Bookworm

Versed (Wesleyan University Press)Rae Armantrout has been associated with the Language-centered poets of the eighties, a group often accused of overly cerebral poetry derived from theory. Now, her work is found in the most widely read magazines that publish poetry...

The Mirror in the Well (Dalkey Archive) Micheline Marcom's works squeeze themselves between uncomfortable alternatives: Is her new novel, The Mirror in the Well, erotic or pornographic?

Kimono My House  (Island Def Jam); Exotic Creatures of the Deep (Lil' Beethoven)After years of yearning, Bookworm talks with his favorite rock band about the art of writing pop songs.  Join us in this celebration of their 21st album, Exotic Creatures of the Deep.

Things I've Been Silent About: Memories (Random House)Azar Nafisi is one of the most powerful advocates literature has. After writing Reading Lolita in Tehran, her memoir about reading forbidden books in a repressive culture, she has taken on a new source of repression—the family.  

A Mercy (Knopf)In this second half of our two-part interview with Toni Morrison, the conversation continues in an attempt to discover the way a novel is built.

Ms. Hempel Chronicles (Harcourt)What is a middle-school teacher? Is Ms. Hempel the old-maid meanie we remember fearing in childhood? Or is she, as she believes, a barely-out-of-college young woman on the threshold of life?

Sea of Poppies (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) With Sea of Poppies, a trilogy begins! Few know that the opium that fueled the Opium Wars was grown and processed in India...

Home (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)Marilynne Robinson's recent novels concern two ministers and their families. Here, we discuss her most-troubled character, Jack Boughton, a man who would have been called a ne'er-do-well when words like ne'er-do-well were common...

Home (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)Marilynne Robinson had not published a novel in twenty years when she wrote Gilead, which went on to win the Pulitzer Prize. How peculiar, interesting and lovely that she should follow it so quickly with Home...

Jerk, a play, from a story by Dennis Cooper, directed by Gisèle VienneOur series closes with American writer Dennis Cooper, who lives and writes in Paris. His work is believed to continue the French lineage of poète maudits (outlaw poets) a tradition that includes Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Sade.