Bookworm

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.

Daniel Mendelsohn’s Ecstasy and Terror: From the Greeks to Game of Thrones is an uncommon collection of essays that intertwine the personal with the intellectual and critical.

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.

Chris Ware’s Rusty Brown depicts life the way it is: jam packed with details, the closer you look the ever more there is.

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.

Benjamin Moser’s Sontag: Her Life and Work is interested in the writing and ideas of Susan Sontag.