Episode 34: Jim Phelan & Dorothee Birke — Ali Smith’s “Text for the Day”

In this episode of the Project Narrative Podcast, Jim Phelan and Dorothee Birke discuss Ali Smith’s short story, “Text for the Day,” from her 1995 collection, Free Love and Other Stories. Dorothee Birke is professor for Anglophone Literatures at the University of Innsbruck, and her many areas of expertise include the history of the novel, reading and book culture, memory studies, and narrative theory. Birke is the author of two books, Writing the Reader: Configurations of a Cultural Practice in the English Novel and Memory’s Fragile Power: Crises of Memory, Identity, and Narrative in Contemporary British Novels. Among Birke’s numerous articles, she has won the International Society for the Study of Narrative’s annual prize for best essay in the journal for an article co-authored with Birte Christ, Ellen McCracken and Paul Benzon for Narrative, “Paratexts and Digital Narrative.” Birke is currently the second vice president of the International Society for the Study of Narrative.