LARB Radio Hour

The Los Angeles Review of Books Radio Hour is a weekly show featuring interviews, readings and discussions about all things literary. Hosted by LARB Editor-at-Large Kate Wolf, Managing Editor Medaya Ocher, and Gender and Sexuality Editor, Eric Newman.

Rank #1: Sally Rooney: Great Expectations.
Co-hosts Medaya Ocher and Kate Wolf speak with Sally Rooney about her two novels Conversations with Friends and Normal People. Dubbed the "Jane Austin of the Precariat" and called "the first great millennial novelist" Sally addresses the acclaim she’s received; and how she’s grown into the person and writer she is today.  Also, William E. Jones returns to recommend The Imposter byJavier Cercas, which tells the story of Spaniard Enric Marco, who was a national hero until he was exposed as a fraud in 2005.

Rank #2: The Delightful Rage of Fran Lebowitz.
Eric Newman, Medaya Ocher and Kate Wolf speak with legendary public speaker Fran Lebowitz. In a wide-ranging conversation, the gang flits from the Kavanaugh hearings to how the uber-rich have blighted the landscape of New York, from the escapism of literature (Lebowitz maintains that books are always better than real life) to the changes that have rocked the media environment in which Lebowitz has been a central figure for decades. In her iconic unvarnished style, Fran proves — as if there were ever any need for such a thing — that she’s still one of the most fascinating people to chat with about the lofty and mundane. Also, Eric recommends classicist Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles that brings to life the love affair between Patroclus and Homeric Greece's greatest warrior.

Soundings from The New York Review

Interviews, conversations, discussions, events and more from the writers and staff of The New York Review of Books

Rank #1: Oliver Sacks on Mania, Memoir, and Music.
Oliver Sacks speaks with Eve Bowen about Michael Greenberg's new memoir, the work of Kay Redfield Jamison, and music and madness in Musicophilia.

Rank #2: Helen Vendler on Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell.
Poetry critic and frequent Review contributor Helen Vendler speaks with Sasha Weiss about the correspondence of Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, and reads some of the poems that were inspired by the poets' lifelong friendship.

Granta

From Nobel laureates to debut novelists, international translations to investigative journalism, each themed issue of Granta turns the attention of the world’s best writers on to one aspect of the way we live now. Granta does not have a political or literary manifesto, but it does have a belief in the power and urgency of the story and its supreme ability to describe, illuminate and make real. Our podcasts bring you readings & in depth discussions with highly acclaimed authors & rising stars from the quarterly magazine of new writing.

Rank #1: Helen Oyeyemi: The Granta Podcast, Ep. 68.
In our latest instalment of podcasts featuring our Best of Young British Novelists, we speak to Helen Oyeyemi. Oyeyemi is the author of The Icarus Girl and The Opposite House. Her third novel, White is for Witching, was awarded a 2010 Somerset Maugham Award, and her fourth, Mr Fox, won the 2012 Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation Award. ‘Boy, Snow, Bird’, in the issue, is an excerpt from a new novel of the same title, published in 2014 by Picador in the UK and Riverhead in the US. Here Oyeyemi spoke to online editor Ted Hodgkinson about the joys of writing from a male perspective, the role of magic in her work, some of her influences from Alfred Hitchcock to Jeanette Winterson and how as a young girl she would write alternate endings in the margins of the classics.

Rank #2: Don DeLillo & Paul Auster: The Granta Podcast, Ep. 28.
Don DeLillo and Paul Auster read from their work in Granta 117: Horror and discuss writing about 'impoverished characters' and living and writing about New York.

London Review Bookshop Podcasts

Twice a week or so, the London Review Bookshop becomes a miniature auditorium in which authors talk about and read from their work, meet their readers and engage in lively debate about the burning topics of the day. Fortunately, for those of you who weren't able to make it to one of our talks, were able to make it but couldn't get a ticket, or did in fact make it but weren't paying attention and want to listen again, we make a recording of everything that happens. So now you can hear Alan Bennett, Hilary Mantel, Iain Sinclair, Jarvis Cocker, Jenny Diski, Patti Smith (yes, she sings) and many, many more, wherever, and whenever you like.

Rank #1: James Wood: The Fun Stuff.
James Wood visited the Bookshop to talk about his new collection of pieces, The Fun Stuff, and to discuss life, literature, and the role of the critic.

Rank #2: 1606: James Shapiro and Charles Nicholl.
Ten years after the publication of his highly acclaimed and prize-winning 1599 James Shapiro moves the Shakespeare story on to 1606, the year of *King Lear*, *Macbeth* and *Antony and Cleopatra*. At the shop talking about *1606* (Faber) with Shapiro was Charles Nicholl, author of *The Reckoning*, *The Lodger* and *Traces Remain*.

A Phone Call From Paul

You have reached Literary Hub's aural department. Because sometimes the words are better when they're out of your head. More at LitHub.com.

Rank #1: In conversation with John Berger.
John Berger talks with Paul Holdengraber about President Donald Trump, the emptiness of American political commentary, desire, place, and how the hell to keep going. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rank #2: In Conversation with Junot Diaz.
Junot Diaz talks to Paul Holdengraber about death, pain, the joys of teaching, and the magic of the library. For more, visit LitHub.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The LRB Podcast

On the LRB Podcast you'll find recent (and not so recent) pieces read by the author; our 'Close Reading’ series, in which Seamus Perry and Mark Ford consider 20th century poets through the lens of the pieces written about them in the LRB; and a range of other conversations on topics and writers covered in the paper.

Rank #1: Marilyn Monroe.
Jacqueline Rose celebrates Marilyn Monroe. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Rank #2: Colm Tóibín: In Conversation.
Author, essayist and poet Colm Tóibín is one of Ireland’s greatest living writers. He discusses his life and work, including his recent book The Testament of Mary, in which he re-imagines the life of Christ through the eyes of the holiest of saints. With Michael McGirr. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Shakespeare and Company

Recorded live from our bookshop, in the heart of Paris, conversations and readings with internationally acclaimed authors. Discover exciting new fiction, non-fiction and poetry, and delve into our archives for events with Zadie Smith, Eddie Izzard, Don DeLillo, Rebecca Solnit, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Dave Eggers, Rachel Cusk, Marlon James, Edouard Louis, Sara Pascoe, Richard Powers, Sally Rooney and many, many more. Hosted by Adam Biles.

Rank #1: Zadie Smith and Nick Laird.
Zadie Smith and Nick Laird by

Rank #2: Rachel Cusk on Kudos.
We were joined by the brilliant Rachel Cusk for an exploration of the third book in her highly-acclaimed literary trilogy, Kudos.

ALOUD @ Los Angeles Public Library

ALOUD is the Library Foundation of Los Angeles' award-winning literary series of live conversations, readings and performances at the historic Central Library and locations throughout Los Angeles.

Rank #1: Ta-Nehisi Coates: Between the World and Me.
In a revelatory testament of what it means to be black in America today, this timely new memoir solidifies Coates as one of today’s most important writers on the subject of race. Composed as letters to his teenage son, Coates bears witness to his own experiences as a young black man while moving between emotionally charged reportage of the recent shootings of unarmed black men by police. Coates—a national correspondent for The Atlantic, which published his landmark 2014 essay, “The Case for Reparations,” and author of the previous memoir, The Beautiful Struggle—arrives at a transcendent vision of the past and present to offer hope for his son’s future. Join us for a momentous conversation with Coates and historian Robin D.G. Kelley about America’s way forward.**Click here for photos of the event.

Rank #2: Eileen Myles and Maggie Nelson: Why We Write.
For twenty years, groundbreaking poets Eileen Myles (Chelsea Girls; I Must be Living Twice) and Maggie Nelson (National Book Critics Circle Award, The Argonauts) have been friends, mutual influences, and interlocutors on the experiences of living in a poetry and gender-inflected writing world. Myles’ latest work—a collection of old and new poems—refracts a radical world and a compelling life.  Nelson’s genre-bending memoir, The Argonauts, calls for radical individual freedom and the value of caretaking. Together on stage to read both poetry and prose, these two ground-breaking writers then will join in conversation to, as Myles says, “let thoughts rip.”Click here for photos from the program.

Otherppl with Brad Listi

A weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading authors. Hosted by Brad Listi.

Rank #1: Episode 587 — Bret Easton Ellis.
Bret Easton Ellis is the guest. His new essay collection, White, is available from Knopf.Ellis is the author of six novels, including Less Than Zero, The Rules of Attraction, and American Psycho, and a collection of stories, which have been translated into thirty-two languages. He lives in Los Angeles and is the host of The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast, available on Patreon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rank #2: Episode 401 — Hanya Yanagihara.
Hanya Yanagihara is the guest. Her novel A Little Life was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Award, and it is now available in trade paperback from Anchor Books. I feel like A Little Life is having the kind of existence that pretty much all writers hope their books will have. It seems to provoke passionate responses. The people who love it really fucking love it and the people who hate it are incensed by it and there are way more people who love it than hate it. You can't ask for much more than that. Hanya was only in town for a day and pretty solidly booked but she found an hour to come over and talk with me, and for that I'm grateful. I learned a lot from her. She knows her shit, and she really fought hard for her novel. She fought hard to see her vision of this book realized, and she's protective of it in a way that seems both smart and endearing. Also: it paid off huge. Few works of literary fiction strike a nerve the way this book has struck a nerve. Also: it's 700 pages long and she wrote it in 18 months. Also: she doesn't own a cell phone.  In today's monologue, I give a quick update on the health of my son and share news about some appearances I'll be making during AWP here in Los Angeles in April.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

fiction/non/fiction

Hosted by Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan, fiction/non/fiction interprets current events through the lens of literature, and features conversations with writers of all stripes, from novelists and poets to journalists and essayists.

Rank #1: S3 Ep. 1: The Secret Lives of Editors: Rakesh Satyal, Brian Birnbaum, & M.K. Rainey on the World of Editing .
In this episode, novelist and editor Rakesh Satyal and Dead Rabbits Books founders Brian Birnbaum and M.K. Rainey talk to Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell about editing and being edited. Satyal discusses the ins and outs of big publishing houses, how he revises, and the simple but revealing question he heard another editor ask an author. Birnbaum and Rainey share what it took for them to start Dead Rabbits Books, how they give each other feedback, and why they appreciate fresh eyes on their work.Guests:Rakesh SatyalBrian BirnbaumM.K. (Katie) RaineyReadings for the Episode:Rakesh SatyalNo One Can Pronounce My Name by Rakesh Satyal Blue Boy by Rakesh Satyal Rakesh Satyal on the pick up line that changed his life LitHub, Nov. 7, 2018No One Can Pronounce My Name' Is A Charming Take On Loneliness And Connection by Maureen Corrigan, NPR, May 10, 2017 Brian BirnbaumEmerald City by Brian Birnbaum Dead Rabbits Podcast Dead Rabbits Episode 33: Vulnerable Discovering an iconic literary character was based on your grandfather LitHub, May 16, 2019M.K. (Katie) RaineyReading Your Work in Public: 12 Tips from Dead Rabbits Reading Series Founder by M.K. Rainey, Writer’s Digest, July 15, 2019Citizen Uncensored: The Power of Student Centered Learning by M.K. Rainey, Writer’s Chronicle, July 2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rank #2: 2: Idra Novey and Esmé Wang Talk Mental Health and Writing.
In this episode of the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast, Idra Novey and Esmé Wang talk to hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell about Brett Kavanaugh, Christine Blasey Ford, trauma, and mental health.Readings for the episode: · The Border of Paradise by Esmé Wang  ·  The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Wang (forthcoming) · Esmé Wang's website · “Perdition Days: On Experiencing Psychosis,” by Esme Wang · “The Silence of Sexual Assault in Literature,” by Idra Novey · Ways to Disappear and Those Who Knew, by Idra Novey · “Good Country People,” by Flannery O’Connor · The Recovering by Leslie Jamison Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Freedom, Books, Flowers & the Moon

A weekly culture and ideas podcast brought to you by the Times Literary Supplement.

Rank #1: The Problem We All Still Live With.
With Stig Abell and Lucy Dallas. We are joined by Patricia Williams, to discuss how black girls are silenced, marginalised and abused within American society, an ongoing tragedy with its origins in slavery. Katherine Lewis, the winner of the inaugural TLS/Mick Imlah Poetry Prize, then comes on to read her prize-winning poem, "Memory of An Ocean". For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Rank #2: March on.
With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Paul Collier on the new "hard" pragmatism and the future of capitalism; Michael Chabon discusses his invigorating new novel, Moonglow; Mary Beard on women in academia (the troubles and the triumphs, past and present), and why the Trump inauguration protests were a step in the right direction.Discover more at www.the-tls.co.uk For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Bookworm

Intellectual, accessible, and provocative literary conversations.

Rank #1: Ocean Vuong: On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous.
Ocean Vuong speaks of leaving his thumbprint on his new novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. Alternate modes of storytelling are discussed, as are narratives without intrinsic conflict. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who doesn’t read English; it is about finding joy in innovative and creative survival.

Rank #2: Harold Bloom: The Shadow of a Great Rock: A Literary Appreciation of the King James Bible.
Harold Bloom passed away last week. An admired literary critic who endorsed the Western canon, a long-standing Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University, his absence is a significant cultural loss. Bookworm pays him tribute with an archival interview conducted in his apartment to talk about his book, The Shadow of a Great Rock: A Literary Appreciation of the King James Bible. A discussion officially about the great King James translation of the Old and New Testaments. But when you talk with Harold Bloom, you talk about everything—politics, poetry, teaching, aging, reading and ultimately, respect.Harold Bloom The Shadow of a Great Rock: A Literary Appreciation of the King James Bible

Book Review

Sam Tanenhaus, editor of The New York Times Book Review, discusses this week's issue.

Rank #1: The 10 Best Books of 2016.
Stefan Hertmans talks about "War and Turpentine"; editors at the Book Review talk about the year's best books; and Ian McGuire discusses "The North Water."

Rank #2: Should You Stop Eating Sugar?.
Gary Taubes discusses "The Case Against Sugar," and Anthony Gottlieb talks about a new biography of Casanova.

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

BOOKS ∙ WORKSHOPS ∙ PODCAST

Rank #1: Jesse Ball : How to Set a Fire and Why.
Jesse Ball’s blistering novel tells the story of a teenage girl who has lost everything—and will burn anything. Lucia’s father is dead, her mother in a mental hospital, and now she’s been kicked out of school—again. She makes her way through the world with only a book, a zippo lighter, a pocketful of stolen licorice, […] The post Jesse Ball : How to Set a Fire and Why appeared first on Tin House.

Rank #2: Celeste Ng : Little Fires Everywhere.
“I read Little Fires Everywhere in a single, breathless sitting. With brilliance and beauty, Celeste Ng dissects a microcosm of American society just when we need to see it beneath the microscope:  how do questions of race stack up against the comfort of privilege, and what role does that play in parenting?  Is motherhood a […] The post Celeste Ng : Little Fires Everywhere appeared first on Tin House.

New Books in Literary Studies

Interviews with Scholars of Literature about their New Books

Rank #1: Jeremy Black, "England in the Age of Shakespeare" (Indiana UP, 2019).
Jeremy Black’s impressive new book offers an enormously wide-ranging account of the social, political and religious cultures in which England’s greatest dramatist was formed and found success. England in the Age of Shakespeare (Indiana University Press, 2019) draws together Black’s expansive reading in Shakespeare’s contexts with extensive knowledge of the canon of his plays. Black, a professor of history at Exeter University, reads the plays as evidence of Shakespeare’s interest in his changing world. As an English writer, rooted in the very distinctive theological and liturgical arguments of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Shakespeare offers a moral vision of a turbulent and contradictory world.Crawford Gribben is a professor of history at Queen’s University Belfast. His research interests focus on the history of puritanism and evangelicalism, and he is the author most recently of John Owen and English Puritanism (Oxford University Press, 2016). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rank #2: Kerry Driscoll, "Mark Twain among the Indians and Other Indigenous Peoples" (U California Press, 2018).
Mark Twain among the Indians and Other Indigenous Peoples (University of California Press, 2018; paperback edition, 2019) is the first book-length study of the writer’s evolving views regarding the aboriginal inhabitants of North America and the Southern Hemisphere, and his deeply conflicted representations of them in fiction, newspaper sketches, and speeches. Using a wide range of archival materials—including previously unexamined marginalia in books from Clemens’s personal library—Kerry Driscoll, Editor for the Mark Twain Papers and Project as well as former Professor of English at the University of Saint Joseph, charts the development of the writer’s ethnocentric attitudes about Indians and savagery in relation to the various geographic and social milieus of communities he inhabited at key periods in his life, from antebellum Hannibal, Missouri, and the Sierra Nevada mining camps of the 1860s to the progressive urban enclave of Hartford’s Nook Farm. The book also examines the impact of Clemens’s 1895–96 world lecture tour, when he traveled to Australia and New Zealand and learned firsthand about the dispossession and mistreatment of native peoples under British colonial rule. This groundbreaking work of cultural studies offers fresh readings of canonical texts such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Roughing It, and Following the Equator, as well as a number of Twain’s shorter works.Ryan Tripp is part-time and full-time adjunct history faculty for Los Medanos Community College as well as the College of Online and Continuing Education at Southern New Hampshire University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices