Books Up Close: The Podcast

In today's Halloween episode I talk to Emily Ogden about Edgar Allan Poe's short story, 'The Tell-Tale Heart' from 1843. We also discuss Emily's new book on Poe, Darkness Becomes Bright: The Haunted Life (and Afterlife) of Edgar Allan Poe. We talk horror, terror, confession, and why we are fascinated by murderers. 

Emily Ogden is the author of On Not Knowing: How to Love and Other Essays and Credulity: A Cultural History of US Mesmerism. The recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant, and a Mellon Fellowship in the Columbia Society of Fellows, she is a professor of English at the University of Virginia.

Reading recs:

• Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment 
• Amy Leach, Things That Are
• Brian Blanchfield, Proxies

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Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

This is the first episode in a series of reading guides: Where to start with...  These guides give you a starting point to get into reading a particular author, genre or form.

First up, given it's spooky season, is Where to start with Stephen King! We've got 'starter books', classic horror, nonfiction and more. Take a listen and let me know what you think.

Follow @booksupclose on Instagram for the visual post to go alongside this overview, check out the Substack and leave a five star review now.

Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In today's episode I talk to Eve Esfandiari-Denney about her poem 'No Ecclesial Song, No Clapping' from the collection Girling (2026).

Eve Esfandiari-Denney’s debut poetry pamphlet, My Bodies This Morning This Evening, was published by Bad Betty Press in 2022. She has been shortlisted for the White Review Poet’s Prize, Aesthetica’s Creative Writing Award, the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem (Performed) and longlisted for the National Poetry Competition. Her work has appeared in The Poetry Review, Granta, BBC Radio 4 and Prototypes Annual Anthology, among others. Girling is her first collection.

Episode notes:

• CAConrad, Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return

Reading recs:

• Jessie Greengrass, An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to One Who Saw It
• Hélène Bessette, Lili is Crying (trans. Kate Briggs)
• Matthew Rice, Plastic
• Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf, Love Letters
• The Tibetan Book of the Dead
• James Vincent, Beyond Measure: The Hidden History of Measurement

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Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In today's episode I talk to Tice Cin about her new novel SAFE SPACES, now out from Granta.

Tice Cin is an interdisciplinary artist and author from North London. Her debut novel Keeping the House (2021) received a Somerset Maugham Award and a London Writers Award, was a Guardian Book of the Year and was shortlisted for a British Book Award and the Desmond Elliot Prize among other accolades. Its accompanying mixtape having her named as one of Notion Magazines Ones to Watch. Her BBC Radio 4 documentary How Much Can You Say? (2024) won an Audio Production Award. Her work has been published and commissioned by Granta Magazine, London Magazine, Somerset House, Montblanc, Cartier and more. She is the founder of the interdisciplinary production company Neoprene Genie which has had sold out shows at the Southbank Centre, produced films, put on bloc parties outside Edmonton Green Train Station. Cin’s sophomore novel SAFE SPACES was just published by Granta in September 2026, with the Guardian calling it “a kaleidoscopic vision of precarity, music and grief”. Cin lives between North London and North Cyprus.

Episode notes:

• Noreen Masud, A Flat Place; Mona Arshi, 'Coming to Terms';      Sema Kaygusuz (trans. Nicholas Glastonbury), 'A Language of Figs';      Marguerite Duras, Writing.

Reading recs:

• Mandisa Apena, The World's Darling
• William Keohane, Out There
• Hwang Jungeun (trans. r. yaewon), (이예원) I'll Go On
• Ralph Webb, Two Lovers

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Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

This is Books Up Close: The Podcast. It's a show for readers, writers and anyone interested in how texts get made. Chris Lloyd - poet, scholar, critic - interviews authors about an excerpt of their work and they closely read it together. This is the kind of literary chat you won't hear elsewhere

Guests include: Torrey Peters, Garth Greenwell, Lola Olufemi, Abigail Bergstrom, Kieran Yates, Carys Davies, Fatima Bhutto, Oluwaseun Olayiwola, Sara Ahmed, Saleem Haddad, Elaine Castillo, Richard Scott, and many more.

In today's episode I talk to Wayne Holloway-Smith's new book RABBITBOX. 

Wayne Holloway-Smith is the author of three books, Alarum and Love Minus Love, both published by Bloodaxe Books, and RABBITBOX, recently published by Scribner UK. He’s been shortlisted for the TS Eliot prize, won the National Poetry Competition and the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize. He teaches and lives in London.

Book recs:

• Denise Riley, A Chorus of Ears: On 'The Voice of the Poem'
• Mary Ruefle, Madness, Rack and Honey
• Nuar Alsadir, Animal Joy

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Find Wayne at 

Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In today's episode I talk to Remi Kalir about his book Re/Marks on Power: How Annotation Inscribes History, Literacy, and Justice

Remi Kalir is a scholar and practitioner of annotation. He studies how annotation facilitates social, collaborative, and justice-directed learning. Remi is the author of two books published by MIT Press–Re/Marks on Power: How Annotation Inscribes History, Literacy, and Justice (2025) and Annotation (2021). He has also authored and contributed to over 50 peer-reviewed publications about literacy, learning, and technology. Remi currently serves as Associate Director of Faculty Development and Applied Research at Duke University. He began his career teaching literacy at Middle School 22 in the South Bronx and earned his PhD in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Notes:

• James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room; bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress

Book recs:

• Christina Sharpe, Ordinary Notes
• Nicholas Thompson, The Running Ground

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Follow Remi on Bluesky at remikalir.bsky.social or find him at https://remikalir.com

Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In today's episode I talk to Kieran Yates about her nonfiction book All the Houses I've Ever Lived In (2023). 

Kieran Yates is a London based journalist and author who has written everywhere from The Guardian and The Independent to Dazed and Vice. Her debut book, all the houses ive ever lived in is a meditation on home and the politics of the housing crisis.

Book recs:

• Eula Biss, Having and Being Had
• Sam Johnson-Schlee, Living Rooms 
• Kyle Chayka, The Longing for Less: What's Missing from Minimalism 
• Toni Morrison, 'The Site of Memory'
• Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing
• Hanif Abdurraqib, A Little Devil in America: In Praise of Black Performance 

Follow the show on Instagram and subscribe to the Substack for transcripts and more links. Please leave feedback here.

Follow Kieran on Instagram @Kierany8s or find her at kieranyates.co.uk

Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In today's episode I talk to Ashley Clark about his new book The World of Black Film: A Journey Through Cinematic Blackness in 100 Films (2026) as well as Julie Dash's canonical film Daughters of the Dust. 

Ashley Clark is a writer, broadcaster, and film programmer. He has organized numerous film seasons at international venues including London's BFI Southbank, New York's Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Toronto's TIFF Lightbox. His writing has appeared in The Guardian, Reverse Shot, Sight & Sound, and Film Comment, and he is the author of two books: Facing Blackness: Media and Minstrelsy in Spike Lee's Bamboozled (2015); and The World of Black Film: A Journey Through Cinematic Blackness in 100 Films (2026). Ashley was born in London, lives in Jersey City, and works in New York City, where he has been the curatorial director of the Criterion Collection since 2020.Episode notes:

• Julie Dash, Illusions (1982)

Book recs:

• Keith Ridgway, A Shock
• Amy Sall, The African Gaze: Photography, Cinema, and Power
• Patrick Radden Keefe, London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth

Follow the show on Instagram and subscribe to the Substack for transcripts and more links. Please leave feedback here.

Follow Ashley on Instagram @_Ash_Clark

Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.

In today's episode I talk to Garth Greenwell about his novel Small Rain (2024)

Garth Greenwell is the author of three books, most recently Small Rain, which won the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award. A Guggenheim Fellow, his writing on culture appears widely, including in The New Yorker, The Guardian, Harper’s, and elsewhere; he also writes the Substack newsletter To a Green Thought. He is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University.

Episode notes:

• Close reading of Raven Leilani's Luster
• George Oppen, 'Stranger's Child'
• T.J. Clark, The Sight of Death: An Experiment in Art Writing

Book recs:

• Ivana Sajko, Every Time We Say Goodbye

Follow the show on Instagram and subscribe to the Substack for transcripts and more links. Please leave feedback here.

Follow Garth @ggreenwell on Bluesky, Instagram, X and Threads; or @garthgreenwell on Substack and Facebook.

Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.