The Big Read

This episode is about Ernest Gaines' A Lesson Before Dying.  It's the story of a young black man named Jefferson, accused of the murder of a white storekeeper, and Grant Wiggins, a teacher at a plantation school.  While Jefferson prepares for his execution, the two men discover a friendship that transforms at least two lives. Original Series Credits: This program was created by the National Endowm...

Great historical fiction is the closest we can get to time travel, immersing us in the lives of characters experiencing a moment and a place we could only otherwise access through factual accounts. In this audio documentary, Junot Diaz, Edwige Danticat and Neko Case share their love of Julia Alvarez’s epic novel In the Time of the Butterflies, and we also hear from the author herself. The book chr...

James McBride, author of The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, is one of the guests in this episode discussing the impact of The Joy Luck Club.  Amy Tan’s canonical novel tells the stories of four Chinese immigrant mothers and their American-born daughters. In McBride’s words, “no one quite deals with magical realism and women characters like Amy Tan does. She's brilliant. She's an American origin...

This episode does a beautiful job of introducing and demystifying the work of Emily Dickinson. Thoughtful considerations of some of Dickinson’s most beloved poems unlock their pleasures for the uninitiated listener. Dickinson is of course one of the foremost lyric poets of American literature, but this episode also explores her artistic life, including the almost utter lack of recognition of her w...

Set in the South in the 1930s, "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" was written by a 23-year old Carson McCullers, and its release immediately shot her to literary stardom.  The novel follows the intertwined lives of a diverse group of people as they navigate loneliness, societal tensions and their struggle for human connection. In this episode, Mary Louise-Parker reads excerpts, and we hear from Gore V...