Johanna Hedva : Your Love Is Not Good

Johanna Hedva : Your Love Is Not Good

Author: David Naimon, Milkweed Editions June 10, 2023 Duration: 2:46:58

What if you gave your fictional main character all of your own biographical details and family history but had them, at every point, choose “wrong”? At every point do the thing you yourself would be against? Johanna Hedva does just that, and their novel Your Love Is Not Good is not just full of sex battles and high-stakes art openings, but also high-stakes moral quandaries. Set in the institutional art world of museums and galleries, Your Love Is Not Good looks at making art (and love) under capitalism, at a mixed-race Korean American painter striving for universality (and whiteness) and yet wanting to be authentic, to build community and solidarity. When forced to choose, where and with whom will she stand?

Johanna Hedva is also a musician and a performance artist. And their contribution to the bonus audio archive is one of the most unique ones ever, and one created specifically with us in mind. After we recorded this conversation they went on book tour and, while traveling from city to city, recorded themselves moaning, grunting, screaming, and breathing; recorded themselves reading text they wrote while touring. They then sent all these voice files to LA audio engineer Henry Glover along with the voices of the universe itself: sonifications of a black hole and the helix nebula, raw audio of the sun, a field recording of the aurora borealis. Hedva explained to Glover the vibe and scenario they imagined as he mixed and mastered a layering of voices, personal and “universal,” into this unique track: “The Saddest Thing of All Is When a Lone Astronaut Falls in Her Suit—Who Is There to Help Her Up?” To learn about how to subscribe to the bonus audio archive and the many other potential benefits of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter head over to the show’s Patreon page.

The Bookshop for today’s episode.

 

 


There's a particular kind of conversation that happens when a thoughtful reader sits down with a writer, one that moves beyond simple promotion into the real heart of the creative act. Between The Covers is built on that very premise. Hosted by David Naimon and presented with Milkweed Editions, this long-form interview podcast delves into the lives and minds of authors working across fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Each episode feels less like an interview and more like a privileged eavesdrop on a deep, meandering dialogue. You'll hear writers discuss not just their latest book, but the fragments of life, the stubborn questions, and the daily rituals that feed their work. Naimon’s approach is informed and curious, often leading guests into unexpected reflections on craft, influence, and the ideas that haunt them. The result is a consistently illuminating audio experience that feels like a private workshop in narrative, language, and thought. For anyone who loves the texture of words and the stories behind them, this podcast offers a sustained and intimate look at how literature is made. It’s a space where the finished book is just the starting point for a richer exploration.
Author: Language: en-us Episodes: 100

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry
Podcast Episodes
Martha Anne Toll : Duet for One [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:54:02
Today’s guest is writer and critic Martha Anne Toll. Through a discussion of her latest novel Duet for One we explore the perennial mystery of writing and art-making, namely how to render something that lives beyond repr…
Rob Macaisa Colgate : Hardly Creatures & My Love is Water [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:32:30
Today’s conversation with Rob Macaisa Colgate is about two books, his poetry collection Hardly Creatures and his verse drama My Love is Water. You could say these two books are approaching the same questions, but from op…
Robert Macfarlane : Is a River Alive? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:12:14
Don’t miss today’s conversation with Robert Macfarlane. A polyvocal deep dive into the mysteries of words and rivers, of speech acts as spells, whorls as worlds, of grammars of animacy, of what it means to river, and to…
adrienne maree brown : Ancestors [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:23:56
With the arrival of Ancestors, the third and final book in adrienne maree brown’s Grievers Trilogy, we take the iconic frames she has created in her nonfiction work—emergent strategy, pleasure activism, fractal responsib…
Madeleine Thien : The Book of Records [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:00:32
The Book of Records is many things: a book of historical fiction and speculative fiction, a meditation on time and on space-time, on storytelling and truth, on memory and the imagination, a book that impossibly conjures…
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson : Theory of Water [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:01:04
What would it mean for our writing, thinking, and living if we looked to land as pedagogy, or if we thought of theory as something embodied and kinetic? In Theory of Water Leanne Betasamosake Simpson takes us not only ou…
Keetje Kuipers : Lonely Women Make Good Lovers [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:25:57
From the craft of writing sex in poetry to the virtues of failing publicly, today’s conversation with poet Keetje Kuipers is not to be missed. We explore everything from storytelling within poems to the dialectic between…
Patrycja Humienik : We Contain Landscapes [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:21:31
What does it mean to risk rupture for rapture, on the page, and in one’s life? Or for water to be one’s method, mode or muse? Are inherited forms (of womanhood, of sexuality, of national identity) a gift or are their bor…
Torrey Peters : Stag Dance [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:18:27
Four novellas, in four different genres—science fiction, horror, teen romance, and a western—Stag Dance not only interrogates genre, but gender through genre. Written over a ten year period, Torrey Peters’ new book spans…
Michelle de Kretser : Theory & Practice [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:02:36
Today’s guest, one of Australia’s most celebrated and daring writers, Michelle de Kretser, discusses her latest uncategorizable book Theory & Practice (one she describes as 80% fiction, 15% essay and 5% memoir). Theory &…