Bookworm

Yellow Bay Writer's Workshop Bill Kitteredge and Annick Smicth, the founding directors of the Yellow Bay Writer's Workshop in Montana, tell about what goes on at one of the most spirited summer writing workshops in America.

Mark Doty Heaven's Coast, Atlantis (Harper Collins) Poet Mark Doty's memoir is an expression of grief over his lover's death. How do prose and poetry compare as vehicles for emotion?

Who Owns the West? William Kittredge, the big-hearted, grouchy guru of the literary non-fiction movement, talks about the American West and good writing.

Atticus Ron Hansen has written a noir novel with theological underpinnings. Is the moral novelist a moral man?

David Foster Wallace has written the ultimate mega-meta novel, a 1078-page whopper. The surprise is that this mind-stunner may capture the imagination of a new generation of readers.

Pollen Adventures in cyberspace. A first--Bookworm goes sci.fi. with the author of Vurt! Is there a boundary between science fiction and literature?

Human Wishes After an analysis of the role that pleasure and pain play in his poetry, our poet laureate discusses contemporary literary criticism.

Good Benito; Einstein's Dreams Lightman discusses loneliness: the curse of the scientist and the rest of us, as well.

The Law of Enclosures A discussion about the strategies of structure--how Peck disassembles chronology to tell the story of an unhappy marriage.

Mr. Ives' Christmas Oscar Hijuelos on the difficulty of writing a contemporary tale of faith.

The Moor's Last Sigh Part I: The focus is on Salman Rushdie's writing: its themes, structures, techniques and styles. The subjects include mothers, love, cartoons, James Joyce and, only occasionally, the fatwa. Part II: Rushdie on the art of layering: the organization of the swarms of characters, stories and styles that crawl, teem and fly through The Moor's Last Sigh.

Translators Ron Padgett and Garrett White on the work of the rip-roaring, fire-snorting French poet, Blaise Cendrars.

Morality Play History and fiction-writing. The Booker Prize winner talks about how he uses the past as a commentary on the present.

How to Read an Unwritten Language Graham began by writing prose poems, graduated to short stories and has no produced a novel. It's a special sort of a novel--mystical, philosophical and respectful of the language of inanimate objects.

The Great Fires:Poems 1982-1992The poet and adult passion: An improvisation on the nature of love, poetry's moral function and the finality of death.

Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man Norman Mailer's examination of Picasso provokes a discussion of three Mailer obsessions: women, art and crime.

In two new novels, Joyce Carol Oates has created disturbing male narrators. How do such dark creations affect the author's life?

The Hundred Secret Senses Amy Tan, an instinctual writer, discusses the gradual steps she has taken toward mastering the craft of novel-writing.

The politics of gender. When Theodore Roszak re-writes Mary Shelly, is he committing an act of gender aggression?

A conversation with Rick Moody about the literary values of Generation X.