Reading Around the Margins

We are taking the month of August to rest, recharge, and read. We’ll be back in September with a full slate of really exciting guests, including Doireann Ní Ghríofa and Marie Darrieussecq. In the meantime, we invite you to listen to our previous episodes and to let us know what you're reading over these last summer days.

Find a copy of Marginalia: an autobiography from Autofocus Books, New York University Press, or your local independent bookstore. Subscribe to Process Notes for further reflections on reading, subjectivity, and psychoanalysis.

Naomi and Heather begin their discussion by exploring Heather's recent questions about the function of criticism; how a person's nervous system interacts with an artwork; how theory interacts with a sense of trust and belief; how her movement training created a mode in which her body understands content first; how underlining in a book is an attempt to imprint the text in her brain, her respiration, her body; the methods of marginalia she uses to illustrate her own thought processes on revision; and the benefits of interdisciplinary discussion and exploration, with reference to her discussions and collaborations with her friend, the musical composer Reena Esmail.

Reading List + selections from Heather McCalden

Heather's marginalia came from the following texts:

Something Speaks to Me: Where Criticism Begins, Michel Chaouli

Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light, Peter Schjeldahl

Poetry and Drama, T.S. Elliot

The Perfect Critic, T.S. Eliot

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The Observable Universe -- US Edition

The Observable Universe -- UK Edition

Other work by Heather McCalden:

"A Naturally Occurring Phenomenon"

"On World AIDS Day What Does it Mean to Live in a Culture Defined by Virality?"

"Facing the Unknown with Heather McCalden"

Heather McCalden (she/her) is a writer and multidisciplinary artist working with text, image and movement. She is a graduate of the Royal College of Art and has exhibited at Young Space, Tanz Company Gervasi, Roulette Intermedium, Pierogi Gallery, National Sawdust, Testbed 1, and 99 Canal Street. In 2021 she won the Fitzcarraldo Essay Prize which led to the publication of her debut memoir The Observable Universe (2024). William Gibson, author of Neuromancer, called it, ‘A gifted writer’s brilliantly innovative approach to autobiographical non-fiction, syncing a narrative of profoundly personal emotion with the invention and evolution of today’s cyberspace.’ She has written for the Financial Times Weekend Magazine, LitHub, Broadcast by Pioneer Works, and Another Man Magazine. 

Find a copy of Marginalia: an autobiography from Autofocus Books, New York University Press, or your local independent bookstore. Subscribe to Process Notes for further reflections on reading, subjectivity, and psychoanalysis.

Naomi is joined by Berlin-based novelist, philosopher, and translator Lindsay Lerman for a discussion that winds through Lindsay's experience with Perfume by Patrick Süskind and explores the physical experiences of reading, and reading as a practice of writing; how a book can open up a field that sparks the need to do or make something in response, whether it's a course, a book, a painting, or a devoted reading group; how permeability makes you a good storyteller; the necessary risks of being radically open to the world; and how the things we try to push away are the very things with which we must engage.

Reading List + selected works from Lindsay Lerman

Perfume, Patrick Süskind

The Knowable Unknown: "Dark Philosophy" and Fiction, Lindsay Lerman

Your Life is Your Work of Art: on John Dewey's Art as Experience, Lindsay Lerman

Lindsay's books

Lindsay Lerman is a novelist, philosopher, and translator. Her first book, I'm From Nowhere, was published in 2019. Her second book, What Are You, was published in 2022. She has a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. Her short stories, interviews, essays, and occasional poems have been published in the Los Angeles Review of Books, New York Tyrant, The Creative Independent, and elsewhere. Her work has been translated into German, French, and Greek. She lives in Berlin.

Find a copy of Marginalia: an autobiography from Autofocus Books, New York University Press, or your local independent bookstore. Subscribe to Process Notes for further reflections on reading, subjectivity, and psychoanalysis.

Naomi is joined by writer and reader Oonagh Devitt Tremblay for a conversation that begins with Samuel Richardson's epistolary novel Clarissa and ends with Miriam Toews' recent epistolary memoir, A Truce that is Not Peace. Beginning with the fact of Tremblay's original copy of Clarissa having burned in a fire, we reflect on the impact of loss and lost objects, and how our relationship to loss changes over time; epistolary practice as a mode for processing experience, as diaries you can send away while also holding onto them; the links between epistolary practice and rejection; and writing book reviews as a true response and a letter outwards.

Reading List

Clarissa, Samuel Richardson

A Truce that is Not Peace, Miriam Toews

Iza's Ballad, Magda Szabó

Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion

Selected writing by Oonagh Devitt Tremblay

Westward Glances: Home and the Crisis of Language in the Work of Miriam Toews

Lauren Elkin's 'Scaffolding' Analyses Our Unconscious Desires

Interview with babaà

Oonagh Devitt Tremblay is a writer based in London. She writes novels and reviews books. Her criticism can be found in The Times Literary Supplement, Frieze, The London Magazine and Literary Review. She was born in France and raised in Canada and has lived in the UK since 2018. 

Find a copy of Marginalia: an autobiography from Autofocus Books, New York University Press, or your local independent bookstore. Subscribe to Process Notes for further reflections on reading, subjectivity, and psychoanalysis.

Naomi is joined by writer Mark Haber for a conversation about the habit of mind cultivated through reading. We discuss the kind of writer who opens a door for other writers, tracing a thread through Haber’s early encounter with Kurt Vonengut to a later encounter and friendship with the Argentinian writer Rodrigo Fresán. We talk about voice-driven novels over plot-driven novels, books in conversation with each other, and books that don’t shy away from their influences, along with the American obsession with the myth of originality, of what’s never been done before. Our conversation is framed by Haber’s reading of Rodrigo Fresán’s book The Invented Part, translated from the Spanish by Will Vanderhyden.

Reading List

The Invented Part, Rodrigo Fresán

Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut

Lesser Ruins, Mark Haber

Reinhardt’s Garden, Mark Haber

Saint Sebastian’s Abyss, Mark Haber

Pre-order Haber’s new novel ADA, out July 14, 2026 with Coffee House Press here.

Other Selected writing by Mark Haber

How to Read Kafka

César Aira Makes the Impossible Possible

The Writer You’ve Never Heard of that Made My Book Possible, on the life and writing of Mila Menendez Krause

Mark Haber was born in Washington, D.C. and grew up in Florida. His debut novel, Reinhardt’s Garden (2019), was longlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award. His second novel, Saint Sebastian’s Abyss (2022), and third, Lesser Ruins (2024) were both named as a best book of the year by the New York Public Library. His fourth novel, Ada, will be published this July. Mark's fiction has appeared in Guernica, Southwest Review, and LitHub, among others. Mark lives in Minneapolis.

Find a copy of Marginalia: an autobiography from Autofocus Books, New York University Press, or your local independent bookstore. Subscribe to Process Notes for further reflections on reading, subjectivity, and psychoanalysis.

Naomi is joined by writer and psychoanalyst Akshi Singh. They speak about the kind of associations that prompt more writing in the margins versus the moments of significance that are less immediately available in words; teaching oneself to write dialogue in a novel; how a listener can fade into listening; the problems we're embroiled in while reading; how the carrying-on of one version of a life can involve the repression of one's own thoughts and wishes; and psychoanalysis, friendships, and diaries as spaces where speech and writing can create new experiences of thinking.

Reading List

Voices in the Evening, Natalia Ginzburg

A Life of One's Own, Marion Milner

How to End a Story: Collected Diaries, 1978-1998, Helen Garner

Selection of related essays by Akshi Singh

When Raising Your Voice is Not Enough to be Heard

Issey Miyake

X

Akshi Singh is a writer and psychoanalyst. Born in India, she lives in Glasgow. Akshi is the author of In Defence of Leisure: Experiments in Living with Marion Milner (Jonathan Cape, 2025). She works across genres, writing memoir, criticism, fiction, and poetry. Her writing on psychoanalysis, art, and politics has appeared in Granta, Parapraxis, The London Review of Books, Art Review and elsewhere. She has a PhD in literature from the University of London. She was previously a Wellcome Trust funded postdoctoral fellow at Queen Mary, University of London, and Lecturer in Global Migrations at the University of Glasgow. She is Associate Editor at Parapraxis magazine and Deputy Editor at Critical Quarterly.

Find a copy of Marginalia: an autobiography from Autofocus Books, New York University Press, or your local independent bookstore. Subscribe to Process Notes for further reflections on reading, subjectivity, and psychoanalysis.

For the first episode of Season 2, Naomi is joined by writer and art critic Emily LaBarge. We revisit marginalia from her copies of Amy Hempel's The Dog of the Marriage, Joan Didion's The White Album, Sylvia Plath's The Unabridged Journals, and Alice Munro's Who Do You Think You Are? exploring a lineage of library-keeping; book titles lost in translation across continents; forms of intertextual desire; marginalia as a record of life outside the book; the complexity of memory; and the internal rhythms of our prose style, as they develop consciously and unconsciously through our practice of reading and thinking.

Reading List

The Dog of the Marriage, Amy Hempel

The White Album, Joan Didion

The Unabridged Journals, Sylvia Plath

Who Do You Think You Are?, Alice Munro

Selection of related essays by Emily LaBarge

"Best Book of 1978: Who Do You Think You Are?"

"Chantal Akerman's Elusive Interiors: what the filmmaker's portrayal of women reveals--and withholds"

"What Wasn't There"

Purchase LaBarge's debut DOG DAYS

Emily LaBarge is a Canadian writer living in London. Her essays and criticism have appeared in Granta, the London Review of Books, Artforum, mousse, Bookforum, Frieze, The Observer, and The Paris Review, among others. She is a regular contributor to The New York Times and 4Columns. She is the author of Dog Days (Peninsula Press, 2025; Transit and Hamish Hamilton Canada, 2026).

Find a copy of Marginalia: an autobiography from Autofocus Books, New York University Press, or your local independent bookstore. Subscribe to Process Notes for further reflections on reading, subjectivity, and psychoanalysis.

For our final episode of our first season, Naomi is joined by fellow Annie Ernaux enthusiast Jeannie Vanasco for an in-depth discussion on immersion in the reading process, the un-self-consciousness of writing memoir, the question of whether there is a divide between the craft and the personal, and how we make choices about what to leave out when and why. For the Annie Ernaux fans out there, Naomi and Jeannie look closely at Jeannie's marginalia in her copies of Shame and The Other Girl and their influence on Jeannie's work, particularly The Glass Eye. Shout-out to Seven Stories Press, Ernaux's American publisher -- we're repping your Annie Ernaux hats and shirts and hope you'll make more of them ;)

Author Bio: Jeannie Vanasco is the author of A Silent Treatment, which was named a best book of 2025 by NPR and a best nonfiction book of 2025 by Electric Literature. Her other memoirs include Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl—a New York Times Editors' Choice and a best book of 2019 by TIME, Esquire, Kirkus, among others—and The Glass Eye, which Poets & Writers called one of the five best literary nonfiction debuts of 2017. Born and raised in Sandusky, Ohio, she lives in Baltimore and is an associate professor of English at Towson University. Her fourth book is under contract with Tin House, publisher of her other memoirs.

Marginalia: an autobiography is out now! Order it from Autofocus Books or your favorite, cool bookstore (like Unnameable Books, Book Club Bar, Exile in Bookville, Literati, Third Place Books, Skunk Cabbage Books, Interabang Books, and more)! Subscribe to her Substack, Process Notes, for further thoughts and reflections.

Naomi is joined by bookseller and podcaster Lori Feathers to discuss her reading of The Hunger of Women by Marosia Castaldi, translated by Jamie Richards (And Other Stories, 2023). They explore the impact of this rhythmic, hypnotic prose, the embedded references to books from other cultures, and the lineage of ‘abundant’ books that drives so much of Lori’s reading.

Reading List:

Miss Mackintosh, My Darling by Marguerite Young

Palinuro of Mexico by Fernando del Paso

Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann

Lori Feathers is a writer and podcaster in Dallas, Texas, and a co-owner/founder of Interabang Books where she is the store’s book buyer. She is creator of “The Big Book Project” on Substack, and co-hosts the critically acclaimed books podcast, “Across the Pond.” Lori is founding Chair of the Republic of Consciousness Prize, US and Canada, a prize honoring the work of small publishers, and co-founder of the Inside Literary Prize for incarcerated persons. For six years she served on the elected board of the National Book Critics Circle. Her writing can be found at Literary Hub, Words Without Borders, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Southwest Review.

Marginalia: an autobiography is out now! Order it from Autofocus Books or your favorite, cool bookstore (like Unnameable Books, Book Club Bar, Exile in Bookville, Literati, Third Place Books, Skunk Cabbage Books, Interabang Books, and more)! Subscribe to her Substack, Process Notes, for further thoughts and reflections.

Naomi is joined by Lauren Elkin for a conversation on the permission-giving qualities of Georges Perec's Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, how reading Perec made her into a writer, and what it's like to re-see the world in the way he encourages us to do. Weaving through Elkin's own experiments in seeing with her book No. 91/92: diary of a year on the bus and the ways we live in and through our homes with her novel Scaffolding, we land in her current home in London where her accumulated stacks of books are grouped by subject, and we get a taste of how a new stack is building toward a particular new project.

Reading List

Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, Georges Perec

An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris, Georges Perec

The House in Paris, Elizabeth Bowen

The Daughter's Seduction: Feminism and Psychoanalysis, Jane Gallop

Lauren Elkin is the author of several critically-acclaimed books, including Scaffolding, Art Monsters, and Flâneuse. Her essays on art, literature, and culture have appeared in the London Review of Books, the New York Times, Granta, Harper's, Le Monde, Les Inrockuptibles, and Frieze, among others. An award-winning translator, she lives between Paris and London.

Marginalia: an autobiography is out now! Order it from Autofocus Books or your favorite, cool bookstore (like Unnameable Books, Book Club Bar, Exile in Bookville, Literati, Third Place Books, Skunk Cabbage Books, and more)! Subscribe to her Substack, Process Notes, for further thoughts and reflections.