Bookworm

Tales of romance and adventure inspire Jesse Ball's novellas and prose poems....

At age sixteen Jon-Jon Goulian started to wear women's clothes — he couldn't say why. At age forty he wrote this memoir to account for his fascination with androgyny...

After twenty-five years, Art Spiegelman gathers his thoughts about his prize-winning, ground-breaking graphic novel, MetaMaus .

A deep and ultimately heartbreaking look at family relationships, love, identity and memory—all against the heyday of LA rock 'n' roll, new wave and punk...

The author of Push, on which the film Precious was based, has a new novel, The Kid , told from the point of view of Precious' son, Abdul...(Part 2 of 2)

The author of Push, on which the film Precious was based, has a new novel, The Kid , told from the point of view of Precious' son, Abdul...(Part 1 of 2)

WEB EXCLUSIVE! Michael Silverblatt felt challenged when Sapphire's publisher mentioned that The Kid "might not be your kind of thing..."

Dora Malech explores the violence of relationships...

Oncologist and novelist Chris Adrian talks about how his need to tell and hear stories has helped him through his difficult work with children.

John Sayles on how a writer gathers knowledge, the language, the unusual perspectives and the humanity to illuminate the whole arc of our history...

Novelist and essayist Geoff Dyer celebrates his first published essay in the New Yorker. He tells us how his amateur interest in jazz led him to write a book...

Radiance (Counterpoint) Mark Perdue, a physics professor who we first met in Louis B. Jones' Particles of Luck, is at the farther fringe of a complete nervous breakdown..

The occasion of a Los Angeles theater festival offers playwright John Steppling ( Phantom Luck ) the chance to talk about theater in general and what's wrong with it.

Ann Patchett has written a book you can't put down. State of Wonder is a version of Conrad's Heart of Darkness , set in South America in the heart of the jungle...

My New American Life is the immigrant story told in a new way. Francine Prose 's touching and funny character, Lula, is used to suffering -- she comes from Albania...

The Finkler Question is the winner of this year's Booker Prize, an amazing novel in that it's many things at once: comic, melancholic, philosophical and paradoxical.

Unable to sleep after her husband, Ray Smith, died three years ago, Joyce Carol Oates spent the night keeping a journal of her day to day thoughts and experiences...

Fearless Eileen Myles discusses her fears in this autobiographical novel.

When Diane Ackerman's husband, Paul West, suffered a stroke, the couple had to learn a new way to communicate. That led him to write a new form of novel — an aphasic novel.

While the Bookworm and Harvard literary theorist Marjorie Garber disagree about nearly everything, theirs is one of the most diverting literary debates you'll likely hear.

What You See in the Dark (Algonquin) Manuel Muñoz imagines a crime of passion set in the Central Valley, which he deviously juxtaposes with the mayhem of Hitchcock's Psycho .

When David Foster Wallace died, he left behind drafts of a rich and complex novel. Writers Rick Moody and David Lipsky discuss Wallace's achievement, The Pale King...

Widow: Stories (Bellevue Literary Press) Michelle Latiolais wrote some of these stories before the death of her husband, some later. Her emotional register changed markedly after his death...

The New Yorker Stories (Scribner) This collection, which spans the years 1974-2006, contains all of the Anne Beattie stories published in the New Yorker – from the very first one, accepted after 17 rejections....

A second program with Carlos Fuente s, this one about culture and politics: Will narco-politics defeat government? Will a "New Deal" be negotiated to help the ni-nis? (Part I of this two-part conversation airs on March 17.)