The legendary actor George Takei reads one of the oldest stories in the Review’s archive. Published by the magazine in 1957, “The Victim” is Ivan Morris’s English translation of the Japanese author Jun'ichirō Tanizaki’s 1910 literary debut.

This episode was produced by John DeLore and Helena de Groot, and was mixed and sound-designed by John DeLore. Our theme song this season is “Shadow,” composed and performed by Ernst Reijseger.

Additional Links:

theparisreview.org/fiction/4872/the-victim-junichiro-tanizaki

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The Japanese American Museum: https://www.janm.org/

Sean Thor Conroe shares entries from “The Walk Book”—his meticulous, funny travelogue about his 2014 attempt to walk across the United States—including some rain-soaked field recordings.

theparisreview.org/letters-essays/8039/the-walk-book-sean-thor-conroe

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The Nobel Prize–winning Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk discusses the souls of animals, discovering feminism, and her home in the village of Krajanów where she was once neighbors with “three different translators of William Blake in an excerpt from her Art of Fiction interview with Marta Figlerowicz.

This episode was produced and sound-designed by John DeLore. Our theme song this season is “Shadow,” composed and performed by Ernst Reijseger.

Additional Links:

theparisreview.org/interviews/7968/the-art-of-fiction-no-258-olga-tokarczuk

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“We needed erotic touch to tell us what we were.” Robert Glück reads from About Ed, a memoir about his relationship with his former partner Ed Aulerich-Sugai. The performance is paired with excerpts from his Art of Fiction interview with Lucy Ives.

This episode was produced by Helena de Groot and John DeLore, and was mixed and sound-designed by Helena de Groot. Our theme song this season is “Shadow,” composed and performed by Ernst Reijseger.

Additional Links:

https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/8016/the-art-of-fiction-no-260-robert-gluck

https://theparisreview.org/miscellaneous/7896/about-ed-robert-gluck

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“Nothing reifies a romance like proximate disaster.” Seated at her kitchen table, Jean Garnett reads her essay “Scenes from an Open Marriage” and chats with the Review’s deputy editor, Lidija Haas, and senior producer of the podcast, Helena de Groot.

This episode was produced, sound-designed, and mixed by Helena de Groot. Our theme song this season is “Shadow,” composed and performed by Ernst Reijseger.

Additional Links:

theparisreview.org/blog/2022/06/29/scenes-from-an-open-marriage/

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“The only colors we’re going to use will be blacker than most blacks. Mm-kay.” Terrance Hayes reads his poem, “Bob Ross Paints Your Portrait.” An homage to the iconic host of the PBS show The Joy of Painting, and an exploration of Blackness: “deep-space black, black-hole black … lampblack and ink black, boot black and blackjack and blacker.”

Additional Links:

theparisreview.org/poetry/7883/bob-ross-paints-your-portrait-terrance-hayes

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/457422/so-to-speak-by-hayes-terrance

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The Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Sharon Olds discusses sex, religion, and writing poems that "women were definitely not supposed to write,” in an excerpt from her Art of Poetry interview with Jessica Laser. Olds also reads three of her poems: “Sisters of Sexual Treasure” (issue no. 74, Fall–Winter 1978), “True Love,” and “The Easel.”

Additional Links:

theparisreview.org/interviews/8000/the-art-of-poetry-no-114-sharon-olds

theparisreview.org/poetry/3462/the-sisters-of-sexual-treasure-sharon-olds

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A stealth poetry reading inside a bustling IKEA. Poet Maggie Millner reads her own poem (Issue no. 239, Spring 2022), as well as two more from the archive: Toi Dericotte’s “Bird” (Issue No. 124, Fall 1992) and Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Death” (Issue No. 82, Winter 1981). This episode was produced by Helena de Groot and John DeLore, and was sound-designed by John DeLore. Our theme song this season is “Shadow,” composed and performed by Ernst Reijseger.

Additional Links:

theparisreview.org/poetry/7855/from-couplets-maggie-millner

theparisreview.org/poetry/6855/death-rainer-maria-rilke

theparisreview.org/poetry/2039/two-poems-toi-derricotte

maggiemillner.com/

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Actor, producer, and screenwriter Lena Waithe reads Rivers Solomon’s “This Is Everything There Will Ever Be,” which was published in issue no. 243 of the Review. The story, dark and uplifting by turns, is a portrait of “just another late-forties dyke entirely too into basketball, dogs, and memes.” This episode was produced and sound-designed by Helena de Groot. Our theme song this season is “Shadow,” composed and performed by Ernst Reijseger.

Additional Links:

theparisreview.org/fiction/7963/this-is-everything-there-will-ever-be-rivers-solomon

rivers-solomon.com/

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The Paris Review Podcast returns with a new season on November 15, 2023. Selections of interviews, fiction, essays, and poetry from America’s most legendary literary quarterly, brought to life in sound. Catch up now on earlier seasons & then tune in November 15th for the fourth season.