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Unemployed, Living In A Caravan — And Now, Winner Of A $165,000 Literary Prize

3:10pm March 01, 2017

by Colin Dwyer

Ali Cobby Eckermann, an Australian indigenous poet forcibly taken from her family as a child, discovered without warning last week she had just won one of the richest literary prizes in the world.

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Arts

Escaping A World On Fire In 'Exit West'

7:00am March 01, 2017

by Michael Schaub

Mohsin Hamid's new novel imagines a country, never specified, swollen with refugees from an ongoing conflict — and a series of mysterious doors that appear, offering escape, but also displacement.

Some writers are turning to sensitivity readers to be sure they haven't inadvertently offended someone from a different culture.

Experts Or Censors? The Debate Over Authors' Use Of Sensitivity Readers

3:00pm February 28, 2017

by Lynn Neary

One author sees them as an extension of the research she does for all her books; another worries they're being used as a risk management tool.

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'River On Fire' Explores Genius, Madness And The Poetry Of Robert Lowell

1:45pm February 28, 2017

Kay Redfield Jamison's new book describes how Lowell's manic-depressive illness influenced his life and work. "His manias tended to lead him into writing a fresh kind of poetry," she says.

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To This Scholar, For-Profit Colleges Are 'Lower Ed'

12:17pm February 28, 2017

by Anya Kamenetz

Tressie McMillan Cottom delves into the hopes and dreams of students outside the traditional college path.

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Arts

'To Be A Machine' Digs Into The Meaning Of Humanity

7:00am February 28, 2017

by Jason Heller

Mark O'Connell's new book is a lucid, soulful look at the transhumanist movement — a group who believe that direct interface between humans and machines is the only way forward for our species.

"This arctic fox would not hold still. Finally, in desperation, I squealed like a pig. With that, he stopped, tilted his head to figure out what that awful sound was, and I made this frame," Sartore writes.

Photographer Builds A 'Photo Ark' For 6,500 Animal Species And Counting

5:54pm February 27, 2017

National Geographic photographer Joel Sartore is on a mission to document every captive animal species in the world. He talks about getting an arctic fox to hold still, and Photoshopping out poop.

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Books

'The Hate U Give' Explores Racism And Police Violence

8:12am February 26, 2017

In Angie Thomas' novel, Starr Carter lives in a gang-ravaged area and goes to a school where she's one of only a few black students. She talks with Lulu Garcia-Navarro about her book The Hate U Give.

Books

New Book Focuses On The 'Humanity Of Syria' Lost In The War

8:12am February 26, 2017

Writer Alia Malek's new book is The Home That Was Our Country: A Memoir of Syria. She talks about why she chose to tell the story of Syria through her grandmother's apartment in Damascus.

Books

'Harmless Like You' Is A Story Of How Hurts Are Inherited

8:28am February 25, 2017

NPR's Scott Simon talks to author Rowan Hisayo Buchanan about her debut novel, Harmless Like You, a story of how we inherit pain from our parents, and inevitably pass it to our descendants.