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

Originally delivered at the 2021 Tin House Summer Writers Workshop, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore’s electrifying talk “Writing On Your Own Terms” explores what it means to write against the canonical imperative, to write against the world as it is, to instead write on your own terms, toward community, and specifically toward the community of people who […] The post Tin House Live : Writing On Your Own Terms with Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore appeared first on Tin House.

Today’s guest, poet Kaveh Akbar, discusses his latest poetry collection Pilgrim Bell. Given that Akbar once suggested that syntax was identity, how do the changes in Akbar’s own poetry, from his first collection to now, reflect changes in himself as a person? Akbar talks about the ways in which poetry can be a spiritual technology, […] The post Kaveh Akbar : Pilgrim Bell appeared first on Tin House.

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 have one transformation.” Angus talks about trans narratives, both the ones most commonly seen in the culture at large, and his notion of transness, not as a journey between two static […] The post Callum Angus : A Natural History of Transition appeared first on Tin House.

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 Jeanty) Fodder. Throughout Kearney’s career he has engaged with the tension between the stage and the page, the eye and the ear, the word and the body, all as a means to […] The post Douglas Kearney : Sho appeared first on Tin House.

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: New and Collected Poems. Together they step back to take in a half century of Arthur’s work, not only how it has changed and why, tracking the growth of a […] The post Arthur Sze : The Glass Constellation : New & Collected Poems appeared first on Tin House.

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 Year. Bina was also shortlisted for the 2020 Goldsmith Prize, awarded to fiction that pushes the boundaries of form (in the spirit of  Walter Benjamin who said “All great works of […] The post Anakana Schofield : Bina appeared first on Tin House.

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 debut that has captured the imaginations (and all the awards) in Ireland and the UK and is just out now in North America. A Ghost in the […] The post Doireann Ní Ghríofa : A Ghost in the Throat & To Star the Dark appeared first on Tin House.

Today’s guest, Moroccan writer and filmmaker Abdellah Taïa discusses his most recent novel A Country For Dying translated by Emma Ramadan and winner of the 2021 PEN Translation Award. We talk about voice in relation to self, story in relation to truth, writing in one’s second language, particularly a language imposed by colonization, about making that […] The post Abdellah Taïa : A Country For Dying appeared first on Tin House.

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 Washuta’s body of work, and White Magic is no exception, is deeply engaged with form, particularly in relationship to the telling of our own true stories. How do we find […] The post Elissa Washuta : White Magic appeared first on Tin House.

Writer, poet, and painter Rikki Ducornet returns to Between the Covers to discuss her latest novel Trafik which is her first foray into science fiction. Ducornet’s body of work—surrealist, alchemical, gnostic, metamorphic—is sparked by the wonder and mystery of dreams, as well as by the shared company of the non-human other, the eels and butterflies […] The post Rikki Ducornet : Trafik appeared first on Tin House.

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—Sea Change, Place, and Fast—confronts our accelerating trajectory toward climate disaster. But as Lidija Haas says for Harper’s Magazine, Graham “in her poems remakes a world you can inhabit, one in […] The post Jorie Graham : Runaway appeared first on Tin House.

Today’s Between the Covers conversation with Brandon Hobson is about his novel The Removed, his first book since his National Book Award finalist, Where the Dead Sit Talking. The Removed places us with the Echota family fifteen years after the death of their son Ray-Ray at the hands of the police, and in the long shadow […] The post Brandon Hobson : The Removed appeared first on Tin House.

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 Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Sympathizer. The second book in this trilogy finds our protagonist in the French Vietnamese community of Paris in the 1980s. We talk about the differences between France and the […] The post Viet Thanh Nguyen : The Committed appeared first on Tin House.

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 a mere few seconds of the basketball career of Julius Erving (aka Dr. J). Be Holding is a finalist for this year’s PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, given to a work “which […] The post Ross Gay : Be Holding appeared first on Tin House.

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 lens through which to look at his entire career, from his novels to his essay collection, from his collaborative work of image-text to the curation of his Spotify playlists. “Who is a stranger? Who […] The post Teju Cole : Fernweh appeared first on Tin House.

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 Books) as a lens and a frame, we discuss the difference between Afrofuturism and Africanfuturism, questions of hybrid identity and home within her stories, her use of Nigerian, Namibian, and Ghanian cosmologies […] The post Nnedi Okorafor : Remote Control appeared first on Tin House.

Vanessa Veselka returns to Between the Covers, eight years after her first appearance, to discuss her new novel The Great Offshore Grounds. Longlisted for this year’s National Book Award in Fiction, Roxane Gay calls The Great Offshore Grounds epic, original, and “utterly engrossing.” Lidia Yuknavitch adds: “This novel is thrilling in its content, daring in […] The post Vanessa Veselka : The Great Offshore Grounds appeared first on Tin House.

This Tin House Live conversation between Leni Zumas and Janice Lee, “Publishing, Power Structures, and Creative Practice,” was recorded at the summer 2020 Tin House Writers Workshop. Leni Zumas is the author most recently of the novel Red Clocks, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and winner of the Oregon Book Award for […] The post Tin House Live : Publishing, Power Structures & Creative Practice with Leni Zumas & Janice Lee appeared first on Tin House.

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 two’ does not entirely depend upon part one, but it does refer back to it with frequency.  So if you would like to get the fullest experience begin here. […] The post Natalie Diaz : Postcolonial Love Poem : Part Two appeared first on Tin House.

Today’s episode of Between the Covers is a conversation with poet and classicist Alice Oswald. Widely considered one of our great living poets, Oswald is the 46th professor of poetry at the University of Oxford, and the first woman to hold the poetry chair in its over three centuries of existence. Perhaps best known for Memorial, […] The post Alice Oswald : Nobody appeared first on Tin House.