Shows
San ClementeBenjamin Markovits: Finding Purpose, Writing the Family and Intergenerational UnderstandingBenjamin Markovits grew up mostly in Texas. He left an unpromising career as a professional basketball player to study the Romantics – an experience he wrote about in Playing Days, a novel. Since then he has taught high school English, worked at a left-wing cultural magazine, and written essays, stories and reviews for, among other publications, The New York Times, Granta, The Guardian, The London Review of Books and The Paris Review.He has published seven novels, including Either Side of Winter, about a New York private school, and a trilogy on the life of Lord By...2025-05-151h 00
Rippling Pages: Interviews with WritersBonus Content - Benjamin Markovits on Subtexts, Michael Jordan, and family favourites!“It’s my mum’s favourite book that I wrote!”
Benjamin Markovits is here to talk about his new and twelfth novel, THE REST OF OUR LIVES, published by Faber and Faber. Tom Layward has made a pact with himself. After his daughter moves out of college, he’s moving out too. His wife had an affair, and he feels like he owes himself a road trip across America. He takes in the sights, sounds and basketball games of the American heartland and beyond. But he’s deferring some health issues and it seems like it’s only a matter o...2025-04-0309 minRippling Pages: Interviews with WritersBenjamin Markovits on Basketball, Family, and Illness‘The people I like to write about are what I would describe as moderately successful failures.’
Benjamin Markovits is here to talk about his new and twelfth novel, THE REST OF OUR LIVES, published by Faber and Faber.
Tom Layward has made a pact with himself. After his daughter moves out of college, he’s moving out too. His wife had an affair, and he feels like he owes himself a road trip across America. He takes in the sights, sounds and basketball games of the American heartland and beyond. But he’s deferri...2025-03-2033 min
Lit with CharlesBen Markovits, author of "The Rest of Our Lives"In this episode of Lit with Charles, I sit down with Benjamin Markovits to discuss his latest novel, The Rest of Our Lives. This beautifully reflective book follows Tom, a middle-aged father who, after dropping his youngest daughter at college, keeps driving, embarking on an unplanned journey that forces him to confront the unresolved trauma of an affair, a failing marriage, and a mysterious health condition. Blending the themes of a road trip novel, midlife crisis, and personal reckoning, Markovits crafts a story that is much more than the sum of its parts—meditative, intimate, and profoundly moving....2025-02-2443 min
Work FaceLuckpilling the Meritocracy (with Dr. Aaron Rabinowitz)What if most of what we believe about success and failure at work is just a story we made up? What if the core ideas driving modern workplace culture might be making us less effective, less innovative, and a whole lot more anxious?Dr. Aaron Rabinowitz, Ethics Director at the Creator Accountability Network, shares his experience in off-Broadway theater and discusses his dissertation research on “luckpilling,” a radical new way of thinking about success, failure, and who deserves help (spoiler: it’s everyone).(00:00) Who Deserves Help?(01:44) Theater Work and Insecurity(06:03) Workplace Power Dynamics(1...2025-02-0138 min
Layman LowmanThe Draft, Victor Wembenyama, playing against Dirk and is Damian Lillard Tottenham Hotspur?This week James B sits down with former player and award winning author, Benjamin Markovits, to discuss the Draft, its number one prospect Victor Wembenyama, playing against a young Dirk Nowitzki and Ben's latest novel, The Sidekick. Rate and review people, because the temperature is rising. 2023-06-2353 min
The LRB PodcastHow To Win at BasketballAhead of the NBA finals next month, LRB contributor, novelist and former basketball player Benjamin Markovits talks to sports journalists Ben Cohen and Kevin Arnovitz about the role of data in the game. Why did it take teams so long to realise the value of the three-point shot? What's the difference between a 32% shooter and a 37% shooter? And is there anything more exciting in sport than watching Steph Curry’s pre-game warm-up?Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/nbapodSubscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://myl...2022-05-3158 min
The TLS PodcastClarity, Honesty, FluffThis week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Benjamin Markovits, the novelist, critic and teacher of creative writing, to discuss 100 American essays spanning 300-odd years (‘have we got any better at it?’); the sinologist Rana Mitter discusses the supremely difficult, and controversial, job of adapting the Chinese script for the modern age; plus, ‘Edelweiss’, a poignant new poem by Fiona Benson‘The Glorious American Essay: One hundred essays from colonial times to the present’, edited by Phillip Lopate‘Kingdom of Characters: A tale of language, obsession, and genius in modern China’ by Jing Tsu...2022-01-271h 03
Arts & IdeasMid Century ModernPeace, prosperity and formica - that's one way of describing the vision on show at the Festival of Britain in 1951. But domesticity had a radical side and in this Free Thinking conversation, Shahidha Bari talks to researchers Sophie Scott-Brown and Rachele Dini and looks at the domestic appliances selected for display in the newly re-opened Museum of the Home, talking to Director Sonia Solicari about how ideas about home, homelessness and home-making have shaped what is on show.Museum of the Home, previously the Geffrye Museum re-opened on June 12th 2021 https://www.museumofthehome.org.uk/...2021-06-2344 min
ART FICTIONSContemplative Cracks and Lo-Fi Tech (DEAN KENNING)Guest artist DEAN KENNING
joins me to chat about his work via John Maxwell Coetzee's 2013 allegorical novel 'The Childhood of Jesus'. The story revolves around five year old David with his father-by-default Símon, on their quest to find a mother for the boy and a better life for the three of them.
Winner of this year's prestigious Mark Tanner Sculpture Award, Dean Kenning, and I go on to discuss his clunky sculptures, social body-mind maps and his philosophical mish mash 'Metallurgy of the Subject'. We delve into the cracks between the flatness to explore id...2021-05-241h 16
The TLS PodcastBringing Tolstoy downCaryl Emerson on Tolstoy’s art, ideas and life, and the extent to which these came together; Benjamin Markovits returns to a treasured childhood book: The Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook; Eve Babitz – a “fizzy”, “fabulous” chronicler of 1960s and 70s Los Angeles – is mid revival. Megan Marz fills us in.Lives and Deaths: Essential stories by Leo Tolstoy, translated by Boris DralyukLeo Tolstoy: A very short introduction by Liza KnappLeo Tolstoy by Andrei ZorinThe Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Players Handbook by Gary GygaxI Used To Be Char...2020-02-0646 min
Escape Reality Through Your Headphones With Free AudiobookHome Games Audiobook by Benjamin MarkovitsListen to this audiobook in full for free onhttps://hotaudiobook.com/freeID: 390767
Title: Home Games
Author: Benjamin Markovits
Narrator: Kirby Heyborne
Format: Unabridged
Length: 7:44:37
Language: English
Release date: 02-04-20
Publisher: HarperCollins
Genres: Kids, Health & Family, Sports
Summary:
Award-winning adult author Benjamin Markovits delivers a poignant coming-of-age middle grade story that will give comfort to anyone feeling like a small fish in a Texas-size sea. Perfect for fans of Kevin Henkes, Rebecca Stead, and Kate DiCamillo.
Twelve-year-old Ben is a shy, quiet kid. His life isnt perfect, but he feels at home in his New York City apartment. Then his...2020-02-047h 44
Stream Popular Full Audiobooks in Kids, Non-fictionHome Games by Benjamin MarkovitsPlease visithttps://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/390767to listen full audiobooks.
Title: Home Games
Author: Benjamin Markovits
Narrator: Kirby Heyborne
Format: Unabridged Audiobook
Length: 7 hours 44 minutes
Release date: February 4, 2020
Genres: Non-fiction
Publisher's Summary:
Award-winning adult author Benjamin Markovits delivers a poignant coming-of-age middle grade story that will give comfort to anyone feeling like a small fish in a Texas-size sea. Perfect for fans of Kevin Henkes, Rebecca Stead, and Kate DiCamillo. Twelve-year-old Ben is a shy, quiet kid. His life isn’t perfect, but he feels at home in his New York City apartment. Then his dad takes a job in Lo...2020-02-047h 44
Gelf Magazine's Varsity LettersSports Novels Night: A Conversation With Alexander Tilney and Benjamin MarkovitsOn November 7, 2019, two novelists appeared at Gelf Magazine's Varsity Letters at The Gallery at Le Poisson Rouge to read from and talk about their books on squash and tennis. Talking about their work in a conversation with Gelf Magazine co-founder Carl Bialik in this episode: Benjamin Markovits—teacher of creative writing at Royal Holloway, University of London, and author of nine novels, including Playing Days, about his experience playing pro ball in Germany—read from his pair of novels A Weekend in New York and Christmas in Austin, which follow the fortunes of a large family of Te...2019-11-0947 minGelf Magazine's Varsity LettersSports Novels Night: Alexander Tilney and Benjamin MarkovitsOn November 7, 2019, two novelists appeared at Gelf Magazine's Varsity Letters at The Gallery at Le Poisson Rouge to read from and talk about their books on squash and tennis. Reading from their work in this episode: Benjamin Markovits—teacher of creative writing at Royal Holloway, University of London, and author of nine novels, including Playing Days, about his experience playing pro ball in Germany—read from his pair of novels A Weekend in New York and Christmas in Austin, which follow the fortunes of a large family of Texan Jews, including Paul Essinger, a retiring tennis playe...2019-11-0927 min
Thirty Love: Conversations About TennisNovelist Benjamin Markovits On Life After A Professional Tennis CareerNovelist Benjamin Markovits rejoins Thirty Love host Carl Bialik to talk about his two books that touch on tennis: "A Weekend In New York" and its sequel, "Christmas in Austin." On the publication day of his latest book, and after a tennis match with his podcast host, Markovits describes how solitary an athlete's existence can be, whether in career or out, in a team sport or an individual one; how a retired tennis pro in the midst of a breakdown can make a lot of reasonable points; and how a career of competition can into an entire life viewed t...2019-11-0829 min
Get Lost in Stories, While on the Go With Full AudiobookChristmas in Austin Audiobook by Benjamin MarkovitsListen to this audiobook in full for free onhttps://hotaudiobook.com/freeID: 398911
Title: Christmas in Austin
Author: Benjamin Markovits
Narrator: Benjamin Markovits
Format: Unabridged
Length: 12:40:45
Language: English
Release date: 11-07-19
Publisher: Recorded Books
Genres: Fiction & Literature, Literary Fiction
Summary:
A luminous family saga from one of Grantas Best Young British Novelists.
When the four Essinger children gather in Austin for
Christmas, they all bring their news. Nathan wants to become a
federal judge. Susies husband has taken a job in England. Jean has
asked her boyfriend and (once-married) boss to meet her family.
Paul has broken up with Dana...2019-11-0712h 40
Saturday ReviewThe Souvenir, Bait, Appropriate, Mary Beth Keane, A ConfessionTwo Brit indie film productions arrive at once: Joanna Hogg's The Souvenir is a slightly autobiographical work about a struggling young film-maker's relationship with a charismatic drug addict. Also Bait; set in a fishing village in Cornwall and with an intentionally handmade aesthetic, it explores the tense relationship between locals and incomers.
Appropriate at The Donmar Warehouse is a new play from Brandon Jacobs Jenkins. A family in the American south are dealing with the estate of their recently deceased father and unearth some unpleasant truths
Mary Beth Keane's new novel - Ask Again, Yes - is set in...2019-08-3150 minThirty Love: Conversations About TennisNovelist Benjamin Markovits On The Solitary Lives Of Tennis Pros And WritersNovelist Benjamin Markovits joins Thirty Love host Carl Bialik to talk about his two books that touch on tennis: "A Weekend In New York" and its forthcoming sequel, "Christmas in Austin." Markovits explains how his professional basketball career turned him off from team sports, shares his favorites from the tennis memoirs he read to prepare for writing about the game, and reflects on the agony of having a number next to your name that defines your place in your profession and the world. Music by Lee Rosevere. Markovits's website: http://www.benjaminmarkovits.com/2019-07-1829 minArts & IdeasCatch 22, Recycling fashion, Fred D'Aguiar, Wu MaliAnne McElvoy, former Colonel Lincoln Jopp MC & novelist Benjamin Markovits on the new TV Catch-22. Jade Halbert on recycling fashion. Poet Fred D'Aguiar on winning the Cholmondeley Prize and Wu Mali on socially engaged art.Producer: Zahid Warley2019-06-2045 min
Access Unmissable Full Audiobooks in Fiction, Coming of AgePlaying Days: A Novel by Benjamin MarkovitsPlease visithttps://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/368557to listen full audiobooks.
Title: Playing Days: A Novel
Author: Benjamin Markovits
Narrator: Zach Villa
Format: Unabridged Audiobook
Length: 8 hours 34 minutes
Release date: June 18, 2019
Genres: Coming of Age
Publisher's Summary:
Available for the first time in the United States, acclaimed novelist Benjamin Markovits’s Playing Days is a mostly autobiographical narrative concerning the author’s season playing minor league professional basketball in Germany and the love affair with another player’s estranged wife that ushers him into adulthood. Growing up in Texas, Ben experienced basketball as a mostly solitary pursuit, one he gave up after r...2019-06-198h 34
Access Unmissable Full Audiobooks in Fiction, Coming of AgePlaying Days: A Novel by Benjamin MarkovitsPlease visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/368557 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Playing Days: A Novel Author: Benjamin Markovits Narrator: Zach Villa Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 8 hours 34 minutes Release date: June 18, 2019 Genres: Coming of Age Publisher's Summary: Available for the first time in the United States, acclaimed novelist Benjamin Markovits’s Playing Days is a mostly autobiographical narrative concerning the author’s season playing minor league professional basketball in Germany and the love affair with another player’s estranged wife that ushers him into adulthood. Growing up in Texas, Ben experienced basketball as a mostly solitary pursuit, one he gave up afte...2019-06-1905 minEmbrace The Eye-Opening Full Audiobook Now, Thriller Fans!Playing Days: A Novel by Benjamin MarkovitsPlease visithttps://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/368557to listen full audiobooks.
Title: Playing Days: A Novel
Author: Benjamin Markovits
Narrator: Zach Villa
Format: Unabridged Audiobook
Length: 8 hours 34 minutes
Release date: June 18, 2019
Genres: Literary Fiction
Publisher's Summary:
Available for the first time in the United States, acclaimed novelist Benjamin Markovits’s Playing Days is a mostly autobiographical narrative concerning the author’s season playing minor league professional basketball in Germany and the love affair with another player’s estranged wife that ushers him into adulthood. Growing up in Texas, Ben experienced basketball as a mostly solitary pursuit, one he gave up after riding...2019-06-188h 34Find Best-Selling Full Audiobooks in Literature, Literary FictionPlaying Days: A Novel by Benjamin MarkovitsPlease visithttps://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/368557to listen full audiobooks.
Title: Playing Days: A Novel
Author: Benjamin Markovits
Narrator: Zach Villa
Format: Unabridged Audiobook
Length: 8 hours 34 minutes
Release date: June 18, 2019
Genres: Literary Fiction
Publisher's Summary:
Available for the first time in the United States, acclaimed novelist Benjamin Markovits’s Playing Days is a mostly autobiographical narrative concerning the author’s season playing minor league professional basketball in Germany and the love affair with another player’s estranged wife that ushers him into adulthood. Growing up in Texas, Ben experienced basketball as a mostly solitary pursuit, one he gave up after riding...2019-06-188h 34
Escape Reality Through Your Headphones With Free AudiobookPlaying Days: A Novel Audiobook by Benjamin MarkovitsListen to this audiobook in full for free onhttps://hotaudiobook.com/freeID: 368557
Title: Playing Days: A Novel
Author: Benjamin Markovits
Narrator: Zach Villa
Format: Unabridged
Length: 8:34:28
Language: English
Release date: 06-18-19
Publisher: HarperAudio
Genres: Fiction & Literature, Literary Fiction, Coming of Age
Summary:
Available for the first time in the United States, acclaimed novelist Benjamin Markovitss Playing Days is a mostly autobiographical narrative concerning the authors season playing minor league professional basketball in Germany and the love affair with another players estranged wife that ushers him into adulthood.
Growing up in Texas, Ben experienced basketball as a mostly solitary pursuit, o...2019-06-188h 34
VINTAGE BOOKSNine strangers and a natural catastrophe ᛫ Richard PowersLeena Norms talks to Richard Powers - author of twelve novels who lives in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains and is author of the Pulitzer Prize winning literary novel, The Overstory.Follow us on twitter: twitter.com/vintagebooksSign up to our bookish newsletter to hear all about our new releases, see exclusive extracts and win prizes: po.st/vintagenewsletterMusic is Orbiting A Distant Planet by Quantum Jazz http://po.st/OrbitingADistantHe has recently been awarded the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his...2019-06-1637 min
London Review Bookshop PodcastRichard Powers and Benjamin Markovits: The OverstoryRichard Powers, one of America’s greatest novelists, often compared to Pynchon and Roth, read from and talked about his twelfth novel ‘The Overstory’ (Heinemann). Powers has always been remarkable for the seriousness with which he takes science and nature and their intersections with literature, and in ‘The Overstory’, which stretches in time and place from antebellum New York to the Pacific North West timber wars in the late 20th century, he provides us with an arboreal equivalent to Moby Dick, and a book that will permanently change – and for the better – the way you view the world around you. Powers was in...2018-10-1052 min
The TLS PodcastA monster successA recording from the TLS’s 2016 London Lit Weekend at King’s Place, London: 2016 was the 200th anniversary of a dark and stormy night with an extraordinary literary legacy: Frankenstein. Frances Wilson and Benjamin Markovits recount the three days in June, 1816, at the Villa Diodati near Lake Geneva, when a group of young writers – among them Mary Godwin – sheltered from the gloom.Find out more at www.the-tls.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2016-12-3050 min
Spring 2016 | Public lectures and events | Audio and pdfLiterary Festival 2016: We Don't Have to Live Like This: experiments in utopian livingContributor(s): Michael Caines, Benjamin Markovits, Jacqueline Yallop | Why are utopian communities so appealing and are they always doomed to failure? The panel discuss utopian experiments in British history and consider whether utopian living would be possible today. Michael Caines (@michaelscaines) is an Assistant Editor of the Times Literary Supplement. Benjamin Markovits is the author of six previous novels: The Syme Papers, Either Side of Winter, Imposture, A Quiet Adjustment, Playing Days and Childish Loves. He has published essays, stories, poetry and reviews in the Guardian, Granta, The Paris Review and The New York Times, among other publications. In 2013 Granta...2016-02-231h 27Spring 2016 | Public lectures and events | VideoLiterary Festival 2016: We Don't Have to Live Like This: experiments in utopian livingContributor(s): Michael Caines, Benjamin Markovits, Jacqueline Yallop | Why are utopian communities so appealing and are they always doomed to failure? The panel discuss utopian experiments in British history and consider whether utopian living would be possible today. Michael Caines (@michaelscaines) is an Assistant Editor of the Times Literary Supplement. Benjamin Markovits is the author of six previous novels: The Syme Papers, Either Side of Winter, Imposture, A Quiet Adjustment, Playing Days and Childish Loves. He has published essays, stories, poetry and reviews in the Guardian, Granta, The Paris Review and The New York Times, among other publications. In 2013 Granta...2016-02-231h 27
London Review Bookshop PodcastJonathan Lethem: Dissident Gardens'The past is a mosaic; we make it out of present materials.'Jonathan Lethem’s latest book Dissident Gardens (Cape) tells, in a ‘torrent of potent voices, searing ironies, popculture allusions, and tragicomic complexities’ the story of three generations of a radical New York family, at the same time painting a vivid portrait of the American Century. Jonathan Lethem was in conversation with Benjamin Markovits, author of A Quiet Adjustment and named by Granta as one of their Best Young British Novelists of 2013. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2014-01-291h 12
GrantaBen Markovits: The Granta Podcast, Ep. 57Benjamin Markovits is the author of six books: The Syme Papers, Either Side of Winter and Playing Days as well as a trilogy on the life of Lord Byron — Imposture, A Quiet Adjustment, and Childish Loves. He is also the only Granta Best of Young Novelists who is known to be able to dunk. In this podcast with Yuka Igarashi, he discusses his time playing minor-league basketball for a team in southern Germany, and the ways in which this and his other experiences inform his work as a writer. He also talks about his new novel, extracted in the is...2013-05-2130 min
London Review Bookshop PodcastDaniel Kehlmann and Benjamin Markovits - World Literature Weekend 2011Novelists Daniel Kehlmann and Benjamin Markovits share interests in their work in biography, genius and failure, charisma and the question of how to give voice to real historical figures but have differences too; both make fuel for a very interesting conversation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2011-06-191h 14