Bookends with Mattea Roach

Communication gets complicated across different languages, time zones and generations. FaceTime and translation apps can only help so much. That's the personal challenge R. F. Kuang drew on in her latest novel Taipei Story. It's about Lily, a Chinese American college student who spends the summer in a language program in Taipei, hoping to connect with her culture and family. But as things unravel, Lily starts to realize that true belonging goes deeper than language and words. This week, R. F. Kuang joins Mattea Roach in front of a live audience for a deeply personal conversation about her own Taipei story, connecting with her grandparents… and why so many white guys want to learn Mandarin.

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Girlbossing on an oil rig
A novel inspired by the death of a tree
How bad was your worst friendship breakup?

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The new novel from Marlon James is based on a rumour … but it’s no rumour that Marlon’s book is one of the year's hottest titles. The Disappearers is an epic Jamaican novel that centres on a group of gay men who were brutally attacked in Kingston in the late 1980s. The story follows the men in the aftermath of the attack, as they seek connection, new identities, understanding and revenge. Marlon calls The Disappearers his most personal book yet, and it draws on his time as a young queer man in Jamaica and his own experiences with invisibility. This week, Marlon tells Mattea Roach about why he doesn’t shy away from writing about violence
and why he once called himself a “disappearer.”

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Douglas Stuart was a fashion exec — now he designs stories
In the Caribbean, secret lives come at a cost

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Canadian writer Anne Carson is the winner of this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature. For today’s podcast, we’re diving into the archives and revisiting one of Anne’s conversations with Eleanor Wachtel on Writers & Company. Anne Carson is celebrated for poems and essays that defy the boundaries of genre. She frequently blends ancient Greek myth with modern stories of love, grief and desire. Anne spoke with Eleanor in 2011 about her book Nox — which means night. Combining poetry, letters, photographs and sketches, the book is an elegy to her brother … and a moving reflection on family and absence.

If you want to hear more from the archives of Writers & Company, the show’s entire catalogue is available on Simon Fraser University’s Digitized Collections website: https://digital.lib.sfu.ca/writers-company

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Anita Rau Badami’s new novel, Asha in Her Garden, is her first in over a decade … and it all started with the striking image of a dying tree. On her seventieth birthday, Asha Mohan’s beloved backyard maple tree is cut down. As she watches it disappear, Asha begins to look differently at the life she’s spent years building. From her move to Canada from India, to the trials of raising her children to an act of violence that changed the family forever, Asha’s garden becomes a space for her to reflect on how she built her family and where she can go now. This week, Anita joins Mattea Roach to talk about the real tree that inspired the book, the maze of memory and a character called “The Hag.”

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Why writing a novel is like riding a horse
What does dystopia look like in the suburbs?

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Imagine the pressure of being the only woman working on an offshore oil rig. That was the reality for Y.M. Abdel-Magied … and she turned her years in the field into a thrilling novel about oil, power and survival on the water. At Sea follows Zainab, a toolpusher who is tasked with leading an all-male drilling crew on an oil rig off the coast of Australia. As Zainab navigates the complicated power dynamics of her role, she begins to uncover signs of catastrophe that could devastate the ocean around her and threaten the lives of everyone on the rig. This week, Y.M. joins Mattea Roach to talk about her experience working on rigs, writing a nuanced story about oil and how everything started with her love of racecar driving.

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A raunchy workplace satire ... about deradicalizing ISIS brides?
Would a tradwife influencer survive in 1855?

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