Sigrid Nunez

Wheels Off with Rhett Miller

Rhett Miller

Arts, Performing Arts, Music

5.0 • 596 Ratings

🗓️ 18 March 2025

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sigrid Nunez, one of our most celebrated literary voices, joins Rhett for a conversation about writing, adaptation, and the creative process. She shares her experience of seeing her novels adapted for the screen and reflects on how film adaptations, much like cover songs, bring a new vision to a writer's work. The two discuss her writing process, transition to short stories, and the unofficial trilogy formed by her last three novels, including "The Vulnerables." Drawing wisdom from her career and the influences of writers like Toni Morrison and Virginia Woolf, she provides a candid look at what it takes to sustain a life in writing. When asked what advice she would give her 21-year-old self, her response is simple: keep writing. Follow Sigrid Nunez https://sigridnunez.com Follow Rhett @rhettmiller Wheels Off is hosted and produced by Rhett Miller. Executive producer Kirsten Cluthe. Editing by Matt Dwyer. Music by Old 97’s. Episode artwork by Mark Dowd. Show logo by Tim Skirven. This podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also ask Alexa to play it. Revisit previous episodes of Wheels Off with guests Rosanne Cash, Rob Thomas, Jeff Tweedy, The Milk Carton Kids, and more. If you like what you hear, please leave us a rating or review. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Wheels Off, a show about the messy reality of the creative life.
0:04.9	I'm Rhett Miller.
0:18.5	Sigrid Nunes off, we started on, and we ain't going to stop. Oh, she made me feel like the car. That's when they got wheels off. Sigrid Nunes is so great, you guys.
0:21.8	I am beyond excited for you to hear this interview.
0:27.6	I recently read her book, What Are You Going Through?
0:30.6	And saw a screening of the Almadovar film, The Next Room, the Room Next Door, based on that novel. And she, Sigrid, actually gave a
0:43.8	Q&A afterwards. And I was so taken by her writing and her, I don't know, sort of clear-headed
0:53.1	communication about art and her own art.
0:57.8	Anyway, I asked my producer Kirsten to please reach out and see if there's any way I could interview
1:04.5	Sigrid, and it worked out. Thank you, Kirsten.
1:07.6	And it was better than I could have hoped.
1:12.5	Sigrid is one of the most intelligent, fascinating artists that I've met or spoken to.
1:24.2	And I just, oh, this is a really fun one for me to do.
1:31.6	If you really want to be a try hard, as the kids say, you might want to go out and read
1:39.7	some of her work before you listen to this because you'll get even more out of it.
1:43.5	And I maybe start where I did with her second to most recent book.
1:49.2	What Are You Going Through?
1:51.7	The book before that, The Friend in 2018 won the National Book Award for fiction,
1:58.0	and she does have won the Vulnerables that's more recent than that. She has a number
2:02.9	of novels. Anyway, I think the world of this writer, and I'm so grateful that she was willing to
2:11.0	share her time and her wisdom with me and with you. So please welcome to Wheels Off, the great Sigrid Nunes.
2:19.9	Hello, welcome to Wheels Off Sigrid Nunes.
	...

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