563 Sylvia Plath (with Carl Rollyson)

The American writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin (1924-1987) spent the second half of his life as a fixture in American intellectual life. But what formed him? In this episode, Jacke talks to Nicholas Boggs, author of Baldwin: A Love Story, the first major biography of ...  Show more

A scrap of Coleridge's handwriting. The sugar that Wordsworth stirred into his teacup. A bracelet made of Mary Shelley's hair... In this episode, Jacke talks to award-winning scholar and literary sleuth Mathelinda Nabugodi (The Trembling Hand: Reflections of a Black Woman in the ...  Show more

This is the kind of conversation I dreamed about having when I began this podcast. Emily Wilson joins Close Readings to talk about Sappho's "Ode to Aphrodite," a poet and poem at the root of the lyric tradition in European poetry. You'll hear Emily read the poem in the Ancient Gr ...  Show more

What a searching, stimulating conversation this was. Elisa Gabbert joins the podcast to talk about a poem she and I have both long loved, Sylvia Plath's "Lady Lazarus."Elisa is a poet, critic, and essayist—and the author of several books. Her recent titles include Normal Distance ...  Show more

This week, in a listener-researched and written episode, we head to Omagh in Northern Ireland, as we take a look at the brutal 1998 murder of 17-year-old Sylvia Fleming. On the cusp of adulthood, and with a difficult childhood now behind her, Sylvia thought she had struck gold wh ...  Show more

Show notes:

Let’s just be real with it: we’re very nosy people. It’s why we’ve always been interested in other people’s stories and why we love books so much. And it’s why we’re both drawn to the historical fiction genre. We get to dive into the past ...