Sonja Srinivasan is host of the new World Literature Today podcast, a project she proposed and now produces as a bimonthly conversation available on YouTube and Spotify. With contributor interviews, a poetry reading, review highlights, and more, this new offering provides a beyond-the-pages glimpse into each issue. Here, we’ve turned the questions back on her, hoping to get to know our gracious and talented host a bit better.

Q: Our first connection was through a creative nonfiction essay you wrote and we published, “The Suitcase,” in our March 2026 issue. Writing, though, is only one of your passions. You’re also an opera singer! How did your interest in opera begin?

A: I began the violin very young and came to opera later, though I had sung in chorus in elementary school and in a class in college. I had a violin teacher who was also a serious classical singer, and so that’s how I began. It just naturally seemed to evolve.

Q: What is your favorite opera? And perhaps this will yield a different answer: If someone has never been to an opera, what opera do you suggest?

A: Without a moment’s hesitation, Don Giovanni, by Mozart (libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte)! Not only is the music stunningly gorgeous, but the libretto is so well written, so tight, and everything fits together, the poetry of the language, great narrative arcs for the characters. Plus it’s so over the top with the extremes of human emotion: lust, revenge, murder, betrayal, etc. We don’t live that way in our daily lives, so it’s really fun to see it on the stage!

For newbies, Don Giovanni, Carmen, La traviata, and Eugene Onegin would be interesting and accessible. Good old-fashioned love stories are always fun, right?

Q: They are, yes. How do music and literature feed one another for you?

A: They are two halves of the same brain or whole. Counterparts. I really couldn’t live without either one; it’s just a question of which side the pendulum is swinging to at any given moment. I especially like nonverbal music, very right-brained, because writing is so left-brained. I like a lot of time without words, believe it or not, because I love sound and am very auditory!

Q: What have you listened to the most so far this year?

A: Oh gosh, that's a hard one, because I listen to so many different genres. One recent favorite is the entirety of Paganini’s “La Campanella” violin concerto, not just the famous third movement. I listen to a lot of jazz, am a huge fan of Björk, and last night I was listening to Led Zeppelin.

I listen to a lot of jazz, am a huge fan of Björk, and last night I was listening to Led Zeppelin.

Q: What would your reading history tell us about you? Is it as varied as your taste in music?

A: I love this question, because when I go to someone’s house, I inevitably end up looking at their bookshelves—it’s an unconscious habit! I read a lot of classics. Plus modern fiction heavyweights, South Asian authors, and a number of international writers in translation. I read mostly novels.

Q: How did you come to speak six languages?

A: I grew up bilingual (English and Tamil), did French in junior high and high school, taught myself Spanish in high school and studied a little in college, Italian in college. I picked up a little German in college in a German-language theme house in college, when I was in Germany, and studied it formally for two years as an adult, after which I spent three weeks in Austria. I know smatterings of phrases in other languages that I can’t really speak.

Q: What is your goal as host of the World Literature Today podcast?

A: A few things. The first is to highlight features from the magazine and bring them to life. Another is to bring visibility to writers from around the world who might otherwise be unknown, and to open listeners’ minds to something new and fascinating, especially from parts of the world they are unfamiliar with. My hope is that if I am learning interesting things in the interviews, then the listeners will as well. I strive for geographic balance as much as possible.

When I go to someone’s house, I inevitably end up looking at their bookshelves—it’s an unconscious habit!

Q: What other podcasts do you recommend?

A: Said & Done from the Language Resource Center at Columbia University is like a sister podcast, except it highlights languages and linguistics instead of literature. Nobel Prize Conversations is super fascinating because it makes science and economics and ideas accessible to the public. Desert Island Discs on BBC is really fun, because each episode features an interview/music list with someone famous. You can really learn a lot about someone by their music choices! Björk’s Sonic Symbolism was brilliant, a behind-the-scenes look at the creative process of her one-of-a-kind genius. And there are several others I like as well.

Q: Is there something from culture—an album, a movement, a TV show, an art trend, anything—that you think best captures the zeitgeist of the 2020s so far?

A: Domestically, I think Black Lives Matter is a hugely important one. It created radical shifts that affected not only Black communities but so many others. Overseas (and also here), I would say that free speech and speaking out against oppressive regimes and institutions have been significant as well, given what’s going on politically. Maybe at some point the pendulum will swing back to an “art for art’s sake” ethos. On the flip side, AI has really encroached on writing, and I think that is really unfortunate. It’s insulting to all of us who spend our lives putting great effort into our craft.

Q: If you could put one book in everyone’s hands, what would you choose?

A: Anna Karenina, by Tolstoy, because I feel like every aspect of life is in it. Tolstoy had such penetrating insight into the human mind and heart and soul. I feel like there are three layers to Tolstoy’s writing: first is the superficial one, where he sees all the details like the sardonic expression on someone’s face or the frills on a woman’s dress. Then he goes into that character’s personality, what drives him or motivates her, good and bad. He spares nothing. But I think at the third level is heart—ultimately, he loves his characters and people.

Q: Thank you, Sonja, for answering these questions and for hosting this wonderful new podcast!

A: You’re so welcome—this was really fun!