Bookworm

Longtime friend and editor of Bookworm, Alan Howard, returns to host this episode, the last of 10 shows to journey through Bookworm’s 33 years and offer a retrospective look at Michael’s accomplishments on behalf of writers and readers. For decades Michael has read almost all of a writer’s work, not just the book which has been most recently published. Howard has watched writers glow as they realize that they’ve been seriously witnessed by the ultimate Bookworm. All of the writers on today’s show have become friends of Michael’s and of Bookworm. We’ll hear from rock band Sparks (brothers Ron and Russell Mael), Art Spiegelman, Françoise Mouly, Ann Beattie, Susan Sontag, and Dennis Cooper.

Close friend of Michael Silverblatt’s and Bookworm editor for 30 years, Alan Howard guest hosts this episode on grief and loss. When the two met more than 33 years ago, Michael’s first words were, “What are you reading?” It was a question that brought Howard back to literature. Over the years, Michael did the same for thousands of listeners. With Bookworm, he was determined to return literary fiction and poetry to the center of the zeitgeist. In the process, he faced the realities of loss and grief. In conversation after conversation with writers he was forging collegial friendships with, loss itself was a frequent topic of those friendships and conversations. We’ll hear from Marilynne Robinson, Joan Didion, Jim Krusoe, Steve Erickson, Dave Eggers, and Mary Ruefle.

Poet, author, and co-founder of The Song Cave, Alan Felsenthal guest hosts this episode’s focus on poetry. As a close friend and mentee of Michael Silverblatt’s, Felsenthal recalls Michael’s revelation that he had trouble finding his way into poetry until he had several formative experiences, including one he described in 2019 during a Walt Whitman tribute. We’ll hear from that tribute with poet Pattiann Rogers reading Whitman. We’ll also hear from poets John Ashbery, Coral Bracho, Forrest Gander, and Lucille Clifton.

Prolific author Dave Eggers, founder of McSweeney's, co-founder of 826 National, and other significant projects, first met Micheal Silverblatt in 2000, upon the publication of his first book –– a critically acclaimed memoir whose title he calls, "obnoxious." They formed a friendship over 22 years of conversation. This episode, the third in a series to examine what novelist Russell Banks called the Story of America, is guest-hosted by Eggers. We’ll hear excerpts of Bookworm shows that discuss this story from E.L. Doctorow, Valeria Luiselli, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Gore Vidal.

Prolific author Dave Eggers, founder of McSweeney's, co-founder of 826 National, and other significant projects, first met Micheal Silverblatt in 2000, upon the publication of his first book –– a critically acclaimed memoir whose title he calls, "obnoxious." They formed a friendship over 22 years of conversation. In this episode, Eggers picks up the thread through what novelist Russell Banks called the Story of America. We’ll hear from Edward P. Jones, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, and Marilynne Robinson as they speak about slavery, race, and history.

Claudia Rankine, award-winning poet and author of Citizen: An American Lyric, a book-length poem about the pernicious racism of American daily life, hosts the first of a three-part episode on the story of America, as told through literary fiction. Over the decades Michael Silverblatt spoke with hundreds of writers about America — its foundation, its history, its challenges, and its culture. This episode reveals the story of America as the story of race. We’ll hear from David Foster Wallace, Russell Banks, Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, William H. Gass, Joan Didion, and Claudia Rankine herself.

Guest host Mary Corey, teacher of American history at UCLA and author of "The World Through a Monocle" about The New Yorker Magazine, teaches a course on American popular culture that explores the blurry lines between perceived high culture and what we think of as popular culture. In this episode, Corey takes us through excerpts of Bookworm conversations with lauded boho rocker Patti Smith, writer and brilliant wit Fran Lebowitz, and outré filmmaker John Waters. Each of these rebel artists has left a mark on our national culture and all of them are serious readers, making up a confederacy of Bookworms.

The Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually since 1901 to an author from any country who has, in the words of the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, “In the field of literature produced the most outstanding work in an idealistic direction.” Michael Silverblatt spoke with eight Nobel Prize laureates. In part 1 of the Laureates show, we heard from four of them. In this second part, we’ll be hearing excerpts from: Kazuo Ishiguro, Mario Vargas Llosa, Doris Lessing, Czesław Miłosz, and Robert Hass speaking about Milosz.

The Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually since 1901 to an author from any country who has, in the words of the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, “In the field of literature produced the most outstanding work in an idealistic direction.” Michael Silverblatt spoke with eight Nobel Prize laureates. In part 1 of The Nobel Laureates, we’ll be hearing from four of them: Toni Morrison, Wole Soyinka, Orhan Pamuk, and Seamus Heaney.

This episode takes us through the arc of Bookworm’s existence: Michael started the program with worries about the future of literature, found hope in the up-and-coming new writers, and proceeded to highlight authors of diverse backgrounds, cultures, and geographies.

Los Angeles-based author Michelle Huneven joins Evan Kleiman to discuss her latest book, “Search.” In this engaging and funny literary fiction novel, main character Dana Potowski writes a memoir that describes the steps of her Unitarian Universalist Church congregation’s year-long search for its new minister and the challenges they encounter.

Natalia Molina tells the story of Nayarit, her grandmother’s Mexican restaurant, a space that became a cherished hub for immigrants and the LGBTQ community in Echo Park. 

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.”

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

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

Paul Tran says that poetry can live on a page. This show discusses the abundant life in their debut poetry book, “All the Flowers Kneeling.” Tran joins guest host Shawn Sullivan to explore the book’s four sections as well as its notes.

Writer Tobias Wolff speaks about a dark book that remains loving, Harry Crews 1978 classic “A Childhood: The Biography of a Place.” Wolff wrote the foreword to its Penguin Classics re-release, which joins a number of Crews’ works in the series. 

Acclaimed novelist, poet, and essayist Tao Lin (“Taipei,” “Shoplifting from American Apparel”) speaks about growing as a writer, and growing his idea of himself in a book, including his latest, “Leave Society,” about the blurred lines between life and fiction. 

Author Zac Smith speaks about the extreme juxtaposition of the very short, dense, and clipped stories in his new book, “Everything is Totally Fine.” He says that by removing a lot of exposition, he was able to create intense emotions in a small space. His energetic and thoughtful stories of absurdity and minutiae are things that could not be said any other way, and usually don’t get said. Plus, special guest Tao Lin explains why “Everything is Totally Fine” inspired him to reopen his Muumuu House imprint after it was closed for more than ten years.

Brit Bennett pushes questions of race and color to their extremes in her new novel, The Vanishing Half.

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.”

Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes (Knopf) A collection of lyrics from the first half of Stephen Sondheim's career, along with insights into the art of songwriting for the theater. In this 2010 conversation, he explains why a song that may be "perfect" can be wrong for its dramatic moment in a show. This famous perfectionist reveals how much can go wrong.

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.

Ben’s life falls down around him, and he’s the protagonist, in A Wonderful Stroke of Luck, by master writer Ann Beattie.

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.

Brit Bennett pushes questions of race and color to their extremes in her new novel, The Vanishing Half.

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.

Dunce, by Mary Ruefle, finds meaning everywhere.

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

The eerie realism of Charles Baxter reaches an apotheosis in his new novel, “The Sun Collective.”

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. 

Marilynne Robinson’s “Jack” is a book that Bookworms have been eager to read: the fourth volume of her multi-award-winning Gilead novels.

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.

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.

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.

Language-loving twin sisters discover themselves united by passion but separated by needs in The Grammarians, the eleventh book by Cathleen Schine.

Dunce, by Mary Ruefle, finds meaning everywhere.

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

Sarah Rose Etter’s The Book of X belongs to a literary conversation about the grotesque and surreal.

Characters with DNA, blood and soul populate forty three stories and a novella by Peter Orner: Maggie Brown & Others.

From the archives, a highly resonate conversation with Toni Morrison about transfiguring love, as portrayed in her novel Beloved.

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.*

Literary legends Captain Ahab and Captain Nemo are pitted against each other by real life engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel in Howard Rodman’s The Great Eastern.

The poetry in Ariana Reines's A Sand Book is centered around the theme of hiding: running away and trying to escape.

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.

David Trinidad’s Swinging on a Star is a two-part collection of poems that put the human in pop culture.

 Laila Lalami’s The Other Americans is a polyphonic novel about social class and identity, with a revelation in every chapter.

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.

Ben’s life falls down around him, and he’s the protagonist, in A Wonderful Stroke of Luck, by master writer Ann Beattie.

The Parade, by Dave Eggers, is a book of creeping dread, where every worst thing is possible, and rational reason leads one to expect that the worst is not over.

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.

Seventy sonnets written in the first two hundred days of Trump's presidency, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, by Terrance Hayes, flies out of the cages of literary, cultural, and historical forms. Warning: Today's episode contains strong language that some listeners may find offensive. 

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.

Her fourth book, which took her six years to write, An American Marriage brought Tayari Jones to the attention of Oprah’s Book Club. 

John Lanchester’s The Wall is a wild love story with a dystopian backdrop.

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. 

Valeria Luiselli's Lost Children Archive tells the story of a family by combining the American road trip subgenre with the Latin American tradition of an inward journey. 

Her nature oppositional, Elizabeth McCracken’s Bowlaway is a sad, funny, hilarious, and melancholic novel.

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. 

Sea Monsters is a fascinatingly consistent and exquisitely shaped novel by Chloe Aridjis.

Bookworm alumnus Dennis Cooper, and collaborator Zac Farley, discuss the creative impulses behind their film Permanent Green Light.

A novel that presents ambiguity as a constant feature of modern life, Hark is a book full of tensions, written with Sam Lipsyte’s fine grain strangeness, and absent of easy answers.

A writer of ten novels in French, Holy Lands is the first novel by Amanda Sthers to appear in English, translated by herself.

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.

Mary Ruefle reads the entirety of her glorious and gruesome essay about shrunken heads, the title essay in her book My Private Property.

The original and indescribable writing of Diane Williams is showcased in over three hundred dazzling new and previously published shorts fictions from six releases, The Collected Stories of Diane Williams.

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

John Wray discusses writing about the extremes of subjectivity, and breaking the reader of expectations in his new novel, Godsend.

Jeff Jackson’s Destroy All Monsters: The Last Rock Novel comes at the same story from radically different angles that echo and rewrite each other.

A voluminous correspondence of an intellectual friendship between two literary geniuses,  Questioning Minds: The Letters of Guy Davenport and Hugh Kenner, edited by Edward M. Burns.

Dramatic, emotional, and philosophical, Katherine Weber’s, Still Life with Monkey, is a profound book written in the old style, with depths orchestrated by the author.

In Barbara Kingsolver’s Unsheltered, characters feel as if they did what was right in life, but get a bad deal at the end of their lives.

Mythical and lyrical, written in love, Leland de la Durantaye’s debut novel Hannah Versus the Tree is original work that speaks to our moment.

The restless imagination of Brian Phillips brings lyrical essays to a narrative border in his debut book, Impossible Owls.

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.

Beauty and despair woven into their history, twelve multigenerational urban Native Americans find ways to live in Tommy Orange’s There There.

Gary Shteyngart’s Lake Success is about a hedge-fund manager billionaire who has lost track of what he once cared about and loved.

French Exit by Patrick deWitt, a vastly amusing novel about a spider woman.

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.

Buffalo Trace: A Threefold Vibration, by Mary Cappello, James Morrison, and Jean Walton, is a trio of novella-length autographical essays about graduate school students who love to read.

Joshua Mattson’s experimental debut novel, A Short Film About Disappointment, pulls the rug out from under the reader.

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.