Dialogue with Marcia Franklin

Pulitzer Prize-winning humorist Dave Barry hams it up with host Marcia Franklin at the 2014 Sun Valley Writers' Conference. The two talk about Barry's various misadventures in the Gem State, including tree-climbing, snowmobiling and trout fishing—and what he thinks the new motto for Idaho should be. They also discuss Barry's partnership with Ridley Pearson on the Peter and the Starcatchers book series.

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Originally Aired: 11/21/2014

The interview is part of Dialogue's series "Conversations from the Sun Valley Writers' Conference" and was taped at the 2014 conference. Since 1995, the conference has been bringing together some of the world's most well-known and illuminating authors to discuss literature and life.

Marcia Franklin talks with author Yiyun Li about her works, including her recent novel, Kinder Than Solitude. Li, who came to the U.S. in 1996, originally studied to be an immunologist but fell in love with writing. In addition to many awards for her fiction, Li received a MacArthur "Genius Grant." She discusses her life, the themes of her books, and why she only writes in English.

Don't forget to subscribe, and visit the Dialogue website for more conversations that matter.

Originally Aired: 10/30/2014

The interview is part of Dialogue's series "Conversations from the Sun Valley Writers' Conference" and was taped at the 2014 conference. Since 1995, the conference has been bringing together some of the world's most well-known and illuminating authors to discuss literature and life.

Marcia Franklin talks with David Epstein, an award-winning sports journalist and author of the bestselling book The Sports Gene. It delves into the controversial research on what role genetics plays in the development of athletic talent. The book also takes on the so-called "10,000 Hour Rule," which contends that 10,000 hours of practice can produce mastery in a field, including sports.

Don't forget to subscribe, and visit the Dialogue website for more conversations that matter.

Originally Aired: 10/24/2014

The interview is part of Dialogue's series "Conversations from the Sun Valley Writers' Conference" and was taped at the 2014 conference. Since 1995, the conference has been bringing together some of the world's most well-known and illuminating authors to discuss literature and life.

Known for elevating the "ordinary" with her keen observations, including life in Latino and Arab communities, Palestinian-American poet Naomi Shihab Nye is the author or editor of more than 30 works of poetry, fiction and essays. Her books include Words Under the Words; Red Suitcase; Fuel; You and Yours; Never in a Hurry; Habibi; A-maze Me; Honeybee; and 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East, which was nominated for the National Book Award.

Nye, whose father was a journalist, gleans many of the subjects for her poems from the news, including writing about both the tensions and close relationships between Palestinians and Israelis. The promotion of cross-cultural understanding and peace is an important component of her work, as is teaching poetry to children, publishing their poems and writing children's books.

Marcia Franklin talks with Nye about her beginnings as a poet, the influences on her work, her tips for writing, the role of poetry in society and her thoughts on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Don't forget to subscribe, and visit the Dialogue website for more conversations that matter.

Originally Aired: 10/26/2012

The interview is part of Dialogue's series "Conversations from the Sun Valley Writers' Conference" and was taped at the 2012 conference. Since 1995, the conference has been bringing together some of the world's most well-known and illuminating authors to discuss literature and life.

S.C. "Sam" Gwynne is the author of Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2011, a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist and the winner of both the Texas and Oklahoma Book Awards. It paints the epic story of the Comanches, whose territory comprised an estimated 250,000 square miles of the American Plains, an area now part of five states. It also draws the more intimate story of Cynthia Ann Parker, a nine-year old girl who was kidnapped by Comanches during a raid on the family's Texas homestead. Parker subsequently spent 24 years with the tribe and had three children, including Quanah, who would become one of the Comanche's most skilled warriors.

Don't forget to subscribe, and visit the Dialogue website for more conversations that matter.

Originally Aired: 10/19/2012

The interview is part of Dialogue's series "Conversations from the Sun Valley Writers' Conference" and was taped at the 2012 conference. Since 1995, the conference has been bringing together some of the world's most well-known and illuminating authors to discuss literature and life.

Amy Waldman, a former reporter for The New York Times, discusses her bestselling novel The Submission, which tells the fictional tale of Mohammad "Mo" Khan, a secular Muslim who wins a competition to design a memorial honoring the victims of a terrorist attack similar to 9/11. When the jury members discover who've they've selected, some try to change the result. But the decision is leaked to the press, resulting in outrage not over the selection of Khan, but over his entry, which includes a garden some think is an Islamic design to honor martyrs.

The outcry is reminiscent of the 2010 controversy over Park51, a planned Islamic community center in New York City near the former Twin Towers. But Waldman had finished the first draft of her book before that story erupted.

Don't forget to subscribe, and visit the Dialogue website for more conversations that matter.

Originally Aired: 10/12/2012

The interview is part of Dialogue's series "Conversations from the Sun Valley Writers' Conference" and was taped at the 2012 conference. Since 1995, the conference has been bringing together some of the world's most well-known and illuminating authors to discuss literature and life.

Marcia Franklin talks with author Alexandra Fuller about her works, her life and her writing philosophy. Fuller was raised in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Malawi and Zambia, and her reminiscences of growing up in war-torn Africa with her hardscrabble parents form the basis of two memoirs, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood (2002) and Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness (2011).

In the books, she details her growing awareness not only of the manic depression and alcoholism of her mother, who lost three children to disease and accident, but also of the unequal treatment of whites and blacks in Africa and her parents' own racism.

Don't forget to subscribe, and visit the Dialogue website for more conversations that matter.

Originally Aired: 10/5/2012

The interview is part of Dialogue's series "Conversations from the Sun Valley Writers' Conference" and was taped at the 2012 conference. Since 1995, the conference has been bringing together some of the world's most well-known and illuminating authors to discuss literature and life.

Marcia Franklin talks with author and former journalist Kati Marton. She describes the experience of researching her book Enemies of the People, which chronicles her effort to learn more about her parents. They were imprisoned by the Hungarian government during the Cold War for their work as reporters for American news outlets. Released after nearly two years, her parents fled to the United States, where they lived out their lives and never discussed their ordeal.

Years after their deaths, Marton had the unique opportunity to look at the once-secret files compiled on her family. She discovered not only who had betrayed her parents, but more about their past lives than she had ever imagined.

Don't forget to subscribe, and visit the Dialogue website for more conversations that matter.

Originally Aired: 12/15/2011

The interview is part of Dialogue's series "Conversations from the Sun Valley Writers' Conference" and was taped at the 2011 conference. Since 1995, the conference has been bringing together some of the world's most well-known and illuminating authors to discuss literature and life.

Marcia Franklin talks with Colum McCann, author of Let the Great World Spin. Called the "first great 9/11 novel" and winner of the 2009 National Book Award for fiction, the novel weaves together the stories of fictional characters all living in New York City in 1974 during the week Philippe Petit made his famous tightrope walk between the Twin Towers. Although the book barely mentions the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, it is considered an homage to that day and its effect on the country.

Don't forget to subscribe, and visit the Dialogue website for more conversations that matter.

Originally Aired: 12/8/2011

The interview is part of Dialogue's series "Conversations from the Sun Valley Writers' Conference" and was taped at the 2011 conference. Since 1995, the conference has been bringing together some of the world's most well-known and illuminating authors to discuss literature and life.

When a Tunisian street vendor set himself on fire in December 2010 to protest treatment by a police officer, he set off an unlikely chain of uprisings throughout the region, now dubbed as the "Arab Spring."

Marcia Franklin talks with Suzanne Maloney, an expert on Iran who was at the time a scholar at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, about how uprisings in the Middle East affect the United States. Maloney is now a vice president of Brookings and director of its foreign policy program.

Don't forget to subscribe, and visit the Dialogue website for more conversations that matter.

Originally Aired: 10/6/2011

The interview is part of Dialogue's series "Conversations from the Sun Valley Writers' Conference" and was taped at the 2011 conference. Since 1995, the conference has been bringing together some of the world's most well-known and illuminating authors to discuss literature and life.