The Immortalists
Book by Chloe Benjamin
43
MENTIONS
18
EPISODES
16
PODCASTS
Search complete. 43 mentions across 18 episodes found for "The Immortalists".
Sep 28, 2026
Elsie LarsonHOST
She's just a talented novelist who really got all the way in on her subject.
Elsie LarsonHOST
And I also read her book The Immortalist a few years back, which I love that book as well, and it was a book that really, really stuck with me, and the- this book is gonna stick with me but in different ways.
Elsie LarsonHOST
Anyway, I don't know if I'm giving it a good enough sell, but I don't wanna give anything else away.
Elsie LarsonHOST
Just if you're going to take a book recommendation, please read this one.
Bianca MaraisHOST
Loved her first two books, and am so excited to get to speak to her again.
Bianca MaraisHOST
So today's guest is the author of The Immortalists, a New York Times bestseller, and The Anatomy of Dreams.
Bianca MaraisHOST
A Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, Library Reads Favorite, and number one Indie Next pick, The Immortalists was named a Best Book of 2018 by NPR, The Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, and others.
Bianca MaraisHOST
The Anatomy of Dreams received the Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award and was long listed for the 2014 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize.
Bianca MaraisHOST
Originally from San Francisco, she is a graduate of Vassar College and the University of Wisconsin, where she received her MFA in fiction.
Chloe BenjaminGUEST
It's so good to see you.
Bianca MaraisHOST
It is so good to see you too.
Bianca MaraisHOST
So listeners who've listened to previous podcasts that we've chatted in, Chloe and I were lucky enough to meet in real life when she was busy on tour for The Immortalists.
Ron BlockHOST
So.
Chloe BenjaminGUEST
Well, Ron, you and I go way back because you were so supportive of The Immortalists.
Chloe BenjaminGUEST
And that book now came out in 2018, almost nine years ago.
Chloe BenjaminGUEST
And I'm just so grateful.
19 MINS LATER
Kristy Woodson HarveyHOST
Okay, so let's talk about the title for a minute.
Kristy Woodson HarveyHOST
So Understory is such a great title for the environmental focus on this story.
Kristy Woodson HarveyHOST
And you've talked about your own personal connection to the title and how it has mirrored your path since The Immortalists came out.
Kristy Woodson HarveyHOST
So can you talk to us about that?
Rebecca SchinskyHOST
Um, Go Gentle by Maria Semple, not nearly as literary as Marlon James, but another one that I could find, also did like 6,000 or 8,000 hardcovers in the first week.
Rebecca SchinskyHOST
Um, so we just need to moderate our expectations of what a giant, very literary novel is going to do, and 11,000 is quite good.
Rebecca SchinskyHOST
This is a great performance.
Jeff O'NealHOST
Yes.
12 MINS LATER
Rebecca SchinskyHOST
Ah, okay, fun.
Rebecca SchinskyHOST
Uh, so next up is "Understory" by Chloe Benjamin.
Rebecca SchinskyHOST
This is a big follow-up novel to her novel "The Immortalists." Follow-up as in, like, it's coming after, but they are unrelated.
Jeff O'NealHOST
Yes.
Brenda AllisonHOST
Yeah.
Jodi PicoultGUEST
I, I, first of all, I have loved her since I read The Immortalists.
Jodi PicoultGUEST
Amazing.
Brenda AllisonHOST
The Immortalists is one of my all-time favorites, yes.
Jodi PicoultGUEST
She's such a gorgeous writer.
Brenda AllisonHOST
Yep.
speaker_3HOST
It elevates love to the level of high art, defying the mundane.
speaker_2HOST
Contrast that high literary approach with Chloe Benjamin's Understory Benjamin, who wrote the massive hit The Immortalists, is bringing us an epic sci-fi love story.
speaker_2HOST
It asks a devastating question: how far would we go for more time with the people we love?
speaker_3HOST
This is love actively pushing against the immovable boundaries of science, physics, and mortality.
Chloe BenjaminGUEST
And I think that's for two reasons.
Chloe BenjaminGUEST
I was coming off of a of a very successful publication with my second book, The Immortalists.
Chloe BenjaminGUEST
And I think that gave me a lot of bandwidth.
Chloe BenjaminGUEST
I think that I had trust and enthusiasm about what I was going to do next.
27 MINS LATER
MarcoHOST
but you know yeah you know i always find the interest being to people you know we hear from publishers we hear from agents we've just spoken to a bunch of agents on the podcast that you know selling cross genre is a difficult thing to do yeah because publishers like to put you in a little box and know where it's going to sit on the shelf and all that sort of stuff And we've spoken to so many writers that are successful with cross-genre books.
MarcoHOST
And I guess it is how you end up.
MarcoHOST
I mean, as she said, she had a bit of leeway because of the success of The Immortalists.
MarcoHOST
So people didn't really ask her.
Sarah BatkeHOST
Can she persuade him to risk everything to fix the burden that hangs between them, to turn back the clock and live their story a second time? The book is out now from Putnam.
Sarah BatkeHOST
Chloe Benjamin is the author of The Immortalists, a New York Times bestseller, and The Anatomy of Dreams.
Sarah BatkeHOST
A Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection, Library Reads Favorite, and No. 1 Indie Next Pick, The Immortalists was named a Best Book of 2018 by NPR, The Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, and others.
Sarah BatkeHOST
The Anatomy of Dreams received the Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award and was long listed for the 2014 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize.
Sarah BatkeHOST
Originally from San Francisco, California, Benjamin is a graduate of Vassar College and the MFA in Fiction at the University of Wisconsin.
7 MINS LATER
Chloe BenjaminGUEST
So it was a pretty enormous lift, but also a really exhilarating and exciting experience.
Sarah BatkeHOST
Yeah, yeah.
Sarah BatkeHOST
Well, so you've written a couple novels before that we mentioned kind of in the intro, The Immortalists and The Anatomy of Dreams.
MJ FranklinGUEST
I have The Understory by Chloe Benjamin.
MJ FranklinGUEST
This is a science fiction-inflected grief novel, and Benjamin is the author of The Immortalists, a book that I think deserves more praise.
MJ FranklinGUEST
I love that book.
MJ FranklinGUEST
Um, here, with The Understory, we follow a woman who has fled to Antarctica.
OliviaGUEST
My first book is The Understory by Chloe Benjamin.
OliviaGUEST
She wrote The Immortalist, which I didn't read.
OliviaGUEST
Oh, my
Annie JonesHOST
gosh.
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