Bookworm

Matthew McIntosh’s theMystery.doc asks a reader to consider what a book is, while exploring how a book can be like life.

Jane Gillette describes the wicked writing of her first book, The Trail of the Demon and Other Stories.

Revisiting Ursula LeGuin, the immensely popular author who changed science fiction and fantasy for millions of readers. She died this month at the age of 88.

Storytelling queen Isabel Allende wrote a time-crossing, culture-hopping chamber piece that gives faces to immigration during these dark times for literature, In the Midst of Winter.

In her stunning After Kathy Acker: A Literary Biography, Chris Kraus wrote not of theory but of writing, creativity, and the depth a writer has to go to form an identity.

In Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine , Joe Hagan explores the countercultural rise of the late-60s rock and roll teen society.

Morgan Parker says that the poems in her book There Are Things More Beautiful than Beyoncé take a stand against the clichés of the dominant culture.

Anne Fadiman discusses topics from The Wine Lover’s Daughter : wine, literature, and her father Clifton.

The great novelist, essayist and prose stylist William H. Gass died last week at 93. This tribute show is composed of excerpts from previous Bookworm conversations with Gass.

A moody historical novel, Miss Burma by Charmaine Craig explores history as it is inscribed in the souls of a rather special Burmese family.

Without spoilers, we discuss the intricate surprises and complex modes of disclosure in Jennifer Egan's new novel Manhattan Beach.

This show features a dramatic and emotional reading by writer/actor Wallace Shawn of an excerpt from Night Thoughts, his book-length essay. (REPEAT)

The Familiar, Volume 5: Redwood , by Mark Danielewski, closes Season One of a serial novel imagined as a vast TV series.

The second conversation with brothers Ron and Russell Mael of the band Sparks, along with stripped-down versions of two songs from their new album Hippopotamus .

Sparks plays stripped-down acoustic versions of art rock songs off their new album Hippopotamus , along with a classic song, and the theme to Bookworm , Where Would We Be without Books .

Beloved writer Eileen Myles didn't make up the dog but she did make up Afterglow (a dog memoir) .

We sample 25 years of Bookworm conversations with Kazuo Ishiguro, the 2017 Nobel Prize Laureate for literature.  

Following his National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize celebrated The Swerve , in the elaborately readable The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve Stephen Greenblatt explores reasons why the story of Genesis has seized the imagination.

Nicole Krauss took a risk by writing about two protagonists who never meet. Krauss says she let herself follow the characters of Forest Dark into the unknown.

In his novel Less , Andrew Sean Greer discusses filterless writing and the idea of getting what you want in a world bent on not giving you what you want. 

Matthew Klam reveals that his novel Who is Rich? ponders the meaning of wealth. Is richness having a big bank account or is it being happy with your lot in life?  

Mark Danielewski says he wants to give words to animals, to plants, to the waves of the ocean. His vast serial novel The Familiar begins with a young girl rescuing a cat.

Known for the outrageous comedy of his acclaimed short stories, George Saunders says that daring to write this novel about grief, loss and the journey of the soul was like jumping off a cliff. [REPEAT]

Lincoln in the Bardo dramatizes a grieving President Lincoln as he visits the grave of his beloved son Willie, who died at age eleven. In the novel, the buried dead believe they're not dead -- "they're sick and refer to their coffins as "sick boxes."  [REPEAT]

In her novel New People , Danzy Senna relishes kicking political correctness to the curb. She believes that irony and humor are more effective than earnestness when writing about race and gender