David Byrne on Turning 'American Utopia'...

Some time ago, the British journalist Sophie Elmhirst was reporting a story about people who try to escape the land and to live on the water. “I found myself trolling around as you do in these moments, online and on a website devoted to castaway stories and shipwreck stories,” sh ... Show More

“Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself”: So reads one of the great opening lines in British literature, the first sentence of Virginia Woolf’s classic 1925 novel, “Mrs. Dalloway.”The book tracks one day in the life of an English woman, Clarissa Dalloway, living in ... Show More

On this week's episode, A.O. Scott joins host Gilbert Cruz to talk about the value of close reading poetry. And New York Times Book Review poetry editor Greg Cowles recommends four recently published collections worth reading.Books mentioned in this episode* "New and Collected He ... Show More

Ling Ma joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss “Seeing Ershadi,” by Nicole Krauss, which was published in The New Yorker in 2018. Ma is the author of the novel “Severance” and the story collection “Bliss Montage,” which came out in September. 

Akhil Sharma joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss “Zombie,” by Joyce Carol Oates, which was published in The New Yorker in 1994. Sharma is the author of the novels “Family Life” and “An Obedient Father,” which will be reissued in a revised version this month. 

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.  

Elif Batuman joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss “Truth and Fiction,” by Sylvia Townsend Warner, which was published in The New Yorker in 1961. Batuman is the author of one book of nonfiction, “The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them,” and ... Show More

On this week’s show, Jamie talks about her new essay collection Surfacing and we hear a rare recording of the Cider with Rosie author. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/bookspod 

Dorothea Lasky joins Kevin Young to read “Three Songs,” by Louise Bogan, and her own poem “The Green Lake.” Lasky is the author of several books of poetry and prose, including her forthcoming collection “The Shining.” She’s the co-creator, with Alex Dimitrov, of Astro Poets, and ... Show More

Diane Mehta joins Kevin Young to read “The Lost Art of Letter Writing,” by Eavan Boland, and her own poem “Landscape with Double Bow.” Mehta is the author of the poetry collection “Forest with Castanets” and the forthcoming “Tiny Extravaganzas,” and the recipient of the Peter Hei ... Show More

Hal Foster is one of the most well-known thinkers about art today. In a career that spans several decades, he is known for important much-cited books including The Return of the Real from 1996, Design and Crime from 2002 and most recently, Brutal Aesthetics from 2020. He teaches ... Show More

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. 

Kate Baer joins Kevin Young to read “The Morning After,” by Ellen Bass, and her own poem “Mixup.” Baer is the New York Times bestselling author of three poetry collections, including, most recently “And Yet.”