The Author is Dead

This week: is the author dead? Does it matter what an artist intended when we’re trying to figure out what their work means? We ask Marcelle Kosman and Hannah McGregor, creators of the Harry Potter podcast Witch Please, why it’s worth reading the Harry Potter books as if author JK Rowling is dead. Then we ask translator Chantal Wright whether the original author gets lost in a translation, and what gets poured in. Finally, we ask Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky why he rarely comments on the political meaning of his photographs of extreme landscapes created by humans.