Valeria Luiselli : Beginning Middle End
episode
Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry
2h 44m
1 speaker
8 chapters
transcribed 22 days ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What sponsors and charitable calls to action are introduced at the very start of the episode?
Today's episode of Between the Covers is brought to you in part by the nonprofit press Phonograph Editions. This year Phonograph celebrates its tenth anniversary. Since their first releases in twenty sixteen, by Eileen Miles and Ray Armantrout, The press has put out over fifty five projects spanning genres and mediums, LPs, EPs, and cassettes, alongside chapbooks, broadsides, and full-length books. In 2026 alone, Phonograph is releasing ten full-length titles from both canonical and debut authors. to help carry the press into its next ten years. Phonograph is raising twenty thousand dollars, and thanks to a generous donor, every gift made in twenty twenty six will be matched up to ten thousand dollars, doubling your impact on independent publishing.
Give it the friend level, and you'll receive a year of membership, your name printed in the colophon of every 2027 phonograph editions release. Higher tiers include back catalog selections, broadsides featuring poems by Eileen Miles, Brandon Shimoda, Mark Leidner, and Alice Knotley. and even help fund an entirely new book or record. If you believe in publishing that moves between the page and the record player, head to PhonographEditions dot com slash support and make a tax deductible donation today. That's F-O-N-O-G-R-A-F editions.com slash support. Today's episode is also brought to you by Water in the Desert, a Pilgrimage by acclaimed agrarian activist and ethnobotanist, Gary Paul Nabhan. Celebrated as a world visionary by Utney Reeder and a lyrical poet of biodiversity by Mother Jones, Gary Paul Nabhan has authored dozens of books and been awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant.
Water in the Desert is a profoundly inspiring account of interspecies belonging, collaborative conservation, and the sacred work of caring for the earth. He traces his childhood growing up as a Lebanese American boy in the dunes along Lake Michigan's southern shore, to his interests in earth based spiritual practices that led him to take vows as an ecumenical monk. A refreshing account of kinship with other species. Water in the desert brings science to the service of land and culture, showing up what it looks like to reciprocate the gifts of nature with gifts of head, hands, and heart. Writes Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass. Water in the Desert is available from Milkweed Editions at milkweed.org.
Today's episode begins a new phenomenon for me as an interviewer on the show. It's part of a small but significant upcoming wave of episodes going into the fall. As part of curating a year's roster of guests, I create an artificial bottleneck for return guests so that the vast majority of guests have never been on the show in a given year, and perhaps four or five are coming back for the second, or much more rarely the third time. If you were to ask me in the abstract about specific writers I love, for instance, if you told me I wouldn't have had Garth Greenwell on for his last book, or not have him on for every book of his for that matter, or not have had Kelly Link on for her long awaited first novel, or not have had Gava Akbar on for his move into prose with his book Martyr.
or after the amazing conversation with Percival Everett, that he wouldn't be back on for his much celebrated novel, James. All of that would seem inconceivable to me, even though it is all true. But for the most part, the trade offs upside, having remarkable first encounters with Cecilia Vacunya and Saul Williams, Olga Round and Robert MacFarlane has made sense. But something has changed this year, and it's not by design, but rather, I think, by time, where it has been so long since I've talked to some writers I love. That the dam has broken on this artificial constraint. Not entirely, the show will still preference new guests, if a little less so, but I've measured my excitement all year to talk to three or four writers who I haven't talked to in over a decade, who were formative encounters for me as an interviewer and as a writer in what feels like a different
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What sponsors and charitable calls to action are introduced at the very start of the episode?
0:00–7:37
2
Why is Valeria Luiselli returning to the show after eleven years and what new book is being discussed?
7:37–22:29
3
How does the conversation shift to the origins of the novel’s opening scene with the sword‑fish head?
22:29–40:36
4
What questions does the host raise about borders, matrilineal lineage, and the novel’s larger themes?
40:36–1:21:30
5
How do Valeria Luiselli and the guests explore humor in Kafka, Villamatas, and other dark writers?
1:21:30–1:40:17
6
Why does Luiselli consider sound and sonic recording essential to the storytelling of Beginning Middle End?
1:40:17–2:01:19
7
What is the significance of the shapeshifting god Proteus and the mosaic tile in the novel’s mythic framework?
2:01:19–2:21:27
8
How do volcanoes, pre‑Socratic philosophy, and collective imagination shape the book’s ending?
2:21:27–2:43:21