On this episode of Awakeners, Lena chats with writers Leslie Jamison and Emmeline Clein. Clein studied with Jamison at Columbia University’s MFA program, and the pair published their most recent books—Jamison’s memoir, Splinters, and Clein’s debut essay collection, Dead Weight—the very same week back in February 2024.

We discuss what they’re working on right now, what they talked about on their most recent lunch date, how Jamison’s “Archive Fever” class shaped Clein’s research, how to weave softness from words that cut, how both of their books engage with the (often maligned) desire to “revoke” or undo your decisions as a woman, and what they’ve learned from each other when it comes to writing about eating disorders, self-harm, and pain. 

In the second half of the episode, Clein reads from Jamison’s feedback letter in response to an early draft of Clein’s essay “On Our Knees” from Dead Weight, and Jamison reads from “On Shame,” a lecture that has since been integrated into her in-progress book of essays about writing.

Leslie Jamison is the New York Times bestselling author of Splinters, The Recovering, The Empathy Exams, Make it Scream, Make it Burn, and a novel, The Gin Closet. She is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and teaches at Columbia University. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.

Emmeline Clein is the author of Dead Weight: Essays on Hunger and Harm (Knopf, 2024) and Toxic (Choo Choo Press, 2024). Her writing has appeared in the Paris Review, The Nation, the Yale Review, the New York Times Magazine, and elsewhere.

Links:

Awakeners featured on The Lit Hub Podcast (0:31): https://dcs-spotify.megaphone.fm/LIT3180235730.mp3?key=633b1bbb7860a1e12ffb4fa0ddd234fb&request_event_id=8055516a-55c5-4ac3-a490-1e3b1e46f10e&timetoken=1731795270_B448F57BE00F644C54A56320FDD845D3

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