Bookworm

Novelist and essayist Geoff Dyer celebrates his first published essay in the New Yorker. He tells us how his amateur interest in jazz led him to write a book...

Radiance (Counterpoint) Mark Perdue, a physics professor who we first met in Louis B. Jones' Particles of Luck, is at the farther fringe of a complete nervous breakdown..

The occasion of a Los Angeles theater festival offers playwright John Steppling (Phantom Luck) the chance to talk about theater in general and what's wrong with it.

Ann Patchett has written a book you can't put down. State of Wonder is a version of Conrad's Heart of Darkness, set in South America in the heart of the jungle...

My New American Life is the immigrant story told in a new way. Francine Prose's touching and funny character, Lula, is used to suffering -- she comes from Albania...

The Finkler Question is the winner of this year's Booker Prize, an amazing novel in that it's many things at once: comic, melancholic, philosophical and paradoxical.

Unable to sleep after her husband, Ray Smith, died three years ago, Joyce Carol Oates spent the night keeping a journal of her day to day thoughts and experiences...

Fearless Eileen Myles discusses her fears in this autobiographical novel.

When Diane Ackerman's husband, Paul West, suffered a stroke, the couple had to learn a new way to communicate. That led him to write a new form of novel — an aphasic novel.

While the Bookworm and Harvard literary theorist Marjorie Garber disagree about nearly everything, theirs is one of the most diverting literary debates you'll likely hear.

What You See in the Dark (Algonquin) Manuel Muñoz imagines a crime of passion set in the Central Valley, which he deviously juxtaposes with the mayhem of Hitchcock's Psycho.

When David Foster Wallace died, he left behind drafts of a rich and complex novel. Writers Rick Moody and David Lipsky discuss Wallace's achievement, The Pale King...

Widow: Stories (Bellevue Literary Press)Michelle Latiolais wrote some of these stories before the death of her husband, some later. Her emotional register changed markedly after his death...

The New Yorker Stories (Scribner)This collection, which spans the years 1974-2006, contains all of the Anne Beattie stories published in the New Yorker – from the very first one, accepted after 17 rejections....

A second program with Carlos Fuentes, this one about culture and politics: Will narco-politics defeat government? Will a "New Deal" be negotiated to help the ni-nis? (Part I of this two-part conversation airs on March 17.)

Destiny and Desire (Random House) The great Mexican writer modestly confides that yes, he has completed a new novel but it's really the same story, just with new characters... (Part I of this two-part conversation airs on March 24.)

The Intimates (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)Ralph Sassone, a first novelist, on the vicissitudes of — what else — the first novel.

When the Killing's Done (Viking)T.C. Boyle's newest novel contains elements of sea-adventure story and eco-thriller. Bringing together the themes of his life's work, he explores the interstices of the green-movement and the animal rights community...

House of Prayer No. 2: A Writer's Journey Home (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday)Busy writing for film and television, for his first book in over a decade, Mark Richard provides a decidedly unconventional autobiography, a spiritual journey through some of the most unusual underworlds the soul can encounter...

The Lotus Eaters (St. Martin's Griffen) Ten years ago when Tatjana Soli began to write her novel about female journalists in Viet Nam, she was warned that it might not sell. Instead, this prophetic tale about America's foreign wars was chosen one of the most important books of last year...