John Plotz

Dec 6, 2024 | publicbooks.org | John Plotz |Megan Cummins

Our partner podcast Novel Dialogue invites a novelist and a literary critic to talk about novels from every angle: how we read them, write them, publish them, and remember them. This season’s signature question is: If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be, and why? During a desert thunderstorm outside Tucson, Lydia Millet joined the Novel Dialogue conversation with hosts John Plotz and Emily Hyde, with Emily playing the role of critic.

Nov 8, 2024 | publicbooks.org | John Plotz |Megan Cummins

Our partner podcast Novel Dialogue invites a novelist and a literary critic to talk about novels from every angle: how we read them, write them, publish them, and remember them. This season’s signature question is: If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be, and why? What happens when a novelist wants “nonsense and joy” but his characters are destined for a Central European sanatorium?

Sep 12, 2024 | publicbooks.org | Lori Allen |Ajantha Subramanian |John Plotz

This is the last of three discussions in Violent Majorities: Indian and Israeli Ethno-nationalism, a Recall This Book series put together by the anthropologists Ajantha Subramanian and Lori Allen. First Ajantha and Lori spoke with Balmurli Natrajan about the slippery slope to a multiculturalism of caste in India. Then Natasha Roth-Rowland joined them to discuss what the most extreme Israeli ethno-nationalists share with the established political ruling parties.

May 9, 2024 | publicbooks.org | Elizabeth Ferry |John Plotz

Ryo Morimoto’s Nuclear Ghost: Atomic Livelihoods in Fukushima’s Gray Zone published with the University of California Press in 2023 shows in stunning detail how residents of the region live with and through the “nuclear ghost” that resides with them.

May 9, 2024 | podcasts.apple.com | Aarthi Vadde |John Plotz

Brandon Taylor practices moral worldbuilding in his fiction—that means an essential piece of these worlds is the “real possibility that someone could get punched in the face.” Brandon, author of the novels Real Life and The Late Americans, joins Stephanie Insley Hershinow for a wide-ranging, engrossing, and often hilarious conversation about the stakes of the novel today.