Author Interviews

NPR's Scott Simon talks to former Buzzfeed writer Anne Helen Peterson about her new book Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation.

Decades of living with bipolar disorder was "training" for the coronavirus pandemic, says Terri Cheney, whose new book shares lessons for navigating mental illness — and the times we live in.

In his new book No Rules Rules, Reed Hastings argues that in order for a creative workplace to succeed, it needs as few policies and rules as possible. Others say the culture is demoralizing.

In If Then, historian Jill Lepore tells the story of Simulmatics. Founded in 1959, the company's "people machine" used a computer program to predict the impact of various political messages.

NPR's Steve Inskeep talks to Jill Lepore about her latest book If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future. Her acclaimed books include These Truths, a history of the U.S.

It's been 16 years since Clarke wrote Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. "The pressure of all the years when I hadn't written, and all the stories I hadn't written, weighed very heavily on me," she says.

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Ayad Akhtar centers his new novel on a Muslim man who, like Akhtar, is the son of Pakistani immigrants living in Wisconsin.

NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks to Bob Woodward about his new book: Rage. Woodward documents that President Trump was aware of how lethal the coronavirus was, well before he let on in public.

The narrator's name in the novel is also Ayad Akhtar, and the book reads like memoir. Akhtar says he had to "pilfer" from his own life to write a novel that had the "addictive thrill" of reality TV.

The Latino USA host, who's spent a career covering those silenced in the media, now tells her own story in a new memoir. "We all have to work at making the immigrant story much more public," she said.

NPR's Scott Simon talks with novelist Sue Miller about her latest work, Monogamy, which follows the story of a new widow.

NPR's Scott Simon speaks with Trevor Barnes, author of the new book, Dead Doubles: The Extraordinary Worldwide Hunt for One of the Cold War's Most Notorious Spy Rings.