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

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.

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.