Edward Hirsch Reads Gerald Stern

Sasha Debevec-McKenney joins Kevin Young to read “Hammond B3 Organ Cistern,” by Gabrielle Calvocoressi, and her own poem “Kaepernick.” Debevec-McKenney is the author of the new poetry collection “Joy Is My Middle Name.” She was a Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the Univers ... Show More

Megan Fernandes joins Kevin Young to read “Half-Life in Exile,” by Hala Alyan, and her own poem “On Your Departure to California.” Fernandes’s books include “I Do Everything I’m Told” and “Good Boys.” Her poems have been published widely, and she’s received fellowships from the Y ... Show More

Erika Meitner joins Kevin Young to read “What Work Is,” by Philip Levine, and her own poem “To Gather Together.” Meitner’s books include “Useful Junk” and “Holy Moly Carry Me,” which won the 2018 National Jewish Book Award in Poetry. She is currently a Mandel Institute Cultural L ... Show More

We're revisiting our 2021 interview with the poet Jericho Brown, who this week was named a MacArthur Fellow-- one of the highest honors in the arts and humanities. He and Jordan talk about the great mystery of why we desire the things we desire; about oration and the poets he rea ... Show More

Mark Twain didn’t just write American classics, he lived one of the most powerful personal transformations in history. In Part 2 of this conversation, Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Ron Chernow returns to join Ryan for a deep dive into Twain’s remarkable moral evolution. They ... Show More

Anna and Annie discuss the winners of the Goldsmiths Prize, the Baillie Gifford Prize and the National Book Awards. Our book of the week is The Magician by multi-award winning author Colm Tóibín. His latest novel, based on the life of Thomas Mann, is a New York Times Notable Book ... Show More

In Mosab Abu Toha’s “Ibrahim Abu Lughod and brother in Yaffa,” two barefoot siblings on a beach sketch out a map of their former home in the sand and argue about what went where. Their longing for return to a place of hospitality, family, memory, friends, and even strangers is al ... Show More

Brilliance without emotional control is often a recipe for destruction. In this episode, Ryan sits down with Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Ron Chernow, whose acclaimed biographies on Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, John D. Rockefeller, and most recent ... Show More

Have you ever had a private moment — perhaps in the middle of the night — in a large city? When it just seems like it’s you and the great dreaming metropolis? Rowan Ricardo Phillips brings us into a memory he can’t forget, complete with a Wu-Tang Clan soundtrack.Rowan Ricardo Phi ... Show More

The broad outlines of "James" will be immediately familiar to anyone with even a basic knowledge of American literature: A boy named Huckleberry Finn and an enslaved man named Jim are fleeing down the Mississippi River together, each in search of his own kind of freedom.But where ... Show More

Anne of Cleves or Anne of Catfish? This minisode pays homage to Anne of Cleves, wifey #4 to King Henry VIII—namely the portrait of her by Hans Holbein the Younger. Was Anne really the most unattractive of Henry’s wives? Did Holbein really pull one over on his murdery boss by enga ... Show More

This week, we bring you a live interview with Garth Greenwell, conducted in October 2024 at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn. Garth talks about growing up in Kentucky assuming that he would die young, the teacher who gave him a path toward being an artist, and the doggedness with which ... Show More