All Episodes

Friends of Michael

Chapter 9: Grief and Loss

Poetry

The Story of America, Pt. 3

The Story of America, Pt. 2

The Story of America, Pt. 1

The Confederacy of Bookworms

The Nobel Laureates, Pt.2

The Nobel Laureates, Pt.1

The Arc of Bookworm

Michelle Huneven: ‘Search’

Natalia Molina: ‘A Place at the Nayarit: How a Mexican Restaurant Nourished a Community’

Emily Skillings and John Yau: John Ashbery’s “Parallel Movement of the Hands: Five Unfinished Longer Works” (Re-air)

Rita Dove: “Playlist for the Apocalypse” (Re-air)

Robert Jones, Jr.: “The Prophets” (Re-air)

Paul Tran’s wildly impressive debut poetry book, ‘All the Flowers Kneeling’

Tobias Wolff on Harry Crews’ ‘A Childhood: The Biography of a Place’

Tao Lin’s ‘Leave Society’ shifts the author’s perspective to love and kindness

Zac Smith’s ‘Everything is Totally Fine,’ the book that reopened Tao Lin’s Muumuu House

Brit Bennett: The Vanishing Half

Sarah Manguso’s ‘Very Cold People’ and life’s overwhelming small moments

Sheila Heti: “Pure Colour”

Tom Bissell: ‘Creative Types: and Other Stories’

Tessa Hadley: “Free Love”

Antoine Wilson: “Mouth to Mouth”

John Keene: “Punks: New & Selected Poems” (The Song Cave)

In Memory of Joan Didion: 'Blue Nights'

Honoree Fanonne Jeffers: “The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois” (Part 2)

Honoree Fanonne Jeffers: “The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois” (Part 1)

Stephen Sondheim: Finishing the Hat

Dave Eggers: “The Every” (Part 2)

Dave Eggers: “The Every” (Part 1)

Louise Erdrich: “The Sentence”

Sandra Cisneros: “Martita, I Remember You/Martita, te recuerdo”

Diane Williams: “How High? – That High”

Mary Gaitskill: “The Devil's Treasure”

Teresa K. Miller with Carol Muske-Dukes “Borderline Fortune”

Atsuro Riley: “Heard-Hoard”

Jackie Kay: “Bessie Smith: A Poet's Biography of a Blues Legend”

Rabih Alameddine: “The Wrong End of the Telescope”

Richard Powers: “Bewilderment”

Dennis Cooper: “I Wished”

Alice McDermott: “What About the Baby?: Some Thoughts on the Art of Fiction”

Richard Powers: The Overstory

Ron and Russell Mael: “Annette”

Rikki Ducornet: “Trafik”

Yaa Gyasi: “Transcendent Kingdom” and “Homegoing” (Part 2)

Yaa Gyasi: “Transcendent Kingdom” and “Homegoing” (Part 1)

Jack Skelley: “Dennis Wilson and Charlie Manson”

Emily Skillings and John Yau: John Ashbery’s “Parallel Movement of the Hands: Five Unfinished Longer Works”

Amy Gerstler: “Index of Women”

Joshua Cohen: 'The Netanyahus'

Joan Silber: 'Secrets of Happiness'

Robert Coover and Art Spiegelman: “Street Cop”

Edward St. Aubyn: 'Double Blind'

Domenico Ingenito: 'Beholding Beauty: Saʿdi of Shiraz and the Aesthetics of Desire in Medieval Persian Poetry'

Brad Gooch: Rumi's Secret

Sandi Tan: 'Lurkers'

Rachel Cusk: “Second Place”

George Toles: 'Status Update'

Rachel Kushner: “The Hard Crowd: Essays 2000-2020”

Rita Dove: “Playlist for the Apocalypse”

Wayne Koestenbaum: “The Cheerful Scapegoat”

Kazuo Ishiguro: “Klara and the Sun”

A Kazuo Ishiguro Retrospective

Robert Jones, Jr.: “The Prophets”

Carol Edgarian: “Vera”

A Tribute to Lawrence Ferlinghetti: “Time of Useful Consciousness”

Viet Thanh Nguyen: “The Committed”

Ann Beattie: A Wonderful Stroke of Luck

David Duchovny: “Truly Like Lightning”

George Saunders “A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life” (Part 2)

George Saunders: “A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life” (Part 1)

Rebecca Sacks: “City of a Thousand Gates”

Eileen Myles: “For Now (Why I Write)”

Alan Felsenthal and Peter Cole discuss Harold Bloom’s “Take Arms Against a Sea of Troubles: The Power of the Reader’s Mind over a Universe of Death”

Susan Taubes, introduction by David Rieff: “Divorcing”

Garth Greenwell: Cleanness

Brit Bennett: The Vanishing Half

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore: “The Freezer Door”

Jen Craig: “Panthers and the Museum of Fire”

Mary Ruefle: Dunce

Douglas Stuart: “Shuggie Bain”

Charles Baxter: 'The Sun Collective'

Nicole Krauss: 'To Be a Man'

Mauro Javier Cárdenas: “Aphasia”

Douglas Stuart: “Shuggie Bain”

Charles Yu: Interior Chinatown

Marilynne Robinson: 'Jack'

Walter Mosley: “The Awkward Black Man”

Barbara Kingsolver: “How to Fly (In Ten Thousand Easy Lessons)”

Jay Parini: “Borges and Me: An Encounter”

Aracelis Girmay: “How to Carry Water: Selected Poems of Lucille Clifton”

Mitch Sisskind: “Collected Poems 2005-2020”

Henri Cole: Blizzard

Sarah Shun-lien Bynum: “Likes”

Edmund White “A Saint from Texas”

Elizabeth Wetmore: 'Valentine' (Part 2)

Elizabeth Wetmore: 'Valentine' (Part 1)

Margot Livesey: “The Boy in the Field”

Daphne Merkin: “22 Minutes of Unconditional Love”

Zadie Smith: “On Beauty”

Alex Halberstadt: "Young Heroes of the Soviet Union: A Memoir and a Reckoning"

Scott Spencer: “An Ocean Without a Shore”

Horacio Castellanos Moya: Senselessness

Fowzia Karimi: Above Us the Milky Way

Mark Z. Danielewski: The Little Blue Kite

Edited by André Naffis-Sahely The Heart of a Stranger: An Anthology of Exile Literature

Victoria Chang: Love, Love (Part 2)

Victoria Chang: Obit (Part 1)

Benjamin Moser: Sontag: Her Life and Work

Daniel Kehlmann: Tyll

Rob Doyle: Threshold

Ariana Reines: A Sand Book

Charles North: Everything and Other Poems

Harry Dodge: My Meteorite: Or, Without the Random There Can Be No New Thing

Rebecca Solnit: Recollections of My Nonexistence

Stephen Wright: Processed Cheese

Jenny Offill: Weather

Steven Sater: Alice By Heart

Charles Yu: Interior Chinatown

Translators Suzanne Jill Levine, Jessica Powell, and Katie Lateef-Jan: The Promise and Forgotten Journey by Silvina Ocampo

Tobias Wolff: This Boy’s Life

Fanny Howe: Love and I

Garth Greenwell: Cleanness

Daniel Mendelsohn: Ecstasy and Terror: From the Greeks to Game of Thrones

Jonathan Blum: The Usual Uncertainties

Ben Lerner: The Topeka School

André Aciman: Find Me

Deborah Eisenberg: Your Duck Is My Duck

Adina Hoffman on 'Ben Hecht: Fighting Words, Moving Pictures'

Chris Ware: Rusty Brown

Lawrence Weschler: And How Are You, Dr. Sacks?: A Biographical Memoir of Oliver Sacks

Ocean Vuong: On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

Lynda Barry: Making Comics

Jeanette Winterson Frankissstein: A Love Story

Lynda Barry and Chris Ware: Making Comics and Rusty Brown

John Freeman and Robin Coste Lewis Freeman’s: The Best New Writing on California

Harold Bloom: The Shadow of a Great Rock: A Literary Appreciation of the King James Bible

Benjamin Moser: Sontag: Her Life and Work

Salman Rushdie: Quichotte (Part 2)

Salman Rushdie: Quichotte (Part 1)

Emma Donoghue: Akin

Cathleen Schine: The Grammarians

Mary Ruefle: Dunce

Katya Apekina: The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish

Sarah Rose Etter: The Book of X

Peter Orner: Maggie Brown & Others

Toni Morrison: Beloved

Toni Morrison Tribute

Howard Rodman: The Great Eastern

Ariana Reines: A Sand Book

Ocean Vuong: On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

David Trinidad, Amy Gerstler, Ruth Greenstein: Punk Rock is Cool for the End of the World: Poems and Notebooks of Ed Smith

David Trinidad: Swinging on a Star

Laila Lalami: The Other Americans

Seth: Clyde Fans

Ann Beattie: A Wonderful Stroke of Luck

Dave Eggers: The Parade

Richard Powers: The Overstory

Terrance Hayes: American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

Nafissa Thompson-Spires: Heads of the Colored People

Tayari Jones: An American Marriage

John Lanchester: The Wall

Nathan Englander: kaddish.com

Chris Cander: The Weight of a Piano

Valeria Luiselli: Lost Children Archive

Elizabeth McCracken: Bowlaway

Yiyun Li: Where Reasons End

Marlon James: Black Leopard, Red Wolf: The Dark Star Trilogy

Chloe Aridjis: Sea Monsters

Dennis Cooper and Zac Farley: Permanent Green Light

Sam Lipsyte: Hark

Amanda Sthers: Holy Lands

Tosh Berman: Tosh: Growing Up in Wallace Berman’s World

Mary Ruefle: My Private Property

Diane Williams: The Collected Stories of Diane Williams

Deborah Eisenberg: Your Duck Is My Duck: Stories

John Wray: Godsend

Jeff Jackson: Destroy All Monsters: The Last Rock Novel

Edward M. Burns and Jim Gauer: Questioning Minds: The Letters of Guy Davenport and Hugh Kenner

Katharine Weber: Still Life with Monkey

Barbara Kingsolver: Unsheltered

Leland de la Durantaye: Hannah Versus the Tree

Brian Phillips: Impossible Owls

Eileen Myles: Evolution

Ben Fountain: Beautiful Country Burn Again

Susan Orlean: The Library Book

Tommy Orange: There There

Gary Shteyngart: Lake Success

Patrick deWitt: French Exit

Edward St. Aubyn: The Complete Patrick Melrose Novels

Joshua Cohen and Samuel Nicholson: ATTENTION: Dispatches from a Land of Distraction

Joshua Cohen: ATTENTION: Dispatches from a Land of Distraction

Mary Cappello, James Morrison, Jean Walton Buffalo Trace: A Threefold Vibration

Joshua Mattson: A Short Film About Disappointment

B. Catling: The Vorhh Trilogy (Part 2)

B. Catling: The Vorhh Trilogy (Part 1)

Christian Kracht: The Dead

Lydia Millet: Fight No More

David Sedaris: Calypso

Joseph McBride with Nicola Lubitsch: How Did Lubitsch Do It?

Presenting The Organist from McSweeney's

Lauren Groff: Florida

A.M. Homes Days of Awe: Stories

Rita Bullwinkel: Belly Up

Michael Ondaatje: Warlight (Part 2)

Michael Ondaatje: Warlight (Part 1)

Mary Gaitskill: Somebody with a Little Hammer

Linda Spalding: A Reckoning

Shauna Barbosa: Cape Verdean Blues

Joyce Carol Oates: A Book of American Martyrs

Leslie Jamison: The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath

Rachel Kushner: The Mars Room

Carol Muske-Dukes: Blue Rose

Christine Schutt: Pure Hollywood

Junot Diaz: Islandborn

Lynne Tillman: Men and Apparitions

Sean Penn: Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff

Roberta Allen: The Princess of Herself

Ann Beattie and Richard Bausch: The Complete Stories of Peter Taylor

Mokhtar Alkhanshali and Dave Eggers: The Monk of Mokha

André Aciman: Call Me by Your Name / Enigma Variations

Scott McClanahan: The Sarah Book / Crapalachia: A Biography of Place

Víctor Terán and David Shook: Like A New Sun: New Indigenous Mexican Poetry

Matthew McIntosh: theMystery.doc

Jane Gillette: The Trail of the Demon and Other Stories

Ursula LeGuin

Isabel Allende: In the Midst of Winter

Chris Kraus: After Kathy Acker: A Literary Biography

Joe Hagan: Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine

Morgan Parker: There Are More Beautiful Things than Beyoncé

Anne Fadiman: The Wine Lover's Daughter

William H. Gass Tribute

Charmaine Craig: Miss Burma

Jennifer Egan: Manhattan Beach

Wallace Shawn: Night Thoughts

Mark Danielewski: The Familiar, Volume 5

Sparks (Part II)

Sparks (Part I)

Eileen Myles: Afterglow (a dog memoir)

Kazuo Ishiguro

Stephen Greenblatt: The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve

Nicole Krauss: Forest Dark

Andrew Sean Greer: Less

Matthew Klam: Who Is Rich?

Mark Z. Danielewski: The Familiar

George Saunders: Lincoln in the Bardo (Part II)

George Saunders: Lincoln in the Bardo (Part I)

Danzy Senna: New People

Ryan Gattis: Safe

Deborah Treisman: The Dream Colony

Arundhati Roy: The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

Jim Gauer: Novel Explosives

Joshua Cohen: Moving Kings

Peter Cole: Hymns & Qualms

Zachary Mason: Void Star

Alan Felsenthal: Lowly

Yiyun Li: Dear Friend, from My Life, I Write to You in Your Life

Colm Tóibín: House of Names

Claudio Magris: Blameless

Brad Gooch: Rumi's Secret

Richard Bausch: Living in the Weather of the World

Ron Padgett: Motor Maids across the Continent

Steven Moore: My Back Pages

Julian Talamantez Brolaski: Of Mongrelitude

Elif Batuman: The Idiot

George Toles: Paul Thomas Anderson

Emil Ferris: My Favorite Thing Is Monsters

Gary Groth on Fantagraphics and the art of the graphic novel

Álvaro Enrigue: Sudden Death

Rachel Cusk: Transit

Steve Erickson: Shadowbahn

Michael Tolkin: NK3

Ron Padgett: Collected Poems

Ottessa Moshfegh: Homesick for Another World (Part II)

Ottessa Moshfegh: Homesick for Another World (Part I)

Lynne Tillman: The Complete Madame Realism and Other Stories

Don DeLillo: Zero K

Colson Whitehead: The Underground Railroad

Patrick Ness: A Monster Calls

Rabih Alameddine: The Angel of History

Mitch Sisskind: Do Not Be a Gentleman When You say Goodnight

Peter Orner: Am I Alone Here?

Kate Tempest: The Bricks that Built the Houses

TC Boyle: The Terranauts

Tessa Hadley: The Past

Ann Patchett: Commonwealth

Jonathan Safran Foer: Here I Am

Nicholson Baker: Substitute

Nadja Spiegelman: I'm Supposed to Protect You from All This

Jacqueline Woodson: Another Brooklyn

Marisa Silver: Little Nothing

Affinity Konar: Mischling

Adam Fitzgerald: George Washington

Krys Lee: How I Became a North Korean

Joe McGinniss Jr: Carousel Court

Tom McCarthy: Satin Island

Tom Lutz: Drinking Mare's Milk on the Roof of the World

Michelle Latiolais: She

Constantine Phipps: What You Want

Vivian Gornick: The Odd Woman and the City

Geoff Dyer: White Sands

Louise Erdrich: LaRose, Part II

Louise Erdrich: LaRose, Part I

Joyce Carol Oates: The Man Without a Shadow

A. Scott Berg: Max Perkins

John Keene: Counternarratives

John D'Agata: The Making of the American Essay

Valeria Luiselli: The Story of My Teeth

Garth Greenwell: What Belongs to You

David Means: Hystopia

Helen Macdonald: H Is for Hawk

Christopher Sorrentino: The Fugitives

Greg Jackson: Prodigals

Brian Blanchfield: Proxies

Dana Spiotta: Innocents and Others

David Remnick and Deborah Treisman on fiction in the New Yorker

Joshua Cohen: Book of Numbers

Elizabeth McKenzie: The Portable Veblen

Mark de Silva: Square Wave

Darryl Pinckney: Black Deutschland

Ryan Gattis: All Involved

Larissa MacFarquhar: Strangers Drowning

Edmund de Waal: The White Road

Bruce Bauman: Broken Sleep

Supplication: Selected Poems of John Wieners

Rick Moody: Hotels of North America

Salman Rushdie: Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights

Paul Murray: The Mark and the Void

Eileen Myles: I Must Be Living Twice

Isabel Allende: The Japanese Lover

Sandra Cisneros: A House of My Own

Jonathan Franzen: Purity

Gary Indiana: I Can Give You Anything but Love

Mary Karr: The Art of Memoir

Joy Williams: The Visiting Privilege

Patrick deWitt: Undermajordomo Minor

Bill Clegg: Did You Ever Have a Family

Ann Beattie: The State We're In

Bonnie Nadzam and Dale Jamieson: Love in the Anthropocene

Dodie Bellamy: When the Sick Rule the World

William T. Vollmann: The Dying Grass, Part II

William T. Vollmann: The Dying Grass, Part I

Allison Green: The Ghosts Who Travel with Me

Louisa Hall: Speak

Mira Gonzalez and Tao Lin: Selected Tweets

E. L. Doctorow: Homer & Langley

Harper Lee: Go Set a Watchman

Linda Rosenkrantz: Talk

Christian Kracht: Imperium

Amy Gerstler: Scattered at Sea

Vendela Vida: The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty

Aleksandar Hemon: The Making of Zombie Wars

Alan Cheuse: Prayers for the Living

Maggie Nelson: The Argonauts

Atticus Lish: Preparation for the Next Life

Valeria Luiselli: Faces in the Crowd

Per Petterson, Ethan Nosowsky and Geir Berdahl on Publishing

Thomas McGuane: Crow Fair

Per Petterson: I Refuse

Kazuo Ishiguro: The Buried Giant

Luis Alberto Urrea: Tijuana Book of the Dead, and The Water Museum

David Vann: Aquarium

Charles Baxter and the 'Hidden Bookshelf'

Charles Baxter: There's Something I Want You to Do

Rachel Kushner: The Strange Case of Rachel K

Claudia Rankine: The Racial Imaginary

Claudia Rankine: Citizen, An American Lyric

Joyce Carol Oates: The Sacrifice

Peter Cole: The Invention of Influence

Chang-rae Lee: On Such a Full Sea

David Shields and Caleb Powell: I Think You're Totally Wrong

Alain Mabanckou: Letter to Jimmy

Richard Ford: Let Me Be Frank with You

Lydia Millet: Mermaids in Paradise

Colm Tóibín: Nora Webster

Todd Colby: Splash State

Goli Taraghi: The Pomegranate Lady and Her Sons

Marilynne Robinson: Lila

Martin Amis: The Zone of Interest

Robert Duncan and Jess

Françoise Mouly, Ian Falconer, and Neil Gaiman: Kid’s Books

Ben Lerner: 10:04

Sarah Waters: The Paying Guests

John Darnielle: Wolf In White Van

Jonathan Coe: Expo 58: A Novel

David Mitchell: The Bone Clocks

Charles Burns: Sugar Skull

Dylan Landis: Rainey Royal

Richard Flanagan: The Narrow Road to the Deep North

Joyce Carol Oates: Prison Noir

Donald Antrim: The Emerald Light in the Air

Kevin Birmingham: The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce’s Ulysses (Part II)

Kevin Birmingham: The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce’s Ulysses (Part I)

William T. Vollmann: Last Stories and Other Stories (Part II)

William T. Vollmann: Last Stories and Other Stories (Part I)

Lynne Tillman: What Would Lynne Tillman Do?

Edward St. Aubyn: Lost For Words

Francine Prose: Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932

Alice Notley: Negativity's Kiss

Karl Ove Knausgaard: My Struggle (Part II)

Karl Ove Knausgaard: My Struggle (Part I)

Michael Carroll: Little Reef, and Edmund White: Inside a Pearl

László Krasznahorkai: Seiobo There Below

Lydia Davis: Can't and Won't

Sjon: The Whispering Muse

Mona Simpson: Casebook

Jeff VanderMeer: Annihilation, Authority, Acceptance

Jeff Jackson: Mira Corpora

Emma Donoghue: Frog Music

Lorrie Moore: Bark

Dustin Long: Bad Teeth

Michelle Huneven: Off Course

John Banville (Benjamin Black): Black-Eyed Blonde

Robert Bly and Marion Woodman

John Irving: Trying to Save Piggy Sneed

John Robert Hoffman

Jay Parini

Yiyun Li: Kinder than Solitude

T.C. Boyle: Stories II

Warren Lehrer: A Life in Books

Valerie Martin: The Ghost of the Mary Celeste

Hilton Als: White Girls

Richard Powers: Orfeo

Jaime Hernandez and Junot Diaz: This Is How You Lose Her

Jonathan Blum: Last Word

Gary Shteyngart: Little Failure

Alfred Starr Hamilton: A Dark Dreambox of Another Kind

Denis Scheck, German literary critic and host of 'Druckfrisch'

James McCourt: Lasting City

Junot Diaz: This Is How You Lose Her

Joe Sacco: The Great War: July 1, 1916

Erica Jong: Fear of Flying

Will Self: Umbrella

Joan Didion on 'Blue Nights'

James Franco: Actors Anonymous

Allan Gurganus: Local Souls

Alice McDermott: Someone

Andre Dubus, III: Dirty Love

Nicholson Baker: Traveling Sprinkler

Jonathan Lethem: Dissident Gardens

Alexander Maksik: A Marker to Measure Drift

Rebecca Solnit: The Faraway Nearby

Van Dyke Parks: Songs Cycled

Russ Kick: The Graphic Canon, Volume 3

Mark Slouka: Brewster

Margaret Atwood: Maddaddam

Cathleen Schine: Fin and Lady

Peter Orner: Last Car over the Sagamore Bridge

Andrew Sean Greer: The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells

Linda Spalding: The Purchase

Tao Lin: Taipei

James Kelman: Mo Said She Was Quirky

Anne Carson: Red Doc>

Tom Drury: Pacific

Isabel Allende: Maya's Notebook

David Sedaris: Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Americanah

Marisa Silver: Mary Coin

Alice Fulton: Cascade Experiment

Rae Armantrout: Just Saying

Pura Lopez-Colome and Forrest Gander: Watchword

Aleksandar Hemon: The Book of My Lives

Margaret Atwood on Innovation

Rachel Kushner: The Flamethrowers

David Shields: How Literature Saved My Life

Mohsin Hamid: How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

Sam Lipsyte:The Fun Parts

Joyce Carol Oates: The Accursed

Michael Ondaatje: The Cat's Table

Jess Walter: We Live in Water

Eloise Klein Healy: A Wild Surmise

Luis Alberto Urrea, Part Two

Luis Alberto Urrea: The Hummingbird's Daughter and Queen of America

George Saunders: Tenth of December, Part Two

Nick Flynn: The Reenactments

Jamaica Kincaid: See Now Then

George Saunders: Tenth of December, Part One

Ange Mlinko: Shoulder Season; Marvelous Things Overheard

Lydia Millet: Magnificence

Amy Wilentz: Farewell, Fred Voodoo: A Letter from Haiti

Antoine Wilson: Panorama City

Oliver Sacks: Hallucinations

Charles Burns: The Hive

Mark Z. Danielewski: The Fifty Year Sword

Christine Schutt: Prosperous Friends

Scott Shepherd and John Collins: Gatz

David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas

Chris Kraus: Summer of Hate

Chris Ware: Building Stories

Craig Nova: The Constant Heart

Martin Amis: Lionel Asbo

Susanna Moore: The Life of Objects

Lawrence Norfolk: John Saturnall's Feast

Robert Hass: What Light Can Do

Michael Chabon: Telegraph Avenue

Joshua Cohen: Four New Messages

Neal Stephenson: Some Remarks

Mary Ruefle: Madness, Rack, and Honey

Lawrence Ferlinghetti: Time of Useful Consciousness

John Irving: In One Person

Sheila Heti: How Should a Person Be?

Jess Walter: Beautiful Ruins

Laszlo Krasznahorkai: Satantango

Jim Krusoe: Parsifal

Victoria Nelson: Gothicka

Dave Eggers: A Hologram for the King

Richard Ford: Canada, Part 2

Richard Ford: Canada, Part 1

Ben Fountain: Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

Cees Nooteboom: Self-Portrait of an Other

Susan Orlean: Rin Tin Tin-The Life and the Legend

Hari Kunzru: Gods Without Men

Adam Levin: Hot Pink

Etgar Keret: Suddenly, A Knock on the Door

Peter Behrens: The O'Briens

Heidi Julavits: The Vanishers

William H. Gass: Life Sentences

Krys Lee: Drifting House

Jeanette Winterson: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Moshe Kasher: Kasher in the Rye

Edward St. Aubyn: The Patrick Melrose Novels, Part II

Edward St. Aubyn: The Patrick Melrose Novels, Part I

Ben Marcus: The Flame Alphabet

Jonathan Lethem and Steve Erickson: The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

Edmund White: Jack Holmes and His Friend

Ayad Akhtar: American Dervish

Wayne Koestenbaum: Humiliation

Steve Erickson: These Dreams of You

Annie Leibovitz: Pilgrimage

Ismet Prcic: Shards

Dennis Cooper: The Marbled Swarm

Jonathan Lethem: The Ecstasy of Influence

Peter Gizzi: Threshold Songs

Paul La Farge: Luminous Airplanes

Stephen Greenblatt: The Swerve

Jeffrey Eugenides: The Marriage Plot

W.S. Merwin: The Shadow of Sirius

Ann Beattie: Mrs. Nixon

Tony D'Souza: Mule

Lawrence Weschler: Uncanny Valley

Russell Banks: Lost Memory of Skin

Harold Bloom: The Shadow of a Great Rock

Justin Torres: We the Animals

Kevin Wilson: The Family Fang

Hector Tobar: The Barbarian Nurseries

Maggie Nelson: The Art of Cruelty-A Reckoning

Simon Reynolds: Retromania-Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past

Rikki Ducornet: Netsuke

Jesse Ball: The Village on Horseback, and The Curfew

Jon-Jon Goulian: The Man in the Gray Flannel Skirt

Art Spiegelman: MetaMaus

Dana Spiotta: Stone Arabia

Sapphire: The Kid, Part 2

Sapphire: The Kid, Part 1

UpClose: Sapphire

Dora Malech: Say So

Chris Adrian: The Great Night

John Sayles: A Moment in the Sun

Geoff Dyer: Otherwise Known as the Human Condition

Louis B. Jones: Radiance

John Steppling on theater, 'Fever Dreams'

Ann Patchett: State of Wonder

Francine Prose: My New American Life

Howard Jacobson: The Finkler Question

Joyce Carol Oates: A Widow's Story

Eileen Myles: Inferno (A Poet's Novel)

Diane Ackerman: One Hundred Names for Love

Marjorie Garber: The Use and Abuse of Literature

Manuel Munoz: What You See in the Dark

David Lipsky and Rick Moody: David Foster Wallace's 'The Pale King'

Michelle Latiolais: Widow

Ann Beattie: The New Yorker Stories

Carlos Fuentes: Destiny and Desire, Part II

Carlos Fuentes: Destiny and Desire, Part I

Ralph Sassone: The Intimates

T.C. Boyle: When the Killing's Done

Mark Richard: House of Prayer No. 2: A Writer's Journey Home

Tatjana Soli: The Lotus Eaters

Joseph McElroy: Night Soul and Other Stories

Isabel Allende: Paula

T.C. Boyle on the environment

David Levithan: The Lover's Dictionary

David Vann: Caribou Island

Salman Rushdie: Luka and the Fire of Life

Mary Ruefle: Selected Poems

Jaimy Gordon: Lord of Misrule

Nicole Krauss: Great House

Leslie Marmon Silko: The Turquoise Ledge

Breyten Breytenbach on His Literature, Anti-Apartheid Activism

Lan Samantha Chang: All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost

Susan Straight: Take One Candle Light a Room

Mona Simpson: My Hollywood

Monique Truong: Bitter in the Mouth

Tom McCarthy: C

Charles Yu: How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

Rick Moody: The Four Fingers of Death

Howard Norman: What Is Left the Daughter

Gary Shteyngart: Super Sad True Love Story

Maile Meloy: Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It

Vendela Vida: The Lovers

Paul Muldoon and special guests, Sparks

Craig Nova: The Informer

Martha McPhee: Dear Money

David Mitchell: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

D.A. Powell and Linda Gregerson: Chronic

Jane Smiley: Private Life

Peter Carey

Aimee Bender

Favorite Books: John Waters and Elif Batuman

Isabel Allende: Island Beneath the Sea

Zachary Mason

Jean-Philippe Toussaint

Yann Martel

David Shields and Ander Monson on the New Prose

Ian McEwan

Anne Carson

Sam Lipsyte: The Ask

Chang-rae Lee: The Surrendered

John D'Agata: About a Mountain

Elif Batuman: The Possessed

John Ashbery

Adam Haslett

Joshua Ferris

Barbara Epler

John McPhee

Patti Smith, Part II

Patti Smith, Part I

Javier Marias, Part II

Javier Marias, Part I

Rita Dove

Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly

Jonathan Lethem

Rudolph Wurlitzer, Part II

Rudolph Wurlitzer, Part I

Barbara Kingsolver

Wallace Shawn: Essays & Grasses of a Thousand Colors

Orhan Pamuk, Part II

Orhan Pamuk, Part I

A.S. Byatt

Tao Lin: Shoplifting from American Apparel

Brenda Hillman

Margaret Atwood: The Year of the Flood

James Galvin

Nicholson Baker

Nick Laird

Lorrie Moore: A Gate at the Stairs

Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Dennis Cooper

Alvaro Uribe and Cristina Rivera-Garza

Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman

Clancy Martin

Colum McCann

Reif Larsen

Glen David Gold

Eduardo Galeano: Mirrors

Jim Krusoe

Anne Waldman

John Wray

Wells Tower

Matthea Harvey

Brad Gooch: Flannery

Matthew Dickman

Geoff Dyer: Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi

Mary Gaitskill

An Oulipo Mini-Anthology

Jacques Roubaud

Gary Indiana: The Shanghai Gesture

Elizabeth Alexander

Yusef Komunyakaa

Joanna Scott

Abdellah Taia

T.C. Boyle

A Whitman Tribute

Robin Romm

Frank Bidart, Part II

Frank Bidart, Part I

John Haskell

Rae Armantrout

Micheline Aharonian Marcom

Sparks: The Art of the Popular Song

Azar Nafisi

Toni Morrison, Part II

Sarah Shun-lien Bynum

Amitav Ghosh

Marilynne Robinson, Part II

Marilynne Robinson, Part I

An American Bookworm in Paris, Part V

Jonathan Carroll

David Foster Wallace

Sarah Vowell

An American Bookworm in Paris, Part IV

Diane Johnson

Francine Prose: Goldengrove

James Wood

An American Bookworm in Paris, Part III

Art Spiegelman

Horacio Castellanos Moya

David Markson

Annie Proulx

An American Bookworm in Paris, Part II

An American Bookworm in Paris, Part I

A Celebration of the Work of Swiss Writer Robert Walser

Francoise Mouly

Donald Ray Pollock (national)

Art Spiegelman (local)

Andrew Sean Greer: The Story of a Marriage

Salman Rushdie: The Enchantress of Florence

Rudolph Wurlitzer

Tobias Wolff

Coral Bracho and translator Forrest Gander

Brian Hall

Keith Gessen

Zachary Lazar

Richard Price

Isabel Allende: The Sum of Our Days

Clayton Eshleman

Bruce Weigl and Brian Turner

David Shields: The thing about life is that one day you'll be dead

Ariana Reines

Colm Tóibín: Mothers and Sons

Anne Enright

Arnon Grunberg

William T. Vollmann

David Rieff

Geraldine Brooks

Lewis Hyde

Eileen Myles and Maggie Nelson

Robert Hass

Cees Nooteboom

Oliver Sacks: Musicophilia

Russell Banks

Edmund White: Hotel de Dream

James McCourt: Now Voyagers

David Plante

Ann Patchett: Run

George Saunders: The Braindead Megaphone

Carol Muske-Dukes

Steve Erickson: Zeroville

Mario Vargas Llosa

Millard Kaufman

Ron Padgett: Joe

Robert Alter

Junot Diaz: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Veronica Gonzalez

Rupert Thomson

Alice Sebold

Ana Castillo

William Gibson

Viken Berberian

Marianne Wiggins

Miranda July

Nathan Englander

Naeem Murr

Michael Ondaatje: Divisadero

Helena Maria Viramontes

Alice Sebold

Kurt Vonnegut

Richard Flanagan

Jim Crace

Jonathan Lethem

Kiran Desai

Mark Slouka: The Visible World

John Ashbery and Ron Padgett on the works of Pierre Reverdy

Lydia Davis

Joanna Scott

Joyce Carol Oates: The Gravedigger's Daughter

Christine Schutt

John Banville (as Benjamin Black): Christine Falls

John Ashbery

Brian Selznick

Howard Norman

C.K. Williams

Vikram Chandra

Norman Mailer, Part II

Norman Mailer, Part I

Robert Stone

Martin Amis: House of Meetings

Vendela Vida

Gore Vidal

Isabel Allende: Ines of My Soul

Alice McDermott: After This

Brian Evenson

Dave Eggers

Mary Gordon

Richard Ford

Anne Carson

Philip Levine

Greil Marcus

Jennifer Egan: The Keep

Chris Adrian: The Children's Hospital

Edward P. Jones

Geoff Dyer: The Ongoing Moment

Clifford Chase

Zadie Smith

Michael Tolkin

Marisha Pessl

Andrew Holleran

Chris Kraus: Torpor

Mark Z. Danielewski

Wole Soyinka

John Updike, Part 2

John Updike, Part 1

Stacey Levine

W. S. Merwin

Uzodinma Iweala

Carlos Fuentes

Joyce Carol Oates: High Lonesome

T.C. Boyle

David Mitchell

Irving Feldman

Alice Quinn

John Yau

Leonard Cohen

Yannick Murphy

David Foster Wallace: Consider the Lobster and Other Essays

Robert Pinsky

Stanley Crawford

Robert Coover, Part 2 of 2

Robert Coover, Part 1 of 2

Peter Maresca and Art Spiegelman

Mary Caponegro

Richard Howard

Salman Rushdie: Shalimar the Clown

Jane Smiley

Campbell McGrath

Christopher Sorrentino

Joyce Carol Oates: Missing Mom

George Saunders: The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil

Colm Tóibín: The Master

Francine du Plessix Gray

Louise Erdrich: The Painted Drum

Kazuo Ishiguro: Never Let Me Go

Michel Houellebecq

Umberto Eco

Nicole Krauss: The History of Love

Bret Easton Ellis

Bookworm Series Finale (Part 10 of 10)

Beyond Identity--A Dark Vision (Part 9 of 10)

Hispanic Identity in Writing (Part 8 of 10)

Asian Identity in Writing (Part 7 of 10)

Sexuality and Literary Theory (Part 6 of 10)

Jewish Identity in Writing (Part 5 of 10)

African Americans and Identity in Writing (Part 4 of 10)

Place and Identity (Part 3 of 10)

The Creation of Identity (Part 2 of 10)

Escaping the Cage: Identity, Multiculturalism and Writing

Matthew Zapruder and Joshua Beckman

Jonathan Safran Foer: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Jonathan Williams

Ian McEwan

Roberto Calasso

Gilbert Sorrentino

Steve Erickson: Our Ecstatic Days

Martha Kinney, Derek McCormack and Dennis Cooper

Camille Paglia

Marilynne Robinson, Part II

Marilynne Robinson, Part I

Stephen Greenblatt: Will in the World

Cynthia Ozick

Mark Helprin

Joy Williams: Honored Guest

Susan Sontag

August Kleinzahler

Alan Hollinghurst

Russell Banks

Orhan Pamuk

Courtney Angela Brkic

Louis de Bernières

Kem Nunn

Don Lee: Country of Origin

Carlos Ruiz Zafon

William H. Gass: Reading Rilke

William T. Vollmann

Dan Chaon

Steve Almond

Marianne Wiggins

A Tribute to Czeslaw Milosz

Angus Fletcher

Alex Garland

Craig Nova

Karen Joy Fowler

David Bezmozgis

John Banville: Shroud

Seamus Heaney

Art Spiegelman

Walter Abish

Jim Shepard

E. L. Doctorow: Sweet Land Stories

Rebecca Solnit

Martin Amis: Yellow Dog

Suzan-Lori Parks

Guy Maddin

Harold Bloom: The Best Poems of the English Language

Alice Walker

Lucie Brock-Broido

Andrew Sean Greer: The Confessions of Max Tivoli

Melissa Pritchard

Edwidge Danticat

Chris Abani

David St. John

Octavia Butler

Benjamin Weissman, with editor Dennis Cooper

Doris Lessing: The Grandmothers

Rita Dove

Clayton Eshleman

James McCourt: Queer Street

Maxine Hong Kingston

Stuart Dybek

Tobias Wolff

Toni Morrison

Elmore Leonard: Mr. Paradise

Susan Choi

Jhumpa Lahiri

Edmund White: Fanny

DBC Pierre

Remembering George Plimpton

Remembering Edward Said

Pete Dexter

Edward P. Jones

Jonathan Lethem

Joan Didion

Vendela Vida and Julie Orringer

Chuck Palahniuk: Diary

Kevin Young

Rikki Ducornet

John Kaye

Janette Turner Hospital

Heidi Julavits: The Effect of Living Backwards

Ahdaf Soueif

Barbara Gowdy

Yann Martel: Life of Pi

Joseph McElroy (Part 2 of 2)

Joseph McElroy (Part 1 of 2)

Carol Muske Dukes

Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly

Margaret Atwood: Oryx and Crake

Siri Hustvedt

Alice McDermott: Child of My Heart

Monique Truong

Robert Stone

Jane Smiley

Don DeLillo: The Body Artist

Don DeLillo: Cosmopolis

John Murray

Kate Moses

ZZ Packer

Jessica Shattuck

John D'Agata: The Next American Essay

William Gibson

Norman Mailer

Louise Erdrich: The Master Butchers Singing Club

Brian Hall

A. S. Byatt (Part II)

A. S. Byatt (Part I)

Geoff Dyer: Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It

Colum McCann

Hubert Selby, Jr (Part II)

Hubert Selby, Jr. (Part 1)

Ron Padgett: You Never Know

Jeffrey Eugenides: Middlesex

Kim Deitch

Jonathan Franzen: How to Be Alone

Mary Robison

Sandra Cisneros: Caramelo

Joyce Carol Oates: I'll Take You There

Tristan Egolf

Michael Chabon

Frances Sherwood

Paul Auster

Nick Tosches

Adam Haslett

Anthony Lane

Mary Woronov

Gilbert Sorrentino, Part I

Ben Marcus: Notable American Women

James McCourt: Wayfaring at Waverly in Silver Lake

Dennis Cooper

Rick Moody: The Black Veil

Francine Prose: The Lives of Muses

Dave Eggers

Oliver Sacks: Oaxaca Journal

Charles Simic

Alice Sebold

Michael Frayn

Oscar Hijuelos: A Simple Habana Melody

Jonathan Safran Foer: Everything Is Illuminated

Maya Angelou

Viken Berberian: The Cyclist

Lydia Davis

Ian McEwan

Edward Hirsch

Howard Norman

Jim Krusoe

Jonathan Dee

Edna O'Brien

Cees Nooteboom