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james richardson
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 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.
After recovering from a nearly fatal accident, all Peggy Shumaker wanted to do was read. The poet and
Alaska's State Writer Laureate, 2010-2012, eventually began to write again, and while she didn't intend to write a memoir, her book of short pieces, Just Breathe Normally,
is one. Shumaker reads from the book and from her poetry collection, Gnawed Bones.
She also discusses how writing allows her to take what she calls a kaleidoscopic
look at the "broken shards" of her experience, incorporating her physical
recovery from the accident with family memories and ancestral stories.
Much like the heroine in her coming-of-age novel The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, author Heidi Durrow grew up in a biracial household. She talks about being both African-American and Danish, and how she used her own mixed experience, along with a tragic newspaper story, to create her 2010 novel. Durrow
also discusses the years she
spent writing the novel, which
won the 2008 PEN/Bellwether
Prize for Socially Engaged
Fiction, an award established by
Barbara Kingsolver.
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ABOUT
NEW LETTERS ON THE AIR:
New Letters on the Air, hosted by
Angela Elam, is the half-hour radio companion to the literary quarterly magazine New Letters. Past guests include U.S. Poet Laureates Ted Kooser, Rita Dove, Billy Collins; Pulitzer Prize winning playwrights August Wilson, Suzan-Lori Parks, Tony Kushner and novelists Jim Harrison, Jane Smiley, Richard Russo. The program, which also features emerging writers of poetry, fiction, drama and creative non-fiction, is produced by the University of Missouri-Kansas City and distributed via
the
Public Radio
Satellite System's Content Depot,
and the
Public Radio Exchange.
Angela Elam, Host of New Letters on the Air
MEET THE STAFF OF NEW LETTERS ON
THE AIR:
The
New Letters on the Airproduction team includes producer/host Angela Elam, assistant producer Annie Walsh, technical editor Stephanie Hughes, and our intern Andrew Hansbrough. Robert Stewart is the executive editor.
THE STORY OF NEW LETTERS ON
THE AIR:
This radio companion to the distinguished literary quarterly,
New Letters, was
founded in 1977, by
David and
Judy Ray with help from their staff, including
Robert Stewart, now the editor of the magazine.
Rebekah Presson Mosby worked as a producer and then host from 1982 until 1995. Now, producer/host Angela Elam continues the tradition.
New Letters on the Air is a weekly program broadcast over many public radio stations, and is also one of the largest and best collections of recordings of contemporary authors from the United States and around the world.
Many of these important
writers, including Allen Ginsberg, Jane
Kenyon, Howard Nemerov, Michael
Dorris, James Dickey, John
Gardner, and Gwendolyn Brooks, have
now passed from the literary
scene. Many are Nobel laureates,
winners of Pulitzer Prizes or
National Book Awards. Most
programs from our extensive
archives are offered for sale on
audiocassette or CD.
TIP You may use the left-side search parameters in any combination. You can search by author name, ID, Genre or Interview Year. For example, to find all authors who have a last name beginning with "A" simply put an "a" in the text box field, on the drop down box select On The Air and press the enter key.
SPONSORS:
Support for New Letters on the Air comes from the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency, and the University
of Missouri-Kansas City's College of Arts and Sciences.
of Missouri-Kansas City's College of Arts and Sciences.