Sam Munson, author of Dog Symphony, in conversation with Tablet Magazine editor Jacob Siegel

About Dog Symphony: Boris Leonidovich, a North American professor who specializes in the history of prison architecture, has been invited to Buenos Aires for an academic conference. He’s planning to present a paper on Moscow’s feared Butyrka prison, but most of all he’s looking forward to seeing his enigmatic, fiercely intelligent colleague (and sometime lover) Ana again. As soon as Boris arrives, however, he encounters obstacle after unlikely obstacle: he can’t get in touch with Ana, he locks himself out of his rented room, and he discovers dog-feeding stations and water bowls set before every house and business…

Sam Munson’s writing has appeared in n+1, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, LA Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, and numerous other publications. He is the author of the novels The November Criminals and The War Against the Assholes.

Jacob Siegel is an editor at Tablet magazine. Prior to that he co-edited the literary anthology Fire and Forget: Short Stories from the Long War and wrote the collection’s lead story. From 2013-2015 he covered national security, protest politics, and digital culture at The Daily Beast, where he reported on assignment from Iraq. His writing has been published in The New York Times, Tablet, Politico, the New York Daily News, Vice, Rolling Stone, the National Endowment for the Humanities magazine and elsewhere. Along with National Book Award winner Phil Klay, he co-hosts Manifesto! A Podcast, a podcast about art and manifestos. He is a former Army officer who served in Iraq in 2006-2007 and Afghanistan in 2012.