LA Review of Books

The Los Angeles Review of Books is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting and disseminating rigorous, incisive, and engaging writing on every aspect of literature, culture, and the arts. The Los Angeles Review of Books magazine was created in part as a response to the disappearance of the traditional newspaper book review supplement, and, with it, the art of lively, intelligent long-form writing on recent publications in every genre, ranging from fiction to politics. The Los Angeles Review of Books seeks to revive and reinvent the book review for the internet age, and remains committed to covering and representing today’s diverse literary and cultural landscape.

Episodes

Kelly Reichardt's "Mastermind"

October 24, 2025 • 41 mins

Kate Wolf and Medaya Ocher speak with the filmmaker Kelly Reichardt about her new movie, "The Mastermind," out in theaters now. Josh O’Connor stars as an unemployed carpenter named JB, who hatches a plan to rob the museum in his small Massachusetts town of its collection of Arthur Dove paintings. JB soon he finds himself on the run, leaving his young family behind for a Greyhound tour of 1970s America, a country torn apart by the w...

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Grace Byron's "Herculine"

October 17, 2025 • 55 mins

Medaya Ocher and Eric Newman speak with writer Grace Byron about her debut novel, "Herculine." Set between the freelance rat race of New York and an equally cutthroat commune for trans women in rural Indiana, "Herculine" follows a narrator trying to put her life together. Featuring demons, conversion therapy, and blood rites, the novel is part horror part coming-of-age tale. Byron discusses how the book emerged from a memoir pro...

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Chris Kraus's "The Four Spent the Day Together"

October 10, 2025 • 60 mins

Chris Kraus joins Kate Wolf to talk about her new novel, "The Four Spent the Day Together." Organized into three linked sections, the book begins with a portrait of Kraus’s avatar, Catt Greene, and her family, as they struggle to overcome the isolation of the suburbs after moving into their first home in Milford, Connecticut, in the late 1950s. The book’s second part takes place many decades later: Catt is now a well-known novelist...

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J. Hoberman's "Everything is Now: Primal Happenings, Radical Music, Underground Movies, and the 1960s New York Avant-Garde"

October 3, 2025 • 67 mins

Kate Wolf speaks to J. Hoberman about his latest book, "Everything is Now: Primal Happenings, Radical Music, Underground Movies, and the 1960s New York Avant-Garde." It recaptures the frenetic, creative simultaneity of New York in the 60s, rendering the era's cultural explosion in real time. The events of a single decade, let alone a single year, or month, or even day, can be staggering. Hoberman compiles the work of various musici...

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Alejandro Varela's "Middle Spoon"

September 26, 2025 • 54 mins

Eric Newman speaks to Alejandro Varela about his latest novel, "Middle Spoon." Told in epistolary form through the narrator's unsent emails, the novel opens in the immediate aftermath of a devastating breakup. The breakup, like the relationship, was complicated. It was the narrator's first experience with polyamory, and his now ex-boyfriend ended things because the narrator refused to leave his husband and two children. As it grapp...

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Sally Mann's "Art Work: On the Creative Life"

September 19, 2025 • 46 mins

Medaya Ocher and Kate Wolf speak to the photographer and writer Sally Mann about her new book, "Art Work: On the Creative Life." In describing her path to becoming an artist, Mann provides prospective artists with insights on how to weather everything from rejection and poverty, to failure, fallow periods, and the millions of things that can come between you and your work. The book includes selections from Mann’s rich archive of ph...

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Where Have All the Cowboys Gone: Are Literary Men in Crisis?

September 12, 2025 • 65 mins

In this special episode, hosts Medaya Ocher, Kate Wolf, and Eric Newman discuss the "crisis" du jour in American publishing: the erosion of male literary stars and their readers across the landscape of contemporary fiction. Is this even happening—and if so, why? Tackling cultural anxieties about the waning centrality of the straight, white male author alongside spurious statistics and questions about the material realities of publi...

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Fara Dabhoiwala's "What is Free Speech? The History of a Dangerous Idea"

September 5, 2025 • 66 mins

Kate Wolf speaks with historian Fara Dabhoiwala about his new book, "What is Free Speech? The History of a Dangerous Idea." A foundational aspect of the U.S. Constitution, free speech is a relatively recent invention and one rooted less in democratic ideals than first may be clear. Tracking its evolution from the pre-modern age through the Enlightenment to our present day, Dabhoiwala explores how free speech and freedom of the pres...

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Mosab Abu Toha's "Forest of Noise"

August 29, 2025 • 52 mins

This week we're listening back to Eric Newman and Medaya Ocher's interview with the Palestinian poet, short-story writer, and essayist Mosab Abu Toha. Abu Toha is the author of the award-winning collection of poetry, "Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear," as well as the founder of the Edward Said Library in Gaza, which he hopes to one day rebuild. In 2025, Toha was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his series of essays about Gaza in th...

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Nicholas Boggs's "James Baldwin: A Love Story"

August 22, 2025 • 52 mins

Eric Newman speaks with Nicholas Boggs about his monumental new biography, "James Baldwin: A Love Story." Drawing on fresh archival research and interviews, Boggs offers an intimate portrait of the literary legend anchored by the romances that shaped his life, writing, and political vision. Spanning Baldwin’s formative mentorship under artist Beauford Delaney, his romance with Lucien Happersberger, and lesser-known relationships wi...

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Nathan Kernan's "Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler"

August 15, 2025 • 41 mins

Kate Wolf speaks with Nathan Kernan about his new biography, "A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler." It’s an intimate look at the great poet who was born in 1923 and would become one of the original members of the so-called New York School along with John Ashbery, Frank O’Hara, Kenneth Koch and Barbra Guest. With the restraint, precision and wry humor of one of Schuyler’s own poems, Kernan’s biography delves into Schuyl...

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Talking 'Heightened Scrutiny' with Sam Feder and Amy Scholder

August 8, 2025 • 38 mins

Eric Newman speaks with director Sam Feder and producer Amy Scholder about their new documentary "Heightened Scrutiny." The film follows ACLU attorney Chase Strangio’s journey to the Supreme Court in United States v. Skrmetti, which sought to overturn Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth. Alongside Strangio's work on the case, interviews with journalists, activists, and others reveal how media coverage of trans ...

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Michael Clune's "Pan"

August 1, 2025 • 54 mins

Writer and scholar Michael Clune joins Kate Wolf and Medaya Ocher to discuss his debut novel, "Pan." It captures the frenetic mind of a 15-year old boy named Nicholas as he undergoes his first panic attacks. Trapped in suburban Illinois in a time before the internet, Nicholas has little basis to understand what is happening to him. His search to understand his panic leads him to the condition’s namesake, the Greek god Pan, and a se...

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LARB Book Club: Sebastian Castillo

July 25, 2025 • 51 mins

Eric Newman and Medaya Ocher are joined by writer and professor Sebastian Castillo whose new novel "Fresh, Green Life" is the LARB Book Club pick for the summer. "Fresh, Green Life" follows a narrator, also named Sebastian Castillo, who has resolved to spend a year alone, exercising, watching self-improvement videos and thinking about how he has arrived at this particular point in his life: a lapsed adjunct philosophy professor, ob...

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Catherine Lacy's "The Möbius Book"

July 18, 2025 • 50 mins

Medaya Ocher and Kate Wolf speak with writer Catherine Lacey, author of the novels "Biography of X," "Pew," "The Answers," and a short story collection, "Certain American States." Her most recent work is "The Möbius Book," which is split in two — one half is fiction and the other memoir. The novel tells the story of two friends, catching up on a grim Christmas Eve. The memoir is about Catherine herself, set adrift after a brutal br...

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LARB x The Stacks Podcast: Books on the Internet

July 11, 2025 • 53 mins

Medaya Ocher and Eric Newman speak with Traci Thomas, host of the "The Stacks” podcast. They discuss the impact of social media on publishing, the content creator life, and the way readers discover books today. At the end of the episode, Medaya, Eric, and Traci offer readers a rundown of recommendations for the books getting us through 2025.

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Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s “Abolition Geography: Essays Toward Liberation”

July 4, 2025 • 59 mins

For Independence Day, we dive into the archives to bring you an episode that still feels timely. Ruth Wilson Gilmore joins Kate Wolf and Eric Newman to talk about her collection, "Abolition Geography: Essays Toward Liberation," which covers three decades of her thinking about abolition, activism, scholarship, the carceral system, the political economy of racism, and much more. For Gilmore, these are not siloed issues; rather, they ...

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Susan Choi's "Flashlight"

June 27, 2025 • 57 mins

Susan Choi joins Kate Wolf and Medaya Ocher to speak about her new novel, "Flashlight." An epic story that spans multiple generations of a single family, the book is an astute exploration of identity, migration, memory, kinship and the irrepressibility of the past. It begins in the wake of the mysterious disappearance of a young academic named Serk. An ethnic Korean, who was raised in Japan and decided to continue his studies there...

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PRIDE SHOW: Featuring Milo Todd and Vince Aletti

June 20, 2025 • 54 mins

In this double episode celebrating pride month, Kate Wolf speaks with the critic Vince Aletti about his new book, "Physique," an assortment of hundreds of physique photos from Aletti’s own personal collection. The images in the book represent a time when homosexual life in the US was illegal, existed mostly underground, and was by necessity furtive and coded. Yet throughout the country there were photo studios producing erotic and ...

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Alison Bechdel's "Spent"

June 13, 2025 • 50 mins

Eric Newman and Medaya Ocher speak with Alison Bechdel about her new graphic novel, "Spent." Bechdel is the author of "Essential Dykes to Watch Out For," "Fun Home," and "Are You My Mother?" "Spent" fictionalizes Bechdel’s life with her wife Holly on their pygmy goat sanctuary in Vermont. The comic chronicles political and local dramas, generational shifts, experiments with polyamory, and navigating the relationship between succes...

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LA Review of Books

Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Kelly Reichardt's "Mastermind"

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Grace Byron's "Herculine"

Chris Kraus's "The Four Spent the Day Together"

J. Hoberman's "Everything is Now: Primal Happenings, Radical Music, Underground Movies, and the 1960s New York Avant-Garde"

Alejandro Varela's "Middle Spoon"

Sally Mann's "Art Work: On the Creative Life"

Where Have All the Cowboys Gone: Are Literary Men in Crisis?

Fara Dabhoiwala's "What is Free Speech? The History of a Dangerous Idea"

Mosab Abu Toha's "Forest of Noise"

Nicholas Boggs's "James Baldwin: A Love Story"

Nathan Kernan's "Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler"

Talking 'Heightened Scrutiny' with Sam Feder and Amy Scholder

Michael Clune's "Pan"

LARB Book Club: Sebastian Castillo

Catherine Lacy's "The Möbius Book"

LARB x The Stacks Podcast: Books on the Internet

Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s “Abolition Geography: Essays Toward Liberation”

Susan Choi's "Flashlight"

PRIDE SHOW: Featuring Milo Todd and Vince Aletti

Alison Bechdel's "Spent"

Popular Podcasts

Kelly Reichardt's "Mastermind"

Grace Byron's "Herculine"