Bookworm

Eamon Grennan : Matter of Fact (Graywolf) Major Jackson : Hoops (Norton) Pattiann Rogers : Wayfare (Penguin) Three poets join us on Bookworm to celebrate Walt Whitman. They read from Leaves of Grass , describe Whitman's influence on their work, read their own poems, and, in general, paint a raucous, friendly, informal portrait of the Good Gray Poet — America's greatest.

The Mercy Papers: A Memoir of Three Weeks (Scribner) Fact and fiction. Robin Romm has written a book of short stories and now a memoir arising from one central event: her mother’s gradual death by cancer...

Watching the Spring Festival: Poems (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) For Frank Bidart , the act of reading poetry aloud involves the entire body... ( Part I of this interview aired March 12.)

Watching the Spring Festival: Poems (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) The word most frequently used to describe Frank Bidart ’s poetry is “intense.” ( Part II of this interview airs on March 19.)

Out of My Skin (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) An existential novel (think Camus’ The Stranger ) LA-style. When a celebrity impersonator trains the hero in the art of impersonation, identity confusion ensues...

Versed (Wesleyan University Press) Rae Armantrout has been associated with the Language-centered poets of the eighties, a group often accused of overly cerebral poetry derived from theory. Now, her work is found in the most widely read magazines that publish poetry...

The Mirror in the Well (Dalkey Archive) Micheline Marcom 's works squeeze themselves between uncomfortable alternatives: Is her new novel, The Mirror in the Well , erotic or pornographic?

Kimono My House  (Island Def Jam); Exotic Creatures of the Deep (Lil' Beethoven) After years of yearning, Bookworm talks with his favorite rock band about the art of writing pop songs.  Join us in this celebration of their 21st album, Exotic Creatures of the Deep .

Things I've Been Silent About: Memories (Random House) Azar Nafisi is one of the most powerful advocates literature has. After writing Reading Lolita in Tehran , her memoir about reading forbidden books in a repressive culture, she has taken on a new source of repression—the family.  

A Mercy (Knopf) In this second half of our two-part interview with Toni Morrison , the conversation continues in an attempt to discover the way a novel is built.

Ms. Hempel Chronicles (Harcourt) What is a middle-school teacher? Is Ms. Hempel the old-maid meanie we remember fearing in childhood? Or is she, as she believes, a barely-out-of-college young woman on the threshold of life?

Sea of Poppies (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) With Sea of Poppies , a trilogy begins! Few know that the opium that fueled the Opium Wars was grown and processed in India...

Home (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) Marilynne Robinson 's recent novels concern two ministers and their families. Here, we discuss her most-troubled character, Jack Boughton, a man who would have been called a ne'er-do-well when words like ne'er-do-well were common...

Home (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) Marilynne Robinson had not published a novel in twenty years when she wrote Gilead , which went on to win the Pulitzer Prize. How peculiar, interesting and lovely that she should follow it so quickly with Home ...

Jerk , a play, from a story by Dennis Cooper , directed by Gisèle Vienne Our series closes with American writer Dennis Cooper , who lives and writes in Paris. His work is believed to continue the French lineage of poète maudits (outlaw poets) a tradition that includes Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Sade.

The Ghost in Love (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) Although he would never want us to say so, Jonathan Carroll 's novels are like metaphysical self-help books for the supernaturally inclined.

Web exclusive: The terrible and sad impact of David Foster Wallace 's suicide caused us to want to remember him as he first appeared in the KCRW studios, fresh from the publication of his breakthrough novel, Infinite Jest . He was brilliant and charming—and his death is an enormous loss to American literature.

The Wordy Shipmates (Riverhead) What brought the indomitable Sarah Vowell to write a book about the Puritans? A couple of Thanksgiving episodes of The Brady Bunch and Happy Days , to be sure, but also...

Grégoire Bouillier The Mystery Guest: An Account (Farrar Straus & Giroux) and Report on Myself (Houghton Mifflin) Olivier Cadiot Colonel Zoo ( Green Integer) Marc Cholodenko Mordechai Schamz (Dalkey Archive) Finally at ease in Paris, the Bookworm encounters three French novelists and attempts to navigate the tangle of philosophy, artifice, intertextuality and hilarity that exemplifies the art...

Lulu in Marrakech (Dutton) Here's a conversation about ambivalence, ambiguity and judgment in a comic or satiric novel. Usually, we would know exactly where the author stands, but not with Diane Johnson ...

Francine Prose is full of surprises in speaking of her newest novel, Goldengrove It's narrated by a thirteen-year-old girl whose sister has drowned....

How Fiction Works (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) This conversation is characterized by indirection. Critic James Wood seems to be responding to accusations made against him by other reviewers...

Pierre Alféri: Oxo (Burning Deck) and Natural Gaits ( Sun & Moon) Emmanuel Carrère Class Trip & The Mustache (Picador) and The Adversary: A True Story of Monstrous Deception (Picador) In this episode of our ongoing series, the American Bookworm leaves philosophy and politics and makes his way to his true loves: poetry and fiction... Note : More installments of an American Bookworm in Paris...

Breakdowns (Pantheon) Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*! is the subtitle of this new book, and we talk about the kind of young %@&*! Art Spiegelman was...

Senselessness , translated by Katherine Silver (New Directions) Castellanos Moya 's first novel to be translated into English is a jet black tragic-comedy...