London Review Bookshop Podcast

London Review Bookshop Podcast

London Review Bookshop

Listen to the latest literary events recorded at the London Review Bookshop, covering fiction, poetry, politics, music and much more.Find out about our upcoming events here: https://lrb.me/bookshopeventspod

1 hour 51 seconds

Eley Williams & So Mayer: Moderate to Poor, Occasionally Good

‘There are very few writers with as clear and thrilling a love for the stuff of language as Eley Williams’, writes Jon McGregor. Moderate to Poor, Occasionally Good revels in the same inventiveness and experimentation that made her debut collection of short stories, Attrib. and Other Stories, so beloved; courtroom artists, childhood crushes, scholarly annotators and editors of canned laughter take their place in a joyful panoply exploring the nature of relationships both intimate and transient. Williams was in conversation with So Mayer, author of Truth & Dare (Cipher Press).
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25 December 2024, 12:30 pm
1 hour 6 minutes

Michael Longley & Declan Ryan: Ash Keys

Published to coincide with the poet’s 85th birthday, Ash Keys (Jonathan Cape) presents a new selection of Longley’s finest works. Born in Belfast in 1939, his verse inhabits the landscapes Ireland’s west, at the same time occupying a space within a distinctly European tradition, ranging freely across the continent's histories, tragedies and triumphs. ’One of the most perfect poets alive,’ writes Sebastian Barry. ‘There is something in his work both ancient and modern. I read him as I might check the sky for stars.’

Michael Longley was joined for this reading and discussion by fellow poet Declan Ryan, whose most recent collection Crisis Actor is published by Faber.

Get the book: https://lrb.me/ashkeyspod
Find more events at the Bookshop: https://lrb.m/eventspod

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18 December 2024, 12:08 pm
51 minutes 56 seconds

Ralf Webb & Philippa Snow: Strange Relations

Strange Relations (Sceptre) explores the crisis in mid-century masculinity through the lives and works of four bisexual writers who fought to express and embody alternate possibilities. The nonfiction debut of Forward Prize-shortlisted poet Ralf Webb, it considers the ways in which Tennessee Williams, Carson McCullers, John Cheever and James Baldwin, resisted damaging contemporary expectations around gender and sexuality. Will Tosh has described it as ‘wise, humane, hopeful and exquisitely written’. Webb was in conversation with Philippa Snow, author of Which As You Know Means Violence: On Self-Injury as Art and Entertainment (Repeater) and, most recently, Trophy Lives: On the Celebrity as an Art Object (MACK).
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11 December 2024, 12:30 pm
56 minutes 16 seconds

Juliet Jacques & Orit Gat: The Woman in the Portrait

Juliet Jacques is one of the most electrifying short fiction writers working in the UK today; The Woman in the Portrait (Cipher) collects her published and unpublished fiction, work which Agata Pyzik has described as a ‘large canvas on which the pattern for a utopian socialist queer life might be inscribed’.
Jacques was joined in conversation by the writer and art critic Orit Gat.

Get the book: https://lrb.me/jacquesportaitpod
Find more events at the Bookshop: https://lrb.me/eventspod

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4 December 2024, 2:05 pm
59 minutes 36 seconds

Jason Allen-Paisant & Colin Grant on Aimé Césaire

Aimé Césaire’s masterpiece of exile and homecoming, Return to my Native Land – beautifully translated by John Berger – is now a Penguin Classic. To celebrate, Jason Allen-Paisant (who has written the introduction for the new edition) and Colin Grant discuss the poem. Allen-Paisant’s most recent poetry collection, Self-Portrait as Othello (Carcanet), won both the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection; Colin Grant is director of WritersMosaic, a division of the Royal Literary Fund, his most recent book is a memoir, I’m Black So You Don’t Have to Be (Jonathan Cape).
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27 November 2024, 11:01 am
57 minutes 42 seconds

Hannah Regel & Emily LaBarge: The Last Sane Woman

In her first novel The Last Sane Woman (Verso) poet Hannah Regel investigates the pains and pleasures of artistic practice carried out against the odds. While researching in a small archive dedicated to women’s art young graduate Nicola Long happens upon one half of a correspondence, conducted half a century before, written by a recently graduated ceramicist to a friend. As Nicola reads on she becomes obsessed with the parallels between her own life and that of the woman she encounters in the letters.

Regel was joined in conversation by LRB contributor and art critic Emily LaBarge.

Find more events at the Bookshop: https://lrb.me/eventspod
Get the book: https://www.londonreviewbookshop.co.uk/stock/the-last-sane-woman-hannah-regel

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20 November 2024, 12:00 pm
54 minutes 51 seconds

Will Burns & Ella Frears

Poets Ella Frears and Will Burns were at the shop to read from and talk about their new collections. Ella’s Goodlord, from Rough Trade Books, takes the form of a long, lyrical email to an estate agent, interrogating our obsession with ‘property’ with Frears’ characteristic humour and sharpness, while Will’s Natural Burial Ground (Corsair) is the second collection from a writer Max Porter has described as ‘a soulful English poet of the kind we don’t make enough of’.
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13 November 2024, 12:30 pm
1 hour 9 minutes

Constance Debré & Alice Blackhurst: Playboy

In her latest semi-autobiographical novel Playboy (Tuskar Rock, translated by Holly James), leading French writer Constance Debré describes how a woman, at the age of 43, abandons her apartment, her marriage and her successful legal career to lead a new life as an out lesbian and a writer. In a series of short, sharp vignettes the narrator describes a series of meetings with lovers, with her father and with her son and ex-husband, exploding heteronormative assumptions about what it means to be queer in a straight world. Debré was joined in conversation about her work by writer and critic Alice Blackhurst.

Get Playboy: https://lrb.me/debrepod
Find more events at the Bookshop: https://lrb.me/eventspod

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6 November 2024, 12:01 pm
1 hour 4 minutes

Leah Cowan & Lola Olufemi: Why Would Feminists Trust the Police?

Throughout its history feminism has had a troubled relationship with policing, torn between seeking its protection and attacking its ingrained sexist bias. In Why Would Feminists Trust the Police? (Verso) Leah Cowan cuts a trenchant path through the debate, reminding us of the vibrant and creative alternatives envisioned by those who have long known the truth: the police aren't feminist, and the law does not keep women safe. She discusses the issue with feminist writer and scholar Lola Olufemi.
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30 October 2024, 11:26 am
53 minutes 50 seconds

Lauren Elkin & Octavia Bright: Scaffolding

In her debut novel Scaffolding (Chatto) Lauren Elkin – ‘The Susan Sontag of her generation’, according to Deborah Levy – presents two couples occupying the same Paris apartment, five decades apart. Lauren Elkin’s previous works include Art Monsters, a landmark study of women artists, Flâneuse and a translation of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Inseparables. She was joined in conversation by writer and broadcaster Octavia Bright.

Find more events at the Bookshop: https://lrb.me/eventspod
Get the book: https://lrb.me/scaffoldingpod

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23 October 2024, 11:04 am
1 hour 9 minutes

James Shapiro & Sarah Churchwell: The Playbook

The Federal Theatre Project, established as part of the New Deal in 1935 to provide employment opportunities for theatre professionals affected by the Great Depression, became the cornerstone of American radical drama, both on stage and on radio, throughout the late 1930s. Its staunchly political stance on labour and race relations and housing and health inequality proved popular with audiences, but less so with Congress which, in an atmosphere of growing anti-communist paranoia, withdrew the Project’s funding in 1939. In The Playbook (Faber) theatre historian and Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro tells the absorbing and disturbing tale, at the same time uncovering the deep roots of today’s culture wars. He's in conversation with historian and author Sarah Churchwell.
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16 October 2024, 10:04 am
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