The TLS Podcast

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – The Mexican-born novelist Valeria Luiselli joins us to discuss her new book, Tell Me How It Ends: An essay in 40 questions, about America's role in an ongoing immigration crisis where tens of thousands of Mexican and Central American children arrive at the border, unaccompanied and undocumented; Is Matthew Arnold responsible for the worst opening line of a sonnet in English? Seamus Perry gives an impassioned defence of the poet's dissonant and awkward verse; "If you are transgender, and if you come out as an adult in a position of authority (a tenured professor, say), non-trans people may treat you as an expert." So argues Harvard Professor Stephanie Burt, who has reviewed two accounts of being a trans person, Trans Like Me, by C. N. Lester and The Gender Games by Juno Dawson. She joins us to discuss.