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

Today’s conversation with adrienne maree brown begins with the notion that all organizing is science fiction, and thus that social justice and science fiction are intricately linked imaginative acts, acts that have real effects in the world at large. brown looks at works by Le Guin that she considers foundational texts for activists and organizers, […]

Cristina Rivera Garza returns to the show to discuss her New and Selected Stories, which gathers together fiction across thirty years of her writing life. Some are stories translated into English for the first time. Others are stories in English that haven’t yet appeared in Spanish. Still others are new versions, rewritten, retranslated or both. We […]

Today’s guest, Caren Beilin, talks about her latest novel Revenge of the Scapegoat. All four of her books—two nonfiction, two fiction—each stand alone but they each also share recognizable people/characters that travel across books and across genre. How do the fictional versions of the real people in her life—her partner, her parents, her siblings, her […]

Today’s guest on Crafting with Ursula, the award-winning writer of science fiction, fantasy, and historical fiction Karen Joy Fowler, was a longstanding friend of Ursula K. Le Guin. And they both shared a deep interest not only in science, but also in raising questions about the biases deeply embedded in the way we conduct it […]

Sheila Heti returns to Between the Covers to discuss her latest unclassifiable novel Pure Colour. When something happens in your life that upends everything you thought you knew, that changes what you notice and value, something that is hard, if not impossible, to put into language, that mystifies you even now, how do you find […]

Today’s guest is Chilean novelist, essayist, literary critic, and poet Alejandro Zambra, talking about his latest novel Chilean Poet, a novel brimming over with, yes, Chilean poets and poems, but also with love and laughter, artistic dreams and failures, and the desire to find language for things deeply felt that have no name. This conversation, […]

Today’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 […]

It’s been five years since Solmaz Sharif’s first appearance on Between the Covers, for her National Book Award–finalist debut collection Look. Since then, many listeners have pointed to this conversation as one of the most memorable episodes to date. Solmaz returns today to discuss her much-anticipated follow-up, Customs. We talk about belonging, exile and language, about what […]

Writer and performance artist Gabrielle Civil talks about her latest book the déjà vu: black dreams & black time, as well as her chapbook ( ghost gestures ), chosen by Bhanu Kapil for the Gold Line Press Nonfiction prize. What does Civil mean by “Black time” and how does she enact this in the déjà […]

Today’s guest on the second episode of Crafting with Ursula, Molly Gloss, the acclaimed writer of both award-winning science fiction and fantasy as well as feminist Westerns, has a particular insight into the work and writing life of Le Guin. Gloss’ writing career began as a student of Le Guin’s in a workshop in the […]

Writer, critic, performer, & visual artist James Hannaham talks about his latest and most uncategorizable book Pilot Impostor. This book slips between the borders of prose and poetry, fiction and nonfiction, image and text, facts and fake news, selfhood and persona, pretending and privilege. And Pilot Impostor comes into being piece by piece through an engagement […]

Rabih Alameddine talks about his new novel The Wrong End of the Telescope, which is set on the island of Lesbos amidst the medical personnel and tourist-volunteers involved with helping the arriving Syrian refugees. Interestingly, the writer, one suspiciously similar to Rabih himself, is a secondary character in this novel, a character who asks Mina, […]

Today’s guest, Becky Chambers, discusses her own work, and her own considerations when imagining alien cultures and the beings that inhabit them. She does this in light of Le Guin’s novel The Left Hand of Darkness and Le Guin’s short story, “Coming of Age in Karhide,” written by Le Guin 25 years later, but within […]

Poet Victoria Chang talks about her latest and most uncategorizable book Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief. A book composed largely of essay-like letters, Dear Memory also contains collages by Victoria, created from the artifacts (mementos, documents, photographs) found in her family’s storage locker, and short poems which she places among the images. […]

Today’s guest, Mexican poet, painter, and translator Valerie Mejer Caso talks about her latest book, the bilingual publication of poetry, collage, and photography Edinburgh Notebook, translated by Michelle Gil-Montero for Action Books. What does it mean to write something both autobiographical and surreal, both dream-like and real? How can questions of selfhood and identity (the […]