Author Interviews

A Doctor On Why He Volunteered To Fight Ebola In Liberia

8:03am March 05, 2017

In 2014, Dr. Steven Hatch traveled to Liberia to treat people infected with the Ebola virus. NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with him about his new book, Inferno: A Doctor's Ebola Story.

Chimamanda Adichie's novels include Americanah and Half of a Yellow Sun. The author is pictured here at NPR in February 2017.

Books
Arts

How Do You Raise A Feminist Daughter? Chimamanda Adichie Has 15 Suggestions

6:55pm March 03, 2017

by Audie Cornish

Adichie's new book began as a letter to a childhood friend (and new mother) who had asked for some advice. It's called Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions.

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Maj. Mary Jennings Hegar served three tours in Afghanistan. She now lives in Austin, Texas, and works as an executive coach and consultant.

A Purple Heart Warrior Takes Aim At Military Inequality In 'Shoot Like A Girl'

2:57pm March 02, 2017

Maj. Mary Jennings Hegar is part of a lawsuit that argues excluding women from combat is unconstitutional. She says the lawsuit isn't about women's rights – it's about military effectiveness.

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Tyler Cowen argues, in his new book The Complacent Class, that Americans are in a period of stagnation because we are doing less and less of what made us successful in the past: embracing change, moving to different parts of the country and associating wi

America's 'Complacent Class': How Self-Segregation Is Leading To Stagnation

1:15pm March 02, 2017

by Heidi Glenn

Economist and author Tyler Cowen worries that Americans' desire to keep changing has gone away. "The forward march of progress," he says, "is not the main story today."

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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.

"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.