The woman who turns up dead at the start of Elly Griffiths' new novel billed herself as a "murder consultant" for writers. Griffiths says she was inspired by her aunt, who enjoys thinking up murders.
Katie Engelhart explores the complexity of physician-assisted death in the book The Inevitable. She says patients seeking to end their own lives sometimes resort to veterinary drugs from overseas.
The Code Breaker profiles Jennifer Doudna, a Nobel Prize-winning biochemist key to the development of CRISPR, and examines the technology's exciting possibilities and need for oversight.
After Pulitzer Prize-winner John Archibald read sermons from his father's time as a Methodist preacher, he went on a quest to find out why his dad, a devout man, didn't speak out publicly on racism.
You're Leaving When? is a witty memoir of Gurwitch's many middle age misadventures — and it doesn't even cover the stage IV lung cancer diagnosis she received in the midst of the pandemic.
McBride's most recent novel, Deacon King Kong, is set in a Brooklyn housing project in 1969. "Time and place is really crucial to good storytelling," he says. Originally broadcast Feb. 29, 2020.
NPR's Audie Cornish speaks with Naima Coster about her novel What's Mine And Yours, about a North Carolina high school in the middle of an integration program in the early 2000.
Cartoonist and zine-maker John Porcellino has been a hugely influential figure in the world of zine-making. As several of his classic books are reissued, we talk to him about his life and work
Viet Thanh Nguyen's Pulitzer Prize-winning spy novel The Sympathizer told the story of a communist double agent just after the Vietnam War — his quest for revolution resumes in The Committed.
The new movie Cherry follows an Iraq war vet who gets addicted to heroin and starts robbing banks. It's based on a semi-autobiographical novel by Nico Walker, who was just released from prison.
NPR's Michaeleen Doucleff found that parenting books she read after becoming a mom left a lot out. When she went through a tough period with her daughter, she traveled the world in search of guidance.
Now 74, O'Brien didn't become a father until his late 50s. He reflects on writing, mortality and his experiences in Vietnam in the new documentary, The War and Peace of Tim O'Brien.
Journalist Joby Warrick takes a detailed look at an excruciating moment for the world — the time in 2013 when the U.S. concluded that Syria's government had used chemical weapons in its civil war.
In her third collection of poems, Natalie Shapero takes a blunt, funny look at the uncomfortable realities of life under capitalism. She says her work engages with the things people don't talk about.
Trotter was a Black newspaper editor in the early 20th century who advocated for civil rights by organizing mass protests. Historian Kerri Greenidge tells his story. Originally broadcast January 2021.
