Reading Around the Margins

Naomi is joined by Berlin-based novelist, philosopher, and translator Lindsay Lerman for a discussion that winds through Lindsay's experience with Perfume by Patrick Süskind and explores the physical experiences of reading, and reading as a practice of writing; how a book can open up a field that sparks the need to do or make something in response, whether it's a course, a book, a painting, or a d...

Naomi is joined by writer and reader Oonagh Devitt Tremblay for a conversation that begins with Samuel Richardson's epistolary novel Clarissa and ends with Miriam Toews' recent epistolary memoir, A Truce that is Not Peace. Beginning with the fact of Tremblay's original copy of Clarissa having burned in a fire, we reflect on the impact of loss and lost objects, and how our relationship to loss chan...

Naomi is joined by writer Mark Haber for a conversation about the habit of mind cultivated through reading. We discuss the kind of writer who opens a door for other writers, tracing a thread through Haber’s early encounter with Kurt Vonengut to a later encounter and friendship with the Argentinian writer Rodrigo Fresán. We talk about voice-driven novels over plot-driven novels, books in conversati...

Naomi is joined by writer and psychoanalyst Akshi Singh. They speak about the kind of associations that prompt more writing in the margins versus the moments of significance that are less immediately available in words; teaching oneself to write dialogue in a novel; how a listener can fade into listening; the problems we're embroiled in while reading; how the carrying-on of one version of a life c...

For the first episode of Season 2, Naomi is joined by writer and art critic Emily LaBarge. We revisit marginalia from her copies of Amy Hempel's The Dog of the Marriage, Joan Didion's The White Album, Sylvia Plath's The Unabridged Journals, and Alice Munro's Who Do You Think You Are? exploring a lineage of library-keeping; book titles lost in translation across continents; forms of intertextual de...

For our final episode of our first season, Naomi is joined by fellow Annie Ernaux enthusiast Jeannie Vanasco for an in-depth discussion on immersion in the reading process, the un-self-consciousness of writing memoir, the question of whether there is a divide between the craft and the personal, and how we make choices about what to leave out when and why. For the Annie Ernaux fans out there, Naomi...

Naomi is joined by bookseller and podcaster Lori Feathers to discuss her reading of The Hunger of Women by Marosia Castaldi, translated by Jamie Richards (And Other Stories, 2023). They explore the impact of this rhythmic, hypnotic prose, the embedded references to books from other cultures, and the lineage of ‘abundant’ books that drives so much of Lori’s reading. Reading List: Miss Mackintosh, M...

Naomi is joined by Lauren Elkin for a conversation on the permission-giving qualities of Georges Perec's Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, how reading Perec made her into a writer, and what it's like to re-see the world in the way he encourages us to do. Weaving through Elkin's own experiments in seeing with her book No. 91/92: diary of a year on the bus and the ways we live in and through our h...

Miranda Mellis joins Naomi for a discussion that indexes Michael Eigen’s book The Psychoanalytic Mystic . They discuss the resonance between annotation and free association; the experience of narrating oneself in analysis, losing the thread, doubling back, and having one’s speech be received by the other; the index as a branching form, a poem of the subjective reader; writing as social practice th...

Naomi is out on tour , so she will be back in two weeks with a new, full episode in conversation with Miranda Mellis, author of Crocosmia from Nightboat Books. And, as it happens, Miranda is on tour, too. Click here for a full list of her upcoming stops. Naomi's next stops are Clio's Books in Oakland, CA on Friday, October 17th with the poet and psychoanalyst Alice Jones and Third Place Books - Ra...

Briana Parker, co-owner of Brooklyn’s Lofty Pigeon Books, joins Naomi for a discussion that begins in her thoroughly annotated copy of Ulysses from a high school English class (shouts out to Richard Roundy, Briana’s English teacher and now regular at Lofty Pigeon!) and meanders through the many worlds Briana has occupied and built in New York City — from growing up in Sheepshead Bay, to the Union...

To celebrate the release of Naomi's Marginalia: an autobiography , we have a bit of a role reversal in this episode. Michael Wheaton, publisher of Autofocus Books, joins us today and takes over the host chair as he chats with Naomi about Marginalia , the kind of book it turned out to be, “project” books, the idea of a book as container, and how the process of creating it altered her practice of ma...

Bookseller Liz Freeman joins Naomi for a conversation about Liz’s marginalia in books by David Wojnarowicz, William Gaddis, and Kathryn Scanlan; the soundtrack playing alongside this marginalia, from Joni Mitchell and the Melvins to Frank Sinatra’s “bipolar big band hits”; her approach to making thoughtful recommendations for readers visiting the store; and more. Liz Freeman is a writer, artist an...

Writer and professor Hilary Leichter joins Naomi for a discussion about books that conjure many different realities; how the reader is made culpable to the events of a text by what they hold and create in their mind, in the gap between what’s stated and what’s implied; how teaching a book you have complex feelings about can enrich the teaching experience; inheriting large libraries; and what happe...

Writer, teacher, and psychoanalytic candidate Claire Donato joins Naomi for a discussion on the convergences between psychoanalytic process and writing, reading, editing, and teaching. They discuss the capacious rigors of a reading practice, the remixing and revising of our writing and the stories we tell about our lives, and the shock of a book project emerging from one's analysis. Claire Donato...

Writer and professor Sara Levine joins Naomi for a conversation on Toni Morrison's Sula , in which they discuss tracking prepositions, the use of vowel sounds in influencing readerly movement, lobbies, and the traces of different readings in oft-re-read books. To pre-order Naomi's new title, Marginalia: an autobiography , from Autofocus Books, please click here . Sara Levine is the author of the n...

Writer and publisher Deborah Shapiro joins Naomi in a conversation on  The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh . From that starting point, they discuss the desire to create, underlining versus annotating, and the importance of lamps, physical and metaphorical. To preorder Naomi's new title, Marginalia: an autobiography from Autofocus Books, please click here . Deborah Shapiro is the author of the novels T...

Episode 3: “Rebecca van Laer on Roland Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse and theorizing one’s own writings on love” Naomi is joined by the writer Rebecca van Laer. They discuss Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse , writing as self-annotation, how to Pale Fire oneself, and more. To preorder Naomi’s new title, Marginalia: an autobiography from Autofocus Books, please click here . Rebecca van Laer is a writer ba...

In this second episode of Reading Around the Margins , Naomi is joined by Claire Foster, a reader, writer, and literary translator from French. In what is truly a wide-ranging conversation, they discuss frank: sonnets by Diane Seuss, Roland Barthes on Roland Barthes , projects inspired by the act of underlining, and more. To preorder Naomi’s new title, Marginalia: an autobiography from Autofocus B...

Episode 1: “Marina Blitshteyn on Theory, A Sunday” In this first episode of Reading Around the Margins , Naomi is joined by the writer Marina Blitshteyn. They discuss the, perhaps unexpected to Marina, marginalia Marina added to her copy of Theory, A Sunday from Belladonna Press. Their conversation explores books as bodies, how trauma lives in the body, how our selves resurface and reemerge throug...