In this final bonus episode of How to Proceed, Linn Ullmann talks about how the idea for this podcast started, and her thoughts one year later. Emmanuel Carrere's final question to the readers, "Are you happy? And do you think it is important to be happy?", made Ullmann think of one of her favorite poems, Having it Out with Melancholy by Jane Kenyon. Together with the other interviewers this season, she gives you a reading of this poem, as a final tribute to our wonderful listeners, to the silent pandemics in our lives, the melancholy that sometimes fills our hopes and floating moments, but also the hope and solitude, the glimpses of happiness and comfort, the beating heart of the bird.

“Having It Out with Melancholy” from Collected Poems. Copyright © 2005 by The Estate of Jane Kenyon. Used with the permission of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, www.graywolfpress.org

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In this episode, the French writer Emmanuel Carrère talks to Linn Ullmann about depression and how to write about something that can´t really be put into words, the question of form and truth, right and wrong and writing about the self and others. He also talks about his love for ghost stories, poetry and the gospels - "Christianity," he says, "is perhaps more about being a bad Christian than a good Christian".

Check out our show notes for more on the things Carrère and Ullmann talked about.

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For the first time in the How to Proceed podcast, we have not only one guest, but two! Namely poet and classicist Anne Carson and her partner and collaborator, Robert Currie. Together, they talk to guest moderator John Freeman about translating words into other forms, about love, about the color red - and green, and about the strangeness of working in a new landscape.

Be sure to check out our show notes for this episode here.

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Rachel Cusk talks to Kjersti Skomsvold about writing her memoirs and the Outline trilogy, and her upcoming novel Second place. She also talks about form and truth, change and repetition, the feminine personal and writing without felling like a writer.

Read more about Cusk, Skomsvold and everything they talked about in our show notes for this episode.

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In this episode, the Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat talks to our guest interviewer, writer and editor John Freeman, about mourning and death, about birds and migration, about literary ancestors - and Toni Morrison.

Read more about Danticat, Freeman and everything they talked about in our show notes.

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Listen to Deborah Levy read, first an excerpt from her memoir The Cost of Living, and then an excerpt from Swimming Home.

Music by Kingocito and Sandra Kolstad. Artwork by Julius Vidarssønn Langhoff.

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Our guest in this episode is the British writer Deborah Levy. She talks to Linn Ullmann about living and writing in lock-down, about intimacy and formality, the personal and political, and how “The “I” is always a we. She also talks about mothers, swimming and how it takes someone leaving to understand them better.

Be sure to check out our show notes for more information and links to what they talk about.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.