Author Interviews

Sedaris likens this photo, taken in the Los Angeles County Library Children's Department before they opened, to a Playboy magazine author photo.

Books
Arts

David Sedaris reflects on the driving force of his life: His war with his dad

5:00am May 31, 2022

by Terry Gross

"My father was not a good person, but he was a great character," Sedaris says. The humorist writes about his efforts to make peace with his memories of his late father in Happy-Go-Lucky.

Books

Author interview: 'Jim Crow's Pink Slip'

5:44pm May 29, 2022

NPR's Michel Martin speaks with educator Leslie Fenwick about her book Jim Crow's Pink Slip: The Untold Story of Black Principal and Teacher Leadership.

Queue Listen Now

Eliot Schrefer's book, Queer Ducks (and Other Animals): The Natural World of Animal Sexuality, is designed to be teenager friendly. It's filled with comics and humor and accessible science on the diversity of sexual behavior in the animal world.

Books
Arts

What 'Queer Ducks' can teach teenagers about sexuality in the animal kingdom

5:00am May 29, 2022

The new book, Queer Ducks (and Other Animals), is designed to be teenager friendly. It's filled with comics and humor and accessible science on the diversity of sexual behavior in the animal world.

Queue Listen Now

How an expert on online disinformation and harassment became the target of both

2:07pm May 26, 2022

by Terry Gross

Nina Jankowicz was tapped to head the Biden administration's new Disinformation Governance Board but resigned after being deluged with online threats. Her new book is How to Be a Woman Online.

Queue Listen Now

Books

Author examines the behavioral patterns of people who carried out mass shootings

5:11am May 26, 2022

NPR's Rachel Martin talks with Mark Follman about the behavioral patterns of mass shooters. Follman is the author of: Trigger Points: Inside the Mission to Stop Mass Shootings in America.

Diana Goetsch writes about her later-in-life transition in the memoir, This Body I Wore.

Books
Arts

At 58, poet Diana Goetsch finally feels right in her own skin

1:41pm May 25, 2022

by Terry Gross

Goetsch grew up in a time when she didn't have the language to help her understand what it meant to be trans. She chronicles her later-in-life transition in the memoir is This Body I Wore.

Queue Listen Now

Animal sexuality may not be as binary as we're led to believe, according to new book

4:27pm May 24, 2022

NPR's Sacha Pfeiffer talks with Eliot Schrefer, author of Queer Ducks (And Other Animals): The Natural World of Animal Sexuality. It's about how "natural sex" may not be as binary as some think.

Books

Elif Batuman's sequel 'Either/Or' follows a young woman's sexual awakening

10:58am May 24, 2022

Either/Or is Batuman's sequel to her bestselling Pulitzer finalist novel The Idiot.

Queue Listen Now

Books
Arts

Novelist Emma Straub asks life's big questions in 'This Time Tomorrow'

1:59pm May 23, 2022

by Tonya Mosley

Straub's new novel is a time-travel fantasy about a 40-year-old woman who's tending to her ailing father — until, that is, the day she's transported to her childhood home on her 16th birthday.

Queue Listen Now

Books

A kids' story unfolds without words in 'A Day For Sandcastles'

8:12am May 22, 2022

by Samantha Balaban

Three siblings spend a summer day at the beach building sandcastles and watching them get demolished in a wordless picture book written by JonArno Lawson and illustrated by Qin Leng.