Bookworm

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.