Shelf Life
Episodes
Francis Spufford on Blitz London, archangels, and the temptation to change history.
02 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Send a textFrancis Spufford’s new novel, Nonesuch, drops us into Blitz London—blackouts, random acts of violence, food rationing—and then, almos...
Madeleine Dunnigan on heated rivalries, women writing desire, and boyhood’s pressure systems
09 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textMadeleine Dunnigan’s fierce, unnerving coming-of-age novel, Jean, is set in the final weeks at Compton Manor, an all-boys school that ...
Jonathan Mahler on the 1980s New York that made Trump — and Michael Chabon’s comic-book Gotham
26 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textFew cities lend themselves to myth quite like New York, a city that reinvents itself so often that each generation claims its own versio...
Laurie Gwen Shapiro on Amelia Earhart, Harriet the Spy, and the art of rewriting legend
16 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textBefore you can shape a story, you have to pay attention to the world as it really is—even when it’s messy, even when it stings. That...
Ada Calhoun on Ghostwriting, Thornton Wilder, and the audacity of desire
29 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a text“Anything Ada Calhoun wants to write is well worth reading,” declared Kirkus in its review of her new novel, Crush, a sharp and sedu...
Geoff Dyer on Bad Food, Jazz Renegades, and the "Soviet Resignation" of Post-War Britain
17 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textFew writers dance across genres with as much wit, irreverence, and intellectual curiosity as Geoff Dyer. From Out of Sheer Rage, about h...
Biographer Katherine Bucknell on Christopher Isherwood's Odyssey from Weimar Berlin to California
04 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textWhat can we learn from Weimar Germany and its rapid unraveling in the 1930s? Lately that question has gained more urgency as the US turn...
Legendary Publisher Edwin Frank in Praise of Rudyard Kipling — and Why the 20th Century Novel Matters
21 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textNobel Laureate Rudyard Kipling is among the most derided of 20th century novelists, but in this episode of Shelf Life, the publishing le...
Jeanette Winterson on ghosts, tech bros, and what her success taught her about class in Britain
31 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textIt's been 40 years since Jeanette Winterson's debut novel, Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, launched a confident and daring new...
Jennifer Kabat on America's forgotten populist uprising and the politics of place
06 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textMemoir meets history meets politics in Jennifer Kabat’s book, The Eighth Moon, a fascinating account of moving to the Catskills in 200...
Ricky Ian Gordon's Odyssey of Sex, Drugs and Opera
29 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textA teenage prodigy who worshiped Joni Mitchell, Ricky Ian Gordon has made a career turning novels and poems into operas and song. “I wa...
YA author Rex Ogle on Life as a Poor Kid in a Land of Plenty
08 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textRex Ogle’s series of YA memoirs, beginning with Free Lunch, about life as a poor kid in a wealthy school district, and culminating thi...
Helen Phillips on a mother's primal love, and the perfidy (and promise) of AI in her novel, Hum
03 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textIs there a more primal terror than a mother’s fear of losing a child. Helen Phillips, one of our greatest speculative writers, explore...
Musician Orenda Fink on Glass Castles, Witchy Mothers, and Family Dysfunction
24 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textThe musician Orenda Fink, best known for her early 2000s band, Azure Ray, purveyors of a dreamy, confessional pop, has now penned a fran...
Jennifer Belle on complicated teenage girls, and writing with Madonna
29 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textWhat does Charles Portis’s 1968 novel, True Grit, twice made into a Hollywood western, have in common with Kay Thompson’s whimsica...
Curtis Sittenfeld on writing comedy, and Jane Austen's headstrong heroines
20 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textThe author of seven novels and one collection of stories, Curtis Sittenfeld specializes in sharp-witted female protagonists in stories t...
Ada Zhang on the Lives of Others and stanning Eudora Welty
27 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textLoss, longing and melancholy dominate the strange and sometimes mordantly funny short stories of Eudora Welty, the writer whose debut 19...
The Dead Presidents Society with Actor Dylan Baker
12 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textWhen did you first encounter Dylan Baker? Perhaps it was as the brazen wife killer Colin Sweeney in the long-running CBS show, The Good ...
Ramit Sethi on money, pleasure, and finding moments of awe
30 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textThe bestselling finance guru-turned-TV star, Ramit Sethi is on a mission to help all of us live what he calls our rich lives, but he&a...
Season Three is Coming: turn the page on a new chapter.
23 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textIn the quiet hush of winter, there's a particular inclination to fold into the pages of unexplored narratives. Since Shelf Life pau...
Between Dystopias: Marlon James and Hafizah Augustus Geter Live at Deep Water Lit Fest 23
10 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textEach year Deep Water Literary Festival in Narrowsburg, NY, identifies a unifying theme, often a particular literary work or an author,...
DJ Taylor on George Orwell's literary genesis, and why the author of 1984 still matters
14 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textThe writer and biographer D.J. Taylor on the rich, complicated and too-short life of one of the 20th century’s greatest writers, Georg...
Christopher Bollen on Graham Greene, Agatha Christie, and the abiding pleasures of the whodunnit
26 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textNovelist Christopher Bollen has been writing twisty thrillers with emotional depth for over a decade. His latest, The Lost Americans, ta...
Joanna Quinn, author of The Whalebone Theater, on secret gardens, complicated heroines, and procrastination.
31 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textFew of us need reminding that childhood can be a difficult and challenging time; but it can also be a magical one. That duality is at th...
Ari Shapiro on singing for Bono, cooking for Nina Totenberg, and what novels teach him.
23 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textTender hearted children growing up in oppressive and claustrophobic societies dominate the two novels chosen by the journalist and music...
Reading Stephen King with Sera Gamble, co-creator of the hit show, You.
23 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textSera Gamble is perhaps best known as the screenwriter and showrunner for the hit Netflix show You, based on the novels of Caroline Kepne...
Brooke Gladstone on her terrible waitressing, the future of media, and why Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita resonates today
19 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textFor 22 years Brooke Gladstone has been demystifying the media for listeners of her indispensable public radio show, On the Media. But ...
Jerry Stahl on a bus trip to Auschwitz, his friendship with Anthony Bourdain, and Nathaniel West’s The Day of the Locust.
05 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textA bus trip to Auschwitz in the company of the writer Jerry Stahl, who in 2016 set off for Poland to confront one of the darkest chapters...
A Year in Reading with Joyce Maynard, Darcey Steinke, Edmund White, and John Waters
28 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textIn this special holiday episode of Shelf Life, we took time out from our regular format to see what guests old and new read in 2022. T...
Marion Nestle on late starts, unhappy families and her war on food myths
11 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textIf you sometimes fret that your opportunity to make your mark on the world has passed, take a leaf from Marion Nestle’s career. At 5...
Leila Taylor on Shirley Jackson's Haunted Houses, Black Goth, and Being a "Creepy Kid."
23 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textIn this episode, Leila Taylor, the author of Darkly, an expansive rumination on the relationship between Gothic narratives and the Black...
Lydia Millet on writing about goodness; and Mary Ruefle makes a cameo.
12 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textDo good people make for good novels? In this episode, the author Lydia Millet, best known for The Children’s Bible, a National Book Aw...
Orlando Figes on writing history, radioactive fungi, and why Madame Bovary is the greatest novel ever written
01 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textHow do we synthesize a 1000-plus years of history into a 300–page book. The historian Orlando Figes, who has made the study of Russia ...
A.M. Homes on absurdity, satire, and the troubles of men
16 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textIn that esteemed group of soothsayers, we might consider adding the novelist A.M. Homes. Homes has just published her eighth novel, Th...
Jonathan Escoffery on tough guys, the joys of ackee, and writing the books we need to see in the world
22 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textJonathan Escoffery navigates identity, belonging and the hollow promise of the American Dream in his mesmerizing debut If I Survive Yo...
Seán Hewitt, author of All Down Darkness Wide, on love, loss, and poetry
10 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textIn his new memoir All Down Darkness Wide, the award-wining poet, Sean Hewitt, describes that experience of living with the chronically d...
Michael Cunningham on originality in fiction, and realizing his destiny while bartending at a tiki bar
26 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textMichael Cunningham is the author of seven novels, as well as a short story collection and several non-fiction books, including his trave...
Director Anthony Fabian on Mrs Harris, talking cats, and Colum McCann's sexy resurrection of Nuryev
17 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textAnthony Fabian, the director of this summer's sleeper hit, Mrs Harris Goes to Paris, is a long-time Paul Gallico fan, and for thi...
Douglas Stuart on love and war in 1980s Glasgow and Cromwell's England
09 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textThe Scottish novelist Douglas Stuart is a master of writing about tender souls in tough spaces. He is a tender soul himself, having grow...
Sondre Lerche on Marguerite Duras, and the alchemy of love
02 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textNorwegian pop star Sondre Lerche has been making music and releasing albums since he was a teenager, songs that ache with yearning and t...
William Boyd on Evelyn Waugh's Scoop, and the art of the comic novel
24 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textIt took William Boyd three failed attempts at writing a novel before he hit gold with A Good Man in Africa, which won him both the Whitb...
Courtney Maum on riding out depression (literally), and the children's party that changed her life.
14 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textCourtney Maum, the author of three novels, including I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You, Touch, and Costalegre, inspired by the ...
Melissa Gilbert on family secrets, escaping Hollywood, and L.A. noir
06 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textHardboiled detective noir, and a multi-generational historical saga take center stage in the reading life of the actor Melissa Gilbert, ...
David Hare on not being a nice boy, the irrelevance of critics, and bourgeois marmalade
30 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textThe legendary British playwright Sir David Hare is widely regarded as British theater’s most fervent chronicler of his country’s mor...
Season Two is coming: bookworms, are you ready?
25 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textIt's summer, and we're ready for a nice, shady nook, or a perfect beach, and some great new book recommendations. Since Shel...
Kevin Barry on reading Annie Dillard, and finding his voice through Saul Bellow
15 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textLove takes center stage in the short stories of the celebrated Irish writer Kevin Barry, best known for his 2019 novel, Night Boat to Ta...
Meredith Talusan on Complex Women in Literature
09 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textWhen the award-winning journalist Meredith Talusan published her memoir, Fairest, in 2020, it was widely praised for the unflinching hon...
Peeling an orange with rare food hunter Dan Saladino
19 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textWe step into the world of a sinister gourmand, in John Lanchester’s novel of 90s hedonism, The Debt to Pleasure, take a trip to Florid...
Brendan Slocumb on time traveling with Anthony Doerr and Hanif Abdurraqib
01 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textIn this episode of Shelf Life we are time traveling, courtesy of two 2021 National Book Award finalists: Anthony Doerr’s critically ac...
Brian Broome on Mary Karr's The Liar's Club, and the art of writing memoir
04 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textBroome’s memoir, Punch Me Up to the Gods, the winner of the 2021 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction, is a deeply felt account of growing up B...
Darcey Steinke on writing the female body and avoiding the paparazzi with Jackie O.
23 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textDarcey Steinke is the author of five novels and a memoir, as well as most recently, the fragmentary investigation, Flash Count Diary: Me...
Joyce Maynard on memoir, Salinger, and the original Spider-verse
17 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textJoyce Maynard has written ten novels, including To Die For and Labor Day (both turned into acclaimed movies) and, most recently, Count t...
Becky Ann Baker on Somerset Maugham, and life as Lena Dunham's screen mom
11 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textNot many of us can brag they’ve been murdered on screen by both Sir Ben Kingsley and Bill Paxton; Becky Ann Baker can, in the respecti...
John Birdsall: The Complicated Legacy of James Beard
24 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textThe writer and essayist John Birdsall grew up in San Francisco where he learned to cook at Green's restaurant before exiting the ...
Nic Stone: On Losing Her Religion, and Revisiting The Virgin Suicides
22 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textIn this episode, the best-selling YA author, Nic Stone, revisits two childhood faves: Louis Sachar's classic 1998 novel, Holes, a...
Alan Cumming: On Visiting Gore Vidal and Reading Jean Rhys
18 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textWhen he's not making movies, TV shows, podcasts, or performing in cabaret, Alan Cumming also finds time to write books. He's...
Sarah Waters: On the Brothers Grimm and Victorian Sex
15 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textSarah Waters racy Victorian picaresque, Tipping the Velvet, was published in 1998, and garnered huge attention and praise. It was adapte...
John Waters: On the Serious Pleasures of a Bright Young Thing
15 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textJohn Waters once said nothing is more impotent than an unread library. In this episode, the cult film director responsible for such endu...