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Isabel Allende,
"Womens's Series I: Daughter of Fortune", January 27 2000
Isabel Allende
"Womens's Series I: Daughter of Fortune", January 27 2000
In the first of a series on women’s writing and imagination, Isabel Allende uses feminist terms to describe her history of the California Gold Rush. Her writing has always been a stand against the patriarchy, her characters the people marginalized by American history: women, Hispanics, Native Americans and Asians.
Real Audio: Womens's Series I: Daughter of Fortune
Isabel Allende Bio and Cross Links
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Dorothy Allison,
"Cavedweller", July 02 1998
Dorothy Allison
"Cavedweller", July 02 1998
Dorothy Allison’s arrival as a significant voice in mainstream American fiction provokes questions of identity and the limits of truthfulness. How far can she go?
Real Audio: Cavedweller
Dorothy Allison Bio and Cross Links
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Margaret Atwood,
"The Blind Assassin", November 02 2000
Margaret Atwood
"The Blind Assassin", November 02 2000
While revealing her passion for storytelling, cunning Margaret Atwood carefully avoids the secret mechanisms of her engrossing new novel.
Real Audio: The Blind Assassin
Margaret Atwood Bio and Cross Links
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Paul Auster,
"Timbuktu", October 21 1999
Paul Auster
"Timbuktu", October 21 1999
In life, as in his metaphysical mystery novels, the elegant Paul Auster implies and evades, implies and evades. Listen to him evade the implication of his newest novel, featuring a talking dog.
Real Audio: Timbuktu
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Russell Banks,
"Angel on the Roof", November 09 2000
Russell Banks
"Angel on the Roof", November 09 2000
The house of fiction has many rooms. Russell Banks talks about the life-choices that let him to occupy his particularly gritty sublet.
Real Audio: Angel on the Roof
Russell Banks Bio and Cross Links
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John Barth,
"Coming Soon!!", October 5 2001
John Barth
"Coming Soon!!", October 5 2001
Part 1 of a two-part interview.A full-scale celebration of the career of John Barth, one of America’s greatest comic writers. His experiments with form, his crazy circumlocutions and contractions of languages and, in particular, his creation of double-gendered narration are explored, explained, exhibited, and exclaimed over.
Real Audio: Coming Soon!!
John Barth Bio and Cross Links
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John Barth,
"Coming Soon!!", November 1 2001
John Barth
"Coming Soon!!", November 1 2001
Part II of a two-part interview.More on the spectacular fictional inventions of John Barth--including dual narrators, Muse-author collaborations, and stories so complexly interconnected that they mirror the spiraling structure of the universe.
Real Audio: Coming Soon!!
John Barth Bio and Cross Links
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Ann Beattie,
"Perfect Recall", April 05 2001
Ann Beattie
"Perfect Recall", April 05 2001
Expressing outright admiration for this new collection of stories, Bookworm attempts to pin down Ann Beattie’s elusive techniques: her concrete details that turn abstract, her ability to spin from happiness to tears, and to tell jokes that start our funny, turn sick, and end up tragic.
Real Audio: Perfect Recall
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Sylvia Brownrigg,
"The Metaphysical Touch", October 07 1999
Sylvia Brownrigg
"The Metaphysical Touch", October 07 1999
In this novel, a romance of sorts, is struck up via the internet. This, then, is a conversation about the creation of characters--how they reveal themselves, how they invent themselves, and what they tell us about that invisible presence, their author.
Real Audio: The Metaphysical Touch
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Gabrielle Burton,
"Heartbreak Hotel", December 30 1999
Gabrielle Burton
"Heartbreak Hotel", December 30 1999
This feminist extravaganza received marvelous reviews but disappeared from print. On its rediscovery and republication, the author reveals the complex destiny of a book that challenges the status quo.
Real Audio: Heartbreak Hotel
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Octavia Butler,
"Kindred", April 15 2004
Octavia Butler
"Kindred", April 15 2004
Although Octavia Butler was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship (genius grant) in 1995 because of her science fiction, she does not consider her breakthrough novel, Kindred, to be Sci-Fi. Indeed, Butler celebrates the 25th anniversary of that book with a review of the many paradoxes that surround her work: contradictions and reversals that have placed her among the distinguished literary novelists of our time.
Real Audio: Kindred
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A.S. Byatt
"Untitled", March 9 1992
No show description provided.
Real Audio: Untitled
A.S. Byatt Bio and Cross Links
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Michael Byers,
"The Coast of Good Intentions", December 03 1998
Michael Byers
"The Coast of Good Intentions", December 03 1998
This young short-story writer makes a really impressive debut. A look at his landscape (Washington state’s coastline) and his influences (""steal from the best"").
Real Audio: The Coast of Good Intentions
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Ethan Canin,
"Carry Me Acorss the Water", August 23 2001
Ethan Canin
"Carry Me Acorss the Water", August 23 2001
Ethan Canin, probably the gentlest writer of his generation, affably offers his ideas about fatherhood, memory and the betrayal children inevitably feel at the hands of their parents.
Real Audio: Carry Me Acorss the Water
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Joyce Carol Oates,
"Women's Series VIII - Blonde", March 16 2000
Joyce Carol Oates
"Women's Series VIII - Blonde", March 16 2000
The life of Marilyn Monroe inspires Joyce Carol Oates’ vast accomplishment in Blonde and provides an opening for our conversation about a feminine icon. We explore violation of privacy, the secrecy of abuse, the relationsip between public and private lives, and Oates’ special gift: the ability to enter another life completely.
Real Audio: Women's Series VIII - Blonde
Joyce Carol Oates Bio and Cross Links
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Anne Carson,
"Plain Water; Glass, Irony and God", August 07 1997
Anne Carson
"Plain Water; Glass, Irony and God", August 07 1997
A truly intimate interview about the value of intelligence in the face of passion. This Canadian poet has found a new boundary for poetry to explore.
Real Audio: Plain Water; Glass, Irony and God
Anne Carson Bio and Cross Links
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Michael Chabon,
"The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay", December 7 2000
Michael Chabon
"The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay", December 7 2000
This novel about escape artists, super heroes and the Golden Age of Comics is a complete entertainment. Still, personal concerns escape like Houdini from a locked box. Michael Chabon on the personal life of the writer as it relates to his work.
Real Audio: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
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Dan Chaon,
"Among the Missing", September 20 2001
Dan Chaon
"Among the Missing", September 20 2001
Three young writers, eachpublishing a first book with a major press, explore the terrain of contemporary short-story writing. From personal backgrounds to their desires to break with tradition, we examine the variety of impulses that bring writers to the short story.
Real Audio: Among the Missing
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Susan Choi,
"American Woman", January 29 2004
Susan Choi
"American Woman", January 29 2004
The critics loved Susan Choi's novelization of the Patty Hearst saga, but they barely mention the book's center. Told from the point of view of the Asian-American woman who helped hide Hearst and her kidnapper comrades, the book really explores morality and revolution from a "hyphenated" perspective.
Real Audio: American Woman
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Bernard Cooper,
"Guess Again", April 12 2001
Bernard Cooper
"Guess Again", April 12 2001
Bernard Cooper explores the temptations he faces in his writing: a yearning for permanence and security rivaled by a sneaking affection for odd, transient, and unique experiences.
Real Audio: Guess Again
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Dennis Cooper,
"Guide", September 04 1997
Dennis Cooper
"Guide", September 04 1997
With an aesthetic reflective of hallucinogenic disorientation and the sensory overload of rock and roll, Dennis Cooper talks about the transformation of chaos into art.
Real Audio: Guide
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Jim Crace,
"Being Dead", November 23 2000
Jim Crace
"Being Dead", November 23 2000
In this post-mortem account of mortality, Crace exposes the anti-religious beliefs that fuel his prurly biological expolration of the afterlife.
Real Audio: Being Dead
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John D'Agata,
"Halls of Fame", December 27 2001
John D'Agata
"Halls of Fame", December 27 2001
The inventor of a new style of lyrical essay writing, John D’Agata talks about the classical traditions he draws upon and the special American loneliness that resonates in his unusual sentences.
Real Audio: Halls of Fame
John D'Agata Bio and Cross Links
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Rita Dove,
"American Smooth", March 25 2004
Rita Dove
"American Smooth", March 25 2004
When her house burned down, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Rita Dove decided to learn formal ballroom dancing. These new, as yet unpublished, poems explore the intersection of formal dance and an African-American distrust of assimilation.
Real Audio: American Smooth
Rita Dove Bio and Cross Links
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Roddy Doyle,
"A Star Called Henry", January 20 2000
Roddy Doyle
"A Star Called Henry", January 20 2000
Roddy Doyle, novelist of the Irish working class, takes a picturesque gallop through the ‘the Troubles’ in an historical novel about an inveniently heroic sod.
Real Audio: A Star Called Henry
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Rikki Ducornet,
"Women's Series IV: Tha Fan-Maker's Inquisition", February 17 2000
Rikki Ducornet
"Women's Series IV: Tha Fan-Maker's Inquisition", February 17 2000
Rikki Docornet claims that the imagination has no gender--and no limitations. In an investigation of its dangers, we focus on the Marquis de Sade, the extermination of the Maya and erotic art.
Real Audio: Women's Series IV: Tha Fan-Maker's Inquisition
Rikki Ducornet Bio and Cross Links
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Rikki Ducornet,
"Untitled", June 14 1993
Rikki Ducornet
"Untitled", June 14 1993
No show description provided.
Real Audio: Untitled
Rikki Ducornet Bio and Cross Links
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Carol Dukes,
"Life After Death", August 9 2001
Carol Dukes
"Life After Death", August 9 2001
Carol Muske-Dukes began to write a dark comedy about death. Slowly, she discovered that compassion was reshaping her book, giving it depth and complexity. A conversation, then, about emotions and shifting intentions.
Real Audio: Life After Death
Carol Dukes Bio and Cross Links
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Stuart Dybek,
"I Sailed with Magellan", February 26 2004
Stuart Dybek
"I Sailed with Magellan", February 26 2004
Dream and reality are side by side in Stuart Dybek's short stories--but with a twist. As the sexual dreams of his adolescent characters are shaped by reality, those characters are transformed: they are forced to live in two hallucinatory worlds at once, having been deformed as much by imagination as by experience.
Real Audio: I Sailed with Magellan
Stuart Dybek Bio and Cross Links
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Maxine Hong Kingston