Former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky discusses his new book of prose, Thousands of Broadways: Dreams and Nightmares of the American Small Town.  Raised in Long Branch, New Jersey, where his family has a long history, Pinsky examines American small town life, and how it plays in literature, such as in Faulkner's The Hamlet. He also reads some poetry, talks about his book, The Sounds of Poetry, and gives an update on his Favorite Poem Project that was developed during his poet laureateship:  www.favoritepoem.org.

W.S. Merwin recently ended his term as the 17th U.S. Poet Laureate.  With a career spanning more than 60 years, Merwin has won nearly every major literary honor, including the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry twice--in 1971 and again in 2009.  Poet and scholar, H. L. Hix, author of UNDERSTANDING W.S. MERWIN, talks with the poet about his poetry and his interest in the natural environment and native peoples. A long-time resident of Hawaii, Merwin's interest in the preservation of the islands' ecology and culture are evident in readings from his 1999 book,THE RIVER SOUND, as well his 1998 novel-in-verse, THE FOLDING CLIFFS, a fact-based fictional tale of Hawaii's tragic 19th century history.

Richard Russo, known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel EMPIRE FALLS, describes his writing process as “hiking without knowing where your trails are going.”  The author returned to NEW LETTERS ON THE AIR to talk about everything from writing screenplays to writing novels and short stories.  As, in his words, a “late-career novelist,” he learned that when he runs out of experience, he reads the terrain and weaves a story from the clues he can see ahead.  Russo reads from his most recent novels, BRIDGE OF SIGHS and THAT OLD CAPE MAGIC.

In this interview in front of an audience at the Kansas City Public Library, Marilynne Robinson, winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize, and more recently the 2009 Orange Prize for Fiction, discusses her classic 1980 novel HOUSEKEEPING, part of the NEA’s Big Read program. She also reads from her most recent novel, HOME, which is a sequel of sorts to the Pulitzer-winning, GILEAD.

Anne Fortier is the latest in a long line of writers who draw on the legend of the doomed lovers, best known as William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.  In her novel JULIET, Fortier follows a descendant of Giulietta Tolomei, who uncovers eerie parallels between her life and that of the "real-life" Juliet.  Fortier, who was raised in Denmark, talks about writing this novel in English as opposed to her native Danish, and reflects on bilingualism and her approach to writing adventure stories.

Peter Balakian, a poet of Armenian descent, discusses his 2010 work, ZIGGURAT, with former NEW LETTERS ON THE AIR host, Rebekah Presson Mosby. The book is in three parts, and the middle section, which is a poem in 45 sections, is Balakian's response to the 9/11 attacks.  It touches on everything from soul music to the war in Iraq and gives a semi-autobiographical account of a mail runner at the World Trade Center in the early 1970s.

Poet, literary critic, and scholar, Evie Shockley, reads from her two poetry collections, A HALF-RED SEA and THE NEW BLACK, and talks about how poetic form can bring new meaning to a poem's subject matter. She discusses how her work pays homage to her literary mentors, yet challenges common notions about historical figures and events and what race in America means to different generations. She also shares how her poetry interweaves the personal and political, as well as the historical and imagined, and challenges readers to see their heroes in new and meaningful ways.

Born in a small Arizona border town to a Mexican father and English mother, Alberto Rios is often recognized as Arizona's unofficial poet laureate. As a child he once lost the ability to speak in Spanish for several years after being punished by teachers for using the language, but today has become an honored poet in both Spanish and English. His poetry and short fiction have received numerous awards and are often anthologized. Most recently his memoir, Capirotada, was selected as the One Book Arizona choice for 2009, the same year as the publication of his newest book of poetry, The Dangerous Shirt.

Poet Ada Limon's world changed, but not as she exepected, when she won two book prizes in 2005: the Autumn House Press Poetry Prize for a collection that became her 2006 book, LUCKY WRECK, and the Pearl Poetry Prize for what became her 2007 book, THIS BIG FAKE WORLD. A California native who lived and worked in New York City for years, Limon draws inspiration from the Sonoma Valley of her childhood, the mythologies of her Mexican grandfather's Churascan tribe, and the visual arts. She discusses her time working for magazines and how copywriting and poetry work together for her, and reads from her 2010 book, SHARKS IN THE RIVERS.

National Poetry Month continues with the new Missouri Poet Laureate, William Trowbridge, who was named to the post on Friday, April 13th, 2012.  That's the perfect date for the author who portrays the fool archetype, leading his character through humiliations and sufferings with his signature humor in his 2011 collection, SHIP OF FOOL.  The author of three chapbooks and five poetry collections, such as THE COMPLETE BOOK OF KONG, Trowbridge is unafraid of incorporating pop culture in his work, perhaps because he felt deprived of it as a child.  In this interview, he discusses his affinity for complex characterizations and descriptive language and his belief that comedy is as necessary as tragedy to great literature. 

Winner of a 2011 Clarion Award for radio from the Association for Women in Communications, New Letters on the Air features poems from WHEN SHE NAMED FIRE: AN ANTHOLOGY OF CONTEMPORARY POETRY BY AMERICAN WOMEN. Edited by poet Andrea Hollander Budy, the book features 460 poems by 96 contemporary female poets. Four of those poets, Budy, Robin Behn, Michelle Boisseau, and Jo McDougall, were recorded at the Writers Place in Kansas City. The award-winning program also features archived NEW LETTERS ON THE AIR recordings of Alice Friman and Dorianne Laux reading poems included in the highly praised anthology.

Poet, translator, and editor Wayne Miller reads from his 2011 collection, THE CITY, OUR CITY, and talks about how history and war shape culture and language. He also discusses the art of translation and what it can teach young poets, and shares award-winning poems from his 2006 book, ONLY THE SENSES SLEEP, and his 2009 collection, THE BOOK OF PROPS.

Robert Bly, the preeminent poet, translator, and cultural commentator, reads from his 2011 poetry collection, TALKING INTO THE EAR OF A DONKEY. Winner of a National Book Award and two Guggenheims, Bly has published over twenty collections of poetry, and is highly regarded as a great translator of international poetry. In this recording of his reading at Rockhurst University’s Midwest Poets Series, he performs with sitartist David Whetstone and also reads from MY SENTECE WAS A THOUSAND YEARS OF JOY: POEMS, his own adaptation of the Mideastern ghazal form in three-line stanzas.

A SUNDAY IN GOD-YEARS takes its title from the notion that inside the long stretch of geologic time, human history happens in the blink of God's eye as God rolls over during a Sunday nap. This fourth collection by Michelle Boisseau is centered around the long poem "A Reckoning," made up of 15 sections that explore the connections between the heirs of slave holders and slaves, and the repercussions felt in today's society.

After meeting at Cave Canem, the black writers' symposium, John Murillo, Dwayne Betts, Randall Horton, and Marcus Jackson discovered they all had a shared love of the late African-American poet Etheridge Knight.  The four bonded, kept in touch, and formed their own poetry collective called "The Symphony."  Each poet of the collective reads from his own work and discusses writing from the perspective of the African-American male experience.

The poet James Richardson has called himself an "accidental aphorist," but his well-crafted works are no accident. He has received awards from the Poetry Society of America and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His 2004 book, INTERGLACIAL: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS AND APHORISMS, was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, and his 2010 book BY THE NUMBERS: POEMS AND APHORISMS, was a finalist for the National Book Award. He reads from the latter collection and explains why he thinks it's crucial to his creative process to take "unproductive, wasted" stretches time between books.

Poet Terrance Hayes reads from his 2010 collection, LIGHTHEAD, which won the National Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Hayes discusses some of the themes in his work, including light, shadow, and race. He also reads from his third book, WIND IN A BOX, and talks about the poetic impulse and how he shapes poetry from life