Featuring: the way books begin, the conversation between languages, on teaching and writing, untranslatable words, finding a way to get rid of excess, translating her own novel from Italian and the intense scrutiny involved, Jhumpa's upcoming book of short stories called Roman Stories, the anthology of Italian writers Jhumpa edited, those authors with whom Jhumpa feels an affinity, the machinery of publishing and the differences between countries, advice on starting out as a writer, having a threshold for uncertainty and how rejections are crucial.

* There’s background noise in a few places, apologies.