Books & Literature

Safiya Sinclair, grew up in a Rasta family in Montego Bay, Jamaica. Her father is a reggae singer and guitarist. Her hair was twisted into dreadlocks until she was 19. She came to realize that for her, being Rasta meant living in a cage. It was through reading and writing poems that she came to better know herself and to break out of the cage and enter the larger world.

Cat Bohannon is the author of the book "Eve" How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution". The book attempts to trace the evolution of women's bodies and how that evolution has shaped our lives.

A new tribute album offers musical interpretations of Ginsberg's poems. The poet and countercultural activist spoke to Terry Gross in 1994 about his poem "Howl," which was inspired by his mother.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan says given that it's a novel about the struggle to fend off deprivation and extinction, 'Land of Milk and Honey' is gloriously lush. Zhang's sensuous style makes us see, smell and, above all, taste the lure of that sun-dappled mountain enclave.

In her new novel called "The Vaster Wilds," Lauren Groff, who's been a finalist for the National Book Award three times, tells a harrowing story of an escape from Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in the New World.

Hitler's Germany banned jazz, which was deemed degenerate music made by Jews and Black people. But NPR host Scott Simon says the Nazis repurposed jazz abroad to weaken British and American resolve.

Hua Hsu won the Pulitzer Prize for Stay True, his memoir about identity, musical obsessions and the sudden tragic murder of a close friend. Originally broadcast Oct. 18, 2022.

A story about a fictional famed Irish poet named Phil McDaragh who deserts his sick wife and two young daughters — a betrayal that reverberates into his granddaughter's life.

The Fraud is a work of historical fiction centering on the real-life Victorian Era Tichborne trial – and one of the trial's witnesses, a formerly enslaved man from Jamaica.

Joining us today to talk about the life and legacy of the Notorious B.I.G. is journalist Justin Tinsley. He's the author of the book "It Was All A Dream: Biggie And The World That Made Him." In the book, Tinsley explores Biggie's life in the context of not only rap, but the wider cultural and political forces that shaped him, including immigration, Reagan-era politics, the war on drugs and mass incarceration.

R. Eric Thomas Thomas' new book, Congratulations, the Best Is Over!, is about middle age, and what it feels like to go back to the place where you were born — especially when your relationship with that place is complicated.

Washington Post reporter Laura Meckler tells the story of Shaker Heights, Ohio, a town with high-performing, diverse schools — and also a pronounced achievement gap between white and Black students.

In Naomi Hirahara's new novel a Japanese American family that had been interned during World War II returns home to a Los Angeles that isn't what they remembered.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan says The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store is one of the best novels she's read this year. She says it pulls off the singular magic trick of being simultaneously flattening and uplifting

Shane McCrae, poet and author of the new memoir "Pulling The Chariot Of The Sun: A Memoir Of A Kidnapping."

Writer Andrew Leland started losing his sight 20 years ago, when he was in high school, as a result of a progressive eye disease called retinitis pigmentosa, an inherited condition that leads to the deterioration of the retinas.

Dubus III talks about the injuries he faced when he was a carpenter, and how his relationship changed with his father after the senior Dubus was struck by a car and never walked again.

S.A. Cosby's new novel is called "All The Sinners Bleed." He spoke with our producer, Sam Briger.

"My early '70s New York is dingy and grimy," the Pulitzer Prize-winning author says. Whitehead's sequel to Harlem Shuffle centers on crime at every level, from small-time crooks to Harlem's elite.

Maureen Corrigan's review of two new novels that are great summer reading: Do Tell by Lindsay Lynch and The Stolen Coast by Dwyer Murphy