Nell Freudenberger on Literary Alchemy, the Poetry of Hard Science, and… Ghosts

Bookable features established authors and emerging talent in conversation with host and author Amanda Stern, perhaps best known for creating the Happy Ending Music & Reading Series at New York’s famous Joe’s Pub and Symphony Space. With an immersive sound experience designed around each episode, Bookable takes you on an audio exploration of a book—usually new, sometimes classic and occasionally obscure but always worth knowing about.

Can ghosts use radiation to talk to us? And what does quantum entanglement have to do with friendship? Acclaimed novelist Nell Freudenberger answers these questions, and tells Amanda the true story of a pioneering female scientist who one hundred percent should have won the Nobel Prize, but didn’t (guess why). Hard science can give rise to poetry, and Freudenberger talks about her choice to go that route in Lost and Wanted—pulling back the curtain on a process of literary alchemy—and did we mention ghosts?

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Nell Freudenberger is the author of the novels The Newlyweds and The Dissident, and the story collection Lucky Girls, which was awarded the PEN/Malamud Award and the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, and a Cullman Fellowship from the New York Public Library, she lives in Brooklyn with her family.