Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

Claudia Rankine first appeared on Between the Covers in 2014 to discuss Citizen: An American Lyric. Our first encounter back then was before January 6th or October 7th, before Trump 1.0 or Trump 2.0, before the public murder of George Floyd or the live-streamed genocide, before the fall of Roe v Wade or the massive worldwide fires felling our forests each summer. Not only do we account for the time since we last talked, Claudia’s powerful new book Triage does this very thing as well. Triage follows the lifelong contentious friendship between The Narrator and The Theorist, a Black woman and nonbinary Palestinian, who have invented a ritual of collapse, falling to the ground each time they see each other. “Collapse was an antidote to an unbearable but borne disturbance we glimpsed in the face of each other,” the narrator says. And “maybe collapsing simply was the easiest way to keep from breaking apart.” Join us as we explore Triage together, and the possibilities of becoming someone else in the face of catastrophic change.

If you enjoyed today’s program consider joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter. Find out about all the potential benefits and rewards of doing so—from the Milkweed Early Reader Subscription to access to bonus contributions from everyone from Dionne Brand to Nikky Finney, Isabella Hammad to Omar El Akkad— at the show’s Patreon page.

Finally, to explore the books discussed and referenced in today’s conversation check out the Between the Covers BookShop specific for today’s episode.  And don’t miss Milkweed BookShop bookstore as well.

We welcome back Valeria Luiselli—who first appeared on the show eleven years ago—to discuss her new and truly marvelous novel Beginning Middle End. Much like the shapeshifting god Proteus, who figures prominently in this story, Beginning Middle End is many things at once: a road novel, a family drama, a work of climate fiction, a feminist retelling of classical mythology, a novel about writing, about borders and migration, and perhaps even a field guide for the apocalypse, enacting a way to live and love in a time of rupture and unimaginable change.  Join Valeria, Proteus, and a host of pre-Socratic philosophers as we follow the novel’s make-shift family, broken apart and now coming back together anew, in a Sicily beset by metamorphic forces, mythic, geologic, and more.

If you enjoy today’s conversation, consider shapeshifting from a listener to a listener-supporter by joining the Between the Covers community. You can find out about all the benefits and rewards of doing so at the show’s Patreon page.

Finally, to explore the many books discussed and referenced in today’s conversation check out the Between the Covers BookShop specific for today’s episode.  In addition, don’t miss Milkweed Editions BookShop bookstore as well.

Today’s archival conversation, recorded in 2019, is Cristina Rivera Garza’s first unforgettable appearance on the show. We discuss two works of fiction by her, The Taiga Syndrome and The Iliac Crest. Poet Daniel Borzutsky says of the first, “If The Taiga Syndrome is a book of illness, it’s also about exile, disappearance, borders, love, language and translation, desire, capitalism and its discontents, fairy tales, and what it means to be possessed by the madness of others and the madness of ourselves…There is no one writing novels as phantasmagorically exquisite as Cristina Rivera Garza’s. The Taiga Syndrome, which is both quietly poetic and narratively unhinged, is a crucial addition to her distinguished oeuvre.” And Yuri Herrera says of the second, “An intelligent, beautiful story about bodies disguised as a story about language disguised as a story about night terrors. Cristina Rivera Garza does not respect what is expected of a writer, of a novel, of language. She is an agitator.”

For the bonus audio archive we have an extended conversation with acclaimed translator Suzanne Jill Levine. We explore the pleasures and challenges of translating Cristina’s work; what the collaboration between Suzanne, Cristina and Suzanne’s doctoral student in translating The Taiga Syndrome together looked like; what to expect when pursuing a degree in translation, and more. To learn how to subscribe to the bonus audio, and about the many other potential benefits of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter, head over to the show’s Patreon page.

Today’s guest is writer, poet and translator Eleni Sikelianos. We discuss her hybrid-genre, ancestral memoir Memory Rehearsal, a work that moves between poetry and prose, image and text, human and animal, history and mythology, and perhaps most of all tells the story of a poet’s self-discovery, finding her voice within a dual poetic lineage, within a chorus of remarkable voices, past and present. As Anne Waldman says: “Sikelianos’s voyage is a spiritual quest to untangle a history that only she and only poetry can accomplish. It is a meditation on gender, place, and reclamation, a struggle for a whole vision and version for the writer of her own self and purpose. The genius of this pursuit is staggering. . . .The intricate weaving and array of image and language to get there leaves me breathless. There is nothing like it that I have seen.”

For the bonus audio archive Eleni contributes an electrifying reading from book one of  H.D.’s Trilogy, called “The Walls Do Not Fall.” This joins many unforgettable contributions, whether Lisa Robertson reading her translation of the long Baudelaire poem “Hags,” Jorie Graham reading Robert Creeley, Jen Bervin reading Paul Celan, a late night whispered reading by Bhanu Kapil from her writing journal, and much more. To find out how to subscribe to the bonus audio, and about all the other potential benefits and rewards of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter, head over to the show’s Patreon page.

Finally here is the BookShop for today’s conversation.

[Author photo by Laird Hunt]

Lisa Robertson’s Riverwork twins the mysterious disappearance of the great aunt of our protagonist, Lucy Frost, and that same aunt’s interest in a long-disappeared river, buried under the streets of Paris. As Lucy searches for traces of her aunt, by attempting to inhabit and complete her work on this long-forgotten river, erased histories about both come to the surface. Today’s unforgettable conversation—whether when talking about laundry or linguistics, text or textile, dust or menses, archivists or troubadours—floods designation, spills over with newly daylighted significations.

For the bonus audio archive Lisa introduces us to and reads her translation of “Hags,” the long poem by Charles Baudelaire that is a germ for both of her novels, The Baudelaire Fractal and Riverwork. This joins many contributions from past guests including Dionne Brand, Christina Sharpe, Canisia Lubrin, Sheila Heti, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Bhanu Kapil, Kate Zambreno, Sofia Samatar and many more. To learn how to subscribe to the bonus audio and about the many other potential benefits and rewards of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener support, head over to the show’s Patreon page.

Finally here is the robust and wide-ranging BookShop for today’s conversation.