KCRW's Bookworm
A must for the serious reader, "Bookworm" showcases writers of fiction and poetry - the established, new or emerging - all interviewed with insight and precision by the show's host and guiding spirit, Michael Silverblatt.
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An American Bookworm in Paris, Part II
Camille de Toledo: Coming of Age at the End of History (Soft Skull)The young French critic, novelist and filmmaker Camille de Toledo tells the sad /exuberant story of young French intellectuals growing up at the end of everything.
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An American Bookworm in Paris, Part I
Sylvia Whitman, of Shakespeare and Company, a bookstore popular with Americans in Paris Francois Cusset French Theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze & Co. Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States (University of Minnesota Press) Our tour begins at Shakespeare and Company, a books …
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A Celebration of the Work of Swiss Writer Robert Walser
A tribute to the great (and virtually unknown) Swiss writer Robert Walser, who influenced Kafka and inspired Hermann Hesse. Writers Susan Bernofsky, Deborah Eisenberg and Wayne Koestenbaum read, discuss and worship Walser, a writer who is like a mouse that roaredâ??small and fragile but out-o …
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Francoise Mouly
Editor of Toon Books Françoise Mouly describes the new children's books she's bringing into the world...
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Donald Ray Pollock (national)
Knockemstiff (Doubleday)Knockemstiff, Ohio, inspires Donald Ray Pollock to explore the miseries and ferocities of small-town life.
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Art Spiegelman (local)
Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*! (Pantheon)A sneak preview of the new Art Spiegelman book, which collects Art's early underground commix and includes his next autobiographical sequence...
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Andrew Sean Greer
The Story of a Marriage (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) A wonderful young novelist, Andrew Sean Greer, writes about enormous and basic truths that his characters choose to conceal...
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Salman Rushdie
The Enchantress of Florence (Random House)In this new novel, Salman Rushdie explores Renaissance Florence and the reign of Akbar in India, in order to describe a world on the verge of discovering that all its beliefs are incorrect...
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Rudolph Wurlitzer
The Drop Edge of Yonder (Two Dollar Radio)Where has Rudy Wurlitzer been for the last fifteen years? The mental traveler takes another vision quest, this time into the Old American West...
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Tobias Wolff
Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories (Knopf)Tobias Wolff has re-written his famous stories many times—even after they've been published...
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Coral Bracho and translator Forrest Gander
Firefly under the Tongue: Selected Poems (New Directions)Coral Bracho, a major Mexican poet, writes ecstatic visionary poetry that has been translated into English for the first time. Our program marks another first—she has never before agreed to an interview...
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Brian Hall
Fall of Frost (Viking)Brian Hall takes on a fictional life of our great Robert Frost, giving language to the poet's inner life.
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Keith Gessen
All the Sad Young Literary Men (Viking)Keith Gessen, one of the founding editors of the hip, intellectual journal n 1, has written his first novel. It's about the struggles of young people to break into the world of their aspirations, in this case, the literary intelligentsia of New York City...
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Zachary Lazar
Sway (Little, Brown)Zachary Lazar's novel is about the Rolling Stones, Charles Manson, Kenneth Anger and the dark side of the Sixties. In this conversation, we try to gauge how much "sympathy for the devil" the era generated—from sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll to satanic ritual murders.
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Richard Price
Lush Life (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)This high-voltage interview with Richard Price (he spiels, riffs, and shoots off sparks) gives a rare insight into the way he orchestrates the complex of simultaneous perception in his writing. He proceeds with a strong sense of dread—ready for an attack from a …
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Isabel Allende
The Sum of Our Days (Harper)Isabel Allende's second memoir is written to Paula, her daughter who died, telling the history of their family since her death. Allende tells stories naturally, and here we discuss storytelling as a form of memory, a way of preserving the present.
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Clayton Eshleman
An Alchemist with One Eye on Fire (Black Widow Press)When The Bookworm explains that reading Eshleman's intense and visceral work brings up initial feelings of disgust, Eschleman responds that his poetry is a matter of initiation and transformation.
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George Saunders
The Braindead Megaphone (Riverhead)This conversation provides a mini-course in short-story writing, Saunders-style and explores the construction of short fiction from the ground up.
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Russell Banks
The Reserve (Harper)Russell Banks, one of the great living American novelists, uses the 1930's novel of passion and betrayal -- with its allied seductions, madness, and adultery -- to explore America's class system; the relationships between art, politics and wealth; and the despoiling of the Americ …
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Oliver Sacks
Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain (Knopf) Oliver Sacks explores the brain's affinity for music by examining the extraordinary ways our brains adapt in response to musical aberrations. Sack's wisdom and deep love of music are palpable in this vibrant conversation.
KCRW's Bookworm
