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

Episódios

• Eleni Sikelianos : Memory Rehearsal 29.06.2026 2h 6min

  Today’s guest is writer, poet and translator Eleni Sikelianos. We discuss her hybrid-genre, ancestral memoir Memory Rehearsal, a work that moves between poetry and prose, image and text, human and animal, history and mythology, and perhaps most of all tells the story of a poet’s self-discovery, finding her voice within a dual poetic lineage, within a chorus of remarkable voices, past and present. As Anne Waldman says: “Sikelianos’s voyage is a spiritual quest to untangle a history that only she and only poetry can accomplish. It is a meditation on gender, place, and reclamation, a struggle for a whole vision and version for the writer of her own self and purpose. The genius of this pursuit is staggering. . . .The intricate weaving and array of image and language to get there leaves me breathless. There is nothing like it that I have seen.” For the bonus audio archive Eleni contributes an electrifying reading from book one of  H.D.’s Trilogy, called “The Walls Do Not Fall.” This joins many unforgettable contributions, whether Lisa Robertson reading her translation of the long Baudelaire poem “Hags,” Jorie Graham reading Robert Creeley, Jen Bervin reading Paul Celan, a late night whispered reading by Bhanu Kapil from her writing journal, and much more. To find out how to subscribe to the bonus audio, and about all the other potential benefits and rewards of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter, head over to the show’s Patreon page. Finally here is the BookShop for today’s conversation. [Author photo by Laird Hunt]
• Lisa Robertson : Riverwork 08.06.2026 2h 25min

  Lisa Robertson’s Riverwork twins the mysterious disappearance of the great aunt of our protagonist, Lucy Frost, and that same aunt’s interest in a long-disappeared river, buried under the streets of Paris. As Lucy searches for traces of her aunt, by attempting to inhabit and complete her work on this long-forgotten river, erased histories about both come to the surface. Today’s unforgettable conversation—whether when talking about laundry or linguistics, text or textile, dust or menses, archivists or troubadours—floods designation, spills over with newly daylighted significations. For the bonus audio archive Lisa introduces us to and reads her translation of “Hags,” the long poem by Charles Baudelaire that is a germ for both of her novels, The Baudelaire Fractal and Riverwork. This joins many contributions from past guests including Dionne Brand, Christina Sharpe, Canisia Lubrin, Sheila Heti, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Bhanu Kapil, Kate Zambreno, Sofia Samatar and many more. To learn how to subscribe to the bonus audio and about the many other potential benefits and rewards of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener support, head over to the show’s Patreon page. Finally here is the robust and wide-ranging BookShop for today’s conversation.
• From the Archives : Richard Powers : The Overstory 01.06.2026 1h 32min

  Today’s archival episode with Richard Powers, about The Overstory, was recorded in 2019 in the studios of KBOO community radio in Portland, Oregon.  Unusually, that same night I appeared with Richard at a live ticketed event at Revolution Hall to discuss the same book. Beyond the differences between an intimate one-on-one in-studio conversation (which today’s episode is), and a public-facing live event, where the presence of the audience is palpable and becomes part of the collective rapport we establish, I also developed two discrete lines of inquiry for each conversation respectively. So if you haven’t heard the live conversation (aired in 2023), I highly recommend it as well. Barbara Kingsolver for the New York Times Book Review declares The Overstory—winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction—a book that accomplishes “what few living writers from either camp, art or science, could attempt. Using the tools of story, he pulls readers heart-first into a perspective so much longer-lived and more subtly developed than the human purview that we gain glimpses of a vast, primordial sensibility.” What does it mean to de-center humans in a story written for a human readership?  We explore that together today. For the bonus audio archive Richard discusses a collaborative tree cantata between musicans and writers, where writers pick their favorite text about trees and the musicians compose music to accompany it. Richard then reads his selection for the project, “Native Trees” by W.S. Merwin. This joins an ever-growing archive of material contributed by past guests, whether Forrest Gander reading poems in collaboration with a lichen scientist or Jorie Graham reading poems about rain by others; whether writing exercises by Lucy Ives, Lily Dunn or Will Alexander, or craft talks by Jeannie Vanasco and Marlon James. To learn how to subscribe to the bonus audio and about the other potential benefits and rewards of joining the Between the Covers community, head over to the show’s Patreon page.
• Giada Scodellaro : Ruins, Child 25.05.2026 2h 10min

  Dionne Brand says of Giada Scodellaro debut novel, winner of the prestigious Novel Prize: “Ruins, Child takes us to the crumbling architecture of a future past; a future past that is possibly now. In this work of fractal seeing, we encounter women in lives that are simultaneously lived, reenacted, and observed. Ruins, Child is conceptually rich, prismatic, and choral, embodied, and surreal, cinematic and textual. Giada Scodellaro writes us Black life watching Black life.” In today’s conversation with Giada we look at this singular novel, one that moves less by story than by sound and by image; we look at the politics and poetics of the gaze, at the grammar of film and dance in relation to the the way Giada’s language gestures and flows; at Black artistic lineages, and at this community in her novel, of largely Black women, who film themselves living, and watch themselves on film alive. For the bonus audio archive, Giada contributes a reading from Dionne Brand’s touchstone collection of poetry Ossuaries. This joins contributions from many past guests including Dionne herself, Christina Sharpe, Nikky Finney, Ada Limón, Lydia Davis, Viet Thanh Nguyen and many others. To learn how to subscribe to the bonus audio and about the many other potential benefits and rewards of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter, head over to the show’s Patreon page. Finally, here is the BookShop for today.
• Saul Williams : Martyr Loser King 08.05.2026 2h 42min

  Martyr Loser King, the debut graphic novel of poet, musician, actor and director Saul Williams, with art by Morgan Sorne, not only exists in the same world as his feature film Neptune Frost, but also that of three of his albums, one of his poetry collections and a touring dance performance called The Motherboard Suite. All of these works, in their respective disciplines, explore the distribution of power, the intersection of technology and race, and how our digitally-mediated lives are sustained by the crudest and cruelest of analog exploitations. In Martyr Loser King we follow two Central African protagonists—a miner of coltan, the trace mineral that powers our smart phones and laptops, and an intersex hacker with designs on the system extracting wealth from their country and people. To borrow words from Saul’s song and poem “Coltan as Cotton,” in today’s conversation we hack into land rights and ownership, faith and morality, masculinity, femininity and sexuality. We hack into the rebellious gene, the storyboard, and the history of revolutions. We hack into the database and the panel marked “survival.” If you enjoy today’s conversation consider joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter. One of the many benefits and rewards you can choose from is access to the bonus audio archive, with contributions from everyone from Dionne Brand to Isabella Hammad, N.K. Jemisin to Danez Smith, Naomi Klein to Viet Thanh Nguyen. You can find out more at the show’s Patreon page. Finally, here is the BookShop for today’s conversation.
• From the Archives : Zadie Smith : Grand Union 01.05.2026 56min

  Today’s classic episode from the archives with Zadie Smith was recorded in 2019 at the studios of KBOO community radio to discuss her story collection Grand Union. The conversation ranges wildly—from the politics of representation, of being “free to imagine,” to the freedoms we’ve surrendered to surveillance capitalism. It ranges widely because her collection is, in the words of the San Francisco Chronicle an “unusual creature…Between the covers of one book, readers will find such disparate forms as allegory, parable, speculative thriller and satire, as well as shorter incarnations of Smith’s characteristic social comedy . . . Smith’s voracious intellect is on full display.” If you enjoy today’s conversation consider joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter. Find out about all the potential benefits and rewards of doing so at the show’s Patreon page.
• Molly Crabapple : Here Where We Live Is Our Country : The Story of the Jewish Bund 17.04.2026 2h 29min

  One of the elements that makes Molly Crabapple’s latest book so remarkable is, not only the remarkable stories it unearths and retells, but more specifically how she tells these stories, these erased stories, these stories meant to be forgotten. Not only does she tell them in a dynamic, often thrilling, way, she also does so in a way that somehow opens up the history and gifts it to contemporary movements, organizers and their artists. You can feel how alive to the moment Molly’s book of history is in the words of everyone who praises it. Whether Naomi Klein calling it a “gripping, human story of love, idealism and betrayal” or Tareq Baconi “a road map for our revolution today” and we explore this together—how to write, in whatever genre, in a way that offers one’s work to anti-colonial movements of liberation. A great conversation to pair today’s with is the recent episode with Jordy Rosenberg, who asks many of these same questions, but within the realm of fiction. After Jordy and my conversation had aired, Jordy sent me a second contribution to the bonus audio archive, a reading of the Palestinian writer and performance artist Fargo Tbakhi’s “Notes on Craft: Writing in the Hour of Genocide.” This joins many contributions from past guests whether from Naomi Klein, Dionne Brand, Isabella Hammad, or Omar El Akkad. You can check out all the potential rewards and benefits of joining the Between the Covers community, including access to the bonus audio archive, at the show’s Patreon page. Finally here is the BookShop for today.
• Lily Brooks-Dalton : Ruins 08.04.2026 2h 12min

  Lily Brooks-Dalton’s Ruins is both a cleverly plotted page-turner, and an emotionally engaging, character-driven novel with an unforgettable protagonist; it’s both erudite and a wild ride, inviting and yet mysterious, only slowly revealing its cards. Through the lens of archaeology, Ruins explores how cultures construct history and shape memory, and through our prickly protagonist Ember, the difficulties and rewards of questioning the beliefs we’ve inherited. Today’s conversation, beyond delving into the themes and narrative of Ruins, also is a deep dive into craft, particularly exploring a writer’s considerations when it comes to plotting. As part of that discussion, we not only discuss Lily’s sensibilities when it comes to her three successful novels, but we also talk about two completed novels that never coalesced and why that might be. For the bonus audio archive, Lily contributes a reading from the opening of one of these novels we will never see. This joins bonus readings from everyone from Ted Chiang to N.K. Jemisin, adrienne maree brown to Dionne Brand. You can find out how to subscribe to the bonus audio, and about all the other potential benefits of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter, at the show’s Patreon page. Finally, here is the BookShop for today’s conversation.
• From the Archives : Ted Chiang : Exhalation 01.04.2026 1h 13min

  Excited to share this classic episode from the archives with one of the great short storytellers of our time, Ted Chiang. This conversation happened in 2019 at the studios of KBOO community radio in Portland, Oregon. Blake Crouch speaking of Exhalation, the book we discuss today, says “Ted Chiang has no contemporary peers when it comes to the short story form. His name deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Carver, Poe, Borges, and Kafka. Every story is a universe. Every story is a diamond. You will inhale Exhalation in a single, stunned sitting, because true genius doesn’t come along nearly as often as advertised. This is the real thing.” For the bonus audio archive Ted contributed a reading of his essay “Silicon Valley Is Turning into its Own Worst Fear,” first published at Buzzfeed, an essay exploring the reasons why Silicon Valley might particularly fear superintelligent A.I. and how credible those fears really are. This joins contributions from everyone from N.K. Jemisin to Daniel Jose Older to Vajra Chandrasekera. You can find out how to subscribe to the bonus audio, and about the other potential rewards and benefits of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter, at the show’s Patreon page.
• Jordy Rosenberg : Night Night Fawn 27.03.2026 2h 26min

  Today’s conversation with Jordy Rosenberg is many things but at its heart it explores the question of what it means to write revolutionary literature (or as Trotsky would call it “October literature”). Whether we are talking about trans horror or a Marxist surreal, the originating violence of early capitalism or writing toward utopian horizons; whether we are getting granular on the level of craft and form or looking more broadly at the role of art and artists, the question of how our writing can lend itself toward conjuring an elsewhere and otherwise is, I think, the animating force behind it all. Jordy’s provocative choices in his latest novel Night Night Fawn bring these questions urgently to the fore as it centers and is narrated by someone whose worldview Jordy strongly opposes. Night Night Fawn is an opioid-addled, deathbed rant by one Barbara Rosenberg, a transphobic Zionist woman modeled after Jordy’s own mother. Barbara holds court not only on her life’s disappointments, but on Marxism and gender delivered through her cracked lens. All while her greatest disappointment, her transgender son, who may or may not want to kill her, visits her at her bedside. What opportunities, challenges and dangers does this approach create for a writer with revolutionary aims? How can looking back at originary violences, within a family or a nation or an ideology, be a liberatory act? And when confronting structural or familial violence, what is the role of humor and satire? Perhaps it is best summed up by Book Page in its starred review when they say Night Night Fawn is “comedic fiction as political firepower.” For the bonus audio archive Jordy contributes a reading of Kay Gabriel & Andrea Abi-Karam’s “What is the Project of Trans Poetics Now?” This joins supplemental readings by Torrey Peters, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, Rickey Laurentiis, Randa Abdel-Fattah, Isabella Hammad, Naomi Klein, Dionne Brand, Christina Sharpe, Layli Long Soldier, Natalie Diaz and many others. To learn how to subscribe to the bonus audio, and about the many other potential benefits and rewards of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter, head over to the show’s Patreon page. Finally, here is the BookShop for today. Given Jordy’s generous citational practice, it is more robust than most.
• Joan Naviyuk Kane : with snow pouring southward past the window 12.03.2026 2h 39min

  When Cynthia Cruz describes Joan Naviyuk Kane’s latest collection as a series of poems that “both shows and enacts how a self is brought to being through the abyss,” I think of Kane’s own words about poetry: as “a place of refuge and possibility, a generative space. Not a space of loss, but contingence.” What is a home in the face of dispossession? Inheritance in the face of rupture and colonial erasure? And what is the role of language on behalf of continuity and continuation? We explore all of these questions and much more, both generally, but also quite granularly within the context of the indigenous circumpolar North. For the bonus audio archive, Joan contributes the reading of a long poem, one that she is still working on, called “Provisionally.” She grants us a sneak peek of a poem that she has been drafting and revising for a year, in its current provisional form. This joins many remarkable contributions— from everyone from Layli Long Soldier to Dionne Brand, Isabella Hammad to Arthur Sze, Jorie Graham to Danez Smith. Find out how to subscribe to the bonus audio, and about the other potential benefits and rewards of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter at the show’s Patreon page. Finally, here is the BookShop for today’s conversation.
• From the Archives : Brandon Shimoda : The Grave on the Wall 02.03.2026 1h 55min

  Today’s episode is a classic from the archives, a conversation from 2019 with Brandon Shimoda about his book The Grave on the Wall. While the book centers on an exploration of Shimoda’s grandfather’s internment at Fort Missoula during World War II, it is really an interrogation of America that extends both directions in time from that moment. Forts such as these, that imprisoned Japanese and Japanese-Americans during the war, were also previously used to fight the Indian wars that established white dominance over Native lands, and are now today being used as detention centers/concentration camps for the refugees and immigrants from our southern border. The Grave on the Wall is also an engagement with photography and (mis)representation, memory and memorialization and asks the question of what it means to memorialize something that is ongoing, that has never ended. For the bonus audio archive Brandon Shimoda contributes a reading from Etel Adnan’s long poem “Fog,” a poem she dedicated to him. This joins contributions from everyone from Isabella Hammad to Dionne Brand, Natalie Diaz to Kaveh Akbar and more. To learn how to subscribe to the bonus audio and about all the other potential rewards and benefits of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter head over to the show’s Patreon page.
• Báyò Akómoláfé : Selah 25.02.2026 2h 14min

  What if we were to take seriously that we, as humans, aren’t the sole authors of our world, that there are other intelligences at play, that we are only one of many agents of change and transformation, and that “we” aren’t even entirely ourselves given that “we” are composed of many “others,” many strangers that nevertheless make up what we call a “self”—what would a philosophy and politics emerging from this look like, one where we weren’t the center or central agent of the story? And what would we do if we discovered that the way we’ve been responding to the things we want to change—colonialism, racism, fascism, environmental devastation, and more—what if something about the way we oppose these forces actually reinscribes them, where the very way we are responding to the crisis becomes part of the crisis? We explore these animating philosophical questions of Báyò Akómoláfé today and take them also into the realm of words— from what it means when Báyò says “poetry precedes language” to how to tell stories while recognizing, in their remarkable power, their danger and limitations. We talk koans and tricksters, monsters and fugitives, shifting shape, following cracks, making sanctuary and much more. If you enjoy today’s conversation consider transforming yourself from a listener to a listener-supporter by joining the Between the Covers community. Find out more about all the potential benefits and rewards of doing so at the show’s Patreon page. Finally the BookShop for today.
• Milkweed Live : Canisia Lubrin : The World After Rain 11.02.2026 1h 10min

  Canisia Lubrin returns to Between the Covers for a live conversation in downtown Portland, at Powell’s Bookstore, about her latest poetry collection The World After Rain. A private book, that Canisia never intended to publish, we explore what it means to write elegy beyond personal biography, what it means that “metaphors unmake the too-made,” what it means to write against the literal, with a folk sensibility and consciousness, and much more. How does elegy relate, formally and aesthetically, to water? What is the utility of poetry, its effect in the world? How can autobiography be a way to move beyond the self? Join Canisia for a deep exploration of these animating questions in her latest work. The first time Canisia was one the show, to discuss her book Code Noir, her contribution to the bonus audio archive was a reading of as-of-yet-unpublished works by Christina Sharpe and Dionne Brand, and a soundscape she stitched together from six years of touring, from Canada to Europe to the Caribbean. This joins an immense and ever-growing archive of supplemental material and is only one of many possible things to choose from when you join the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter. You can find out more at the show’s Patreon page. Finally, here is the BookShop for today.  
• From the Archives : Jake Skeets : Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers 05.02.2026 1h 58min

  Today’s episode is a classic from the archives, a conversation from 2019 with current Navajo Nation Poet Laureate Jake Skeets about his debut poetry collection Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers. Winner of the Whiting Award in poetry and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, there is no better time to revisit this remarkable collection, and this unforgettable conversation with Skeets, as we await his new book Horses coming this March from Milkweed Editions. For the bonus audio archive Jake contributed a reading and analysis of a poem by the first Navajo Nation Poet Laureate, Luci Tapahonso, a poem called “Hills Brothers Coffee.”  He talks about it in relation to his thoughts on Diné or Navajo poetics. This joins supplemental readings by many past guests including Tommy Pico, Layli Long Soldier, Brandon Hobson, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Natalie Diaz, Elissa Washuta, Morgan Talty and many others. To learn how to subscribe to the bonus audio and about the many other potential benefits and rewards of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter, head over to the show’s Patreon page.  
• Sangamithra Iyer : Governing Bodies : A Memoir, A Confluence, A Watershed 28.01.2026 2h 41min

  “When I tell you a story about my body, I cannot separate it from a story about water. And a story about water is also a story about family. And a story about family is rooted in the earth…,” opens Sangamithra Iyer’s Governing Bodies. What does it mean for a memoir to assume the elusive, ever-changing shape of water, to be the story of family but where the notion of family crosses the boundaries of blood, culture, nation and even species? Governing Bodies, as the Whiting judges said in their citation, is “a subtle, meditative exploration on grief and nonviolence, an international and intergenerational voyage through shared histories and a consideration of what we owe to each other and the natural world.” For the bonus audio archive, Sangu contributes a reading of her remarkable essay “Are You Willing?” which originally appeared in the anthology Writing for Animals: New Perspectives for Writers & Instructors to Educate & Inspire. This joins an ever-growing archive of contributions from past guests—from Richard Powers to adrienne maree brown, Forrest Gander to Arthur Sze, Natalie Diaz to Ada Limón. You can find out how to access the bonus audio and about the many other potential benefits and rewards to choose from, when you join the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter, at the show’s Patreon page. Finally, here is today’s BookShop.
• Lily Dunn : Into Being : The Radical Craft of Memoir and Its Power to Transform 01.01.2026 1h 56min

  In Into Being Lily Dunn explores the ways in which writing one’s life has the potential to transform it; how writing, if done well,  can produce “symbolic repair.” We look at Virginia Woolf’s notion of “moments of being” as a means and method to find the form that best fits your specific story to tell. We look at different ways memoirists have used the imagination within their own work, and the various ethical issues that arise when writing about people close to you or about other peoples’ trauma. And from beginning to end, we look at Lily’s own remarkable memoir, Sins of My Father: A Daughter, A Cult, A Wild Unravelling, as a way into these questions as well. For the bonus audio archive Lily walks us through one of the writing exercises in the book. This joins a large and ever-growing archive, everything from craft talks by Marlon James and Jeannie Vanasco, to writing prompts from Danez Smith & Lucy Ives, to readings by everyone from Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore to Richard Powers. You can find out about how to subscribe to the bonus audio and about all the other potential benefits and rewards of joining the Between the Covers community at the show’s Patreon page. Finally here is the BookShop for today.
• Randa Abdel-Fattah : Discipline 13.12.2025 1h 56min

  Randa Abdel-Fattah’s new novel Discipline is set in Sydney, Australia in 2021 during Ramadan. Discipline follows two Palestinians there, one in media and one in academia, where each has to confront questions of silence and complicity in their respective fields. As Israel intensifies its bombardment of Gaza, and as an eighteen-year-old student at a local Islamic school is arrested for protesting a university’s investment in an Israeli arms manufacturer—an arrest that results in an Islamophobic moral panic across Australia, our two Palestinian protagonists make very different decisions on how to engage with the power structures within their disciplines and within the country at large. What is the cost of staying and fighting within an organization that wants to silence you? What is the cost of walking way? In addition to being a riveting read on the level of story, Discipline is also a sort of primer on the weaponization of language, particularly liberal rhetoric employed to capture and domesticate radical movements of change. For the bonus audio archive Randa contributes a reading of excerpts from Chelsea Watego’s “Always Bet on Black (Power): The Fight Against Race.” This joins bonus readings from Dionne Brand, Danez Smith, Isabella Hammad, Natalie Diaz, Omar El Akkad, music from Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and much more. To learn about how to subscribe to the bonus audio and the other potential benefits and rewards of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter head over to the show’s Patreon page. Finally here is the BookShop for today.
• Jazmina Barrera : The Queen of Swords 06.12.2025 1h 58min

  Jorge Luis Borges called her the “Tolstoy of Mexico” and César Aira the “greatest novelist of the 20th century,” so why is it likely that you haven’t read or even heard of Elena Garro before now? And given that Garro was, like her fantastical stories,  not beholden to the truth when accounting her own life, and given that her own life was, in its radical shifts and contradictions, so wildly resistant to comprehension, how does one present her now to the world? Jazmina Barrera may be the perfect writer to do so as her new Garro-centric book The Queen of Swords is as unconventional as her subject. Full of cats and revolution, Tarot and the CIA, conspiracy and embroidery, this anti-biographical love letter to another writer also becomes a portrait of Jazmina as well. For the bonus audio archive Jazmina contributes a reading from Elena Garro’s story “When We Were Dogs,” in Christina MacSweeney’s translation. To learn how to subscribe to the bonus audio and the other potential benefits and rewards of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter, head over to the show’s Patreon page. Finally, here is the BookShop for today.
• Tin House Live : Caren Beilin : Sea Poison 22.11.2025 1h 16min

  Caren Beilin’s first appearance on the show, in 2022 to discuss her book Revenge of the Scapegoat, was so unforgettable, and spurred so much enthusiasm and electrifying conversation in its wake, that I couldn’t say “no” to being in conversation with her again, this time live at Powell’s Bookstore, to discuss her latest book Sea, Poison out with New Directions. So get ready, as if you were a donkey dragged through a mossy ditch of Daniel Day-Lewis-ishness, for a conversation of stolen plots and stolen uteri, medical Oulipo, botched eye surgeries, dirty dancing, and more. If you enjoyed today’s conversation consider joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter. Find out about all the potential rewards and benefits of doing so at the show’s Patreon page. Finally, here is the BookShop for today’s conversation.