The Unspeakable Podcast

When The Greatest Story Ever Told Isn’t Yours To Tell. Jean Hanff Korelitz on her new novel, The Plot

05.23.2021 - By Meghan DaumPlay

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Jean Hanff Korelitz is the author of many novels, including You Should Have Known, which became the basis for last fall's hit HBO limited series The Undoing, starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant. Her brand new novel, The Plot, is a literary suspense thriller about a struggling writer who stumbles upon what by all accounts is the greatest story ever (or in this case never) told. The problem is, it belongs to someone else. In this conversation Jean talks with Meghan about what a "story" really is and why the boundaries of ownership can get so murky. She also discusses some of her other books, two of which, 2009's Admission and 2017's The Devil and Webster, were set on college campuses and delve into the lives of school administrators trying to negotiate a changing world. Jean has a lot to say about the state of higher education, the state of higher culture, and how reading-and writing-has been reshaped by the constraints of the pandemic.    Guest Bio:   Jean Hanff Korelitz is the author of nine books, most recently The Plot, just out from Macmillan's Celadon Books. Yet another novel, The Latecomer, will be published in 2022. With her husband, the poet Paul Muldoon, Jean adapted James Joyce's The Dead as an immersive theatrical event that was performed at New York's s American Irish Historical Society. She is also the founder of Book The Writer, a pop up book club enterprise that brings authors and readers together for curated book discussion groups.

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