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.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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Leonard Zwilling tells Jim Fleming about boxing’s impact on the English language. It’s yielded such words and phrases as fan, throw in the towel, and up to scratch.
Celtic historian John Matthews tells Steve Paulson that Merlin probably was a real person and that wizards are related to our ancient shamans.
Kenneth Helphand tells Jim Fleming how a photo of a French soldier tending a rose bush in a trench during WWI resulted in his book.
Classical pianist Leon Fleisher was sidelined for many years by a medical condition that crippled his right hand.
Poet Lisa Russ Spaar tells Jim about her book “Acquainted with the Night” - an anthology of verse about insomnia, or written by insomniacs.
When John Schwartz’s son, Joseph, was born seventeen years ago, John and his wife were feeling pretty good about their parenting… helping their son Sam and their daughter Elizabeth through the challenges of childhood..
But as Joe grew into toddlerhood, the Schwartzs noticed that he was different… not like most of the other boys. They started to wonder if he might grow up to be gay. They also noticed how the social pressure to be a stereotypical boy weighed on Joe…
Lyle Victor Albert is a playwright who’s gotten the most attention for his one-man show “Scraping the Surface,” which recounts his experiences with cerebral palsy.
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