Author Interviews

detail from cover of Forgiving the Angel

Books
Arts

Living, And 'Forgiving,' In A Brilliant Writer's Orbit

11:35am January 18, 2014

by NPR Staff

Jay Cantor is a hard author to nail down. He's written about topics as wide-ranging as Che Guevara and Krazy Kat. His latest work expands his range even more, fictionalizing the lives of four of Franz Kafka's friends and lovers. It's called Forgiving the Angel, and Cantor tells NPR's Lynn Neary it's a book born out of gratitude.

Queue Listen Now

A Strange Composition: Classical Music Meets Bioterror In 'Orfeo'

8:33pm January 17, 2014

by NPR Staff

Richard Powers' new novel tells the story of an avant-garde classical composer who finds himself dabbling in DNA. He "gets obsessed with finding music inside of living things," Powers explains, and, as a fugitive, ends up leading officials on a low-speed chase.

Queue Listen Now

Gabriel Sherman is a contributing editor at New York Magazine, where he's written cover stories on media, politics and business.

Books
Arts

Book Chronicles The Building Of Roger Ailes' Fox News Empire

5:00pm January 17, 2014

Gabriel Sherman traces the beginning of Fox News' success back to its wall-to-wall coverage of Monica Lewinsky. He says, "Ratings during the Lewinsky scandal exploded more than 400 percent, so you saw instantly that there was a market for this type of ... television." Sherman's book is called The Loudest Voice In The Room.

Queue Listen Now

Books
Arts

Chang-rae Lee Stretches For Dystopic Drama, But Doesn't Quite Reach

2:04pm January 14, 2014

by Maureen Corrigan

Lee is acclaimed for his realistic and historical fiction, but he's made a foray into the futuristic sci-fi genre with a new novel called On Such a Full Sea. Fresh Air book critic Maureen Corrigan says sometimes it's better for writers to stick closer to familiar shores.

Queue Listen Now

Watch an interactive of the Supreme Court justice narrating her personal family photos. (Above: Sotomayor, 1959)

Books
Arts

As A Latina, Sonia Sotomayor Says, 'You Have To Work Harder'

12:46pm January 14, 2014

The Supreme Court justice tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross, "In every position that I've been in, there have been naysayers who don't believe I'm qualified or who don't believe I can do the work." She has committed herself to proving those people wrong.

Queue Listen Now

An overseer sits in the shade while workers collect coffee beans on a Brazilian plantation, circa 1750.

Books
Arts

How Coffee Influenced The Course Of History

3:49pm January 09, 2014

by Lydia Zuraw

Once people figured out how to roast the seeds of the Coffea plant in the 1400s, coffee took over the world. In doing so, it fueled creativity, revolutions, new business ventures, literature, music — and slavery.

Queue Listen Now

Books
Arts

In An Age Of Slavery, Two Women Fight For Their 'Wings'

10:29pm January 08, 2014

by Lynn Neary

Sue Monk Kidd, the author of the best-selling The Secret Life of Bees, takes on both slavery and feminism in her novel The Invention of Wings. It's a story told by two women: Hetty, a slave, seeks her freedom, while Sarah, her reluctant owner, rebels against her family to become an abolitionist.

Queue Listen Now

Pussy Riot members Yekaterina Samutsevich (left), Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova sit in a glass-walled cage in a Moscow court on Oct. 10, 2012.

The 'Pussy Riot' Arrests, And The Crackdown That Followed

4:19pm January 08, 2014

According to Russian journalist Masha Gessen, the 2012 arrests were the start of a campaign by Vladimir Putin and his supporters against government critics. Gessen, who is also an LGBT rights advocate, recently moved to New York with her partner and their children in response to the anti-gay laws Russia passed in June.

Queue Listen Now

Gary Shteyngart's work has been translated into 26 languages.

Books
Arts

'You Can't Be This Furry' And Other Life Lessons From Gary Shteyngart

2:56pm January 07, 2014

In Little Failure, the novelist recounts his emigration from the USSR to the U.S. when he was 7. For the first few years, he says, he would sit alone in the school cafeteria, talking to himself in Russian "in this gigantic fur hat and fur coat." It wasn't long before a teacher advised, "Children won't play with you if you have that much fur on."

Queue Listen Now

A young man looking sad while sitting on the ground with his head on his hands

Fear Of Fainting, Flight And Cheese: One Man's 'Age Of Anxiety'

8:09pm January 06, 2014

Since about age 2, Atlantic editor Scott Stossel has been "a twitchy bundle of phobias, fears and neuroses." Today, his phobias include asthenophobia, a fear of fainting; aerophobia, a fear of flying; and turophobia, a fear of cheese. He wrote his latest book to help understand and find relief from his anxious suffering.

Queue Listen Now