Welcome to season four of The Critic and Her Publics: The Art of the Interview. This season, host Merve Emre talks with professional interviewers of all kinds about how they get the answer they’re looking for, what makes a good question, how do you listen for what’s unsaid, and how hard do you have to push someone before they say something new? Subscribe to The Critic and Her Publics, available wherever you get your podcasts!
From the episode: “We try to end each season of The Critic and Her Publics with a little twist on our theme, something different and often risky or uncomfortable. A few years ago, our final guest Anna Silman interviewed and profiled me for Business Insider. Back then, when Twitter was still called Twitter, it was possible for a profile of someone in a niche industry to go viral, as Anna’s profile of me did.
The subject of a profile rarely gets to confront its writer and ask “what were you thinking?” or “why did you do that?” but in this episode, Anna and I finally have an opportunity to compare memories of our conversation, confess what each of us thought the other was after, and debate whether a profile of a woman can ever avoid reproducing the misogyny it aims to critique.” For a full transcript, head over to the New York Review of Books. The Critic and Her Publics Hosted by Merve Emre • Edited by Michele Moses • Music by Dani Lencioni • Art by Leanne Shapton • Sponsored by Alfred A. Knopf The Critic and Her Publics is a co-production between the Shapiro Center for Creative Writing and Criticism at Wesleyan University, New York Review of Books, and Lit Hub.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
