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Author Interviews NPR interviews with top authors and the NPR Book Tour, a weekly feature and podcast where leading authors read and discuss their writing. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

Author Interviews

Intersections: Crafting a Voice for Black Culture

In 1975, Pulitzer-Prize winning author Alice Walker wrote an essay that helped lift from obscurity Zora Neale Hurston, the most widely published black woman author of the 1930s Harlem Renaissance. For Intersections, a series on artists and their inspirations, Walker tells NPR's Vertamae Grosvenor about the guiding role Hurston's work has played in her own art.

Intersections: Crafting a Voice for Black Culture

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Author James Reston Jr.

Fresh Air

His new book is Warriors of God: Richard the Lionheart and Saladin in the Third Crusade (Doubleday). It's the story of the battle for the Holy Land in the late 12th century. It begins as a dual biography of Saladin, the Sultan of Egypt, Syria, Arabia and Mesopotamia, and Richard I, King of England, known as the Lionheart. The two men led the battling Islamic and Christian armies. James Reston is also the author of twelve books, including The Last Apocalypse and Galileo: A Life. He is currently a scholar in residence at the Library of Congress.

Author James Reston Jr.

Only Available in Archive Formats.

Poet, Critic, and Novelist Carol Muske-Dukes

Fresh Air

Carol Muske-Dukes' new novel Life After Death (Random House) is the story of a woman who, one day, says to her husband in anger "Why don't you just die?" The next day, he drops dead. The book follows her journey into grief, self-reproach and self- discovery. Muske-Dukes directs the doctoral program in creative writing and literature at the University of Southern California; she's published six collections of poetry, the most recent titled An Octave Above Thunder. She's also a regular critic for the New York Times Book Review.

Poet, Critic, and Novelist Carol Muske-Dukes

Only Available in Archive Formats.

Lost & Found Sound

LOST & FOUND SOUND: Tennessee Williams - The Pennyland Recordings

6.} {LOST & FOUND SOUND: TENNESSEE WILLIAMS: THE PENNYLAND RECORDINGS Part One} -- We present a story about one of America's best and most eccentric playwrights. In the late 1940's, Tennessee Williams and his friends made a series of recordings at a Voice-O-Graph, a coin-operated booth at a New Orleans amusement park. The recordings include singing, conversation and comic parodies of Williams most famous plays. This is the first time these home-recordings have ever been broadcast.

LOST & FOUND SOUND: Tennessee Williams - The Pennyland Recordings

Only Available in Archive Formats.