Douglas Stuart Reads Kevin Barry

Souvankham Thammavongsa joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss “The Size of Things,” by Samanta Schweblin (translated, from the Spanish, by Megan McDowell), which was published in The New Yorker in 2017. Thammavongsa is a Laotian Canadian writer. Her publications include the ... Show More

Edwidge Danticat joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss “Two Men Arrive in a Village,” by Zadie Smith, which was published in The New Yorker in 2016. Danticat, a MacArthur Fellow and a winner of the Vilcek Prize in Literature, has published six books of fiction, including “Br ... Show More

Yiyun Li joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss “The Piano Tuner’s Wives,” by William Trevor, which was published in The New Yorker in 1995. Li has published eight books of fiction, including the novels “Must I Go” and “Book of Goose,” a winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for F ... Show More

Booker Prize-winning author Douglas Stuart joins us to discuss his new novel, Young Mungo (Grove, April 2), a sophomore effort Kirkus calls “romantic, terrifying, brutal, tender, and, in the end, sneakily hopeful” (starred review). Then our editors join with their reading recomme ... Show More

David Baker joins Kevin Young to read “In Passing,” by Stanley Plumly, and his own poem “Six Notes.” Baker has received honors and awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Theodore Roethke Memorial Foundation. He served as poetry editor ... Show More

Clarence Major joins Kevin Young to read “Downpour,” by Billy Collins, and his own poem “Hair.” Major’s recent honors include a PEN Oakland Reginald Lockett Lifetime Achievement Award and a Lifetime Achievement Award in the fine arts from the Congressional Black Caucus foundation ... Show More

Amanda Gorman joins Kevin Young to read “Declaration,” by Tracy K. Smith, and her own poem “Ship’s Manifest.” Gorman served as the first-ever National Youth Poet Laureate, received a 2020 Poets & Writers Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award, and, in 2021, became the youngest ... Show More

On this week’s show, we talk to graphic novelist Isabel Greenberg about her comic Glass Town and the 2020 longlist for the International Booker prize. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/bookspod 

Aria Aber joins Kevin Young to read “Half Light,” by Frank Bidart, and her own poem “Dirt and Light.” Aber is a Whiting Award recipient, a current Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, and the author of “Hard Damage,” which won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry. 

Douglas Stuart’s debut novel Shuggie Bain won him The Booker Prize in 2020. It centres around an alcoholic single mother and her gay son navigating life on a Glasgow estate and it reflects Douglas’ own troubled upbringing. After near homelessness he earned a place at The Royal Co ... Show More

Louise Erdrich reads her story “The Hollow Children,” which appeared in the November 28, 2022, issue of the magazine. Erdrich is the author of more than a dozen works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, most recently “The Sentence” and “The Night Watchman,” which won the Pulitzer ... Show More

Joy Harjo joins Kevin Young to read “Still-Life with Potatoes, Pearls, Raw Meat, Rhinestones, Lard, and Horse Hooves,” by Sandra Cisneros, and her own poem “Running.” Harjo is the current Poet Laureate of the United States, as well as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets ... Show More

Ben Purkert joins Kevin Young to read “Notes on the Reality of the Self,” by Jorie Graham, and his own poem “News.” Purkert began contributing poetry to The New Yorker in 2012, and his début poetry collection, “For the Love of Endings,” was published in 2018.