The Drum

BOSTON BOOK FESTIVAL: Great Brits and Books

Courtesy of the Boston Book Festival, the Great Brits and Books Panel, with Maria Tatar, Rachel Brownstein, Lisa Rodensky, and Leah Price, moderated by Drum editor Henriette Lazaridis Power. Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, James Barrie, and the Brontës were just some of the authors these scholars discussed during the BBF session on October 27, 2012. Listen to the audio of the panel to hear how books were used as instruments of power in the 19th century, how Jane Austen continues to engage readers today, and how Barrie's Peter Pan explores questions of our own mortality.This session was sponsored by the British Consulate.

MARTIN AMIS--Interview

Martin Amis joined Henriette Lazaridis Power for a conversation on September 7, 2012. Amis spoke about his novel Lionel Asbo: State of England, about why we don't like Dickens' Little Nell, why we still like Jane Austen, and other topics, including religion and writing. The Drum's Audio Editor Ethan Wolff Mann joined in the conversation while Amis took a lunch break at the Keltic Krust Bakery in West Newton, Massachusetts.

ELENI GAGE Interview

Eleni Gage met with Drum editor Henriette Lazaridis Power on February 29, 2012 for an interview at Newtonville Books in Newton, Massachusetts. Gage spoke about her new novel Other Waters, about living with two cultures and more than two languages, and about aspects of Greek history and of her own family's history. The conversation ranged as well into dicussion of the notion of the curse--a key element of her novel--and how the practical and scientific world and the more mystical world of curses and fate intersect and combine.

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BOSTON BOOK FESTIVAL The Fiction: Time is. . . panel

Courtesy of the Boston Book Festival, the Time Is. . .  panel with Jennifer Egan, Lawrence Douglas, and Peter Mountford, moderated by Henriette Lazaridis Power. The discussion took place in the Sanctuary of Old South Church on Saturday, October 15th, 2011. The panelists discussed issues like the structural choices they made in handling narrative time in their novels, the relationship between memory and identity in their work, the way their characters manipulate history and time, and how as novelists they represent time itself. Listen through to the end to hear the discussion include physics, the Big Bang, and narrative craft.

JAEL MCHENRY Interview

Jael McHenry met with Drum editor Henriette Lazaridis Power on May 25, 2011 to record an interview for The Drum. Taking her novel The Kitchen Daughter as a starting point, Jael answered questions about cooking culture and history, the meaning of recipes and the ways they bind us together, and the narrative challenges and opportunities of writing from the point of view of a character with Asperger's Syndrome. She also described her favorite Manhattan street food, and gave tips on that invaluable skill of supreme-ing an orange.

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PAUL HARDING Interview

In the first of what will be two interivews with The Drum, 2010 Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Harding spoke with editor Henriette Lazaridis Power about his experience as a rock drummer, his fascination with jazz, his views on the craft of writing, and the ways in which a writer, like a drummer, gets to keep and manipulate time.

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