New Letters - On the Air - Audio feed

This program pays tribute to the past American voices of feminist poets from the last century, who opened doors at publishing houses for the vast numbers of talented women writers today. Listen to excerpts from Pulitzer Prize winners Maxine Kumin (1925-2014) and Carolyn Kizer (1925-2014), as well as MacArthur "genius" fellow Adrienne Rich (1929-2012). We'll also list...

Kim Shuck is San Francisco's seventh Poet Laureate and the first from a recognized Native Nation. Shuck, a citizen of Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, takes on the disappearance of native women in the United States in her poetry book, Murdered Missing, winner of the 2019 PEN Oakland Censorship Award. During her reading at Haskell Indian Na...

This Past American Voice episode features the late, great poet Adrienne Rich, who died in 2012. Known for her perfectly crafted, award winning poems, she was also a fearless spokeswoman for the Feminist Movement, gay rights and peace. This program features excerpts from a 1995 New Letters on the Air interview and from a 2002 Cockefair Chair presentation at the University of ...

In the second half of this interview, Patricia Smith, a 2017 National Endowment for the Arts fellow, reads from her book Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah, the 2014 winner of the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt Award. Smith also shares a poem from her earlier National Poetry Series Award-winning collection, ...

In the final part of the "On Writing, On Race" program at the Kansas City Public Library, DaMaris Hill, the youngest and first living American poet to be signed to Bloomsbury Publishing, reads poems from her book, A Bound Woman is a D...

Anthony Grooms, the author of Bombingham, reads from his newest novel, The Vain Conversation, a finalist for the 2020 Townsend Prize for Fiction. In part one of this show produced from a presen...

We pay tribute to one of America's best fiction writers, Ernest Gaines (1933-2019), whose career really took off with his fourth novel, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. A native of Louisiana, Gaines brought to life...

Patricia Smith is the author of seven poetry books and a four-time National Poetry Slam Champion, the most successful poet in the competition's history. In part one of this conversation, she reads from her recent book, Incendiary Art, 2018 winner of an NAACP Image Award and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and discusses the why she chose to write so much about the late Emmett Till, who was killed ...

Tyehimba Jess, winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry reads from his multi-award winning Olio at the Kansas City Public Library, during his 2019 visit to the Unesco Creative City of Music. The book delves into the voices of African...

Tyehimba Jess, winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry reads from his multi-award winning Olio at the ...

Kansas native Ben Lerner often weaves personal experiences into his writing, which is particularly apparent in his third novel, The Topeka School, a finalist for the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award. While UMKC's Cockefair Chair Writer in Residence, Lerner performs his first public reading of the novel at the Kansas City Public Library. A 20...

Kansas native Ben Lerner often weaves personal experiences into his writing, which is particularly apparent in his third novel, The Topeka School, a finalist for the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award. While UMKC's Cockefair Chair Writer in Residence, Lerner performs his first public reading of the novel at the Kansas City Public Library. A 20...

Glenn North, the inaugural Poet Laureate of the 18th and Vine Historic Jazz District, shares passages from his 2015 book City of Song (re-released in 2019 by Spartan Press). Excerpted from the Kansas City Public Library's 2017 program, To Make a Poet Black and Bid Him Sing, the...

Glenn North, the inaugural Poet Laureate of the 18th and Vine Historic Jazz District, shares passages from his 2015 book City of Song (re-released in 2019 by Spartan Press). Excerpted from the Kansas City Public Library's 2017 program, To Make a Poet Black and Bid Him Sing, the...

Acclaimed novelist, retired Princeton professor and mountain climber, Russell Banks discusses his recent memoir, Voyager:Travel Writings. Interviewed by his former student and now fellow novelist, Whitney Terrell, Banks reveals how his childhood traumas played into his relationships in front of an aud...