The novelist Jonathan Lethem listens here to recordings of his own New York State Writers Institute events over the past two decades. This propels conversation into wild places. It turns out that going into familiar moments—even listening to one’s own voice—can prompt discoveries. There’s a chance to find, as Lethem puts it, “worlds within the world.”

William Kennedy describes a similar discovery here. Going back as a journalist to his hometown of Albany, NY, was “a revelation,” he says. The city that once bored him became, to the writer in search of stories, a place of proliferating character, of drama—a world full of worlds.

You’ll hear in this episode the reward of applying mind to matter. Says Lethem: “We have tables and chairs and apples and cherries and shirts and pants and socks, but everything else seems to me pretty much up for grabs. Once you put subjectivity and consciousness in the mix, it all gets pretty strange.”

On this episode:

Jonathan Lethem (conversation with Adam Colman). Books: Motherless Brooklyn and The Arrest.

Samuel Delany (from the archives). Books: Dhalgren and Nova.

Ann Beattie (from the archives). Books: What Was Mine and Another You.

Denis Johnson (from the archives). Books: Jesus' Son and Train Dreams.

William Kennedy (conversation with Adam Colman). Books: Very Old Bones and The Flaming Corsage.

Find out more about the New York State Writers Institute at https://www.nyswritersinstitute.org.

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In this series, you hear about writers' words coming to life in different places—in conversation, in TV writers’ rooms, at public readings. When those writers are poets, an especially intense attention to language can do something similarly intense to the places where they read or speak. In this episode, Saeed Jones—author of the new poetry collection Alive at the End of the World—explains how he learned that “my education in poetry as a craft could serve me outside of the context of writing a poem.” Poetic economy of language, he says, informed his work in a newsroom and his presence on social media.

You’ll also hear archival sound from poets Alice Notley, John Ashbery, and Yusef Komunyakaa, thanks to the New York State Writers Institute. And you’ll hear how poetry can echo through an audience, across media, into thought.

On this episode:

Saeed Jones (conversation with Adam Colman). Books: Alive at the End of the World and Prelude to Bruise.

Alice Notley (from the archives). Books: Close to Me & Closer... (The Language of Heaven) and Desamere and Disobedience.

John Ashbery (from the archives). Books: Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror and The Tennis Court Oath.

Yusef Komunyakaa (from the archives). Books: The Emperor of Water Clocks and Taboo.

William Kennedy (conversation with Adam Colman). Books: Changó's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes and Riding the Yellow Trolley Car.

Find out more about the New York State Writers Institute at https://www.nyswritersinstitute.org.

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You’ll hear Don DeLillo say in this episode that “the best sort of television has almost replaced a certain kind of novel.” That’s from a Writers Institute event nearly fifteen years ago, and while conversations about novelistic TV have changed since then, novelists continue to bring their sensibilities to television. Among those writers is Amelia Gray—author of startling short stories and novels—who’s written for shows including Maniac and Mr. Robot. Gray says here that “TV is a writer’s medium. In features they’ll still take it away from you, and have you do a bunch of rewrites, and then it’s the director’s baby, and that’s just how it is. But TV is so big and unwieldy that they need the writers.”

On the subject of writers struggling with feature films, we listen to the novelist Russell Banks in conversation with Don DeLillo about their friend Nelson Algren, whose novel, The Man with the Golden Arm, was adapted into a 1955 Otto Preminger film with Frank Sinatra—a film Algren loathed. Banks has had happier experiences with film adaptations of his novels, on the other hand, and DeLillo’s White Noise has now been adapted into a film by Noah Baumbach. The question is: what makes things go right or wrong for novelists in Hollywood?

On this episode:

Amelia Gray (conversation with Adam Colman). Books: Isadora and Museum of the Weird.

Don DeLillo (from the archives). Books: White Noise and Underworld.

Russell Banks (from the archives). Books: The Sweet Hereafter and Affliction.

William Kennedy (conversation with Adam Colman). Books: Legs and Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game.

Find out more about the New York State Writers Institute at https://www.nyswritersinstitute.org.

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The future of in-person author events seems shaky after years of remote book talks. What happens if we no longer have bookstore readings, library lectures, and interviews before live audiences? Jonathan Franzen tells Adam Colman in this episode, “If we lose live book events, I would experience it as a great loss.” He describes here the humor, community, and conversation at those gatherings. Says Franzen: “To me, it’s consistently moving to do an event and look out at people who care about books and then to have a chance to find some kind of moment of connection.” Those connections with the public can be surprising, with results ranging from enduring correspondences to international incidents. (“I’ve never been invited back to Brazil,” Franzen says.)

Here, Jonathan Franzen also listens to Don DeLillo, Jamaica Kincaid, and Joseph Heller via the New York State Writers Institute’s archives, and he considers the links between his fiction, his public readings, and writing for the stage. 

On this episode:

Jonathan Franzen (conversation with Adam Colman). Books: The Corrections and Crossroads.

Don DeLillo (from the archives). Books: Underworld and Libra.

Joseph Heller (from the archives). Books: Catch-22 and Good as Gold.

Margaret Atwood (from the archives). Books: The Handmaid’s Tale and Oryx and Crake.

Jamaica Kincaid (from the archives). Books: Lucy and A Small Place.

William Kennedy (conversation with Adam Colman). Books: Roscoe and O Albany!

Find out more about the New York State Writers Institute at https://www.nyswritersinstitute.org.

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Writers direct years of effort to language’s possibilities, so when you listen to a podcast devoted to writers speaking (which is this one) you can expect an appropriate range of possibility. You might hear something unforgettable—something that changes how you think, or reinforces a hunch you had, or confuses you in the most liberating way. On The Writers Institute, we seek those moments in the New York State Writers Institute’s overbrimming audio archives, guided by writers in 2022 who join that archival exploration. In this series premiere, Susan Choi—author of novels including Trust Exercise and My Education—listens with host Adam Colman to literary giants Grace Paley and Raymond Carver. Along the way, she talks about writers in the world, off the page.

“One thing I really like about writers,” Choi says, is that “writers are really curious about other people . . . I’m constantly amazed by how often I meet people who have no curiosity at all, about anything. It’s really disturbing to me, actually.”

On this episode:

Susan Choi (in conversation with Adam Colman). Books: Trust Exercise and My Education.

Raymond Carver (from the archives). Books: Cathedral and Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?

Grace Paley (from the archives). Books: Enormous Changes at the Last Minute and Later the Same Day.

Jamaica Kincaid (from the archives). Books: Lucy and A Small Place.

William Kennedy (in conversation with Adam Colman). Books: Ironweed and The Ink Truck.

Find out more about the New York State Writers Institute at https://www.nyswritersinstitute.org.

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Welcome to the Writers Institute, the new series from Lit Hub and the New York State Writers Institute at the University at Albany. Hear writer/producer Adam Colman's adventures through the overbrimming audio archives of the Institute, one of the leading organizers of literary events in the US. Listening in with Adam will be writers including Susan Choi, Jonathan Franzen, Amelia Gray, Saeed Jones, and Jonathan Lethem, and you'll also hear from William Kennedy, the novelist and founder of the Writers Institute.

For more on the Institute, visit https://www.nyswritersinstitute.org.

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