becky Chambers, discusses her own work, and her own considerations when imagining alien cultures and the beings that inhabit them. She does this in light of Le Guin’s novel The Left Hand of Darkness and Le Guin’s short story, “Coming of Age in Karhide,” written by Le Guin 25 years later, but within the same world as the the novel. What does putting these two narratives side by side tell us about storytelling, about audience, about otherness, about the author herself? And what does it mean to imagine worlds not through the science of physics but through the science of culture and the science of bodies? What can be gained by decentering (or even disposing of) plot, conflict, or heroes? And what are the biological and technological considerations one might think about when imagining a future or the beings that might inhabit it? If this first episode of Crafting with Ursula is your first encounter with the Between the Covers podcast, you can sort the show’s archive by genre, foregrounding, if you desire, all the past science fiction and fantasy conversations with everyone from Ted Chiang and N.K. Jemisin to Neal Stephenson, Daniel José Older, and Kelly Link. All the books mentioned in today’s conversation with Becky Chambers can be found at the show’s BookShop (a nice way to support the author, the show, and independent booksellers all at the same time). To learn more about the potential benefits and rewards of becoming a listener-supporter of the show, from rare Le Guin collectibles to becoming an early reader for Tin House, head over to the Between the Covers Patreon page.   The post Crafting with Ursula : Becky Chambers on Creating Aliens & Alien Cultures appeared first on Tin House.

Poet Victoria Chang talks about her latest and most uncategorizable book Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief. A book composed largely of essay-like letters, Dear Memory also contains collages by Victoria, created from the artifacts (mementos, documents, photographs) found in her family’s storage locker, and short poems which she places among the images. What does this formal shapeshifting tell us about this project? How are form and identity related? What does changing form (in this case from poetry to prose) reveal about the self? What role does imagination play in memory? What is post-memory and how does one write into memories that one didn’t have oneself but which nevertheless cast a shadow under which one’s life has been shaped? What does it mean to put language at risk and how does one go about doing it? Is it possible that constructing a self comes not from striving toward wholeness, but from entering the gaps, the silences, the severance, and departures from which one comes? Today’s conversation invokes the thoughts and work of many other writers (from Brandon Shimoda to Don Mee Choi to Theresa Hak Kyung Cha to Rick Barot). You can check out all the books mentioned (by both Victoria and others) at today’s episode’s BookShop. For the bonus audio archive Victoria adds a reading from her forthcoming collected The Trees Witness Everything as well as a short discussion of writing using constraints, talking about the multiple constraints that produced the tiny poems in this very different upcoming collection. You can find out how to subscribe to the bonus audio as well as about the other potential benefits of becoming a Between the Covers supporter at the show’s Patreon page. The post Victoria Chang : Dear Memory appeared first on Tin House.

Today’s guest, Mexican poet, painter, and translator Valerie Mejer Caso talks about her latest book, the bilingual publication of poetry, collage, and photography Edinburgh Notebook, translated by Michelle Gil-Montero for Action Books. What does it mean to write something both autobiographical and surreal, both dream-like and real? How can questions of selfhood and identity (the identity of nation, of language, of family) become uncanny? What does it mean to write with “shattered language” and how can one find words, images, and forms to capture grief, loss, and death? This only scratches the surface of this conversation with Valerie, one that ranges widely, from Freud’s dreams to Tarkovsky’s notion of time to Raúl Zurita’s thoughts on the relationship of poetry to mortality itself. Today’s addition to the bonus audio archive is a long-form, in-depth conversation with the translator of Edinburgh Notebook, Michelle Gil-Montero. We talk about translating Valerie Mejer Caso’s work, about studying under poet-translators Forrest Gander and C.D. Wright, about her press Eulalia Books that seeks to translate poetry and hybrid works that are ex-centric and ecstatic and which trouble notions of nation, and about finding the right balance between her own writing, her translating, her teaching, and her editing. Near the end she reads some of her most recent poetry as well. To learn how to subscribe to the bonus audio and the other potential benefits of becoming a supporter of Between the Covers head over to the show’s Patreon page. The post Valerie Mejer Caso : Edinburgh Notebook appeared first on Tin House.

British poet, educator, and writer Raymond Antrobus has two poetry collections out this year. The US release of his award-winning debut The Perseverance and his follow-up, just out now, All The Names Given. We discuss both books in relation to Antrobus’ own particular deaf poetics. What questions do his poems raise about audience and accessibility, about the written, the heard, the signed, the performed? What questions do they raise about sound itself? We also discuss the intersection of deafness and race, and about holding a space for the tensions and contradictions when exploring, in one’s art, both sides of the Antrobus family tree, white, Black, Jamaican and British. All of this and much more. As 2021 comes to a close, consider becoming a supporter of Between the Covers going into 2022. To find out all the potential benefits and rewards of doing so head over to the show’s Patreon page. The post Raymond Antrobus : All The Names Given & The Perseverance appeared first on Tin House.