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

Shze-Hui Tjoa is an innovative Singaporean writer whose debut memoir, 'The Story Game,' masterfully intertwines genres. She discusses her unique approach to storytelling, exploring themes of memory, grief, and identity. Tjoa shares insights into her grandfather's traumatic history and how it shapes her writing. The conversation dives deep into the complexities of personal narrative and authenticity, reflecting on the nature of familial bonds and the impact of silence. Expect a captivating blend of introspection and creativity as she navigates her literary journey.

Today’s guest Chilean poet, performance artist, visual artist, activist, and filmmaker Cecilia Vicuña, joins us to discuss her latest work, Deer Book, or Libro Venado. A bilingual collection, with translations by the acclaimed poet and translator Daniel Borzutsky, Deer Book brings together nearly forty years of Vicuña’s poetry and drawings surrounding the cosmologies and mythologies of the deer. Much like her work at large, Deer Book explores the mysteries of translation, interspecies communication, feminism, environmental destruction, the erasure and rupture caused by colonization, and the relationship between image and text, and the written word versus the oral, embodied and spoken one. We also explore how one’s relationship to language changes when one’s work emerges from a different set of epistemologies, when one writes from an indigenous and/or shamanic poetics. For the bonus audio archive Cecilia’s translator, Daniel Borzutsky, joins the show for a forty-five minute conversation to discuss the uniqueness of Cecilia Vicuña’s work, the joys and challenges of translating it, the role she has played in shifting the Spanish-language canon to include more indigenous poetics, and to discuss Daniel’s own journey as a translator, including some great anecdotes about working with another iconic Chilean poet Raúl Zurita. To find out how to subscribe to the bonus audio and about the many other potential benefits of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter, head over to the show’s Patreon page. Finally, the BookShop for today’s episode.   The post Cecilia Vicuña : Deer Book appeared first on Tin House.

Lance Olsen returns to Between the Covers to discuss his two new books, his uncategorizable multiverse fiction Absolute Away, and his new collection of philosophical essays and interviews on writing Shrapnel:Contemplations. Lance’s latest novel engages with the life of Edith Metzger, an improbable footnote in two momentous events in history: 1)as  the woman in the backseat of Jackson Pollock’s car on the fateful day he crashed it and ended both their lives, and 2)as  a German Jewish three-year old at the infamous Nazi book burning. When Hermann Göring mistook her for an Aryan, picking her up, little Edie bit his lip until it bled. Employing the notions of quantum physics as well as the notions of home and exile of Jacques Derrida, Lance imagines many otherwises for Edith Metzger. In this life and others. Together we explore the philosophic underpinnings of Lance’s writing, as evidenced in Shrapnel: Contemplations, and use his novel Absolute Away as the test case. For the bonus audio archive Lance contributes an extended reading from his forthcoming novel about the outsider artist Henry Darger. It’s provisional title is An Inventory of Benevolent Butterflies. You can find out how to subscribe to the bonus audio and all the other potential benefits and rewards of joining the Between the Covers community  as a listener-supporter at the show’s Patreon page. Here is the BookShop for today’s conversation. The post Lance Olsen : Absolute Away & Shrapnel appeared first on Tin House.

Join acclaimed writer Amitav Ghosh as he discusses the opium trade, colonial legacies, and the rise of realism in fiction. Explore themes of plant intelligence, climate change, and the intertwining history of opium trade and resource exploitation. Discover the parallels between historical events and modern challenges, and the role of writers in addressing urgent environmental issues.

Poet Joyelle McSweeney discusses her latest poetry collection 'Death Styles,' exploring the juxtaposition of death and style, survival through writing, and the eerie prescience of her works. The bonus audio features a performance from her operatic reimagining of the trial of Oscar Pistorius. The conversation delves into aesthetics, poetics, and the intertwining of personal and global tragedies in her work.

One might ask, just what is Danielle Dutton’s latest book, Prairie, Dresses, Art, Other? A collection of stories, a philosophical essay, a sequence of nested dreams and memories, an act of loving citation, a one-act play of silent animals, a meditation on the human in the more-than-human world, on the end of the world, on writing, on reading, on visual art, on black holes, on subterranean forests and the landscapes inside us? Somehow, as we leap from one section to the next, from Prairie to Dresses to Art to Other, this book is about all of these things and much more. And yet, mysteriously, magically, improbably it all holds together as one. Everything echoing off of and deepening everything else. We talk about finding form, about creating work that best reflects the unique and weird way one sees the world, about the generative power of making the world strange again, about opening spaces in fiction, and writing into them. Many of the people mentioned today, from Bhanu Kapil to Sabrina Orah Mark to Caren Beilin have contributed readings to the bonus audio archive when they themselves were guests on the show. The bonus audio archive is only one possible benefit of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter. You can find out how to subscribe to it and all the other resources and rewards available at the show’s Patreon page. Lastly, here is the BookShop for today’s conversation. The post Danielle Dutton : Prairie, Dresses, Art, Other appeared first on Tin House.

Today’s guest is one of the most important and celebrated writers in Australia today, Alexis Wright. We look together at the ways Wright reshapes the novel form to honor Aboriginal notions of story, of time, and of scale. To find a different sound and voice for the novel, one that is multiple and collective. both ancestral and visionary, one that invites us to walk back into relationship with other beings and the land itself, and shows us where we are headed when we don’t. Her latest novel Praiseworthy is set in a world like ours, of extreme weather events, of unchecked white supremacy, of the inexorable pull toward assimilation, erasure and  the demanding present-tense of the internet. But the book is also one of aboriginal invention, adaptation, and vision, a novel of both biting humor and wisdom, as people, in the face of it all, search for Aboriginal sovereignty. For the bonus audio archive Alexis reads a favorite poem of hers by Bei Dao which joins an immense archive of supplemental material—readings, craft talks, long-form conversations with translators—from everyone from Layli Long Soldier to Dionne Brand, Naomi Klein to Richard Powers. You can find out more about the bonus audio archive and the many other potential benefits of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter at the show’s Patreon page. Finally, here is the Bookshop corresponding to today’s episode.   The post Alexis Wright : Praiseworthy appeared first on Tin House.

Nam Le discusses his transition from fiction to nonfiction to poetry, aiming to challenge identity representation. His poetry collection explores themes of identity, culture, and displacement in a unique and bold manner. The podcast delves into the interconnectedness of poetry, prose, and place, reflecting on nature, language, and personal growth amidst political challenges.

Writer, interdisciplinary artist, editor and publisher Anne de Marcken discusses her new book It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over. Winner of the Novel Prize, and thus published simultaneously in the U.S., U.K., and Australia, by New Directions, Fitzcarraldo Editions and Giramondo respectively, de Marcken’s new book is a deeply philosophical and metaphysical, heartbreakingly funny book about life and death, love and loss. Join our undead protagonist, in search of herself, as she loses one body part after another, yet fills herself with one thing after another. How much can we lose and still be ourselves? How much of our sense of self is built from what we’ve lost? How much of who we are is really ‘other’? Perhaps the crow inside her chest, dead but communicative, speaking human words but not a human language, can tell us. For the bonus audio archive, Anne contributes a reading from her book The Accident: An Account, which joins supplemental readings from everyone from Dionne Brand to Jorie Graham, Natalie Diaz to Christina Sharpe. To find out how to subscribe to the bonus audio and the other potential benefits of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter head over to the show’s Patreon page. Finally, here is today’s BookShop. The post Anne de Marcken : It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over appeared first on Tin House.

Award-winning poet Canisia Lubrin talks about her debut fiction, Code Noir. The fifty-nine stories in this collection are each prefaced by one of Louis XIV’s fifty-nine “Black codes,” the rules of conduct in France and its colonies regarding slaves and slavery. And each of these codes, each of these edicts, is also engaged with, manipulated and remade by the abstract artist Torkwase Dyson. Together they unmake history, unmake the edicts, one in language and one with a brush. Canisia tells stories that are as short as a line, or told in footnotes, or that take place one thousand years in the future. Stories that remake other stories, and stories that aren’t stories at all. And ultimately, through storytelling, Canisia asks us how we place ourselves in relation to the stories we’ve inherited, the histories which themselves are fictions, and in the ways she herself does and doesn’t engage with the codes, she enacts a different way of living, sounding a future for Black life. For the bonus audio archive Canisia reads from Dionne Brand’s upcoming book Salvage: Readings from the Wreck, from Christina Sharpe’s remarkable “What Could a Vessel Be?” and more that I will leave as surprise. To learn how to subscribe to the bonus audio and the many other potential benefits of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter head over to the show’s Patreon page. Finally here is today’s BookShop. The post Canisia Lubrin : Code Noir appeared first on Tin House.