Well-Versed with FSG Literary Hub

On this episode, Catherine Lacey talks with translator Michael Favala Goldman about his work on the recent work of Tove Ditlevsen, The Copenhagen Trilogy. In the conversation, the two discuss how Goldman knew the work was a masterpiece, the tragic irony throughout the work, and Ditlevsen's commentary on our society of excess.
Danish translator Michael Favala Goldman (b. 1966) is also a poet, educator and jazz clarinetist. Among his sixteen translated books are Dependency (a Penguin Classic) by Tove Ditlevsen, The Water Farm Trilogy by Cecil Bødker, and Something To Live Up To, Selected Poems of Benny Andersen. Goldman’s books of original poetry include Who has time for this? (2020) and Small Sovereign (2021). His work has appeared in numerous literary journals and has received rave reviews in the New York Times and The London Times. Goldman lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, USA, where he has been running poetry critique groups since 2018. He also serves as Chair of the Program Committee for Straw Dogs Writers Guild and as Member of the Board of Directors for the Northampton Center for the Arts.
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On this week's episode of Well-Versed, Farrar, Straus and Giroux/MCD associate editor Jackson Howard talks with Thomas Grattan about his new book, The Recent East, which follows a mother and two teens as they navigate a new life in East Germany.
Thomas Grattan's short fiction has appeared in several publications, including One Story, Slice, and The Colorado Review, has been shortlisted for a Pushcart Prize, and was listed as a notable stories in Best American Short Stories. The Recent East is his debut novel. He has an MFA in Fiction Writing from Brooklyn College and has taught middle school English for more than a decade. He lives in New York City.
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This month on Well-Versed, Julia Ringo, associate editor at FSG, talks with Jonas Hassen Khemiri about his new book, The Family Clause, contemporary fatherhood, and his life in Stockholm during lockdown.
Jonas Hassen Khemiri is the author of novels (Everything I Don't Remember, Montecore), plays (I Call My Brothers), and a collection of plays, essays, and short stories (Invasion!). Among his many honors are the August Prize, the highest literary award for Swedish literature; the Enquist Literary Prize; the Borås Tidning Award for Best Literary Debut Novel; and an Obie Award. His novels have been translated into more than thirty languages, and his plays have been performed by more than one hundred companies around the world. He lives in Stockholm, Sweden.
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This week on Well-Versed, Julia Ringo, associate editor at FSG, talks with Megan Rosenbloom about her new book, Dark Archives, the hunt for books bound in human skin, and her involvement with the death positivity movement.
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This month on Well-Versed, Jonathan Galassi, publisher of FSG, talks with writer Marilynne Robinson about her new novel, Jack, returning to Gilead, her research on the segregation of St. Louis, and the mysterious impulse of a new novel.
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This week on Well-Versed, Sean McDonald, publisher of MCD, talks with Héctor Tobar about his new book, The Last Great Road Bum, the great road novels in literature, his real-life allegiance to Joe Sanderson and his family, and publishing a novel at the current moment.
In The Last Great Road Bum, Héctor Tobar turns the peripatetic true story of a naive son of Urbana, Illinois, who died fighting with guerrillas in El Salvador into the great American novel for our times.
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