Bookworm

American-born writers of Asian descent explore the challenge of forging identity, while living "between cultures."

James McCourt, Camille Paglia, Alan Hollinghurst and Edmund White

James McCourt discusses the emergence of "queer identity" and gives an overview of French literary theories and their influence on multiculturalism, while Camille Paglia explains the destructive nature of such theories. Booker Prize winner Alan Hollinghurst, who writes about the gay experience, reveals that he reads very little popular gay literature. Edmund White explains how he has turned away from the aesthetic and has embraced social realism in his desire to document the AIDS crisis.

Cartoonist and graphic novelist Art Spiegelman explains how writers' identities are revealed in their work, that reading a book is like crawling into the writer's head. Cynthia Ozick and Jonathan Rosen talk about the immigrant experience and the Jewish American novel...

Rita Dove, Edward P. Jones, Alice Walker and Jayne Cortez

J. D. McClatchy has traveled the US visiting the homes of classic American writers. Joan Didion talks about her native California; Jonathan Lethem describes growing up in Brooklyn; and Toni Morrison describes the creation of an imaginary home, a hotel, in her most-recent novel. 

We hear from E. L. Doctorow and Norman Mailer, but the focus is on Russell Banks, a white, male, American writer, who started his career in a specific part of the world, the American Northeast. He has explored identity throughout his career, using it as a narrative tool. He believes that good writing transcends the mythology of identity....

Russell Banks, Susan Sontag, Maya Angelou, Camille Paglia, Stephen Greenblatt, Tom Wolfe and David Mitchell

American Linden (Tupelo)

Your Time Has Come (Verse)

Poets Matthew Zapruder and Joshua Beckman discuss the formation of a new literary press, Wave, and then branch out into an exploration of the improbable economics of life as a poet....

The young Jonathan Safran Foer (28) offers an even younger narrator (9) whose father died in the bombing of the World Trade Center.

Jubilant Thicket: new and selected poems (Copper Canyon)

Jonathan Williams alternates between playing the role of elder statesman and that of rambunctious old cuss. You can hear it in his poetry...