{"podcast":{"title":"Private Life: A New York Review Podcast","slug":"private-life-a-new-york-review-podcast-7689958","podcast_index_feed_id":7689958,"rss_url":"https://feeds.transistor.fm/private-life","website_url":"https://www.nybooks.com","image_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/gnQ-tYKkQUrf9KBbX-Lv2CitGexgv0Aij1cs3L5VRhY/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:1400/h:1400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS8wODA5/ZGRiYmU0NTg3OTY0/Y2RkNDQzMTJhZjU3/NWUyZS5wbmc.jpg","author":"New York Review Podcasts","episode_count":22,"summary":"Private Life is a podcast from The New York Review, hosted by contributor Jarrett Earnest. Each episode offers intimate, in-depth conversations with distinguished voices from across the literary landscape—about their lives, their work, and the ideas that shape both. Along the way, they revisit pieces from the The New York Review of Books's robust sixty-year archive (some episodes of the podcast will feature newly recorded readings of these classic essays) to situate arguments within contemporary culture. The show also includes discussions of titles from our book publishing arm, New York Review Books, featuring talks with translator Mark Polizzotti on Andre Breton's surrealist masterpiece Nadja and musician Richard Hell on the re-issue of his novel Godlike. Other early episodes find Joyce Carol Oates ruminating on true crime, while Darryl Pinckney opens up about the perils of memoir and his formative friendship with essayist Elizabeth Hardwick. Private Life is a personable, expansive invitation for longtime subscribers and a new generation of readers alike to connect with the past, present and future of The New York Review.","last_synced_at":"2026-07-09T00:19:47.670598+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/private-life-a-new-york-review-podcast-7689958"},"episode":{"title":"Darryl Pinckney on Memoir, Friendship, and Elizabeth Hardwick","slug":"darryl-pinckney-on-memoir-friendship-and-elizabeth-hardwick","published_at":"2026-02-11T20:42:13+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/private-life-a-new-york-review-podcast-7689958/darryl-pinckney-on-memoir-friendship-and-elizabeth-hardwick","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/private-life-a-new-york-review-podcast-7689958","url":"https://share.transistor.fm/s/85026953","audio_url":"https://media.transistor.fm/85026953/57fdd3d4.mp3","summary":"In the first episode of our podcast Private Life , Darryl Pinckney talks with host Jarrett Earnest about his close friend and former teacher Elizabeth Hardwick. Pinckney discusses her inimitable voice on the page, her love of literature’s most “terrific losers,” and the people in her inner circle, including the Review ’s editor Barbara Epstein, Mary McCarthy, and Susan Sontag, who came to shape Hardwick’s life and art. Pinckney reflects on the painful process of writing memoirs and his education in early 1970s New York City. Darryl Pinckney is the author of two novels as well as the memoir Come Back in September: A Literary Education on West Sixty-Seventh Street, Manhattan (2022). He met Hardwick while a student in her creative writing seminar at Columbia University, then worked as an assistant at The New York Review of Books before contributing his first article, in 1977, “The Black Upper Class,” a review of Stephen Birmingham’s Certain People: America’s Black Elite . For the Review , as well as Harper’s , Granta , and The New Yorker , he has written extensively about American literature, black American culture, YouTube, James Baldwin, Obama’s presidency, and Elizabeth Hardwick. His essays about Hardwick include “ Master Class ,” about his experience as her student, and “ On Elizabeth Hardwick ,” an expansive consideration of her style. Darryl Pinckney selected the work included in The New York Stories of Elizabeth Hardwick (2010) and The Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick (2017), for which he wrote the introduction. Elizabeth Hardwick (1916–2007) was a writer and Review contributor who wrote some of the most influential criticism of the twentieth century. In 1963 she cofounded The New York Review of Books alongside the editors Robert Silvers and Barbara Epstein,…","meta_description":"In the first episode of our podcast Private Life , Darryl Pinckney talks with host Jarrett Earnest about his close friend and former teacher Elizabeth Har…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":3063,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/private-life-a-new-york-review-podcast-7689958/episodes/darryl-pinckney-on-memoir-friendship-and-elizabeth-hardwick/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/private-life-a-new-york-review-podcast-7689958/darryl-pinckney-on-memoir-friendship-and-elizabeth-hardwick.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}