Jesse Ball's new novel is called "How to Set a Fire and Why." The protagonist is a teenage girl who joins a secret Arson Club at her new school.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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Steven Okazaki is a third generation Japanese-American and an Academy Award winning film-maker. He tells Jim Fleming that Japanese-Americans face racism both at home and in Japan.
One of the founders of queer theory says his childhood in the Pentecostal church laid the ground for his evolution as a gay man and literary scholar. Michael Warner grew up around faith healing and speaking in tongues. He says it was an education in thinking beyond "normal".
Novelist and journalist William Vollmann has written a seven volume study of the moral calculus of violence. Vollmann talks with Steve Paulson about when violence is justified and when it isn’t.
Humorist Roy Blount Junior talks about some of his favorite rambles in New Orleans, with observations on oysters, New Orleans characters and the city’s history.
Stacy Peralta was one of the original Z-boys who transformed the sport of skateboarding. Peralta tells Steve Paulson that the Z boys were all wild surfers from a rough neighborhood in west Los Angeles.
Alena Graedon's debut novel is an intellectual thriller set in the near future. Print is dead, words have been monetized, and a "word flu" is running rampant. The book is called "The Word Exchange."
Susana Chavez-Silverman tells Steve Paulson why she fell in love with Spanglish, a form of code-switching.
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