London Review Bookshop Podcasts

Four of the most interesting poets working today read at the bookshop, to mark the publication of Cambridge Literary Review 10: Vahni Capildeo, Drew Milne, Luke Roberts and Eley Williams.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

'Americans don’t actually believe in death.' Siri Hustvedt and Lisa Appignanesi were in conversation in the bookshop. Hustvedt's latest collection of essays on art, sex and psychology, A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women, is published by Sceptre; Prospect magazine, reviewing the volume, called her 'a writer of blazing intelligence and curiosity'. Lisa Appignanesi's Trials of Passion: Crimes in the Name of Love and Madness was published in 2014.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Horacio Castellanos Moya was in conversation at the Bookshop with Rory O'Bryen. Best known in the UK for novels such as Revulsion: Thomas Bernhard in San Salvador and The Dream of My Return, Castellanos Moya is a writer who, in the words of Natasha Wimmer, 'has turned anxiety into an art-form and an act of rebellion, and redeemed paranoia as a positive indicator of rot'. This event took place in association with Cervantes Institute London and the Embassy of El Salvador.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Anna Minton, Reader in Architecture at the University of East London and author of Ground Control, asks, in her latest book Big Capital (Penguin), a very big question: 'Who is London For?' As the cost of housing spirals upwards, putting this most essential of all necessities beyond the financial reach of the majority of Londoners, Minton draws on original research to bring us the stories of those in the frontline of the struggle to keep a roof over their heads, to analyse how we got into this mess, and to suggest some practical policies for how we might start to get out of it. Anna was in conversation with Oliver Wainwright, the architecture and design critic for the Guardian.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Philip Hoare, who won the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2009 for his magnificent Leviathan, continues his exploration of our watery world with RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR (Fourth Estate). In searching the past and present for stories encapsulating the human fascination with the sea, Hoare mixes natural history with travel writing, autobiography and literary criticism to create an invigorating portrait of the oceans, and of their often fatal allure. He was in conversation with Olivia Laing, author of The Lonely City, The Trip to Echo Spring and To the River.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

PalFest, The Palestinian Festival of Literature, which brings writers from around the world to Palestine to read to and meet their readers, celebrates its tenth anniversary this year. This Is Not a Border is an anthology of essays, poems and stories from some of those writers and artists as they respond to their experiences at this unique festival. Heartbreaking and hopeful, their gathered work is a testament to the power of literature to promote solidarity and courage in the most desperate of situations. To celebrate the launch of this remarkable anthology, we were joined for an evening of readings and discussion by its editor Ahdaf Soueif, contributors Jeremy Harding and Rachel Holmes, and Bashir Abu-Manneh, lecturer in postcolonial literature at the University of Kent.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Andrew O’Hagan’s latest book The Secret Life brings together three of his finest long essays, each of them investigating the strange, vexed intersections and conflicts between the virtual and the real, and what they mean for the nature and construction of identity in the modern world. ‘Ghosting’ tells the story of O’Hagan’s difficult collaboration with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange; in ‘The Invention of Ronald Pinn’ he uses the real identity of a deceased young man to create an entirely spurious one that exists only in cyberspace, and ‘The Satoshi Affair’ explores the strange history of Craig Wright, the man who may or may not be the inventor of Bitcoin. As well as being ‘The best essayist of his generation’ (New York Times), O’Hagan is an acclaimed novelist and contributing editor at the LRB. He was in conversation about his latest work with Hans-Ulrich Obrist, curator of the Serpentine Gallery and author of Ways of Curating.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Ali Smith was at the shop to read from and talk about her (now Booker nominated!) novel Autumn, an unconventional love story that plays with boundaries of time and space and is the first in a quartet of seasons. Smith won the Bailey’s Prize for Fiction in 2015 for How to Be Both and has been short-listed for the Man Booker prize on several occasions. Smith was in conversation with The Guardian journalist Alex Clark.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In his latest book In Writing (Hamish Hamilton) psychoanalyst and regular LRB contributor Adam Phillips celebrates the art of close reading and asks what it is to defend literature in a world that is increasingly devaluing language. Through a vivid series of readings of writers he has loved, from Byron and Barthes to Shakespeare and Sebald, Phillips draws on his work as a practicing psychoanalyst to demonstrate, in his own unique style, how literature and psychoanalysis can speak to, and of, each other. He was joined in conversation by Dr Devorah Baum, Lecturer in English Literature and Critical Theory at the University of Southampton. She is the co-director of the feature film The New Man (2016) and author of two forthcoming books, Feeling Jewish (a book for just about anyone) (Yale University Press) and The Jewish Joke (Profile).  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Paul Beatty, winner of 2016's Man Booker Prize, will be in conversation with Lola Okolosie, Guardian journalist and editor-at-large of Media Diversified. The Sellout (Oneworld) was the first novel by a US author to win the Booker; Beatty's other novels, being released in new paperback editions, are The White Boy Shuffle, Tuff and Slumberland.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Writer, filmmaker, architectural critic and essayist Jonathan Meades was in conversation with his publisher, John Mitchinson (Unbound Books) to discuss his career in literature, criticism and journalism. Meades’ literary works include novels Filthy English (1984) and Pompey (1993) and autobiography An Encyclopaedia of Myself (2014). His most recent work, The Plagiarist in the Kitchen (2017), is his first cookbook.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

To celebrate the publication of Vanishing Points, a new showcase of writing from El Salvador, Tania Pleitez Vela and Claudia Castro Luna were at the shop to discuss the anthology, which aims to challenge the traditional concepts of nationality and the idea of a 'national literature'. The anthology includes stories from the likes of Horacio Castellanos Moya, Jacinta Escudos, Miguel Huezo Mixco, Rafael Menjívar Ochoa and Ana Escoto, showcasing authors that reside in El Salvador as well as authors that have emigrated to the United States, Mexico, Argentina and Europe. Thus, Vanishing Points offers both Spanish-speaking and English-speaking readers an array of linguistic, thematic and aesthetic contrasts. This is Kalina’s second volume––the first one was dedicated to poetry and published in 2014––and also a first of its kind: a bridge and an opportunity for Salvadoran writers to establish a dialogue with the literary community at large. This event took place with the support of the Embassy of El Salvador. &n

Laurent Binet, who won the Prix Goncourt du premier roman for his first novel HHhH, was at the shop to read from and discuss his second, The 7th Function of Language (Harvill Secker). The new book is a global conspiracy thriller encompassing the death of Roland Barthes, semiotic theory and the sex life of Michel Foucault. 'It had me rolling on the floor of the Paris Metro when I read it', wrote Alex Preston in the Observer. Binet was in conversation with Christopher Tayler, contributing editor at the London Review of Books.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In Future Sex, Witt captures the experiences of going to bars alone, online dating, and hooking up with strangers. After moving to San Francisco, she decides to say yes to everything and to find her own path. From public health clinics to cafe conversations about 'coregasms', she observes the subcultures she encounters with a wry sense of humour, capturing them in all their strangeness, ridiculousness, and beauty. The result is an open-minded, honest account of the contemporary pursuit of connection and pleasure, and an inspiring new model of female sexuality - open, forgiving, and unafraid. Witt spoke at the Bookshop in conversation with Katherine Angel.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Patricia Lockwood was at the shop to read from her new memoir, Priestdaddy (Penguin), a hilarious account of growing up with a Catholic priest for a father, and her 2013 collection of poems, Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals. It was the first UK reading from one of the liveliest poets writing at the moment, whose other occupations include trolling the Paris Review on Twitter. Patricia was in conversation with Dawn Foster, whose most recent book, Lean Out, was published last year by Repeater Books.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Ocean Vuong was in conversation with Max Porter, author of Grief is the Thing With Feathers (Faber and Faber), and read from his eagerly-awaited first collection, Night Sky With Exit Wounds (Cape Poetry). Vuong’s work has won plaudits on both sides of the Atlantic: in the New Yorker, Daniel Wenger wrote that ‘Reading Vuong is like watching a fish move’. In 2016, Vuong was awarded the Whiting Award.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

On the publication of the first complete edition of Leonora Carrington's short fiction,The Debutante and Other Stories (Silver Press) and the republication of her memoir Down Below in this centenary year of her birth, cultural critic Marina Warner and novelist Chloe Aridjis discussed Carrington's absurd, funny and provocative fiction and paintings. Carrington first started to paint and draw among Surrealists in Paris in the 1930s, escaped the war via New York to Mexico City where she met Diego Riviera, Frida Kahlo and Octavio Paz and became involved in the Women's Liberation Movement. Warner, who came to know Carrington in the 1980s in New York, and Aridjis, Carrington's friend from Mexico City, discussed the life and legacy of a singular artist and writer with Silver Press publishers Joanna Biggs and Alice Spawls.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Though he was admired by some of the liveliest cultural figures of the twentieth century, David Jones is not known or celebrated in the way that Eliot, Beckett or Joyce have been. Thomas Dilworth's biography - the first full biography of Jones, and thirty years in the making - aims to redress this oversight, reframing the poet, visual artist and essayist as a true genius and the great lost Modernist. Thomas Dilworth discussed Jones's life and work with writer and journalist Rachel Cooke, with readings from the book's editor and publisher, poet Robin Robertson.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In The Zoo of the New, poets Don Paterson and Nick Laird have cast a fresh eye over more than five centuries of verse, from the English language and beyond, looking for those poems which see most clearly, which speak most vividly, and which have meant the most to them as readers and writers. Don and Nick will be at the shop to read from and discuss this essential new work.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Boys will be boys, and girls will be girls? Well, no, Professor of the History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Melbourne Cordelia Fine argues, it’s a lot more complicated than that. She spoke about her latest book Testosterone Rex (Icon Books), an examination of the vexed and fascinating interplay between nature and nurture in the construction of gender, with writer, broadcaster and feminist campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.