CHANEL’s literary podcast Les Rencontres is poised on the intersection of literature and identity — this time with German-American poet and novelist Aria Aber, whose debut novel Good Girl was recently shortlisted for the 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction.

The podcast, an extension of CHANEL’s ongoing Literary Rendezvous at Rue Cambon initiative, invites listeners into intimate conversations with rising literary talents. Since its inception in 2021, Les Rencontres has traced the influences, rituals, and emotional landscapes of various emerging female authors as they navigate the path toward authorship. This month's guest, Aria Aber, is a natural fit for the series.

Born in Germany and now based in the United States, Aber is best known for her poetry collection Hard Damage, which won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize and the Whiting Award. With Good Girl, Aber turns her poetic gaze toward fiction, crafting a debut novel that is both formally precise and emotionally resonant. In the episode, she speaks with clarity about the move between genres, the politics of language, and how memory is both shaped and distorted by the words we choose to remember it with.

As has become custom of Les Recontres, listeners are offered a rare glimpse into Aber’s evolving creative process, which is  both steeped in lyrical intuition, and also shaped by her lived experience across multiple cultures and languages. She speaks to the difficulty of writing a character who is not always “good,” and how vulnerability and literary ambition must often coexist.

As always, Les Rencontres is more than just a conversation — it’s a reminder of the power of literature to expand how we think, feel, and connect.

The latest episode of Les Rencontres with Aria Aber is available to stream now. New episodes are released monthly via CHANEL.com and CAMBON Podcasts.