Leslie Jamison recently published her new book, a collection of essays called Make It Scream, Make It Burn, in September 2019. She’s also written a novel, The Gin Closet, a collection of essays, The Empathy Exams, and a critical memoir, The Recovering. Her work has appeared in places including The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, Oxford American, A Public Space, Virginia Quarterly Review, and The Believer. She directs the graduate nonfiction program at Columbia University.
James Wood has been a staff writer and book critic at The New Yorker since 2007. In 2009, he won the National Magazine Award for reviews and criticism. He was the chief literary critic at the Guardian, in London, from 1992 to 1995, and a senior editor at The New Republic from 1995 to 2007. His critical essays are collected in “The Broken Estate: Essays on Literature and Belief”; “The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel,” which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and “The Fun Stuff: And Other Essays.” He is also the author of the novel “The Book Against God” and a study of technique in the novel, “How Fiction Works.” His latest novel, “Upstate,” was published in June, 2018. He is a professor of the practice of literary criticism at Harvard University.
Leslie Jamison in conversation with James Wood