David Naimon - Podcast Details

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One Bright BookBonus Episode #3: In Conversation with David NaimonThis third bonus episode of the podcast is a conversation that Rebecca and Frances recently had with writer and podcaster, David Naimon, while Dorian recharges his depleted battery in the wilds of Canada. We are devoted listeners to David's fine work on Between the Covers, and as you listen in here, we feel confident that you will appreciate the intelligence, the generosity, and the empathy that makes his work irresistible to us. You might also be interested in: David's Crafting With Ursula series: https://tinhouse.com/th_podcast_cat/crafting-with-ursula/ 2024-07-111h 00

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryNam Le : 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese PoemOver the past fifteen years, Nam Le has published a book in each genre. Best known for his phenomenal 2009 debut story collection The Boat, he followed it with his 2019 debut nonfiction On David Malouf, and now, this year, his debut poetry collection 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem. What is remarkable about these three books, is how, in a way, they are three different strategies aimed at the same goal—how to avoid the flatness and fixity of representation of identity, how to create enough elbow room, to push back against the assumptions, presumptions and expectations that come with on...2024-03-172h 24

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryCrafting with Ursula: Neil Gaiman on Word Magic & The Power of Telling StoriesWho better to talk about the unique power of telling stories than one of our great contemporary storytellers, Neil Gaiman? One deep way Neil Gaiman and Ursula K. Le Guin are kindred spirits is how they both share an abiding interest in the strange, uncanny relationship between truth and fiction, truth and myth, the imagination and the real, the fantastic and reality, and the ways we seem hardwired, from childhood onward, to be adept at finding the enduring truths within stories that others have “made up.” Today’s conversation, as the final one in the Crafting with Ursula series, serves...2022-12-101h 39

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryMorgan Talty : Night of the Living RezMorgan Talty’s collection of linked short stories is set on the Penobscot Reservation on Indian Island in Maine. But Morgan is quick to point out that these stories are not Penobscot stories in so far as they do not ‘represent’ the Penobscot people, that even people who are praising the book are often falling into this trope of “exoticized foreknowledge.” As we talk about his acclaimed debut fiction collection, we talk about this term (coined by David Treuer), about the problematic ways people often come to literature written by Native Americans, and the ways Talty himself subverts these expectatio...2022-08-202h 08

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryCrafting with Ursula : Isaac Yuen on Writing Nature & Nature WritingToday’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 using human language for a human readership? Looking closely at three of Le Guin’s short fictions, “The Direction of the Road,” “Bones of the Earth,” and “The Author of the Acacia Seeds and Other Extracts from the Journal of Therolinguistics,” Isaac and David discus...2022-03-101h 37

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryPádraig Ó Tuama : In the Shelter & Borders and BelongingIrish 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, open to encounter and transformation? How can certain stories, in contrast, be a means to bring people with deep grievances to the table, to move them toward recognition and repair? How does poetry, like prayer, orient us toward something beyond ourselves, beyond our meaning...2021-09-102h 32

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryArthur Sze : The Glass Constellation : New & Collected PoemsArthur 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 poet and person across time, but also what animating questions, despite all the changes, have endured. They also step forward and look closely at questions of selfhood in relationship to poetry, how one decenters the controlling self when writing (and to what end), the pl...2021-07-012h 19

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryAnakana Schofield : BinaToday’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 literature either dissolve a genre or invent one”). We talk about form as content, form as momentum (as a way to move story forward instead of plot), and form that both creates and reveals character. We also talk about Bina the protagonist, about the invi...2021-06-162h 30

Keep the Channel OpenKTCO Book Club - Human Archipelago (with David Naimon)In the inaugural KTCO Book Club episode I’m joined by writer and podcaster David Naimon, host of the literary podcast Between the Covers. For our conversation, David selected Teju Cole and Fazal Sheikh’s hybrid photo/prose book Human Archipelago. In their collaboration, Cole’s writing and Sheikh’s images support each other in a way that expands the form of the traditional photobook and provides a potent exploration of human migration, national boundaries, imperialism, the connections between people, and our responsibilities to one another. (Recorded September 2, 2020.) Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | RadioPublic | Stitcher | Spotify | Tun...2020-09-231h 15

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryTin House Live : Revision Panel with R.O. Kwon, Karen Shepard, Danielle Evans, Jamel Brinkley“Finding the Life of the Story: Vision & Revision” was recorded at the 2019 Tin House Summer Writers Workshop. Panelists Karen Shepard, Danielle Evans, R.O. Kwon and Jamel Brinkley talk strategies to draft and revise. Moderated by David Naimon, host of Between the Covers. The post Tin House Live : Revision Panel with R.O. Kwon, Karen Shepard, Danielle Evans, Jamel Brinkley appeared first on Tin House. 2019-09-2548 min

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryMattilda Bernstein Sycamore : Sketchtasy“Sycamore paints an unsparing and unsentimental portrait of survival in a homophobic era, and her writing is beyond beautiful. Sketchtasy is a powerful firecracker of a novel; it’s not just one of the best books of the year, it’s an instant classic of queer literature.”—Michael Schaub, NPR BooksThe post Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore : Sketchtasy appeared first on Tin House. 2019-02-121h 49

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryAlicia Jo Rabins : Fruit Geode “How does a body do what it does: make love, mistakes, create life, exist after life; how does a body evolve, celebrate, regret, reconsider its big and small moments: these are the passionate concerns of Alicia Rabins’ Fruit Geode, a book that I could not stop reading once I started, a book that drew me in with intimacy and force and then grabbed my heart hard, which is to say, if you have a body, this book is a must read.”—Lynn Melnick The post Alicia Jo Rabins : Fruit Geode appeared first on Tin House. 2019-02-011h 39

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryGenevieve Hudson : Pretend We Live Here“A terrific collection of stories. There are echoes here of Flannery O’Connor, Barry Hannah, and Denis Johnson, but Genevieve Hudson is her own writer—impressively and gloriously so. Her eye for the clinching detail is unnerving and her sympathies are fascinatingly conflicted. I hope, and suspect, this book will be the start of a long and inspiring career.” —Tom Bissell “Full of blood and dust and stars and light, Hudson captures the beauty and horror of the everyday and makes it all seem like magic.” —Leah DieterichThe post Genevieve Hudson : Pretend We Live Here appeared first on Tin Hou 2019-01-131h 32

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryJeffrey Yang : Hey Marfa“Yang rebuilds for the reader a town that is notable for its many stark contrasts: restored & ruined buildings, wealth & poverty, international art & border enforcement. Hey, Marfa makes a remarkable poetic accounting of the ways imagination is currently working with & against the histories & myths of the US/Mexico borderlands & the American West.”―Tim Johnson “Hey, Marfa a commonplace book, memoir, & hybrid obituary for things: following a trail of ‘last words’ & communal losses, here is a History learning to listen with eyes & Mourning recovering the dead travelers on the road. Hey, Marfa transmits voltage or vitalized matter as words reach to wor...2019-01-021h 38

Keep the Channel OpenDavid NaimonDavid Naimon is a writer and the host of the literature podcast Between the Covers, one of my absolute favorite podcasts. On his show, David brings a deep curiosity and impressive intellect to every conversation, making for some of the most engaging and in-depth interviews I’ve ever heard. In our conversation, David and I talked about the similarities and differences between our two shows, about the craft of interviewing, as well as about his own writing. Then in the second segment, David asked the question, is there a way for us as a society to change the way we...2018-12-1957 min

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryChaya Bhuvaneswar : White Dancing Elephants“Bhuvaneswar is unflinching about the lives of those for whom identity is a constant battle & the act of being is an unavoidable challenge, but she doesn’t ignore the beauty in their strength . . . White Dancing Elephants is a necessary book — & one that introduces a gifted voice to contemporary literature.”―NPR “White Dancing Elephants is a searing & complex collection, wholly realized, each piece curled around its own beating heart. Tender & incisive, Chaya Bhuvaneswar is a surgeon on the page, unflinching in her aim, unwavering in her gaze, & absolutely devastating in her prose. This is an astonishing debut.”―Amelia Gray The p...2018-12-171h 50

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryLayli Long Soldier : Whereas“Long Soldier reminds readers of their physical and linguistic bodies as they are returned to language through their mouths and eyes and tongues across the fields of her poems.”—Natalie Diaz for The New York Times Book Review “Layli Long Soldier’s movement between collective and personal makes this book intimate and urgent. She has charted new ways to write in what’s left out—and not merely in the margins either. WHEREAS offers a powerful reckoning.”—National Book Critics Circle Award judges’ citation The post Layli Long Soldier : Whereas appeared first on Tin House. 2018-12-021h 53

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryDiane Williams: The Collected Stories of Diane Williams“Williams’s short precise, & emphatic sentences build a strange society whose denizens are not quite familiar to us & not quite comfortable with their own quietly disturbing evolutions. Not a single moment of the prose here is what you expect, & even the ordinary is, in the context created by Diane Williams, no longer ordinary. It is fresh, happy & peculiar — or is it we who are refreshed, happy, & more peculiar than before after reading her?”—Lydia Davis “Let’s hear it for the magnificent Diane Williams, one of the wittiest & most exacting writers of our time. Her fictions are fervid endorse...2018-11-141h 14

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryR.O. Kwon : The Incendiaries“Every explosive requires a fuse. That’s R. O. Kwon’s novel, a straight, slow-burning fuse. To read her novel is to follow an inexorable flame coming closer & closer to the object it will detonate—the characters, the crime, the story, &, ultimately, the reader.”—Viet Thanh Nguyen “Kwon’s multi-faceted narrative portrays America’s dark, radical strain, exploring the lure of fundamentalism, our ability to be manipulated, and what can happen when we’re willing to do anything for a cause.” —Atlantic.com “A God-haunted, willful, strange book written with a kind of savage elegance. I’ve said it before, but no...2018-11-011h 11

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryTommy Pico : Junk“Reading Tommy Pico’s Junk I kept thinking of Heather McHugh’s pronouncement that the main discipline of poetry is “to keep finding life strange.” Pico is the master of making the stone stony, or returning the sheer absurdity of being to everything, from grief to intimacy to dating apps to donuts. Junk insists on the urgency of the quotidian, of, to borrow a phrase from Pico, ‘vibrant inconsequence.’ It’s rare to read a book that makes living feel so alive.”—Kaveh Akbar “A visceral exorcism of personal & collective demons . . . Pico demonstrates that a person’s many selves, traumas, an...2018-10-141h 19

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryDubravka Ugrešić : Fox & American FictionaryDubravka Ugrešić is considered one of Europe’s most distinctive novelists and essayists. She is the 2016 winner of Neustadt International Prize for Literature for her body of work, joining literary luminaries from Gabriel Garcia Marquez to Elizabeth Bishop to Octavio Paz. In 1991 when war broke out in the former Yugoslavia, Ugrešić took a firm antiwar stance, critically dissecting retrograde Croatian and Serbian nationalism, the stupidity and criminality of war, and becoming a target for nationalist journalists, politicians, and fellow writers in the process. Subjected to prolonged public ostracism and persistent media harassment, she has lived in exile since 1...2018-10-011h 45

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryAnna Moschovakis : Eleanor or The Rejection of the Progress of Love“Anna Moschovakis takes the reader straight to the terrifying edge: that moment where one ages out of youthfulness & begins to flutter in the debris of middle living, flattened out by technology, wild-goose chasing one’s data. Yet, the deeper we look into Eleanor’s unsettledness, the more we see & the more hope we find in her rhizomic wandering. This is a beautiful slow burn of a novel.” —Renee Gladman “By turns funny, melancholic, & provocative, Anna’s novel undoes & remakes the conventions of realist fiction through repetition & compression of time . . . It is ‘luminously ordinary’ in its progression, where profound shifts are...2018-09-241h 51

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryDao Strom : You Will Always Be Someone From Somewhere ElseIn Dao Strom’s collection of poetic fragments, You Will Always Be Someone From Somewhere Else, translated by Ly Thuy Nguyen as Mình sẽ luôn là người nọ đến từ nơi nọ, the fragments are wholly filled—with text: English, Vietnamese, drifting, entwined, dense, vanishing—with space: empty, white, solid, black—with images: cropped, multiplied, sliced, erased—& with punctuation: plus, minus, inequality signs, slashes, brackets, & bullet points imbued with as much meaning as entire novels. “After you depart from the cinema of her sea, you may ask, what or who is she? . . . why is she able to dismantle my sou...2018-08-221h 55

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryCatherine Lacey : Certain American States“Lacey captures with eerie precision the strangeness of being a person in the world, living alongside other human beings with unknowable thoughts and feelings . . . Reading Lacey’s fiction feels like walking through a dark apartment in someone’s mind, full of winding hallways and unmarked doors. You never know quite where you are or where you’ll end up. Like the work of Clarice Lispector or Rachel Cusk, Lacey seems to be on the verge of inventing a new genre somewhere between prose poem and fugue state.”—Los Angeles Times The post Catherine Lacey : Certain American States appeared fir...2018-08-071h 29

LA Review of BooksThe Science of Fiction: David Naimon on Ursula K Le GuinThis week's podcast is an homage to Ursula K Le Guin from her final collaborator. David Naimon joins co-hosts Kate Wolf, Medaya Ocher, and Eric Newman and explains the backstory to his new book, Ursula K Le Guin: Conversations on Writing, a collection of dialogues with the legendary author from Naimon's literary podcast, Between the Covers. Le Guin died unexpectedly before Naimon had completed the project; thus, her mortality did not hang over the proceedings. Still, Naimon, a master interviewer, elicited reflections on the breadth of her work and thinking. In this conversation, he paints a resonant portrait of Le...2018-07-2033 min

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryForrest Gander : Be With“Forrest Gander’s life partner, the poet C.D. Wright, died suddenly a little more than two years ago, and this book is one result or record of the aftermath of that loss. In poems that are utterly naked and bereft, elegies, apologies, could-have-beens, Gander grieves and wonders about what’s left in his life. There is so much pain in this book—perhaps too much, almost too much—but what is poetry for if not for this? And there’s more life in one of these dark words than in most entire books. Reading this book may hurt, but it will...2018-07-191h 25

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryChelsea Hodson : Tonight I’m Someone Else“Hodson’s essays have such a sexy drama to them—and ultimately it’s the romance of just getting through life; the passion that comes from being a wholly alert woman and living to tell about it. I had a real romance with this book.”—Miranda July “Chelsea Hodson tests herself against her desires, grapples with their consequences, and presents a surgically precise account of what they were to her. These essays are bewitching—despite their discipline and rigor, you can smell the blood.”—Sarah Manguso “A unique collection about being an artist and a woman in a world that...2018-07-061h 26

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryMolly Crabapple : Brothers of the Gun – A Memoir of the Syrian War“From the anarchy, torment, and despair of the Syrian war, Marwan Hisham and Molly Crabapple have drawn a book of startling emotional power and intellectual depth. Many books will be written on the war’s exhaustive devastation of bodies and souls, and the defiant resistance of many trapped men and women, but the Mahabharata of the Levant has already found its wisest chroniclers.”—Pankaj Mishra “A revelatory and necessary read on one of the most destructive wars of our time . . . In great personal detail, Marwan Hisham and Molly Crabapple poignantly capture the tumultuous life in Syria before, after, and...2018-06-121h 37

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetrySheila Heti : Motherhood“This book is going to change how we think about life and women forever; like ancient Greek philosopher level of describing reality in a way that creates it. So, go or don’t go, read the book or don’t—either way your life will be changed by this thinker. I’m being serious here.”—Miranda July “This inquiry into the modern woman’s moral, social and psychological relationship to procreation is an illumination, a provocation, and a response—finally—to the new norms of femininity, formulated from the deepest reaches of female intellectual authority. It is unlike anything else I...2018-06-011h 28

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryAzareen Van Der Vliet Oloomi : Call Me Zebra“Not many authors are compared to Borges, Cervantes, and Kathy Acker all in one breath, but that is exactly what we’re dealing with here: Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi is a twisted, twisty genius.”—Nylon Magazine “Van der Vliet Oloomi captures the shattered identity of the refugee and the immigrant, the way that literature becomes a lifeline in exile: a movable home, a network of dissent, a genealogy beyond national borders.”—Los Angeles Review of Books “Hearken ye fellow misfits, migrants, outcasts, squint-eyed bibliophiles, library-haunters and book stall-stalkers: Here is a novel for you.”—The Wall Street Jour...2018-05-151h 37

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryJen Bervin : Silk Poems“Jen Bervin’s work—all of it—engages the eye, the hand, the ear, and the mind. Her artistry is vast and inclusive, by finesse and intelligence, by curiosity, forbearance, and vision. She knows the unexpected wonder of pattern is everywhere and that the smallest detail contains enough energy to spawn a universe. I think they should send her into space, if it were not for the fact her work has already sent us there. Her poems in themselves, those exhilirated fragments, are the purest form of the art itself—they contain the innate inner gradients of whatever takes our breath...2018-05-011h 33

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryCheston Knapp : Up Up Down Down“Cheston Knapp’s Up Up, Down Down has the uncanny, welcome ability to make so-called mainstream or dominant culture—white, masculinist, Christian, frat boy, & so on—appear newly strange, & newly open to analysis. He has the eye & ear of an anthropologist, a joyously expansive vocabulary, a prose style that feels both extravagant & exact, & a big, booming heart.”—Maggie Nelson “This book made me laugh out loud in embarrassing places—a quiet Swedish train, a darkened redeye flight—& its insights will keep echoing in me for a long time.”—Leslie Jamison The post Cheston Knapp : Up Up Down Down appeared f 2018-04-101h 38

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryJohn Keene : Counternarratives, Playland, and Grind“In Counternarratives, John Keene undertakes a kind of literary counterarchaeology, a series of fictions that challenge our notion of what constitutes ‘real’ or ‘accurate’ history. His writing is at turns playful and erudite, lyric and coldly diagnostic, but always completely absorbing. Counternarratives could easily be compared to Borges or Bolaño, Calvino or Kiš.”—Jess Row “Keene’s story collection is truly radical—in its politics, in its stylistic restlessness, in its rethinking of the myths we tell ourselves about race and sexuality in the history of the Americas.”—Anthony Domestico The post John Keene : Counternarratives, Playlan...2018-04-011h 37

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryVi Khi Nao : Umbilical Hospital & A Brief Alphabet of Torture“These pieces are elaborate piecework—perforated, whip stitched, and distressed field-dressed dissections of language. Tortured? Maybe. But lusciously junked & juxtaposed, turned inside out & every which way but . . . No, in every way they make way.”—Michael Martone “Imagine an entity composed of sheep, wheat, assholes, clitorises, stars. Why not? That would be this poem, this world—a perfectly recognizable post-human world which is also post surreal. Vi Khi Nao is making it new, no, she is doing the old job of making us see what’s already here in a new way.”—Rae Armantrout The post Vi Khi Nao : Umbili...2018-03-111h 48

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryMicheline Aharonian Marcom : The Brick HouseMicheline Aharonian Marcom’s The Brick House is a place where people dream of love and loneliness, of the world’s beauty, and of ongoing environmental degradation. Travelers confront their lives in the strange, elemental language which dreams allow for, a strangeness mirrored in the accompanying illustrations by Fowzia Karimi. Inspired by Calvino’s Invisible Cities and Kawabata’s House of Sleeping Beauties, and following in the tradition of Armenian illuminated manuscripts, The Brick House is in Rikki Ducornet’s words “Fierce, fearlessly erotic and always unforeseeable.” The post Micheline Aharonian Marcom : The Brick House appeared first on Tin House. 2018-03-011h 36

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryTerese Marie Mailhot : Heart Berries“Heart Berries by Terese Mailhot is an astounding memoir in essays. Here is a wound. Here is need, naked and unapologetic. Here is a mountain woman, towering in words great and small . . . What Mailhot has accomplished in this exquisite book is brilliance both raw and refined.” ―Roxane Gay “If Heart Berries is any indication, the work to come will not just surface suppressed stories; it might give birth to new forms.”—The New York Times The post Terese Marie Mailhot : Heart Berries appeared first on Tin House. 2018-02-131h 21

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryCarmen Maria Machado : Her Body and Other Parties“Cross-pollinating fairy tales, horror movies, TV shows, & a terrific sense of humor, Machado’s work reminds me at different times of such wildly divergent figures as David Lynch, Jane Campion, Maggie Nelson, & Grace Paley; which is a way of saying, Machado sounds like nobody but herself.”—John Powers, NPR “Fresh Air” “The book abounds with fantastical premises that ring true because the intensity of sexual desire, the mutability of the body, & the realities of gender inequality make them so. These stories stand as exquisitely rendered, poignant hauntings.”—San Francisco Chronicle The post Carmen Maria Machado : Her Body and Other...2018-02-011h 28

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryEunsong Kim : Gospel of Regicide“In Gospel of Regicide, Eunsong Kim develops a thrilling method for unwriting lyric even as she reimagines it, creating a socially engaged poetry of & for our time. Anticapitalist, feminist & anti-racist yet critical of non-intersectional understandings of identity & selfhood, she is unafraid of drawing the sacred from the pedestrian, & unbeholden to whiteness as foundation. These poems, mutable in form & style, yet cohesive in their vision, suggest a complex & different order allowing us to ‘complete the story.’ Kim kills the king, & blesses us with a superlative collection as a result.”—John Keene The post Eunsong Kim : Gospel of Regicide...2018-01-141h 43

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryLeni Zumas : Red Clocks“Leni Zumas here proves she can do almost anything. Her tale feels part Melvillian, part Lydia Davis, part Octavia Butler—but really Zumas’s vision is entirely her own. Red Clocks is funny, mordant, political, poetic, alarming, and inspiring—not to mention a way forward for fiction now.”—Maggie Nelson “Move over Atwood, Leni Zumas’s Red Clocks is a gender roaring tour de force. The bodies of women in Red Clocks are each the site of resistance and revolution. I screamed out loud. I pumped my fist in the air. And I remembered how hope is forged from the...2018-01-051h 20

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryDavid Biespiel : The Education of a Young Poet“Biespiel’s supple memoir of becoming a poet will surely inspire other writers to embrace the bodily character of writing & feel the power &, sometimes, the emptiness of the act of writing poetry.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review “Whether he is writing about poetry, politics, competitive diving, or the glories of great conversation, Biespiel’s recurring subject is the tension between freedom & discipline―between the sublime release of our own wildness & the precision that comes only from exquisite self-control. Part memoir, part ars poetica, The Education of a Young Poet is a feast: of language, of memory, & of insights into how one youn...2017-12-011h 38

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryRae Armantrout : Partly – New & Selected Poems“For nearly 40 years Armantrout has made a poetics of not finding the right words–of finding, in fact, the ‘wrong’ ones . . . Armantrout restores the strangeness of experiences we take for granted.”—Michael Robbins, Chicago Tribune “Hoopskirts, star jasmine, synchronized swimming, Russian icons, a ceramic fish face, electrons & photons: in these poems, everything is interconnected, thought through, deeply felt & expressed in the most precise and necessary words. Armantrout is one of our most inventive & magnetic poets, & she never disappoints: with inspired patience, she embraces the strangeness of our familiar world & refashions it into something new & utterly transporting.”—Lydia Davis The p...2017-11-011h 17

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryEileen Myles : Afterglow“What is a dog if not god? In Afterglow, Eileen Myles steps up to the challenge for writers to function as prophets. Ghostwritten in part by deceased pit bull Rosie, this ‘dog memoir’ explores—among other things—geometry, gender, mortality, evil, aging, and plaids. Myles makes new rules for what prose writing can be. Afterglow is Myles’s funniest, profoundest work yet.”—Chris Kraus “Only Eileen Myles could reinvent the memoir again so stunningly; Afterglow is the sort of multidimensional love story you could only expect from one of our greatest experimental writers living today!”—Porochista Khakpour The post Eileen...2017-10-191h 27

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryCeleste 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 bond forged by blood, or by love? And perhaps most importantly: do the faults of our past determine what we deserve in the future? Be ready to be wowed by Ng’s writing—and unsettled by the mirror held up to one’s own beliefs.”—Jod...2017-10-051h 11

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryPeter Rock : Spells“Spells is a fascinating hybrid text, not simply illustrated by a collection of photographs but created in response to them, a collaboration between Peter Rock and five photographers. The result is a novel unlike any I’ve read before, that weaves elements of realism, fable, prose poetry, and essay through the supporting structure of images to create something beautiful and unsettling.”—Cari Luna “Rock’s prose calls to mind Kazuo Ishiguro, not just for its spareness but also for its mix of wonder and creepiness.”—New York Times The post Peter Rock : Spells appeared first on Tin House.2017-09-211h 24

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetrySafiya Sinclair : Cannibal“Sinclair crafts her stunning debut collection around the beauty & brutality of the word cannibal, whose origins derive from Columbus’s belief that the Carib people consumed human flesh. Attacking this dehumanizing judgment born from white entitlement & denouncing the idea that blackness is synonymous with savagery, Sinclair ponders such questions as, How does a poet get inside the head of Shakespeare’s Caliban? How would Caliban define blackness without the filter of a white man’s bias? . . . Through her visceral language Sinclair paints the institution of white supremacy as not just an individualized phenomenon, but as a ruthless & menacing force.”—Publisher’s...2017-09-101h 21

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryMatthew Zapruder : Why PoetryIn Why Poetry, award-winning poet, translator, and editor, Matthew Zapruder argues that the way we have been taught to read poetry is the very thing that prevents us from enjoying it. Anchored in poetic analysis & steered by Zapruder’s personal experience of coming to the form, Why Poetry is engaging & conversational, even as it makes a passionate argument for the necessity of poetry in an age when information is constantly being mistaken for knowledge. He takes on what it is that poetry—and poetry alone—can do. Most important, he asks how reading poetry can help us to lead our live...2017-08-211h 30

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryYanara Friedland : Uncountry“As a descendent of Chantal Akerman and Unica Zürn—among others—Yanara Friedland reimagines the origin myth. Friedland’s permeable pages allow the reader entryway into a ‘mirror [that] becomes an open door,’ a door through which we hear the echo of Ana Mendieta telling us ‘There is no original past to redeem: there is the void.’ Uncountry is an invitation to that void, and Friedland serves as dream guide through this blend of the personal, political, and stunningly poetic”—Lily Hoang Uncountry: a Mythology is winner of the Noemi Press Fiction Prize The post Yanara Friedland...2017-08-071h 25

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryMary Ruefle : My Private Property“Mary Ruefle’s careful, measured sentences sound as if they were written by a thousand-year-old person who is still genuinely curious about the world . . . She combines imagistic techniques from surrealism with narrative techniques to create surprising, high-velocity, and deeply affecting work.”—The Stranger “Mary Ruefle is, in this humble bookseller’s opinion, the best prose-writing poet in America. (And one of our best poets, too.) My Private Property, her latest collection of stories, essays, and asides, is as joyous and singular a book as you’ll read.”—Stephen Sparks, Literary Hub The post Mary Ruefle : My Private Propert...2017-07-221h 13

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryYuri Herrera : Kingdom ConsIn the court of the King, everyone knows their place. But as the Artist wins hearts & egos with his ballads, uncomfortable truths emerge that shake the Kingdom to its core. Part surreal fable & part crime romance, this prize-winning novel from Yuri Herrera questions the price of keeping your integrity in a world ruled by patronage & power. “A powerful & memorable meditation on the social & economic value of art in a world ruled by the pursuit of power.”—Publisher’s Weekly “Yuri Herrera must be a 1000 years old. He must’ve traveled to hell, & heaven, & back again. He must’ve on...2017-07-111h 17

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryGregory Pardlo : Digest“[Gregory Pardlo] explores what is American, what is African American, what is the Other, what is city, what is suburban, what is personal & what is persona. Digest offers a changing, rich landscape of verse both haunting, funny, & rigorously intellectual—Jerry Magazine “[Pardlo] renders history just as clearly & palpably as he renders NYC or Copenhagen or his native New Jersey. But mostly what he renders is America with its intractable conundrums & clashing iconographies. With lines that balance poise & a jam-packed visceral music & images that glimmer & seethe together like a conflagration these poems are a showcase for Pardlo’s ample...2017-06-261h 31

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryDani Shapiro : HourglassWhat are the forces that shape our most elemental bonds? How do we make lifelong commitments in the face of identities that are continuously shifting, and commit ourselves when the self is so often in flux? What happens to love in the face of the unexpected, in the face of disappointment and compromise—how do we wrest beauty from imperfection, find grace in the ordinary, desire what we have rather than what we lack? Drawing on literature, poetry, philosophy, and theology, Shapiro writes gloriously of the joys and challenges of matrimonial life, in a luminous narrative that unfurls with ur...2017-06-071h 31

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryJeff Vandermeer : Borne“Here is the story about biotech that VanderMeer wants to tell, a vision of the nonhuman not as one fixed thing, one fixed destiny, but as either peaceful or catastrophic, by our side or out on a rampage as our behavior dictates—for these are our children, born of us and now to be borne in whatever shape or mess we have created. This coming-of-age story signals that eco-fiction has come of age as well: wilder, more reckless and more breathtaking than previously thought, a wager and a promise that what emerges from the twenty-first century will be as good...2017-05-231h 09

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryThalia Field : Experimental Animals“Thalia Field has now composed what very well might be her life’s work—a tragic, comical, & utterly fascinating tale of a marriage that vividly encapsulates not only the origins of experimental medicine, but an entire age that spirited experiments in literature, science, engineering, film, etc. It’s nothing less than a history—gorgeously fictional, purposefully essayistic–of how we got where we are.”—John D’Agata “Stemming from a through-line of marital discord in the household of the great French vivisector Claude Bernard . . . this compelling tale is made up largely of excerpts and quotations . . . a beautiful and thought-provokin...2017-05-021h 18

Healthwatch with Dr. David Naimon: Interviews with experts in Natural Medicine, Nutrition, and the Politics of HealthThe Case Against Sugar with Gary Taubes (Part Two)The Case Against Sugar with Gary Taubes (Part Two) Health and science writer Gary Taubes returns to Healthwatch to continue his conversation with host Dr. David Naimon. In Part Two Taubes discusses how the effects of sugar consumption are passed … Continue reading →2017-05-0228 min

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetrySallie Tisdale : Violation“That Sallie Tisdale’s a treasure comes as no secret to lovers of the essay, and yet this happy gathering that spans the decades is revelatory, a fascinating look at the epic wanderings of a life mapped by curiosity. Here we get elephants and houseflies, diets and fires, birth and the debris of death, all the mixed and messy vitality of family life. We travel far and we travel wide, but in the end we circle home to Tisdale herself, vulnerable and available, intimate and encouraging, our guide and our friend, her questioning presence lighting the way and celebrating it a...2017-04-191h 15

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryMorgan Parker : There Are More Beautiful Things Than BeyoncéMorgan Parker uses political & pop-cultural references as a framework to explore 21st century black American womanhood & its complexities: performance, depression, isolation, exoticism, racism, femininity & politics. Parker explores this in the contemporary American political climate, folding in references from jazz standards, visual art, personal family history, & Hip Hop. The voice of this book is a multifarious one: writing & rewriting bodies, stories, & histories of the past, as well as uttering & bearing witness to the truth of the present; actively probing toward a new self, an actualized self. This is a book at the intersections of mythology & sorrow, of vulnerability & posturing, of...2017-03-291h 10

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryMelissa Febos : Abandon Me“Abandon Me is, in many ways, a story about how a woman’s body & the body of literature hold memory. In other ways, Abandon Me is a story about stories. Febos weaves familial stories, feminist stories, communal stories, literary stories & love stories, revealing much of where she’s been & where we, her readers, might go if we dare. Do we dare? Are we all running away from abandonment? It makes sense that Abandon Me feels completely structurally innovative. Febos has created 21st century text that intimately explores addiction, pain, pleasure & the strangely joyful & terrifying nuances of abandonment. I don’t know th...2017-03-151h 20

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryUrsula K. Le Guin : Words Are My Matter“Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society & its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, & even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom—poets, visionaries—realists of a larger reality. . .” Words Are My Matter collects talks, essays, intros to beloved books, & book reviews by Ursula K. Le Guin, one of our foremost public literary intellectuals. It is essential reading, & through the lens of deep considerations of contemporary writing, a way of exploring the world we a...2017-02-141h 13

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetrySusan DeFreitas : Hot SeasonAn outlaw activist on the run. A pipeline set to destroy a river. And 3 young women who must decide who to love, who to trust, & what to sacrifice for the greater good. Based in part on real events in the Northwest & Southwest in the early 90s & mid-aughts, Hot Season explores what Oregon Book Award Winner Cari Luna calls “the charged terrain where the youthful search for identity meets the romantic, illicit lure of direct action.” “Is it worse to destroy a dam or to destroy a river? Which is to say, how do we live our conscience on a c...2017-01-181h 26

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetrySolmaz Sharif : LookIn this virtuosic array of poems, lists, shards, & sequences, Sharif assembles fragmented narratives in the aftermath of war. Those repercussions echo in the present day, the grief for those killed in America’s invasions of Afghanistan & Iraq, the discriminations endured at the checkpoints of daily encounter. At the same time, these poems point to ways violence is conducted against language, employing words lifted from the Department of Defense Dictionary of Military & Associated Terms. Sharif exposes euphemisms deployed to sterilize language, control its effects, & sway our collective resolve, but refuses to accept this terminology as given, instead turning it back on...2017-01-041h 01

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetrySofia Samatar : The Winged Histories“If you love stories but distrust them, if you love language & can also see how it is used as a tool or a weapon in the maintenance of status quo, then read The Winged Histories.”—Marion Deeds, Fantasy Literature “Told by four different women, it is a story of war; not epic battles of good & evil, but the attempt to make things right & the realities of violence wielded by one human against another, by one group against another. It’s about the aftermath of war, in which some things are better but others are worse. Above all, it’s a sto...2016-12-131h 02

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryTyehimba Jess : Olio“This 21st century hymnal of black evolutionary poetry, this almanac, this theatrical melange of miraculous meta-memory. Tyehimba Jess is inventive, prophetic, wondrous. He writes unflinchingly into the historical clefs of blackface, black sound, human sensibility. After the last poem is read we have no idea how long we’ve been on our knees.”—Nikky Finney “Olio is one of the most inventive, intensive poetic undertakings of the past decade . . . The result is a work both historical and musical, scholarly and sculptural.”—Boston Globe The post Tyehimba Jess : Olio appeared first on Tin House. 2016-11-161h 16

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryEliot Weinberger : The Ghosts of BirdsA new collection from “one of the world’s great essayists” (The New York Times), The Ghosts of Birds offers 35 new essays by Eliot Weinberger. He chronicles a 19th century journey down the Colorado River, records the dreams of people named Chang, & shares other factually verifiable discoveries that seem too fabulous to possibly be true. These essays include his notorious review of George W. Bush’s memoir, Decision Points, writings about the I Ching, & the history of American Indophilia (“There is a line, however jagged, from pseudo-Hinduism to Malcolm X”). This collection proves once again that Weinberger is “one of the bravest a...2016-11-021h 04

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryKeith Lee Morris : Travelers Rest“It won’t take long—a page, maybe two—before you feel wondrously disquieted by Keith Lee Morris’s Travelers Rest. The novel traps its characters in the town of Good Night, Idaho, and the reader in its shaken snow globe of a world. The language dazzles and the circumstances chill and put this story in the good company of Stephen King’s The Shining, Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks. This is a breakout book that will earn Morris the wide readership he richly deserves.”―Benjamin Percy The post Keith Lee Morri...2016-01-2042 min

Healthwatch with Dr. David Naimon: Interviews with experts in Natural Medicine, Nutrition, and the Politics of HealthThe Hidden Half of Nature by David Montgomery & Anne BikléPrepare to set aside what you think you know about yourself and microbes. Good health–for people and for plants–depends on Earth’s smallest creatures. The Hidden Half of Nature tells the story of our tangled relationship with microbes and their potential … Continue reading →2015-11-0227 min

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryDavid Biespiel : A Long High WhistleLibrary Journal calls David Biespiel’s A Long High Whistle one of the best books about reading poetry you will ever find. Biespiel is a poet, editor, essayist, critic, and teacher, and also the writer of the longest-running newspaper column on poetry in the United States. A Long High Whistle discusses the work of nearly a hundred poets from ancient times to the present, in English and in translation. This collection will provide anyone, from the beginning poet to the mature writer to the lover of literature, with insights into what inspires poets, how poems are written and read, and...2015-08-191h 18

Healthwatch with Dr. David Naimon: Interviews with experts in Natural Medicine, Nutrition, and the Politics of HealthThe Anti-Cancer Diet with Dr. David KhayatWhy can Europeans eat red meat and not increase their risk of cancer, and not Americans? Why is salmon a problematic fish for a cancer prevention diet? Why should we be drinking pomegranite juice of all things? Learn the latest … Continue reading →2015-05-1827 min

Healthwatch with Dr. David Naimon: Interviews with experts in Natural Medicine, Nutrition, and the Politics of HealthBrain Maker with Dr. David PerlmutterOver the past few decades the medical world has made great strides in treating heart disease, diabetes and even some forms of cancer but the same cannot be said for brain-related disorders. We don’t have meaningful treatments for all-too-common neurological … Continue reading →2015-05-1122 min

Healthwatch with Dr. David Naimon: Interviews with experts in Natural Medicine, Nutrition, and the Politics of HealthEbola: The Natural & Human History with David QuammenIn 1976 a deadly virus emerged from the Congo forest. As swiftly as it came, it disappeared, leaving no trace. Over the four decades since, Ebola has emerged sporadically, each time to devastating effect. It can kill up to 90 … Continue reading →2014-12-0826 min

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryDavid Mitchell : The Bone Clocks“No one, clearly, has ever told Mitchell that the novel is dead. He writes with a furious intensity and slapped-awake vitality, with a delight in language and all the rabbit holes of experience . . . In his sixth novel, he’s brought together the time-capsule density of his eyes-wide-open adventure in traditional realism with the death-defying ambitions of Cloud Atlas until all borders between pubby England and the machinations of the undead begin to blur . . . Not many novelists could take on plausible Aboriginal speech, imagine a world after climate change has ravaged it, and wonder whether whales suffer from unrequited love . . . Very...2014-10-0146 min

Healthwatch with Dr. David Naimon: Interviews with experts in Natural Medicine, Nutrition, and the Politics of HealthUnstuck with Dr. James S. GordonHost Dr. David Naimon interviews Dr. James S. Gordon about his book “Unstuck: Your Guide to the Seven-Stage Journey Out of Depression” Heralded by holistic doctors from Andrew Weil to Dean Ornish to Christine Northrup, Unstuck is a practical guide … Continue reading →2014-09-2229 min

Healthwatch with Dr. David Naimon: Interviews with experts in Natural Medicine, Nutrition, and the Politics of HealthGuide to the Great Beyond with Jane BrodyHost David Naimon interviews New York Times health columnist Jane Brody about her new book “Jane Brody’s Guide to the Great Beyond,” a practical primer to help people prepare medically, legally and emotionally for the end of life. Jane Brody … Continue reading →2014-05-1929 min

Healthwatch with Dr. David Naimon: Interviews with experts in Natural Medicine, Nutrition, and the Politics of HealthGrain Brain with Dr. David PerlmutterNeurologist Dr. David Perlmutter is a leader in the field of nutritional influences on neurological disorders. Today on Healthwatch he discusses his latest book Grain Brain: The Surprising Truth About Wheat, Carbs and Sugar. Learn about the latest research on … Continue reading →2013-09-1526 min

Healthwatch with Dr. David Naimon: Interviews with experts in Natural Medicine, Nutrition, and the Politics of HealthTreatment Alternatives for Children with Dr. Lawrence RosenParents concerned about the side effects of commonly used over-the-counter and prescription medicines are in search of safe and effective natural treatment alternatives. Host Dr. David Naimon talks with leading integrative pediatrician Lawrence Rosen, MD about his book, co-authored with … Continue reading →2013-09-0129 min

Healthwatch with Dr. David Naimon: Interviews with experts in Natural Medicine, Nutrition, and the Politics of HealthNatural Home Remedies with Dr. Ed GibbsOne of the few practitioners in Oregon licensed in naturopathic medicine, Chinese medicine and chiropractic medicine, Dr. Ed Gibbs talks with host Dr. David Naimon about natural home remedies, the herbs, foods, supplements and home care techniques you can use … Continue reading →2013-08-0626 min

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryNoViolet Bulawayo : We Need New NamesBorn and raised in Zimbabwe, NoViolet Bulawayo earned her MFA at Cornell University where she was the recipient of the Truman Capote fellowship. In 2011 she won the biggest literary prize in Africa, the Caine Prize for African Writing for her short story “Hitting Budapest,” first published in the Boston Review. Bulawayo talks with Between The Covers host, David Naimon, about her debut novel, We Need New Names, a powerful story of emigration and immigration during Zimbabwe’s Lost Decade. The post NoViolet Bulawayo : We Need New Names appeared first on Tin House. 2013-06-2728 min

Healthwatch with Dr. David Naimon: Interviews with experts in Natural Medicine, Nutrition, and the Politics of HealthThe Book of Woe with Gary GreenbergDr. David Naimon talks with author and psychotherapist Gary Greenberg about his latest book, The Book of Woe, an insider’s challenge to psychiatry’s scientific pretensions. “Gary Greenberg has become the Dante of our psychiatric age, and the DSM-5 is his … Continue reading →2013-06-1028 min

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryLenore Zion : Stupid ChildrenHost David Naimon talks with Lenore Zion about her debut novel Stupid Children, a book Thomas Michael Duncan of Necessary Fiction calls “a bildungsroman of twisted proportions told with startling clarity through the filter of a smart, psychoanalytic perspective. No character is safe from Zion’s unapologetic examinations. She bestows her protagonist with an open mind, a sharp intellect, and a sweltering imagination—all of the requisite ingredients for a disturbing, fascinating novel.” The post Lenore Zion : Stupid Children appeared first on Tin House. 2013-05-3026 min

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryBenjamin Percy : Red MoonThey live among us.  They are your neighbor, your mother, your lover.  They change. Every teenage girl thinks she’s different. When government agents kick down Claire Forrester’s front door and murder her parents, Claire realizes just how different she is. Patrick Gamble was nothing special until the day he got on a plane and hours later stepped off it, the only passenger left alive, a hero. President Chase Williams has sworn to protect the people of the United States from the menace in their midst but is becoming the very thing he has pr...2013-05-1528 min

Healthwatch with Dr. David Naimon: Interviews with experts in Natural Medicine, Nutrition, and the Politics of HealthThe Art of Fermentation with Sandor KatzDr. Naimon talks with Sandor Katz about his do-it-yourself guide to home fermentation. Katz contextualizes fermentation in terms of biological and cultural evolution, health and nutrition, and even economics. Michael Pollan, in the foreword, describes The Art of Fermentation this … Continue reading →2013-05-1330 min

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryKaren Russell : Vampires in the Lemon GroveKaren Russell is one of today’s most celebrated and vital writers—honored in the New Yorker’s list of the twenty best writers under the age of forty, Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists, and the National Book Foundation’s five best writers under the age of thirty-five. Last year, Karen Russell was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction (along with David Foster Wallace and Denis Johnson) for her debut novel, Swamplandia! Now Russell is back with a magical new collection of stories, Vampires in the Lemon Grove, that showcases her gifts at their inimitable best. The post...2013-04-2431 min

Healthwatch with Dr. David Naimon: Interviews with experts in Natural Medicine, Nutrition, and the Politics of HealthUlcerative Colitis & Crohn’s, Holistic Approaches with Dr. Gary WeinerToday’s guest, Dr. Gary Weiner, is a naturopathic physician, licensed acupuncturist, and founder of Pearl Natural Health in downtown Portland. He joins host Dr. David Naimon to discuss natural approaches to the inflammatory bowel diseases–ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease–as well … Continue reading →2013-02-2627 min

Healthwatch with Dr. David Naimon: Interviews with experts in Natural Medicine, Nutrition, and the Politics of HealthIn Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto with Michael Pollan (Classic–aired 2008)For 25 years, Michael Pollan has been writing books and articles about the places where nature and culture intersect: on our plates, in our farms and gardens, and in the built environment. In today’s episode host David Naimon talks with … Continue reading →2013-02-1941 min

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryChris Kraus : Summer of HateWriter, filmmaker and art critic Chris Kraus talks with host David Naimon about her latest book, Summer of Hate. Her other books include the novels I Love Dick, hailed by Rick Moody as one of the literary highpoints of the past two decades, Aliens & Anorexia, and Torpor. She is also the author of the essay collections Video Green and Where Art Belongs, and is a frequent contributor to Artforum, Bookforum, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. “Chris Kraus cuts a new and insatiably clever line in this explosive new work, breaking down big themes like art writing, romanc...2012-11-3027 min

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryAlexis Smith : GlaciersPortland author Alexis Smith talks with host David Naimon about Glaciers, her debut novel from Tin House books. Glaciers follows Isabel through a day in her life, in which work with damaged books in the basement of a library, unrequited love for the former soldier who fixes her computer, and dreams of the perfect vintage dress move over a backdrop of deteriorating urban architecture and the imminent loss of the glaciers she knew as a young girl in Alaska. Glaciers was a Publishers Weekly pick of the week, received its coveted starred review, and was selected by IndieBound.org for the...2012-11-1528 min

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryJess Walter : Beautiful RuinsHost David Naimon talks with Jess Walter about his sixth novel, Beautiful Ruins, a deeply human rollercoaster of a novel, spanning fifty years and nearly as many lives. Walter is also the author of the national bestseller The Financial Lives of the Poets, the National Book Award finalist The Zero, the Edgar Award-winning Citizen Vince, Land of the Blind, and the New York Times Notable Book Over Tumbled Graves. He lives in Spokane, Washington with his family. “A blockbuster, with romance, majesty, comedy, smarts, and a cast of thousands. There’s lights, there’s camera, there’s action. If you wan...2012-10-2529 min

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryJunot Diaz : This Is How You Lose HerHost David Naimon speaks with Junot Diaz, who the New Yorker calls one of the top 20 writers for the 21st century. He’s the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, a Creative Writing professor at MIT, the Fiction Editor at the Boston Review, and a founding member of Voices of Our Nations Arts Writing Workshop, which focuses on writers of color. In 2010, he was the first Latino to be appointed to the board of jurors for the Pulitzer Prize. Junot Diaz is here today to talk about his new short story collection This...2012-09-2734 min

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetrySheila Heti : How Should A Person Be?Is How Should a Person Be? a novel, a memoir, a self-help manual, or a book of philosophy? It is all of these things and more. Host David Naimon talks with Sheila Heti about her new book, which Bookforum dubs “a raw, startling, genre-defying novel of friends, sex, and love in the new millennium—a compulsive read that’s like spending a day with your new best friend.” Canadian writer Sheila Heti is the author of five books, all very different in form and style. She has written a collection of modern fables entitled The Middle Stories, a historical n...2012-08-3127 min

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryKaren Thompson Walker : The Age of MiraclesOn a seemingly ordinary Saturday in a California suburb, Julia and her family awake to discover, along with the rest of the world, that the rotation of the earth has suddenly begun to slow. The days and nights grow longer and longer, gravity is affected, and the environment is thrown into disarray. Yet as she struggles to navigate an ever-shifting landscape, Julia is also coping with the normal disasters of everyday life—the fissures in her parents’ marriage, the loss of old friends, the hopeful anguish of first love, the bizarre behavior of her grandfather who, convinced of a gove...2012-07-1427 min

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryVanessa Veselka : ZazenA war has either started or is about to; bombs are going off in the city, but people seem strangely disengaged. Della’s activist friends seem more concerned about the next sex party or the finer points of vegan ideology, and customers at the vegan café where she works talk of leaving the country for a life of escape and eco-tourism. But Della feels compelled to stay as the bombs inch closer, even though she isn’t quite sure how to engage or what exactly to fight for. This is the world of Zazen. Today’s guest is Portl...2012-06-2229 min

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryAdam Levin : Hot PinkAdam Levin’s debut novel, The Instructions, published by McSweeney’s in 2010, arrived with a lot of buzz. An inventive, experimental book of over 1000 pages, its protagonist was Gurion ben-Judah Maccabee, a 10-year-old genius from Chicago, who may or may not be the Jewish Messiah. Levin’s short stories have appeared in Tin House, McSweeney’s, and Esquire. He was the winner of the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award and the 2004 Joyce Carol Oates Fiction Prize, among others. He lives in Chicago, where he teaches Creative Writing at the School of the Art Institute and talks today, with...2012-06-1429 min

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryJon Raymond : Rain DragonHost David Naimon talks with Portland author, Jon Raymond, about his new novel Rain Dragon. Raymond is the author of the novel The Half-Life, and the short story collection Livability, which won the Oregon Book Award and contained two stories that became the critically acclaimed movies Old Joy and Wendy & Lucy. Jon Raymond was also the screenwriter for the film Meek’s Cutoff and for the HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce, starring Kate Winslet. Rain Dragon follows a couple who leave the rat race in L.A. to work on an organic farm in Oregon. “Raymond expertly captures the emotions of pe...2012-05-2429 min

Healthwatch with Dr. David Naimon: Interviews with experts in Natural Medicine, Nutrition, and the Politics of HealthNational Geographic Guide to Medicinal Herbs–Dr. Tieraona Low DogDr. Tieraona Low Dog, a medical doctor with a background as an herbalist and midwife, discusses her book The National Geographic Guide to Medicinal Herbs: The World’s Most Effective Healing Plants with Dr. Naimon.2012-05-0828 min

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryBen Marcus : The Flame AlphabetWhat if the words your children spoke to you actually made you sick? Physically sick. And what if the children themselves relished in this newfound power over their parents? This is the setting of Ben Marcus’ new dystopian novel The Flame Alphabet. Ben Marcus is Chair of Creative Writing at Columbia University and the author of three previous books of fiction. “Echoes of Ballard’s insanely sane narrators, echoes of Kafka’s terrible gift for metaphor, echoes of David Lynch, William Burroughs, Robert Walser, Bruno Schulz, and Mary Shelley: a world of echoes and re-echoes—I mean our world—out...2012-03-0125 min

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryColson Whitehead : Zone OneHost David Naimon speaks with award-winning writer Colson Whitehead about his new novel Zone One, described as a “wry take on the post-apocalyptic horror novel.” The world has been devastated by a plague. There are two types of survivors: the uninfected and the infected, the living and the living dead. Colson Whitehead is the author of the novels The Intuitionist, John Henry Days, Apex Hides the Hurt, and Sag Harbor. He has also written a book of about his hometown, a collection of essays called The Colossus of New York. His work has appeared in the New York Times...2011-12-2921 min

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryJustin Torres : We The AnimalsHost David Naimon interviews debut novelist Justin Torres. His book, We the Animals, has been heralded for its beautiful, concentrated prose. NPR likened it to a diamond, brilliant and brilliantly compressed. Esquire called it a “knock to the head that will leave your mouth agape.” Justin Torres is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, with work in the New Yorker, Harper’s, Granta, Tin House, and Glimmer Train. Currently, he serves as the Wallace Stegner fellow at Stanford University. The post Justin Torres : We The Animals appeared first on Tin House. 2011-11-0325 min

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryChina Miéville : EmbassytownScience fiction and fantasy writer China Miéville has won nearly every award in the genre and has caught the attention of mainstream publications from the New York Times to the Guardian with the depth of his imagination and the height of his erudition. David Naimon interviews him about his new, much anticipated book, Embassytown. “Embassytown is a fully achieved work of art . . . Works on every level, providing compulsive narrative, splendid intellectual rigor and risk, moral sophistication, fine verbal fireworks and sideshows, and even the old-fashioned satisfaction of watching a protagonist become more of a person than she g...2011-07-2128 min

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryScott Sparling : Wire to WireHost David Naimon interviews Portland writer Scott Sparling about his debut novel, Wire to Wire, from Tin House Books. A pick of the week by Publisher’s Weekly, they call Wire to Wire, “well-crafted and thrilling, tying together an obvious love for both Michigan and railroads with an expert sense of timing and plot. The world he has created is both overwhelming and exhilarating, thanks in no small part to a large ensemble of memorable characters and a relentless pace. Indeed, hardly a page goes by without some sort of fantastic calamity throwing Slater and company into further turmoil—when the most...2011-06-3028 min

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryAnthony Doerr : Memory WallHost David Naimon speaks with writer Anthony Doerr about his latest book, Memory Wall. Doerr is the author of three other books: The Shell Collector, About Grace, and Four Seasons in Rome. Doerr’s short fiction has won three O. Henry Prizes and has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories, The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, and The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Fiction. He has won the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize, the Rome Prize, the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEA Fellowship, the National Magazine Award for Fiction, two Pushcar...2011-01-1326 min

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & PoetryNicole Krauss : Great HouseHost David Naimon speaks with Nicole Krauss about her newest novel Great House, which tells a story haunted by questions: What do we pass on to our children? How do they absorb our dreams and losses? How do we respond to disappearance, destruction, and change? Great House was a finalist for the National Book Award for fiction this year. Nicole Krauss is also the author of the international bestseller The History of Love, which won the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, France’s Prix du Meilleur Livre Ėtranger, was named #1 book of the year by Amazon.com, and...2010-12-1425 min