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Laurie Gwen Shapiro on Amelia Earhart, Harriet the Spy, and the art of rewriting legend
Season 4 Episode 6
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Before you can shape a story, you have to pay attention to the world as it really is—even when it’s messy, even when it stings. That lesson from Louise Fitzhugh’s classic Harriet the Sp…
Published on 11 hours ago
Ada Calhoun on Ghostwriting, Thornton Wilder, and the audacity of desire
Season 4 Episode 5
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“Anything Ada Calhoun wants to write is well worth reading,” declared Kirkus in its review of her new novel, Crush, a sharp and seductive exploration of midlife desire and the unruly fo…
Published on 2 weeks, 4 days ago
Geoff Dyer on Bad Food, Jazz Renegades, and the "Soviet Resignation" of Post-War Britain
Season 4 Episode 4
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Few writers dance across genres with as much wit, irreverence, and intellectual curiosity as Geoff Dyer. From Out of Sheer Rage, about his struggles to write a book on DH Lawrence, to t…
Published on 1 month, 4 weeks ago
Biographer Katherine Bucknell on Christopher Isherwood's Odyssey from Weimar Berlin to California
Season 4 Episode 3
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What can we learn from Weimar Germany and its rapid unraveling in the 1930s? Lately that question has gained more urgency as the US turns away from the trans-Atlantic alliance that has …
Published on 6 months, 1 week ago
Legendary Publisher Edwin Frank in Praise of Rudyard Kipling — and Why the 20th Century Novel Matters
Season 4 Episode 2
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Nobel Laureate Rudyard Kipling is among the most derided of 20th century novelists, but in this episode of Shelf Life, the publishing legend Edwin Frank urges us to take a second look. …
Published on 7 months, 3 weeks ago
Jeanette Winterson on ghosts, tech bros, and what her success taught her about class in Britain
Season 4 Episode 1
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It's been 40 years since Jeanette Winterson's debut novel, Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, launched a confident and daring new voice in English fiction, one that wasn’t afraid to take r…
Published on 8 months, 2 weeks ago
Jennifer Kabat on America's forgotten populist uprising and the politics of place
Season 3 Episode 10
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Memoir meets history meets politics in Jennifer Kabat’s book, The Eighth Moon, a fascinating account of moving to the Catskills in 2005, and stumbling on a history of America’s forgotte…
Published on 10 months, 1 week ago
Ricky Ian Gordon's Odyssey of Sex, Drugs and Opera
Season 3 Episode 9
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A teenage prodigy who worshiped Joni Mitchell, Ricky Ian Gordon has made a career turning novels and poems into operas and song. “I was that kid who was invited to the party because I c…
Published on 10 months, 2 weeks ago
YA author Rex Ogle on Life as a Poor Kid in a Land of Plenty
Season 3 Episode 8
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Rex Ogle’s series of YA memoirs, beginning with Free Lunch, about life as a poor kid in a wealthy school district, and culminating this year in Road Home, which chronicles his experienc…
Published on 11 months, 1 week ago
Helen Phillips on a mother's primal love, and the perfidy (and promise) of AI in her novel, Hum
Season 3 Episode 7
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Is there a more primal terror than a mother’s fear of losing a child. Helen Phillips, one of our greatest speculative writers, explored that terrain in her acclaimed 2020 novel, The Nee…
Published on 1 year ago