Writers and Company from CBC Radio

Eleanor spoke with Oliver Sacks four times over the years, and he was always remarkably warm and engaging. In 2001 they spoke about his book, "Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood." Oliver Sacks died earlier this week at the age of 82.

James McBride was the surprise winner of the 2013 National Book Award, for his novel "The Good Lord Bird". It's a comic treatment of controversial abolitionist John Brown, who led a violent crusade against slavery.

British-Guyanese poet, novelist, and playwright, Fred D'Aguiar. His novel "Children of Paradise" is inspired by the horrific events at Jonestown in 1978.​​

Aminatta Forna has first-hand knowledge of civil war. Her father was hanged in 1975 by the regime in Sierra Leone, on false charges of treason. Forna writes about civil war in her latest book - this time about Yugoslavia.

​This week, ​Eleanor speaks with Amy Tan about her gripping novel "The Valley of Amazement", her first in eight years. The book revolves around the world of the courtesan in early 20th ​century Shanghai.​

​​This week, a panel discussion about George Eliot's masterpiece,"Middlemarch". Rebecca Mead said of the book that it "...has an incredible depth and maturity of vision that grows with you as you age."

This week, as the Pan Am games wrap up, we present our 2004 interview with Argentinian journalist and novelist, Tomás Eloy Martínez, who died in 2010.

This week, during the Pan Am games, Eleanor speaks with Colombian writer and essayist, Hector Abad. His moving memoir "Oblivion" is a tribute to his father, killed in 1987 by a repressive regime for his human rights activism.

​We're continuing our focus on writers from Latin American during the Pan Am games, this week with Chilean fiction writer and dramatist Antonio Skarmeta.

​During the Pan Am games we'll be featuring artists from Latin America, this week with Brazilian filmmaker, Jose Padilha.​

​​Scottish writer Ali Smith said "that it is the duty of both readers and writers to 'be as open as a book, and alive to the life in language.'" Her dazzling novel, "How to Be Both" has ​just won the Baileys Prize for Women's Fiction.​

David Thomson has been called "the greatest living writer on the movies". Eleanor speaks with him about Cary Grant's dark past, Meryl Streep's brilliance, and whether or not Laurence Olivier was a nice guy.

J. M. Coetzee has said of Caryl Phillips that his body of work had “a single aim: remembering what the West would like to forget.”

American writer Jim Shepard is described as "one of the finest (and most overlooked) writers." His new novel The Book of Aron looks at the Holocaust, focusing on Jewish children in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Eleanor speaks with the Irish writer, Donal Ryan. He recently quit his day job to devote himself full-time to his writing - and the awards are piling up.