New Letters - On the Air - Audio feed

Our "Classics Series" continues as we go "Back to the Writing Well" to hear from writers of place, including the late Pat Conroy. Famous for his novels about the south, with several made into movies such as The Great Santini, he finally puts his father to rest with his 2013 memoir, ...

We continue our "Classics Series" by going to the writing well to fill our creative spirits with advice from several fiction writers, including Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Jane Smiley, who reveals her "Five Writing Tips." The author of the trilogy of novels...

We begin our "Classics Series" with our program celebrating our 2013 Clarion Award for Best Radio Talk/Interview Program from the Association for Women in Communications, which features audio excerpts from our award-winning interviews. Jamaica Kincaid reads from her novel Mr. Potter, based loosely on her life and relationship with her father, while ...

In this special anthology program novelist Meg Wolitzer (shown) and poet Molly Peacock both discuss the importance of writing about the lives and work of women. Wolitzer reads from her novel The Female Persuasion while Peacock shares poems from her collection...

American-Canadian essayist, poet and biographer Molly Peacock gives an in-depth look into her latest work, The Analyst, her 2017 poetry collection that traces her decades-long relationship with her...

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As we near what may be the end of our 43 years of broadcasting, we look back at our decades of publishing the National Magazine Award-winning New Letters, the American Book Award-winning BkMk (BookMark) Press, and the radio show, New Letters on the Air...

The late Etheridge Knight began writing poetry in the 1960s, when he was imprisoned for armed robbery, where he discovered that "art is ultimately about freedom." This program features excerpts from a 1986 poetry reading and a 1989 interview by Rebekah Presson, when they discuss the role of black men in society and his use of prison as a metaphor. The author of four books, his work continues to inspire younger ...

This special program features the final issue of new works of poetry, fiction, essays and reviews, edited by Robert Stewart for New Letters: Volume 86 Nos. 1 and 2. In this Diastole House reading in February 2020,...

Virginia Brackett, the author of 15 books, discusses her 2019 family memoir, In the Company of Patriots. She reveals how she used family stories, scrapbooks, letters, and interviews to trace the life of her father, Captain Edmund C. Roberts, who was killed in the Korean War when she was only eight months old. The Park University Professor Emeritus of English als...

Guggenheim fellow Jericho Brown describes the joy he finds in writing poetry and how his work helps him examine his world as a gay black man. He talks about some of his poetic mentors—from Emily Dickinson to Alice Walker—and the lessons he strives to pass along to his students at Emory University. He also reveals the story behind changing his name and discusses his childhood in Shreveport, Louisiana, where he was raised by fundamental Christians. Brown reads from his second collec...