New Letters - On the Air - Audio feed

Former California Poet Laureate (2005-2008) Al Young has penned 25 books, won two American Book Awards, and was recently included in The Best American Poetry 2016. In the first half of our conversation, he discusses how his family and childhood in Mississippi shaped some of his writing which includes poetry, memoir, and fict...

A great promoter of poetry in Kansas City, Phyllis Becker served on the board of The Writers Place and is coordinator of the Riverfront Reading Series. Her own publications include the 2008 book, How I Came to Love Jazz and other Poems, an earlier chapbook, ...

We remember the late August Wilson in this 2002 interview with the playwright who chronicled African-American life in the 20th century in plays such as Joe Turner's Come and Gone, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom,...

Poet Dan Jaffe, the guest co-editor of a recent issue of New Letters magazine that focuses on jazz, has always combined his poetry and his love of music in performances with modern composers of opera and classical music, as well as jazz. In this program, he reads from Festival and Playing the Word: Jazz Poems...

Irish poet and former Chair of the Poetry Society in England, Anne-Marie Fyfe explores parallels in her poetry with the life and work of the renowned William Butler Yeats as part of the "Mapping Yeats Symposium" at the 2015 Kansas City Irish Festival. The creator of the Coffee-House Poetry series at the Troubadour in London, Fyfe reads from her fourth and fifth books, ...

Pulitzer Prize winning fiction writer, Geraldine Brooks talks about the 2015 book, The Secret Chord, her historical novel about the Biblical King David and the women and men who surrounded him as told from the perspective of Nathan, a member of David's court, whose writings are now los...

Irish poet and former Chair of the Poetry Society in England, Anne-Marie Fyfe explores parallels in her poetry with the life and work of the renowned William Butler Yeats as part of the "Mapping Yeats Symposium" at the 2015 Kansas City Irish Festival. The creator of the Coffee-House Poetry series at the Troubadour in London, Fyfe reads from her fourth and fifth books, ...

Visiting Kansas City for the Midwest Poets Series, National Book Critics Circle Award winner Rodney Jones discusses what he learned about the use of language from the late writers and friends, Kent Haruf and C.D. Wright. He also reads from and talks about the shaping of his selected works, Salvation Blues: ...

Alice Friman, the 2012 Georgia Author of the Year for her book, Vinculum, discusses that collection and her darkly humorous 2014 book, ...

We go "Back to the Writing Well" to hear from writers of place, including the late Pat Conroy. Famous for his novels about the south, with several made into movies such as The Great Santini, he finally puts his father to rest with his 2013 memoir, ...

Kansas blogger Jen Mann talks about her humorous book Spending the Holidays With People I Want to Punch in the Throat. She describes how a viral post about her disdain for Elf-on-the-Shelf brought national attention to her blog "People I Want to Pu...

A holiday favorite, this highly anthologized short story is read by the late author Grace Paley. "The Loudest Voice" is an amusing tale about a little Jewish girl, chosen to play the lead in her school's Christmas pageant, an...

This audio anthology features readings by six poets, including a few who are part of the upcoming book co-edited by Cherokee writers Diane Glancy and Linda Rodriguez called The World Is One Place: Native American Poets Visit the Middle East. Kim Shuck (shown), Bojan Louis, LeAnne Howe, Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán, and Allison Hedge Coke read poetry that intertwines stories about the history, culture, and landscape of the Middle East with their experiences. They were recorded at the...

Pulitzer Prize winning fiction writer, Geraldine Brooks talks about the 2015 book, The Secret Chord, her historical novel about the Biblical King David and the women and men who surrounded him as told from the perspective of Nathan, a member of David's court, whose writings are now los...

An Obie Award-winning playwright, MacArthur fellow, and 2015 NEH Jefferson Lecturer for Intellectual Ideas, Anna Deavere Smith discusses her technique of interviewing real people to use their stories on stage. While a 2015 Hall Center for the Humanities Lecturer at the University of Kansas, she talks...