Amor Towles Sees Dead People

<p>Literature isn’t a horse race. Taste is subjective, and artistic value can’t be measured in terms of “winners" and “losers.”</p><p>That doesn’t mean it’s not fun to try.</p><p>The book world’s awards season officially kicked off on Oct. 9, when the Hungarian novelist Laszlo Kr ... Show More

<p>Nicholas Boggs’s “Baldwin: A Love Story,” is many things at once. It’s a comprehensive biography of James Baldwin. It’s a nimble excavation of Baldwin’s work, filled with astute literary analysis of his books and prose. And, most pressingly, it’s an argument for a new critical ... Show More

<p>On Nov. 10, 1975, during a calamitous storm, the Edmund Fitzgerald sunk below the waves of Lake Superior. All 29 men aboard went down with the vessel. With no survivors and no eyewitnesses, there’s always been a sense of mystery to what is arguably the most famous shipwreck in ... Show More

What a delight this was, to talk to my friend Walt Hunter about the marvelous Gwendolyn Brooks poem "kitchenette building." Walt is an associate professor and the Chair of the Department of English at Case Western Reserve University. He is the author of two books of criticism: Fo ... Show More

<p>American novelist and screenwriter Michael Cunningham is best known for his 1998 novel ‘The Hours’, which became a ‘New York Times’ bestseller and won both the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize. His work has appeared in ‘The New Yorker’ and ‘The Best American Short Sto ... Show More

Early modern poets - John Milton, Edmund Spenser, Aemilia Lanyer, Abraham Cowley - lived in a world where theological questions were as hotly contested as political struggles over issues like empire, gender, civil war, and poetic authority. In this episode, Jacke talks to Deni K ... Show More

This week’s episode is with one of my biggest writing inspirations: Dame Jacqueline Wilson. Her 111th novel Love Frankie is out now. We talk about her journey into being one of the nation's most loved writers, her writing process, why she's always wanted to discuss deeper issues ... Show More

We are joined by the writer Andrew Hankinson to discuss Walter Greenwood’s classic novel of Northern working-class life. First published in 1933, Love on the Dole, revolves explores the fortunes of the Hardcastle family, who live in industrial Salford in the 1930s, just as the De ... Show More

<p><em>His saucer was parked in the woods, and Mr. Steariot (from Venus) was parked in the lobby.... Short Snorter by Charles Einstein</em>, that’s next on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast.</p><br><p>What does Willie Mays, Curb Your Enthusiasm, stuntman Super Dave Osborne and the 1991 mov ... Show More

Proust as an agony uncle, Romeo and Juliet rewritten as 21st century Welsh teenagers in a new drama by Gary Owen, the Lesbian coming of age novel by Rita Mae Brown that inspired the lead character in Willy Russell's Educating Rita to change her name and a new book inspired by the ... Show More

Come see a brand new Alice Isn’t Dead live show, along with performances from Within the Wires and Welcome to Night Vale’s the Faceless Old Woman, at the Largo in LA on April 27! Tickets available now: https://wl.seetickets.us/event/Night-Vale-Presents/381517?afflky=LargoAtTheCor ... Show More

Get this week's full So Into That newsletter here! https://whattocook.substack.com/p/the-idea-of-you-author-robinne-leeThe Idea of You was a book that changed the way I read. I absolutely loved it. I recommend it all the time. And it was my gateway drug into the romance genre… al ... Show More