Burned By Books

By: New Books Network
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  • Summary

  • A podcast for writers and readers who are obsessive about their books. Interviews with established and up-and-coming writers, and recommendations for the best in contemporary fiction, poetry, and drama. Chris Holmes. Chris is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers.
    Chris Holmes
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Art Literary History & Criticism
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Episodes
  • Colum McCann, "Twist" (Random House, 2025)

    Colum McCann, "Twist" (Random House, 2025)
    Apr 9 2025
    Anthony Fennell, an Irish journalist and playwright, is assigned to cover the underwater cables that carry the world’s information. The sum of human existence—words, images, transactions, memes, voices, viruses—travels through the tiny fiber-optic tubes. But sometimes the tubes break, at an unfathomable depth. Fennell’s journey brings him to the west coast of Africa, where he uncovers a story about the raw human labor behind the dazzling veneer of the technological world. He meets a fellow Irishman, John Conway, the chief of mission on a cable repair ship. The mysterious Conway is a skilled engineer and a freediver capable of reaching extraordinary depths. He is also in love with a South African actress, Zanele, who must leave to go on her own literary adventure to London. When the ship is sent up the coast to repair a series of major underwater breaks, both men learn that the very cables they seek to fix carry the news that may cause their lives to unravel. At sea, they are forced to confront the most elemental questions of life, love, absence, belonging, and the perils of our severed connections. Can we, in our fractured world, reweave ourselves out of the thin, broken threads of our pasts? Can the ruptured things awaken us from our despair? Resoundingly simple and turbulent at the same time, Twist (Random House, 2025) is a meditation on the nature of narrative and truth from one of the great storytellers of our times. Colum McCann is the author of eight novels, three collections of stories and two works of non-fiction. Born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, he has been the recipient of many international honours, including the U.S National Book Award, the International Dublin Literary Prize, a Chevalier des Arts et Lettres from the French government, election to the Irish arts academy, several European awards, the 2010 Best Foreign Novel Award in China, and an Oscar nomination. In 2017 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts. His work has been published in over 40 languages. He is the President and co-founder of the non-profit global story exchange organization, Narrative 4. He lives in New York with his wife Allison and their family. Recommended Books: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein Omar El Akkad, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    51 mins
  • Lauren Elkin, "Scaffolding" (FSG, 2024)

    Lauren Elkin, "Scaffolding" (FSG, 2024)
    Apr 3 2025
    Paris, 2019. An apartment in Belleville. Following a miscarriage and a breakdown, Anna, a psychoanalyst, finds herself unable to return to work. Instead, she obsesses over a kitchen renovation and befriends a new neighbor—a younger woman called Clémentine who has just moved into the building and is part of a radical feminist collective. Paris, 1972. The same apartment in Belleville. Florence and Henry are renovating their kitchen. She is finishing her degree in psychology, dropping into feminist activities, and devotedly attending the groundbreaking, infamous seminars held by the renowned analyst Jacques Lacan. She is hoping to conceive their first child, though Henry isn’t sure he’s ready for fatherhood. Two couples, fifty years apart, face the challenges of marriage, fidelity, and pregnancy. They inhabit this same small space in separate but similar times—times charged with political upheaval and intellectual controversy. A novel in the key of Éric Rohmer, Lauren Elkin’s Scaffolding is about the way our homes collect and hold our memories and our stories, about the bonds we create and the difficulty of ever fully severing them, about the ways all the people we’ve loved live on in us. Lauren Elkin is also the author of Art Monsters and Flâneuse, a New York Times Books Review notable book and a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, Le Monde, Frieze, and The Times Literary Supplement, among others. A native New Yorker, Elkin lived in Paris for twenty years and now resides in London. Recommended Books Italo Calvino, Under the Jaguar Sun Garth Greenwell, Small Rain Catherine Lacey, Möbius Strip The novels of Elizabeth Bowen Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    58 mins
  • Emma Pattee, "Tilt" (Marysue Rucci Books, 2025)

    Emma Pattee, "Tilt" (Marysue Rucci Books, 2025)
    Mar 25 2025
    Set over the course of a single day, an electrifying debut novel from “a powerful new literary voice” (Vogue) following one woman’s journey across a transformed city, carrying the weight of her past and a fervent hope for the future. Last night, you and I were safe. Last night, in another universe, your father and I stood fighting in the kitchen. Annie is nine months pregnant and shopping for a crib at IKEA when a massive earthquake hits Portland, Oregon. With no way to reach her husband, no phone or money, and a city left in chaos, there’s nothing to do but walk. Making her way across the wreckage of Portland, Annie experiences human desperation and kindness: strangers offering help, a riot at a grocery store, and an unlikely friendship with a young mother. As she walks, Annie reflects on her struggling marriage, her disappointing career, and her anxiety about having a baby. If she can just make it home, she’s determined to change her life. A propulsive debut, Tilt is a primal scream of a novel about the disappointments and desires we all carry, and what each of us will do for the people we love. Emma Pattee is a climate journalist and a fiction writer living in Portland, Oregon. She’s written about climate change for The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and more. In 2021, she coined the term “Climate Shadow” to describe an individual’s potential impact on climate change. Her fiction has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Idaho Review, New Orleans Review, Carve Magazine, Citron Review, and Alaska Quarterly Review. Recommended Books: KJ Charles, A Seditious Affair Danzy Senna, Colored Television Tony Tulathimutte, Rejection Rob Franklin, Great Black Hope Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    48 mins

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