London Review Bookshop Podcasts

New York's 92nd Street Y has been a home to the voices of literature for 80 years, hosting in its famed Reading Series the greatest literary artists of the 20th century and recording for posterity their appearances as part of its vast audio archive. Featuring Colm Tóibín on Elizabeth Bishop and Rachel Cusk on Katherine Anne Porter, the Writers on Recordings series invites contemporary authors to discuss the legendary voices that have meant the most to them. Each conversation features rare archival recordings and is led by Bernard Schwartz, who produces 92Y's Reading Series as director of its Unterberg Poetry Center. Now in its third year, the series is produced in collaboration with the 92nd Street Y and Queen Mary University of London.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

New York's 92nd Street Y has been a home to the voices of literature for 80 years, hosting in its famed Reading Series the greatest literary artists of the 20th century and recording for posterity their appearances as part of its vast audio archive. Featuring Colm Tóibín on Elizabeth Bishop and Rachel Cusk on Katherine Anne Porter, the Writers on Recordings series invites contemporary authors to discuss the legendary voices that have meant the most to them. Each conversation features rare archival recordings and is led by Bernard Schwartz, who produces 92Y's Reading Series as director of its Unterberg Poetry Center. Now in its third year, the series is produced in collaboration with the 92nd Street Y and Queen Mary University of London.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Sheila Rowbotham’s many books, in history, politics, feminist theory and biography, have established her firmly at the forefront of both the women’s movement and of libertarian socialism. Perhaps the most personal of them though is Promise of a Dream, first published by Penguin in 2000 and now available again in a new edition from Verso. Frank, beautifully written, funny and moving, it is a coming of age story that takes us from Leeds to Oxford via the Sorbonne, and a stirring account of awakening political consciousness during the 1960s. Professor Rowbotham read from her work, and was in conversation with Lynne Segal, Professor of Psychology and Gender Studies at Birkbeck College and author, most recently, of Radical Happiness and Making Trouble.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In her latest work Guestbook: Ghost Stories (Particular Books) Leanne Shapton, through a series of stories and vignettes, encounters the uncanny. Are our experiences of ghosts and the unworldly mere fantasies of the mind, or are they solid evidence of the supernatural? In a book designed, curated and illustrated by Shapton herself, she provides some, but by no means all of the answers. Toronto-born Shapton rose to literary prominence with her genre-defying Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, published by Bloomsbury in 2009. Her subsequent works, including Was She Pretty?, Swimming Studies and Toys Talking, have continued to baffle those readers and booksellers who like to know exactly which shelf to put a book on. She was in conversation with novelist and critic Adam Thirlwell.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

David Keenan’s For the Good Times (Faber), set in Belfast during The Troubles, pursues four friends battling for an identity in a neighbourhood harangued by violence and religious intensity. The book highlights the complexity of believing in a cause whilst indulging in the spoils of amoral days. Keenan’s second novel is an urgent and experimental follow up to This is Memorial Device (Faber). Keenan was in conversation with artist and musician, Bill Drummond.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In her first book Dressed (Jonathan Cape), Shahidha Bari explores the hidden memories, meanings and ideas which are wrapped up in our clothes; themes of privacy, freedom, love and objectification are treated garment by garment. Bari was in conversation with Marina Warner, whose most recent book is Forms of Enchantment (Thames & Hudson).  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Listen back to an evening of readings and discussion from three outstanding poets, Mary Jean Chan, Will Harris and Sarah Howe. ------ Mary Jean Chan's first full length collection Flèche is published by Faber this July. Her debut pamphlet, A Hurry of English, was selected as the 2018 Poetry Book Society Summer Pamphlet Choice. She is a Ledbury Poetry Critic, editor of Oxford Poetry and is a Lecturer in Creative Writing (Poetry) at Oxford Brookes University. Will Harris is the author of the essay Mixed-Race Superman, published in the UK by Peninsula Press and in an expanded edition in the US by Melville House. His debut poetry collection, RENDANG, is forthcoming from Granta in 2020. Sarah Howe is a British poet, academic and editor. Her first book, Loop of Jade (Chatto), won the T.S. Eliot Prize and The Sunday Times / PFD Young Writer of the Year Award. She is a Lecturer in Poetry at King’s College London.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

To mark the publication of Niven Govinden’s This Brutal House (Dialogue Books), we hosted a round table discussion about LGBTQI+ literature and culture, and the contributions it might make to the current, somewhat torrid, political climate. Our participants were Niven Govinden, Amelia Abraham author of Queer Intentions (Picador) and Isabel Waidner, editor of Liberating the Canon: An Anthology of Innovative Literature and author of We Are Made of Diamond Stuff (both Dostoyevsky Wannabe).  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

An evening of discussion and poetry readings with poets Kayo Chingonyi, Bhanu Kapil, Ilya Kaminsky and New York Times book critic Parul Sehgal. This lively event brings together eminent poets, critics and editors for a public panel discussion on diversity and the current state of poetry reviewing culture in the UK and the US, followed by poetry readings from Kayo Chingonyi and Bhanu Kapil. The panel event featured a transatlantic discussion of race and poetry reviewing with Ilya Kaminsky, Kayo Chingonyi and Parul Sehgal, chaired by Sandeep Parmar and introduced by Sarah Howe. This event also launched the 2019 report on ‘The State of Poetry and Poetry Criticism’ compiled by Dave Coates and supported by Ledbury Emerging Poetry Critics and the University of Liverpool’s Centre for New and International Writing.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Nicola Barker discusses T.S. Eliot, with reference to his appearances at New York’s 92nd Street Y, with the 92Y’s Reading Series producer Bernard Schwartz. The 92Y has been a home to the voices of literature for 80 years, hosting in its famed Reading Series the greatest literary artists of the 20th century and recording for posterity their appearances as part of its vast audio archive. The ‘Writers on Recordings’ event series invites contemporary authors to discuss the legendary voices that have meant the most to them. Each conversation features rare archival recordings and is led by Bernard Schwartz, who produces 92Y's Reading Series as director of its Unterberg Poetry Center. The series is produced in collaboration with the 92nd Street Y and Queen Mary University of London.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In Full Surrogacy Now (Verso), Sophie Lewis takes on the surrogacy industry – worth over one billion dollars a year in the USA alone, and famously exploitative – with a unique and explosive argument: we need more surrogacy, not less! Lewis argues that the needs and protection of surrogates should be put front and centre, that we should ‘overthrow, in short, the notion of the “family”’. Donna Haraway has described the book as ‘the serious radical cry for full gestational justice I long for.’ Lewis was in conversation with Joanna Biggs, assistant editor at the LRB and author of All Day Long: A Portrait of Britain at Work.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A.L. Kennedy discusses a personal mixtape of early influences (Cummings, Burgess, Pinter, Feiffer), with reference to their appearances at New York’s 92nd Street Y, with the 92Y’s Reading Series producer Bernard Schwartz. The 92Y has been a home to the voices of literature for 80 years, hosting in its famed Reading Series the greatest literary artists of the 20th century and recording for posterity their appearances as part of its vast audio archive. The Writers on Recordings series invites contemporary authors to discuss the legendary voices that have meant the most to them. Each conversation features rare archival recordings and is led by Bernard Schwartz, who produces 92Y's Reading Series as director of its Unterberg Poetry Center. The series is produced in collaboration with the 92nd Street Y and Queen Mary University of London.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Mark Ford discusses John Ashbery, with reference to his appearances at New York’s 92nd Street Y, with the 92Y’s Reading Series producer Bernard Schwartz. The 92Y has been a home to the voices of literature for 80 years, hosting in its famed Reading Series the greatest literary artists of the 20th century and recording for posterity their appearances as part of its vast audio archive. The Writers on Recordings series invites contemporary authors to discuss the legendary voices that have meant the most to them. Each conversation features rare archival recordings and is led by Bernard Schwartz, who produces 92Y's Reading Series as director of its Unterberg Poetry Center. The series is produced in collaboration with the 92nd Street Y and Queen Mary University of London.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Tracy K. Smith is the 22nd Poet Laureate of the USA. Her last collection, Wade in the Water, was nominated for a Forward Prize; her last-but-one, Life on Mars, won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Eternity, her Selected Poems, gathers together the best of her four books. Hilton Als has called her ‘a storyteller who loves to explore how the body can respond to a lover, to family, to history.’ Jay Bernard’s eagerly-awaited first collection, Surge, draws a line between the New Cross Fire of 1981 and the fire at Grenfell Tower. Bernard’s pamphlet, The Red and Yellow Nothing, was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry. The two poets read from and discussed their new collections.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

‘Every new baby is its own crisis.’ The ‘mother ship’ of Francesca Segal’s memoir is the neonatal intensive care unit where she was confined for fifty-six days after the premature birth of her twin girls. Mother Ship (Chatto and Windus) is at once a celebration of female friendship, a medical thriller and a love poem to Segal’s daughters, from the acclaimed author of The Innocents and The Awkward Age. Segal was in conversation with Olivia Laing, whose first novel, Crudo, was published last year.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Novelist, journalist and translator Keith Gessen will be at the shop to read from and talk about his latest novel A Terrible Country, published by Fitzcarraldo, which investigates Russia’s past and present through the eyes of a Russian-American who moves from New York to Moscow to care for his elderly grandmother. Man Booker Prize winner George Saunders describes A Terrible Country as ‘A cause for celebration: big-hearted, witty, warm, compulsively readable, earnest, funny, full of that kind of joyful sadness I associate with Russia’. Gessen was in conversation with Vadim Nikitin, Murmansk-born investigator of financial crime in what was once the USSR. Both Gessen and Nikitin are regular contributors to the LRB.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Sally Rooney breathes new life into fiction. Her novels deal with ordinary life in all its unexpected ways. The Guardian said of Rooney’s debut novel, Conversations with Friends: ‘It’s rare that a novel elicits such ferocious and unmitigated awe from just about everyone you know, whether male, female, or millennial’. Rooney’s second novel, Normal People (published by Faber & Faber last September), was called ‘superb . . . a tremendous read, full of insight and sweetness’ by Anne Enright. Olivia Laing has stated that ‘Rooney is the best young novelist – indeed one of the best novelists – I’ve read in years.’ On the occasion of the paperback publication of Normal People, Rooney was in conversation with Kishani Widyaratna, editor at Picador Books and contributing editor at The White Review.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

After Algeria gained its independence from France in 1962 Algiers became the de facto capital of anti-imperialism, anti-racism and world revolution, and a haven for visionaries and rebels such as Stokely Carmichael, Timothy Leary, Jomo Kenyatta and Eldridge Cleaver. Elaine Mokhtefi moved to Algiers during this extraordinary moment of hope, turmoil, dreams and disillusion, and her memoir of that time makes gripping reading. She was in conversation with Adam Shatz, a contributing editor at the LRB.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In So Much Longing in So Little Space, Karl Ove Knausgaard explores the life and work of Norwegian painter Edvard Munch. Setting out to understand the enduring power of Munch’s painting, Knausgaard reflects on the essence of creativity, on choosing to be an artist, experiencing the world through art and its influence on his own writing. As co-curator of a major new exhibition of Munch's work in Oslo in 2017, Knausgaard visits the landscapes that inspired him, and speaks with contemporary artists, including Vanessa Baird and Anselm Kiefer. Bringing together art history, biography and memoir, and drawing on ideas of truth, originality and memory, So Much Longing in So Little Space is a personal examination of the legacy of one of the world’s most iconic painters, and a meditation on art itself. Knausgaard was in conversation with writer and journalist Charlotte Higgins.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Jhumpa Lahiri, author of several highly acclaimed novels, described in her memoir In Other Words her passionate romance with the Italian language. She now continues that passionate engagement with the country and its literature as the editor of a new Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories. She was in conversation about Italy, things Italian, and the art of the short story with Chris Power, whose debut collection of stories Mothers was published by Faber last year.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.