London Review Bookshop Podcasts

A holistic and revealing account of the inspirations, passions and practices of one of the country’s foremost contemporary artists, Art is Magic finds Jeremy Deller reflecting on the entirety of his career, his life and his art. Deller was joined in conversation with writer Michael Bracewell, author of Unfinished Business.Find more events at the London Review Bookshop: lrb.me/eventspodBuy a copy of Art is Magic: lrb.me/dellerpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In Tessa Hadley’s new collection, After the Funeral (Jonathan Cape), small events have huge consequences. As psychologically astute as they are emotionally dense, these stories illuminate the enduring conflicts between responsibility and freedom, power and desire, convention and subversion, reality and dreams. Hadley was in conversation with Geoff Dyer.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Four Faber poets will join us to read from their recent collections.Describing Declan Ryan's long-awaited debut, Crisis Actor, Liz Berry called it ‘elegant and heartaching’. Maggie Millner‘s Couplets, also a debut, is a novel in verse, a unique repurposing of the 18th century rhyming couplet into a thrilling story of queer desire. Hannah Sullivan’s follow-up to her T.S. Eliot Prize-winning Three Poems, Was it For This, also consists of three long poems, on subjects ranging from London and the Grenfell fire to new motherhood. The title poem of Nick Laird’s new collection, Up Late, won the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. Terrance Hayes has characterised his work as containing 'a truth-telling that’s political, existential, and above all, emotional'.Find more events at the Bookshop: lrb.me/eventspod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Olivia Laing, Ken Worpole and Jon Day discuss Colin Ward and David Crouch's 1988 classic of social and oral history The Allotment, long out of print but finally reissued by the indefatigable Little Toller Books.Upcoming events at the bookshop: lrb.me/eventspod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Two of Britain’s most exciting short story writers joined in conversation to celebrate the release of their highly-acclaimed debuts in paperback. Faber author Jem Calder and Edge Hill Prize winner Saba Sams read from and discussed their stories with Tom Conaghan, publisher of Scratch Books.Find more events at the Bookshop: lrb.me/eventspodBuy Reward System: lrb.me/rewardsystemBuy Send Nudes: lrb.me/sendnudes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Meat Love, the latest book-length essay by Amber Husain (following on from 2021’s Replace Me), explores how meat-eating has become irretrievably enmeshed with capitalist desire, in what Sophie Lewis has described as ‘an exquisitely-crafted little hand grenade lobbed at the gentrification of the carnivorous mind’.She is in conversation with Rebecca May Johnson, whose Small Fires: An Epic in the Kitchen (Pushkin, 2022) touches on many of the same revolutionary themes. Johnson is an essayist and critic, and senior editor at the online magazine Vittles. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Melodrama, biography, cold war thriller, drug memoir, essay in fragments, mystery – ​Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors is cult critic Ian Penman’s long awaited first original book, a kaleidoscopic study of the late West German film maker Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945–1982). Written quickly under a self-imposed deadline in the spirit of Fassbinder himself, who would often get films made in a matter of weeks or months, ​Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors presents the filmmaker as a pivotal figure in the late 1970s moment between late modernism and the advent of postmodernism and the digital revolution. Penman was joined in conversation by Adam Mars-Jones.Buy a copy of Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors: lrb.me/fassbinderFind more events at the Bookshop: lrb.me/eventspod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

K Patrick’s Mrs. S is one of the most eagerly awaited debuts of the year, having already secured for its author a spot on the Granta Best of Young British Novelists list. A queer romance set in the staffroom of an elite English boarding school, Lillian Fishman has described it as ‘a voluptuous performance in the art of withholding’. Patrick was in conversation with editor and writer Amelia Abraham, whose most recent book, Queer Intentions (Macmillan) was nominated for a Polari First Book award in 2020. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

M. John Harrison has produced one of the greatest bodies of fiction of any living British author, encompassing space opera, speculative fiction, fantasy, magical and literary realism. Wish I Was Here is his first work of memoir – an ‘anti-memoir’ – written in his mid-seventies with aphoristic daring and trademark originality and style, fresh after winning the Goldsmiths Prize in 2020 for The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again. Harrison was joined in conversation with writer and critic Jennifer Hodgson.Find more events at the Bookshop: lrb.me/eventspod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In The Plague (Fitzcarraldo) Jacqueline Rose who has, in the words of Edward Said ‘no peer among critics of her generation’ uses the recent experience of the Covid pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the writings of Simone Weil to investigate how we might learn to live with death when it intrudes more closely than we might like on our lived experience. Rose was in conversation about life and death with James Butler, contributing editor at the LRB. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This Ragged Grace tells the story of Octavia Bright’s journey through recovery from alcohol addiction, and the parallel story of her father’s descent into Alzheimer’s. Looking back over this time, each of the seven chapters explores the feelings and experiences of the corresponding year of her recovery, tracing the shift in emotion and understanding that comes with the deepening connection to this new way of life. Bright was joined in conversation by Olivia Laing, author of Everybody.Find more events at the Bookshop: lrb.me/eventspodBuy a copy of This Ragged Grace: lrb.me/thisraggedgrace Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Maureen McLane’s poetry has been praised for its deftness, intelligence and grace under extreme pressure. Her new collection, the aptly named What You Want, draws on these strengths to produce something remarkable and new.In a rare UK appearance, she reads from her work and talks to Will Harris, who also reads from his new collection Brother Poem (Granta). Harris has won the Forward Prizes for Best Single Poem and Best First Collection (for his debut, 2019's RENDANG), and more importantly, the LRB Bookshop Poetry Pamphlet Pick of the Year for 2016. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Novelist, essayist and playwright Deborah Levy read from and spoke about her novel August Blue, a mesmerising story of how identities, coalesce, collide and collapse. She was joined in conversation about August Blue with the psychoanalyst Stephen Grosz, author of The Examined Life.Find more events at the Bookshop: lrb.me/eventspodBuy a copy of August Blue: lrb.me/augustbluepod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Marriage has been an institution for centuries but why this highly contested and ancient practice has remained relevant to so many is by no means certain. What are we really talking about when we talk about marriage? And what are we really doing when we say, 'I do'? In On Marriage (Hamish Hamilton), Devorah Baum draws on philosophy, film, fiction, comedy, psychoanalysis, music and poetry, to consider the marriage plot. Baum was in conversation with Hisham Matar. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When novelist and cultural critic Lynne Tillman’s mother became ill with the rare condition of normal pressure hydrocephalus she became entirely dependent on Lynne, her sisters and other caregivers, reversing the normal roles of parent and child. In Mothercare, Tillman describes, without flinching, the unexpected, heartbreaking, and anxious eleven years of caring for a sick parent. Tillman was joined by Michael Bracewell, author of Unfinished Business.Find more events at the Bookshop website: lrb.me/eventspodBuy a copy of Mothercare: lrb.me/mothercare Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Claudia Rankine’s Plot, an early work published for the first time in the UK this month, is a meditation on pregnancy and the changes it heralds: the potential bodily cost, the loss of self, the sense of impending stasis. It is a genre-defying text, a collection of fragments, dreams and conversations with all of the hallmarks of Rankine’s subsequent work, Citizen, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely and Just Us. Rankine will be in discussion with Nicola Rollock, author of The Racial Code. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Using Joni Mitchell's seminal album Blue - which shaped Amy Key's expectations of love - as an anchor, Arrangements in Blue elegantly honours a life lived completely by, and for, oneself. Joined by Megan Nolan, the author of Acts of Desperation, Key discussed the many forms of connection and care that often go unnoticed.Find more events at the Bookshop: lrb.me/eventspodRead Arrangements in Blue: lrb.me/amykeyblue Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A landmark work of oral history written in the spirit of Nell Dunn, Porn: An Oral History (Fitzcarraldo Editions) is a thrilling, thought-provoking, revelatory, revealing, joyfully informative and informal exploration of a subject that has always retained an element of the taboo. ‘Polly Barton is a brilliant, learned and daring writer,’ writes Joanna Kavenna, author of ZED. She was in conversation, brilliantly, learnedly and daringly, with Amelia Abraham, author of Queer Intentions (Picador). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In Revolutionary Spring (Allen Lane), a series of brilliant set-pieces, pre-eminent European historian Christopher Clark brings back to our attention the extraordinary events of the Spring of 1848. From Paris to Vienna to Budapest to Berlin to Rome to Palermo, a whole continent was embroiled in struggle, hope, revolutionary fervour and ultimately reaction. Regius Professor of History at the University of Cambridge, Sir Christopher will be in conversation with Katja Hoyer, a visiting Research Fellow at King's College London and author of Blood and Iron and Beyond the Wall. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

New York in the late 1960s: Mae escapes a run-down an apartment, an alcoholic mother and her mother’s occasional boyfriend to a new life as a typist for Andy Warhol, transcribing conversations with his friends and associates to provide the material for an unconventional novel. A mordantly funny investigation of celebrity, obsession, womanhood and sexuality, Nothing Special (Bloomsbury) is itself an unconventional debut novel, following on from Flattery’s acclaimed short story collection Show Them a Good Time. Nicole Flattery discusses her novel with Claire-Louise Bennett, author of Pond and Checkout 19. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.