Ken Worpole, ‘a literary original, a social and architectural historian whose books combine the Orwellian ideal of common decency with understated erudition’ (New Statesman), has written on many subjects during his long career, from cemeteries to hospices to the novels of Alexander Baron, but has often returned to the subject of his beloved Essex. His latest essay collection Brightening from the East (Little Toller) focuses on the natural and built landscapes of the ‘region of the mind’ that is the estuarine marshlands of the Thames and the East Anglian coast, bringing us stories of radical communities and arcadian dreams of new ways of living. Worpole is in conversation with writer and journalist Melissa Benn; the evening will be hosted by writer and producer Gareth Evans.

With Testo Junkie, Pornotopia, An Apartment in Uranus and Can the Monster Speak, Paul B. Preciado became established as one of the most exciting and challenging social thinkers of our time. His latest book Dysphoria Mundi (Fitzcarraldo), a mutant text assembled from essays, philosophy, poetry and autofiction, draws on the experience of the Covid pandemic and the social convulsions that accompanied and followed from it to argue that dysphoria, far from being a form of mental illness, is the defining condition of our age. In what is his most accessible and significant work to date he seeks to make sense of a world in ruins around us, at the same time mapping a joyous, radical way forward. Preciado was joined by Nathalie Olah, author of Bad Taste and Steal as Much as You Can. From the LRB: Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subsbkshppod⁠⁠⁠ Close Readings podcast: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/crbkshppod⁠⁠⁠ LRB Audiobooks: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobooksbkshppod⁠⁠⁠ Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/storebkshppod⁠⁠⁠ Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

Gender, race and identity collide on the open seas in Xiaolu Guo’s Call Me Ishmaelle (Chatto), a powerful, feminist reimagining of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. She was in conversation with Philip Hoare, author of Leviathan: Or the Whale, who has described Guo’s latest novel as being ‘as animal and visceral and shape-shifting and subversive as the broad back of the mythic whale themselves.’

In The Life, Old Age, and Death of a Working-Class Woman (Allen Lane), sociologist Didier Eribon continues the historical, political and personal reflection he began with his classic memoir Returning to Reims, this time turning his attention to the end of life. Tracing his mother’s rapid physical and cognitive decline, and drawing on works by Simone de Beauvoir, Norbert Elias, Annie Ernaux and Michel Foucault among others, Eribon transmutes his rage, sadness and the shame over her death into a nuanced portrait of the woman who raised him. How does our society treat the elderly, Eribon asks? Can the completely dependent speak for themselves – and if not, who can speak for them? Eribon was in conversation about his work with the essayist and novelist Mendez. From the LRB: Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subsbkshppod⁠⁠ Close Readings podcast: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/crbkshppod⁠⁠ LRB Audiobooks: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobooksbkshppod⁠⁠ Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/storebkshppod⁠⁠ Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

Seventy years after the publication of Samuel Beckett’s first novel in English, Faber have reissued Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnameable with ritzy new covers and fresh introductions. To celebrate, Lara Pawson, author of Spent Light, and Jennifer Hodgson, whose biography of Ann Quin is forthcoming, deliver their own tribute to Beckett's fiction, and discuss his life and work. ‘Oh the stories I could tell you if I were easy,’ as Beckett wrote, ‘What a rabble in my head, what a gallery of moribunds.’

In Enemy Feminisms (Haymarket Books), described by Judith Butler as ‘honest, brutal, historically comprehensive, and brilliant’, Sophie Lewis provides a field guide to the reactionary stereotypes that have affected and distorted feminisms past and present, and propounds a paradigm for a feminism that is inclusive, anticolonial and truly liberational. Lewis, author of Full Surrogacy Now and Abolish the Family, was joined in conversation about her work by Lola Olufemi, author of Feminism, Interrupted and Experiments in Imagining Otherwise. More from the Bookshop: Discover our author of the month, book of the week and more: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/bkshppod⁠⁠ From the LRB: Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subsbkshppod⁠ Close Readings podcast: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/crbkshppod⁠ LRB Audiobooks: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobooksbkshppod⁠ Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/storebkshppod⁠ Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

Women in Dark Times (Fitzcarraldo) begins with three remarkable women: revolutionary socialist Rosa Luxemburg; German-Jewish painter Charlotte Salomon; and film icon Marilyn Monroe. The story of these women blazes a trail across some of the defining features of the twentieth century – revolution, totalitarianism and the American dream – and compels us to reckon with the unspeakable. Extending her argument into the present, Rose turns her focus to ‘honour’ killings and celebrates contemporary artists whose work grows out of an unflinching engagement with all that is darkest in the modern world. Women in Dark Times, reissued a decade after its original publication, offers a template for a scandalous feminism, one which confronts all that is most recalcitrant and unsettling in the struggle to create a better world. Jacqueline Rose was in conversation about her work with Yasmin El-Rifae, co-producer of The Palestine Festival of Literature and author of Radius.

Art historian T.J. Clark began his academic career with two groundbreaking works on the art of mid-nineteenth century France, expounding materialist theory of art that has remained his watchword for five decades, with books on Poussin, Cézanne, Picasso and modernism.  Those Passions: On Art and Politics (Thames and Hudson) distils a lifetime’s work through a series of case studies, from Hieronymus Bosch to Jacques-Louis David and the French Revolution, from Walter Benjamin to Pier Paolo Pasolini, exploring how art has always responded to the often chaotic and dangerous circumstances of its creation. Clark was joined in conversation about his life and work by Caroline Arscott, Emeritus Professor of the History of Art at the Courtauld Institute. More from the Bookshop: Discover our author of the month, book of the week and more: ⁠https://lrb.me/bkshppod⁠ From the LRB: Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subsbkshppod Close Readings podcast: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/crbkshppod LRB Audiobooks: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobooksbkshppod Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/storebkshppod Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

‘With his electric Soho, Richard Scott has arrived like a lightning bolt in our midst’ said T.S. Eliot Prize judge Sinéad Morrissey on the publication of his first collection in 2018. To celebrate publication of his second, That Broke into Shining Crystals (Faber), Richard will be reading alongside fellow poets Emily Berry (Dear Boy, Stranger Baby and Unexhausted Time) and Jane Yeh (Discipline, Marabou and Ninjas). More from the Bookshop: Discover our author of the month, book of the week and more: ⁠https://lrb.me/bkshppod⁠ From the LRB: Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subsbkshppod Close Readings podcast: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/crbkshppod LRB Audiobooks: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobooksbkshppod Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/storebkshppod Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

Poet and playwright Ariana Reines will be making a rare UK appearance to read from her new collection with Divided Books, Wave of Blood, a lyric essay she has described as an ‘experiment in ethics’ reckoning with the US wars on terror and their repercussions. Reines was joined in conversation by critic and academic Alice Blackhurst, whose most recent book is Luxury, Sensation and the Moving Image. More from the Bookshop: Discover our author of the month, book of the week and more: ⁠https://lrb.me/bkshppod⁠ From the LRB: Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subsbkshppod Close Readings podcast: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/crbkshppod LRB Audiobooks: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobooksbkshppod Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/storebkshppod Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

In Wages for Housework (Allen Lane) Emily Callaci, professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, tells the story of a movement that shot to prominence in the 1970s, distilling a century of feminist struggle and critique into a single bold slogan. Focusing on five women who helped forge and fight for it – Selma James, Mariarosa Della Costa, Silvia Federici, Wilmette Brown and Margaret Prescod – Callaci takes us deep inside the heart of the movement as it reached across Europe, America, Africa and the Caribbean. For these women, the wage was more than a demand for money: it was a starting point for remaking the world as we know it. Callaci was in conversation with Helen Charman, author of Mother State: A Political History of Motherhood.

In his debut collection Strange Beach – the very first title in Fitzcarraldo’s new poetry series – poet and choreographer Oluwaseun Olayiwola finds the body to be a porous landscape across which existential dilemmas of gender, sexuality and race are enacted and explored. Poet and novelist Andrew McMillan writes of Olayiwola’s work ‘the tideline of the poetic phrase is constantly shifting, is forever rebuilt and remade on the shifting sands of language, every grain of a word held up to the light to consider its myriad refractions.’ Olayiwola read from Strange Beach, and was joined in conversation about his work by the poet and critic Camille Ralphs. Find more events at the London Review Bookshop: https://lrb.me/eventspod

From his arrival in London in 1981 – clutching a suitcase and sewing machine – to his death from AIDS on New Year’s Eve 1994, Leigh Bowery – the man described by Boy George as ‘modern art on legs’ – led an extraordinary life; a life chronicled in the equally extraordinary biography by his closest friend and confidante Sue Tilley, reissued by Thames and Hudson this February. Tilley was at the shop to discuss Bowery’s life and legacy with Charlie Porter, author of What Artists Wear, and whose debut novel Nova Scotia House was published by Particular Books in March. More from the Bookshop: Discover our author of the month, book of the week and more: ⁠https://lrb.me/bkshppod⁠ From the LRB: Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/pod⁠⁠⁠ Close Readings podcast: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/crlrbpod⁠⁠ LRB Audiobooks: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobookslrbpod⁠⁠ Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/storelrbpod⁠⁠ Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

In The Position of Spoons novelist, essayist and playwright Deborah Levy invites the reader to share in her interior world, mapping her own life through the lives and works of the artists and writers who have shaped her own practice, from Marguerite Duras to Colette and Ballard, and from Lee Miller to Francesca Woodman and Paula Rego. Levy, described by Lauren Elkin as ‘one of the most exciting voices in contemporary British fiction’, talks about it here with Adam Thirlwell. More from the Bookshop: Discover our author of the month, book of the week and more: ⁠https://lrb.me/bkshppod⁠ From the LRB: Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/pod⁠⁠⁠ Close Readings podcast: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/crlrbpod⁠⁠ LRB Audiobooks: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobookslrbpod⁠⁠ Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/storelrbpod⁠⁠ Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

Matthew Hollis has reworked the classic Anglo-Saxon poem The Seafarer into a poem desperately relevant for our times: in a society threatened by climate change and the coming-loose of social bonds, Hollis invites us to hear, as the Anglo-Saxons did, the spirit music of land, wind and sea. Hollis’s text is one half of a collaborative project with the photographer Norman McBeath, who was at the shop with Hollis to present and talk about their work. The discussion was chaired by Sara Hudston of Hazel Press. Find more events at the Bookshop: https://lrb.me/eventspod

In Serendipity (Reaktion) Carol Mavor uses Anne Frank’s journal, discovered in the Secret Annex after the Second World War, Emily Dickinson’s poems, scribbled on salvaged envelopes hidden in a drawer, Lolita, rescued from incineration by Nabokov’s wife Véra and her own memory of eating a frozen hot chocolate in New York’s Serendipity 3, a dessert café favoured by Andy Warhol, to muse upon the serendipitous afterlives of objects. Mavor, Professor of Art History and Visual Culture at the University of Manchester and prolific author of books and articles about art and culture, was in conversation about fragments, remnants and what remains with novelist, essayist and translator Lauren Elkin.

In his 2014 Dante’s Inferno poet and provocateur Philip Terry moved the action to Essex University. His Purgatorio (Carcanet) transports us to nearby Mersea Island, where Ted Berrigan leads our author up an artificial mountain to meet with artists Grayson Perry, Rachel Whiteread and Damien Hirst, as well as Christopher Marlowe, Boris Johnson, Lady Diana, Jean Paul Getty, Hilary Clinton, Allen Ginsberg, Samuel Beckett, Martin McGuinness, Ciaran Carson and Anoushka Shankar. Philip Terry was joined in conversation with Marina Warner at the Bookshop. More from the Bookshop: Discover our author of the month, book of the week and more: ⁠https://lrb.me/bkshppod⁠ From the LRB: Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/pod⁠⁠⁠ Close Readings podcast: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/crlrbpod⁠⁠ LRB Audiobooks: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobookslrbpod⁠⁠ Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/storelrbpod⁠⁠ Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

It’s hard to believe that Fitzcarraldo Editions has only existed for ten years; during that short time, they have published a remarkable selection of books (gathering four Nobel Prizes between them), and their iconic blue and white covers have become a mainstay of the bookshop. To celebrate their first decade, Fitzcarraldo are publishing some of their best-loved titles in hardback, limited edition form. Brian Dillon and Kate Briggs will be at the shop to discuss their books in this series: Dillon’s Essayism (a gathering together of his loose trilogy on the intimate and abstract pleasures of reading and looking), and Briggs’ This Little Art, a fresh, fierce and timely meditation on literary translation. The conversation will be chaired by Helen Charman, whose political history of motherhood, Mother State, came out earlier this year from Penguin.

In You Can’t Please All (Verso), a sort of sequel to his seminal 1987 memoir Street-fighting Years, Tariq Ali continues the story of a life lived flamboyantly and magnificently on the Left. Pen portraits of friends and comrades such as Edward Said, Derek Jarman, Richard Ingrams, Benazir Bhutto, Mary-Kay Wilmers, E.P. Thompson, Perry Anderson and Robin Blackburn are combined with reflections on his work as a novelist, playwright and film-maker, and as an activist in the War on the War on Terror. Ali was in conversation about his life and work with Oliver Eagleton, associate editor of New Left Review and author of The Starmer Project.

From Jesus Christ to Krautrock via Julian of Norwich and T.S. Eliot, Simon Critchley’s On Mysticism (Profile) brilliantly displays the author’s playful, eclectic erudition in an evocation of the phenomenon he defines, after Evelyn Underhill, as ‘experience in its most intense form.’ Critchley was in conversation about mysticism East and West with the LRB’s James Butler. Find more events at the Bookshop: https://lrb.me/eventspod