New Letters on the Air
program schedule

Robert Dana

Former poet laureate of Iowa, Robert Dana, reminisces about attending the Iowa Writers Workshop after World War II, and being in a class with poets Donald Justice and Henri Coulette.  He reads poems in memoriam to those writers from his 2008 collection The Other, and talks about the influences of languages he heard growing up in immigrant and working-class areas of Boston and small towns in New England.

James Still

Like the playwright, William Inge, who came from Independence, James Still comes from another small town in Kansas--Pomona. In this interview, Still talks about his beginnings, and how that led to writing over 15 plays, including The Heavens are Hung in Black, commissioned by Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C. to premiere in 2009 on the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth. Currently the playwright-in-residence at the Indiana Repertory Theatre, Still reads from Iron Kisses and his other 2009 play, The Velvet Rut, which premiered at The Unicorn Theatre in Kansas City.

Annie Barrows

Known for her Ivy + Bean series of children's books, Annie Barrows never dreamed the outcome of the request of her aunt, Mary Ann Shaffer, to revise Shaffer's manuscript for The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Barrows talks about the two stories involved in the writing of this book: one of the English islanders living through German occupation during World War II and the other of her aunt's 20-year passage from inspiration to book creation. Barrows tells New Letters' Danette Alexander about her role in the book's completion and reads from the best-selling novel.

Tobias Wolff

Old School, the 2003 novel by Tobias Wolff that was a finalist for the Pen/Faulkner Award, is a selection for the National Endowment for the Arts program "The Big Read."  Wolff talks with Angela Elam about this book in front of an audience at the Kansas City Public Library where his appearance concludes the city-wide read of Old School. They also discuss fiction writing and his 2009 book, Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Aimee Nezhukumatathil, a Filipino/Indian-American poet and winner of the Tupelo Press Prize, discusses her two books of poetry At the Drive-in Volcano and Miracle Fruit. She talks about writing poetry with a comic eye, and discusses the poetic form for which she named her dog, Villanelle. She also talks about the influence of her unique ethnic heritage—she's a first generation American—and the role her family plays in inspiring her work.

David Kirby

David Kirby, a nationally renowned poet who has spent his career teaching at Florida State University, is constantly on the move in his work and is known for his comic poetry.   In this program, he reads from his latest book The House on Boulevard Street—a finalist for the 2007 National Book Award in poetry—and discusses life in the "pobiz" (poetry business) and the relevance of history and pop culture in his work, with influences ranging from Dante to Dagwood.

Victoria Chang

Victoria Chang, author of the poetry collections Circle and Salvinia Molesta, discusses her poetry with New Letters editor Robert Stewart. Chang, who works as a business journalist, talks about mixing her "practical" business role with the imaginative role as a poet, and talks about how being the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants influences her work.

Thomas E. Kennedy

The essay "I Am Joe's Prostate," by Thomas E. Kennedy garnered New Letters the National Magazine Award in the category of the essay in 2008. In this interview, Kennedy talks about some of his other essays in his 2008 collection, Riding the Dog: A Look Back at America, and discusses his approach to writing non-fiction. Kennedy, an American, has lived in Denmark for over 30 years, and his other recent books include the Copenhagen Quartet novels and his 2007 short story collection, Cast Upon the Day.

Hilda Raz

A literary editor since she graduated from college, Hilda Raz wasn't originally interested in writing poetry.  But then, the editor of Prairie Schooner magazine went to the Breadloaf writing conference to represent her magazine, and found her own poetic voice as well.  Raz talks about the dual roles of editing and writing, and discusses the experiences of surviving breast cancer and coming to terms with her child's transsexuality. She reads from her books All Odd and Spendid, What Happens, and Trans.

Erik Larson

Bestselling author Erik Larson discusses two of his nonfiction books: Devil in the White City (which juxtaposes the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition and the nation's first serial killing) and Thunderstruck! (that deals with the invention of radio and England's second-most famous murder). In this conversation with New Letters' Dennis Conrow, Larson reveals how he uses historical facts to create a novelistic approach to writing nonfiction.

Mia Leonin

Born and raised in the Arkansas Ozarks, C.D. Wright now lives and teaches in Rhode Island, where she served as the state poet laureate from 1994-99.  The author of over a dozen collections of poetry and prose discusses her more recent books, Steal Away: Selected and New Poems;  her collection of writings on poetry, Cooling Time: An American Vigil; and her 2008 book, Rising, Falling, Hovering.  She talks about the experience of discovering hidden writers in the backwoods of Arkansas and her collaboration with photographer Deborah Luster on the book, One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana

Junot Diaz

In honor of Caribbean-American Heritage Month, New Letters on the Air presents an encore interview with Junot Diaz. He won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his second book, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.   He discusses this novel, as well as how genre fiction reveals the deepest fears and dreams of culture at large, and talks about how his early childhood in the Dominican Republic and New Jersey influenced the creation of his characters in both his award-winning novel and his short story collection, Drown. 

Gearoid Mac Lochlainn

Irish poet Gearoid Mac Lochlainn is the author of three books of poetry in Gaelic and a bilingual collection in English called Stream of Tongues. In this interview, he talks about writing in both languages and the musicality of writing in Gaelic. Also a musician and radio producer, Mac Lochlainn discusses how sound plays into his composition, and we hear some of his own sound productions.

Andrew Hudgins

The author of After the Lost War: A Narrative about the Confederate soldier and poet Sydney Lanier, Andrew Hudgins still bears the marks of his southern Baptist military upbringing in his work. He talks about parts of his childhood reflected in his collection, Ecstatic in the Poison, a lyrical look at middle-class America.  Hudgins, who teaches at Ohio State University, reads various poems and talks about the writing life within academia.

Kurt Andersen

Co-founder of the infamous and now defunct Spy magazine, Kurt Andersen is a long-time journalist, who's also written fiction and essays and is now known as the host of the public radio program Studio 360. He discusses the sometimes alternating demands of interviewing creative people and being creative in his own right and reads from his novel Heyday. He also talks about his earlier novel Turn of the Century.

Lisa See

Our recognition of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month features Lisa See, the author of the bestselling novel Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, and the soon to be released Shanghai Girls. In this interview, she talks about her first book, On Gold Mountain, her family memoir about life in Los Angeles' Chinatown, where her Chinese great-grandfather founded a very successful curio shop and married a woman of European descent to begin his American family.  See also discusses her 2007 novel, Peony in Love, loosely based on the 17th century Chinese opera The Peony Pavilion, about a girl who starves herself rather than face an arranged marriage.

Helena Maria Viramontes

Just in time for Cinco de Mayo, Helena Maria Viramontes reads from her 2007 novel, Their Dogs Came With Them, a book that offers a profoundly gritty portrait of everyday life in the Mexican-American barrios of East Los Angeles in the 1960s. She discusses her fiction and her earlier books, Under the Feet of Jesus and The Moths and Other Stories. Viramontes teaches English at Cornell University, and in 2006, she won both the Luis Leal Award and the John Dos Passos Award for Literature.

Cave Canem Poets

To end National Poetry Month, we will finally air the often promised show with Cave Canem founders Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady who talk about their goal of providing a safe space for African-American poets. Recorded at the University of Georgia's Cave Canem Symposium in 2008, they are joined on stage for conversation and poetry by Opal Moore, Kyle Dargan, and Nikki Finney, the editor of The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South (Cave Canem Anthology).  The other poet was Sean Hill, who was recently featured on our show, and can be heard here.   

Paul Muldoon

Paul Muldoon, the poetry editor for The New Yorker, talks about his own rejection from the magazine in his earlier days.  This Irish author of ten collections of poetry reads from his work that includes formal poems about made-up words along with tributes to musicians such as the Beatles and Warren Zevon.  We'll also hear a bit of music from Muldoon's own rock band, Rackett.

Kay Ryan

Named the 16th U.S. Poet Laureate in the fall of 2008, Kay Ryan is sometimes seen as a poetry outsider.  Rather than making her living in the academic world of creative writing, this California poet has spent her life teaching remedial English in Marin County, while writing small, compact poems that revel in word play, philosophy, and humor.  She reads from two of her books, The Niagara River and Say Uncle, and talks about what led her to poetry and the influence of her recently deceased partner, Carol.

Charles Simic

U.S. Poet Laureate in 2007-08, Charles Simic is known for his surreal, humorous poetry.  Born in Serbia in 1938, Simic immigrated to the United States when he was 16.  He talks with New Letters editor Robert Stewart about his more recent work, and the strange experience of gaining national attention as the poet laureate.  He reads from his 2008 collection, The Monster Loves His Labyrinth, and other books.

Jaimee Wriston Colbert

The author of three books of fiction, Colbert talks about her most recent collection of linked stories, Dream Lives of Butterflies.  A native of Hawaii, Colbert was educated in Seattle and New England, and currently lives and teaches in Binghamton, NY.  She talks about how place influences her fiction, particularly this book, which is set in St. Louis, where Colbert lived briefly as a visiting writer, and was inspired by the people in her apartment building.  

Azar Nafisi

Growing up in pre-revolutionary Iran, Azar Nafisi did not have a particularly happy family life.  In her new memoir, Things I Have Been Silent About, she examines the growing pains of her family as well as the Iranian culture that led to the 1978 Islamic Revolution, and how those events helped shape her life. She also discusses how she's grown as a writer since her first book, Reading Lolita in Tehran.

Leslie Adrienne Miller

Poet Leslie Adrienne Miller became fascinated by 17th century medical illustrations, which encouraged myths and ignorance surrounding female anatomy in scientific literature up to the early 20th century.  She uses these themes in her poetry collection The Resurrection Trade, and discusses what it was like to become a first-time mother at age 45.  She also reads from Eat Quite Everything You See. 

Debra Marquart

Growing up on a North Dakota farm, Debra Marquart couldn't wait to leave.  Now, she returns to the place repeatedly in her fiction, essays and poetry.  A multi-genre writer, Marquart has led a life influenced by music and sound, dropping out of college to join a rock band in the ‘70s.  She reads from The Hunger Bone: Rock and Roll Stories, From Sweetness (poems) and The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere (essays). 

Elizabeth Alexander

The woman chosen to write a poem for the Inauguration of President Obama, Elizabeth Alexander talks about her most recent collection, American Sublime, and how she intertwines history with personal stories in her poetry.  This fourth collection of her work captures African-American voices and traditions from slavery to the present. 

Stanley E. Banks

Stanley E. Banks' poetry explores the segregated Kansas City of his youth and some of the difficulties of growing up in his black neighborhood. In this program, he discusses how he overcame racial prejudice to find success in the unlikely arena of poetry. A literary child of the earlier Missouri poet, Langston Hughes, Banks reads from Blue Beat Syncopation, the collection that captures the first 25 years of his career.

Claudia Rankine

Jamaican-born poet Claudia Rankine's work "goes directly to the objective of literary writing--to write a book that is deeply interesting despite the expectations that received forms give us," according to interviewer and New Letters editor Robert Stewart. The two discuss her early collection Plot and her multi-genre book, Don't Let Me Be Lonely, that combines prose and poetry with incongruous illustrations.

Sean Hill

Sean Hill, a native of Milledgeville, Georgia, is the author of the poetry collection Blood Ties & Brown Liquor. An homage to African-American life in the segregated South, the poems create a call and response across six generations of the fictional Silas Wright family. Hill discusses how he weaves history, fiction and his own family into this debut book.   

Remembering John Updike

A master of twentieth century American prose, John Updike died on January 27, 2009.  This week on New Letters on the Air, we remember his life with a 1998 interview with former New Letters editor Jim McKinley.  In this interview, Updike talks about his devotion to his legendary characters Henry Bech and Rabbit Angstrom, reflects on his humble origins in "the hinterlands of Pennsylvania," and examines his life as a man of faith.

Thomas Gibbons

This Philadelphia playwright talks about his trilogy of plays that deal with racial issues in America. The author of dozen dramas, Gibbons uses real life events as the basis of his fictional works. He reads from A House with No Walls and Permanent Collection, and talks about how the shaping of the plays were influenced with the rolling premiers of these works in five different theatres across the country.

Kai Wright and The African-American Experience

Editor of the 2009 collection, The African-American Experience: Black History and Culture Through Speeches, Letters, Editorials, Poems, Songs, and Stories, Kai Wright talks specifically about the great speeches in American history, including those of Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, Jr and Barack Obama. This chronologically ordered book deals with American life from the earliest slaves brought by the Spanish in the16^th century to the speech on race by the first African-American to be elected President of the United States.

Victoria Chang

Victoria Chang, author of the poetry collections Circle and Salvinia Molesta, discusses her poetry with New Letters editor Robert Stewart. Chang, who works as a business journalist, talks about mixing her "practical" business role with the imaginative role as a poet, and talks about how being the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants influences her work.

M.T. Anderson

Young adult writer M. T. Anderson, author of The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing (listed by Amazon in their top 20 books of 2008), talks about his immersion into 18th century literature in preparation for writing this National Book Award-winning novel. Anderson also discusses the importance of language, and how it shapes our reality, as well as the need for books written exclusively for teenagers, and how that is distinguished from writing for adults.

Let's Hear That Again, 2008

Listen to memorable excerpts culled from a collection of this year's New Letters on the Air, ranging from the poignant to the humorous.  This program features Junot Diaz, John Irving, Natasha Trethewey, Mary Jo Bang and others.

Chanukah Tales

Poet Marilyn Kallet reads from her book, One for Each Night: Chanukah Tales and Recipes, that she wrote for families to share in lean times.  The book features humorous stories about traditional Chanukah foods, and recipes to prepare them.  In this program, we put the recipes to a test with a family of four Jewish women.

Thomas E. Kennedy

The essay "I Am Joe's Prostate," by Thomas E. Kennedy garnered New Letters the National Magazine Award in the category of the essay earlier in 2008.   In this interview, Thomas E. Kennedy talks about some other essays in his 2008 collection, Riding the Dog: A Look Back at America. Kennedy, an American, has lived in Denmark for over 30 years.  His recent books of fiction include the Copenhagen Quartet and his 2007 short story collection, Cast Upon the Day.

Kevin Prufer

Kevin Prufer, the author of four collections of poetry, talks about why he's drawn to the elegy, and reads from his books, including the 2008 National Anthem. A 2007 NEA Literature Fellow in Poetry, Prufer is also editor of Pleiades: A Journal of New Writing and serves on the board of directors for the National Book Critics Circle.

Patricia Hampl

The author of I Could Tell You Stories: Sojourns in the Land of Memory, Patricia Hampl discusses the importance of the memoir and reads from that book, and her latest, The Florist's Daughter. Hampl also gives some frank and practical advice for those who want to write their own memoirs.

Matthew Eck

Named one of the top five writers under 35 to watch by the National Book Foundation, Matthew Eck discusses his novel, The Farther Shore, touted by Salon as "the first great war novel of our generation." Eck enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1992 and served in Somalia and Haiti before returning to the U.S. to earn degrees in literature and creative writing.

Anchee Min

Matt Sax

24-year-old actor and playwright Matt Sax talks about his hip-hop musical, Clay.  Full of Shakespearian undertones, the play is a coming-of-age story that follows a young man's journey from a broken home to musical stardom. Sax discusses the play's origins at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and how it has evolved on several stages before taking it off-Broadway via the Lincoln Center.

The Elegy

With a nod to the Day of the Dead, this program looks at the poetic form that honors death—the elegy.  It features elegiac poets, Stanley Plumly (author of Now that My Father Lies Down Beside Me) and Patricia Clark (My Father on a Bicycle), who talk about how poetry lifts the lament to the level of celebration.   They include readings from favorite elegies and a discussion of what separates them from country music lyrics.

Jack Fuller

Former Chicago Tribune president and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing, Jack Fuller discusses the importance of newspapers and the differences in a journalist's approach to writing to that of a novelist.  Fuller, the author of seven novels, talks about his most personal story to date, his 2008 book, Abbeville, that is loosely based on his grandfather's rise, fall, and rebirth in a small farm town in central Illinois.

Claudia Rankine

Jamaican-born poet Claudia Rankine's work "goes directly to the objective of literary writing--to write a book that is deeply interesting despite the expectations that received forms give us," according to interviewer and New Letters editor Robert Stewart.  The two discuss her early collection Plot and her multi-genre book Don't Let Me Be Lonely that combines prose and poetry with incongruous illustrations.

Mary Jo Bang

Winner of the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry,  Mary Jo Bang reads from her prize-winning fifth collection, Elegy, that traces the year following the death of her son.  This manuscript was originally chosen to be published as the winner of the Alice Fay di Castagnoia Award from the Poetry Society of America because it cuts "a guiding path for the reader." 

Junot Díaz

Junot Díaz won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his second book, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.  The Dominican-American writer discusses this novel, as well as how genre fiction reveals the deepest fears of culture at large. He talks about the how his early childhood in the Dominican Republic and growing up in New Jersey influenced the creation of his characters in both his award-winning novel and his short story collection, Drown. 

Helena Maria Viramontes discusses her fiction, including her 2007 novel, Their Dogs Came With Them, a book that offers a profoundly gritty portrait of everyday life in the barrios of East Los Angeles in the 1960s. Viramontes teaches English at Cornell University, and is also the author of Under the Feet of Jesus and The Moths and Other Stories.  In 2006, she won both the Luis Leal Award and the John Dos Passos Award for Literature.

Chicano writer and activist Tomás Riley began his writing career officially in 1994 as a member of the Taco Shop Poets in California. A first-generation American raised in San Diego, his work is a meld of bilingualism and cultural politics with a hip hop beat. A finalist for the 2004 California Voices Award from Poets & Writers magazine, Riley shares work from his first book Mahcic in this energetic public reading for the Latino Writers Series at the Kansas City Public Library.

Nathan Englander discusses his novel, The Ministry of Special Cases, about Argentina's Dirty War in the 1970s.  In this interview with New Letters on the Air's assistant producer Dennis Conrow, Englander talks about the relationship between fathers and sons—which plays a significant role in the novel—and the role that Judaism plays in his novels, in his writing, and in his life. 

Natasha Trethewey's first collection of poetry, Domestic Work, was selected by Rita Dove as the winner of the inaugural Cave Canem Poetry Prize for the best first book by an African-American poet, She has picked up several other awards since then, including the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2007 for her third book, Native Guard, which intertwines the history of black soldiers during the Civil War with a personal tribute to her mother, whose marriage to a white man in Mississippi in the 1960s was illegal.  She reads from both these books and talks about her work that addresses the south's racial legacy. 

Kansas City Star book critic and poet John Mark Eberhart's new book, Broken Time, is named for the style of playing in which the rhythm section refuses to follow a measured beat, which becomes his metaphor for life.   The book focuses on all kinds of musicians and music—from blues, jazz, classical, to movie scores--and it has led the poet to a whole new relationship with his musician brother, Ken Eberhart.  In this recording made at the Writers Place in Kansas City, the Eberhart brother perform together for the first time, as John Mark reads from his book and Ken plays the marimba and other instruments.

The Los Angeles Times has called Bakken's short story collection Necessary Lies, "straightforward American fiction that works." This book, published by BkMk Press as the winner of the  G. S. Sharat Chandra Prize for Short Fiction, also won the Best Books 2006 Award from USABookNews.com, a silver medal from the Independent Publisher Book Awards and a bronze medal from the ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Awards.   Bakken talks about her work with New Letters editor, Robert Stewart.

Known for her poetry that is linguistically brash, playful and dazzling, this National Book Award finalist's public reading at the Midwest Poets Series at Rockhurst University lives up to that description. Suggestive and often humorous, Heather McHugh, a writer-in-residence for the University of Washington in Seattle, reads from her collections Hinge and Sign: Poems 1968-93 and Eyeshot, along with some new works that challenge the standard assumptions of English grammar and syntax.

Young adult writer M. T. Anderson, author of The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, talks about his immersion into 18th century literature in preparation for writing this National Book Award-winning novel.  Anderson also discusses the importance of language, and how it shapes our reality, as well as the need for books written exclusively for teenagers, and how that is distinguished from writing for adults. 

Sophie Gee always wanted to be a writer.  While in high school, she won a prestigious magazine award in her native Australia, but postponed her desire to write to pursue a career as an eighteenth century scholar.  Now, she's combined the two with her first novel, The Scandal of the Season, which is about the poet Alexander Pope and the inspiration for his famous poem "The Rape of the Lock." 

Chip Kidd, who has been described as the world's most famous book cover designer, has worked at Knopf for over 20 years.  Now a novelist too, he talks about his two books The Cheese Monkeys and The Learners.  In this conversation with New Letters on the Air's Dennis Conrow, Kidd explains how to see with a designer's eye, and talks about the challenging transition from working with pictures to working with words.

Co-founder of Cave Canem for African-American poets, Cornelius Eady talks about his book, Brutal Imagination, that brings to life fictional characters in American culture, including Uncle Tom, Aunt Jemima, Mrs. Butterworth, and the black man invented by Susan Smith to cover her murder of her own children.  Some of these poems, along with works from his six other books, are included in his 2008 collection of new and selected poems, Hardheaded Weather.

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