Shelf Life
by Grand Journal
Latest episode
Joyce Carol Oates and A.M. Homes on writing against the clock
Joyce Carol Oates and A.M. Homes on writing against the clock
About this podcast
Shelf Life is a show about books and the people who love them. In each episode, we invite a celebrated bibliophile (think Alan Cumming, John Waters, and Joyce Maynard) to select two of their favorite books, and then we chat about them, drawing connections between their lit choices and their lives and careers.
Episodes
The newest 20 of 59 episodes
- Joyce Carol Oates and A.M. Homes on writing against the clock · 52 min · Season 4 Episode 9Send us Fan Mail In the week of her eighty-eighth birthday, and the publication of Frenzy, her latest collection of short stories, Joyce Carol Oates sat down with her friend and…
- Francis Spufford on Blitz London, archangels, and the temptation to change history. · 55 min · Season 4 Episode 9Send us Fan Mail Francis Spufford’s new novel, Nonesuch, drops us into Blitz London—blackouts, random acts of violence, food rationing—and then, almost imperceptibly, the world…
- Madeleine Dunnigan on heated rivalries, women writing desire, and boyhood’s pressure systems · 52 min · Season 4 Episode 8Send us Fan Mail Madeleine Dunnigan’s fierce, unnerving coming-of-age novel, Jean, is set in the final weeks at Compton Manor, an all-boys school that sells itself as enlightened…
- Jonathan Mahler on the 1980s New York that made Trump — and Michael Chabon’s comic-book Gotham · 51 min · Season 4 Episode 7Send us Fan Mail Few cities lend themselves to myth quite like New York, a city that reinvents itself so often that each generation claims its own version. In this episode, we…
- Laurie Gwen Shapiro on Amelia Earhart, Harriet the Spy, and the art of rewriting legend · 54 min · Season 4 Episode 6Send us Fan Mail Before you can shape a story, you have to pay attention to the world as it really is—even when it’s messy, even when it stings. That lesson from Louise…
- Ada Calhoun on Ghostwriting, Thornton Wilder, and the audacity of desire · 52 min · Season 4 Episode 5Send us Fan Mail “Anything Ada Calhoun wants to write is well worth reading,” declared Kirkus in its review of her new novel, Crush, a sharp and seductive exploration of midlife…
- Geoff Dyer on Bad Food, Jazz Renegades, and the "Soviet Resignation" of Post-War Britain · 52 min · Season 4 Episode 4Send us Fan Mail Few writers dance across genres with as much wit, irreverence, and intellectual curiosity as Geoff Dyer. From Out of Sheer Rage, about his struggles to write a…
- Biographer Katherine Bucknell on Christopher Isherwood's Odyssey from Weimar Berlin to California · 52 min · Season 4 Episode 3Send us Fan Mail What can we learn from Weimar Germany and its rapid unraveling in the 1930s? Lately that question has gained more urgency as the US turns away from the…
- Legendary Publisher Edwin Frank in Praise of Rudyard Kipling — and Why the 20th Century Novel Matters · 51 min · Season 4 Episode 2Send us Fan Mail Nobel Laureate Rudyard Kipling is among the most derided of 20th century novelists, but in this episode of Shelf Life, the publishing legend Edwin Frank urges us…
- Jeanette Winterson on ghosts, tech bros, and what her success taught her about class in Britain · 51 min · Season 4 Episode 1Send us Fan Mail It's been 40 years since Jeanette Winterson's debut novel, Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, launched a confident and daring new voice in English fiction, one that…
- Jennifer Kabat on America's forgotten populist uprising and the politics of place · 52 min · Season 3 Episode 10Send us Fan Mail Memoir meets history meets politics in Jennifer Kabat’s book, The Eighth Moon, a fascinating account of moving to the Catskills in 2005, and stumbling on a…
- Ricky Ian Gordon's Odyssey of Sex, Drugs and Opera · 52 min · Season 3 Episode 9Send us Fan Mail A teenage prodigy who worshiped Joni Mitchell, Ricky Ian Gordon has made a career turning novels and poems into operas and song. “I was that kid who was invited…
- YA author Rex Ogle on Life as a Poor Kid in a Land of Plenty · 51 min · Season 3 Episode 8Send us Fan Mail Rex Ogle’s series of YA memoirs, beginning with Free Lunch, about life as a poor kid in a wealthy school district, and culminating this year in Road Home, which…
- Helen Phillips on a mother's primal love, and the perfidy (and promise) of AI in her novel, Hum · 51 min · Season 3 Episode 7Send us Fan Mail Is there a more primal terror than a mother’s fear of losing a child. Helen Phillips, one of our greatest speculative writers, explored that terrain in her…
- Musician Orenda Fink on Glass Castles, Witchy Mothers, and Family Dysfunction · 51 min · Season 3 Episode 6Send us Fan Mail The musician Orenda Fink, best known for her early 2000s band, Azure Ray, purveyors of a dreamy, confessional pop, has now penned a frank, unsparing memoir, The…
- Jennifer Belle on complicated teenage girls, and writing with Madonna · 51 min · Season 3 Episode 5Send us Fan Mail What does Charles Portis’s 1968 novel, True Grit, twice made into a Hollywood western, have in common with Kay Thompson’s whimsical children's book, Eloise? Here…
- Curtis Sittenfeld on writing comedy, and Jane Austen's headstrong heroines · 52 min · Season 3 Episode 4Send us Fan Mail The author of seven novels and one collection of stories, Curtis Sittenfeld specializes in sharp-witted female protagonists in stories that reflect a Jane…
- Ada Zhang on the Lives of Others and stanning Eudora Welty · 52 min · Season 3 Episode 3Send us Fan Mail Loss, longing and melancholy dominate the strange and sometimes mordantly funny short stories of Eudora Welty, the writer whose debut 1941 collection, A Curtain…
- The Dead Presidents Society with Actor Dylan Baker · 52 min · Season 3 Episode 2Send us Fan Mail When did you first encounter Dylan Baker? Perhaps it was as the brazen wife killer Colin Sweeney in the long-running CBS show, The Good Wife. Or maybe it was the…
- Ramit Sethi on money, pleasure, and finding moments of awe · 52 min · Season 3 Episode 1Send us Fan Mail The bestselling finance guru-turned-TV star, Ramit Sethi is on a mission to help all of us live what he calls our rich lives, but he's not just another finance…
