31 min listen
The Quarantine Tapes 156: Ayad Akhtar
ratings:
Length:
30 minutes
Released:
Feb 2, 2021
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
On episode 156 of The Quarantine Tapes, Paul Holdengräber is joined by writer Ayad Akhtar. They talk about Ayad’s most recent novel, Homeland Elegies, and how Ayad thinks the book’s reception has been shaped by the ongoing pandemic.Paul and Ayad have a wide-ranging conversation, touching on issues of debt, American individualism, a writer’s relationship to ideology. Then, Paul asks Ayad about some of his influences. They discuss Salman Rushdie, Toni Morrison, and the year that Ayad spent with Jerzy Grotowski. Ayad Akhtar is a novelist and playwright. His work has been published and performed in over two dozen languages. He is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Ayad is the author of Homeland Elegies (Little, Brown & Co.), which The Washington Post called “a tour de force” and The New York Times selected as a Top 10 Book of 2020, calling it “pitch-perfect…virtuosic.” His first novel, American Dervish (Little, Brown & Co.), was published in over 20 languages. As a playwright, he has written Junk (Lincoln Center, Broadway; Kennedy Prize for American Drama, Tony nomination); Disgraced (Lincoln Center, Broadway; Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Tony nomination); The Who & The What (Lincoln Center); and The Invisible Hand (NYTW; Obie Award, Outer Critics Circle John Gassner Award, Olivier, and Evening Standard nominations). Among other honors, Akhtar is the recipient of the Steinberg Playwriting Award, the Nestroy Award, the Erwin Piscator Award, as well as fellowships from the American Academy in Rome, MacDowell, the Sundance Institute, and Yaddo, where he serves as a Board Director. Additionally, Ayad is a Board Trustee at New York Theatre Workshop and PEN America, where he will serve as the next president beginning in December 2020.Credits:Paul Holdengraber - Co-Creator, Host, OLA DirectorAnthony Audi - Co-Creator, Researcher, OLA DirectorAlejandro Cohen - Co-Creator, Producer, ComposerChristian Pitt - Production Coordinator Erin Cooney - Copy, ProductionDublab Team
Released:
Feb 2, 2021
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
The Quarantine Tapes 010: Nicolas Berggruen: Today's talking points: Shadow Governments, COVID-19 lessons from the Berggruen institute's time in China, the ultimate capacity of government, equality, and visions of economic restructuring and free distribution. ‘We have to arm each citizen with more or better social and economic minimums, access and ability to integrate from an information standpoint, into a greater world’. by The Quarantine Tapes