Guest Host Sheila Heti (Motherhood, How Should a Person Be?) speaks with fellow “autofiction” author Rachel Cusk (A Life’s Work, Aftermath, et al). The Giller-nominated writers discuss receiving harsh criticism, why memoir is a dead end, and how Cusk is reimagining the novel, and making art and meaning out of mid-life crisis and divorce with her critically-acclaimed trilogy (dubbed a “literary experiment“).

Photograph by Laura Pannack for The New Yorker.