Author Interviews

Books
Arts

Time-Traveling Serial Killer Hunts For 'The Shining Girls'

6:03pm June 08, 2013

by NPR Staff

Over the last 15 years, the South African writer Lauren Beukes has been a journalist, a screenwriter, a documentarian — and most recently, a novelist. Her new book is called The Shining Girls, a summer thriller about a time-traveling serial killer and the victim who escapes to hunt him down.

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Judy Blume is the author of many books for kids and teens, including Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing and Blubber. Her 1981 novel, Tiger Eyes, has just been adapted into a movie.

Books
Arts

Judy Blume Hits The Big Screen With 'Tiger Eyes' Adaptation

8:29pm June 07, 2013

by NPR Staff

With the help of her son Lawrence Blume, Judy Blume has adapted her 1981 novel into a film. The widely beloved coming-of-age author speaks with NPR's Audie Cornish about turning the book into a movie, and how the themes in Tiger Eyes echo her own life.

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Brian Castner served as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal officer in the U.S. Air Force from 1999 to 2007, deploying to Iraq to command bomb disposal units in Balad and Kirkuk in 2005 and 2006.

Books
Arts

'The Life That Follows' Disarming IEDs In Iraq

2:30pm June 07, 2013

Brian Castner commanded two Explosive Ordnance Disposal units in Iraq, where his team disabled roadside IEDs and investigated the aftermath of roadside car bombings. He returned home a completely different man, which he details in his memoir, The Long Walk.

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How To Survive A Mass Extinction

1:33pm June 07, 2013

In her new book Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction writer Annalee Newitz looks back at Earth's previous mass extinctions to see what lessons might be learned, and how earthlings might prepare themselves to survive a future planet-wide catastrophe.

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In her latest book about Henry Molaison, Corkin tells the story of the amnesic man she studied for a half-century, whose brain helped teach neuroscientists about the distinctions between memory and intellect.

The Patient Who Let Us Peek Inside A Brain In 'Present Tense'

5:03pm June 06, 2013

For nearly 50 years, neuroscientist Suzanne Corkin worked with Henry Molaison, who lost most of his memory in 1953 after experimental surgery for severe seizures. Their work together taught us much of what we know today about memory, and she writes about Molaison and their work in her new book.

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In TransAtlantic, Colum McCann takes readers into the world of two aviators attempting a nonstop trip across the Atlantic Ocean.

In 'TransAtlantic', Author Colum McCann Returns Home

11:34am June 06, 2013

Irish-American author Colum McCann has spent the better part of his life inhabiting others in his novels — from Russian ballet dancers to New York subway diggers. In TransAtlantic, he tells the story of his native country — its famine, its troubles, its emigrants and those who stayed.

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For One Family, A 'Double' Dose Alcoholism

7:43pm June 04, 2013

Weekend Edition Saturday host Scott Simon talks with best-selling mystery writer Martha Grimes and her son, Ken Grimes, about their new book, Double Double: A Dual Memoir of Alcoholism.

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Books
Arts

'Fairyland': A Girl Grows Up In San Francisco's Gay Community

9:58am June 04, 2013

In her new memoir, Fairyland, Alysia Abbott describes her childhood as the daughter of an openly gay father in San Francisco while the gay liberation movement was gaining strength. Her book is based largely on her father's journals, which she found after his death in 1992.

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Book Explores Downfall Of An Indian-American Business Icon

8:10am June 04, 2013

by NPR Staff

Rajat Gupta was one of the wealthiest and most successful men in America. Why would he throw that away on an insider-trading scheme? A new book from financial journalist Anita Raghavan tries to uncover the motivations of a man who lost everything in the Galleon Group scandal.

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Allan Sherman released three albums between October 1962 and August 1963.

Hello Muddah, Hello Drama: The Brief Bloom Of Parodist Allan Sherman

6:53pm June 03, 2013

by NPR Staff

Sherman worked a tight niche: classic songs rewritten to tickle a Jewish audience's funny bone. A new biography, Overweight Sensation: The Life and Comedy of Allan Sherman, explains how the performer's 1960s crossover fell in line with a collective awakening to ethnic identity in America.

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