Bookworm

Alan Felsenthal's first book of poetry, Lowly, moves in the direction of the visionary, the mystical and the metaphysical.

Written about a time when she was hospitalized for depression, Yiyun Li's Dear Friend, from My Life, I Write to You in Your Life is a combination of memoir and essay.  She believes that cherished writers saved her from sorrow and suicidal ideation.

In his novel House of Names, Colm Tóibín finds, in adapting Greek tragedy, a home for all of his old concerns and room for new ones, too.

In Claudio Magris' Blameless, a museum of the implements of war and destruction is created to inspire peace. But this conversation is not just about war and peace.

Biographer Brad Gooch reveals that he traveled 2500 miles to trace Rumi's footsteps, learned Persian and spent eight years to write Rumi's Secret: The Life of the Sufi Poet of Love.

Has the feeling of doom become our weather? If so, Richard Bausch says he contends with contemporary life by writing about people coping with loss and sorrow.

Poet Ron Padgett reveals that in the 1960s, he found a dusty novel in a Manhattan bookstore. Originally written for teenage girls during World War I, Padgett has been playfully rewriting it ever since.

Steven Moore has gathered his book reviews and essays that take us from the Beats and the Fifties to practically yesterday or even tomorrow. 

Talamantez Brolaski is trans-gender and describes himself as a multi-gendered, racial and linguistic mongrel.  His poems chart a journey out of pain, confusion and darkness into a visionary state.

Selin, the heroine of Batuman’s autobiographical first novel, The Idiot, is an 18-year-old Harvard freshman of Turkish-American descent.  Set in 1995, the novel observes the rise of internet culture.  

Screenwriter and critic George Toles' study of writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson focuses on his more recent films, including Punch-Drunk Love, There Will Be Blood and The Master. Toles values tracking his deepest personal experiences while watching a movie.

My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Emil Ferris' debut graphic novel, is the diary of a ten-year-old girl obsessed with monsters who also believes she herself is a werewolf. 

Gary Groth, editor of Fantagraphics, publisher of some of the most notable graphic novels today, discusses the rise of comics, what makes a good graphic novel, and what his selection process is like.

Álvaro Enrigue's Sudden Death is the wild tale of a tennis match between the poet Francisco de Quevedo and the artist Caravaggio that transcends time and involves other historically transformative, and often combative, figures. Enrigue, who calls his impulse to write "visceral and erratic," was angered into starting this book by the 2008 financial crisis.

Rachel Cusk's novel Transit is the second in a planned trilogy. Cusk believes that humans have an innate grasp of form, a gift that makes us story-tellers. But the stories we tell ourselves can become traps.