New Letters - On the Air - Audio feed

This program features the second part of a conversation in front of an audience at the Hall Center for the Humanities at the University of Kansas with the Mississippi Poet Laureate, Natasha Trethewey. The 19th U.S. Poet Laureate (2012-14), she talks about the role's affect on her work and her life as a literary citizen, and shares some of the projects she's taken on since, including her work selecting poetry for Th...

Georgia State Poet Laureate Judson Mitcham talks about his psychology background and how his poetry career began with trying to write songs. He shares stories about some of the influential poets he's met along the way, including the late Richard Hugo, William Stafford and Philip Levine. In the first part of this 2015 interview, recorded by WUGA in front of an audience in Athens, GA, Mitcham talks about his initiatives as the state's Poet Laureate and reads from his book ...

Kansas Poet Laureate, 2009-2013, Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg is the author of multiple books of poetry and prose. Themes of openness resonate throughout her work, whether she's relating the tumultuous history of her laureateship in Poem on the Range: A Poet Laureate's Love Song to Kansas or discussing her memoir...

Poet and journalist Duyna Mikhail, a Kresge Fellow and winner of the Arab American Book Award, reads poetry from her three books: The War Works Hard, Diary of a Wave Outside the Sea and The Iraqi Nights. She discusses the imp...

A longtime resident of Kansas and professor at Washburn University, Thomas Fox Averill lets his numerous interests and passion for research guide his writing of "flyover fiction." His 2001 novel Secrets of the Tsil Café features southwestern cuisine almost like a character, while th...

The author of 19 books of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction, Philip Lee Williams’ honors include the 2015 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Georgia Writers Association. In this interview at WUGA in Athens, Georgia, he talks about some of his most recent books and we discover how science, literature, music and visual art have helped shape his writing life. In this first half of a two part interview, he reads from his 2012 novel, ...

Poet Marilyn Kallet reads from her book, One for Each Night: Chanukah Tales and Recipes, which she wrote for families, who may need ideas on what to share in lean times. The book features humorous stories about her mother and being Jewish in the deep south, along with tales about traditional Chanukah foods, a...

Drawing upon his Native American heritage, poet Greg Field (shown) reads from his 2014 book of poetry, Black Heart, and reveals the inspiration for this book, including his grandmother’s deathbed confession about his grandfather. Field is joined by his editor, the former Kansas Poet Laureate Denise Low, who published his book through her press, ...

We go "Back to the Writing Well" to hear from writers of place, including 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, The De...

Linda Rodriguez is a self-proclaimed "feminist, activist, and unashamed liberal," who has now given those attributes to Skeet Bannion, the Native American heroine of her mystery novels. Rodriguez, who is also a poet and part Cherokee, talks about how her series was conceived after the debut book, Every Last Secret, won St. Martin's Malice Domestic First Novel Competition, and wa...

The author of more than 40 books of poetry, fiction, essays and criticism, Gerald Vizenor was raised on the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota and went into the army at age 18. While in Japan, he discovered a new appreciation of his native Anishinaabe dream songs through haiku. In this interview for Park University’s 2014 Ethnic Voices Poetry Series, he talks about this art form and reads from his 2014 collection, Favor...

We go to the writing well to fill our creative spirits with advice from several fiction writers, including Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Jane Smiley,who reveals her "Five Writing Tips." The author of the trilogy of novels ...

Born in Ghana and raised in Jamaica, Kwame Dawes has written poetry, plays, fiction, a documentary and an accompanying Emmy-winning website of poetry. In this reading at the 2015 Pleiades Visiting Writers Series at the University of Central Missouri, Dawes reads from his book,...

Vermont Poet Laureate (2011-2015), Sydney Lea is the author of over a dozen books of poetry, essays, and fiction, including three books published in 2013: I Was Thinking of Beauty, A North Country Life: Tales of Woodsmen, Waters, and Wildlife, and ...

Describing herself as a latecomer to writing, author Catherine Browder discusses her new book, Now We Can All Go Home, which pays tribute to Anton Chekhov and three of his plays, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters, and The Seagull. In this book, Browder picks up the lives of Chekov's beloved characters and continues their stories through three novellas. Browder, who is also a playwright, talks about why she chose to write these as fiction rather than plays, and dis...