Michelle de Kretser : Theory & Practice

Michelle de Kretser : Theory & Practice

Author: David Naimon, Milkweed Editions March 10, 2025 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 & Practice is a book that is wildly erudite and erotic at the same time, both an engrossing, immersive read and one that is constantly experimenting with and breaking form. A book that dwells in the contradictions between what we believe and what we do. And one that uses, as a lens, the liberatory power of Virginia Woolf’s published words alongside her often snobbish, racist, and antisemitic private ones, not only to explore this contradiction but also questions of gender, race, class and colonialism more broadly. You’d be just as correct, however, to call it a book about love, sex, shame and jealousy, set on a university campus in the 1980s at the height of deconstruction’s hold on the minds of its thinkers there.

If you enjoyed today’s conversation consider joining the Between the Covers community, receiving supplemental resources with each and every episode, and being able to choose from a wide variety of other gifts and rewards as well. You can check it all out at the show’s Patreon page.

Finally, here is the BookShop for today’s conversation with books from everyone from Ursula K. Le Guin to Shirley Hazzard to Virginia Woolf.


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
Randa Abdel-Fattah : Discipline [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:56:31
Randa Abdel-Fattah’s new novel Discipline is set in Sydney, Australia in 2021 during Ramadan. Discipline follows two Palestinians there, one in media and one in academia, where each has to confront questions of silence a…
Jazmina Barrera : The Queen of Swords [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:58:43
Jorge Luis Borges called her the “Tolstoy of Mexico” and César Aira the “greatest novelist of the 20th century,” so why is it likely that you haven’t read or even heard of Elena Garro before now? And given that Garro was…
Tin House Live : Caren Beilin : Sea Poison [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:16:08
Caren Beilin’s first appearance on the show, in 2022 to discuss her book Revenge of the Scapegoat, was so unforgettable, and spurred so much enthusiasm and electrifying conversation in its wake, that I couldn’t say “no”…
Tin House Live: Stephen Hayes [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 0:00
Painter Stephen Hayes latest exhibition, “Elegy,” consists of twelve abstract paintings that engage with the genocide in Gaza. One of the twelve paintings was created while listening to the Between the Covers conversatio…
Robin Coste Lewis : Archive of Desire [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:40:51
Archive of Desire: A Poem in Four Parts for C.P. Cavafy began as a collaborative multidisciplinary project between the poet Robin Coste Lewis, the composer Vijay Iyer, the cellist Jeffrey Zeigler and the visual artist Ju…
Diana Arterian : Agrippina the Younger & Smoke Drifts [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:12:56
As an artist, how does one dive into the wreck of an archive, a canon, a shared collective memory, a history—one filled with silenced voices, distorted accounts, erasures and elisions—on behalf of those wronged by it? Po…
Olga Ravn : The Wax Child [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:16:42
Set during the 17th century witch trials in Denmark, and relayed to us through the voice of a magically animated wax child of one of the accused, Olga Ravn’s new book, which creates something uncannily other from primary…
Rickey Laurentiis : Death of the First Idea [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:59:56
Ten years in the making, poet Rickey Laurentiis joins us to talk about her much-anticipated remarkable new collection Death of the First Idea. “In the past decade, as Laurentiis has transitioned, her ideas of the lyric a…
Laynie Browne : Apprentice to a Breathing Hand [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:49:46
What does it mean to write toward or under the aura of another poet one admires, to write in homage, as a celebration of another? What happens to language when it hovers between two writers, between how they each separat…