Are authors ever as interesting as their books? Usually not. Yet writers today are compelled to promote not just their work but themselves.
Tag Archives: #noveldialogue
3.6 Why are you in bed? Why are you drinking? Colm Tóibín and Joseph Rezek in conversation (TM)
Colm Tóibín, the new laureate for Irish fiction, talks to Joseph Rezek of Boston University, and guest host Tara K. Menon of Harvard. The conversation begins with Colm’s latest novel The Magician, about the life of Thomas Mann, and whether we can or should think of novelists as magicians and then moves swiftly from one big question to the next.Continue reading “3.6 Why are you in bed? Why are you drinking? Colm Tóibín and Joseph Rezek in conversation (TM)”
13. Inventing an Archive
One of the first things marginalized researchers in the humanities discover is that the choices about who and what materials are important enough to include in archives, and how that material will be presented, actively works to nullify non-whiteness and queerness.
12. Our Bodies, Our Time Machines
I’ve become aware of the fuzziness of my experience of time. Days slide together or drift apart, making the present feel elastic and stretchy. This elasticity—part of getting older and living through a global pandemic—is also the bread and butter of time travel narratives…
3.4 The Work of Inhabiting a Role: Charles Yu speaks to Chris Fan (JP)
Charles Yu won the 2020 National Book Award for Interior Chinatown but some of us became fans a decade earlier, with How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (2010). He brilliantly uses SF conventions to uncover the kind of self-deceptive infilling that we all do every day, the little stories we tell ourselvesContinue reading “3.4 The Work of Inhabiting a Role: Charles Yu speaks to Chris Fan (JP)”
11. A Good Day at the Old Sweatshop
How can a narrative locked in place register the sprawl of global supply chains?
3.3 In the Editing Room with Ruth Ozeki and Rebecca Evans (EH)
Ruth Ozeki, whose most recent novel is The Book of Form and Emptiness, speaks with critic Rebecca Evans and guest host Emily Hyde. This is a conversation about talking books, the randomness and serendipity of library shelves, and what novelists can learn in the editing room of a movie like Mutant Hunt. Ozeki is an ordained ZenContinue reading “3.3 In the Editing Room with Ruth Ozeki and Rebecca Evans (EH)”
3.2 Promises Unkept: Damon Galgut with Andrew van der Vlies (CH)
Guest host Chris Holmes sits down with Booker Prize winning novelist Damon Galgut and Andrew van der Vlies, distinguished scholar of South African literature and global modernisms at the University of Adelaide, Australia. Andrew and Damon tunnel down into the structures of Damon’s newest novel, The Promise to locate the ways in which a generational family story reflects broadly on SouthContinue reading “3.2 Promises Unkept: Damon Galgut with Andrew van der Vlies (CH)”
8. The Proper Name of Theory
What relationship, if any, does the anticolonial novel of ideas bear to the contemporary “theory novel”? Nguyen’s novels expose the tension between the two forms.
7. On Rewriting the World
“Writing is a community practice,” Garza says. “When we write, we write with others. We always write with materials that are not our own.”
2.6 Dreaming or Thinking: Cristina Rivera Garza with Kate Marshall and Dominique Vargas (AV)
ND stages a trialogue this week with MacArthur “Genius” Cristina Rivera Garza and Notre Dame critics Kate Marshall and Dominique Vargas. Professor Rivera Garza recalls roadtripping through Mexico in a bochito (a Volkswagen). For her, such drives became the mother of literary invention: there was no car radio and when family conversations died down, the windowContinue reading “2.6 Dreaming or Thinking: Cristina Rivera Garza with Kate Marshall and Dominique Vargas (AV)”
6. On Having Something to Say
“I write only when I have something to say” — How should a Caribbean writer of my generation take this? Moreover, Is it a good advice for a teacher to give her writing students?
2.5 Stitching the Past to the Present: Caryl Phillips speaks with Corina Stan (JP)
Caryl Phillips, professor of English at Yale, world-renowned and prize-winning novelist (from The Final Passage to 2018’s A View of the Empire at Sunset) shares his thoughts on transplantation, on performance, on race, even on sports. Joining him here are John and the wonderful comparatist Corina Stan, educated in Romania, Germany, France and the US, authorContinue reading “2.5 Stitching the Past to the Present: Caryl Phillips speaks with Corina Stan (JP)”
5. Writing Home
“Home is a place where I exist at every age.”
2.4 In Medias Res: Kamila Shamsie and Ankhi Mukherjee (AV)
Acclaimed novelist Kamila Shamsie joins esteemed Oxford scholar Ankhi Mukherjee for a wide-ranging discussion of literature and politics. Ankhi raises the unique challenges facing postcolonial and specifically Muslim writers in the wake of 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan, including the pressure to become commentators in times of crisis (our episode was recorded in AugustContinue reading “2.4 In Medias Res: Kamila Shamsie and Ankhi Mukherjee (AV)”
4. Sigrid Nunez’s Visions of Life
Novels, she says, should provide a “vision of life” rather than a “fascinated horror” of it.
2.3 Because I Couldn’t Be a Dancer: Sigrid Nunez and Tara Menon (JP)
The brilliant New York writer Sigrid Nunez‘s most recent novel is What Are You Going Through; her previous one, The Friend, (2018) won the National Book Award. She speaks with Tara Menon, of the Harvard English department, and author of a terrific article about Sigrid Nunez in the Sewanee Review. The conversation ranges widely andContinue reading “2.3 Because I Couldn’t Be a Dancer: Sigrid Nunez and Tara Menon (JP)”
3. Tom Perrotta’s Writerly Ethic
“Who do we, as writers, choose not to leave behind?”
2.2 Adaptation: Tom Perrotta and Mark Wollaeger Go from Page to Screen (AV)
Novelist, screenwriter, and HBO showrunner Tom Perrotta joins his old friend Mark Wollaeger (who also happens to be a top scholar of modernism) for a wide-ranging conversation about literature, television, and everything in between. Tom reveals that he has been reading a most peculiar self-help book: Richard Ellmann’s biography of James Joyce. Mark then sharesContinue reading “2.2 Adaptation: Tom Perrotta and Mark Wollaeger Go from Page to Screen (AV)”
2.1 Fiction as Streaming, Genre as Portal: Jennifer Egan and Ivan Kreilkamp (JP)
We are just delighted to welcome you back to the second season of Novel Dialogue, putting scholars and writers together to chew the fat, and spill secrets of the trade. It begins with a bang; who better to interview the prolific and prize-winning American novelist Jennifer Egan than Ivan Kreilkamp? The distinguished Indiana Victorianist showedContinue reading “2.1 Fiction as Streaming, Genre as Portal: Jennifer Egan and Ivan Kreilkamp (JP)”
Novel Dialogue 