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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.

Photo credit: Marc Goldstein

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TODAY'S SHOW

Jane Smiley: Private Life

Private Life (Knopf) Jane Smiley explores lives limited by repression, narrow scope and boundless ego, describing the sadness of a genius whose work never catches on, … more >>

UPCOMING SHOWS

D.A. Powell and Linda Gregerson: Chronic

Chronic (Graywolf) The Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award offers an impressive $100,000 prize to a poet entering the major phase of his/her career. We speak to this year's … more >>

David Mitchell: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

Glowing front-page reviews and profiles proclaim David Mitchell to be "the real thing" and his new novel, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (Random House), a … more >>

RECENT SHOWS

Peter Carey

Parrot & Olivier in America (Knopf) Australian-born Peter Carey celebrates his years in America with a larking, picaresque novel based on Toqueville's Democracy in … more >>

Aimee Bender

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (Doubleday) A little girl is able to taste sadness in her food. Her brother, who has become emotionally withdrawn, is able to turn … more >>

Favorite Books: John Waters and Elif Batuman

Role Models (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) and The Possessed (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) John Waters’ gives a passionate description of his favorite books, and for … more >>

Isabel Allende

Island Beneath the Sea (Harper) Isabel Allende's historical novel about slavery and the Haitian revolution becomes the springboard for a conversation about global … more >>

Zachary Mason

The Lost Books of the Odyssey (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) Higher mathematics and logic problems have long intrigued fiction writers, including Zachary Mason. Both … more >>

Jean-Philippe Toussaint

Self-Portrait Abroad (Dalkey Archive); Running Away (Dalkey Archive) French fiction had become austere and theoretical until Jean-Philippe Toussaint took it in the … more >>

Yann Martel

Beatrice & Virgil (Spiegel & Grau) After recognizing that most holocaust literature is centered on personal testimony, Yann Martel decided to create an allegory … more >>

David Shields and Ander Monson on the New Prose

Reality Hunger: A Manifesto (Knopf) and Vanishing Point: Not a Memoir (Graywolf Press) New web technologies (and the ever-increasing availability of information) have … more >>

Ian McEwan

Solar (Doubleday) Along the way in our conversation about bad morals and good intentions, Ian McEwan dabbles in the background subjects of his new novel... more >>

Anne Carson

Nox (New Directions) Anne Carson's brother ran away, and she never saw him again. After learning of his death some twenty years later, she assembled Nox as a form of … more >>

Sam Lipsyte

The Ask (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) A comic wild card, Sam Lipsyte explains why, in the midst of all his scandalous anger and shenanigans, it’s the shape of a great … more >>

Chang-rae Lee

The Surrendered (Riverhead) Renowned for his novels about repressed, withdrawn characters, Chang-rae Lee new novel explores new ground.... more >>

John D'Agata

About a Mountain (Norton) In a culture whose major activities include consumption and the production of waste, John D'Agata ponders the adjacency of Las Vegas and a … more >>

Elif Batuman

The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) Elif Batuman never intended to study literature, learn … more >>

John Ashbery

Planisphere (Ecco) John Ashbery has made a dumbfounding statement: he is afraid that sometimes "the language gets in the way of the music of a poem." This is … more >>

More Past Shows

Program Details

Host

Michael Silverblatt

Bookworm Michael Silverblatt is the guy authors go to when they want a serious literary conversation about their writing, because Michael reads everything they’ve ever written, often surprising the authors with insights about their work that they themselves hadn’t realized.

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Schedule

Live

Tapes & Transcripts

A CD copy of Bookworm is available by calling 888-600-5279.

Transcripts of Bookworm are not available.

Click the Full Details link to read an excerpt from the featured book.

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