Writer and activist Yasmin Nair's Dangerous Idea? Writers should always
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Jerry Apps is a rural historian and chronicler of country life. His book "Old Farm" is a kind of deep history of his land in Wisconsin.
Singer/songwriter Lisa Germano played violin for rock artist John Mellencamp. Her own album, “Geek the Girl” contains a song, “The Psychopath,” based on her experiences with an obsessed fan.
Robert Ellis Orrall is a musician who lives in Nashville, on the same street where Al Gore bought a house. So he wrote a song about it!
Norwegian novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard discusses his six-volume autobiographical novel, "My Struggle."
You could also listen to an extended interview with Karl Ove Knausgaard.
Joan Didion, who died last week at the age of 87, helped shape a highly personal brand of nonfiction that came to be known as the New Journalism. Her early essay collections "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" (1968) and "The White Album" (1979) influenced generations of writers. Her later memoirs, "The Year of Magical Thinking" and "Blue Nights," chronicled the deaths of her husband and daughter. In 2011 Didion talked with Steve Paulson about illness and growing old in the wake of the death of her daughter, Quintana.
Marti Leimbach is an autism activist and successful novelist. She talks about her own experiences trying to get help for her autistic son.
Hana was a little girl killed in the Holocaust. Her suitcase came into the possession of a Japanese school teacher some 60 years later.
Pages
