'Fun Home' Author Alison Bechdel on Her New Graphic Novel
23 May - 35 minsAlison Bechdel rose to fame as the creator of a long-running alt-weekly comic strip before jumping to an even wider audience by way of her celebrated graphic memoirs “Fun Home” and “Are You My Mother?” Her new book, “Spent,” is a graphic novel — but it was originally meant to be another memoir, as Bechdel tells Gilbert Cruz on this week’s podcast.
“Over the years that I turned myself from being a comic strip writer into a memoirist, I got very sort of self-righteous about memoir as a genre,” Bechdel says. “I just thought, why would you bother making anything up? Life is incredible. It’s all right there. It’s served up on a platter every day. Write about that. My friends who are fiction writ...
Series Episodes
S.A. Cosby on Writing Southern Crime Fiction
In S.A. Cosby’s latest thriller, “King of Ashes,” a successful and fast-living financial adviser is called suddenly back to the small Virginia hometown he fled, where his family runs the local crematory and his father is in a coma stemming from a car crash that may not be as accidental as it seems. Cosby himself is from a small Virginia town, and on this week’s podcast he discusses the allure of homecoming, the tricky emotional terrain of complicated families and the reason he keeps revisiting the rural South in his fiction.
37 mins
6 June Finished
Book Club: Let's Talk About 'The Safekeep'
MJ Franklin, who hosts the Book Review podcast’s monthly book club, says that whenever someone asks him, “What should I read next?,” Yael van der Wouden’s “The Safekeep” has become his go-to recommendation. So he was particularly excited to discuss the novel on this week’s episode. Set in the Netherlands in 1961, “The Safekeep” is one of those books it’s best not to know too much about, as part of its delight is discovering its secrets unspoiled.
39 mins
30 May Finished
Ron Chernow on His New Mark Twain Biography
The biographer Ron Chernow has written about the Rockefellers and the Morgans. His book about George Washington won a Pulitzer Prize. His book about Alexander Hamilton was adapted into a hit Broadway musical. Now, in “Mark Twain,” Chernow turns to the life of the author and humorist who became one of the 19th century’s biggest celebrities and, along the way, did much to reshape American literature in his own image. On this week’s episode of the podcast, Chernow tells host Gilbert Cruz how he came to write about Twain and what interested him most about his subject.
42 mins
16 May Finished
12 Summer Books We're Looking Forward To
Summer arrives just over a month from now. On this week’s episode, Gilbert Cruz talks with Joumana Khatib about some of the books they're most looking forward to.
32 mins
9 May Finished
'The Interview': Isabel Allende Understands How Fear Changes a Society
The Book Review is off this week, but please enjoy this episode of the The New York Times podcast "The Interview," in which Gilbert Cruz speaks with the author Isabel Allende about her new novel "My Name is Emilia del Valle."
42 mins
2 May Finished
