Tag: Anne Carson

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Episode 208 – Barbara Epler

Virtual Memories Show 208: Barbara Epler

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“We try to find things that move the walls in our brain about what fiction and poetry can do.”

New Directions publisher Barbara Epler joins the show to talk about her accidental career, the pros and cons of New Directions’ size, the Moneyball aspect of publishing works in translation, surviving a Nobel crush, the importance of secondary rights, the language she most wishes she could read, the novel she promises never to write, the book whose success surprised her the most, where WG Sebald’s work might have gone, and more! This is part of our Festival Neue Literatur series; Barbara is the 2017 recipient of the FNL’s Friedrich Ulfers Prize! Give it a listen!

“We have to make money, but we don’t do anything that overtly looks like it makes money.”

“James Laughlin believed that one of the most important streams of income for New Directions was to get the best poets of the generation who were working in an experimental mode, because of the secondary rights.”

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!

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About our Guest

Barbara Epler started working at New Directions after graduating from Harvard in 1984, and is now the publisher. The writers Epler has published include such international luminaries as W.G. Sebald, Roberto Bolaño, László Krasznahorkai, Robert Walser, Clarice Lispector, Yoko Tawada, César Aira, Inger Christensen, Franz Kafka, Yoel Hoffmann, Bei Dao, Tomas Tranströmer, Jenny Erpenback, Veza Canetti, Fleur Jaeggy, Raduan Nassar, Joseph Roth, Takashi Hiraide, Alexander Kluge, and Antonio Tabucchi. She has worked with some of the world’s most gifted translators and has served as a judge for the PEN/Heim Translation Fund Awards. In 2015, Poets & Writers awarded Epler their Editor’s Prize and in 2016 Words Without Borders gave her the Ottaway Award for the Promotion of International Literature.

Credits: This episode’s music is Nothing’s Gonna Bring Me Down by David Baerwald, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded at the New Directions offices on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 Microphones feeding into a Zoom H5 digital recorder. I recorded the intro and outro on a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Cloudlifter CL-1 and a Mackie Onyx Blackjack 2×2 USB Recording Interface. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photo of Ms. Epler by me. It’s on my instagram.

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Podcast: Wax, Rhapsodic

rupert thomson

Virtual Memories: Rupert Thomson – Wax, Rhapsodic

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“There is a kind of comfort in having a part of yourself that will never be known, can never be known, by others.”

Thomson_Secrecy-252x390Genre-jumping author Rupert Thomson joins the show to talk about his new novel, Secrecy (Other Press), a 1690’s-based thriller about the Florentine wax-sculptor Zumbo. Along the way, we talk about the arbitrariness of “historical fiction,” the perils of researcher’s block (as opposed to writer’s block), what he learned from a 90-minute audience with James Salter, discovering archaic Italian curses, letting one’s art follow one’s unconscious, the joys of visiting the graves and/or homes of his literary idols, why finding the psychological truth of a story is more important than the details and background, and why it always helps to know a good histopathologist. Go listen!

“When I first started out, what I liked was the unlikely image, the unlikely metaphor. What I like now is finding that simple sentence that captures something you haven’t thought of before.”

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Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes! Related conversations:

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About our Guest

Rupert Thomson is the author of nine highly acclaimed novels: Dreams of Leaving, The Five Gates of Hell, Air And Fire, The Insult, Soft!, The Book of Revelation, Divided Kingdom, Death of a Murderer, which was short-listed for the 2007 Costa Novel Award, and Secrecy. His memoir, This Party’s Got To Stop, won the Writers’ Guild Non-Fiction Award. He lives in London.

Credits: This episode’s music is Hotwax by Beck. The conversation was recorded at the Other Press offices on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones feeding into a Zoom H4n recorder. The intro and outro were recorded on Blue Yeti USB Microphone. Processing was done in Audacity and Garage Band. Photo of Mr. Thomson by Graeme Robertson.

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Podcast: Little Suicides, Little Fish

Lori Carson on The Virtual Memories Show (3/3)

Virtual Memories – season 3 episode 11 – Little Suicides, Little Fish

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“There’s this misconception that something born of the imagination is less true. It’s more true, if you do it right.”

TheOriginal1982 PB CLori Carson joins us to talk about her debut novel, The Original 1982 (published by William Morrow, an imprint of Harper Collins). Lori’s one of my all-time favorite musicians, so the conversation also covers her singer-songwriter career and her time with the Golden Palominos, where she recorded two phenomenal albums, This Is How It Feels and Pure. It’s a really fun talk about the blurring of fact and fiction, the differences between songwriting and prose-writing (and album vs. book launches), how the music industry changed over the course of her career, her favorite authors and the books that sustained her through her first novel, why she made this life-jump from music to books, and more!

“Many people get to a point where they say, ‘I’ve done this all my life; what’s next?'”

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(And there’s a book launch at The Corner Bookstore on Madison and 93rd St. in New York City on Thursday, May 30, starting at 6 pm.! If you’re in the area, check it out! Also, here’s a video of her reading the book’s prologue.)

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great talk!

Follow The Virtual Memories Show on iTunes, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and RSS!

About our Guest

Carson-Lori-ap1Lori Carson is a critically acclaimed singer/songwriter whose albums include Shelter, Where It Goes, Everything I Touch Runs Wild, Stars and Another Year. A former member of the seminal band Golden Palominos, she has contributed to the soundtracks of Bernardo Bertolucci’s Stealing Beauty, Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days, Keith Gordon’s Waking the Dead, and others. The Original 1982 is her first novel.

Credits: This episode’s music is Little Suicides, Souvenir, and Stars by Lori Carson and/or Golden Palominos. The conversation was recorded at the Harper Collins offices (thanks, Leah!) on a pair of Blue enCORE 100, feeding into a Zoom H4n recorder. I recorded the intro and outro on a Blue Yeti USB mic into Audacity. All editing and processing was done in Garage Band. Photo by Lauren Cook (thanks, Lauren!). There are a few more pix of us up at the Virtual Memories Show flickr set.