Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry
Episodes
Randa Abdel-Fattah : Discipline
13 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Randa Abdel-Fattah’s new novel Discipline is set in Sydney, Australia in 2021 during Ramadan. Discipline follows two Palestinians there, one in med...
Jazmina Barrera : The Queen of Swords
06 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Jorge Luis Borges called her the “Tolstoy of Mexico” and César Aira the “greatest novelist of the 20th century,” so why is it likely that you...
Tin House Live : Caren Beilin : Sea Poison
22 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Caren Beilin’s first appearance on the show, in 2022 to discuss her book Revenge of the Scapegoat, was so unforgettable, and spurred so much enthus...
Tin House Live: Stephen Hayes
17 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Painter Stephen Hayes latest exhibition, “Elegy,” consists of twelve abstract paintings that engage with the genocide in Gaza. One of the twelve p...
Robin Coste Lewis : Archive of Desire
04 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Archive of Desire: A Poem in Four Parts for C.P. Cavafy began as a collaborative multidisciplinary project between the poet Robin Coste Lewis, the co...
Diana Arterian : Agrippina the Younger & Smoke Drifts
16 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As an artist, how does one dive into the wreck of an archive, a canon, a shared collective memory, a history—one filled with silenced voices, distor...
Olga Ravn : The Wax Child
29 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Set during the 17th century witch trials in Denmark, and relayed to us through the voice of a magically animated wax child of one of the accused, Olga...
Rickey Laurentiis : Death of the First Idea
08 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ten years in the making, poet Rickey Laurentiis joins us to talk about her much-anticipated remarkable new collection Death of the First Idea. “In ...
Laynie Browne : Apprentice to a Breathing Hand
20 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean to write toward or under the aura of another poet one admires, to write in homage, as a celebration of another? What happens to lang...
Martha Anne Toll : Duet for One
06 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s guest is writer and critic Martha Anne Toll. Through a discussion of her latest novel Duet for One we explore the perennial mystery of writi...
Rob Macaisa Colgate : Hardly Creatures & My Love is Water
19 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s conversation with Rob Macaisa Colgate is about two books, his poetry collection Hardly Creatures and his verse drama My Love is Water. You ...
Robert Macfarlane : Is a River Alive?
27 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Don’t miss today’s conversation with Robert Macfarlane. A polyvocal deep dive into the mysteries of words and rivers, of speech acts as spells, wh...
adrienne maree brown : Ancestors
09 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
With the arrival of Ancestors, the third and final book in adrienne maree brown’s Grievers Trilogy, we take the iconic frames she has created in her...
Madeleine Thien : The Book of Records
19 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Book of Records is many things: a book of historical fiction and speculative fiction, a meditation on time and on space-time, on storytelling an...
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson : Theory of Water
01 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What would it mean for our writing, thinking, and living if we looked to land as pedagogy, or if we thought of theory as something embodied and kineti...
Keetje Kuipers : Lonely Women Make Good Lovers
19 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From the craft of writing sex in poetry to the virtues of failing publicly, today’s conversation with poet Keetje Kuipers is not to be missed. We ex...
Patrycja Humienik : We Contain Landscapes
05 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean to risk rupture for rapture, on the page, and in one’s life? Or for water to be one’s method, mode or muse? Are inherited forms ...
Torrey Peters : Stag Dance
24 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Four novellas, in four different genres—science fiction, horror, teen romance, and a western—Stag Dance not only interrogates genre, but gender th...
Michelle de Kretser : Theory & Practice
09 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s guest, one of Australia’s most celebrated and daring writers, Michelle de Kretser, discusses her latest uncategorizable book Theory & Prac...
Omar El Akkad : One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
21 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In late October 2023, weeks into Israel’s bombing of northern Gaza, the novelist Omar El Akkad retweeted a video taken by a Gazan man. This video sh...
Hélène Cixous : Rêvoir
01 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Feminist and literary theorist, playwright, philosopher, memoirist and novelist Hélène Cixous returns to the show to discuss her latest genre-defyin...
Aria Aber : Good Girl
14 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Poet Aria Aber’s debut novel Good Girl , set in the club scene of Berlin, is a book brimming over with sex and drugs and music, true. But really at...
Zahid Rafiq : The World With Its Mouth Open
01 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s guest Zahid Rafiq discusses his debut short story collection The World With Its Mouth Open, eleven remarkable stories set in modern-day Kas...
Tin House Live : Denis Johnson : 2004
24 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We started 2024 with an archival recording of Denis Johnson from the first ever Tin House Writers Workshop in 2003. That episode was a three-part epis...
Rodrigo Fresán : Melvill
09 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How can a novel set during one brief moment near the end of Herman Melville’s father’s life, a moment lost to history and now fully overshadowed b...
Dionne Brand : Salvage : Readings from the Wreck
25 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean that a life can not only be animated by books but destroyed by them? That a self can be not only made by reading, but unmade by it? ...
Danez Smith : Bluff
08 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Danez Smith’s poetry is so many things, a poetry of resistance, of elegy, of joy, of care, of repair. Their poetry is Afrofuturist and Afropessimist...
Kenzie Allen : Cloud Missives
24 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s conversation with Kenzie Allen, about her debut poetry collection Cloud Missives, is unusually wide-ranging. We look at the influence of arc...
Tin House Live : Torrey Peters on Strategic Opacity
11 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s craft talk—by Torrey Peters on “Strategic Opacity”— was recorded at the 2024 Tin House summer writers workshop. Peters explores the ...
Jewish Currents Live : Dionne Brand & Adania Shibli in Conversation
02 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
As part of Jewish Currents Live: A Day of Politics & Culture, I moderated a conversation between Adania Shibli and Dionne Brand this September in New ...
Isabella Hammad : Recognizing the Stranger : On Palestine and Narrative
24 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s conversation with Isabella Hammad is truly like no other on the show in its fourteen year history. The main text of her book is the speech s...
Tin House Live : Frank Bidart
06 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is an archival recording of poet Frank Bidart from the 2008 Tin House Writers Workshop. It begins with an introduction by the poet B...
Nalo Hopkinson : Blackheart Man
01 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Todays’ guest is Grand Master of science fiction and fantasy Nalo Hopkinson. Together we center her first novel in over a decade, the remarkable Bla...
Vajra Chandrasekera : Rakesfall
17 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Sri Lankan writer Vajra Chandrasekera’s first novel, The Saint of Bright Doors, was shortlisted for or won nearly every major SFF award there is. Mu...
Carl Phillips : Scattered Snows, to the North
02 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s guest is one of the most singular and celebrated Anglophone poets writing today, Carl Phillips. We center his latest collection, Scattered S...
Shze-Hui Tjoa : The Story Game
20 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s guest, Shze-Hui Tjoa, has written a book that is remarkably unique. Is it an essay collection or a memoir? A detective story or a fantasy? A...
Cecilia Vicuña : Deer Book
01 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s guest Chilean poet, performance artist, visual artist, activist, and filmmaker Cecilia Vicuña, joins us to discuss her latest work, Deer Bo...
Lance Olsen : Absolute Away & Shrapnel
16 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Lance Olsen returns to Between the Covers to discuss his two new books, his uncategorizable multiverse fiction Absolute Away, and his new collection o...
Amitav Ghosh : Smoke and Ashes
01 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
For nearly twenty years Amitav Ghosh has been writing about opium and the opium trade, first in his fictional Ibis trilogy, and now in nonfiction with...
Joyelle McSweeney : Death Styles
18 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s guest, poet, playwright, novelist, translator, publisher, editor and critic, Joyelle McSweeney discusses her latest poetry collection Death ...
Danielle Dutton : Prairie, Dresses, Art, Other
20 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
One might ask, just what is Danielle Dutton’s latest book, Prairie, Dresses, Art, Other? A collection of stories, a philosophical essay, a sequence ...
Alexis Wright : Praiseworthy
01 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 th...
Nam Le : 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem
17 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past fifteen years, Nam Le has published a book in each genre. Best known for his phenomenal 2009 debut story collection The Boat, he followe...
Anne de Marcken : It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over
04 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Writer, interdisciplinary artist, editor and publisher Anne de Marcken discusses her new book It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over. Winner of the Nov...
Canisia Lubrin : Code Noir
26 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 Lou...
Diana Khoi Nguyen : Root Fractures
05 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s conversation, with poet and multimedia artist Diana Khoi Nguyen, is not to be missed. Both of her books, Ghost Of and Root Fractures, engage...
Álvaro Enrigue : You Dreamed of Empires
21 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s conversation with Álvaro Enrigue about his latest novel, You Dreamed of Empires, translated by Natasha Wimmer, is set during the relatively...
Mathias Énard : The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild
10 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Is Mathias Énard’s latest book formally influenced by the Buddhist Wheel of Time, by Jewish undertaker guilds, by François Rabelais’s scatologic...
Tin House Live : Denis Johnson : 2003
05 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We are kicking off the new year with a serious blast from the past. A recording from the very first Tin House writers workshop in the summer of 2003 w...
Elle Nash : Deliver Me
21 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Perhaps it is fitting that today’s episode, with writer and founding editor of Witch Craft Magazine, Elle Nash, is launched on the shortest day of t...
Naomi Klein : Doppelganger : Part Two
08 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s part two of the conversation with Naomi Klein about Doppelganger highlights the Jewish elements in the book, and looks at them through the l...
Kate Zambreno & Sofia Samatar : Tone
01 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Kate Zambreno & Sofia Samatar’s Tone they construct a shared voice, that of the “Committee to Investigate the Atmosphere.” Yes, they do this...
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore : Touching the Art
09 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore returns to Between the Covers to talk about her remarkable new book, Touching the Art. A mixture of memoir, biography, cri...
Bhanu Kapil : Incubation : A Space for Monsters
01 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Bhanu Kapil’s postcolonial feminist road novel Incubation: A Space for Monsters has long been out of print. The book of hers that most engages with ...
Colleen Burner : Sister Golden Calf
23 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Colleen Burner’s novella Sister Golden Calf is the story of two sisters on the road set in a world without men. Inspired, in part, by Vanessa Vesel...
Kate Briggs : The Long Form
14 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Essayist and translator Kate Briggs’ first novel The Long Form is a book about, and happening within, the relationship between Helen and her infant ...
Lydia Davis : Our Strangers
02 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s conversation with Lydia Davis about her latest story collection, Our Strangers, a collection of 143 stories, is a deep dive into storytelli...
Naomi Klein : Doppelganger : Part One
20 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Naomi Klein’s new book, Doppelganger, is a departure for her. One some of her closest friends even cautioned her against. On the one hand, it is wha...
Tin House Live : Matthew Zapruder on Story of a Poem
12 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
You could say that Matthew Zapruder’s Story of a Poem is about the revision of a poem, that it follows the life of one poem, from its first phrase t...
Major Jackson : Razzle Dazzle
04 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Poet and host of the The Slowdown podcast Major Jackson joins us to talk about Razzle Dazzle, his collection of new and selected poems that captures t...
JoAnna Novak : Contradiction Days
21 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Five months pregnant, fearful of the future, and creatively blocked, JoAnna Novak becomes obsessed with the life, writings, and paintings of Agnes Mar...
Jorie Graham : To 2040
09 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 hi...
Tin House Live : Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah on Surrealism
04 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s craft talk, “Why So Surrealism” by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, was recorded at the 2022 Tin House Summer Workshop. Prompted by a journalis...
Roger Reeves : Dark Days
26 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 a...
Isabella Hammad : Enter Ghost
08 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 act...
Tin House Live : Max Porter on Shy
01 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 “tr...
Megan Fernandes : I Do Everything I’m Told
20 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Spareness, economy, and distillation are often put forth as obvious virtues in poetry. But what if there were a politics undergirding this aesthetic p...
Johanna Hedva : Your Love Is Not Good
10 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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”...
Tin House Live : Katie Holten on The Language of Trees
01 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Early Medieval Ireland there was a language called Ogham that was sometimes referred to as the “Celtic Tree Alphabet'” because its letters each...
Tin House Live: Richard Powers on The Overstory
19 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Back in 2019, when Richard Powers was a guest on Between the Covers for The Overstory, we also appeared together that very same night, in conversation...
Melanie Rae Thon : As If Fire Could Hide Us
10 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Melanie Rae Thon’s latest book, As If Fire Could Hide Us, is described not as a novel with three chapters, nor as a collection of three stories, but...
Christina Sharpe : Ordinary Notes
01 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
There may be no writer, no thinker, who has shaped my conversations on the show more than Christina Sharpe. Whether her work is explicitly part of a c...
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o : The Language of Languages
11 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s guest, novelist, storyteller, essayist, playwright, scholar, translator, and perennial front-runner for the Nobel Prize in Literature Ngũgĩ...
Charif Shanahan : Trace Evidence
01 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Early in poet Charif Shanahan’s latest collection, Trace Evidence, we encounter the lines: “I want to tell you what for me it has been like. //...
Sabrina Orah Mark : Happily
14 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s guest is poet, storyteller, and now essayist Sabrina Orah Mark. Her latest book, Happily: A Personal History—with Fairy Tales, is an intri...
Monica Youn : From From
03 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In today’s conversation with poet Monica Youn we explore what it means to write from a poetics of difference rather than of authenticity, a poetics ...
Jai Chakrabarti : A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness
20 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s conversation with novelist and story writer Jai Chakrabarti is unusually wide-ranging, touching on everything from classical Indian aestheti...
Mariana Enriquez : Our Share of Night
01 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s guest, Argentinian novelist, short story writer, and journalist Mariana Enriquez has been called the queen of Latin American gothic horror. ...
Gabrielle Bates : Judas Goat
20 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s conversation is with poet, visual artist, editor, and podcast host Gabrielle Bates. The poems in Bates’ debut poetry collection Judas Goat...
Georgi Gospodinov : Time Shelter
01 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s guest, Bulgarian novelist, storyteller, poet, essayist, and more, Georgi Gospodinov, is the perfect writer to bring in the new year. Gospodi...
Lucy Ives : Life Is Everywhere
22 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Novelist, short story writer, poet, and critic Lucy Ives’ new novel Life Is Everywhere has been heralded by some of our most formally inventive and ...
Crafting with Ursula: Neil Gaiman on Word Magic & The Power of Telling Stories
10 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Who better to talk about the unique power of telling stories than one of our great contemporary storytellers, Neil Gaiman? One deep way Neil Gaiman an...
Sawako Nakayasu : Pink Waves
01 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Of Sawako Nakayasu’s many literary endeavors—poetry, translation, performance art—it is hard to know where one begins and another ends. They eac...
Ama Codjoe : Bluest Nude
20 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
“On Seeing and Being Seen” is the title of an Ama Codjoe poem but it could just as easily be a description of her debut collection Bluest Nude as...
Crafting with Ursula : Gabrielle Bellot on The Power of Names & Naming
10 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Writer and editor Gabrielle Bellot joins Crafting with Ursula to discuss the power of names and naming across Le Guin’s work. From the very beginnin...
Hélène Cixous : Well-Kept Ruins
01 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s guest is poet, novelist, playwright, feminist theorist, literary critic, and philosopher Hélène Cixous. Perhaps best known for her iconic ...
Billy-Ray Belcourt : A Minor Chorus
19 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 somethi...
Crafting with Ursula : Maria Dahvana Headley on Feminist Translation & Classical Retellings
10 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Dionne Brand : Nomenclature — New and Collected Poems
01 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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.” Kama...
Elaine Castillo : How to Read Now
18 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
“White supremacy makes for terrible readers” says today’s guest Elaine Castillo, arguing that we are all overeducated in a set of fundamentally ...
Crafting with Ursula : Lidia Yuknavitch on The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction
08 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 dese...
Claire Schwartz : Civil Service
01 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Claire Schwartz’ poetry collection Civil Service looks at the ways ordinary, everyday actions uphold and sustain state violence, the ways civility ...
Morgan Talty : Night of the Living Rez
20 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 th...
Crafting with Ursula : Julie Phillips on the Writing Mother
10 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 w...
Daniel Mendelsohn : Three Rings — A Tale of Exile, Narrative, and Fate
01 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Daniel Mendelsohn’s latest book you could say is about digression and about ring composition, a form of storytelling with digression at its heart. A...
Vauhini Vara : The Immortal King Rao
20 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Immortal King Rao is somehow three narratives in one, a historical novel set within a Dalit community in 1950s India, a near-future tech dystopia ...
Crafting with Ursula : William Alexander on Writing for Children
10 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
“People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by them,” says Ursula K. Le Guin. “From within.” This is just one of many quotes tha...
Hernan Diaz : Trust
01 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Hernan Diaz’s debut novel In the Distance went on to become not only one of the great debuts of the year, but a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in ...
Rae Armantrout : Finalists
19 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The first time Rae Armantrout came on the show, in 2017, we looked at her poetry through the lens of her interest in quantum physics. Now, five years ...
Crafting with Ursula : Kim Stanley Robinson on Ambiguous Utopias
10 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s guest, Kim Stanley Robinson, is perhaps the living writer most associated with utopian literature today. And as a student of the philosopher...