Poet laureate Mark Strand has died at age 80. He spurned conventional form and wrote spare and haunting prose, which won him the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1999.
NYRB Classics has just reissued Tristana, an 1892 novel by the great Spanish author Benito Pérez Galdós. Critic Juan Vidal says Tristana's intelligence and emotional richness is comparable to Dickens.
Director Morten Tyldum says he wanted the film, about World War II code breaker Alan Turing, to show "how important it is to actually celebrate those who are different than us instead of fear them."
After Jesus died, he supposedly wrote a letter to Earth. A copy of that letter is now on display, along with other historic fakes and forgeries including a famous — and bogus — anti-Semitic tract.
Bing Crosby has long been the voice of the Christmas season, and now he's the subject of a new American Masters documentary. NPR's Scott Simon talks to Kathryn and Mary Crosby about his legacy.
It's hard to say where Ali Smith's new novel begins and ends; it depends on which copy you hold in your hands. She tells NPR's Scott Simon why she made two versions of How to be Both.
Andrew Lawler's Why Did the Chicken Cross the World? explores the secret to the domesticated bird's success: "You can turn the chicken into almost anything," he says, from religious symbol to dinner.
For decades, a rare collection of human remains sat in a basement closet at the University of Texas. A new book tells the story of that collection — and the enduring mysteries that surround it.
AMC's hit zombie drama The Walking Dead airs its midseason finale Sunday. It's now one of TV's most diverse shows, but critic Eric Deggans says it hasn't always served non-white characters well.