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

Courtney Maum — The Year of the Horses

01 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Courtney Maum’s latest book, her memoir The Year of the Horses, is about a writer at a rough point in her writing career, in her marriage, as a moth...

Ada Limón : The Hurting Kind

20 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s guest Ada Limón discusses her latest collection of poetry, The Hurting Kind, whose poems ask and explore what it means to be a human animal...

Crafting with Ursula : adrienne maree brown on Social Justice & Science Fiction

10 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s conversation with adrienne maree brown begins with the notion that all organizing is science fiction, and thus that social justice and scien...

Cristina Rivera Garza : New and Selected Stories

01 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Cristina Rivera Garza returns to the show to discuss her New and Selected Stories, which gathers together fiction across thirty years of her writing ...

Caren Beilin : Revenge of the Scapegoat

20 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s guest, Caren Beilin, talks about her latest novel Revenge of the Scapegoat. All four of her books—two nonfiction, two fiction—each stand...

Crafting with Ursula : Karen Joy Fowler on Experimental Women, Animals, Science & Story

10 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s guest on Crafting with Ursula, the award-winning writer of science fiction, fantasy, and historical fiction Karen Joy Fowler, was a longstan...

Sheila Heti : Pure Colour

01 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Sheila Heti returns to Between the Covers to discuss her latest unclassifiable novel Pure Colour. When something happens in your life that upends ever...

Alejandro Zambra : Chilean Poet

20 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s guest is Chilean novelist, essayist, literary critic, and poet Alejandro Zambra, talking about his latest novel Chilean Poet, a novel brimmi...

Crafting with Ursula : Isaac Yuen on Writing Nature & Nature Writing

10 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s “Crafting with Ursula,” a conversation with nature writer Isaac Yuen, explores Le Guin’s writing of the nonhuman other in her fiction....

Solmaz Sharif : Customs

01 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

It’s been five years since Solmaz Sharif’s first appearance on Between the Covers, for her National Book Award–finalist debut collection Look. ...

Gabrielle Civil : the déjà vu

22 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Writer and performance artist Gabrielle Civil talks about her latest book the déjà vu: black dreams & black time, as well as her chapbook ( ghost ge...

Crafting with Ursula : Molly Gloss on Writing the Clear, Clean Line

10 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s guest on the second episode of Crafting with Ursula, Molly Gloss, the acclaimed writer of both award-winning science fiction and fantasy as ...

James Hannaham : Pilot Impostor

01 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Writer, critic, performer, & visual artist James Hannaham talks about his latest and most uncategorizable book Pilot Impostor. This book slips between...

Rabih Alameddine : The Wrong End of the Telescope

20 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Rabih Alameddine talks about his new novel The Wrong End of the Telescope, which is set on the island of Lesbos amidst the medical personnel and touri...

Crafting with Ursula : Becky Chambers on Creating Aliens & Alien Cultures

10 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s guest, Becky Chambers, discusses her own work, and her own considerations when imagining alien cultures and the beings that inhabit them. Sh...

Victoria Chang : Dear Memory

01 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Poet Victoria Chang talks about her latest and most uncategorizable book Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief. A book composed largely ...

Valerie Mejer Caso : Edinburgh Notebook

13 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s guest, Mexican poet, painter, and translator Valerie Mejer Caso talks about her latest book, the bilingual publication of poetry, collage, a...

Raymond Antrobus : All The Names Given & The Perseverance

01 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

British poet, educator, and writer Raymond Antrobus has two poetry collections out this year. The US release of his award-winning debut The Perseveran...

Tice Cin : Keeping the House

11 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Tice Cin’s debut novel Keeping the House is set within the Turkish Cypriot community of North London. But while it is also set within the heroin tra...

Rosmarie Waldrop : The Nick of Time

01 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s guest, poet and translator Rosmarie Waldrop, is best known for her prose poetry and for good reason. Waldrop is one of the great prose poetr...

Percival Everett : The Trees

18 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s guest, Percival Everett, author of twenty-one novels, four short story collections, six collections of poetry and a children’s book, has a...

Myriam J. A. Chancy : What Storm, What Thunder

05 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Haitian-Canadian-American writer Myriam Chancy is an acclaimed novelist but she is also a literary scholar who studies, among other things, storytelli...

Tin House Live : Negotiating the Love and Renouncing the Rest with Destiny O. Birdsong and Donika Kelly

20 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

“Negotiating the Love and Renouncing the Rest,” today’s Tin House Live conversation between poets Destiny O. Birdsong & Donika Kelly, was record...

Pádraig Ó Tuama : In the Shelter & Borders and Belonging

10 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Irish theologian, storyteller, poet, conflict mediator, and host of the podcast Poetry Unbound Pádraig Ó Tuama joins David to discuss the role of b...

Adania Shibli : Minor Detail

01 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The latest book by Palestinian novelist Adania Shibli, Minor Detail, was a finalist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature, and longlis...

Tin House Live : Writing On Your Own Terms with Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

19 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Originally delivered at the 2021 Tin House Summer Writers Workshop, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore’s electrifying talk “Writing On Your Own Terms” ...

Kaveh Akbar : Pilgrim Bell

10 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s guest, poet Kaveh Akbar, discusses his latest poetry collection Pilgrim Bell. Given that Akbar once suggested that syntax was identity, how ...

Callum Angus : A Natural History of Transition

01 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Callum Angus’s A Natural History of Transition is described as a collection of short stories “that disrupts the notion that trans people can only ...

Douglas Kearney : Sho

12 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s episode with poet Douglas Kearney is about his latest book of poetry, Sho, and the poetry-performance album (with Haitian sound artist Val J...

Arthur Sze : The Glass Constellation : New & Collected Poems

01 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Arthur Sze, winner of the 2019 National Book Award in Poetry for Sight Lines, joins David Naimon to discuss his latest book, The Glass Constellation: ...

Anakana Schofield : Bina

16 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s guest, Irish Canadian writer Anakana Schofield, joins us to talk about her latest novel, Bina, winner of the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the...

Doireann Ní Ghríofa : A Ghost in the Throat & To Star the Dark

01 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Irish poet Doireann Ní Ghríofa joins us to talk about her latest poetry collection, To Star the Dark, and her prose debut, A Ghost in the Throat, a ...

Abdellah Taïa : A Country For Dying

10 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s guest, Moroccan writer and filmmaker Abdellah Taïa discusses his most recent novel A Country For Dying translated by Emma Ramadan and winn...

Elissa Washuta : White Magic

01 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s episode of Between the Covers is with writer Elissa Washuta about White Magic, her new memoir in essays just out from Tin House. Elissa Wash...

Rikki Ducornet : Trafik

18 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Writer, poet, and painter Rikki Ducornet returns to Between the Covers to discuss her latest novel Trafik which is her first foray into science fictio...

Jorie Graham : Runaway

01 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s guest is poet Jorie Graham. We speak about her fifteenth book of poetry, Runaway. This latest book, along with the three that precede it—S...

Brandon Hobson : The Removed

16 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s Between the Covers conversation with Brandon Hobson is about his novel The Removed, his first book since his National Book Award finalist, W...

Viet Thanh Nguyen : The Committed

02 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s guest, Viet Thanh Nguyen, returns to Between the Covers after six years to discuss The Committed, his much-anticipated follow-up to the Puli...

Ross Gay : Be Holding

16 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s Between the Covers conversation is with the poet Ross Gay about Be Holding, his book-length poem that emerges from a sustained meditation on...

Teju Cole : Fernweh

01 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s guest is writer, photographer, critic, and curator Teju Cole. In this extended conversation, we use Cole’s latest photo book Fernweh as a...

Nnedi Okorafor : Remote Control

19 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s episode is with one of today’s great writers of science fiction and fantasy, Nnedi Okorafor. Using her new novella Remote Control (Tor Boo...

Vanessa Veselka : The Great Offshore Grounds

01 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Vanessa Veselka returns to Between the Covers, eight years after her first appearance, to discuss her new novel The Great Offshore Grounds. Longlisted...

Tin House Live : Publishing, Power Structures & Creative Practice with Leni Zumas & Janice Lee

23 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

This Tin House Live conversation between Leni Zumas and Janice Lee, “Publishing, Power Structures, and Creative Practice,” was recorded at the sum...

Natalie Diaz : Postcolonial Love Poem : Part Two

10 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s episode of Between the Covers is a first for the show, a return to and extension of a recent episode with Natalie Diaz.  Today’s ‘part ...

Alice Oswald : Nobody

01 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s episode of Between the Covers is a conversation with poet and classicist Alice Oswald. Widely considered one of our great living poets, Osw...

Tin House Live : Writing Pop Culture with Shayla Lawson & Hanif Abdurraqib

25 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Join poet-essayists Hanif Abdurraqib & Shayla Lawson for an extended conversation on writing pop culture (and so much more).  This conversation was r...

Elisa Gabbert : The Unreality of Memory

14 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

“Amid impending disasters too vast even to be perceived, what can we do―cognitively, morally, and practically? Gabbert, a tenacious researcher and...

Ayad Akhtar : Homeland Elegies

01 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

“An urgent, intimate hybrid of memoir and fiction, Homeland Elegies lays bare the broken heart of our American dream turned reality TV nightmare. Th...

Natalie Diaz : Postcolonial Love Poem : Part One

23 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s conversation is with poet Natalie Diaz, author of the National Book Award shortlisted collection Postcolonial Love Poem.  We talk today ab...

Tin House Live : Getting Past the Gatekeepers with Mira Jacob & Kaitlyn Greenidge

14 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In “Getting Past the Gatekeepers: How to Keep Writing in an Industry that Excludes Us,” Kaitlyn Greenidge and Mira Jacob discuss their combined 30...

Jenny Erpenbeck : Not a Novel : A Memoir in Pieces

02 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

“This collection of essays, memoirs and critical pieces forms an intellectual biography of Europe’s most history-obsessed writer. Beginning with h...

Mary-Kim Arnold : The Fish & The Dove

23 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

“In The Fish & The Dove, Mary-Kim Arnold’s lyrical scope sweeps across intersecting terrains, moving through time to capture the history of occupa...

Tin House Live : Queer Beatitudes with Brandon Taylor & Garth Greenwell

12 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

A conversation between Brandon Taylor & Garth Greenwell about queer aesthetics, “problematic art,” representation, and much more. The post Tin Hou...

Jeannie Vanasco : Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl

03 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

“It’s hard to overstate the importance of this gorgeous, harrowing, heartbreaking book, which tackles sexual violence and its aftermath while also...

Tin House Live : Bassey Ikpi & Melissa Febos on the Anatomy of Melancholy

27 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

“Anatomy of Melancholy” is a conversation between Melissa Febos & Bassey Ikpi at the 2020 Tin House Summer Writers Workshop.  Febos & Ikpi talk a...

Lauren Camp : Took House

20 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

“In Lauren Camp’s Took House we are enveloped in a poetry both precise and mysterious, intimate and sublime. Reading through these poems, I was re...

Joe Sacco : Paying the Land

01 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

“Sacco is a talent entirely unto himself, applying an exquisitely fine eye for detail to the urgent histories that define the world around us. . . ....

Lidia Yuknavitch : Verge

20 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

“Verge is a bouquet of dynamite: explosive, deadly, and spectacularly beautiful. These stories captivated me like modern fairy tales, and like those...

Tin House Live : Lacy M. Johnson On Likability

08 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s talk, “On Likability” by Lacy M. Johnson, was given at the 2018 Tin House Writers Workshop. It later became an essay, one selected by Re...

Philip Metres : Shrapnel Maps

01 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

“Shrapnel Maps is so beautiful. Half dream, half nightmare, all real. Filled with the remnants of what people hope for and what they are willing to ...

Tin House Live : Lidia Yuknavitch on “Writing from the Deep Cut”

17 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Lidia Yuknavitch gave this craft talk, “Writing from the Deep Cut,” at the 2018 Tin House Writers Workshop. As Lidia says: “We are (always) livi...

N.K. Jemisin : The City We Became

11 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

“The City We Became is a wonderfully inventive love letter to New York City that spans the multiverse. A big middle finger to Lovecraft with a lot o...

Nikky Finney : Love Child’s Hotbed of Occasional Poetry

01 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

“Love Child’s Hotbed of Occasional Poetry is a 21st-century paean to the sterling love songs humming throughout four hundred years of black Americ...

Tin House Live : Rebecca Makkai on The Ear of the Story

25 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Given at the 2019 Tin House Summer Workshop, Rebecca Makkai’s craft talk “You Talkin’ to Me?: The ‘Ear’ of the Story” looks at an importan...

Fernanda Melchor : Hurricane Season

18 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

“Fernanda Melchor is part of a wave of real writing, a multi-tongue, variform, generationless, decadeless, ageless wave, that American contemporary ...

Hanif Abdurraqib : A Fortune For Your Disaster

08 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

“A Fortune for Your Disaster proves that, if you pay attention, Black people have defined and still define themselves for themselves amid roses and ...

Tin House Live : How to Write a Hoax Poem with Kevin Young

01 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The New Yorker poetry editor and host of The New Yorker poetry podcast, Kevin Young, delivered this talk, “How to Write a Hoax Poem,” at the 2014 ...

Rachel Zucker : SoundMachine

24 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

“Whether speaking about motherhood, grief, or poetry, Zucker’s unrelenting eye and wittily critical voice peel back these experiences to reveal in...

Tin House Live : Power & Audience, On Not Writing for White People with Ingrid Rojas Contreras

15 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Ingrid Rojas Contreras’ talk “Power & Audience: On Not Writing for White People” was given at the 2019 Tin House Summer Workshop in Portland, Or...

Tin House Live : On Dialogue with Dorothy Allison

08 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Dorothy Allison treated the participants of the 2011 Summer Workshop to a spirited discussion of how characters should speak on the page. Not only “...

Mark Haber : Reinhardt’s Garden

01 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

“Reinhardt’s Garden is one of those perfect books that looks small and exotic and melancholic from the outside but, once in, is immense and exult...

Jenny Offill : Weather

11 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

“Novelists don’t need to dream the end of the world anymore—they need to wake up to it. Jenny Offill is one of today’s few essential voices, b...

Lance Olsen : My Red Heaven

02 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

“Lance Olsen locates his porous, alluring, heartbreaking, and haunted narrative in Berlin on a day in 1927. Poised at a moment of such hope and doom...

Tin House Live : “From First Draft to Plot” with Alexander Chee

21 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Alexander Chee delivered this craft lecture, from “First Draft to Plot,” at the 2016 Tin House Summer Workshop. Chee is the author most recently o...

Garth Greenwell : Cleanness

14 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

“Garth Greenwell, whose first book is a masterpiece, amazingly has written a second book that is also a masterpiece. The great enterprise that Joyce...

Carmen Maria Machado : In the Dream House

03 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

“In the Dream House . . . confronts the issues of credibility, self-doubt, and disbelief that all too frequently arise when survivors of domestic ab...

Tin House Live : Jericho Brown on Suicide & Joy

24 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Jericho Brown gave these two talks, on suicide, and on joy, at the 2016 Tin House Summer Workshop in Portland, Oregon.  His latest poetry collection ...

E. J. Koh : The Magical Language of Others

13 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

“In The Magical Language of Others, E. J. Koh writes of the boundary between anonymity and naming, between absence and abandonment, between cruelty...

Karthika Naïr : Until the Lions : Echoes from the Mahabharata

06 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

“In this retelling of the Mahabharata from the point of view of its hitherto minor female characters, Karthika Naïr uncovers a seminal feminist tex...

CAConrad : Resurrect Extinct Vibration

16 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

“CAConrad always argues (from the inside of their poems) for a poetry of radical inclusivity while keeping a very queer shoulder to the wheel. Their...

Daniel José Older : The Book of Lost Saints

01 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

“Older’s spellbinding novel is a fever dream full of magic and loss, wickedness and grace, faith and love, spirit and power.” —Marlon James; ...

Jake Skeets : Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers

20 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

“Jake Skeets takes us to ‘The Indian Capital of the World,’ a landscape of erosion and erasure, where ‘boys only hold boys / like bottles’ a...

Tin House Live : On Writing Toward Joy : Garth Greenwell, Kelly Link & Justin Torres

12 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Recorded on the final day of the 2019 Tin House Summer Writers Workshop, the panel “On Writing Towards Joy” ended the week on a high note. Moderat...

Richard Powers : The Overstory

02 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

“This book is beyond special. Richard Powers manages to turn trees into vivid and engaging characters, something that indigenous people have done fo...

Zadie Smith : Grand Union

21 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

“Grand Union is an unusual creature, combining all the experimental exuberance of a writer discovering a form with the technical prowess of one at t...

Tin House Live : Readings by Garth Greenwell, Michelle Tea, Kaveh Akbar

16 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Recorded at the 2019 Tin House Summer Writers Workshop at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, today’s episode is a medley of readings from three diffe...

Rob Schlegel : In the Tree Where the Double Sex Sleeps

02 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

“Rob Schlegel has a voice you’d follow into the dark woods, knowing full well it’s hard, awful, daily, plain, living truth you’re running towa...

Tin House Live : Revision Panel with R.O. Kwon, Karen Shepard, Danielle Evans, Jamel Brinkley

25 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

“Finding the Life of the Story: Vision & Revision” was recorded at the 2019 Tin House Summer Writers Workshop. Panelists Karen Shepard, Danielle E...

Xuan Juliana Wang : Home Remedies

18 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

“Filled with characters who mirror the chaos and anxiety, exhilaration and despair, desire and fear of the world around them, Home Remedies offers s...

Ayşe Papatya Bucak : The Trojan War Museum

04 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

“These are stories that reflect the author’s Turkish heritage and a curiosity about our human search for meaning as profound as it is lyrical. The...

Brandon Shimoda : The Grave on the Wall

15 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

“If someone asked me what a poet’s history might look and read like, I would say Brandon Shimoda’s The Grave on the Wall. It is part dream, part...

Elvia Wilk : Oval

01 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

“J. G. Ballard meets William Gibson meets Jeff VanderMeer. Oval is an up-to-the-minute story about the twilight zones of corporate design, aesthetic...

Max Porter : Lanny

14 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

“In Lanny Max Porter has expanded on his innovative hybrid mode while remaining faithful to our species-wide tradition of storytelling through myth,...

Ted Chiang : Exhalation

01 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

“Ted Chiang has no contemporary peers when it comes to the short story form. His name deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Carver, Poe, Bo...

Miriam Toews : Women Talking

14 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

“An astonishment, a volcano of a novel with slowly and furiously mounting pressures of anguish and love and rage. No other book I’ve read in the p...

Sophia Shalmiyev : Mother Winter

03 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

“Shalmiyev stubbornly, brilliantly pursues loss in this psycho-geography of immigration, grief displacement, and damage. A mother herself, Shalmiyev...

Morgan Parker : Magical Negro

14 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

“Morgan Parker’s latest collection, Magical Negro, is a riveting testimony to everyday blackness. . . . It is wry and atmospheric, an epic work of...

Cristina Rivera Garza : The Taiga Syndrome

01 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

“If The Taiga Syndrome is a book of illness, it’s also about exile, disappearance, borders, love, language and translation, desire, capitalism and...

Lacy M. Johnson : The Reckonings

16 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Rebecca Solnit says Lacy M. Johnson’s The Reckonings gives us something essential: “a vision of who and where we are that’s both scathing and ge...

Christine Schutt : Pure Hollywood

01 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In eleven captivating tales, Pure Hollywood brings us into private worlds of corrupt familial love, intimacy, longing, and danger. From an alcoholic...