Sabrina Orah Mark : Happily

Sabrina Orah Mark : Happily

Author: David Naimon, Milkweed Editions March 14, 2023 Duration: 2:10:14

Today’s guest is poet, storyteller, and now essayist Sabrina Orah Mark. Her latest book, Happily: A Personal History—with Fairy Tales, is an intriguing blend of two radically different forms, memoir and fairy tale. Much as fairy tales are feral, forever escaping a simple, reductive meaning, forever changing shape and being retold, forever out of fashion and always enduring, ancient and contemporary at the same time, Sabrina’s essays refuse to be only essays, somehow becoming fairy tales themselves. Our conversation about this essay collection is about fiction, fantasy, memoir, and poetry, about childhood, motherhood, and step-motherhood, and how they all magically coexist in the alchemy of Sabrina’s prose. Ultimately these tales, these surreal dreams, are not ways to look away from the world, but ways to be in it, to cope, confront, and engage with the unimaginably difficult, whether the raising of two Black Jewish boys in the United States today, unspeakable ancestral rupture, a global pandemic and climate apocalypse, or the anxieties and uncertainties of the everyday. Happily takes our hands to walk into the forest together.

For the bonus audio archive Sabrina contributes a reading of the Bruno Schulz story “Birds.” This joins a vast archive of material from Jai Chakrabarti reading poems by Bruno Schulz’s biographer, the Polish poet Jerzy Ficowski, to Jen Bervin reading the letters of Paul Celan, to Rosmarie Waldrop reading Edmond Jabès or Alice Oswald reading from the Book of Job. This is one of many possible benefits to joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter. You can find out about them all at the show’s Patreon page.

Finally here is the Bookshop corresponding to today’s conversation.


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
Lucy Ives : Life Is Everywhere [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:26:43
Novelist, short story writer, poet, and critic Lucy Ives’ new novel Life Is Everywhere has been heralded by some of our most formally inventive and playful writers today, from Jesse Ball to Alejandro Zambra to Percival E…
Sawako Nakayasu : Pink Waves [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:47:18
Of Sawako Nakayasu’s many literary endeavors—poetry, translation, performance art—it is hard to know where one begins and another ends. They each seem to not only be talking to each other but Sawako’s work also blurs the…
Ama Codjoe : Bluest Nude [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:12:55
“On Seeing and Being Seen” is the title of an Ama Codjoe poem but it could just as easily be a description of her debut collection Bluest Nude as a whole. Bluest Nude is a book that engages with ways of seeing, and its p…
Crafting with Ursula : Gabrielle Bellot on The Power of Names & Naming [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:35:25
Writer and editor Gabrielle Bellot joins Crafting with Ursula to discuss the power of names and naming across Le Guin’s work. From the very beginning, with Ged in Earthsea, a boy-wizard who is named in three very differe…
Hélène Cixous : Well-Kept Ruins [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:29:37
Today’s guest is poet, novelist, playwright, feminist theorist, literary critic, and philosopher Hélène Cixous. Perhaps best known for her iconic 1976 essay “The Laugh of the Medusa,” Cixous thought for much of her writi…
Billy-Ray Belcourt : A Minor Chorus [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:42:54
Poet Billy-Ray Belcourt has already transformed the memoir form, remaking it—strange, fresh, and new, in A History of My Brief Body. He does something similarly unexpected with his first novel, A Minor Chorus. Deeply awa…
Dionne Brand : Nomenclature — New and Collected Poems [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:41:08
Today’s guest Dionne Brand, to borrow the words of John Keene, “is without question one of the major living poets in the English language.” Kamau Brathwaite called Brand “our first major exile female poet.” Adrienne Rich…

«1...678910