Working: Biographer Heather Clark on Giving Sylvia Plath Her Due

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4.2 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 10 January 2021

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, host Rumaan Alam talks to author Heather Clark about her massive new biography Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath. Heather speaks about what separates her biography from the ones that came before it, and how an academic changes her writing style for a book aimed at a general audience. She also describes what it was like to track down and get permission to view materials she needed for the book. After the interview, Rumaan and co-host June Thomas talk more about the length of Heather’s book and the tremendous amount of research that went into it. In the exclusive Slate Plus segment, Heather describes what it felt like to finally finish Red Comet, and she previews her next book. Send your questions about creativity and any other feedback to working@slate.com or give us a call at (304) 933-9675. Podcast production by Cameron Drews. If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Dear Prudence—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on Working. It’s only $35 for the first year, and you can get a free two-week trial. Sign up now to help support our work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:41.0	DJ, Doug Pound, and Vic Berger. How Vic Berger every week we bring you laughs fun games and lots of other surprises it's live we take your Zoom calls we love having fun excuse me
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1:04.0	You would be shocked by how many people I spoke to and when I told them I was writing about Sylvia Platt, the first thing they mentioned was the manner in which she died.
1:18.0	And I felt like those details had almost superseded her writing. So it was the sense of mission I guess that that
1:27.9	kind of sparked the flame.
	...

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