Author Interviews

A doctor chronicles life in a Chicago ER during the first year of the pandemic

1:16pm March 23, 2022

by Dave Davies

Though he fully expected to be infected with COVID, Dr. Thomas Fisher says he was committed to providing medical care to the Black community on Chicago's South Side. His new book is The Emergency.

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Author Anne Tyler on writing her 24th novel and why she writes about families

5:12pm March 22, 2022

NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with writer Anne Tyler about her 24th novel French Braid. Set in Baltimore, the book tracks one family, the Garretts, across decades and generations

After a stroke blinded one eye, Frank Bruni focused on the future

12:39pm March 22, 2022

by Terry Gross

The New York Times columnist says the stroke forced him to make a decision: He could focus on what had been lost or on what remained. He chose the latter. Bruni's new memoir is The Beauty of Dusk.

For classical pianist Jeremy Denk, life is like a series of music lessons

2:02pm March 21, 2022

by Terry Gross

The MacArthur "genius" grant winner talks about what he learned from his piano teachers, and his failures, frustrations and pivotal moments as an artist. Denk's new memoir is Every Good Boy Does Fine.

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Books

A cheap gas station map may be the key to solving a murder in 'The Cartographers'

8:05am March 20, 2022

by Elissa Nadworny

Elissa Nadworny speaks to Peng Shepherd about her new book, "The Cartographers," where the daughter of a murdered map scholar unravels the mystery of a map she finds hidden in his desk.

Books

Karen Joy Fowler paints the unlikely life path of John Wilkes Booth in novel 'Booth'

8:02am March 19, 2022

by Scott Simon

Scott Simon asks Karen Joy Fowler about her new historical novel, "Booth," in which she focuses on the parents and siblings of Abraham Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth.

Books
Arts

Remembering William Hurt, star of 'Broadcast News' and 'The Big Chill'

1:26pm March 18, 2022

by Terry Gross

Hurt, who died March 13, won an Oscar for his performance as a drag queen sharing a prison cell with a political dissident in the 1985 film Kiss of the Spider Woman. Originally broadcast in 2010.

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'The Bond King' details the rise and fall of notorious financial investor Bill Gross

4:29pm March 17, 2022

NPR's Ari Shapiro talks with Mary Childs, one of the hosts of NPR's Planet Money, about her new book The Bond King, which tells the story of a notorious financial investor.

Russia's war in Ukraine has NATO on alert. Here's how we got to this point

1:23pm March 17, 2022

by Terry Gross

Historian Mary Elise Sarotte tells how NATO expanded into Eastern Europe after the fall of the U.S.S.R, and is now obligated to defend nations near Russia's war in Ukraine. Her book is Not One Inch.

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Marie Yovanovitch writes about being a key figure in 1st Trump impeachment in memoir

4:38pm March 16, 2022

NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, about her new memoir called Lessons from the Edge.