Back in 2019, when Richard Powers was a guest on Between the Covers for The Overstory, we also appeared together that very same night, in conversation again. This time, an onstage ticketed event at Revolution Hall before a live audience. I’ve wanted to share this second conversation ever since. Not only because I prepared two distinctly different interviews, but also because this was Powers’ first visit to Oregon for The Overstory, a book not merely set in the Pacific Northwest but one that deeply engages with the longstanding history of forest defense in the region on behalf of the last remaining stands of old growth forest. Because Powers hadn’t been to Portland for his hardback or paperback tours and had since won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for this very book, and because of the deep connection the Portland community has to the stories within this novel, the atmosphere was electric at this sold-out event, overflowing with anticipation, excitement, and joy. I’m so happy to be able to now share this with you and want to thank Richard Powers, W. W. Norton, and Powell’s Books, the host of the event, for making that possible. And whether or not you’ve heard the podcast conversation that aired with Powers in 2019, it is a great complement to today’s episode. Two conversations on the same day, one with just Richard and me, the other celebrating the book in community, quite different in tone and content and yet interwoven and speaking to each other.
For the bonus audio archive, Richard contributes a reading of an incredibly moving W. S. Merwin poem about trees, which joins Jorie Graham reading poems by others about rain, Kaveh Akbar reading about worms, Forrest Gander reading poems about lichen, and much more. The bonus audio is only one possible benefit of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter. You can find out about them all at the show’s Patreon page. Lastly, here is today’s very tree-centric Bookshop.
The post Tin House Live: Richard Powers on The Overstory appeared first on Tin House.
Lacy M. Johnson : The Reckonings
Christine Schutt : Pure Hollywood
Mitchell S. Jackson : Survival Math
Marlon James : Black Leopard, Red Wolf
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore : Sketchtasy
Alicia Jo Rabins : Fruit Geode
Genevieve Hudson : Pretend We Live Here
Jeffrey Yang : Hey Marfa
Chaya Bhuvaneswar : White Dancing Elephants
Layli Long Soldier : Whereas
Diane Williams: The Collected Stories of Diane Williams
R.O. Kwon : The Incendiaries
Tommy Pico : Junk
Dubravka Ugrešić : Fox & American Fictionary
Anna Moschovakis : Eleanor or The Rejection of the Progress of Love
Dao Strom : You Will Always Be Someone From Somewhere Else
Catherine Lacey : Certain American States
Forrest Gander : Be With
Chelsea Hodson : Tonight I’m Someone Else
Molly Crabapple : Brothers of the Gun – A Memoir of the Syrian War
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Lit Society: Books and Drama
Ex Libris
Write The Book: Conversations on Craft
A Tale of Two Cities
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Fresh Air
Myths and Legends