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

Today’s guest is writer and critic Martha Anne Toll. Through a discussion of her latest novel Duet for One we explore the perennial mystery of writing and art-making, namely how to render something that lives beyond representation, and how words can become a vehicle to evoke what words themselves cannot adequately describe. In this case, we look at how to bring music into language, the experience of making it and hearing it into the realm of words. We explore Martha’s lifelong journey toward becoming a writer, through music and law and social justice, ultimately debuting as a novelist in her sixties. And how her mentorship as a musician affected and shaped her writing life, from craft and form to failure and perseverance. If you enjoyed today’s conversation consider joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter. Find out about all the rewards and benefits of doing so at the show’s Patreon page [http://patreon.com/betweenthecovers]. Finally here is the BookShop [https://bookshop.org/lists/books-from-martha-anne-toll-conversation] for today’s episode. The post Martha Anne Toll : Duet for One [https://tinhouse.com/podcast/martha-anne-toll-duet-for-one/] appeared first on Tin House [https://tinhouse.com].

Today’s conversation with Rob Macaisa Colgate is about two books, his poetry collection Hardly Creatures and his verse drama My Love is Water. You could say these two books are approaching the same questions, but from opposite, if complementary vantage points. Questions of care and disability, of accessibility and community, of Filipino-American identity and the afterlives of colonialism, of queerness and its intersections with race, of selfhood in relation to psychiatric medications, of cross-species solidarity, of questions of language and form, freedom and love and much more. We explore a Crip Mad Poetics and Disability theory in relation to the syntax of the sentence, the body of the poem, and in relation to the world-at-large. For the bonus audio Rob walks us through how he uses Google spreadsheets as a compositional tool. Reading down several rows of poetry drafts, cell by cell—cells full of recognizable lines of poetry, spontaneous asides, open questions, screenshots and more—he shows us how this process leads to the published poems we hear today. This joins an immense and ever-growing archive of bonus material, with contributions from everyone from Johanna Hedva and adrienne maree brown, to Layli Long Soldier and Victoria Chang. You can learn how to subscribe and about the other potential benefits and rewards of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter at the show’s Patreon page [http://patreon.com/betweenthecovers]. Finally, here is the BookShop [https://bookshop.org/lists/books-from-rob-macaisa-colgate-conversation] for today’s conversation. The post Rob Macaisa Colgate : Hardly Creatures & My Love is Water [https://tinhouse.com/podcast/rob-macaisa-colgate-hardly-creatures-my-love-is-water/] appeared first on Tin House [https://tinhouse.com].

Don’t miss today’s conversation with Robert Macfarlane. A polyvocal deep dive into the mysteries of words and rivers, of speech acts as spells, whorls as worlds, of grammars of animacy, of what it means to river, and to be rivered. From the Epic of Gilgamesh to Virginia Woolf’s wave in the mind to Ursula K. Le Guin’s fellow feeling to Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s notion of theory as embodied and  kinetic, we look at the role of the imagination, language and the body in reorienting ourselves to a world alive with us beholden to it. And we look to the water defenders and language revivers as part of together dreaming an otherwise. The bonus audio archive contains many contributions from people mentioned today, from Alice Oswald to Natalie Diaz to Jorie Graham to Richard Powers. To learn more about how to subscribe to the supplementary material, and about all the potential benefits and rewards of joining the Between the Covers community, head over to the show’s Patreon page [http://patreon.com/betweenthecovers]. Finally, here is the BookShop [https://bookshop.org/lists/books-from-robert-macfarlane-conversation] for today’s conversation. The post Robert Macfarlane : Is a River Alive? [https://tinhouse.com/podcast/robert-macfarlane-is-a-river-alive/] appeared first on Tin House [https://tinhouse.com].

With the arrival of Ancestors, the third and final book in adrienne maree brown’s Grievers Trilogy, we take the iconic frames she has created in her nonfiction work—emergent strategy, pleasure activism, fractal responsibility, loving corrections and more—and look at how they are dramatized within this fictional near-future Detroit. Much as the three books do themselves, one to the next, we look at questions of care and solidarity at three different scales—the individual, the interpersonal, and the collective—and we explore how they relate to each other fractally, both within this imagined world, and within our own. We conjure the work and thought of everyone from Ursula K. Le Guin to Octavia Butler, Grace Lee Boggs to Saul Williams, Toni Morrison to Toni Cade Bambara, as we explore everything from the allure and dangers of utopias, to how to knit oneself into a larger collective as part of dreaming an otherwise. adrienne’s first appearance on the show was for the 2022 series Crafting with Ursula [https://tinhouse.com/podcast/crafting-with-ursula-adrienne-maree-brown-on-social-justice-science-fiction/], where we looked at questions of social justice and science fiction in adrienne’s work alongside that of Ursula K. Le Guin. For the bonus audio archive, adrienne contributes the singing of two songs from the Grievers trilogy. This joins bonus audio from many other past guests, including Dionne Brand, Christina Sharpe, N.K. Jemisin, Daniel José Older and more. The bonus audio is only one of many things to choose from if you join the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter. Find out more at the show’s Patreon page [http://patreon.com/betweenthecovers]. Finally, here is the BookShop [https://bookshop.org/lists/books-for-adrienne-maree-brown-conversation] for today’s conversation. The post adrienne maree brown : Ancestors [https://tinhouse.com/podcast/adrienne-maree-brown-ancestors/] appeared first on Tin House [https://tinhouse.com].

The Book of Records is many things: a book of historical fiction and speculative fiction, a meditation on time and on space-time,  on storytelling and truth, on memory and the imagination, a book that impossibly conjures the lives and eras of the philosopher Baruch Spinoza, the Tang dynasty poet Du Fu and the political theorist Hannah Arendt not as mere ghostly presences but portrayed as vividly and tangibly as if they lived here and now in the room where we hold this very book. But most of all this is a book about books, about words as amulets, about stories as shelters, about novels as life rafts, about strangers saving strangers, about friendships that defy both space and time, about choosing, sometimes at great risk to oneself, life and love. For the bonus audio Madeleine Thien contributes an incredible reading of the poem “Hold Everything Dear” by Gareth Evans. A poem that Evans himself wrote for John Berger. It joins a trove of bonus material, contributions from everyone from Omar El Akkad to Dionne Brand, Viet Thanh Nguyen to Danez Smith. To learn about how to subscribe to the bonus material and about all the other potential benefits and rewards of joining the Between the Covers community head over to the show’s Patreon page [http://patreon.com/betweenthecovers]. Finally, here is the BookShop [https://bookshop.org/lists/books-from-madeleine-thien-conversation] for today’s conversation. The post Madeleine Thien : The Book of Records [https://tinhouse.com/podcast/madeleine-thien-the-book-of-records/] appeared first on Tin House [https://tinhouse.com].