logo
episode-header-image
Oct 2019
19m 25s

Susan Sontag: "Make Something Better"

TORONTO PUBLIC LIBRARY
About this episode
Susan Sontag: Part Four: “Make Something Better” In this part, the last of four, Sontag considers earlier words of hers about the religion of profitability in the USA and how it underpins all of American society. She talks about the important distinction between imagining a utopian society vs simply working towards something better from the lives of her char ... Show More
Up next
Jan 21
Linda Gray Sexton: Anne Sexton's 45 Mercy Street
Content Warning: This episode contains references to suicide. Listener discretion is advised. Please take care of yourself and seek support if needed.In this moving episode of Writers Off the Page: From the TIFA Archives, travel back to October 1994 to hear Linda Gray Sexton spea ... Show More
44m 59s
May 2025
Seamus Heaney: Death of a Naturalist
In this captivating episode of Writers Off the Page: From the TIFA Archives, step back in time to 1990 Toronto and immerse yourself in the lyrical world of Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney. The recording captures Heaney in an intimate reading at the Harbourfront Reading Ser ... Show More
31m 4s
Mar 2025
Carlos Fuentes: From Illusion to Reality
This conversation between Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes and Bob Rae, recorded in 2000, offers a time capsule of North American relations at a pivotal moment. The interview captures Fuentes just after Mexico's historic election that ended the PRI party's 71-year rule—a seismic pol ... Show More
45m 30s
Recommended Episodes
Sep 2022
Amy Fusselman
Jordan talks to Amy Fusselman about writers who perform, getting out of your own head, and the agonies and ecstasies of comedy. It's a laugh-out-loud kind of episode.MENTIONED:McSweeney's Internet Concern"Hawk" by Joy WilliamsSecond PositionAmy Fusselman is the author of five boo ... Show More
36m 18s
Feb 2025
Palestinian Writing From the Diaspora | Sahar Mustafah Interviews Susan Muaddi Darraj
In this episode of Ehkili, Sahar Mustafah welcomes author and editor Susan Muaddi Darraj to discuss her recent anthology, "Ask the Night for a Dream: Palestinian Writing From the Diaspora." The conversation highlights the significance of amplifying Palestinian literary voices, th ... Show More
50m 4s
Nov 2024
Live! Garth Greenwell
This week, we bring you a live interview with Garth Greenwell, conducted in October 2024 at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn. Garth talks about growing up in Kentucky assuming that he would die young, the teacher who gave him a path toward being an artist, and the doggedness with which ... Show More
55m 34s
Sep 2024
Sigrid Nunez
This week, Jordan talks to the novelist Sigrid Nunez about her youthful preoccupation with mimicking the prose of Virginia Woolf, the step-by-step intuitive way she writes prose now, and the best way to make overnight oats.Sigrid Nunez has published nine novels, including A Feath ... Show More
51m 57s
Oct 2024
Merve Emre on Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf
I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is the writer, critic, and author, Merve Emre. Currently the Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing and Criticism at Wesleyan University – and the Director of the Shapiro Center for Creative Writing and Criticism – ... Show More
49m 21s
Nov 2024
Poetry in the Time of Genocide, Part 1: A Conversation with 2024 National Book Finalist Lena Tuffaha
In this two-episode special, host Diana Buttu speaks with award-winning Palestinian-American writers Fady Joudah and Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, who are both finalists for the 2024 National Book Awards. Dr. Joudah and Ms. Tuffaha comprise two of the only five shortlisted writers for the ... Show More
26m 3s
Apr 2025
The power and the pitfalls of narrative | Matthew Beaumont, Ruth Padel, and Theodore Dalrymple
<p><strong>Lost in stories</strong></p><p>Is life a story or a sequence of events?</p><p>Our narratives enable us to make sense of the complex, often confusing, world that we live in. And yet there is a risk that rather than helping us to truly understand this world, narratives c ... Show More
42m 34s
Oct 2024
Remix! Jericho Brown
We're revisiting our 2021 interview with the poet Jericho Brown, who this week was named a MacArthur Fellow-- one of the highest honors in the arts and humanities. He and Jordan talk about the great mystery of why we desire the things we desire; about oration and the poets he rea ... Show More
49m 29s
Aug 2024
Episode 599 - Mirana Comstock
This one's all about legacies: familial, literary, cultural & institutional! Mirana Comstock joins the show to celebrate the publication of The Algonquin Round Table: 25 Years with the Legends Who Lunch (Excelsior Editions/SUNY Press), by her grandfather, the late literary lion K ... Show More
1h 20m