Evenings With An Author podcast

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“What is it that a woman recognizes when she recognizes herself in another woman? This is the question that hovers in the margins of all three books in Léger’s exquisite trilogy,” Eula Biss wrote of Léger’s work in the New Yorker . “The books are extraordinary in the way they are written,” Biss adds. “Léger’s sentences give the impression that they are doing exactly what they want to do. Her paragraphs are not dutiful, not in service to the previous or following paragraphs, but exhilaratingly independent…The essay, already a flexible genre, is at its most gymnastic here, as Léger passes through the many postures of a complex floor routine to produce one fluid, circuitous movement of thought. Her style, unconventional as it is, does not feel contrived. It feels inevitable—as if these books sprang from her mind fully formed, like Athena, born of a splitting headache.” Nathalie Léger Nathalie Léger is the author of several short experimental novels based on her research work as a curator, as well as a volume of illustrated, aphoristic flash-fiction, published under a pseudonym. The director of the Institut Mémoires de l’édition contemporaine (IMEC), which gathers archives and studies related to the main French publishing houses, she lives and works in Paris and in Caen. She curated two Pompidou Centre exhibitions on Roland Barthes and on Samuel Beckett in 2002 and 2007. Eula Biss The author of four books, Eula Biss holds an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa and has been teaching at Northwestern University for fifteen years. Her work has been translated into over ten languages and has been recognized by a Guggenheim Fellowship, among many other prizes. Her essays and poems have appeared in the New Yorker , the Guardian , Harper’s , and the New York Times Magazine , among other publications. Biss was the Library’s Visiting Fellow from 2020-21. The Visiting Fellowship is generously supported by the The de Groot Foundation. The discussion is co-sponsored by Dorothy, a publishing project, which is an award-winning feminist press dedicated to works of fiction or near fiction or about fiction, based in St. Louis, USA. North American readers can purchase the books discussed in this event through Dorothy’s website . In the UK and Europe, these books are available through the UK publisher Les Fugitives .…

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A New Era of US Foreign Policy, with Robin Wright, Steven Erlanger, and Serge Schmemann 1:01:49

4 years ago1:01:49

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The American Library in Paris's Evenings with an Author podcast is back with a new season of author talks and panel discussions, recorded live in the heart of Paris. Does the retreat from Afghanistan mark the end of the American era, or else the start of a new one? This panel discussion focuses on President Biden’s attempt to reset America's place in a new decade of global collaboration, with a particular focus on Biden’s exit from Afghanistan and recent alliance with Great Britain and Australia. Robin Wright (the New Yorker ), Steven Erlanger (the New York Times ) and Serge Schmemann (the New York Times ), drawing on their collective knowledge and long international careers, tuned in virtually for a moderated discussion. Hosted by Library Programs Director Alice McCrum. Evenings with an Author is sponsored by GRoW @ Annenberg.…

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Ask the Doctor: COVID-19 update by Dr. Rob Murphy 57:49

5 years ago57:49

57:49

American Library in Paris member, Dr. Robert L. Murphy has been at the forefront of every infectious disease global crisis since the AIDS pandemic in the 1980s. In this special Zoom session, Dr. Murphy will share with us the latest updates in the fight against COVID-19. He will also answer questions from the audience. He will join us from Chicago, where he is the Executive Director, Institute for Global Health at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Dr. Murphy is currently involved in cutting edge research in diagnostics and treatment of COVID-19. Recorded 15 July 2020…

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Cause of Death: COVID-19, Police Violence, or Racism?: A Conversation about Racial Inequalities in France and the United States with Dr. Jean Beaman and Inès Seddiki 1:24:13

5 years ago1:24:13

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For this evening of conversation, Inès Seddiki interviewed Jean Beaman about her research, including her book, Citizen Outsider: Children of North African Immigrants in France . Dr. Beaman then posed some questions to Inès about her organization, GHETT’UP. Finally, the two discussed racism in France more broadly re COVID-19 and police violence. They also offered their thoughts and perspectives on the recent protests in France for Adama Traoré and in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. Jean Beaman is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She was previously on the faculty at Purdue University and has held visiting fellowships at Duke University and the European University Institute (Florence, Italy). Her research is ethnographic in nature and focuses on race/ethnicity, racism, international migration, and state-sponsored violence in both France and the United States. She is an Editor of H-Net Black Europe, an Associate Editor of the journal, Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, and Corresponding Editor for the journal Metropolitics/Metropolitiques. She earned her B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from Northwestern University. Inès Seddiki is a French-Moroccan activist and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) professional living in the banlieues of Paris. Inès graduated with a masters degree in corporate social responsibility from Grenoble Graduate School of Business and a bachelor’s degree in economics from Pierre Mendès-France University. In 2016, she founded GHETT’UP, an organization dealing with youth empowerment and leadership in the underprivileged areas of Paris, the banlieues. 5000+ youth have been impacted by the organization’s programs.…

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Mark Mayer, Distance (and Social Distance) in the Literary Imagination 57:18

5 years ago57:18

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An exploration of how distance and solitude can spur the literary imagination and how 2020-style social distance can kill it. Part craft talk, part Zoom performance, part lecture on literature, part creative self-help for the quarantined. Addressed to creative writers and readers of all stripes. Mark Mayer has an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a PhD from the University of Denver. His first book, AERIALISTS (Bloomsbury 2019), won the Michener-Copernicus Prize and his stories have been published in American Short Fiction , the Kenyon Review, Guernica, the Iowa Review. He is an Assistant Professor of Fiction Writing in the University of Memphis MFA.…

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Anissa Bouziane, Dune Song 1:01:15

5 years ago1:01:15

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Please join us for an informal conversation with author Anissa M. Bouziane . Anissa was born in Tennessee, daughter of a Moroccan father and a French mother. She grew up in Morocco, but returned to the US to attend Wellesley College, and went on to earn an MFA in fiction writing from Columbia University. Her debut novel, Dune Song, is rooted in her experience of witnessing the collapse of the Twin Towers. She now works and teaches in Paris. “I came to the Sahara to be buried.” After witnessing the collapse of the World Trade Center, Jeehan Nathaar leaves her New York life with her sense of identity fractured and her American dream destroyed. She returns to Morocco to make her home with a family that’s not her own. Healed by their kindness but caught up in their troubles, Jeehan struggles to move beyond the pain and confusion of September 11th. On this desiccated landscape, thousands of miles from Ground Zero, the Dune sings of death, love, and forgiveness. Recorded 26 May 2020…

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Whitney Scharer, The Life of Photographer Lee Miller and 'The Age of Light' 55:42

5 years ago55:42

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Please join us as we check in with author Whitney Scharer, author of The Age of Light. This absorbing debut tells a fictionalized account of Lee Miller’s life, focusing on the years she spent in Paris and her tumultuous relationship with Surrealist artist Man Ray. An icon during her own time, Lee’s bold vision and fearlessness still serve today as a template for a life lived fully. In Whitney’s novel, we follow Lee through her time as a model, Surrealist photographer, fashion photographer, war correspondent, and gourmet chef. Whitney will discuss her book as well as provide us with updates about its reception and translation. Whitney holds a BA in English Literature from Wesleyan University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington. Her short fiction, essays, and interviews have appeared in numerous publications including Vogue, The Telegraph, The Tatler, and Bellevue Literary Review. Her first novel, The Age of Light, was published by Little, Brown (US) and Picador (UK) in February, 2019, and was a Boston Globe and IndieNext bestseller and named one of the best books of 2019 by Parade, Glamour Magazine, Real Simple, Refinery 29, Booklist and Yahoo. Internationally, The Age of Light won Le prix Rive Gauche à Paris, was a 2019 coup de coeur selection from the American Library in Paris, and has been published or is forthcoming from over a dozen other countries. Whitney has been awarded residencies at the Virginia Center for the Arts and Ragdale, a St. Botolph Emerging Artists Grant, and a Somerville Arts Council Artists Fellowship. She teaches fiction in the Boston area and is a co-founder of the Arlington Author Salon , a quarterly reading series. *Covid-19 Update: Although our physical space has temporarily closed, the Library will continue with its Evening with an Author programming during the period of confinement. Our events will continue to be free and open to the public via Zoom. We have moved the events up, to begin at 17h00 (Central European Time). Please check eLibris or our programs calendar for updates and line-up. Recorded 5 May 2020…

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Susan Harlan, Tote Bags as Autobiography 1:03:41

5 years ago1:03:41

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Please join us for a fun and informal talk by author and professor Susan Harlan, who has the rare gift of making the ordinary extraordinary for her readers and audiences. Susan will share with us a personal essay about the tote bags she’s acquired on her travels and throughout her life, touching on themes that are at the forefront of our minds right now: travel, home, souvenirs, including unused bags and luggage. In her words, “I keep looking at my purses on my coat rack and thinking how strange it is to not carry a purse anymore. They just hang there, and then every eight days or so I go to the store. Beyond the present circumstances, the tote bags make up a kind of autobiography, and they tell stories about where they are from and what they have toted around.” Susan Harlan’s essays have appeared in venues including The Guardian US, The Paris Review Daily , Guernica, Roads & Kingdoms, Literary Hub, The Common, Racked, The Brooklyn Quarterly, The Bitter Southerner, and Public Books. Her book Luggage (Bloomsbury, 2018) takes readers on a journey with the suitcases that support, accessorize, and accompany our lives. She also writes satire for McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Billfold, Avidly, Queen Mob’s Tea House, The Hairpin, The Belladonna, Janice , and The Establishment , and her humor book Decorating a Room of One’s Own: Conversations on Interior Design with Miss Havisham, Jane Eyre, Victor Frankenstein, Elizabeth Bennet, Ishmael, and Other Literary Notables was published by Abrams last October . She teaches English literature at Wake Forest University. *Covid-19 Update: Although our physical space has temporarily closed, the Library will continue with its Evening with an Author programming during the period of confinement. Our events will continue to be free and open to the public, via Zoom (please RSVP here to receive meeting details and password). We have moved the events up, to begin at 17h00 (Central European Time). Please check eLibris or our programs calendar for updates and line-up. Recorded 28 April 2020…

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Elaine Sciolino, Life on the Rue des Martyrs during Quarantine 57:00

5 years ago57:00

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Please join us for an informal and uplifting check-in with author and journalist Elaine Sciolino. Following country-wide quarantine measures put in place by the French government, Elaine is confined on the Rue des Martyrs, the subject of her 2016 book, The Only Street in Paris: Life on the Rue des Martyrs. Despite the circumstances, this unique Parisian quartier–and its residents–retain a certain degree of pre-Covid 19 life and charm. In Elaine’s words, the Rue des Martyrs is “a half-mile celebration of the city in all its diversity with rituals and traditions and a feeling of community that goes back decades. It does not belong to monumental Paris — you won’t find it in most Paris guidebooks — and it has managed to retain the feel of a small village.” Tune in to our event to see how Elaine is experiencing confinement, what new hobbies she’s acquired, and get the latest news on her most recent book, The Seine: The River that Made Paris. Elaine is a contributing writer and former Paris bureau chief for The New York Times, based in France since 2002. In 2010, she was decorated chevalier of the Legion of Honor, the highest honor of the French state, for her “special contribution” to the friendship between France and the United States. Covid-19 Update: Although our physical space has temporarily closed, the Library will continue with its Evening with an Author programming during the period of confinement. Our events will continue to be free and open to the public via Zoom. Each event will be capped at 100 participants. We have moved the events up, to begin at 17h00 (Central European Time). Please check eLibris or our programs calendar for updates and line-up. Recorded 21 April 2020…

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Michael Webber, The Story of Energy and the Looming Energy Crisis 41:21

5 years ago41:21

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A global tour of energy – the builder of human civilization and also its greatest threat. Energy is humanity’s single most important resource. In fact, as energy expert Dr. Michael E. Webber argues in Power Trip , the story of how societies rise can be told largely as the story of how they manage energy sources through time. In 2019, as we face down growing demand for and accumulating environmental impacts from energy, we are at a crossroads and the stakes are high. But history shows us that energy’s great value is that it allows societies to reinvent themselves. Power Trip explores how energy has transformed societies of the past and offers wisdom for today’s looming energy crisis. There is no magic bullet; energy advances always come with costs. Scientific innovation needs public support. Energy initiatives need to be tailored to individual societies. We must look for long-term solutions. Our current energy crisis is real, but it is solvable. We have the power. Michael is based in Paris, France where he serves as the Chief Science and Technology Officer at ENGIE, a global energy & infrastructure services company. Michael is also the Josey Centennial Professor in Energy Resources at the University of Texas at Austin. His expertise spans research and education at the convergence of engineering, policy, and commercialization on topics related to innovation, energy, and the environment. His latest book Power Trip: the Story of Energy was published May 7, 2019 by Basic Books with a 6-part companion series in development for PBS. His first book, Thirst for Power: Energy, Water and Human Survival , addressed the connection between earth’s most valuable resources and offers a hopeful approach toward a sustainable future. Recorded 11 February 2020…

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Dana Thomas, Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes 29:28

5 years ago29:28

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An investigation into the damage wrought by the colossal clothing industry – and the grassroots, high-tech, international movement fighting to reform it by New York Times bestselling author and journalist Dana Thomas. In Fashionopolis , journalist Dana Thomas surveys the environmental and human cost of a globalized, profit-hungry supply chain: sweatshop labour, ecological degradation, overconsumption, waste and creative exhaustion. As awareness of the damage inflicted on the planet by globalisation and consumerism increases, “Fashionopolis” investigates the way that the clothing industry has become environmentally and ethically unsustainable. But Fashionopolis also documents renewal, and how technology and purpose are changing how we buy and produce clothes: from 3D printing to clean denim processing, from smart manufacturing to hyperlocalism, from the creation of truly circular fabrics to lab-grown leather. We have all been casual about how we get dressed. Fashionopolis is the first comprehensive look at how to change. Dana is the author of Gods and Kings and the New York Times bestseller Deluxe . She began her career writing for the Style section of The Washington Post, and she has served as a cultural and fashion correspondent for Newsweek in Paris. She is a regular contributor to The New York Times Style section and has written for The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, and Architectural Digest. In 2016, the French Minister of Culture named Dana a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters. She lives in Paris. Recorded 14 January 2020…

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Susan Harlan, “Souvenirs of Paris” 59:27

5 years ago59:27

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What would Paris be without its souvenirs? Snow globes, keychains, and fridge magnets seem to be everywhere. We often think of souvenirs as worthless junk, but they can be powerful material memories. Join us for Susan’s talk about her own Parisian souvenir collection and about what souvenirs tell us about the city, travel, and ourselves. (With photography by Sarah Torretta Klock.) Susan Harlan’s essays have appeared in venues including The Guardian US, The Paris Review Daily , Guernica, Roads & Kingdoms, Literary Hub, The Common, Racked, The Brooklyn Quarterly, The Bitter Southerner, and Public Books. Her book Luggage (Bloomsbury, 2018) takes readers on a journey with the suitcases that support, accessorize, and accompany our lives. She also writes satire for McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Billfold, Avidly, Queen Mob’s Tea House, The Hairpin, The Belladonna, Janice , and The Establishment , and her humor book Decorating a Room of One’s Own: Conversations on Interior Design with Miss Havisham, Jane Eyre, Victor Frankenstein, Elizabeth Bennet, Ishmael, and Other Literary Notables was published by Abrams last October . She teaches English literature at Wake Forest University. Recorded 26 November 2019…

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George Packer in conversation with Thomas Chatterton Williams 42:41

5 years ago42:41

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George Packer is a staff writer for The Atlantic and a former staff writer for The New Yorker . He is the author, most recently, of Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century . He has published five other works of non-fiction, including The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America , which won the National Book Award for nonfiction in 2013, as well as two novels and a play. The late American diplomat Richard Holbrooke was brilliant, wholly self-absorbed, and possessed of almost inhuman energy and appetites. He embodied the postwar American impulse to take the lead on the global stage, and his story is the story of America during its era of supremacy: its strength, drive, and sense of possibility, as well as its penchant for overreach and heedless self-confidence. George will discuss his new biography Our Man, drawn from Holbrooke’s diaries and papers–a non-fiction narrative that is both intimate and epic in its portrait of this extraordinary and deeply flawed man and the elite spheres of society and government he inhabited. Thomas is the author of Losing My Cool and Self-Portrait in Black and White. He is a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine, a contributing editor at the American Scholar and a 2019 New America Fellow. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, the London Review of Books, Harper’s and elsewhere, and has been collected in The Best American Essays and The Best American Travel Writing. He has received support from Yaddo, MacDowell and The American Academy in Berlin. He lives in Paris with his wife and children. Recorded 21 November 2019…

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Emma Jacobs in conversation with Stephanie Nadalo, The Little(r) Museums of Paris 31:15

5 years ago31:15

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In this episode, Emma Jacobs discusses her book, The Little(r) Museums of Paris, part guide-part travelogue through Paris’ landscape of small museums, from the better-known to deeply obscure. Deeply-researched and hand-illustrated, it includes stories and highlights of the collections and conversations with conservators, museum founders and artists. Emma is a multimedia journalist and illustrator who has reported internationally for NPR, Marketplace and PRI’s The World. Her work has appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post . The Little(r) Museums of Paris (2019, Running Press) is her first book. Stephanie Nadalo, PhD, will moderate the conversation. Stephanie is a museum educator and Assistant Professor of Art History at Parsons Paris, the European division of Parsons School of Design. When she is not in the classroom she works as a licensed guide to design and deliver engaging museum pedagogy within Parisian institutions including the Louvre, Rodin Museum, and the Museum of Jewish Art and History. In addition, she currently serves as the Interim Director of the Parsons Paris MA program in the History of Design and Curatorial Studies. Recorded 8 October 2019…

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Tony Perrottet, Secrets of the Cuban Revolution 59:00

5 years ago59:00

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Most people are familiar with the basics of the Cuban Revolution of 1956 to 1959: It was led by two of the 20th century’s most charismatic figures, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara; it successfully overthrew the island nation’s U.S.-backed dictator, Fulgencio Batista; and it quickly went awry under Castro’s rule. But less is remembered about the amateur nature of the upstart movement, or the lives of its players. To mark the 60th anniversary of the revolution, Smithsonian magazine writer Tony Perrottet draws on his new book ¡Cuba Libre!: Che, Fidel, and the Improbable Revolution That Changed World History to offer a look at some of the human drama that played out against the backdrop of political upheaval. He surveys how a scruffy handful of self-taught subversives, many of whom were just out of college, young lawyers, literature majors, and art students—including a number of extraordinary women—defeated 40,000 professional soldiers. Tony’s dive into the revolution reveals fascinating details. How did Castro’s highly organized lover Celia Sánchez whip the male guerrillas into shape? Who were the two dozen American volunteers who joined the Cuban rebels? How do you make land mines from condensed milk cans—or, for that matter, cook chorizo à la guerrilla ? Join Tony for a lively look at a liberation movement that captured the global imagination with its spectacular drama, foolhardy bravery, tragedy, and sometimes, high comedy—and that set the stage for Cold War tension that pushed the world to the brink of nuclear war. Recorded 29 October 2019…

Evenings with an Author

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Nicolas Le Goff, Another Paris: 10 Walks in the Districts that are Transforming the East of Paris 42:00

5 years ago42:00

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Another Paris: 10 Walks in the Districts that are Transforming the East of Paris– Industrial Wastelands, Contemporary Architecture, Shared Gardens, Street Art, Coffee Shops…the east of Paris is undergoing a major metamorphosis. By offering itineraries beginning where tourists generally stop, these ten walks invite urban explorers to take side steps and widen their horizons. Venture forth to discover the districts where the heart of the city is now pulsing. Graduate of Sciences Po Rennes and La Sorbonne, Nicolas Le Goff worked for 10 years on the promotion of the French cultural industries abroad, within the framework of Business France. He was then recruited by the Paris Town Hall to be in charge of innovation in the cultural and digital fields for three years, which led him to join Le Centquatre as a special adviser of the director, José-Manuel Gonçalvès. In this capacity, he ran the international relations of the center and coordinated urban renovation and cultural consulting projects with which Le Centquatre was involved. Two years ago, he decided to become a « Passeur urbain » (urban scout), and now writes alternative guides on the innovative districts of Paris and the Greater Paris Region, and is an independent consultant on how arts and innovation contribute to the attractiveness of cities. Recorded 9 October 2019…

Evenings with an Author

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Tessa Hadley, Late in the Day 43:59

5 years ago43:59

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Tessa Hadley is the author of six highly praised novels, Accidents in the Home , which was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, Everything Will Be All Right, The Master Bedroom, The London Train, Clever Girl and The Past , and three collections of stories, Sunstroke, Married Love and Bad Dreams . The Past won the Hawthornden Prize for 2016, and Bad Dreams won the 2018 Edge Hill Short Story Prize. She lives in London and is Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. Her stories appear regularly in the New Yorker and other magazines. Alexandr and Christine and Zachary and Lydia have been close friends since they first met in their twenties. Thirty years later Alex and Christine are spending a leisurely summer evening at home when they receive a call from a distraught Lydia. Zach is dead. In the wake of this profound loss, the three friends find themselves unmoored; all agree that Zach was the sanest and kindest of them all, the irreplaceable one they couldn’t afford to lose. Inconsolable, Lydia moves in with Alex and Christine. But instead of loss bringing them closer, the three of them find over the following months that it warps their relationships, as old entanglements and grievances rise from the past, and love and sorrow give way to anger and bitterness. Late in the Day explores the tangled webs at the centre of our most intimate relationships, to expose how beneath the seemingly dependable arrangements we make for our lives lie infinite alternate configurations. Ingeniously moving between past and present and through the intricacies of her characters’ thoughts and interactions, Tessa Hadley once again shows that she has ‘become one of this country’s great contemporary novelists. She is equipped with an armoury of techniques and skills that may yet secure her a position as the greatest of them.’ (Anthony Quinn Guardian ) Recorded 17 September 2019…

Evenings with an Author

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Thomas Chatterton Williams in conversation with Lauren Collins 36:23

5 years ago36:23