Burned By Books

An interview with Xochitl Gonzalez, author of the debut novel, Olga Dies Dreaming (Flatiron Books, 2022). Xochitl and I discuss the unique narrative perspective that a wedding planner has on American privilege and inequality, the gentrification of Brooklyn, the rich and wealthy colonizers of Puerto Rico post- la Promesa, Nuyorican culture as the creole of NYC, and so much more.Xochitl Recommends: Cho Nam Joo, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982: A Novel Lan Samantha Chang, All is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost ----. The Family Chao Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao   Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An interview with Joanna Rakoff, author of the memoir My Salinger Year (Vintage, 2014). Joanna and I discuss the power of a novelistic memoir, breaking open literary New York, what it was like replying to J.D. Salinger’s fan mail, and working in true collaboration on the film adaptation of her memoir.Joanna Recommends:Alice Elliott Dark, Fellowship PointEvan Hughes, The Hard SellSara Freeman, TidesChris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If there is such a thing as the American literary canon, then Percival Everett (The Trees, 2021) is at the center of it. The author of over 30 novels, books of poetry and short fiction, and children’s literature, for over thirty years Everett has been one of the great innovators of fictional forms. In our interview, we discuss how a novel about the history and present of racial violence, from the beginnings of lynching during reconstruction to the present day killing of unarmed black men and women by police officers, means something different in the Trump Era. We open up the question of whether or not literary arts are capable of being catalysts to the kinds of change that other movements have failed to enact. And Everett talks about the importance of an adapting and growing archive of the names of those killed in lynchings or extrajudicial killings, a list of names that he himself has attempted to write down as an act of remembering.Books Recommended in this episode: Alan Le May, The Searchers ——-. Painted Ponies Patrick DeWitt, The Sisters Brothers Simone de Beauvoir Jean-Paul Satre, Nausea Robert Coover, Ghost Town Percival’s Gallery Show to accompany The TreesChris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An interview with Cara Blue Adams, author of You Never Get It Back (University of Iowa Press, 2021). Cara and I discuss the joys of linked short story collections, the lack of adequate vocabulary to describe working people in the United States, the many moods of everyday life, and how humor works in her stories.These are stories of exquisite observation and the quiet beauty of everyday life. You Never Get It Back is a collection of linked stories that follows Kate, a young woman moving through her twenties and thirties, first as a research scientist and later as a budding writer. Kate is for this reader, the best of what makes us impossibly human—our need for others, matched against our desire to be meaningful as a singular person in the world.Cara Recommends: Maria Gainza, Optic Nerve Joan Didion, Play it as it Lays Franz Kafka, The Trial Sara Manguso, Very Cold People Sara Majka, Cities I’ve Never Lived In Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An interview with Kalani Pickhart, I Will Die in a Foreign Land (2021), a New York Public Library Best Book of 2021. Russia is again amassing troops on the Ukrainian border. There are threats of more sanctions from the US and the EU, but those come with a tacit understanding that there is likely little that the world can do to stop Putin should he decide to invade. It is within this frightening context that Kalani Pickhart’s extraordinary novel, I Will Die in a Foreign Land, enters the scene. The novel itself is a beautiful pastiche of forms: novelistic plots mix with songs and folktales, manifests of passengers killed in downed planes or in the melee of protest, diaries and recordings, all working to build a feeling, the urge for a democratic voice to speak against violence and despair. Kalani and I discuss the burden of writing true in a work of fiction, and so much more!Books Recommended in this episode: Absalom, Absalom!, William Faulkner God Shot, Chelsea Bieker The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish, Katya Apekina The Power of the Dog (Film), Jane Campion Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A conversation with booksellers from three of the most dynamic, exciting, and community-oriented independent bookstores in the country. Lisa Swayze of Buffalo Street Books (Ithaca, NY), Michelle Malonzo of Changing Hands Bookstore (Tempe, AZ), and Alena Jones of Seminary Co-op Bookstores (Chicago, IL) join me and my special co-host, professor Kasia Bartoszynska for a roundup of their favorite books of the year, and a fascinating look into indie bookstores during the pandemic.Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An interview with Benjamín Labatut, author of When We Cease to Understand the World (2021), a New York Times Top Ten Book of the Year. Benjamin and I cover an enormous amount of ground in our wide-ranging interview: we touch on Heisenberg’s uncertainty principal as a way of his writing; the failure of our societies to make room for overlapping, sometimes contradictory histories; his distaste for genre categories; the inevitable loss involved in translation; Chile’s frightening presidential election; and much much more. I know that you will be as enthralled and challenged and delighted by Benjamín’s capacious mind. Benjamín Recommends: Juan Forn, Los Viernes Roberto Calasso, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony Pascal Quignard, The Last Kingdom Elliot Weinberger, An Elemental Thing J.A. Baker, The Peregrine Georg Buchner, Lenz Frantisek Vlacil, Marketa Lazarova (film) Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An interview with Pola Oloixarac, Mona (2021). Pola and I get to talking about the failure of the US university to live up to its massive influence, especially when it comes to making the lives of black and brown people better. We discuss whether writers are terrible people, or are they simply unfit for any other vocation? Pola introduces me to "me-search," the self-centered prancing of authors at literary conferences. And she helps me to see the folly of imagining writing as a solitary affair, instead imagining the work of the writer as a constant convening of friends.Books Recommended in this episode:Pola Oloixarac, MonaPola Recommends: Maria Gainza, Portrait of an Unknown Lady Aldolfo Caseres, Borges (2023 in English) Rafael Chirbes, Cremation trans. valerie miles Edgardo Cozarinsky,Milongas trans. valerie miles Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An interview with Karina Lickorish Quinn, The Dust Never Settles (2021). Karina and I discuss the indigenous histories of Peru, the desire for more Spanish and indigenous languages to permeate her novel in English, on being English in Peru and Latina in England, and her awakening in the pages of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.Books Recommended in this episode:Karina Lickorish Quinn, The Dust Never SettlesKarina Recommends: Maia Elsner, Overrun by Wild Boars Leone Ross, One Sky Day Benjamín Labatut, When We Cease to Understand the World Caleb Azuma Nelson, Open Water Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An interview with Alexandra Kleeman, Something New Under the Sun (2021). Alexandra and I discuss the need for a more fecund climate imagination, the appeal of writing about California as a natural space under threat, Hollywood as a microcosm for America’s late capitalism, and her love for Robin Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass.Books Recommended in this episode:Alexandra Kleeman, Something New Under the SunAlexandra Recommends: Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation James Bradley, Clade Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass Jeffrey Meikle, American Plastic Tristan Gooley, The Lost Art of Reading Nature’s Signs Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices