Author Interviews

Loudon Wainwright III Opens Up About The 'Exes & Excess' That Inform His Music

10:36am September 06, 2017

Wainwright has written remarkable songs about family, and how we hurt and heal each other. Now he details his life as a husband, father, son, philanderer and musician in the memoir Liner Notes.

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Leaving The Past Behind — Or Trying To — In Rushdie's Latest

4:30pm September 05, 2017

by Ari Shapiro

Salman Rushdie's The Golden House explores the idea of reinvention in America, through an Indian family whose shady patriarch may not be able to escape his past, despite fleeing across the Atlantic.

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Cover image of A Legacy of Spies by John le Carré.

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Novelist John Le Carré Reflects On His Own 'Legacy' Of Spying

4:18pm September 05, 2017

by Terry Gross

The 85-year-old novelist worked for MI5 and MI6 early in his career. "I felt I had to suppress my humanity," he says of those years. His new novel is called A Legacy of Spies.

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In 'A Legacy Of Spies,' John Le Carré Goes Back Out In 'The Cold'

12:10pm September 05, 2017

by Lynn Neary

Former CIA operative Valerie Plame says pop culture doesn't usually get espionage right — but le Carré comes close. His new novel is a kind of prequel to 1963's The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.

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In 'World Of Tomorrow,' A Novelist Found Echoes Of 1939, Today

10:34am September 03, 2017

by Lulu Garcia-Navarro

Brendan Mathews' debut novel is a sprawling story of three Irish brothers and their adventures in America on the cusp of World War II.

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A Feminist Adaptation Of 'Snow White'

8:07am September 03, 2017

Melissa Bashardoust's new novel is a feminist adaptation of Snow White called Girls Made of Snow and Glass. She talks to Lulu Garcia-Navarro about the story of two women pitted against each other.

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Poems For Houston

8:07am September 03, 2017

NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro talks to Gwendolyn Zepeda, Houston's first poet laureate, about the spotlight on the city during Hurricane Harvey.

Nathan Englander is also the author of What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank.

Nathan Englander Says His New Book Is 'A Turducken Of A Novel'

8:04am September 02, 2017

by Scott Simon

Englander describes Dinner at the Center of the Earth as "a political thriller that's wrapped up in a historical novel that's really a love story that ends up being an allegory."

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Celia Perez's New Novel 'The First Rule Of Punk' Comes With Advice For Adolescents

4:32pm September 01, 2017

NPR's Kelly McEvers talks with Celia Perez about her book, The First Rule of Punk for middle-grade readers. The first rule? Be yourself.

Jesmyn Ward poses for a portrait near DeLisle Bayou in DeLisle, Miss. Ward, 40, has chosen to return to DeLisle and raise her children there, despite her profound ambivalence about what the town represents.

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Writing Mississippi: Jesmyn Ward Salvages Stories Of The Silenced

4:31pm August 31, 2017

by Melissa Block

The author's books are set in the poor, black Mississippi community where she grew up, a place where, she says, "the past bears very heavily on the present."

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