Bookworm

Swan Lake

editor, Dalkey Archive Press;The Dead Magician;Mysterioso

The Mystery of the Rose Banquet (a play)

A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters; The Remains of the Day

Seeing Voices: A Journey Into the World of the Deaf

The Floating World;Still Life with Insects

Among Schoolchildren

The Broken Cord

film's 50th anniversary w/ Aljean Harmetz, The Making of the Wizard of Oz

The Terrible Three's

The Waiting Room;owner of Phoenix Bookstore

The Joy Luck Club

Closer

Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century

David Trinidad; Nicholas Christopher, editor of Under Thirtyfive

Leaving Brooklyn

Bookworm Michael Silverblatt interviews author Elmore Leonard and playwright John Steppling. Then Steppling interviews Leonard.

Failure to Zig Zag

A Wolverine is Eating My Leg;

Edridanos Press

Michael Silverblatt speaks with Douglas Messerli, Editor in Chief of Sun & Moon Press, winner of the 1987 Carey-Thomas Award for Creative Publishing given yearly for the most imaginative publishing venture of the year. Michael begins by speaking with John F. Baker, Editor in Chief of Publishers Weekly, the sponsor of the award.

Longtime friend and editor of Bookworm, Alan Howard, returns to host this episode, the last of 10 shows to journey through Bookworm’s 33 years and offer a retrospective look at Michael’s accomplishments on behalf of writers and readers. For decades Michael has read almost all of a writer’s work, not just the book which has been most recently published. Howard has watched writers glow as they realize that they’ve been seriously witnessed by the ultimate Bookworm. All of the writers on today’s show have become friends of Michael’s and of Bookworm. We’ll hear from rock band Sparks (brothers Ron and Russell Mael), Art Spiegelman, Françoise Mouly, Ann Beattie, Susan Sontag, and Dennis Cooper.

Close friend of Michael Silverblatt’s and Bookworm editor for 30 years, Alan Howard guest hosts this episode on grief and loss. When the two met more than 33 years ago, Michael’s first words were, “What are you reading?” It was a question that brought Howard back to literature. Over the years, Michael did the same for thousands of listeners. With Bookworm, he was determined to return literary fiction and poetry to the center of the zeitgeist. In the process, he faced the realities of loss and grief. In conversation after conversation with writers he was forging collegial friendships with, loss itself was a frequent topic of those friendships and conversations. We’ll hear from Marilynne Robinson, Joan Didion, Jim Krusoe, Steve Erickson, Dave Eggers, and Mary Ruefle.

Poet, author, and co-founder of The Song Cave, Alan Felsenthal guest hosts this episode’s focus on poetry. As a close friend and mentee of Michael Silverblatt’s, Felsenthal recalls Michael’s revelation that he had trouble finding his way into poetry until he had several formative experiences, including one he described in 2019 during a Walt Whitman tribute. We’ll hear from that tribute with poet Pattiann Rogers reading Whitman. We’ll also hear from poets John Ashbery, Coral Bracho, Forrest Gander, and Lucille Clifton.

Prolific author Dave Eggers, founder of McSweeney's, co-founder of 826 National, and other significant projects, first met Micheal Silverblatt in 2000, upon the publication of his first book –– a critically acclaimed memoir whose title he calls, "obnoxious." They formed a friendship over 22 years of conversation. This episode, the third in a series to examine what novelist Russell Banks called the Story of America, is guest-hosted by Eggers. We’ll hear excerpts of Bookworm shows that discuss this story from E.L. Doctorow, Valeria Luiselli, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Gore Vidal.

Prolific author Dave Eggers, founder of McSweeney's, co-founder of 826 National, and other significant projects, first met Micheal Silverblatt in 2000, upon the publication of his first book –– a critically acclaimed memoir whose title he calls, "obnoxious." They formed a friendship over 22 years of conversation. In this episode, Eggers picks up the thread through what novelist Russell Banks called the Story of America. We’ll hear from Edward P. Jones, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, and Marilynne Robinson as they speak about slavery, race, and history.

Claudia Rankine, award-winning poet and author of Citizen: An American Lyric, a book-length poem about the pernicious racism of American daily life, hosts the first of a three-part episode on the story of America, as told through literary fiction. Over the decades Michael Silverblatt spoke with hundreds of writers about America — its foundation, its history, its challenges, and its culture. This episode reveals the story of America as the story of race. We’ll hear from David Foster Wallace, Russell Banks, Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, William H. Gass, Joan Didion, and Claudia Rankine herself.

Guest host Mary Corey, teacher of American history at UCLA and author of "The World Through a Monocle" about The New Yorker Magazine, teaches a course on American popular culture that explores the blurry lines between perceived high culture and what we think of as popular culture. In this episode, Corey takes us through excerpts of Bookworm conversations with lauded boho rocker Patti Smith, writer and brilliant wit Fran Lebowitz, and outré filmmaker John Waters. Each of these rebel artists has left a mark on our national culture and all of them are serious readers, making up a confederacy of Bookworms.

The Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually since 1901 to an author from any country who has, in the words of the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, “In the field of literature produced the most outstanding work in an idealistic direction.” Michael Silverblatt spoke with eight Nobel Prize laureates. In part 1 of the Laureates show, we heard from four of them. In this second part, we’ll be hearing excerpts from: Kazuo Ishiguro, Mario Vargas Llosa, Doris Lessing, Czesław Miłosz, and Robert Hass speaking about Milosz.

The Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually since 1901 to an author from any country who has, in the words of the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, “In the field of literature produced the most outstanding work in an idealistic direction.” Michael Silverblatt spoke with eight Nobel Prize laureates. In part 1 of The Nobel Laureates, we’ll be hearing from four of them: Toni Morrison, Wole Soyinka, Orhan Pamuk, and Seamus Heaney.

This episode takes us through the arc of Bookworm’s existence: Michael started the program with worries about the future of literature, found hope in the up-and-coming new writers, and proceeded to highlight authors of diverse backgrounds, cultures, and geographies.

Los Angeles-based author Michelle Huneven joins Evan Kleiman to discuss her latest book, “Search.” In this engaging and funny literary fiction novel, main character Dana Potowski writes a memoir that describes the steps of her Unitarian Universalist Church congregation’s year-long search for its new minister and the challenges they encounter.

Natalia Molina tells the story of Nayarit, her grandmother’s Mexican restaurant, a space that became a cherished hub for immigrants and the LGBTQ community in Echo Park. 

Editor/poet Emily Skillings and poet/critic John Yau speak about an iconic poet of the 21st century, John Ashbery, and his posthumous book, “Parallel Movement of the Hands: Five Unfinished Longer Works.”