Michael Žantovský is a Czech diplomat, author and translator. He is a former Czech Ambassador to the United Kingdom, as well as to Israel and the United States. He has translated more than fifty works of fiction, drama and poetry, mostly by contemporary American and British writers including James Baldwin, Norman Mailer, Joseph Heller, E.L. Doctorow, and Tom Stoppard. Non-fiction translations include works by Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright. He is currently the Executive Director of the Václav Havel Library.    We met in his office at the Library in Prague to talk about, among other things, his book Havel: A Life, published in 2014; about writing the biography of a close friend; about dealing with death, grief and indebtedness; about the clinical attitude; writing as a process of selection; hagiography; coming across honestly; guilt about wealth; responsibility and trust; Václav Havel's play sticking our noses into misery; hope and hopelessness; outsiders; Woody Allen; and the inner need to say something.

John Owen is a bookseller who runs the events program at the English Bookshop at Dussmann das KulturKaufhaus in Berlin. That English Bookshop? Probably the best I've ever been in, in my life.   We talk about, among other things: being blown away; bookshop lighting; window seating; how to display books; mixing things up and discovering new titles; bookshops as cultural institutions; Sally Rooney; sales of English language books in Germany; trying to reduce references to Margaret Atwood in this podcast; bookstores being like bakers; keeping your eyes open; aesthetic awareness; Rebecca Solnit's genre-bending books; Albanian political scientists; kooky, unusual best-sellers; elevator pitches; hating science fiction, and more.

Elisabeth Ruge is a German editor, publisher and literary agent. She currently heads the Elisabeth Ruge Agency which she founded in 2014. In 1994 she established the Berlin Verlag publishing house together with her then husband Arnulf Conradi and Veit Heinichen.    I met Elisabeth at her home on the outskirts of Berlin to discuss the roles she has played over her career, including the one she currently plays as Germany's leading literary agent. Among other things we talk about the importance of "attention" in the book editing and publishing processes: getting it, giving it, maintaining it; about letting go; about spin and elevator pitches; about James McBride's The Color of Water; about Jonathan Littell's The Kindly One; about how essential in-house editors are to the success of publishing houses; about serious book conversation; about authors being paid honorariums in Germany; about the importance of an author's credibility; about critics; explanatory brochures; Gallimard covers; the agent-publisher relationship, the complexity of the publishing business...and about Denmark.

Jonathan Landgrebe is the publisher of Suhrkamp Verlag. We met at his offices in Berlin to talk about his role as head of one of Germany's most revered publishing houses, and to riff off Siegfried Unseld's book The Author and His Publisher. Topics covered in our conversation include: important books that just don't sell; the publisher-author relationship; books that change both readers and the world; explaining and transferring feelings and enthusiasms to others; forcing values on the public; the war and recognizing Ukrainian literature; how to gain attention; authors towering above us; making Rachel Cusk known in Germany; Lutz Seiler's writing on the GDR; the growth in sales of English language books in Germany; publishing Hesse, Brecht and new voices; illness; the frozen sea within; the single reader counting most; enriching life; German publishers' sense of duty to society; Returning to Reims by Didier Eribon, and Sasha Marianna Salzmann's Beside Myself. 

Pamela Paul was books editor at the New York Times from 2013 to March 2022 when she became an opinion columnist for the newspaper.    We talk mostly about the role that books editors play in the lifecycle of 'the book.' I also whine a fair amount about how I don't like the fact that she left her position plus we diverge into discussion about Pamela's recent opinion piece 'There's More Than One Way to Ban a Book.'   Topics tackled also include self-censorship in the publishing business (being a terribly perceptive observer of the book world I boldly assert that there must also be self-censorship going on at The Times itself); the importance of enabling all voices to be heard in the grand public debate; identity; Pamela's confident, informed, smart, pleasant presence on The Review podcast each week; her early ambitions for the books section; how the job changed her; how books are chosen for review; the role of preview editors and publicists; Pamela's guilt and sense of responsibility; and my love of her voice.

Why listen to James Marsh? Because he knows about love and encyclopedias.    He grew up in The Junction district of Toronto surviving a difficult childhood, and began his career in publishing at Holt Rinehart and Winston where he was editor of a Centennial history of Canada entitled Unity and Diversity. He later became executive editor of McClelland and Stewart's Carleton Library Series, after which he was hired by Mel Hurtig as editor-in-chief of The Canadian Encyclopedia - the biggest printing/publishing endeavour in Canadian history.    We talk about his memoir Know it All: Finding the Impossible Country and about what he found; about encyclopedias striving for ideals; about historian Ramsey Cook and limited identities; selection by community; post-Centennial enthusiasm for Canada; economic nationalism; selling 250,000 sets of The Canadian Encyclopedia and then putting it on-line and making it "engaging;" the importance of conversation to democracy; Alberta premier Peter Lougheed; the woman with the two colour eyes; and the gift of friendship.

Nick Anthony is a writer, stand-up comic, and screen-writer. He's participating in this year's Prague Summer Program for Writers and his novel, tentatively entitled Two Hits of Acid in Cambodia, was just workshopped this past week. We talk about the experience, but not before discussing magic, stand-up comedy writing; new material that kills; God complexes; screen-writing; Tarantino's Django Unchained; suspense and humour; intelligence and humour; doubt; and Dave Chappelle. We then talk about workshops as focus groups, plus the importance of hearing the perspectives of better writers.  In addition we also look at Nick's novel itself, and how it references diversity in publishing from the perspective of a young white male writer; losing your best friend "to" life; what men look like post #metoo; and the skewering of what our culture thinks of sex.  Is it a play for Jordan Peterson's huge audience? Could well be. You be the judge. 

Why listen to Alexandra Pringle? Because Richard Charkin told me that she's the best editor in the English speaking world, that's why.   Alexandra was editor-in-chief at Bloomsbury Publishing for more than two decades. She was recently appointed Executive Publisher.    She began her publishing career at the British magazine Art Monthly before joining the women's publisher Virago in 1978. She became Editorial Director in 1984, and moved to Hamish Hamilton in 1991 to undertake the same role. Through much of the 1990s she was a literary agent for, among others, Amanda Foreman, Geoff Dyer, Maggie O'Farrell and Ali Smith. She joined Bloomsbury in 1999 as head of the adult publishing division where her authors included Margaret Atwood, Elizabeth Gilbert, Sheila Hancock, Anne Michaels, Ann Patchett, George Saunders and Richard Ford. Among other things we talk about editing's "what if" conversations, about houseboats, socialism, building confidence, Harry Potter, tempering criticism, teasing, instinct, luck, and yes, arm-hair.     Note to Listener: My apologies. The Zoom connection was poor on this one. But what Alexandra has to say is delightful and informative, so I hope you'll agree with me that it's worth putting up with. I plan to interview her again. In person. With a good microphone. On her houseboat. 

What's not to like here? Marius Kociejowski is charming, erudite and funny. Why should you listen to him? He's just written a memoir about the soul of the book trade. What happens in bookstores doesn't happen elsewhere​ he says. The multifariousness of human nature is more on show​ here​ ​t​han anywhere else, he says, and ​"​I think it’s because of books, what they are, what they release in ourselves, and what they become when we make them magnets to our desires.”​   The ​memoir is called A Factotum in the Book Trade.  We talk about it and the lives of the booksellers​, collectors and characters ​Marius has​​ lived ​with for close to five decades​. He reveals secrets and describes feuds. He gives us a wonderful feel for the workings of the London Antiquarian book trade over the past fifty years. Bertram and Anthony Rota, Bernard and Martin Stone, Bill Hoffer, Peter Ellis, Raymond Danowski. They're all here. Have a listen.    (speaking of which, listening that is, thank you so much to all of you who have so loyally listened to my podcast over the years. Your attention, feedback, and friendship, has meant a great deal to me. No, I'm not quitting. Just want to express my gratitude).

I'm in Prague for the Summer. Going to be participating in one of the world's leading creative writing programs. I interviewed its founder Richard Katrovas.  Why listen to Richard? Having run the Prague Summer Program for Writers for more than two decades, he knows a lot about the process of teaching creative writing; plus he knows karate. We talk about listening and critiquing artfully, not fucking with style, the formalization of a sense of literary community; counter-culture, the literary conversation, literary communities in different epochs, communal writing, work-shopping, the genius of the English language incorporating other languages, publishing first books, validation, the importance of self-esteem and personal prestige, the desire for social relevance, Ernest Becker; 'who touches a book touches a man,' book fetishes, the weirdness of poetry and Prague, ripping off books, living in the Projects, and much more.  This is part one of the conversation. I'll conduct part two once I've gone through the wringer.