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The incredible author and thinker Maggie Nelson is the guest of the 62nd episode of La Poudre. With Lauren Bastide, they talked about Judith Butler, violence and love.

Lauren’s foreword

It’s funny, these past few days, bluets have appeared among poppies and dandelions in the small meadow near the river.

I gathered them and put them to dry between the pages 58 and 59.

In the river, a lapis lazuli sparkle catches my eye in the water.

My hand dives in.

I take the object. It’s a piece of mosaic, maybe a swimming pool tile. As blue as the river. As blue bluets. As blue as a bruise on my thigh, as my soul on summer evenings, as my pen’s ink on my notebook.

Episode summary

Maggie Nelson was born in 1973 in San Francisco where she grew up (08:50). Her parents, high-school sweethearts who were married very young, divorced a year before her father’s death from a heart attack. This tragic event, as well as her family’s story – especially her mother’s sister murder – left their mark on her adolescence (17:16). She moved to New York to go to university and met there important litterary figures such as Eileen Miles or Annie Dillard who both influenced and inspired the young writer she was becoming. She started publishing poetry in 2001 and Jane, a Murder, her first essay in which she explored and confronted her aunt’s death, went out in 2005. Coincidentally, the trial on Jane’s death was reopened at the same time. She published her first novel on the subject, The Red Parts, in which her writing style, between very structured notes and references, autofiction and poetry bloomed (14:20). She completed a trilogy on women and violence in 2009 with another essay, The Art of Cruelty, published the same year as Bluets, a collection of thoughts on the colour blue in which she explores depression’s intricacies (37:10). In 2015 she published The Argonauts, a new hybrid novel revolving around her pregnancy and the parallel transformation of her companion, Harry (54:36). This book, published in a dozen foreign languages, puts her at the forefront of world literature. Her sharp, complex and subtle writing and queer thought gives her recognition in many countries and a wide audience already waiting on her next book.

Executive Producer : Nouvelles Écoutes 

Production and signature tune : Aurore Meyer-Mahieu

Production assistant : Gaïa Marty 

Editing and mixing : Marion Emerit