Episoder
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Aimé Césaire’s masterpiece of exile and homecoming, Return to my Native Land – beautifully translated by John Berger – is now a Penguin Classic. To celebrate, Jason Allen-Paisant (who has written the introduction for the new edition) and Colin Grant discuss the poem. Allen-Paisant’s most recent poetry collection, Self-Portrait as Othello (Carcanet), won both the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection; Colin Grant is director of WritersMosaic, a division of the Royal Literary Fund, his most recent book is a memoir, I’m Black So You Don’t Have to Be (Jonathan Cape).
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In her first novel The Last Sane Woman (Verso) poet Hannah Regel investigates the pains and pleasures of artistic practice carried out against the odds. While researching in a small archive dedicated to women’s art young graduate Nicola Long happens upon one half of a correspondence, conducted half a century before, written by a recently graduated ceramicist to a friend. As Nicola reads on she becomes obsessed with the parallels between her own life and that of the woman she encounters in the letters.
Regel was joined in conversation by LRB contributor and art critic Emily LaBarge.
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Manglende episoder?
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Poets Ella Frears and Will Burns were at the shop to read from and talk about their new collections. Ella’s Goodlord, from Rough Trade Books, takes the form of a long, lyrical email to an estate agent, interrogating our obsession with ‘property’ with Frears’ characteristic humour and sharpness, while Will’s Natural Burial Ground (Corsair) is the second collection from a writer Max Porter has described as ‘a soulful English poet of the kind we don’t make enough of’.
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In her latest semi-autobiographical novel Playboy (Tuskar Rock, translated by Holly James), leading French writer Constance Debré describes how a woman, at the age of 43, abandons her apartment, her marriage and her successful legal career to lead a new life as an out lesbian and a writer. In a series of short, sharp vignettes the narrator describes a series of meetings with lovers, with her father and with her son and ex-husband, exploding heteronormative assumptions about what it means to be queer in a straight world. Debré was joined in conversation about her work by writer and critic Alice Blackhurst.
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Throughout its history feminism has had a troubled relationship with policing, torn between seeking its protection and attacking its ingrained sexist bias. In Why Would Feminists Trust the Police? (Verso) Leah Cowan cuts a trenchant path through the debate, reminding us of the vibrant and creative alternatives envisioned by those who have long known the truth: the police aren't feminist, and the law does not keep women safe. She discusses the issue with feminist writer and scholar Lola Olufemi.
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In her debut novel Scaffolding (Chatto) Lauren Elkin – ‘The Susan Sontag of her generation’, according to Deborah Levy – presents two couples occupying the same Paris apartment, five decades apart. Lauren Elkin’s previous works include Art Monsters, a landmark study of women artists, Flâneuse and a translation of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Inseparables. She was joined in conversation by writer and broadcaster Octavia Bright.
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The Federal Theatre Project, established as part of the New Deal in 1935 to provide employment opportunities for theatre professionals affected by the Great Depression, became the cornerstone of American radical drama, both on stage and on radio, throughout the late 1930s. Its staunchly political stance on labour and race relations and housing and health inequality proved popular with audiences, but less so with Congress which, in an atmosphere of growing anti-communist paranoia, withdrew the Project’s funding in 1939. In The Playbook (Faber) theatre historian and Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro tells the absorbing and disturbing tale, at the same time uncovering the deep roots of today’s culture wars. He's in conversation with historian and author Sarah Churchwell.
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Anne Serre’s latest novel to appear in English, brilliantly translated from the French by Mark Hutchinson, was written in the aftermath of the death of the author’s younger sister, and recounts the tortured relationship between an unnamed narrator and his close childhood friend Fanny, a young woman suffering from profound psychological distress. Hailed in Le Point as a 'masterpiece of simplicity, emotion and elegance’, A Leopard-Skin Hat (Lolli Editions) is a bewildering rollercoaster of hope and despair, calling into question the form of the novel itself.
Serre, Bordeaux-born author of 14 previous novels, was joined in conversation about her work with novelist and LRB contributor Lucie Elven.
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In her debut novel Experienced (4th Estate) writer and cook Kate Young delves into the world of queer dating following, reluctant Bette on an odyssey of sexual encounters as she tries to catch up on the decade of fun she missed out on before coming out, always intending to return after the adventure to her true love Mei. ‘A fizzing rollercoaster of a romcom,’ writes Caroline O'Donoghue. ‘The sexiest book you'll read all year, and the most heartening’. Young read from her novel, and talked about it with Nicola Dinan, author of Bellies.
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Born in Belgium in 1954 to conservative, Catholic parents, Lucy Sante migrated to New York in the 1960s, where she became associated with the Bohemian artistic milieu of the city. After producing several highly acclaimed works of history such as Low Life and The Other Paris and translating Félix Fénéon’s feuilletons for NYRB as Novels in Three Lines, she announced in 2021 that she was transitioning: ‘Yes, I’ve known since at least age 11 but probably earlier and yes, I suppressed and denied it for decades’, she wrote at the time. In I Heard Her Call My Name (Hutchinson Heinemann), ‘a generous, fearlessly revealing book’ (Samantha Hunt), she describes with great grace, wit and humility her decision to begin living the life she knew was truly hers.
Sante is in conversation about her memoir with writer and filmmaker Juliet Jacques.
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Born in the pandemic lockdown of 2020, when Britain’s restaurants had closed their doors, Jonathan Nunn founded the online newsletter Vittles, which rapidly established itself as the premier platform for exploring food cultures in Britain and around the world. Out of Vittles was born London Feeds Itself, a fascinating collection of essays written at the intersections of food, architecture, history, and demography. First published by Open City in 2022, London Feeds Itself now appears in a new edition in association with Fitzcarraldo.
In this episode, Jonathan Nunn speaks about the project with architectural historian Owen Hatherley, whose essay ‘The Housing Estate’ from the book serves as a springboard for the discussion.
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During the Covid lockdown Iain Sinclair took delivery of two large yellow boxes containing fresh prints of photographs by the master-chronicler of Soho John Deakin who died, obscure and penniless, in a Brighton hotel room in 1972. Sinclair, another master-chronicler of London’s hidden past, uses those and other images and memories – (‘an invaluable catalogue of artists and divas, actors, film producers, criminals and derelicts’) – to bring back to life the unique artistic milieu of Bohemian London in the 50s and 60s. Iain Sinclair read from and talked about Pariah Genius (Cheerio), in conversation with memoirist, novelist and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo.
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CAConrad is one of the most productive and inventive poets of their generation. Writing in the New York Times, Tracey K. Smith described how Conrad’s poetry ‘invites the reader to become an agent in a joint act of recovery, to step outside of passivity and propriety and to become susceptible to the illogical and the mysterious’ – a susceptibility fully evidenced in Conrad’s latest Penguin collection, Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return.
Conrad is joined by Luke Roberts, Senior Lecturer in Modern Poetry at King’s College London.
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Drawing on her own experience restoring a walled garden in Suffolk, and moving between real and imagined gardens, from Milton’s Paradise Lost to John Clare’s enclosure elegies, from a wartime sanctuary in Italy to a grotesque aristocratic pleasure ground funded by slavery, Olivia Laing’s The Garden Against Time interrogates the sometimes shocking cost of making paradise on earth. She was joined in conversation with writer, critic and frequent LRB contributor Jon Day.
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At a Bethesda Baptist chapel two worshippers, separated in age by three decades, are drawn together by common interests, driven apart by divergent loves, before being reunited by the mysteries surrounding their small town. Francis Spufford describes Enlightenment (Jonathan Cape) as ‘a book in which everything is kindled into light by Sarah Perry’s rapt, luminous attention: friendship, betrayal, faith, astronomy, the drizzle on the streets of Essex and the heavens above them.’ Sarah Perry, author of Essex Girls, Melmoth and The Essex Serpent, read from the novel and talked about it with nature writer and novelist Helen Macdonald.
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Held is Anne Michaels’ long-awaited new novel – following on from the 1996 classic Fugitive Pieces and 2009’s The Winter Vault – exploring, in the words of Margaret Atwood, ‘war and its damages, passed through generations over a century’.
Michaels shared an extended reading from Held with actor Stephen Dillane, who played Jakob Beer in the 2007 film adaptation of Fugitive Pieces, and was joined in conversation by the evening's host, Gareth Evans.
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Choirboy, drag act, grandson, mentor, poet, lover, activist, performer: Dean Atta has played many roles in his life. In his explosive, candid and courageous memoir Person Unlimited (Canongate) he describes a life lived in defiance of categories. Benjamin Zephaniah wrote of Atta’s work as being ‘As honest as truth itself. He follows no trend; he seeks no favours . . . Beyond black, beyond white, beyond straight, beyond gay, so I say. Love your eyes over these words of truth. You will be uplifted’. Dean Atta reads from his work and talks about it with writer and broadcaster Michael Rosen.
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In The Future of Songwriting, lead singer with Throwing Muses, solo artist and songwriter Kristin Hersh reflects on the status and future of her chosen genre over a long, hot Christmas in Australia. In a series of conversations, encounters and philosophical dialogues Hersh delivers a fierce, funny and existential meditation on the art of the song - and its future. She was joined at the Bookshop by writer and critic Jennifer Hodgson.
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In her debut novel Amma (Weatherglass), a multi-generational saga set in Sri Lanka, Singapore, Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia and London, Saraid de Silva explores memory, trauma and displacement. She was in conversation with Nina Mingya Powles, author of Tiny Moons and Small Bodies of Water.
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Siblings (Monitor Books) is a unique round-table discussion / poetry collection, convened by Will Harris, between Harris, Jay Bernard, Mary Jean Chan and Nisha Ramayya. The four poets explore real and imaginary siblings, writing communities, and the wayward directions of the lyric mode – writing as makers and friends about the possibilities that poetry enables now. All four poets convened at the Bookshop for discussion and readings.
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