Episode 260 with Lauren Markham, Author of A Map of Future Ruins, and Sympathetic and Empathetic Chronicler of The Forgotten, The Neglected, and Those With Complex Stories Often Reduced to Tropes

Notes and Links to Lauren Markham’s Work

 

    Lauren Markham is a writer based in northern California. She is the author of the recent A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging (Riverhead, 2024) which The New Yorker listed as one of “The Best Books We’ve Read in 2024 So Far” and which Kirkus reviews called “a remarkable, unnerving, and cautionary portrait of a global immigration crisis.”

A fiction writer, essayist and journalist, her work most often concerns issues related to youth, migration, the environment and her home state of California. Markham’s first book, The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life (Crown, 2017) was the winner of the 2018 Ridenhour Book Prize, the Northern California Book Award, and a California Book Award Silver Prize. It was named a Barnes & Noble Discover Selection, a New York Times Book Critics' Top Book of 2017, and was shortlisted for the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize and the L.A. Times Book Award and longlisted for a Pen America Literary Award in Biography. 

Markham has reported from the border regions of Greece and Mexico and Thailand and Texas; from arctic Norway; from gang-controlled regions of El Salvador; from depopulating towns in rural Sardinia and rural Guatemala, too; from home school havens in southern California; from imperiled forests in Oregon and Washington; from the offices of overwhelmed immigration attorneys in L.A. and Tijuana; from the upscale haunts of women scammed on the Upper East Side. 

Her writing has appeared in outlets such as VQR (where she is a contributing editor), Harper's, The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, Guernica, Freeman's, Mother Jones, Orion, The Atlantic, Lit Hub, California Sunday, Zyzzyva, The Georgia Review, The Best American Travel Writing 2019, and on This American Life. She has been awarded fellowships from The Mesa Refuge, UC Berkeley, Middlebury College, the McGraw Center, the French American Foundation, the Society for Environmental Journalists, the Silvers Prize, the de Groot Foundation, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. 

In addition to writing, Markham has spent fifteen years working at the intersection of education and immigration. She regularly teaches writing in various community writing centers as well as at the Ashland University MFA in Writing Program, the University of San Francisco and St. Mary’s MFA in Writing Program. Her third book, Immemorial, will be published by Transit Books in 2025.

 

 

 

Buy A Map of Future Ruins

 

Lauren's Website

 

Los Angeles Review of Books’ Review of A Map of Future Ruins

 

At about 4:00, Lauren makes the case that not all young reading has to be high-brow as she discusses formative works as a kid and adolescent, which included Nancy Drew and Milan Kundera

At about 6:50, Lauren responds to Pete’s question about how she thinks and writes in diverse genres, and how her reading of varied writers informs her own work

At about 10:40, Lauren shouts out Vauhini Vara, Hernan Diaz, Nathan Heller, Jia Tolentino, and other treasured contemporary writers

At about 12:45, Lauren talks about how writing informs her teaching, and vice versa

At about 15:25, Pete asks Lauren about seeds for A Map of Future Ruins and how her work with many undocumented and refugee students has affected her writing

At about 19:00, Lauren and Pete discuss ideas of belonging and exclusion and pride and heritage in connection to Lauren’s Greek heritage and reporting trips there

At about 23:10, Ideas of “insiders” and “outsiders” and the challenges of immigration paperwork are discussed

At about 26:05, Pete and Lauren reflect on a powerful quote from Warsan Shire regarding people being impelled to emigrate

At about 26:55, Lauren gives background on the conditions that made Moria on the Greek slang of Lesbos a “purgatory”

At about 31:20, Demetrios, a representative Greek from the book, and his views on immigration and “speak[ing] bird” is discussed 

At about 36:05, Lauren expands upon how Greece as the “starting point of democracy” has been corrupted and co-opted and points to a stellar expose on truth from Kwame Anthony Appiah

At about 41:50, The two discuss the arbitrary nature of “The West” and Greece and its ideals and ideas of a “Western lineage

At about 43:55, Lauren expands upon the ideas of “proximity to Whiteness” with particular historical relevance for Greeks, Italians, and Southern Europeans

At about 44:55, Pete and Lauren reference the horrific images of the Syrian refugee whose death galvanized support, as well as Ali Sayed’s story, traced in her book

At about 46:40, Lauren explains terminology and methods of doing business by Turkish and other smugglers

At about 48:10, Turkish and Greek relations and how they affected the lack of patrols is highlighted 

At about 49:20, “The Moria Six” and Ali’s story and trials are discussed in relation to the fire referenced at the beginning of the book

At about 52:00, The impositions of maps and Empire are reflected upon 

At about 53:05, “Whiteness” and its imposition on “classical form” and racist science are explored, as written about in the book

At about 54:55, The two trace the initial and later welcome for refugees to Greek islands and ideas of the original meaning of “asylum”; Lauren also highlights many incredible people helping refugees to this day, as well as ideas of “invaders” and scapegoats

At about 58:40, Discussion of Greek austerity and true issues of difficulty for are referenced 

At about 59:50, The two discuss Lauren’s section in the book regarding Darien Gap and connections to Lauren’s family’s own emigration/immigration story

At about 1:02:00, The two highlight ideas of community among refugees, and Pete asks Lauren about pessimism and optimism and the book’s title

At about 1:03:25, Ali’s unfinished story is referenced 

At about 1:04:05-Laser Round Questions! East Bay Booksellers, Point Reyes Books and Green Apple are shouted out as good places to buy her books

At about 1:05:05, Immemorial, Lauren’s 2025 release, is described 

What a pleasure it has been to speak with Lauren. Continued good luck to her with her future writing and important work.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Chills at Will Podcast.

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    Please tune in for Episode 261 with Greg Mania, who is a writer, comedian, and award-winning screenwriter. He’s also author of the debut memoir, Born to Be Public, which was an NPR Best Book of 2020 and an O, Oprah Magazine Best LGBTQ Book of 2020. Greg’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Oprah Daily, PAPER, among other international online and print platforms.

This episode will air on November 12.

Lastly, please go to ceasefiretoday.com, which features 10+ actions to help bring about Ceasefire in Gaza.