This is Books Up Close: The Podcast. It's a show for readers, writers and anyone interested in how texts get made. Chris Lloyd - poet, scholar, critic - interviews authors about an excerpt of their work and they closely read it together. This is the kind of literary chat you won't hear elsewhere

Guests include: Torrey Peters, Garth Greenwell, Lola Olufemi, Abigail Bergstrom, Kieran Yates, Carys Davies, Fatima Bhutto, Oluwaseun Olayiwola, Sara Ahmed, Saleem Haddad, Elaine Castillo, Richard Scott, and many more.

Books Up Close: The Podcast (TRAILER)

In today's episode I talk to Wayne Holloway-Smith's new book RABBITBOX. 

Wayne Holloway-Smith is the author of three books, Alarum and Love Minus Love, both published by Bloodaxe Books, and RABBITBOX, recently published by Scribner UK. He’s been shortlisted for the TS Eliot prize, won the National Poetry Competition and the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize. He teaches and lives in London.

Book recs:

 * Denise Riley, A Chorus of Ears: On 'The Voice of the Poem'
 * Mary Ruefle, Madness, Rack and Honey
 * Nuar Alsadir, Animal Joy

Follow the show on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/booksupclose] and subscribe to the Substack [https://booksupclose.substack.com/] for transcripts and more links. Please leave feedback here [https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=ur7mk6rEMUevXdc1sJfq2-MtVOsMawJDpBA3aJ944dVUMkI4OTA3N0dBMUE2SDVJWlpaOE8zNlo4NC4u].

Find Wayne at 

Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd [https://www.instagram.com/chrisllloyd9].

Ep. 41. Wayne Holloway-Smith, RABBITBOX (Repetition, Shadows)

In today's episode I talk to Remi Kalir about his book Re/Marks on Power: How Annotation Inscribes History, Literacy, and Justice [https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/re-marks-on-power-how-annotation-inscribes-history-literacy-and-justice-remi-kalir/de85990bb0070b49?ean=9780262551038&bkshp-astro=t]

Remi Kalir is a scholar and practitioner of annotation. He studies how annotation facilitates social, collaborative, and justice-directed learning. Remi is the author of two books published by MIT Press–Re/Marks on Power: How Annotation Inscribes History, Literacy, and Justice (2025) and Annotation (2021). He has also authored and contributed to over 50 peer-reviewed publications about literacy, learning, and technology. Remi currently serves as Associate Director of Faculty Development and Applied Research at Duke University. He began his career teaching literacy at Middle School 22 in the South Bronx and earned his PhD in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Notes:

 * James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room; bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress

Book recs:

 * Christina Sharpe, Ordinary Notes
 * Nicholas Thompson, The Running Ground

Follow the show on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/booksupclose] and subscribe to the Substack [https://booksupclose.substack.com/] for transcripts and more links. Please leave feedback here [https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=ur7mk6rEMUevXdc1sJfq2-MtVOsMawJDpBA3aJ944dVUMkI4OTA3N0dBMUE2SDVJWlpaOE8zNlo4NC4u].

Follow Remi on Bluesky at remikalir.bsky.social or find him at https://remikalir.com [https://remikalir.com/]

Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd [https://www.instagram.com/chrisllloyd9].

Ep. 40. Remi Kalir, Re/Marks on Power: How Annotation Inscribes History, Literacy, and Justice (Attention, Time-Travel)

In today's episode I talk to Kieran Yates about her nonfiction book All the Houses I've Ever Lived In [https://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/All-The-Houses-Ive-Ever-Lived-In/Kieran-Yates/9781398509856] (2023). 

Kieran Yates is a London based journalist and author who has written everywhere from The Guardian and The Independent to Dazed and Vice. Her debut book, all the houses ive ever lived in is a meditation on home and the politics of the housing crisis.

Book recs:

 * Eula Biss, Having and Being Had
 * Sam Johnson-Schlee, Living Rooms 
 * Kyle Chayka, The Longing for Less: What's Missing from Minimalism 
 * Toni Morrison, 'The Site of Memory'
 * Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing
 * Hanif Abdurraqib, A Little Devil in America: In Praise of Black Performance 

Follow the show on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/booksupclose] and subscribe to the Substack [https://booksupclose.substack.com/] for transcripts and more links. Please leave feedback here [https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=ur7mk6rEMUevXdc1sJfq2-MtVOsMawJDpBA3aJ944dVUMkI4OTA3N0dBMUE2SDVJWlpaOE8zNlo4NC4u].

Follow Kieran on Instagram @Kierany8s or find her at kieranyates.co.uk

Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd [https://www.instagram.com/chrisllloyd9].

Ep. 39. Kieran Yates, All the Houses I've Ever Lived In: Finding Home in a System that Fails Us (Objects, Material Conditions)

In today's episode I talk to Ashley Clark about his new book The World of Black Film: A Journey Through Cinematic Blackness in 100 Films [https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-world-of-black-film-a-journey-through-cinematic-blackness-in-100-films-with-a-foreword-by-john-akomfrah-ashley-clark/5e4d52d0512161d9?ean=9781529438253&bkshp-astro=t] (2026) as well as Julie Dash's canonical film Daughters of the Dust [https://player.bfi.org.uk/subscription/film/watch-daughters-of-the-dust-1991-online]. 

Ashley Clark is a writer, broadcaster, and film programmer. He has organized numerous film seasons at international venues including London's BFI Southbank, New York's Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Toronto's TIFF Lightbox. His writing has appeared in The Guardian, Reverse Shot, Sight & Sound, and Film Comment, and he is the author of two books: Facing Blackness: Media and Minstrelsy in Spike Lee's Bamboozled (2015); and The World of Black Film: A Journey Through Cinematic Blackness in 100 Films (2026). Ashley was born in London, lives in Jersey City, and works in New York City, where he has been the curatorial director of the Criterion Collection since 2020.Episode notes:

 * Julie Dash, Illusions (1982)

Book recs:

 * Keith Ridgway, A Shock
 * Amy Sall, The African Gaze: Photography, Cinema, and Power
 * Patrick Radden Keefe, London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth

Follow the show on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/booksupclose] and subscribe to the Substack [https://booksupclose.substack.com/] for transcripts and more links. Please leave feedback here [https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=ur7mk6rEMUevXdc1sJfq2-MtVOsMawJDpBA3aJ944dVUMkI4OTA3N0dBMUE2SDVJWlpaOE8zNlo4NC4u].

Follow Ashley on Instagram @_Ash_Clark

Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd [https://www.instagram.com/chrisllloyd9].

Ep. 38. Ashley Clark, The World of Black Film / Daughters of the Dust (Temporality, Crossfades)

In today's episode I talk to Garth Greenwell about his novel Small Rain [https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/small-rain-garth-greenwell/f3e947edf1658009?ean=9781509874729&bkshp-astro=t] (2024)

Garth Greenwell is the author of three books, most recently Small Rain, which won the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award. A Guggenheim Fellow, his writing on culture appears widely, including in The New Yorker, The Guardian, Harper’s, and elsewhere; he also writes the Substack newsletter To a Green Thought. He is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University.

Episode notes:

 * Close reading of Raven Leilani's Luster
 * George Oppen, 'Stranger's Child'
 * T.J. Clark, The Sight of Death: An Experiment in Art Writing

Book recs:

 * Ivana Sajko, Every Time We Say Goodbye

Follow the show on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/booksupclose] and subscribe to the Substack [https://booksupclose.substack.com/] for transcripts and more links. Please leave feedback here [https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=ur7mk6rEMUevXdc1sJfq2-MtVOsMawJDpBA3aJ944dVUMkI4OTA3N0dBMUE2SDVJWlpaOE8zNlo4NC4u].

Follow Garth @ggreenwell on Bluesky, Instagram, X and Threads; or @garthgreenwell on Substack and Facebook.

Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd [https://www.instagram.com/chrisllloyd9].

Ep. 37. Garth Greenwell, Small Rain (Long Sentences, Being Human) 

In today's episode I talk to Ann Morgan about her book Relearning to Read: Adventures in Not Knowing [https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/relearning-to-read-adventures-in-not-knowing-ann-morgan/484737f7084aebf8?ean=9781804471326&bkshp-astro=t](2025)

Ann Morgan is an author and speaker based in Folkestone. Her first book, Reading the World, came out of a 2012 project to read a book from every country in a year (ayearofreadingtheworld.com [https://ayearofreadingtheworld.com/]). This sees Ann continuing to blog about international literature, and corresponding and collaborating with writers, readers and literary organisations around the world to champion the sharing of stories underrepresented in mainstream anglophone publishing. Ann is also the author of two novels, international bestseller Beside Myself and Crossing Over. Her latest non-fiction book, Relearning to Read: Adventures in Not-Knowing (Renard Press, 2025), explores the unlearning that armchair travel requires, and celebrates how embracing incomprehension can help us read ourselves and our world better.

Book recs:

 * Tété-Michel Kpomassie, Michel the Giant: An African in Greenland (trans. James Kirkup and Ross Schwartz) 
 * Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume (trans. Barbara J. Haveland)

Follow the show on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/booksupclose] and subscribe to the Substack [https://booksupclose.substack.com/] for transcripts and more links. Please leave feedback here [https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=ur7mk6rEMUevXdc1sJfq2-MtVOsMawJDpBA3aJ944dVUMkI4OTA3N0dBMUE2SDVJWlpaOE8zNlo4NC4u].

Follow Ann on Instagram (@ayearofreadingtheworld), bluesky (@annmorgan.bsky.social) or at https://ayearofreadingtheworld.com. 

Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd [https://www.instagram.com/chrisllloyd9].

Ep. 36. Ann Morgan, Relearning to Read: Adventures in Not Knowing (Reading the World, Unknowing)

In today's episode I talk to Ashton Politanoff about his 2026 novel, Dad Had a Bad Day. 

Ashton Politanoff is a frequent contributor to NOON, edited by Diane Williams. His writing has also appeared or is forthcoming in McSweeney’s, Southwest Review, Conjunctions, New York Tyrant, Egress, and elsewhere. He is a former division I tennis player and his childhood coach was Robert Lansdorp, who is credited with coaching Pete Sampras, Tracy Austin, and Maria Sharapova. His novel Dad Had a Bad Day is forthcoming Spring/Summer 2026 from Astra House (US) and Daunt Books (UK). Politanoff’s first novel, You’ll Like It Here, was published by Dalkey Archive in 2022. He is an English Professor at Cypress College.

Book recs:

 * Damon Galgut, The Promise
 * Tana French, The Searcher

Follow the show on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/booksupclose]and subscribe to the Substack [https://booksupclose.substack.com/] for transcripts and more links. Please leave feedback here [https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=ur7mk6rEMUevXdc1sJfq2-MtVOsMawJDpBA3aJ944dVUMkI4OTA3N0dBMUE2SDVJWlpaOE8zNlo4NC4u].

Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd [https://www.instagram.com/chrisllloyd9].

Ep. 35. Ashton Politanoff, Dad Had a Bad Day (Volleys, Reticence) 

In today's episode I talk to Carys Davies about her novel Clear [https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/clear-carys-davies/7591882?ean=9781803510422&next=t]. 

Carys Davies is the author of three novels and two collections of short stories. Her debut novel West was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize, runner-up for the Society of Authors' McKitterick Prize, and winner of the Wales Book of the Year for Fiction. Her second novel The Mission House was The Sunday Times 2020 Novel Of The Year. Her latest novel Clear won the 2025 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, the 2025 Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger, and the 2025 Wales Book of the Year, and has been nominated for many others, including the Walter Scott Prize, Scotland’s National Book Award, the Prix Femina, the Prix Médicis, and the Europese Literatuurprijs.

Her short story collection The Redemption of Galen Pike won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize. She is also the recipient of the Royal Society of Literature's V.S. Pritchett Prize, the Society of Authors' Olive Cook Short Story Award and a Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a 2025/26 Fellow at Columbia University’s Institute for Ideas and Imagination in Paris. Born in Wales, she grew up there and in the Midlands, lived and worked for twelve years in New York and Chicago, and now lives in Edinburgh.

Episode notes:

 * Elizabeth McCracken, A Long Game

Book recs:

 * Sylvia Townsend Warner, Mr Fortune's Maggot
 * Jessica Francis Kane, Fonseca 

Follow the show on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/booksupclose]and subscribe to the Substack [https://booksupclose.substack.com/] for transcripts and more links. Please leave feedback here [https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=ur7mk6rEMUevXdc1sJfq2-MtVOsMawJDpBA3aJ944dVUMkI4OTA3N0dBMUE2SDVJWlpaOE8zNlo4NC4u]. 

Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd [https://www.instagram.com/chrisllloyd9].

Ep. 34. Carys Davies, Clear (Intimacies, Raising the Music)

In today's episode I walk to Oluwaseun Olayiwola about his poem 'Strange Beach' (the first one) from the book of the same name [https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/strange-beach-oluwaseun-olayiwola/7741269?ean=9781804271551&next=t].

Oluwaseun (Seun) Olayiwola is a poet, critic, choreographer and performer based in London. His creative and critical work has been published in The Poetry Review, PN Review, The Telegraph, the TLS and elsewhere. His choreographic work has been presented at the V&A, The Place, The Central School of Ballet, and Studio Voltaire. He’s been commissioned by RSL, Ledbury Poetry Festival, Southwark Council, and Studio 3 Arts. Seun has an MFA in Choreography from the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, where he was a Fulbright Scholar in 2018-2019. His debut collection was published by Fitzcarraldo Editions (UK) and Soft Skull Press (US). Since publication, Strange Beach has won an Eric Gregory Award and was Poetry Book Society Winter 2025 Special Commendation. Seun is an inaugural member of the Rose Choreographic School at Sadlers Wells East. He is a lecturer in dance in the Kingston School of Art and Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Episode notes: 

 * Jorie Graham, 'Le Manteau De Pascal'
 * Negative Capability (Keats)
 * Claudia Rankine, Citizen
 * Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Spill
 * Christina Sharpe, In the Wake
 * Victoria Adukwei Bulley, 'The Ultra-Black Fish' [https://zencastr.com/z/A4HYRgcs]
 * Louise Glück
 * Robin Coste Lewis, Voyage of the Sable Venus
 * Maggie Nelson, Bluets 
 * Adam Phillips, The Life You Want 

Book recs:

 * Claudia Rankine, Triage [https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/triage-truth-art-and-fiction-claudia-rankine/3484f5f530eb993c?ean=9780241828564&next=t]
 * Christina Sharpe, Ordinary Notes [https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/ordinary-notes-christina-sharpe/7448029?ean=9781914198144&next=t]
 * Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House [https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/in-the-dream-house-a-memoir-carmen-maria-machado/364838?ean=9781788162258&next=t]
 * Leo Bersani and Adam Phillips, Intimacies [https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/intimacies-leo-bersani/2765997?ean=9780226043456&next=t] 

Follow the show on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/booksupclose]and subscribe to the Substack [https://booksupclose.substack.com/] for transcripts and more links. Please leave feedback here [https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=ur7mk6rEMUevXdc1sJfq2-MtVOsMawJDpBA3aJ944dVUMkI4OTA3N0dBMUE2SDVJWlpaOE8zNlo4NC4u]. Follow Seun on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/itsamule/?hl=en].

Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd [https://www.instagram.com/chrisllloyd9].

Ep. 33. Oluwaseun Olayiwola, 'Strange Beach' (Fragmentation, Em-Dashes)

Chris Lloyd (@clloyd9) · Zencastr

Chris Lloyd (@clloyd9)

Books Up Close is a show for writers, readers, and anyone who wants to know how texts get made. Listen as writer and academic Chris Lloyd performs a 'close reading' of some writing with the author themselves.