Between The Covers : Conversations With Writers In Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

Today’s guest on Crafting with Ursula, the award-winning writer of science fiction, fantasy, and historical fiction Karen Joy Fowler, was a longstanding friend of Ursula K. Le Guin. And they both shared a deep interest not only in science, but also in raising questions about the biases deeply embedded in the way we conduct it […] The post Crafting with Ursula : Karen Joy Fowler on Experimental Women, Animals, Science & Story appeared first on Tin House.

Sheila Heti returns to Between the Covers to discuss her latest unclassifiable novel Pure Colour. When something happens in your life that upends everything you thought you knew, that changes what you notice and value, something that is hard, if not impossible, to put into language, that mystifies you even now, how do you find […] The post Sheila Heti : Pure Colour appeared first on Tin House.

Today’s guest is Chilean novelist, essayist, literary critic, and poet Alejandro Zambra, talking about his latest novel Chilean Poet, a novel brimming over with, yes, Chilean poets and poems, but also with love and laughter, artistic dreams and failures, and the desire to find language for things deeply felt that have no name. This conversation, […] The post Alejandro Zambra : Chilean Poet appeared first on Tin House.

Today’s “Crafting with Ursula,” a conversation with nature writer Isaac Yuen, explores Le Guin’s writing of the nonhuman other in her fiction. Why might we consider decentering the human within our stories and how do we do so? How does one evoke a truly alien intelligence (i.e. that of a plant or an insect) but […] The post Crafting with Ursula : Isaac Yuen on Writing Nature & Nature Writing appeared first on Tin House.

It’s been five years since Solmaz Sharif’s first appearance on Between the Covers, for her National Book Award–finalist debut collection Look. Since then, many listeners have pointed to this conversation as one of the most memorable episodes to date. Solmaz returns today to discuss her much-anticipated follow-up, Customs. We talk about belonging, exile and language, about what […] The post Solmaz Sharif : Customs appeared first on Tin House.

Writer and performance artist Gabrielle Civil talks about her latest book the déjà vu: black dreams & black time, as well as her chapbook ( ghost gestures ), chosen by Bhanu Kapil for the Gold Line Press Nonfiction prize. What does Civil mean by “Black time” and how does she enact this in the déjà […] The post Gabrielle Civil : the déjà vu appeared first on Tin House.

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 well as feminist Westerns, has a particular insight into the work and writing life of Le Guin. Gloss’ writing career began as a student of Le Guin’s in a workshop in the […] The post Crafting with Ursula : Molly Gloss on Writing the Clear, Clean Line appeared first on Tin House.

Writer, critic, performer, & visual artist James Hannaham talks about his latest and most uncategorizable book Pilot Impostor. This book slips between the borders of prose and poetry, fiction and nonfiction, image and text, facts and fake news, selfhood and persona, pretending and privilege. And Pilot Impostor comes into being piece by piece through an engagement […] The post James Hannaham : Pilot Impostor appeared first on Tin House.

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 tourist-volunteers involved with helping the arriving Syrian refugees. Interestingly, the writer, one suspiciously similar to Rabih himself, is a secondary character in this novel, a character who asks Mina, […] The post Rabih Alameddine : The Wrong End of the Telescope appeared first on Tin House.

Today’s guest, Becky Chambers, discusses her own work, and her own considerations when imagining alien cultures and the beings that inhabit them. She does this in light of Le Guin’s novel The Left Hand of Darkness and Le Guin’s short story, “Coming of Age in Karhide,” written by Le Guin 25 years later, but within […] The post Crafting with Ursula : Becky Chambers on Creating Aliens & Alien Cultures appeared first on Tin House.

Poet Victoria Chang talks about her latest and most uncategorizable book Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief. A book composed largely of essay-like letters, Dear Memory also contains collages by Victoria, created from the artifacts (mementos, documents, photographs) found in her family’s storage locker, and short poems which she places among the images. […] The post Victoria Chang : Dear Memory appeared first on Tin House.

Today’s guest, Mexican poet, painter, and translator Valerie Mejer Caso talks about her latest book, the bilingual publication of poetry, collage, and photography Edinburgh Notebook, translated by Michelle Gil-Montero for Action Books. What does it mean to write something both autobiographical and surreal, both dream-like and real? How can questions of selfhood and identity (the […] The post Valerie Mejer Caso : Edinburgh Notebook appeared first on Tin House.

British poet, educator, and writer Raymond Antrobus has two poetry collections out this year. The US release of his award-winning debut The Perseverance and his follow-up, just out now, All The Names Given. We discuss both books in relation to Antrobus’ own particular deaf poetics. What questions do his poems raise about audience and accessibility, […] The post Raymond Antrobus : All The Names Given & The Perseverance appeared first on Tin House.

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 trade there, this book is not a crime novel, or if it is, it is like no crime novel you’ve read before. Keeping the House is a book, by Cin’s […] The post Tice Cin : Keeping the House appeared first on Tin House.

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 poetry practitioners and innovators over the course of the last half century. We speak about her latest collection, The Nick of Time, through the lens of the themes, questions, and […] The post Rosmarie Waldrop : The Nick of Time appeared first on Tin House.

Today’s guest, Percival Everett, author of twenty-one novels, four short story collections, six collections of poetry and a children’s book, has also been a horse and mule trainer, a jazz guitarist, a fly fisherman, a rehabilitator of mandolins, and an abstract painter. He is, however, best known for his “gleefully unhinged” (New York Times) hard-to-categorize […] The post Percival Everett : The Trees appeared first on Tin House.

Haitian-Canadian-American writer Myriam Chancy is an acclaimed novelist but she is also a literary scholar who studies, among other things, storytelling. As a scholar instrumental in inaugurating Haitian women’s studies as a contemporary field of specialization, and one who has argued that much of Haitian women’s literature should be viewed through the lens of the […] The post Myriam J. A. Chancy : What Storm, What Thunder appeared first on Tin House.

“Negotiating the Love and Renouncing the Rest,” today’s Tin House Live conversation between poets Destiny O. Birdsong & Donika Kelly, was recorded at the 2021 Tin House Summer Writers Workshop. Among many other things, they ask what it would mean to center yourself in your own work, in your own story. How would that look, […] The post Tin House Live : Negotiating the Love and Renouncing the Rest with Destiny O. Birdsong and Donika Kelly appeared first on Tin House.

Irish theologian, storyteller, poet, conflict mediator, and host of the podcast Poetry Unbound Pádraig Ó Tuama joins David to discuss the role of both narrative storytelling and poetry in relationship to encountering ‘the other.’ How can the stories we tell about ourselves prevent us from seeing who we are, from being open to accountability and change, […] The post Pádraig Ó Tuama : In the Shelter & Borders and Belonging appeared first on Tin House.

The latest book by Palestinian novelist Adania Shibli, Minor Detail, was a finalist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature, and longlisted for the International Booker Prize. Shibli talks about what it means that she doesn’t write about Palestine but rather from Palestine. And why for her, as a writer, so many of the […] The post Adania Shibli : Minor Detail appeared first on Tin House.