{"podcast":{"title":"The Shakespeare and Company Interview","slug":"the-shakespeare-and-company-interview-174467","podcast_index_feed_id":174467,"rss_url":"https://access.acast.com/rss/62065b88f850df0012335061","website_url":"http://www.shakespeareandcompany.com","image_url":"https://assets.pippa.io/shows/62065b88f850df0012335061/1780994163859-33b7fda3-aca3-4e25-920d-f05eae64045b.jpeg","author":"Shakespeare and Company","episode_count":210,"summary":"Discover your next favourite book, or take a deep dive into the mind of an author you love, with The Shakespeare and Company Interview podcast. Now also the home of Editions: A Shakespeare and Company x Faber Production. Long-form interviews with internationally acclaimed authors, recorded from our bookshop in the heart of Paris. Hosted by S&Co Literary Director, Adam Biles. Discover all our upcoming events here . If you enjoy these conversations, you can order The Shakespeare and Company Book of Interviews here . Past guests include: Ottessa Moshfegh, Ian McEwan, Ali Smith, Hari Kunzru, Rachel Kushner, Katie Kitamura, Elif Shafak, Claire-Louiose Bennett, Leïla Simoni, Ian Dunt, David Runciman, Richard Powers, Eimear McBride, Armando Iannucci, Lauren Grodd, Lauren Elkin, Recebcca Solnit, John Berger, Hollie McNish, Michael Pedersen, Rob Doyle, Philippe Sands, George Saunders, Edouard Louis, Rachel Cusk, Preti Taneja, Alejandro Zambra, DBC Pierre, Meg Mason, Sandra Newman, David Simon, Joshua Cohen, Geoff Dyer, David Wallce-Wells, Emul Saint-John Mandel, Mohsin Hamid, Tess Gunty, A.M. Homes, John Higgs, Miriam Toews, Kamila Shamsie, Annie Ernaux, William Boyd, David Keenan, Jonatha…","last_synced_at":"2026-06-25T10:20:31.999267+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-shakespeare-and-company-interview-174467"},"episode":{"title":"Fear Less: Tracy K. Smith on Poetry in Perilous Times","slug":"fear-less-tracy-k-smith-on-poetry-in-perilous-times","published_at":"2026-06-10T22:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-shakespeare-and-company-interview-174467/fear-less-tracy-k-smith-on-poetry-in-perilous-times","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-shakespeare-and-company-interview-174467","url":"https://shows.acast.com/sandco/episodes/fear-less-tracy-k-smith-on-poetry-in-perilous-times","audio_url":"https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/62065b88f850df0012335061/e/6a22c03abe8560e74b7f4554/media.mp3","summary":"Tracy K. Smith comes to Shakespeare and Company for a conversation with Adam Biles. They discuss her book Fear Less: Poetry in Perilous Times , a bold manifesto on poetry as a tool for deeper living, clearer thinking, and more compassionate citizenship. Drawing on her time as US Poet Laureate, Smith reflects on taking poetry to rural America, and how poems, unlike political debate, can open rather than entrench. She talks about the origins of Fear Less , and why she chose to write a love letter to the art form rather than a polemic. Smith also reads from her forthcoming collection The Forest , sharing new poems on war, complicity, the divine feminine, and an expansive, unsettling \"us\" that includes those we revile. Buy Fear Less: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/fear-less-4 Tracy K. Smith was born in Massachusetts and raised in northern California. She earned a BA from Harvard University and an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. From 1997 to 1999 she held a Stegner fellowship at Stanford University. Smith is the author of four books of poetry: The Body's Question (2003), which won the Cave Canem prize for the best first book by an African-American poet; Duende (2007), winner of the James Laughlin Award and the Essense Literary Award; Life on Mars (2011), winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; and Wade in the Water (2018). In 2014 she was awarded the Academy of American Poets fellowship. She has also written a memoir, Ordinary Light (2015), which was a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction. Her latest book is Fear Less: Poetry in Perilous Times (2025). In June 2017, Smith was named U.S. poet laureate. She teaches at Harvard University, where she is a professor of English and of African and African American Studies and the Su…","meta_description":"Tracy K. Smith comes to Shakespeare and Company for a conversation with Adam Biles. They discuss her book Fear Less: Poetry in Perilous Times , a bold man…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":3458,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-shakespeare-and-company-interview-174467/episodes/fear-less-tracy-k-smith-on-poetry-in-perilous-times/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-shakespeare-and-company-interview-174467/fear-less-tracy-k-smith-on-poetry-in-perilous-times.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}