The hosts discuss Stephanie Wambugu’s justly-hyped novel Lonely Crowds before they’re joined by Noah Kulwin, an avowed Macdonaldhead who details the pleasures of private eye fiction through 1966’s Black Money. 

Noah Kulwin is a writer based in New York City. He is also the co-host of the podcast Blowback, a history program about American empire. He has written for a wide variety of publications, but more recently can be found in The Baffler, The Intercept, Screen Slate and Protean. 

Please consider supporting our work on Patreon, where you can access additional materials and send us your guest (and book!) coverage requests. Questions and kind comments can be directed to readingwriterspod at gmail dot com. 

Charlotte Shane’s most recent book is An Honest Woman. Her essay newsletter, Meant For You, can be subscribed to or read online for free. Her social media handle is @charoshane.  

Jo Livingstone is a writer who teaches at Pratt Institute.

To support the show, navigate to https://www.patreon.com/ReadingWriters

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

Charlotte and Jo spring into the new year with a conversation about ancient poetry: Beowulf, The Iliad, and Dante’s Inferno as translated by Mark Musa, Mary Jo Bang, and Danny Lavery. They’re then joined by the wise and wonderful Hanif Abdurraqib who—after sharing a scoop about what series of book he reads every year (!)—reflects on the formative impacts of his encounter with Gloria Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place. Other titles discussed: Toni Morrison’s Jazz, Bebe Moore Campbells’ Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine, Lloyd Alexander’s The Chronicles of Prydain. 

Hanif Abdurraqib is a writer from the east side of Columbus, Ohio.

Danny Lavery’s translations of The Inferno can be found here.

Please consider supporting our work on Patreon, where you can access additional materials and send us your guest (and book!) coverage requests. Questions and kind comments can be directed to readingwriterspod at gmail dot com.

Charlotte Shane’s most recent book is An Honest Woman. Her essay newsletter, Meant For You, can be subscribed to or read online for free. Her social media handle is @charoshane.  

Jo Livingstone is a writer who teaches at Pratt Institute.

To support the show, navigate to https://www.patreon.com/ReadingWriters

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

In this host-only bonus episode, Charlotte and Jo discuss some of their most memorable reads of 2025. Authors discussed include Arthur C. Clarke, Shon Faye, Sarah Schulman, Ai Yazawa, Marjane Satrapi, Ariana Reines, Kyung-Ran Jo, and more.

Please consider supporting us on Patreon, where you can access additional materials and send us your guest (and book!) coverage requests. Questions and kind comments can be directed to readingwriterspod at gmail dot com. 

Charlotte Shane’s most recent book is An Honest Woman. Her essay newsletter, Meant For You, can be subscribed to or read online for free. Her social media handle is @charoshane.  

Jo Livingstone is a writer who teaches at Pratt Institute. 

To support the show, navigate to https://www.patreon.com/ReadingWriters

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

In a scandalous rejection of holiday spirit, Jo and Charlotte reflect on the dark, elegant pleasures of Gabrielle Wittkopf’s The Necrophiliac alongside contemporary novel conventions as deployed in Rebecca Novack’s Murder Bimbo. The hosts are then joined by dear friend Clio Chang, who outlines the timeless, charming, annoying allure of Cheryl Strayed’s hit memoir Wild (2012).

Also discussed in this episode: Charlotte Roche’s Wetlands, Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, and Lillian Fishman’s Acts of Service.  

Clio Chang is a staff writer at Curbed who can do three pullups. 

Please consider supporting our work on Patreon, where you can access additional materials and send us your guest (and book!) coverage requests. Questions and kind comments can be directed to readingwriterspod at gmail dot com. 

Charlotte Shane’s most recent book is An Honest Woman. Her essay newsletter, Meant For You, can be subscribed to or read online for free. Her social media handle is @charoshane.  

Jo Livingstone is a writer who teaches at Pratt Institute. 

To support the show, navigate to https://www.patreon.com/ReadingWriters

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

Charlotte delves into Ecclesiastes through the work of liberation theologist Elsa Támez (When the Horizons Close) before Jo shares some of Pierre Guyotat’s horny, rapturous literary memoir, Idiocy. Icon of many RW conversations past, the thoughtful Jackie Ess then joins to discuss Tolstoy’s crank-inflected final novel, Resurrection.

Jackie Ess is the author of a novel called Darryl, and more recently of a long short-story length chapbook called Eugene. 

Please consider supporting our work on Patreon, where you can access additional materials and send us your guest and book coverage requests! Questions and comments can be directed to readingwriterspod at gmail dot com. Outro music by Marty Sulkow and Joe Valle.

Charlotte Shane’s most recent book is An Honest Woman. Her essay newsletter, Meant For You, can be subscribed to or read online for free, and her social media handle is @charoshane.  

Jo Livingstone is a writer who teaches at Pratt Institute. 

To support the show, navigate to https://www.patreon.com/ReadingWriters

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

Jo and Charlotte discuss secret gardens, indoor kids, and Peter Pan’s baby teeth before they’re joined by culture-shaping Annelise Ogaard, who introduces listeners to the lavish, creepy world of Gabrielle Wittkop’s fiction.

Annelise Ogaard is a writer, translator, filmmaker, vibesmith, area woman, and friend of the pod. She has translated a variety of Japanese manga, including Hauntress, (one of the NYPL's top ten graphic novels of the year💅), and is currently at work on the classic boxing series Fighting for Tomorrow.

Please consider supporting our work on Patreon, where you can access additional materials and send us your guest and book coverage requests! Questions and comments can be directed to readingwriterspod at gmail dot com. Outro music by Marty Sulkow and Joe Valle.

Charlotte Shane’s most recent book is An Honest Woman. Her essay newsletter, Meant For You, can be subscribed to or read online for free, and her social media handle is @charoshane.  

Jo Livingstone is a writer who teaches at Pratt Institute.  

To support the show, navigate to https://www.patreon.com/ReadingWriters

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

Charlotte overcomes her resistance to novels about sexual abuse in order to read Kate Elizabeth Russell’s excellent My Dark Vanessa, after which Jo introduces listeners to the freewheeling criminality of Diane DiMassa’s Hothead Paisan: Homicidal Lesbian. The ferociously intelligent Torrey Peters then joins for a conversation about plant consciousness and our relationship with the organic world. 

Other titles mentioned in this episode: Jamie Hood’s Trauma Plot, The Incest Diary by Anonymous, Is a River Alive? by Robert MacFarlane, Melanie Challenger’s How To Be Animal, Sunaura Taylor’s Beasts of Burden, and Merlin Sheldrake’s Entangled Life.

The Rabindranath Tagore quote that Charlotte gets wrong at the end (I’m sorry! —CS) is:

I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.

Torrey Peters is the author of the novel Detransition, Baby, which won the 2021 PEN/Hemingway award for debut fiction and was named a Best Book of the Century by the New York Times. Her second book, Stag Dance, was a national bestseller. 

Please consider supporting our work on Patreon, where you can access additional materials and send us your guest and book coverage requests! Questions and comments can be directed to readingwriterspod at gmail dot com. Outro music by Marty Sulkow and Joe Valle.

Charlotte Shane’s most recent book is An Honest Woman. Her essay newsletter, Meant For You, can be subscribed to or read online for free, and her social media handle is @charoshane.  

Jo Livingstone is a writer who teaches at Pratt Institute. 

To support the show, navigate to https://www.patreon.com/ReadingWriters

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

This week, Jo discovers the seminal elegance of Sylvia Wynter’s Black Metamorphosis: New Natives in a New World, while Charlotte considers how well she would fare if she traveled back in time to the era of Alexander the Great, as depicted in Mary Renault’s The Persian Boy. Then, the dazzling Lauren Michele Jackson joins to discuss the chaotic, thrilling, sexually vibrant, and deeply unwell narrator of Nettie Jones’ Fish Tales.

Also mentioned in this episode: Percival Everett’s Glyph, Danzy Senna’s Symptomatic, Street Zen by David Schneider, and Samuel R. Delany’s Times Square Red, Times Square Blue.

Lauren Michele Jackson is an assistant professor of English at Northwestern University and contributing writer at The New Yorker. She is the author of White Negroes and the forthcoming essay collection, Back. 

Please consider supporting our work on Patreon, where you can access additional materials and send us your guest and book coverage requests! Questions and comments can be directed to readingwriterspod at gmail dot com. Outro music by Marty Sulkow and Joe Valle.

Charlotte Shane’s most recent book is An Honest Woman. Her essay newsletter, Meant For You, can be subscribed to or read online for free, and her social media handle is @charoshane.  

Jo Livingstone is a writer who teaches at Pratt Institute. 

To support the show, navigate to https://www.patreon.com/ReadingWriters

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

Reading Writers is BACK, and in partnership with Bookforum Magazine!

In this first episode of Season 3, hosts Jo and Charlotte delve into the (separate) letter collections of Vincent Van Gogh and D.H. Lawrence before they’re joined by superstar novelist Rumaan Alam to reflect on magazine eras of yore via Tina Brown’s The Vanity Fair Diaries. Also mentioned: Cat Marnell’s How To Murder Your Life, Jean Godfrey June’s Free Gift With Purchase, Michael M. Grynbaum’s Empire of the Elite, Stet by Diana Athill, the diaries of Helen Garner, and the diaries of Andy Warhol.

Rumaan Alam is the author of four novels, including, most recently, Entitlement.

Please consider supporting our work on Patreon, where you can access additional materials and send us your guest and book coverage requests! Questions and comments can be directed to readingwriterspod at gmail dot com. Outro music by Marty Sulkow and Joe Valle.

Charlotte Shane’s most recent book is An Honest Woman. Her essay newsletter, Meant For You, can be subscribed to or read online for free, and her social media handle is @charoshane.  

Jo Livingstone is a writer who teaches at Pratt Institute. 

To support the show, navigate to https://www.patreon.com/ReadingWriters

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

In an incendiary season finale, the insightful and hilarious K. Austin Collins joins to discuss Dennis Cooper's controversial classic, The Sluts. Other topics of debate include the old internet, social media in fiction, and the world's ultimate unreliable narrators: service review writers. Thanks to all our listeners and guests for a wonderful second season!

K. Austin Collins is a film critic. His writing has appeared in Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, The Ringer, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. He is the author of BLACK COP, forthcoming from Doubleday, and DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, about Frederick Wiseman’s 2001 documentary of the same name, forthcoming from Fireflies Press.  

Send questions, requests, recommendations, and your own thoughts about any of the books discussed today to readingwriterspod at gmail dot com. 

Charlotte’s most recent book is An Honest Woman: A Memoir of Love and Sex Work. Learn more at charoshane.com

Jo co-edits The Stopgap and their writing lives at jolivingstone.com.

To support the show, navigate to https://www.patreon.com/ReadingWriters

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