Episodes

  • Train Dreams

    Train Dreams
    May 14 2024
    Author Amitava Kumar and host Catherine Nichols discuss Train Dreams by Denis Johnson. They talk about the wilderness and the names of plants, the associations of trains and the 19th and 20th centuries in India, Europe and the United States, and the book's rolling, associative prose style. Amitava Kumar is the author of several works of nonfiction and three novels. His novel Immigrant, Montana was a New York Times and New Yorker best book of the year and was selected by President Barack Obama as a favorite book of the year. Kumar's work has appeared in the New York Times, Harper’s, the Nation, Granta, BRICK, and Guernica, among other publications. He has been awarded a Guggenheim fellowship and residencies from Yaddo, MacDowell, and the Lannan Foundation. His most recent novel is My Beloved Life (2024). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 2 mins
  • Pedro Páramo

    Pedro Páramo
    Apr 2 2024
    Authors Daniel Saldaña París and Wah-Ming Chang join host Catherine Nichols to discuss Juan Rulfo's 1955 novel Pedro Páramo, in its new translation by Douglas J. Weatherford. They talk about the book's unique mixture of modernity and timelessness, the violence and coziness of the book's picture of domestic life, and Rulfo's life as a traveler, reader, and editor. Daniel Saldaña París is the author of three novels—Among Strange Victims, Ramifications, and The Dance and the Wildfire—and a collection of personal essays, Planes Flying Over a Monster. His work has been translated into several languages, and he has been included in Bogota39, a list of the Best Latin American Writers Under 40. Wah-Ming Chang is a writer from New York City. Hand, Held, her artist book about her father's art practice, is forthcoming from Bored Wolves in 2024. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 13 mins
  • The Bell

    The Bell
    Feb 13 2024
    Na Zhong and Catherine Nichols discuss Iris Murdoch's 1958 novel The Bell. They discuss Murdoch's characters and the unique ethical quandaries of the book, as well as Murdoch's love of swimming and the size of the bell itself. A native of Chengdu, China, Na Zhong is a fiction writer who now calls New York her home. Her work has been recognized by organizations such as MacDowell and the Center for Fiction. Additionally, she serves as a columnist at China Books Review and is the co-founder of Accent Society. She has finished her first novel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 5 mins
  • The Swimmer and The Waltz

    The Swimmer and The Waltz
    Nov 21 2023
    Host Catherine Nichols and author Christine Coulson (One Woman Show, 2023) discuss The Swimmer by John Cheever and The Waltz by Dorothy Parker. Their conversation covers the humor and surrealism of both stories, the precise artistry of both authors' prose, as well as the social context of Cheever's suburbia, Parker's freedom and the constraints that both stories show in mid-20th century America. Christine Coulson spent twenty-five years writing for The Metropolitan Museum of Art and left the Museum as Senior Writer in 2019. Her debut novel, Metropolitan Stories, was a national bestseller and is followed by One Woman Show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 27 mins
  • My Soul in Exile

    My Soul in Exile
    Oct 17 2023
    In this episode, host Catherine Nichols and writer Sally Foreman discuss Zabel Yesayan's enigmatic 1922 novel My Soul in Exile. Yesayan wrote the book after reporting on the genocide of her own Armenian people, shortly before before becoming a Communist. The book is counterintuitively joyful, as Yesayan describes a life in the arts both as a form of exile and a form of homecoming. Sally Foreman is an English writer and researcher living in Jerusalem. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 4 mins
  • Songs for Drella

    Songs for Drella
    Apr 4 2023
    Writer and musician Leeore Schnairsohn and host Catherine Nichols discuss Songs for Drella, the album Lou Reed and John Cale released in 1990 about their friend, mentor and manager Andy Warhol. They talk about the intimacy of artists' imitation of their friends voices, the paradox of Warhol's art, and where the album fits in both Reed's and Cale's career. Leeore Schnairsohn’s fiction, reviews, and translations have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Painted Bride Quarterly, the Slavic and East European Journal, Russian Review, and elsewhere. He holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Princeton University, with a dissertation on Osip Mandelstam, and teaches in the Expository Writing Program at New York University. A link to Leeore's conversation on Songs for Drella from his Camper Can Calethoven podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-5478ir3ac Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 12 mins
  • The Death of the Heart

    The Death of the Heart
    Feb 28 2023
    Author Lucy Ferriss and host Catherine Nichols discuss Elizabeth Bowen's 1938 novel The Death of the Heart. They discuss the unique narrator—16-year-old Portia, almost unimaginably innocent and stubborn about refusing to learn the hard lessons of life—and whether her demands are reasonable within the world of the book, or the actual world. Lucy Ferriss is the author of eleven books, including her latest collection, Foreign Climes: Stories, which received the Brighthorse Books Prize; and the 2022 re-release of her novel, The Misconceiver. Other recent work includes the 2015 novel A Sister to Honor, as well as essays and short fiction in American Scholar, New England Review, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. Forthcoming in 2023 is a book of essays from Wandering Aengus Press, Meditations on a New Century, as well as Christina Stead’s The Man Who Loved Children, a monograph in Ig Publishing’s Bookmarked series. She is Writer in Residence Emerita at Trinity College. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 4 mins