Idra Novey’s new novel is Take What You Need, published by Viking. She is also the author of Those Who Knew, a New York Times Editors’ Choice. Her first novel Ways to Disappear, received the 2017 Sami Rohr Prize, the 2016 Brooklyn Eagles Prize, and was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize for First Fiction. Her poetry collections include Exit, Civilian, The Next Coun­try, and Clarice: The Visitor, a collaboration with the artist Erica Baum. Her fiction and poetry have been translated into a dozen languages and she’s written for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, New York Magazine, and The Paris Review. She is the recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Poets & Writ­ers Mag­a­zine, the PEN Trans­la­tion Fund, and the Poetry Foundation. Her works as a translator include Clarice Lispector’s novel The Pas­sion Accord­ing to G.H. She teaches fiction at Princeton University.

On the show Barbara talked with Idra about being a genre misfit, the lack of quotation marks, subtext, the crossover from poetry and translation, welding, and much more.

A reminder that April is the one-year anniversary of our Patreon page, and 2023 is the 25th anniversary of the show. To celebrate, we’re offering some additional perks and incentives all month long. To learn more, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website.

(Recorded on April 15, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Co-Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound design: Travis Barrett