Hisham Nitar's semi-autobiographical debut novel In the Country of Men was short-listed for the 2006 Mann Booker Prize.
Matar was born in New York City in 1970 to Libyan parents and spent his childhood in Tripoli, Libya, and later in Cairo, Egypt. He has lived in Great Britain since 1986.
Matar's father, a critic of the Libyan regime, was arrested in 1990. Matar has been unable to find out what happened to him.
Ishmael Beah has written a memoir about his years as a child soldier in Sierra Leone. Orphaned by the civil war there, he was carrying an AK-47 by the age of 12. Pumped up by drugs, he was forced to kill or be killed.
When he was 15, UNICEF took Beah to a rehabilitation center. He was eventually adopted by an American woman and brought to the United States, where he attended high school and graduated from Oberlin College.
His book is A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier.
Jazz trumpeter and New Orleans native Irvin Mayfield lost his father, Irvin Mayfield Sr., in the floods resulting from Hurricane Katrina. Mayfield talks about his Mardi Gras memories, and the state of his hometown today.
Composer and writer Allen Shawn is the author of the new memoir, Wish I Could Be There. The book documents his many phobias. Shawn is deathly afraid of a lot of things, including heights, water, fields, parking lots and unknown streets.
The story of FBI agent-turned-spy Robert Hanssen is told in the new film Breach with Chris Cooper as Hanssen and Ryan Phillippe and Laura Linney as his pursuers.
Journalist Matt Beynon Rees is now a crime novelist, too. The Collaborator of Bethlehem follows a Palestinian schoolteacher who turns detective to solve a murder set in the violence-ridden West Bank. Rees was based in Jerusalem as a Middle East reporter for Time magazine for more than a decade, serving as bureau chief from 2000 to 2006.
Victor Garber will star in the upcoming ABC drama Eli Stone. He has just finished a short run of Stephen Sondheim's Follies for the New York City Center's Encores! series. Viewers may remember him best as Jack Bristow on the hit TV show Alias. Broadway credits include Death Trap, Noises Off and Sweeney Todd.
Linguist Geoff Nunberg considers the sending of Valentine's messages via telephone, the postal system, and e-mail. What does it say about the evolution of personal communication?
The filmmaker has released a new Valentine's Day album called A Date with John Waters. It's a compilation of love songs including Mink Stole's "Sometimes I Wish I Had a Gun" and the late Edith Massey (aka the Egg Lady) singing "Big Girls Don't Cry."
Underground comic book artist Robert Crumb created ZAP COMIX and is the artist behind such 1960s and 1970s icons as Mr. Natural, Fritz the Cat, and Keep-on-Truckin. His wife, Aline Kominsky Crumb, was one of the earliest underground female cartoonists. Her new book, Need More Love: A Graphic Memoir, chronicles her life and career. Robert's new book is The Sweeter Side of R. Crumb.
The famous, or perhaps notorious, model Anna Nicole Smith died last week, prompting a tsunami of media coverage. Here's a look at the reasons for all the hoopla. One shouldn't be embarrassed about finding her story fascinating.
Writer Nuruddin Farah's new novel, Knots, is about the terrible conditions for women in Somalia. The central character is a Somali-Canadian woman who returns to Mogadiscio, her native city.
Investigative reporter Lowell Bergman is the producer of the new documentary, News War: Secrets, Spin and the Future of the News. The series is about the mainstream news media and the political, legal and economic forces at play.
Lead singer/guitarist Pat DiNizio and drummer Dennis Diken from the band The Smithereens. Their new album, Meet the Smithereens, is a track-by-track homage to the Beatles' Meet the Beatles.
Joe Hunter, who died last week at the age of 79, was one of the Funk Brothers, the session musicians who helped create the Motown Sound. He could be heard on such hits as "Money" by Barrett Strong, "Shop Around" by The Miracles and "Heat Wave" by Martha and the Vandellas. This interview originally aired on Nov. 18, 2002.
A review of a new collection of James Brown's first four years of singles: James Brown: The Singles: The Federal Years 1956-1960 (Hip-O Select). James Brown was one of the most distinctive and influential musical figures of the last half-century. He was a one-of-a-kind performer, which wasn't always something that worked in his favor.
Actor Mark Wahlberg is an Academy Award nominee for best supporting actor for his role as a police sergeant in the film The Departed. After a number of smaller film roles, Wahlberg became known for his role as a porn star in Boogie Nights. Wahlberg's other films include The Perfect Storm, Three Kings, The Italian Job, and Invincible.
