The Shakespeare and Company Interview

Shakespeare and Company
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Discover your next favourite book, or take a deep dive into the mind of an author you love, with The Shakespeare and Company Interview podcast. Now also the home of Editions: A Shakespeare and Company x Faber Production. Long-form interviews with internationally acclaimed authors, recorded from our bookshop in the heart of Paris. Hosted by S&Co Literary Director, Adam Biles. Discover all our upcoming events here. If you enjoy these conversations, you can order The Shakespeare and Company Book of Interviews here. Past guests include: Ottessa Moshfegh, Ian McEwan, Ali Smith, Hari Kunzru, Rachel Kushner, Katie Kitamura, Elif Shafak, Claire-Louiose Bennett, Leïla Simoni, Ian Dunt, David Runciman, Richard Powers, Eimear McBride, Armando Iannucci, Lauren Grodd, Lauren Elkin, Recebcca Solnit, John Berger, Hollie McNish, Michael Pedersen, Rob Doyle, Philippe Sands, George Saunders, Edouard Louis, Rachel Cusk, Preti Taneja, Alejandro Zambra, DBC Pierre, Meg Mason, Sandra Newman, David Simon, Joshua Cohen, Geoff Dyer, David Wallce-Wells, Emul Saint-John Mandel, Mohsin Hamid, Tess Gunty, A.M. Homes, John Higgs, Miriam Toews, Kamila Shamsie, Annie Ernaux, William Boyd, David Keenan, Jonathan Coe, Coco Mellors, Tom Mustill, Jeanette Winterson, Sarah Churchwell, Katy Hessel, Don Paterson, Elizabeth McCracken, Meena Kandasamy, Aleksandar Hemon, Catherine Lacey, Xiaolu Guo, M. John Harrison, Dolly Adderton, Hernan Diaz, Kathryn Scanlan, Ben Lerner, Isabel Waidner, Nick Laird, Adam Thirlwell, Mark O'Connell, Marie Darrieussecq, Jo Ann Beard, C Pam Zhang, Naomi Klein...and many, many more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  1. Alain Delon, Murder and Paris ’68, with Edward Chisholm

    7h ago

    Alain Delon, Murder and Paris ’68, with Edward Chisholm

    Edward Chisholm joins Adam Biles to discuss Murder in Paris '68, his deep-dive into the Markovic Affair, one of the most explosive scandals of postwar France. In October 1968, the dismembered body of Stevan Markovic, a Yugoslav immigrant and bodyguard to Alain Delon, was found on the outskirts of Paris. The case implicated France's most iconic film star, the Corsican “milieu”, and eventually the Élysée Palace itself. Chisholm traces how he stumbled onto the story in an obscure Parisian crime library, and what followed: years of obsessive research, classified archives in the suburbs of Versailles, and a surveillance-heavy reading desk watched over by attentive archivists. The conversation covers Delon's impenetrable persona, the Ripley parallels, France's Resistance-era ties between politicians and gangsters, and why a murder nobody solved still can't be fully declassified today. Buy Murder in Paris ’68: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/murder-in-paris-68-2 * Edward Chisholm was born in Dorset, England, and moved to Paris in 2012 where he worked all manner of low-paid jobs, from waiting and bar work to museum security and market hand, while trying to build a career as a writer. His memoir, A Waiter In Paris has sold over 100,000 copies and has been translated into several languages. Now, Chisholm makes a living as a creative director, author and screenwriter, based in Switzerland. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian and the Financial Times magazine. Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Listen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1 hr
  2. BLOOMCAST: 🎬Ulysses Movie Watch-along Special🎬

    Jun 15

    BLOOMCAST: 🎬Ulysses Movie Watch-along Special🎬

    Recorded for Bloomsday 2026. If you're in Paris and it's still June 16th, join us between 2pm and 5pm at Shakespeare and Company, 37 Rue de la Bûcherie, Paris. Find the film here:  https://vimeo.com/408613317 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7xAM_eXuuk Adam Biles and Lex Paulson reunite after an eighteen-month hiatus for a live commentary on the 1967 Joseph Strick film adaptation of Ulysses. They discuss Joyce's real-life role launching Dublin's first cinema, the film's scandalous festival history (Cannes brawl, Irish ban, New Zealand sex-segregated screenings), and Milo O'Shea's towering performance as Leopold Bloom. Along the way: Circe's Monty Python energy, the "Me Too" moment, and why Joyce (thanks to Nora) remains decades ahead of us all. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    2h 41m
  3. Fear Less: Tracy K. Smith on Poetry in Perilous Times

    Jun 10

    Fear Less: Tracy K. Smith on Poetry in Perilous Times

    Tracy K. Smith comes to Shakespeare and Company for a conversation with Adam Biles. They discuss her book Fear Less: Poetry in Perilous Times, a bold manifesto on poetry as a tool for deeper living, clearer thinking, and more compassionate citizenship. Drawing on her time as US Poet Laureate, Smith reflects on taking poetry to rural America, and how poems, unlike political debate, can open rather than entrench. She talks about the origins of Fear Less, and why she chose to write a love letter to the art form rather than a polemic. Smith also reads from her forthcoming collection The Forest, sharing new poems on war, complicity, the divine feminine, and an expansive, unsettling "us" that includes those we revile. Buy Fear Less: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/fear-less-4 Tracy K. Smith was born in Massachusetts and raised in northern California. She earned a BA from Harvard University and an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. From 1997 to 1999 she held a Stegner fellowship at Stanford University. Smith is the author of four books of poetry: The Body's Question (2003), which won the Cave Canem prize for the best first book by an African-American poet; Duende (2007), winner of the James Laughlin Award and the Essense Literary Award; Life on Mars (2011), winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; and Wade in the Water (2018). In 2014 she was awarded the Academy of American Poets fellowship. She has also written a memoir, Ordinary Light (2015), which was a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction. Her latest book is Fear Less: Poetry in Perilous Times (2025). In June 2017, Smith was named U.S. poet laureate. She teaches at Harvard University, where she is a professor of English and of African and African American Studies and the Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute.  Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Listen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    58 min
  4. Editions - Episode 1 - Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes with Taìno Mendez

    May 27

    Editions - Episode 1 - Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes with Taìno Mendez

    In the debut episode of Editions, a podcast from Shakespeare and Company and Faber, literary director Adam Biles and Faber Editions curator Ella Griffiths are joined by novelist and performer Taìno Mendez to discuss Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes by Henry Van Dyke, the twentieth title in the Faber Editions imprint. Published in 1965 and long out of print, the novel follows Oliver, a Black teenager spending a final summer before college in the eccentric Michigan household of his wealthy patron Etta Klein and his aunt Harriet. Witty, camp, and shot through with tragedy, it defies easy categorisation; a drawing-room satire, a coming-of-age story, and a quietly radical work of civil rights era fiction. The conversation covers the novel's Wildean wit, its oblique engagement with race and queerness, the role of photographer Carl Van Vechten in the Harlem Renaissance, and what it means to write against expectation. Buy Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes UK: https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571391783-ladies-of-the-rachmaninoff-eyes-faber-editions/ Rest of World: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/ladies-of-the-rachmaninoff-eyes-faber-editions Buy Rainbow Milk: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/rainbow-milk Sign up to Faber’s Heritage Subscription, featuring all Faber Editions titles: Subscribers get a book in the post each month for just £9 alongside a curated email with exclusive extra content about the book and its author. https://tr.ee/DsDYp5 Books & Authors Discussed The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze — William Saroyan (foreword by Stephen Fry) Mrs Caliban — Rachel Ingalls Palace of the Peacock — Wilson Harris Omeros — Derek Walcott The Flower Beneath the Foot — Ronald Firbank Sorrow in Sunlight (retitled Prancing N-) — Ronald Firbank Go Tell It on the Mountain — James Baldwin Giovanni's Room — James Baldwin Another Country — James Baldwin À rebours (Against Nature) — Joris-Karl Huysmans En rade (Stranded) — Joris-Karl Huysmans Checkout 19 — Claire-Louise Bennett Rainbow Milk — Taìno Mendez Ulysses — James Joyce  Works by Ivy Compton-Burnett, Brigid Brophy and Iris Murdoch also mentioned Illusions— Ruth Lehmann (upcoming Faber Editions title, discussed with Megan Nolan on our next podcast episode) Films/TV Shows Discussed Get Out — dir. Jordan Peele Lovers Rock — dir. Steve McQueen The Defiant Ones — starring Sidney Poitier Playtime — dir. Jacques Tati Severance Bios Taíno Mendez is a novelist based in the southern English town of Margate. Their first novel, Rainbow Milk, was an Observer Top Ten Best Debuts choice for 2020 and widely named as one of the best novels of the year, being shortlisted for a British Book Award and for the Jhalak Prize, Polari Prize and Gordon Burn Prize. Their non-fiction has been published in a variety of outlets including the WritersMosaic, the London Review of Books, Esquire, the Guardian and British Vogue. They are currently working on their second novel.  Ella Griffiths is Faber's Head of Classics & Heritage Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company Listen to Alex Freiman Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/3dbKbpFyqPbklwEdeLYYZR?si=Q5vy9KkRTrqf1BqU1v33cg Insta : @alex.guitarfreiman Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1h 3m
  5. Lea Ypi: Dignity, Fiction, and the Lives History Erases

    May 20

    Lea Ypi: Dignity, Fiction, and the Lives History Erases

    Philosopher and author Lea Ypi joins Adam Biles at Shakespeare and Company Paris to discuss her latest book Indignity: A Life Reimagined, an extraordinary work blending biography, history, and fiction. When a photo of her grandparents' 1941 honeymoon went viral in Albania, sparking online abuse, Ypi found herself compelled to investigate her grandmother Leman's life in full. The search took her into the Albanian Secret Service archives, back to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and deep into questions of memory, belonging, and what it means to preserve dignity in a world that conspires against it. Ypi discusses the dual narrative voices of the book, the "silence of the archives," the ethics of fictionalising real lives, and how writing as a novelist rather than a philosopher transformed her understanding of her subject. A conversation about history, imagination, and the moral necessity of hope. Buy Indignity: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/indignity-2 * Lea Ypi holds the Ralph Miliband Chair in Politics and Philosophy at the London School of Economics. Her first trade book, Free: Coming of Age at the End of History won the Ondaatje Prize and the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize and was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize and the Costa Biography Award. It is translated into over thirty languages. Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Listen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1 hr

  6. Apr 29

    Shelter and Storm: Arundhati Roy on Writing Her Mother

    An edited version of this conversation is now available as part of our collaboration with The Yale Review. Read it here: https://yalereview.org/article/shakespeare-and-company-interview-arundhati-roy Recorded live at Shakespeare and Company, Paris, Adam Biles sits down with Arundhati Roy to discuss her memoir Mother Mary Comes to Me. Roy reflects on writing a “novelist’s memoir,” where memory and imagination blur, and explores her complex relationship with her mother, Mary Roy. The conversation moves from Roy’s unconventional childhood in Kerala to her formative years in architecture, activism, and the aftermath of The God of Small Things. She discusses resisting literary celebrity, embracing political responsibility, and finding strength in chosen families and friendship networks. With candour and wit, Roy rejects reductive “therapy narratives,” instead offering a portrait of identity shaped by contradiction, resilience, and love. Buy Mother Mary Comes to Me: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/mother-mary-comes-to-me Arundhati Roy is the author of the novels The God of Small Things, which won the Booker Prize in 1997, and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2017. She is the author of various works of non-fiction including My Seditious Heart, Azadi and The Architecture of Modern Empire. Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company, Paris Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    49 min
  7. Ben Lerner on Transcription

    Apr 15

    Ben Lerner on Transcription

    Recorded live at Shakespeare and Company, Adam Biles speaks with Ben Lerner about his novel Transcription, a formally inventive meditation on technology, memory, and human connection. Beginning with the novel’s deceptively simple premise (a writer loses his recording device and reconstructs an interview from memory) the conversation expands into questions of mediation, voice, and authenticity. Lerner explores how devices reshape attention and relationships, suggesting that humans themselves function as “media,” transmitting voices across time and between generations. The discussion moves between the philosophical and the intimate: from the limits of digital communication to the emotional power of disembodied voices, from intergenerational care to the fragile transmission of experience. Ultimately, Transcription emerges as a reflection on how stories, memories, and voices persist—less as fixed recordings than as living, shifting acts of interpretation. Buy Transcription: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/transcription-4 Ben Lerner was born in Topeka, Kansas, in 1979. He has received fellowships from the Fulbright, Guggenheim, and MacArthur Foundations, and is the author of three other internationally acclaimed novels, Leaving the Atocha Station, 10:04 and The Topeka School. He has published the poetry collections The Lichtenberg Figures, Angle of Yaw (a finalist for the National Book Award), Mean Free Path and No Art as well as the essay The Hatred of Poetry. Lerner lives and teaches in Brooklyn. Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Listen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    53 min

  8. Apr 2

    Why Translate Homer Again? Daniel Mendelsohn on his new Odyssey

    Why Translate Homer Again? Daniel Mendelsohn on his new Odyssey This conversation explore’s Daniel Mendelsohn’s new translation of The Odyssey. Mendelsohn reflects on why this endlessly retranslated text still invites fresh interpretation, describing Odysseus as a “proto-author” whose storytelling shapes reality itself. The discussion delves into the craft of translation; balancing precision with poetic vitality, preserving the strangeness of Homeric Greek while remaining readable, and making deliberate choices about line length, diction, and even spelling.  Mendelsohn also highlights the influence of teaching and lifelong engagement with the text, emphasising close reading and the role of students in deepening understanding. Beyond technique, the conversation explores why The Odyssey endures. its themes of homecoming, identity, storytelling, and time continue to resonate across generations, making it both an ancient epic and a strikingly modern work. Buy The Odyssey: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/the-odyssey-51 Memoirist, critic, translator, and frequent contributor of essays to The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, where he is Editor-at-Large, Daniel Mendelsohn is the author of ten books, including the international bestsellers The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, winner of the National Jewish Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic, an NPR and Kirkus Best Book of the Year. His other honors include the Prix Médicis in France and the Premio Malaparte, Italy’s highest honor for foreign writers. In 2022 he was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the Republic of France. He is currently the Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities at Bard College. Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Listen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1 hr
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Discover your next favourite book, or take a deep dive into the mind of an author you love, with The Shakespeare and Company Interview podcast. Now also the home of Editions: A Shakespeare and Company x Faber Production. Long-form interviews with internationally acclaimed authors, recorded from our bookshop in the heart of Paris. Hosted by S&Co Literary Director, Adam Biles. Discover all our upcoming events here. If you enjoy these conversations, you can order The Shakespeare and Company Book of Interviews here. Past guests include: Ottessa Moshfegh, Ian McEwan, Ali Smith, Hari Kunzru, Rachel Kushner, Katie Kitamura, Elif Shafak, Claire-Louiose Bennett, Leïla Simoni, Ian Dunt, David Runciman, Richard Powers, Eimear McBride, Armando Iannucci, Lauren Grodd, Lauren Elkin, Recebcca Solnit, John Berger, Hollie McNish, Michael Pedersen, Rob Doyle, Philippe Sands, George Saunders, Edouard Louis, Rachel Cusk, Preti Taneja, Alejandro Zambra, DBC Pierre, Meg Mason, Sandra Newman, David Simon, Joshua Cohen, Geoff Dyer, David Wallce-Wells, Emul Saint-John Mandel, Mohsin Hamid, Tess Gunty, A.M. Homes, John Higgs, Miriam Toews, Kamila Shamsie, Annie Ernaux, William Boyd, David Keenan, Jonathan Coe, Coco Mellors, Tom Mustill, Jeanette Winterson, Sarah Churchwell, Katy Hessel, Don Paterson, Elizabeth McCracken, Meena Kandasamy, Aleksandar Hemon, Catherine Lacey, Xiaolu Guo, M. John Harrison, Dolly Adderton, Hernan Diaz, Kathryn Scanlan, Ben Lerner, Isabel Waidner, Nick Laird, Adam Thirlwell, Mark O'Connell, Marie Darrieussecq, Jo Ann Beard, C Pam Zhang, Naomi Klein...and many, many more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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