The Shakespeare and Company Interview

Jeanette Winterson joined us to celebrate the French edition of One Aladdin, Two Lamps, her book-length exploration of storytelling, built around One Thousand and One Nights. She recalls finding Shahrazad in her hometown library and the insight this led her to: that she could read herself as fiction as well as fact, and so rewrite her own story. The conversation moves from Freud, epigenetics and the plasticity of the brain to Manchester's Industrial Revolution and the lessons we failed to learn from it. Winterson traces AI from Ada Lovelace to Turing to today's tech moguls, making a case for cautious optimism and for calling it "alternative intelligence." She also argues for being present in the world, and looking at art without a phone. Buy One Aladdin Two Lamps here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/one-aladdin-two-lamps-2*Jeanette Winterson CBE was born in Manchester. She published her first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, at twenty-five. Over two decades later she revisited that material in her internationally bestselling memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?. Winterson has written thirteen novels for adults and two previous collections of short stories, as well as children's books, non-fiction and screenplays. She is Professor of New Writing at the University of Manchester. She lives in the Cotswolds in a wood and in Spitalfields, London.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company.Listen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dave Eggers joins us to discuss his 14th novel, Contrapposto, a six-decade love story between childhood friends Cricket and Olympia, illustrated with his own drawings. Eggers traces the book's twenty-year gestation, the moment Olympia's character unlocked its structure, and why he gave Cricket his own boyhood fantasy of being "apprenticed" as a young artist. The conversation ranges widely: the decline of art-school access and the pier-side art collective he's launched in San Francisco; his literacy nonprofit 826 Valencia and its typewriter-obsessed students; and a candid, sometimes fiery take on AI's effect on writing, translation, and education, including an anecdote from his visit to OpenAI's offices. Buy Contrapposto: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/contrapposto-3*Dave Eggers is the author of many books for adults and kids. He’s the founder of McSweeney's and the co-founder of 826 Valencia, and the International Alliance of Youth Writing Centers. A finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, he was recently awarded the Newbery Medal for his all-ages book, The Eyes & the Impossible.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company.Listen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amit Chaudhuri joins Adam Biles to discuss his new novel Chateau Rouge, set not in the postcard Paris of Hemingway and Midnight in Paris, but in the neighbourhood around Gare du Nord — a Paris that resists being known, curated, or confirmed.Chaudhuri talks about writing against the "already known" city, drawing on Roland Barthes and the idea of "heritage modernity" to explain why he wanted to deconstruct Paris's status as a museum-piece rather than a lived-in place. He discusses his narrator's disorientation on arrival, the subtle presence of race and visibility in the book, and how global events — the Gilets Jaunes, the Notre Dame fire — pass through the novel as lived, unfinished moments rather than history. The conversation turns, too, to marriage: how a decades-old, unread copy of A Moveable Feast, gifted by his wife, becomes a quiet emotional throughline.Buy Château Rouge: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/chateau-rouge*Amit Chaudhuri is the author of nine novels, whose ‘languorous, elliptical, beautiful prose is impressively impossible to put in any category at all’ (Salman Rushdie). He is also an essayist, poet, short story writer, singer and composer.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company.Listen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this live conversation at Shakespeare & Company in Paris, Adam Biles speaks with writer Ian Leslie about John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs, Leslie’s acclaimed exploration of the creative and emotional bond at the heart of The Beatles. Together they trace John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s relationship from their first meeting as bereaved teenagers in Liverpool, through the crucible of Hamburg, the frenzy of Beatlemania, and the artistic revolutions of the 1960s. Leslie explains why their partnership was neither simple friendship nor sibling rivalry, but a passionate, volatile, and profoundly collaborative romance—one that shaped their music as much as their music shaped them. They discuss myth-making around the band’s breakup, why McCartney’s reputation took decades to recover, and how John and Paul remained “entangled particles” long after going their separate ways. A rich, moving conversation about genius, chemistry, and the power of creative partnership.Buy John & Paul, A Love Story in Songs: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/john-and-paul*lan Leslie is a journalist and author of two acclaimed books on human behaviour, Born Liars, and Curious. His first career was in advertising, where he worked as a strategist for some of the world's biggest brands at ad agencies in London and New York. He now counsels business leaders on communication and writes about psychology, technology, politics and business for the New Statesman, Economist, Guardian and the Financial Times. He is the co-host of a podcast series called Polarised, on the way we do politics today. lan is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He lives in London with his wife and two young children.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company.Listen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

An edited version of this conversation is now available as part of our collaboration with The Yale Review. Read it here: https://yalereview.org/article/shakespeare-and-company-interview-miriam-toewsTrigger warning: This is a tender, funny, and hopeful conversation, that inevitably touches on the subjects of suicide and depression. Please be advised before listening.In this moving and intimate discussion, Miriam Toews joins Adam Biles at Shakespeare and Company to talk about her memoir A Truce That Is Not Peace. Beginning with the question “Why do I write?”, Toews embarks on a deeply personal exploration of creativity, doubt, family, and loss. She reflects on her Mennonite upbringing, the deaths of her father and sister, and the ways in which writing—and laughter—have helped her make sense of pain and love. With warmth, wit, and clarity, Toews examines the limits of narrative, the pull of silence, and the stubborn hope that persists in the face of despair. A meditation on grief, rebellion, and the meaning of home, this is a conversation about how to keep living, and how to keep creating, when life itself resists coherence.Buy A Truce That Is Not Peace: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/a-truce-that-is-not-peace*Miriam Toews is the author of the bestselling novels Women Talking, All My Puny Sorrows, Summer of My Amazing Luck, A Boy of Good Breeding, A Complicated Kindness, The Flying Troutmans, Irma Voth, Fight Night and one work of nonfiction, Swing Low: A Life. She is the winner of the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, the Libris Award for Fiction Book of the Year, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Writers’ Trust Engel/Findley Award. She lives in Toronto.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company.Listen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.