Race relations

After writing three non-fiction books dealing with race and identity, and relaunching Marvel's black superhero series Black Panther, Ta-Nehisi Coates has written his first novel. Set during slave times, it re-imagines leaders of the underground railroad as having a magical power to help people out of slavery.

The Nobel laureate died Monday at 88. Terry Gross talked with Morrison in 1987 after she wrote Beloved, in 1992 after she authored Jazz and in 2015 when she published God Help the Child.

Before Wanda Sykes became a comic, she worked as a procurement officer for the National Security Agency and had top security clearance. But she always loved telling jokes, and when a local radio station sponsored a talent show that included a comedy category, she decided to audition.

Baltimore is the setting for Laura Lippman's noir novels, including her popular Tess Monaghan series, and her new stand-alone novel 'Lady in the Lake.' Her new novel is set in the mid 60s but deals with issues that are still with us like racism, sexism, and homophobia.

Looking back on his early career, Howard Stern remembers being "petrified" that he wasn't going to be able to make a living. "All the sexual antics, the religious antics, the race antics — everything that I talked about, every outrageous thing that I did — was to entertain my audience and grow my audience," he says. "Whether you liked it or not, or the person down the street liked it or not — I didn't care as long as I kept growing that audience."

Woods' recent Masters title follows a 10-year drought of major tournament victories. Jeff Benedict, co-author of Tiger Woods, says: "What we're seeing now is someone who loves what he's doing."

Phoebe Robinson has set out to change the demographics of comedy: "It's a very white male, straight male-dominated industry — and that can be exhausting," she says.

As the son of a grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, Derek Black was once the heir apparent of the white nationalist movement.

Bell's CNN series is nominated for three 2018 Emmy awards. He talks about his genealogy and why he likes the word "negro" in an excerpt of this 2018 interview with Terry Gross.

A.C. Thompson warns that white power groups in the U.S. increasingly view themselves as paramilitary organizations. His reporting is featured in a new FRONTLINE and ProPublica investigation.