LARB Radio Hour

Los Angeles Review of Books
  • 4.9 (135)
  • BOOKS
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

The Los Angeles Review of Books Radio Hour is a weekly show featuring interviews, readings and discussions about all things literary. Hosted by LARB Editors-at-Large Kate Wolf, Medaya Ocher, and Eric Newman.

  1. 5H AGO

    Sally Mann's "Art Work: On the Creative Life"

    This week, we are revisiting our episode with photographer and writer Sally Mann about her book, Art Work: On the Creative Life. Medaya Ocher and Kate Wolf speak with Mann, whose book describes her path to becoming an artist and provides prospective artists with insights on how to weather everything from rejection and poverty, to failure, fallow periods, and the millions of things that can come between you and your work. The book includes selections from Mann's rich archive of photographic work prints, explaining some of the ideas that have gone into her pictures, as well early diary entries that portray a fierce determination alongside equally fierce self-doubt. She also includes excerpts from her long correspondence with a fellow photographer named Ted Orland. Mann's advice is to write letters, keep your receipts, make lots of lists, and remember that being an artist isn't necessarily such a big deal, it's a job like any other: you have to work at it.

    48 min

  2. 6D AGO

    Special Show: Jenny Slate and Sarah Manguso

    Today's episode features a live recording from a LARB Luminary Dinner honoring writer, performer and actor Jenny Slate. Author Sarah Manguso sits down with Slate for an intimate conversation exploring the complexities of balancing artistic practice with the demands of parenthood and the ways personal transformation shapes creative expression.

    37 min

  3. 12/19/2025

    Tales from Two Critics: A.S. Hamrah and Melissa Anderson on the Year in Film

    Kate Wolf is joined by two of today's finest film critics to discuss the current state of Hollywood—including the sale of Warner Brothers Discovery—the art of writing about movies, and some of the year's best films. Up first is critic A.S. Hamrah, author of two new books: Last Week In End Times Cinema, which compiles the relentless follies of the film industry from March of 2024 to 2025 in an annals of ever-winnowing corporate conglomeration and AI speculation, and Algorithm of the Night: Film Writing 2019-2025. Next, Melissa Anderson discusses her latest book, The Hunger: Film Writing 2012-2024. A self-proclaimed "acteurist" whose attention often centers on a film's star rather than its plot, Anderson's criticism engages with movies on an affective level, charting her own pleasure, desire, and occasional disgust. Here she talks about grounding her writing in queer and feminist politics and how her ardent cinephilia is born of a sense of open-minded curiosity, hopefulness, and the willingness to be transported.

    1h 16m

  4. 12/12/2025

    Best of 2025

    It's that time of the year again! Hosts Kate Wolf, Medaya Ocher, and Eric Newman look back on some of the bright lights from a pretty dark year with a rundown of their favorite books, movies, TV shows, music, and scandals from 2025. For a full list of this year's picks, visit lareviewofbooks.org/podcasts/larb-radio-hour/

    55 min

  5. 12/05/2025

    Julia Loktev "My Undesirable Friends"

    Medaya Ocher and Eric Newman speak with director Julia Loktev about her new documentary My Undesirable Friends. Filmed in 2021, just before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the five-hour epic follows independent journalists at TV Rain as they navigate escalating government repression and the "foreign agent" laws designed to silence dissent. The film is a moving, unsettling portrait of resilience and a stark reminder of the global stakes of Russia's suppression of independent media. Medaya and Eric talk to Julia about her experience filming the documentary in a moment of intense political upheaval, as well as what the disturbing parallels between the campaign against the press in Russia and the United States.

    56 min

  6. 11/29/2025

    Robin Coste Lewis's "Archive of Desire"

    Kate Wolf and Eric Newman speak with Robin Coste Lewis about her new poetry collection, Archive of Desire. The four part collection emerged out of a collaboration with other artists commissioned by the Onassis Foundation to celebrate the 160th birthday of poet Constantin Cavafy, exploring Lewis's encounters with Cavafy's life, work, and sexual history. Lewis discusses her experience poring over the materials from Cavafy's archives in Athens, how his poetry still speaks to us so profoundly more than a century later, and their queer kinship.

    45 min

  7. 11/21/2025

    Brandon Taylor's "Minor Black Figures"

    Eric Newman speaks to Brandon Taylor about his latest novel, Minor Black Figures. It centers on Wyeth, a Black artist in his thirties wrestling with creative stagnation and the pressures of sudden fame after some of his paintings unexpectedly go viral. As he resists the temptation to produce the sort of identity-based art the market seems to want, Wyeth engages in recovering the life and career of a forgotten Black artist from the 1970s. He also finds himself entangled in a romance with a former seminarian whose views on art and faith challenge and inspire him amid the humid swirl of summer in New York. Taylor discusses the novel's origins, the white gaze and the struggles faced by Black artists, and how to write a good sex scene.

    1h 13m

  8. 11/14/2025

    Sarah Schulman's "The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity"

    This week we are listening back to an episode from earlier this year. Eric Newman and Kate Wolf speak with Sarah Schulman about her latest book, The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity. With a focus on practical politics, Schulman explores both how we imagine solidarity and what the work of solidarity requires. Rather than a horizontal movement, the book focuses on the ways achieving today's most pressing political goals—from Palestine's self-determination to immigration reform and protecting LBGTQ rights—requires working across various levels of individual privilege and power. With both historical and present day examples, Schulman presents a clear-eyed, long-term vision of a life in activism, laying out stumbling blocks and failures alongside meaningful progress, and the steps it takes to get there.

    51 min
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4.9
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About

The Los Angeles Review of Books Radio Hour is a weekly show featuring interviews, readings and discussions about all things literary. Hosted by LARB Editors-at-Large Kate Wolf, Medaya Ocher, and Eric Newman.

Information

  • Creator
    Los Angeles Review of Books
  • Years Active
    2015 - 2026
  • Episodes
    99
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Show Website
    LARB Radio Hour

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