Bookworm

A distinguished writer of books in various forms — poetry, essay, memoir — Sarah Manguso embarks on her first novel with “Very Cold People,” a striking work about what it means to be human. She discusses how she came to be the person and writer she seems to be now, and why it was necessary to write fiction to make the kind of book about Massachusetts she wanted to make. This deeply moving novel portrays being overwhelmed by the small moments of life, and documents the experience of being a criticized child.

At the beginning of Sheila Heti’s new book, “Pure Colour,” God looks at a first-draft world he should get around to changing. The reader meets protagonist Mira, who bonds with a woman named Annie. Then Mira’s father dies, and his soul enters her; astonishingly, their combined selves become a leaf on a tree. Annie longs to bring Mira out of leaf form. Annie is what Mira calls a fixer. “Pure Colour” is a singular book that needs to be accepted rather than interpreted. Sheila Heti speaks about how she couldn’t think or write in the same way she did before the death of her own father.

Journalist and author Tom Bissell’s new short fiction collection, “Creative Types: and Other Stories,” is about people trying to solve the problem of being themselves. Seven short stories describe the kinds of lives lived in Los Angeles with thoroughness, audacity, and complexity. 

Tessa Hadley’s new book, “Free Love” (Harper), is set in 1967 London at the beginning of the counterculture movement that swept the world. The protagonist, Phyllis, steps out of one sense of herself into another. She is a conservative mother of two until she crosses paths with the younger Nicky. 

Canadian-American author Antoine Wilson discusses the work he put into writing entertaining pages for his new short book, “Mouth to Mouth” (Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster), and the propulsive story is not finished until the very last sentence. 

“Punks: New & Selected Poems” is expansive poetry from John Keene, one of our time’s most notable writers. Seven sections offer different perspectives on what poetry can be: queer and Black, and much more than that. He joins Bookworm to discuss the difference between his prose and poetry.

After the deaths of her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and her daughter, Quintana, Joan Didion wrote "Blue Nights," the most personal and poetic book of her career. From 2011, she talks about aging, death, and the act of complete surrender that this devastating book required.

Honoree Fanonne Jeffers discusses writing about the full range of a community, its sexuality and gender, in her first fiction novel, “The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois.”

Master poet Honoree Fanonne Jeffers discusses her fiction debut, “The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois.”

Dave Eggers further discusses his new book, “The Every.”

“The Every” is the new book by Dave Eggers, a follow-up to his book “The Circle.”

Every bookstore is haunted, and Louise Erdrich’s new book, “The Sentence,” is about one.

“Martita, I Remember You/Martita, te recuerdo” is a bilingual new book by Sandra Cisneros.

Idiosyncratic short story writer Diane Williams discusses her new book, “How High? – That High.”

Mary Gaitskill’s "The Devil’s Treasure” features sections from her previous novels and an unfinished novel, commentary, illustrations, and a story inspired by a dream her younger self had.

Teresa K. Miller discusses “Borderline Fortune,” which won her the National Poetry Series, when she was about ready to give up on herself.

Atsuro Riley says he wrote “Heard-Hoard” with a kind of pacing he could feel in his body.

Jackie Kay’s “Bessie Smith: A Poet's Biography of a Blues Legend” is a terrific mixture of memoir and biography.

Rabih Alameddine speaks about being in love with the characters in his new novel, “The Wrong End of the Telescope."

Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning Richard Powers discusses his new novel, “Bewilderment,” which has been longlisted for the Booker Prize and National Book Award.

Santa Claus, James Turrell, “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter,” John Wayne Gacy, and, most of all, George Miles: these are parts of Dennis Cooper‘s discussion of his new book, “I Wished.”

Alice McDermott discusses the madness in fiction and her new book, “What About the Baby?: Some Thoughts on the Art of Fiction.”

About the interdependence between humans and trees, Richard Powers found a place for the non-human in literary fiction with his new book, The Overstory.

Ron and Russell Mael of Sparks discuss the small and significant differences between their original material and the final movie, “Annette.”

Rikki Ducornet speaks about writing in dreamtime for her new sci-fi book, “Trafik.”

Part two of two, a continuation of Yaa Gyasi’s discussion about the extraordinary explorations of her books “Homegoing” and “Transcendent Kingdom.”

Part one of two in which Yaa Gyasi discusses the myriad complexities of her novels “Transcendent Kingdom” and “Homegoing.”

Jack Skelley speaks about his new book, “Dennis Wilson and Charlie Manson,” and the bad Beach Boy’s intersection with a serial killer.

Editor/poet Emily Skillings and poet/critic John Yau speak about an iconic poet of the 21st century, John Ashbery, and his posthumous book, “Parallel Movement of the Hands: Five Unfinished Longer Works.”

Amy Gerstler's new book of poetry, “Index of Women,” is the product of a heart the world broke.

Joshua Cohen speaks about “The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor And Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family,” his new book that’s funny and tragic at the same time.

Joan Silber writes about life's strange surprises in her new book, “Secrets of Happiness."

Not a comicbook, but literally illustrated text, “Street Cop,” written by Robert Coover and inhabited by Art Spiegelman.

Edward St. Aubyn discusses his new book, “Double Blind,” and writing about the problems with consciousness that have long fascinated his consciousness.

Domenico Ingenito speaks about his book, “Beholding Beauty: Saʿdi of Shiraz and the Aesthetics of Desire in Medieval Persian Poetry.”

Biographer Brad Gooch reveals that he traveled 2500 miles to trace Rumi's footsteps, learned Persian and spent eight years to write “Rumi's Secret: The Life of the Sufi Poet of Love.”

Sandi Tan speaks about writing “Lurkers” with a gut feeling, and following an emotional momentum.

Rachel Cusk’s “Second Place” wants to render the sensations and apprehensions of living that are pretty much beyond language.

“Status Update,” the mini-narratives of George Toles, accompanied by magnificent art responses from Cliff Eyland.

Rachel Kushner’s “The Hard Crowd: Essays 2000-2020” is a career-spanning collection of nineteen essays.

Rita Dove’s new book of poetry, “Playlist for the Apocalypse,” goes in many different historical and personal directions.

Wayne Koestenbaum’s first book of short fiction, “The Cheerful Scapegoat,” is a spectacularly odd and original collection of whimsical, surreal, baroque, ribald, and heartbreaking fables.

Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Klara and the Sun” is a novel focused on a small group of people in a robot future.

A retrospective of Kazuo Ishiguro, the 2017 Nobel laureate in literature.

The debut novel of Robert Jones, Jr., “The Prophets,” is lyrical prose about the dimensionality and interiority of people.

Carol Edgarian’s “Vera” is the story of a strong, capable, and independent girl whose voice is the voice of the book.

A tribute to the co-founder of the highly influential independent bookstore and publisher City Lights, renowned poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Viet Thanh Nguyen discusses his new novel, “The Committed,” the follow-up to his Pulitzer-winning “The Sympathizer,” and the second entry in a planned trilogy. It brings Nguyen’s storytelling further into the philosophy of refugees, feminism, communism, anti-communism and more—the terror of both the American war in Vietnam and the French presence in Vietnam, along with the Vietnamese presence in America andFrance. This is duality enacted as a writing method; this is a union between theory and fiction. A novel of ideas and politics and history and theory, but also a crime novel. A novel you’re not born knowing how to read, and you might have to reread it, this is exciting contemporary literature.

David Duchovny speaks about his new novel, “Truly Like Lightning,” and its plot that matters.

Part two of two: George Saunders speaks about his new book, “A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life."

The first in a two-parter with George Saunders discussing his new book, "A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life."

Rebecca Sacks discusses her novel, “City of a Thousand Gates,” which explores the Palestinian-Israeli conflict by testing its boundaries.

Those who read to write will want to hear Eileen Myles talk about “For Now,” which is part of the "Why I Write" series from Yale University Press.

Venerated critic Harold Bloom’s final book “Take Arms Against a Sea of Troubles: The Power of the Reader’s Mind over a Universe of Death” is discussed by the poets Alan Felsenthal and Peter Cole.

David Rieff discusses “Divorcing” by Susan Taubes: the reimagined end of an autobiographical marriage.

Garth Greenwell discusses seeking human truths by writing into an abyss, and his new novel Cleanness.

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore’s new book “The Freezer Door” explores the idea of radical visions not predicated on dominant forms.

Jen Craig discusses writing “Panthers and the Museum of Fire,” a short and expansive book that feels immense, rich and complex.

Douglas Stuart’s “Shuggie Bain” is not a book to miss.

Nicole Krauss speaks about subconscious magic and realism combining through the art of writing, and her new book of short stories, “To Be a Man.”

Mauro Javier Cárdenas discusses reimagining narrative possibilities with his new book, “Aphasia."

Douglas Stuart’s “Shuggie Bain” is not a book to miss.

Charles Yu’s "Interior Chinatown" is a contemporary novel about dealing with the difficulty of being whoever you are. 

Walter Mosley’s “The Awkward Black Man” is a new book of short stories that brings readers into the middle of the experience of people today.

Barbara Kingsolver discusses crossing genres of writing and her second book of poetry, “How to Fly (In Ten Thousand Easy Lessons).”

Seventy-one-year-old Jorge Luis Borges as seen through the eyes of twenty-one-year-old Jay Parini in “Borges and Me: An Encounter.”

“How to Carry Water: Selected Poems of Lucille Clifton,” edited by Aracelis Girmay, is a literary special treat.

Mitch Sisskind discusses writing humorous poetry and his new book, “Collected Poems 2005-2020."

Henri Cole is a really sensational poet even for people who may not think poetry can be sensational. He works for the universe and he discusses his new book of poems “Blizzard” on Bookworm.

Sarah Shun-lien Bynum’s “Likes” is a layered book of nine short stories.

Several kinds of novels in one, Edmund White’s “A Saint from Texas” is so good you might forget a novel can be this good.

Elizabeth Wetmore’s “Valentine” is an impressive demonstration of the power of the voices of women.

Elizabeth Wetmore discusses her debut novel, “Valentine,” and Southern conservatism that wants to steer clear of the uglier parts of life.

Life and story go hand in hand in Margot Livesey’s “The Boy in the Field.”

Daphne Merkin discusses what normative means, the concept of a normal looking life, and her new novel, “22 Minutes of Unconditional Love”.

From the archives: obliquely about Zadie Smith's "On Beauty", this intense, abstract conversation is about what a novel is.

History, autobiography, travelogue—a hybrid form—"Young Heroes of the Soviet Union: A Memoir and a Reckoning", by Alex Halberst.

Scott Spencer’s new novel, “An Ocean Without a Shore,” is about a life seeped in unfulfilled desires.

The co-producer of Bookworm, Shawn Michael Sullivan, was able to rebroadcast one of his favorite shows, between Michael Silverblatt and Horacio Castellanos Moya, regarding Senselessness.

Fowzia Karimi speaks about the art of the novel, and designing Above Us the Milky Way.

Mark Z. Danielewski’s The Little Blue Kite is a generous and big-hearted children’s book about creating a spacious mind, with room for others.

Anthologist André Naffis-Sahely says he provided a historical perspective to The Heart of a Stranger: An Anthology of Exile Literature.

Victoria Chang discusses Love, Love, her children’s novel written in verse—poetry written for children.

Victoria Chang’s Obit is a poetry book about the impact of death on the living.

Benjamin Moser recently won a Pulitzer Prize for his biography Sontag: Her Life and Work. 

In this show from the archives, he talks about Susan Sontag‘s ideology: reading more books, going to more plays, traveling more, learning more, taking learning seriously, and taking culture seriously.

Daniel Kehlmann describes his new novel, Tyll, as dark, frightening, and murky—in a good way.

Youthful nihilism, contradictory impulses, preferences and desires catch up with Rob Doyle in his explicitly autobiographical novel Threshold.

Ariana Reines discusses her A Sand Book poetry being centered around a theme of hiding: running away and trying to escape.

Charles North describes Everything and Other Poems as “messy poetry” without the formal demands of his earlier work.

Harry Dodge’s My Meteorite: Or, Without the Random There Can Be No New Thing shifts its scale from the cosmos to viruses.

Recollections of My Nonexistence is a personal, cultural, political, and journalistic hybrid narrative about the formative years in the life of Rebecca Solnit.

Stephen Wright’s Processed Cheese finds hilarity in the tragedy of contemporary life.

Jenny Offill’s Weather is a book about people living very much in our times.

Steven Sater’s Alice By Heart wants to reaffirm the power of the imagination, and inspire readers to reignite the wonder in themselves.

Charles Yu’s "Interior Chinatown" has won the 2020 National Book Award for fiction. In February 2020, Charles Yu spoke with KCRW's Michael Silverblatt in a live edition of Bookworm. 

A discovery readers have been waiting for, more Silvina Ocampo finally translated into English: The Promise and Forgotten Journey.

One of the first books within a huge movement that restored respectability to memoirs, This Boy’s Life celebrates its thirtieth anniversary, and Tobias Wolff celebrates thirty years since being on Bookworm.

Love and I, poems by Fanny Howe, about love, the failure of love, and the transformation of love over the years.

Garth Greenwell discusses seeking human truths by writing into an abyss, and his new novel Cleanness.

Jonathan Blum wrote characters with open destinies, in stories with open endings, for his new book of short stories, The Usual Uncertainties.

Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station and 10:04 find their synthesis in The Topeka School, the third in his Hegelian trilogy.

In André Aciman’s Find Me, strokes of luck are destiny.

Again Deborah Eisenberg demonstrates herself as a masterful and electric writer, in her new collection of seven stories, Your Duck Is My Duck.

Adina Hoffman’s "Ben Hecht: Fighting Words, Moving Pictures" is about a man of multitudes.

And How Are You, Dr. Sacks?: A Biographical Memoir of Oliver Sacks by Lawrence Weschler is a book that can only be itself.

From the archives, Ocean Vuong speaks of leaving his thumbprint on his new novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. Alternate modes of storytelling are discussed, as are narratives without intrinsic conflict. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who doesn’t read English; it is about finding joy in innovative and creative survival.

Lynda Barry’s Making Comics is a how-to graphic novel guide for people who gave up on drawing.

Jeanette Winterson’s Frankissstein: A Love Story is about time travel and body travel.

Lynda Barry and Chris Ware discuss the culture of comics, and their new books, Making Comics and Rusty Brown. 

John Freeman and Robin Coste Lewis discuss Freeman’s: The Best New Writing on California.

In tribute, from the archives, a conversation with Harold Bloom (1930-2019) in his apartment to talk about his book, The Shadow of a Great Rock: A Literary Appreciation of the King James Bible. A discussion officially about the great King James translation of the Old and New Testaments. But when you talk with Harold Bloom, you talk about everything—politics, poetry, teaching, aging, reading and ultimately, respect.

Salman Rushdie’s Quichotte is explored as a modern take on the novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, with the opera Don Quichotte by Jules Massenet a strong influence.

Salman Rushdie’s Quichotte depicts the pleasures of fiction.

The structure of Emma Donoghue’s Akin leads the reader through one surprise after another.

Katya Apekina’s novel The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish has a dark sense of humor, and an interest in the soul.

Nobel Laureate, Toni Morrison passed away this week at 88 years of age.  Bookworm is rebroadcasting a 2009 conversation with her about her novel, A Mercy.*

Ocean Vuong speaks of leaving his thumbprint within his new novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous.

Editor/poet David Trinidad, poet Amy Gerstler, and publisher Ruth Greenstein reflect on the dynamic mind behind Punk Rock is Cool for the End of the World: Poems and Notebooks of Ed Smith.

A stunning graphic novel by one of the medium’s greatest creators, Seth’s Clyde Fans is about people living in a memory fog, and the strange reverie that life takes on when one grows older.

About the interdependence between humans and trees, Richard Powers found a place for the non-human in literary fiction with his new book, The Overstory.

The stories in Heads of the Colored People, by Nafissa Thompson-Spires, try to capture what’s human in what otherwise may only be trends.

In Nathan Englander’s kaddish.com, a secular Jewish son experiments with the task of shepherding his father’s soul safely to rest.

Chris Cander’s The Weight of a Piano explores characters with passionate attachments to things that have been lost. 

In Yiyun Li’s Where Reasons End, a mother discovers a place where she can talk to her son who committed suicide.

Marlon James discusses the endlessly beautiful and brutal world of Black Leopard, Red Wolf, the first novel in The Dark Star Trilogy. 

Tosh Berman’s memoir, Tosh: Growing Up in Wallace Berman’s World, is a depiction of culture brought into Los Angeles from the rest of the world: reinvented to be here.

Evolution is a collection of all-new material by Eileen Myles, whose inspired poetry is a form of communication.

Ben Fountain writes with equal opportunity vexation, trying to make sense of what we’re doing in our lives, in his new book Beautiful Country Burn Again.

Susan Orlean’s The Library Book is about the cultural institution of libraries, with each chapter a source of its own excitement.

Edward St. Aubyn’s Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, Mother’s Milk, and At Last: The Complete Patrick Melrose Novels, recently adapted into a five-episode limited series on Showtime.

Samuel Nicholson edited three of Joshua Cohen’s books at Random House, including his recent collection of nonfiction, ATTENTION: Dispatches from a Land of Distraction.

Joshua Cohen’s collection of nonfiction, ATTENTION: Dispatches from a Land of Distraction, examines the effect of the internet and technology on the human mind.

B. Catling further discusses learning to write The Vorhh Trilogy by being within it.

In B. Catling’s The Vorrh Trilogy, a vast surrealist tapestry comes into being; cooperating with the reader’s desire.

Christian Kracht’s The Dead is an expectations bending book with more tricks than a circus.

Lydia Millet’s Fight No More is a book of improvised stories about people who live improvised lives in Los Angeles.

David Sedaris is hilarious but that’s just the obvious. He discusses the art of melancholy, and mortality, topics in his new book of humorous stories, Calypso.

We share an episode of a KCRW podcast produced in collaboration with McSweeney's.

Characters in Lauren Groff’s collection of stories, Florida, try to meet the challenges of staying alive while life becomes more and more difficult.

In Days of Awe: Stories, A.M. Homes writes about characters who turn out not to be who they hoped to be, and unable to escape who they are.

Bewildered imagination finds a home in the stories of Rita Bullwinkel's Belly Up.

Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight alters the rules about how big a novel’s canvas can be; it gives the feeling of completeness without telling all the secrets.

Michael Ondaatje fully embraces the fun of storytelling in this miracle of a novel, Warlight.

Mary Gaitskill’s collection of essays, Somebody with a Little Hammer, explores prismatic perspectives on rich topics, including literature.

Joyce Carol Oates discusses A Book of American Martyrs, a novel about what women are going to make of the American dream.

Leslie Jamison’s The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath is a book about the nightmare of feeling not enough, Jamison travels all 360 degrees of wanting to be the best and the worst, and has a great struggle to live in the middle ground.

Carol Muske-Dukes discusses her book, Blue Rose. The poetry is written at the highest level but it’s about daily life: poetry as life story.

Christine Schutt says her writing takes place in a danger zone. In Pure Hollywood, one novella and ten stories, she writes beyond weird, at a level that both frightens and empowers.

Devastatingly beautiful, soulful, a fulfillment of a promise to his goddaughter, Junot Diaz’s Islandborn offers a new map into children’s books.

A novel trapped in the mind of a very unusual man. Lynne Tillman writes with wit that makes the reader dance.

A transcendent apocalyptic satire, an outrageous improvisation of a book, embedded with the rhythms of American prose, Sean Penn discusses his first novel, Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff.

Roberta Allen says every truth can work as fiction. She discusses writing into the essence of a story. The Princess of Herself is interconnected stories of familiar but monstrous people not normally written about.

Two brilliant writers talk about a brilliant writer: Ann Beattie and Richard Bausch discuss the haunted dreamscapes of the short fiction of Peter Taylor.

For The Monk of Mokha, Dave Eggers writes the story of Mokhtar Alkhanshali bridging the country of his ancestors with the country where he lives. This is a conversation about the fate of immigrant life in America.

André Aciman takes the intensity, complexity, and variety of his Call Me by Your Name still further in his new novel, Enigma Variations.

Scott McClanahan discusses two of his close-to- the-bone and personal novels: The Sarah Book and Crapalachia: A Biography of Place.

Víctor Terán and David Shook discuss the music of Isthmus Zapotec and poetry translated for Like A New Sun.

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.

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

Ryan Gattis reveals that one day he got a call, asking if he'd like to watch a former gang member crack a safe.  Thus, the novel Safe was born.  

The Dream Colony: A Life in Art is a posthumous memoir that captures the dazzling verbal gifts of Los Angeles art curator Walter Hopps.  

Trained as an architect, Roy reveals that she structured her novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness like an Indian metropolis where ancient neighborhoods collide with modern urban planning.  

Quantum physics, the theory of relativity, and the miracle of the solar system fuel Novel Explosives, Jim Gauer’s ambitious and challenging novel.

In the family novel, Moving Kings, Joshua Cohen weaves together the tragedy of Israeli occupation with an American housing crisis.

Poet and translator Peter Cole reveals that his intention is to yoke together beauty and terror in his new book Hymns & Qualms: New and Selected Poems and Translations.

Zachary Mason insists that Void Star is not cyber-punk  Although it is set more than 100 years in the future during climate catastrophe, he describes the novel as literary fiction that uses science fiction and genre elements.

Alan Felsenthal's first book of poetry, Lowly, moves in the direction of the visionary, the mystical and the metaphysical.

Written about a time when she was hospitalized for depression, Yiyun Li's Dear Friend, from My Life, I Write to You in Your Life is a combination of memoir and essay.  She believes that cherished writers saved her from sorrow and suicidal ideation.

In his novel House of Names, Colm Tóibín finds, in adapting Greek tragedy, a home for all of his old concerns and room for new ones, too.

In Claudio Magris' Blameless, a museum of the implements of war and destruction is created to inspire peace. But this conversation is not just about war and peace.

Biographer Brad Gooch reveals that he traveled 2500 miles to trace Rumi's footsteps, learned Persian and spent eight years to write Rumi's Secret: The Life of the Sufi Poet of Love.

Has the feeling of doom become our weather? If so, Richard Bausch says he contends with contemporary life by writing about people coping with loss and sorrow.

Poet Ron Padgett reveals that in the 1960s, he found a dusty novel in a Manhattan bookstore. Originally written for teenage girls during World War I, Padgett has been playfully rewriting it ever since.

Steven Moore has gathered his book reviews and essays that take us from the Beats and the Fifties to practically yesterday or even tomorrow. 

Talamantez Brolaski is trans-gender and describes himself as a multi-gendered, racial and linguistic mongrel.  His poems chart a journey out of pain, confusion and darkness into a visionary state.

Selin, the heroine of Batuman’s autobiographical first novel, The Idiot, is an 18-year-old Harvard freshman of Turkish-American descent.  Set in 1995, the novel observes the rise of internet culture.  

Screenwriter and critic George Toles' study of writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson focuses on his more recent films, including Punch-Drunk Love, There Will Be Blood and The Master. Toles values tracking his deepest personal experiences while watching a movie.

My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Emil Ferris' debut graphic novel, is the diary of a ten-year-old girl obsessed with monsters who also believes she herself is a werewolf. 

Gary Groth, editor of Fantagraphics, publisher of some of the most notable graphic novels today, discusses the rise of comics, what makes a good graphic novel, and what his selection process is like.

Álvaro Enrigue's Sudden Death is the wild tale of a tennis match between the poet Francisco de Quevedo and the artist Caravaggio that transcends time and involves other historically transformative, and often combative, figures. Enrigue, who calls his impulse to write "visceral and erratic," was angered into starting this book by the 2008 financial crisis.

Rachel Cusk's novel Transit is the second in a planned trilogy. Cusk believes that humans have an innate grasp of form, a gift that makes us story-tellers. But the stories we tell ourselves can become traps.

In Erickson's intense, absorbing novel, the Twin Towers suddenly re-appear in the Dakota Badlands. This road novel is a trip through a phantom country where the American dream was never realized.

The North Koreans have tested a weapon called NK3, a weaponized nano-bacterium designed to confuse South Koreans. The test has spread around the world. As a result, the world has lost its memory. 

Padgett's poems stand in for the poems written by a bus driver in the Jim Jarmusch movie Paterson. Padgett experiences writing poetry as a natural activity, rather like brushing his teeth.

In the second half of our conversation with Ottessa Moshfegh, the author discusses her discomfort in this world but admits that there is a touch of self-parody in the title of this collection of stories. 

In the first of two conversations with Ottessa Moshfegh, the author reveals that she doesn't feel comfortable in this world. Her characters long for another world, as does Moshfegh.

Lynne Tillman's The Complete Madame Realism and Other Stories, is a unique blend of short fiction, essays, and philosophical musings that defy categorization. 

In Don DeLillo's latest novel, Zero K, the practice of cryonics or freezing oneself to be awakened later, is in full, but secret swing.

Colson Whitehead's new great American novel depicts a real underground railroad that transports a fugitive slave to stops that defy time and history, highlighting the daily struggles of black people, past and present.

Patrick Ness' A Monster Calls – about a boy facing tremendous conflict with a bully at school, well-meaning inattentive teachers, and a dying mother – was actually already a story begun by another writer, who died before finishing it.

Rabih Alameddine's The Angel of History takes place as much in the protagonist's head as it does in a psych ward where he checks himself in for a bit of rest while he battles the voices in his head.

Mitch Sisskind's Do Not Be a Gentleman When You Say Goodnight is a distillation of nearly fifty years of brilliant comic writing.  

When novelist Peter Orner's father died, he found himself unable to write. At the same time, his marriage fell apart. He consoled himself by reading and started to write responses to the literature that gave him comfort. 

Rapper, poet, playwright and now novelist, Kate Tempest always knew she would write The Bricks that Built the Houses as an accompaniment to the characters in her record Everybody Down. (Rebroadcast)

TC Boyle's The Terranauts centers around eight earth explorers who lock themselves up in E2, a biodome created to mimic earth and test the viability of a self-sustained environment. But what happens between the eight terranauts and their mission control has a bigger impact on sustainability than science had counted on.

Tessa Hadley's book, The Past, has at its center a summer vacation home, and the four middle-aged siblings who come together to decide whether to sell it or not. 

Ann Patchett's latest novel, Commonwealth, follows fifty-two years in the life of a large family. The idea of the book came to her because as a bookstore owner, she saw that what was missing from the shelves was the story of a big, modern family.

The hero of Here I Am is a pun-loving television writer who is pummeled by the loss of everything he values.  This novel expands a family crisis into a global crisis which threatens the state of Israel.

Nicholson Baker's Substitute: Going to School with a Thousand Kids was born of a desire to write a book articulating his theories about education – theories based on having had kids in school. Realizing his premise was weak, as he'd never been a teacher, he embarked on the adventure of a lifetime by becoming a substitute teacher. 

Since memory is not only malleable but unreliable, which version of the truth will prevail?

Another Brooklyn, award-winning Young Adult novelist Jacqueline Woodson's first novel for adults in twenty years, tells the story of childhood friends as they grow into women. 

An ugly young dwarf girl transforms first into a beauty, then into a tall woman, then into a wolf. 

In Auschwitz, the infamous Dr. Mengele conducted horrifying physical and psychological experiments on concentration camp prisoners. Affinity Konar's Mischling (meaning mixed blood) is the story of twin sisters who find themselves imprisoned in Dr. Mengele's "zoo."

Adam Fitzgerald's poetry in George Washington: Poems comes across as playful while exploring the concept of Americana and what that means. 

Krys Lee's first novel dramatizes boundaries and borders – not just political ones but those that complicate human relationships.  

A married couple wind up in a wasteland of foreclosed houses and abandoned homes.

Tom McCarthy's Satin Island features a protagonist who, as his company's corporate anthropologist, has been given the enormous task of compiling a report summing up the modern era.

In his travels to more than 100 countries – some dangerous, some surprisingly not – Tom Lutz finds that the more places he goes, the more the world leaves him a little bit lost.

Neither a novel nor a collection of stories, the "fictions" in She  weave together a composite view of Los Angeles.  

A tale of the ordinary, everyday quest for contentedness -- written entirely in heroic couplets.

Vivian Gornick's memoir The Odd Woman and the City takes us on a tour of a life that is lived by walking, observing and talking. Gornick keeps her eyes open, and does she ever have a mouth on her!

Paradoxically, Geoff Dyer begins his attempt to locate America by first traveling to Tahiti. There, he discovers that Gauguin’s vision of it no longer exists – if it ever really did. Can he find the soul of America in its landscapes?

In part two of this conversation about LaRose – Louise Erdrich's novel about an act of restorative justice that tests the boundaries between two families – the discussion explores the non-linear form the novel moves in towards seeking balance and resolution.

In Louise Erdrich's LaRose, a terrible tragedy forces two families to resort to a form of traditional "restorative justice" in which one son must be given to replace the loss of another. Erdrich talks about this act as an attempt at restoring balance in a tight knit community where healing can take generations.

Joyce Carol Oates raises questions about memory – ethics, what it means to love, identity, and the ability to engage, and takes us on a trip down memory lane with a reading from a previous memoir recounting her favorite bad-for-you childhood foods. 

A. Scott Berg's Max Perkins: Editor of Genius is the biography of Maxwell Perkins, a long time Scribner editor who worked with the likes of Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe. 

John Keene takes classic American narratives and stands them on their heads. In North and South American tales, he writes about the "others" (Indians, blacks, queers) to re-examine stories we think we know. 

Despite 20 years of study, John D'Agata believes that we're still in the "Wild West" of coming to terms with the essay, its long heritage and its creation.

Originally commissioned to write a novel for Jumex, a Mexican beverage company and supporter of the arts, Luiselli instead chose to write a novel for Jumex's factory workers. 

Greenwell's first novel examines the relationship between an American teacher in Bulgaria with a male prostitute.

After four acclaimed short story collections, Means' first novel takes on the Vietnam War.

Helen Macdonald's new book is her account of working through her grief over her father's death by adopting and training a goshawk.

The characters of Christopher Sorrentino's novel are unreliable narrators. They're liars who hide the truth, not only from themselves but ultimately from the reader. 

Greg Jackson's new collection of eight stories follows the lives of youngish people of privilege on their journey to deconstruct just what their destination is supposed to be. But his characters might be running up against the mystery of themselves.