New Letters - On the Air - Audio feed

New York Times Bestselling author Meg Wolitzer reads from her most recent novel, The Female Persuasion, and discusses its themes of feminism and the tendency to idealize our mentors. Her work has long centered on the experiences of women, with three of her books having been adapted for film, including ...

In this 2020 reading at Rockhurst University for the Midwest Poets Series, Ada Limón talks about her creative process and shares work from her National Book Critics Circle Award-winning collection, The Carrying. While she uses poetry to explore loss and pain—from her own struggles with infertility to the world's devastation from climate change—she also reads praise and love poems—including t...

Tyehimba Jess, winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry reads from his multi-award winning Olio at the Kansas City Public Library, during his 2019 visit to the Unesco Creative City of Music. The book delves into the voices of African...

A decades-long resident of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, Randall Freisinger gives insight into the often wintery world of his surroundings. Now retired from teaching, he shares poetry from his 2019 book, Windthrow and Salvage, which contains the 2007 ...

A member of the Navajo Nation, Bojan Louis is a poet, fiction writer, essayist and author of the 2018 American Book Award-winning poetry collection Currents, published by BkMk press. Louis, who worked for years as an electrician and formerly served as poetry editor for RED INK: An International Journal of Indigenous Literature, Arts, and Humanities, discusses how his previous career and the culture and environment of the N...

Though he's now the author of 17 novels and served as editor for The Vietnam Reader of Fiction and Nonfiction on the War, Stewart O'Nan didn't begin his career as a writer. He started out as a half-hearted engineer until advice from his wife led him writing books as varied as the best-selling novel, ...

Poet and muralist José Faus was born in Bogota, Colombia but grew up in Kansas, just across the Missouri border. In this interview in front of an audience as the 2019 recipient of UMKC's "Defying the Odds" Alumni Award, he talks about his coming-of-age struggles and how he's used art and writing to change his life. A leader in Kansas City's Latino Writers Collective, Faus shares poetry from his book,...

English writer Rupert Thomson discusses his eleventh novel, Never Anyone But You, that was shortlisted for the 2018 American Library in Paris Book Award. It explores the true love story of two lesbians in early 20th century France. Discover the history of artists Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, who resisted fascism and dealt with men...

Multi-award winning short story writer, Amina Gautier, shares excerpts from her 2018 PEN/Malamud Award-winning collection, The Loss of All Lost Things, as part of that year's Pleiades Visiting Writers Series at the University of Central Missouri. She also talks about the real-world inspiration and years of research that went into this book, her third short story collection. She also won the Flannery O'Co...

In part one of this conversation, Arab-American poet Naomi Shihab Nye, whose numerous books of poetry, essays and stories have delighted children and adults alike, reads from her book, Tender Spot, including her poem "Famous" that was turned into a picture book in 2015. She also talks about her award-winning novel, ...