Interview Archives - Public Seminar

Feminism

Re-Revolutionizing the Female Orgasm

A conversation with Rosa Campbell on Shere Hite’s fight for feminist sexuality

July 1, 2026 • by Rosa Campbell and Rachel Potter

Shere Hite’s goal was to bring feminism to the women in the suburbs she grew up in. To her conservative Christian grandmother who raised her; to her mother who fell pregnant with Hite as a teenager and was forced out of school; and to herself—an aspiring feminist academic who, without ...

Interviews

Practical Prison Abolition

An interview with Anna Terwiel on how thinking about justice in terms of personal experience can disrupt the belief that safety requires violent state intervention

June 23, 2026 • by Anna Terwiel and Madeline Trice

There are nearly two million people incarcerated in the United States. The idea of an end to the mass incarceration of those deemed criminal is perceived as far-fetched, naive, or unrealistic. But political scholar Anna Terwiel disagrees. In her new book, Prison Abolition for Realists (University of Minnesota Press, 2025), ...

Interviews

What’s Fresh, White, and Read All Over?

Megan Milks covers everything milky in their new book, Mega Milk

May 14, 2026 • by Cleo Levin and Megan Milks

Megan Milks’s portrait-in-essays Mega Milk (Feminist Press, 2026) has a straightforward premise: It’s a book about milk. But beneath the surface, it’s a multi-dimensional look at American dairy and all its associations. This collection is about transness, queerness, whiteness, family, farming, and much more. It takes the staid category of ...

Interviews

Who’s the Boss?

In her new book, Beneath the Wage, Annie McClanahan offers an alternative history of service work that spans Pullman porters and Amazon Mechanical Turk clickworkers

April 27, 2026 • by Annie McClanahan and Lina Moe

Eighty percent of the US workforce now does service work, yet the protagonist that still anchors most histories of capitalism is the unionized, hourly, goods-producing manufacturing worker. In Beneath the Wage: Tips, Tasks, and Gigs in the Age of Service Work (Zone Books/Princeton University Press, 2026), Annie McClanahan argues that this framing ...

Interviews

Writing With One Eye Squinting at Doom

A conversation with Nancy Lemann on releasing her first novel in twenty years—and why she never stopped writing

March 31, 2026 • by Nancy Lemann and Coleson Smith

Nancy Lemann’s forthcoming novel, The Oyster Diaries (New York Review Books, 2026) is her first publication in over twenty years—and not for lack of trying. Despite the enduring appeal of her first two books—both set in New Orleans—The Lives of the Saints (1985) and The Ritz of the Bayou (1985), ...

Interviews

Larissa Pham on Her New Novel, Discipline, and Finding Truth in Disaster

On the elasticity of art, the detritus of memory, and making the reader sweat

February 17, 2026 • by Jacqueline LeKachman and Larissa Pham

Larissa Pham’s new novel, Discipline (Random House, 2026), started out as something else entirely. “I was going to write ten really gnomic, mysterious meditations on American paintings,” she told me, as we chatted on a snowy day in January. “I have this whole fantasy of writing these weird meditations. And ...

Larissa Pham on Her New Novel, Discipline, and Finding Truth in Disaster

Interviews

Finding the Equator

A conversation on the failures of Western media after Gaza and a new cosmopolitan publication that answers the call for change

December 17, 2025 • by Mariana Giacobbe Goldberg and Suzy Hansen

Suzy Hansen is an author and journalist whose work examines the blind spots of American liberalism and the failures of Western journalism. She is one of the founding editors of Equator, a new online publication created in the aftermath of October 7, 2023, to address censorship in liberal media coverage. ...

Film & Performing Arts

Paolo Sorrentino on his new movie, La Grazia

An interview with the Italian film director on ordinariness, doubt, and jealousy at the heart of his new film

December 8, 2025 • by Mitchell Abidor and Paolo Sorrentino

Editorial note: This interview contains spoilers. Paolo Sorrentino’s films are grand affairs, with elaborate camerawork and stunning settings underscored by memorable music. The plots match the grandeur of the mise-en-scène. In his new film, La Grazia, the purely cinematic elements of the film remain grand—and at times knowingly bizarre, like the ...

Paolo Sorrentino on his new movie, La Grazia

Interviews

Fascism’s Body Politics

A conversation with Dagmar Herzog on disability under fascism in her new book, The New Fascist Body

November 25, 2025 • by Dagmar Herzog and Adam Koehler Brown

"How do we recognize a fascism when we see one?" This is the opening line from Dagmar Herzog's new book, The New Fascist Body (Wirklichkeit Books, 2025). A leading historian of sexuality, disability, and German politics, Herzog now turns her attention to the frightening continuities between past and present authoritarian forces. ...

Interviews

Susan Cheever on Her New Book, When All the Men Wore Hats

When the writing writes itself

November 20, 2025 • by Elizabeth Mirabelle and Susan Cheever

I met Susan Cheever at the Carl Schurz Park dog run, on the Upper East Side, to discuss her latest book, When All the Men Wore Hats (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2025). It’s her usual morning haunt: a place where she gives her beloved Corgi a bit of free-roaming exercise, ...

Susan Cheever on Her New Book, When All the Men Wore Hats

Interviews

Animated by Not Knowing

A conversation with Wendy Xu on thinking through poetry in Your Historical Loveliness Knows No Bounds: Form, Futurity, and Documentary Desire

October 16, 2025 • by Gabriel Chavez and Wendy Xu

Poet and educator Wendy Xu’s new book, Your Historical Loveliness Knows No Bounds: Form, Futurity, and Documentary Desire (University of Michigan Press, 2025), traverses multiple genres of poetry, poetry criticism, essay, and memoir, presenting close readings and “thinking-throughs” of works by poets such as Layli Long Soldier, Inger Christensen, Ocean ...

Art & Design

Imperfect Images

Sohrab Hura on slowing down time in a survey show at MoMA PS1

October 2, 2025 • by Alexandra Chaves and Sohrab Hura

Sohrab Hura began his career in film and photography documenting social issues across India and has been a full-time member of Magnum Photos since 2020. Over the years, his practice has expanded to include publishing, drawing, and writing in an ongoing investigation into the relationship between the personal and the ...

Interview

Re-Revolutionizing the Female Orgasm

A conversation with Rosa Campbell on Shere Hite’s fight for feminist sexuality

Practical Prison Abolition

An interview with Anna Terwiel on how thinking about justice in terms of personal experience can disrupt the belief that safety requires violent state intervention

What’s Fresh, White, and Read All Over?

Megan Milks covers everything milky in their new book, Mega Milk

Who’s the Boss?

In her new book, Beneath the Wage, Annie McClanahan offers an alternative history of service work that spans Pullman porters and Amazon Mechanical Turk clickworkers

Writing With One Eye Squinting at Doom

A conversation with Nancy Lemann on releasing her first novel in twenty years—and why she never stopped writing

Larissa Pham on Her New Novel, Discipline, and Finding Truth in Disaster

On the elasticity of art, the detritus of memory, and making the reader sweat

Finding the Equator

A conversation on the failures of Western media after Gaza and a new cosmopolitan publication that answers the call for change

Paolo Sorrentino on his new movie, La Grazia

An interview with the Italian film director on ordinariness, doubt, and jealousy at the heart of his new film

Fascism’s Body Politics

A conversation with Dagmar Herzog on disability under fascism in her new book, The New Fascist Body

Susan Cheever on Her New Book, When All the Men Wore Hats

When the writing writes itself

Animated by Not Knowing

A conversation with Wendy Xu on thinking through poetry in Your Historical Loveliness Knows No Bounds: Form, Futurity, and Documentary Desire

Imperfect Images

Sohrab Hura on slowing down time in a survey show at MoMA PS1

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