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Playlist: Books and Writers

Compiled By: Ovidia Yu

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The Writers Studio, featuring Maxing Hong Kingston

From Abby Goldstein | Part of the The Writers Studio series | 59:02

A one-hour interview with internationally acclaimed author Maxine Hing Kingston

Writersstudio120_small Maxine Hong Kingston is the author of "The Woman Warrior", "China Men", "Tripmaster Monkey" and "Hawaii One Summer". She has earned the National Book Award, The National Book Critics Circle Award, The PEN West Award for Fiction, an American Academy of Arts & Letters Award and a National Humanities Medal from the national Endowment for the Humanities. Her latest book is called "The Fifth Book Of Peace." This program is part of The Writers Studio, a 7 part series recorded in 2003/2004 at Theatre Three in Dallas, Texas with a live audience, who were able to ask questions during the event. The series was originally broadcast on KERA 90.1 in April and May of 2004.

The Writers Studio, featuring Tracy Kidder

From Abby Goldstein | Part of the The Writers Studio series | 59:04

A one-hour interview with Pulizer Prize winning author Tracy Kidder

Writersstudio120_small Among his many awards, Tracy Kidder is the recipient of the Pulizer Prize, The National Book Award and the Robert F. Kennedy Award. He is the author of 6 books, including his latest work "Mountains Beyond Mountains". This program is part of The Writers Studio, a 7 part series recorded in 2003/2004 at Theatre Three in Dallas, Texas with a live audience, who were able to ask questions during the event. The series was originally broadcast on KERA 90.1 in April and May of 2004.

The Writers Studio Season 2, featuring Umberto Eco

From KERA | Part of the The Writers Studio Season 2 series | 56:40

A one hour interview with internationally acclaimed author Umberto Eco

Writersstudio120_small Umberto Eco, best known for four bestselling novels, "The Name of the Rose", "Foucault's Pendulum", "The Island of the Day Before", and "Baudolino", is also a prominent literary critic and semiotician. His collections of essays include "Five Moral Pieces", "Kant and the Platypus", "Serendipities", "Travels in Hyperreality", and "On Literature". His theories extend the use of semiotics to fiction and combine various genres, literary theory, medieval studies, mystery, and biblical exegesis. "The Name of the Rose" has been translated into more than 16 languages and won two of Italy's main literary awards, the Premio Viareggio and the Premio Strega. Eco lives in Milan.

The Writers Studio Season 2, featuring Margaret Drabble

From KERA | Part of the The Writers Studio Season 2 series | 59:30

A one hour interview with internationally acclaimed author Margaret Drabble

Writersstudio120_small Margaret Drabble is one of our greatest living English authors. Her novel, "The Millstone" (aka "Thank You All Very Much"), won the John Llewelyn Rhys Prize, and she was the recipient of a Society of Author's Travelling Fellowship, James Tait Black and E.M. Forster Awards, and the CBE. Some of her books include "For Queen and Country", "A Writer's Britain", "The Radiant Way", "The Peppered Moth", "The Witch of Exmore", "The Seven Sisters", as well as "The Oxford Companion to English Literature". Her latest book is "The Red Queen". She is married to biographer Michael Holroyd and the sister of author A.S. Byatt.

The Writers Studio Season 2, featuring Bret Easton Ellis

From KERA | Part of the The Writers Studio Season 2 series | 57:22

A one hour interview with internationally acclaimed author Bret Easton Ellis

Writersstudio120_small Bret Easton Ellis's first novel, "Less Than Zero", written for school credit, became a New York Times bestseller, was translated into 20 languages, and made into a film. His next two novels also took a cinematic turn, "The Rules of Engagement", and the controversial "American Psycho", about a Wall Street serial killer. His latest, "Lunar Park", is a tragi-comic novelized memoir, which both underscores and challenges the New York Times claim that Ellis is the "bad boy of American letters, the brattiest of the Brat Pack that included Jay McInerney, Tama Janowitz, and other chroniclers of...Reagan-era angst."

Murakami's Well

From Teresa Goff | 48:44

Haruki Murakami, arguably the most internationally-acclaimed contemporary Japanese writer, has created a series of stories and novels that have gained much attention across the globe. In "Murakami's Well", his stories are contextualised and discussed by translators and friends.

Mcardwednotext_small "The thing about Murakami that everybody seems to share even though nobody has come up with a final answer as to what it is about him that has caught on or what they like so much but there's this sense that he does something weird to your brain." - Jay Rubin, English translator Haruki Murakami, a Japanese writer of increasing renown, is arguably the most internationally-acclaimed contemporary Japanese writer. In 2006, he was awarded the Franz Kafka prize for Literature. Both a cafe in Kiev and a cannabis-laced cocktail at a Moscow bar have been named after him. He has been translated into three dozen languages. Murakami himself has translated many of the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Raymond Carver, Truman Capote, John Irving, and Paul Theroux, among others, into Japanese. His book Underground, a haunting exploration into the sarin gas poisonings of the Tokyo subway, is a non-fiction illustration of the characters who people Murakami's long and short fiction. Adrift in the world, these characters speak to us of what it is to be human. According to a New York Times review, Murakami "is like a magician who explains what he's doing as he performs the trick and still makes you believe he has supernatural powers .." Descend with producer Teresa Goff into "Murakami's Well."