Author Interviews

Pulitzer Prize-winner Jhumpa Lahiri is the author of The Namesake and Interpreter of Maladies.

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Political Violence, Uneasy Silence Echo In Lahiri's 'Lowland'

2:02pm September 23, 2013

by Lynn Neary

India's politics and history play a central role in Jhumpa Lahiri's The Lowland. In the Booker Prize-nominated novel, an Indian radical is killed, and his wife and brother start over in America. Lahiri tells NPR's Lynn Neary that the story was inspired by true events, but very unlike her own life.

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From left, Bob Odenkirk and David Cross co-created the sketch comedy series Mr. Show. They have since played long-running roles on Breaking Bad and Arrested Development, respectively.

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'Hollywood Said No,' But 'Mr. Show' Fans Said Yes!

6:19pm September 22, 2013

by NPR Staff

Bob Odenkirk and David Cross created and starred in the short-lived sketch comedy program Mr. Show. Fifteen years after their show went off the air, they have a new book of old scripts that were rejected by Hollywood.

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Jack Gantos recently won the Newbery Medal, the highest award in children's literature, for his novel Dead End in Norvelt.

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A Road Trip Sparks An Unlikely Friendship In 'Norvelt To Nowhere'

11:34am September 21, 2013

by NPR Staff

Young Jack hits the road with his cranky, elderly teacher Miss Volker (and a couple of cranky, elderly cars) in From Norvelt to Nowhere, the new young adult novel from Jack Gantos. The sequel to 2011's Newbery-winning Dead End in Norvelt is set in 1962, in the shadow of the Cuban missile crisis.

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Evan Mandery is also the author of three novels: Dreaming of Gwen Stefani; First Contact: Or, It's Later Than You Think; and Q: A Love Story.

Years After Historic Ruling, Execution Still A 'Random' Justice

3:44pm September 19, 2013

Evan Mandery's A Wild Justice is an account of the legal battles that led to the U.S. Supreme Court striking down capital punishment, then reversing course four years later. He says that today, prisoners who are sentenced to death have a 10 percent chance of actually being executed.

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Jeff Guinn's previous books include The Last Gunfight and Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde.

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Bio Credits Manson's Terrible Rise To Right Place And Time

4:10pm September 18, 2013

California parolee Charles Manson arrived in San Francisco in 1967, when the city was full of young waifs looking for a guru. In Manson, Jeff Guinn argues that if the cult leader had instead been paroled in a place like Nebraska, he likely would not have been so successful.

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Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking cover

Kitchen Time Machine: A Culinary Romp Through Soviet History

9:38am September 17, 2013

Author Anya Von Bremzen's new memoir, Mastering The Art of Soviet Cooking, is a tragic-comic history of a family and a nation as seen through the kitchen window. Everything we ate in the Soviet Union was grown ... by the party state," she says. "So, with the food, inevitably, you ingested the ideology."

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Barnard President: Today's 'Wonder Women' Must Reframe Feminism

4:06pm September 16, 2013

Many think of the feminist movement as a thing of the past, but Debora Spar says the battle isn't won yet. She tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross about the misinterpretation that got us where we are, and the need to improve support and pay for working women.

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'The Witness Wore Red': A Polygamist's Wife Finds A New Life

6:15pm September 14, 2013

by NPR Staff

Rebecca Musser was raised in an extremist, polygamist church. She tells the harrowing story of her childhood, her first marriage, and her escape in her autobiography.

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Terry McMillan is the best-selling author of Waiting to Exhale and How Stella Got Her Groove Back

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McMillan 'Asks' Readers To Empathize With A Family's Problems

11:28am September 14, 2013

by NPR Staff

Terry McMillan, the best-selling author of How Stella Got Her Groove Back, tells NPR's Scott Simon that she writes because she wishes she were a magician. She shows off her tricks in Who Asked You?, a novel with many narrators — including a woman named BJ and her husband, children and grandkids.

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Art Spiegelman Reflects On 60 Years Of Pen And Ink

11:28am September 14, 2013

by NPR Staff

Art Spiegelman's new book, Co-Mix: A Retrospective of Comics, Graphics, and Scraps, collects comics from a six-decade career, from his early, self-published works to his famous New Yorker covers. Spiegelman tells NPR's Scott Simon he knew in third grade that he wanted to be a cartoonist.

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