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By Brendan O’Meara
This originally aired on September 27, 2019 as Episode 170.
“Essays took on this energy for me in part because they’re unofficial and in part because they brought me in contact with the world that felt really generative.” — Leslie Jamison (@lsjamison on Twitter)
New “now in paperback,” this with Leslie Jamison. Turns out she has a new memoir out called Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story, and, yes, we’ll hustle to have her back on the show for it.
Always nice when you can have straight-up badasses like Leslie Jamison on the show. I’ve spoken with some great essayists on the podcast, like Elena Passarello, Elizabeth Rush, Natalie Singer, among others.
In this episode we riff on how she had to let language to the work for her and not let the language be this shiny veneer without substance, the bounded infinity of nonfiction, and much, much more.
Her new book is Make It Scream, Make It Burn (Little, Brown, 2019) and it’s a joy to read. Leslie is also the bestselling author of The Empathy Exams, The Recovering and the novel The Gin Closet.
