Search results for

NPR's Scott Simon talks with Shannon Pufahl about her debut novel, On Swift Horses, a celebration of her grandmother featuring gamblers, ponies, card sharks and unfinished highways of the West.

A new film revisits a five-day interview that took place between writer David Foster Wallace and a reporter for Rolling Stone in 1996. Critic David Edelstein calls it a "very good movie."

Newbery Medal-winning author Kwame Alexander's new effort is a novel about a 12-year-old boy named Nick, written in verse. He says poetry is one key to keeping kids invested in what they're reading.

NPR's Scott Simon talks with acclaimed novelist Samantha Hunt about her first book of short stories, The Dark Dark, which explores the fantastical and the sorrowful in everyday life.

Jay Allison hosts an updated version of the 1950s radio project, designed to encourage listeners to develop respect for beliefs different from their own. Listen to the introduction.

The latest from Les Nubians is a CD called Les Nubians Presents Echos, a mixture of music and poetry. The Afro-French sister act Helene and Celia discuss the project with Ed Gordon.

Author Jonathan Ames extols the virtues of Dashiell Hammett's hardboiled classic, The Dain Curse. "I started reading Hammett about a dozen years ago, after a long and enjoyable romance with Chandler," Ames says. "I return and reread both writers all the time."

Jack Kerouac's classic On the Road was published half a century ago, on Sept. 5, 1957. A seminal work of the Beat Generation, the book helped change both American culture and the literary world. It continues to have far-reaching influence.

The Enlightenment of Katzuo Nakamatsu, The House on Via Gemito, and Cousins together form a tour of human darkness where liberation comes in many forms.

Mickey Spillane was the best-selling mystery writer of the 20th century. He created Mike Hammer after returning from World War II, and though Spillane died in 2006, writer Max Allan Collins is keeping Hammer's story alive by completing the manuscripts Spillane left behind.