London Review Bookshop Podcasts

China Miéville read from his work, and discussed some of the issues raised by it with Ben Eastham, co-founder and editor of The White Review.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Sheila Heti was in conversation about writing, life and the future of fiction with the critic and experimental novelist Adam Thirlwell.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Ben Marcus talks to Christian Lorentzen about his novel The Flame Alphabet, as well as previous works The Age of Wire and String and Notable American Women. Topics covered include online fiction magazines, mathematics, creating a religion, why writing courses are unfairly criticised, the influence of Borges, encyclopaedias as a source of literary delight and ‘Reader’s Cream’, a lotion Marcus is developing to improve reader sensitivity. Marcus’s latest book is Leaving the Sea.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Turkish writer Kaya Genç discussed with Maureen Freely how his writing reflects and interacts with literary traditions, as well as Turkish culture, history and politics.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Michael Symmons Roberts has been described by Jeanette Winterson as ‘a religious poet for a secular age’ and by Les Murray as ‘a poet for the new chastened, unenforcing age of faith that has just dawned.’ His latest collection Drysalter (Jonathan Cape) is a series of 150 poems each of 15 lines and takes its name from the ancient trade in powders, chemicals, salts and dyes, while drawing formal inspiration from the Book of Psalms. Michael will be at the shop to read from his work, and to discuss his poetry and its inspirations with fellow poet and essayist Jean Sprackland.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

James Wood visited the Bookshop to talk about his new collection of pieces, The Fun Stuff, and to discuss life, literature, and the role of the critic.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Translators Adriana Hunter and Polly McLean shared their versions of a specially-commissioned short story by the French writer Emma Becker, with Sarah Ardizzone in the chair and Emma Becker herself on the panel. The event explored the particular challenges of translating erotic fiction, discussing the decisions the translators made about voice and vocabulary.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Our first Literary Friendships event brought together Colm Tóibín with his friend the writer László Krasznahorkai.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Glyn Maxwell offers us a guide to reading poetry in seven chapters: ‘White’, ‘Black’, ‘Form’, ‘Pulse’, ‘Chime’, ‘Space’ and ‘Time’. Described by Katy Evans-Bush in Poetry Review as being ‘as highly charged as a stick of poetry dynamite’, On Poetry sold out its first printing in less than a week.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Our first Live Translation event of the 2012-13 season explored the work of Guatemalan author Eduardo Halfon, named one of the best young Latin American writers by the Hay Festival of Bogotá.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

To mark the publication of the paperback edition of Mother, Brother, Lover, Jarvis Cocker joined us at the shop for a conversation with the novelist Jon McGregor – ‘Cocker’s lyrics were what made me want to tell stories’, McGregor wrote in the Guardian’s ‘My Hero’ column.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Our International Translation Day event celebrated the distinguished career of Anthea Bell, who was in conversation with Daniel Hahn of the British Centre for Literary Translation. Literary translators are often compared to ventriloquists, but few have as many and varied voices as Anthea Bell.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Will Self leads a panel discussion about questions thrown up by new technology, with special reference to ‘Kafka's Wound’, the digital literary essay he produced in collaboration with the LRB for The Space, a project from the Arts Council and BBC digital arts.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Teju Cole came to the Bookshop to discuss his first novel, Open City. The book, which follows a young Nigerian-German psychiatrist in New York City five years after 9/11, was named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and won both the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Internationaler Literaturpreis. Cole spoke in conversation with writer and journalist Max Liu. Their discussion took in the cities of Lagos, London and New York; W.G. Sebald; twitter as a literary medium; and the disturbing revelation which closes the novel.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

'To the River' is the story of the Ouse, the Sussex river in which Virginia Woolf drowned in 1941. One midsummer week over sixty years later, Olivia Laing walked Woolf’s river from source to sea. The result is a passionate investigation into how history resides in a landscape - and how ghosts never quite leave the places they love. Olivia came to the bookshop to talk about 'To the River' with Jean Sprackland, who won the 2012 Portico Prize for non-fiction for 'Strands: A Year of Discoveries on the Beach', a series of meditations prompted by walking on the wild estuarial beaches of Ainsdale Sands between Blackpool and Liverpool.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Robert Macfarlane, perhaps the most accomplished exponent of the ‘New Nature Writing’, was at the Bookshop to describe his journeys, and to discuss what they can tell us about our nation, its history, present and people.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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Two translators – Shaun Whiteside and Mike Mitchell – went head to head with their versions of a previously untranslated work. Novelist Daniel Kehlmann provided the challenge, with the event chaired by Daniel Hahn, interim director of the BCLT and chair of the Translators Association.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Award-winning Swedish crime writers Karin Alvtegen and Håkan Nesser, chaired by Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen, lecturer in Scandinavian Literature at UCL, explore the power behind crime fiction's gripping narratives, its incisive portrayal of society and its confrontation with ideas of good and evil in a shades-of-grey world, where simple moral certainties aren't so easy to find.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Novelists Daniel Kehlmann and Benjamin Markovits share interests in their work in biography, genius and failure, charisma and the question of how to give voice to real historical figures but have differences too; both make fuel for a very interesting conversation.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.