Tracy K. Smith won a Pulitzer Prize for her 2011 book of poetry, Life on Mars, which took its title from the David Bowie song of the same name. In its exploration of cosmic mysteries, the work was in part an elegy for her father, an electrical engineer who worked on the Hubble Space Telescope. She followed it up with her 2015 memoir, Ordinary Light, which was named one of the best books of the year. A former U.S. Poet Laureate, Tracy K. Smith is now professor of English and African and African American Studies at Harvard University. *This episode originally aired on May 29, 2016.

Marie Kreutzer is one of Austria's most important and established filmmakers. Her new movie, Corsage, probes the inner life of Empress Elizabeth of Austria-Hungary, an iconic figure in 19th-century history. She's been represented many times on screen, most recently in a Netflix series called "The Empress." Opening this month, Corsage has already garnered enthusiastic reviews and earned a Best Actress Award for its star, Vicky Krieps, at Cannes. Eleanor Wachtel spoke to Marie Kreutzer when the film screened at the Toronto International Film Festival last September.

Cleopatra is one of the most famous women in history. As a wily seductress who charmed both Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, she’s been the subject of numerous stage and screen portrayals. Francine Prose says she’s also greatly misunderstood. The award-winning novelist, essayist and critic has written about various real-life figures, from Anne Frank to Ethel Rosenberg. In her latest book, Cleopatra: Her History, Her Myth, Prose challenges common misperceptions about the queen of Egypt and how she's often represented in popular culture.

Thirty years ago, Salman Rushdie made a surprise appearance at a Canadian PEN fundraiser, while still in hiding because of the fatwa issued against him for his 1988 novel, The Satanic Verses. Getting Rushdie to Toronto was an enormous undertaking and Writers & Company was one of few Canadian media outlets granted access to Rushdie before the event. As Rushdie continues his recovery from injuries sustained in an attack earlier this year, Writers & Company revisits conversations with Rushdie in 1992 and 2015 in a special tribute episode.

Lebanese German writer Pierre Jarawan made a stunning debut with his compelling novel, The Storyteller. Hailed as "a love letter to Lebanon," it became an international bestseller and earned him the title "Literature Star of the Year." His latest novel, Song for the Missing, is also set in Lebanon. Haunting and poetic, moving through different decades, it explores the lasting trauma from the country's 15-year civil war. Pierre Jarawan spoke to Eleanor Wachtel onstage last month at the Vancouver Writers Fest.

Charles Dickens and Prince were both brilliant, driven and beloved by their fans. And both died before their time, producing and performing to the end. It wasn’t until his early twenties that Nick Hornby read Dickens, around the same time he attended his first Prince concert. He still keeps their photos on his office wall, and in his new memoir, Dickens and Prince: A Particular Kind of Genius, he explores the parallels between these two heroes and how their creativity inspires his own prolific career.

Lorraine Hansberry was one of the most brilliant — and radical —playwrights of the mid-20th century. The author of the wildly popular "A Raisin in the Sun," Hansberry was both the youngest and the first Black winner of the prestigious Drama Critics Circle Award for Best American Play in 1959. She's the subject of the acclaimed biography Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry by Princeton scholar Imani Perry. This conversation originally aired on May 12, 2019.

Nick Drnaso is the first – and only – graphic novelist to be nominated for a Booker Prize for his 2018 title, Sabrina, which was hailed as a "masterpiece." Now he's back with an ambitious new work, Acting Class, in which ten characters sign up for an acting class at their local community centre, where nothing is quite what it seems. *Please note this conversation deals with abuse.

One of Britain's leading novelists, Ian McEwan is the author of such acclaimed works as the Booker Prize-winning Amsterdam and the hugely popular Atonement, which was made into an Oscar-nominated movie. Now, he's back with Lessons, a story about a fictional alter-ego, Roland, with whom McEwan shares an intimate background -- until a transformative event leads Roland down a very different path. Ian McEwan spoke to Eleanor Wachtel onstage before a live audience at the Toronto International Festival of Authors.

Namwali Serpell's 2019 novel The Old Drift was hailed by Salman Rushdie as "a dazzling debut." It won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction and was named a notable book of the year by the New York Times Book Review. Her time-bending new work, The Furrows, tells the story of one family's struggle with love and loss in the wake of a tragic accident. The novel is dedicated to Serpell's late sister, Chisha, who died from a drug overdose when Serpell was just 18.