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

Matthew Zapruder's 'Story of a Poem' takes us on a journey of poem revision, self-identity, and parenting challenges. The magic of storytelling and vulnerability in writing, creative insights into poetry, and transformative power of words are all explored in this engaging discussion.

Major Jackson, poet and host of The Slowdown podcast, discusses his collection of new and selected poems, 'Razzle Dazzle'. They explore the evolution of his poetry over the years, the intersection of poetry and music, questions of race and nation, and the influence of other writers on his work. The conversation also highlights the power of storytelling, the merging of self and art, and the impact of cancel culture on the art community.

Five months pregnant, fearful of the future, and creatively blocked, JoAnna Novak becomes obsessed with the life, writings, and paintings of Agnes Martin. She fashions a three-week intensive writing regimen in northern New Mexico, where Martin lived and painted (and where Novak writes this book we discuss today). The structure of this retreat is inspired by Martin’s 6×6 gridded abstract paintings that so appealingly keep out the clutter of life, and by Martin’s life philosophy—her notions of “positive freedom” and her pursuit of inner perfection. Because of this, today’s conversation becomes a dual exploration of both Novak’s own artistic journey and that of Martin’s. In addition, we look at the various ways Novak uses constraints and experimental techniques as part of her writing practice, about the different ways she has portrayed pregnancy in her poetry versus her prose, about writing into the unspoken stigma of prenatal depression, and much more. For the bonus audio archive JoAnna contributes a reading of the children’s picture book Mr. Rabbit and the Lovely Present, written some sixty years ago by Charlotte Zolotow, illustrated by Maurice Sendak, and loved by JoAnna’s now four-year-old son. The bonus audio archive is only one potential benefit of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter. You can find out about all the potential rewards and benefits of doing so at the show’s Patreon page. And here is the link to today’s Bookshop.   The post JoAnna Novak : Contradiction Days appeared first on Tin House.

Jorie Graham’s first appearance on the show in 2021, to discuss her collection Runaway, is one of the most relistened to episodes in the show’s history, a conversation that, with each revisitation, seems to reveal something new about how to will oneself into presence as an artist and as a human. And it is a conversation that many other guests on the show since have told me is now part of their syllabi at the universities where they teach. And yet as rich and deep as it was, even after those many substantive hours spent together, there was still so much left to explore about Jorie Graham’s poetics, which makes her return to Between the Covers, to discuss her latest collection, To 2040, particularly exciting. Both of these conversations are stand-alone episodes, and yet, I think to fully grasp Jorie’s poetics, both conversations are necessary to do so, as they approach her body of work from opposite vantage points. Whereas the first explores how to be present to and embodied before one’s life and one’s art, the second looks at how to make art, and to live an embodied life within a deeply and increasingly disembodied world. Today’s conversation is about the body—the body in relation to self and other; the body politic in relation to truth, fact, and shared reality; and the body that is the planet we call home. The body in relation to the virtual, the body in relation to language, and how to find a language in a world where we’ve lost our way. The last time Jorie was on the show she contributed a remarkable bonus reading of several poems about rain (by Robert Creeley and Edward Thomas). The bonus audio archive, which includes bonus readings from everyone from Alice Oswald to Arthur Sze to Layli Long Solider to Dionne Brand, is one of many potential benefits of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter. To find out more head over to the show’s Patreon page. Lastly, here is today’s Bookshop with many of the books mentioned today. photo credit: Alvaro Almanza The post Jorie Graham : To 2040 appeared first on Tin House.

Today’s craft talk, “Why So Surrealism” by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, was recorded at the 2022 Tin House Summer Workshop. Prompted by a journalist who asked him to talk about how surrealistic and speculative conceits operated in and informed Black fiction, in this craft talk Adjei-Brenyah looks at the tropes of surrealist and speculative fiction within his own work, at not only what effects they have, but what they open up for him as a writer. Adjei-Brenyah is the bestselling and critically-acclaimed writer of the story collection Friday Black and the dystopian novel Chain-Gang All-Stars. The post Tin House Live : Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah on Surrealism appeared first on Tin House.

Poet Roger Reeves calls the essays in his debut book of prose “fugitive essays.” And we explore what it means to write fugitively, to write into and from and toward fugitivity. If, as Fred Moten says, fugitivity is “a desire for and a spirit of escape and transgression of the proper and the proposed. . . . a desire for the outside, for a playing or being outside, an outlaw edge proper to the now always already improper voice or instrument,” how does writing fugitively effect a writer’s orientation to self and selfhood, to one’s own community and people, to nation and nationhood, to the canon and canon formation, to otherness and the stranger, to life and living in the ever-unfolding apocalypse? We look together at what a poet writing essays tells us both about the essay form and about Roger’s poetry and poetics. Deep dives into questions of time, progress, repetition, metaphor, history, ancestry, futurity, presence, sound, and silence. For the bonus audio archive, Roger contributes an extended reading from Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani’s novella Return to Haifa. This joins an ever-growing archive of supplemental audio from everyone from Natalie Diaz to Dionne Brand, Isabella Hammad to Christina Sharpe. You can find out more about how to subscribe to the bonus audio and the many other potential benefits of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter at the show’s Patreon page. The Bookshop for today’s episode contains many of the books mentioned, referenced, or read from. The post Roger Reeves : Dark Days appeared first on Tin House.

Isabella Hammad’s latest book Enter Ghost is about a Palestinian theater group attempting to put on a production of Hamlet in the West Bank. The actors come from many different Palestinian experiences, one to the next. Some have Israeli citizenship. Others live in refugee camps or Ramallah or in the diaspora in Europe. But why Hamlet? We look at the unique history of this play within the Arab world, its history of being both performed and banned, but also at how the very act of striving to create a shared performative space, while living under occupation, is a political act in and of itself. Today’s conversation covers many things, from writing against essentialism to the revolutionary potential of art-making. For the bonus audio archive Isabella contributes a reading of a prison letter that Palestinian political prisoner Walid Daqqa wrote twenty years into his still-ongoing incarceration. This letter, called “Parallel Time,” was adapted for the stage in 2014 and performed in Haifa. The theater that performed it was then defunded by the Israeli government, threatening its ability to continue as a theater (a topic we discuss in the main conversation). Daqqa’s letters have yet to find publication in English. This translation is by Dalia Taha. To learn how to subscribe to the bonus audio archive 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 the Bookshop for today’s episode. The post Isabella Hammad : Enter Ghost appeared first on Tin House.

Even though each of Max Porter’s books is a stand-alone book, some have called Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, Lanny, and his latest, Shy, a “trilogy of boyhood,” a framing Max himself embraces. After a truly electrifying short reading from Shy, Max and I explore his impulse to examine and evoke boyhood across these three books and how his choices on the page engage with the crisis that is contemporary masculinity. We talk about fatherhood and parenting, the extra-literary influences on his writing, whether comics or music or visual art, about the mythic and the wild in relation to the human and language, and much more. Today’s conversation was recorded live in Portland, Oregon, at the downtown location of Powell’s Books in May of 2023. Don’t miss Max’s first appearance on the show in 2019 for his book Lanny. Back then, Max contributed a reading of a poem of his to the bonus audio archive. The singer-songwriter Joan Shelley had reached out in admiration of his books. They began a correspondence (which eventually resulted in some of his words becoming lyrics to her songs) and part of that correspondence included this poem he wrote for her. To learn how to subscribe to the bonus audio archive and the other potential benefits of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter head over to the show’s Patreon page. Lastly, here is the Bookshop for today’s episode. The post Tin House Live : Max Porter on Shy appeared first on Tin House.

Spareness, economy, and distillation are often put forth as obvious virtues in poetry. But what if there were a politics undergirding this aesthetic preference? In today’s conversation with poet Megan Fernandes we look at questions of poetics and aesthetics in relation to capitalism and colonialism and how a messier, more unruly poetics can trouble borders and boundaries—of self, of nation, of species. We talk about questions of home and belonging, community and solidarity, how we might create kinship across difference both on the page and in one’s life, creating a sense of shared living through a poetics of diaspora and dislocation. We also talk about time and how to live, love, and create art within an ongoing crisis. Personal, poetical, and geopolitical, this is a conversation not to miss. If you enjoy today’s conversation consider joining the Between the Covers as a listener-supporter. Find out about all the potential rewards and benefits of doing so at the show’s Patreon page. Finally, here is the Bookshop for today’s episode. The post Megan Fernandes : I Do Everything I’m Told appeared first on Tin House.

What if you gave your fictional main character all of your own biographical details and family history but had them, at every point, choose “wrong”? At every point do the thing you yourself would be against? Johanna Hedva does just that, and their novel Your Love Is Not Good is not just full of sex battles and high-stakes art openings, but also high-stakes moral quandaries. Set in the institutional art world of museums and galleries, Your Love Is Not Good looks at making art (and love) under capitalism, at a mixed-race Korean American painter striving for universality (and whiteness) and yet wanting to be authentic, to build community and solidarity. When forced to choose, where and with whom will she stand? Johanna Hedva is also a musician and a performance artist. And their contribution to the bonus audio archive is one of the most unique ones ever, and one created specifically with us in mind. After we recorded this conversation they went on book tour and, while traveling from city to city, recorded themselves moaning, grunting, screaming, and breathing; recorded themselves reading text they wrote while touring. They then sent all these voice files to LA audio engineer Henry Glover along with the voices of the universe itself: sonifications of a black hole and the helix nebula, raw audio of the sun, a field recording of the aurora borealis. Hedva explained to Glover the vibe and scenario they imagined as he mixed and mastered a layering of voices, personal and “universal,” into this unique track: “The Saddest Thing of All Is When a Lone Astronaut Falls in Her Suit—Who Is There to Help Her Up?” To learn about how to subscribe to the bonus audio archive 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. The Bookshop for today’s episode.     The post Johanna Hedva : Your Love Is Not Good appeared first on Tin House.