The Book That Refuses to End: Catherine Lacey on The Möbius Book episode artwork

EPISODE · Jun 11, 2025 · 53 MIN

The Book That Refuses to End: Catherine Lacey on The Möbius Book

from The Shakespeare and Company Interview

In this episode of the Shakespeare and Company Podcast, Adam Biles speaks with acclaimed author Catherine Lacey about her daring new work The Möbius Book. Structured as a "Tête-bêche"—two intertwined texts printed back-to-back—the book pairs a memoir chronicling the fallout of a painful breakup with a novella that spirals into the psychological suspense of a possible murder next door. As the narratives bend and mirror each other, Lacey explores the porous boundary between fiction and nonfiction, faith and doubt, intimacy and estrangement.The conversation dives deep into Lacey’s creative process, her early entanglement with religion, the disorienting legacy of male anger, and how the pandemic shaped her understanding of confinement and rupture. Candid and philosophical, Lacey reflects on memory’s distortions, the ethics of writing memoir, and the liberating act of leaving questions unanswered. Buy The Möbius Book: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/the-mobius-bookCatherine Lacey is the author of the novels Nobody Is Ever Missing, The Answers, Pew, and Biography of X, and the short story collection Certain American States. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award and twice been shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize, and was named one of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company.Listen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of the Shakespeare and Company Podcast, Adam Biles speaks with acclaimed author Catherine Lacey about her daring new work The Möbius Book. Structured as a "Tête-bêche"—two intertwined texts printed back-to-back—the book pairs a memoir chronicling the fallout of a painful breakup with a novella that spirals into the psychological suspense of a possible murder next door. As the narratives bend and mirror each other, Lacey explores the porous boundary between fiction and nonfiction, faith and doubt, intimacy and estrangement.The conversation dives deep into Lacey’s creative process, her early entanglement with religion, the disorienting legacy of male anger, and how the pandemic shaped her understanding of confinement and rupture. Candid and philosophical, Lacey reflects on memory’s distortions, the ethics of writing memoir, and the liberating act of leaving questions unanswered. Buy The Möbius Book: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/the-mobius-bookCatherine Lacey is the author of the novels Nobody Is Ever Missing, The Answers, Pew, and Biography of X, and the short story collection Certain American States. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award and twice been shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize, and was named one of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company.Listen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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The Book That Refuses to End: Catherine Lacey on The Möbius Book

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This episode was published on June 11, 2025.

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In this episode of the Shakespeare and Company Podcast, Adam Biles speaks with acclaimed author Catherine Lacey about her daring new work The Möbius Book. Structured as a "Tête-bêche"—two intertwined texts printed back-to-back—the book pairs a...

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