Author Interviews

"I decided that it would be a really interesting to create a character who was Dream," author Neil Gaiman says of his character Sandman.

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Arts

Neil Gaiman On Returning To 'Sandman,' Talking In His Sleep And The Power Of Comics

3:09pm December 15, 2015

Twenty-five years after he initially created Sandman, Gaiman returns to one of his most enduring characters. Gaiman says writing The Sandman: Overture was "the most intense period of my life."

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According to Aja Raden, a Hungarian countess commissioned the first wristwatch from watchmaker Patek Philippe around 1868. "[It] was a spectacularly expensive piece of jewelry," the author says.

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From Trading Beads To The First Wristwatch, A History Of Shiny Objects

6:46pm December 14, 2015

by NPR Staff

Author Aja Raden says jewelry is the perfect lens through which to view human history. In Stoned, she tells the story of the glass beads used to purchase Manhattan and the rise of the wristwatch.

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Tushenka, canned stewed meat, was both a portable army ration and a prized home ingredient.

From Russia, With Mayonnaise: Cookbook Revisits Soviet Classics

5:48pm December 14, 2015

by Deena Prichep

The dishes that marked the Soviet era still have a strong pull on Russian sentiment (if not stomachs). A new book revisits these recipes, born, in part, of food shortages and ingenuity.

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Arts

Picture This: Frederick Douglass Was The Most Photographed Man Of His Time

5:24pm December 13, 2015

The abolitionist wanted to ensure a more accurate depiction of black Americans during the tumultuous years before the Civil War, Harvard's John Stauffer writes in Picturing Frederick Douglass.

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Why And When Men Grow Beards

7:51am December 13, 2015

NPR's Linda Wertheimer talks to author Christopher Oldstone-Moore about his history of the beard, Of Beards and Men.

The Relic Master, by Christopher Buckley.

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Monty Python Meets Ocean's 11 In 'The Relic Master'

9:05am December 12, 2015

by NPR Staff

Christopher Buckley's new novel is the story of a 16th-century relic hunter and his buddy Albrecht Dürer, who end up in trouble after trying to forge a holy shroud to sell to an unsuspecting nobleman.

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Claire Vaye Watkins' new novel is Gold Fame Citrus.

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Whom Do You Write For? 'Pandering' Essay Sparks A Conversation

5:21pm December 11, 2015

by NPR Staff

Novelist Claire Vaye Watkins recently published an essay called "On Pandering," about realizing she was writing to appeal to white men. She and author Marlon James discuss responses to the piece.

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In 'Drawing Blood,' A Life Of Art And Action

7:34pm December 09, 2015

by NPR Staff

Artist Molly Crabapple's lavishly illustrated memoir chronicles her youth in New York and her work illustrating the Occupy Wall Street movement, protests in Greece and everyday life in Syria.

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Reginald Dwayne Betts serves as a national spokesman for the Campaign for Youth Justice. He is also the author of A Question of Freedom and Shahid Reads His Own Palm.

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In 'Bastards Of The Reagan Era' A Poet Says His Generation Was 'Just Lost'

5:17pm December 08, 2015

After being convicted of carjacking as a teenager, Reginald Dwayne Betts spent eight years in an adult prison. Since his release, he has become a poet and a Yale law student.

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A Downtrodden Protagonist Reveals Himself Room-By-Room In 'Hotels Of North America'

12:07pm December 07, 2015

Rick Moody discusses his new novel, which is told solely in the form of online hotel reviews. The narrator of Hotels Of North America is increasingly down on his luck — and may even be homeless.