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

Today’s guest is poet, novelist, playwright, feminist theorist, literary critic, and philosopher Hélène Cixous. Perhaps best known for her iconic 1976 essay “The Laugh of the Medusa,” Cixous thought for much of her writing life that she would never write about her birthplace and childhood in Algeria, that she would never write about her mother, that she would never write about, let alone go to, the German town of Osnabrück from which her mother and mother’s mother escaped (to Algeria) before the town’s entire Jewish population were murdered. But in the last thirty years, to her surprise, these have increasingly become the topics of her work. First writing about and returning to Algeria, and then, in the last twenty years, writing an increasing number of remarkable books about Osnabrück, her mother’s life there, her mother’s return to that city, Cixous’ “return” to it, as well as about her mother’s ultimate expulsion, the second of her life, now from Algeria. We focus today on two of these books, these novel-memoirs: Well-Kept Ruins and Osnabrück Station to Jerusalem. This strain of Cixous’ work, her novel-memoirs, are not books of autofiction like we’ve come to know them. Yes, they blur the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction but they are as concerned with the borderlands between the conscious and unconscious, waking life and dreams, between history and memory, and literature, imagination and experience, where the present moment in one of these narratives is likely to be inhabited, at the same time, by the seen, the imagined, the dead, and the literature one has read. In her latest book Cixous describes writing as a form of archaeology, historical and literary and ancestral, yes, but I think we could say it is also a psychological archaeology as well, a relation of the writer to her writing and herself. Today’s contribution to the bonus audio archive is a long-form conversation with Cixous’ longstanding translator Beverley Bie Brahic. It is an in-depth conversation about the pleasures and challenges of translating Cixous’ work that also, additionally, further illuminates Cixous as a person and writer, adding further texture and nuance to the main conversation with Hélène. To learn how to get access 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 the Bookshop for today’s episode. The post Hélène Cixous : Well-Kept Ruins appeared first on Tin House.

Poet Billy-Ray Belcourt has already transformed the memoir form, remaking it—strange, fresh, and new, in A History of My Brief Body. He does something similarly unexpected with his first novel, A Minor Chorus. Deeply aware of the history of the novel, of the sociopolitical forces that shaped what we consider a novel today, a form whose limitations, according to Belcourt, can’t accommodate the reality of an indigenous queer life, this novel is both about the searching for a new form (and a new way of living) and a very example of it. Scholarly and sexual, joyful and citational, embodied and theoretical, A Minor Chorus is somehow a polyvocal narrative of self-making (and unmaking), written for the future, that arrives to us, a new form, as if from the future. If you enjoy today’s conversation consider joining the Between the Covers community of listener-supporters. Receive the resource-rich email with each episode, participate in the collective brainstorm of who to invite in the future, and check out the many possible gifts and rewards at the show’s Patreon page. Here is today’s Bookshop with all of Belcourt’s books and most of the books mentioned today, from Saidiya Hartman to José Esteban Muñoz to Judith Butler.   The post Billy-Ray Belcourt : A Minor Chorus appeared first on Tin House.

One of Le Guin’s lesser known but lifelong practices was that of a translator. Her translations of the first Latin American Nobel Prize Laureate in literature (and the only Latin American woman to receive the award), Gabriela Mistral, were the first truly substantive presentations of her work in both English and Spanish. She’s translated other poets and novelists from Chile and Argentina (Angélica Gorodischer, Diana Bellessi), as well as individual poems by Rilke and Goethe. And for many decades she worked on her now much beloved rendition of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching. Le Guin also reread the Aeneid in Latin as part of her preparation to write her final novel, Lavinia, Le Guin’s retelling of that classic epic of Virgil’s but from the point of view of a voiceless woman in the original. There were many feminist choices and considerations that went into both how Le Guin translated and who she chose to translate. That is also true of today’s guest Maria Dahvana Headley who has done both a contemporary feminist retelling of Beowulf in her novel The Mere Wife and who has also translated, to much critical and public acclaim, Beowulf itself, engaging with both the masculinity in the original and the misogyny inserted by various male translators over the centuries. She, like Le Guin, has also engaged with the Aeneid. Her ten-part musical adaptation of the epic is forthcoming. Together, we look at questions of feminist translation in both Maria and Ursula’s work and explore multiple theories on why Le Guin’s novels inspire many of today’s woman writers engaging with classical texts. If you enjoyed today’s conversation consider joining the Between the Covers/Crafting with Ursula community by becoming a listener-supporter of the show. Receive resource-rich emails with each episode, joining the collective brainstorm of who to invite in the future, and choose from a wide and deep selection of potential rewards and gifts, including rare Le Guin collectibles. Check it all out at the show’s Patreon page. Finally here is today’s Bookshop. The post Crafting with Ursula : Maria Dahvana Headley on Feminist Translation & Classical Retellings appeared first on Tin House.

Today’s guest Dionne Brand, to borrow the words of John Keene, “is without question one of the major living poets in the English language.” Kamau Brathwaite called Brand “our first major exile female poet.” Adrienne Rich described her as “a cultural critic of uncompromising courage, an artist in language and ideas, and an intellectual conscience for her country.” Dionne Brand is, as well, a celebrated and beloved novelist, essayist, filmmaker, editor, activist, and thinker. But today, with the release of the landmark work Nomenclature: New and Collected Poems, which gathers eight volumes of her poetry between 1982 and 2010, and includes a new book-length poem never before published, today we center her poetry, and look at why she considers herself a poet first and foremost. What does stepping back together, and looking at her body of work across the decades, tell us about her poetry over time? How is time itself related to her deep engagement with Black life and liberation in her writing? How does Brand employ language as a means to gesture toward an otherwise, an elsewhere, in order to both write toward a future and from a future time? For the bonus audio archive Dionne Brand contributes readings from two of the most-anticipated releases of 2023, a reading from poet Canisia Lubrin’s fiction debut Code Noir and a reading from Christina Sharpe’s Ordinary Notes. This joins a robust archive of supplemental material from Nikky Finney reading from Lorraine Hansberry’s diaries to Myriam Chancy reading and teaching from a passage of Jamaica Kincaid’s to a craft talk on the art of narrative seduction by Marlon James. To learn 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 Dionne Brand : Nomenclature — New and Collected Poems appeared first on Tin House.

“White supremacy makes for terrible readers” says today’s guest Elaine Castillo, arguing that we are all overeducated in a set of fundamentally terrible reading techniques, ones that impoverish us as readers and thinkers, ones that diminish the availability of meaning and meaningfulness in our lives. When Castillo says “read,” and suggests that how we read needs a reevaluation, she is indeed talking about books. But not only. “How to read” extends to what we watch—television, movies, the news—to how we read our histories, and ultimately to how we read the world. What if we aren’t really reading in the true sense at all? And what would a real reading practice, one that is not extractive but one that itself endows meaning, what would it do for us as readers, or as writers or art-makers or activists, and most importantly, as thinking and feeling people in the world? Join Elaine Castillo as she challenges us to re-vision reading. If you enjoy today’s conversation consider joining the Between the Covers community. Every supporter, regardless of level of support, gets resource-rich emails with each episode, and can participate in our collective brainstorm around what future guests we should invite on the show. There are also a wealth of gifts, rare collectibles, the bonus audio archive, and more available to choose from.  You can check it all out at the show’s Patreon page. Here is today’s Bookshop too. The post Elaine Castillo : How to Read Now appeared first on Tin House.

Today’s conversation is about one of Ursula K. Le Guin’s most iconic and influential essays: The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, an essay that deserves an entire episode to itself. And who better to discuss it than Lidia Yuknavitch, whose latest novel Thrust follows a character who herself is a “carrier.” Because this essay has influenced not only an incredible number of  writers but anthropologists, visual artists, filmmakers, performance artists, scholars, and musicians as well, we weave in the voices of others, across disciplines, as we talk about and unpack this work of Le Guin’s. The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction interrogates questions of labor and economy, and interrogates gender in relation to inherited story forms, and looks at the power of story, both to tell and to silence. Le Guin’s essay is her way to reimagine the shape of a story, to dethrone the hero to allow many less familiar and stranger stories to find their way. And she invites us all in to figure it out with her. If you enjoy the Crafting with Ursula series consider transforming yourself from a listener to a listener-supporter. Every supporter gets a resource-rich email with each episode chock full of things referenced in the conversation and things discovered in preparing for it. But there are a ton of other goodies, from rare Le Guin collectibles to the book Ursula and I did together, Ursula K. Le Guin: Conversations on Writing, and much more. You can check it all out at the show’s Patreon page. And lastly, here is today’s Bookshop. The post Crafting with Ursula : Lidia Yuknavitch on The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction appeared first on Tin House.

Claire Schwartz’ poetry collection Civil Service looks at the ways ordinary, everyday actions uphold and sustain state violence, the ways civility can and does serve extraordinary atrocities. The world of this collection, populated by civil positions—The Accountant, The Archivist, The Curator, The Intern—also has within it a fugitive voice, a disruptive voice, the voice of Amira. Her voice, if not beyond language, nevertheless reaches to its edges, reaches beyond the dominant meaning-making of the system that precludes her, reaches toward and imagines an elsewhere and an otherwise. Our conversation ranges widely, weaving Claire’s thoughts on her own work with the writings of Paul Celan, June Jordan, Gwendolyn Brooks, Edmond Jabès, Dionne Brand, and many others. All in service of asking what it means to write poetry towards love and revolution. Claire also contributes a reading of Edmond Jabès to the bonus audio archive. Joining an ever-growing wealth of supplemental material, from Alice Oswald reading from the Book of Job to Jen Bervin reading from the letters and prose of Paul Celan and then one of her poems under his influence. The bonus audio is only one of many potential rewards of becoming a listener-supporter and joining the Between the Covers community. You can check out everything at the show’s Patreon page. Lastly, here is the Bookshop for today’s conversation The post Claire Schwartz : Civil Service appeared first on Tin House.

Morgan Talty’s collection of linked short stories is set on the Penobscot Reservation on Indian Island in Maine. But Morgan is quick to point out that these stories are not Penobscot stories in so far as they do not ‘represent’ the Penobscot people, that even people who are praising the book are often falling into this trope of “exoticized foreknowledge.” As we talk about his acclaimed debut fiction collection, we talk about this term (coined by David Treuer), about the problematic ways people often come to literature written by Native Americans, and the ways Talty himself subverts these expectations. We talk about symbols in stories, about the challenges of being the sole well-known Penobscot fiction writer, about writing in a way that does not perform indigeneity for the white gaze and much more. For the bonus audio archive Morgan contributes a reading of his essay “The Citizenship Question : We the People” which extends our discussion from the main conversation about blood quantum, Native identity, and questions of belonging. This joins an ever-growing archive of supplementary bonus audio, including from indigenous writers Terese Marie Mailhot, Elissa Washuta, Brandon Hobson, Natalie Diaz, Layli Long Soldier, and Jake Skeets, among many others. To learn how to subscribe to the bonus audio archive and about the many other potential rewards and benefits of joining the community of Between the Covers listeners-supporters, head over to the show’s Patreon page. Lastly, here is the Bookshop for today’s episode. The post Morgan Talty : Night of the Living Rez appeared first on Tin House.

Ursula K. Le Guin’s biographer, Julie Phillips, joins “Crafting with Ursula” to talk about the writing mother, how Le Guin’s embrace of both writing and motherhood influenced her engagement with feminism, as well as with story form, and ultimately how it prompted her to develop a philosophical framework from which to re-vision her own work going forward. Julie is not only the perfect guest to discuss this because of the regular conversations she had with Le Guin over the years, but also because she is the author of The Baby on the Fire Escape: Creativity, Motherhood and the Mind-Baby Problem. This book looks at six writing mothers, from Audre Lorde to Doris Lessing to Angela Carter to Ursula herself, and how they each navigated becoming and defending a life as both a writer and as a mother. If you enjoyed today’s conversation consider becoming a supporter of the show. There are many potential rewards and benefits of doing so, from resource-rich emails with each episode, to bonus audio from past guests, everyone from N.K. Jemisin to Ted Chiang, to rare Le Guin collectibles. You can check it all out at the show’s Patreon page. Finally here is today’s conversation’s Bookshop. The post Crafting with Ursula : Julie Phillips on the Writing Mother appeared first on Tin House.

Daniel Mendelsohn’s latest book you could say is about digression and about ring composition, a form of storytelling with digression at its heart. And yet this book, about digression, is not only his shortest and most concise, a mere 112 pages, but also somehow contains all the concerns of his previous books and much more, distilled down into a tight hypnotic spiral. A book about Homer and the Hebrew Bible, about the Odyssey and the Holocaust, about forced migration, exile, and unexpected hospitality, about Proust, Sebald, Auerbach, Fénelon and many others lost to history. But ultimately it is about representation and narrative. Of how best to represent something in a way that feels most true, whether when telling a story, performing a play, building a monument, or creating a memorial. Three Rings is as much a meditation on art-making and writing as it is a meditation on memory and remembering; the mysteries of both, and also the thorny political and ethical questions that arise when choosing to represent reality in one way or another. A conversation rich with references, you can find many of the books mentioned in today’s conversation at the Bookshop for today’s episode. If you enjoyed today’s conversation, help ensure the future of in-depth conversations just like this by becoming a part of the Between the Covers listener-supporter community. Find out all the potential rewards and benefits of doing so at the show’s Patreon page.   The post Daniel Mendelsohn : Three Rings — A Tale of Exile, Narrative, and Fate appeared first on Tin House.