London Review Bookshop Podcast

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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more 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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more 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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more 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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more 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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more 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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more 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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more 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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Paul Auster discussed his first novel in seven years, the extraordinary 4 3 2 1 (Faber) in which a single individual, born in 1947 in Newark, follows four divergent paths through the life and history of mid-twentieth-century America. Auster’s work, in prose, poetry, memoir and film, has often explored multiple and shifting identities, and in 4 3 2 1 - whose protagonist, like Auster himself, is part of the Baby-Boomer generation - he continues his uniquely powerful exploration of selfhood, time and the relationship between fiction and reality. Auster was in conversation with author and journalist Alex Preston. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.