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This week, a conversation about building a more equitable and sustainable economy, and another one about a new novel that grapples with the idea of martyrdom. We’ll hear from poet and novelist Kaveh Akbar in the second half of this program. But first, Nick Romeo. He’s just published The Alternative: How to Build a Just Economy. Based on years of reporting for the New Yorker magazine, the book explores bold experiments and initiatives from around the world that address economic inequities.
Poet Kaveh Akbar’s debut novel Martyr! is a masterfully written family saga centered around a young Iranian-born American. It grapples with difficult subjects like grief, addiction, imperialism, and martyrdom, and often with a good dose of humor. Akbar’s poems appear in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Paris Review, Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. He is the author of two poetry collections: Pilgrim Bell (Graywolf 2021) and Calling a Wolf a Wolf (Alice James 2017), in addition to a chapbook, Portrait of the Alcoholic (Sibling Rivalry 2016). He is also the editor of The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 100 Poets on the Divine (Penguin Classics 2022).