Co-founder with Allen Ginsberg of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, Anne Waldman discusses her connection with the Beat Generation, the Naropa Institute (now University), and the development of her creative work over the past 35 years. She reads from her 2009 collection Manatee/Humanity and also talks about her current collaboration with her musician son, Ambrose Bye, with an excerpt from their 2009 compact disc, Matching Half.

Former Chicago Tribune president, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing, and author of the 2010 book, What is Happening to News: The Information Explosion and the Crisis in Journalism, Jack Fuller discusses the differences in a journalist's approach to writing from that of a novelist. The author of seven novels, he also talks about his most personal story to date--his 2008 book, Abbeville, based loosely on his grandfather's rise, fall, and rebirth in a small farm town in central Illinois.

A journalist who worked for such publications as Esquire, New York Magazine, and MSNBC.com, Jeannette Walls turned to memoir with her bestseller, The Glass Castle. She discusses this book and her 2009 follow-up, Half Broke Horses. Billed as a "true life novel," the second book relays stories about Jeannette Walls' tough-as-nails grandmother, Lily, whose exploits in the early 20th century demonstrate the tenacity of women in the American west. Walls also discusses the fine line between memoir and fiction, and why she labels this family memoir as a novel.

Co-founder of the infamous and now-defunct Spy magazine, Kurt Andersen is a long-time journalist, who's also written fiction and essays and is now famous as the host of the public radio program, Studio 360. He discusses the sometimes alternating demands of interviewing creative people and being creative in his own right and reads from his novel Heyday and talks about his earlier novel, Turn of the Century.

The recipient of the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary, Anna Quindlen had a long career in journalism and writing syndicated columns, especially the 1980s series "Life in the 30s," which led her to becoming an unintended voice of the baby boom generation. Quindlen moved away from journalism to write fiction full-time in 1995, and developed a successful career as a novelist. She discusses her journalistic roots and the family dynamics at play in her 2010 novel, Every Last One.

In this interview, taped before an audience at the Kansas City Public Library, Angela Elam talks with Steve Lopez, about his book, The Soloist, winner of the 2009 PEN Center USA Award for creative non-fiction. The book chronicles Lopez' friendship with schizophrenic virtuoso cellist Nathaniel Ayers, and was made into the movie with the same title. Lopez is an award-winning columnist for the Los Angeles Times and the author of three novels.

Laura Moriarty's third novel, While I'm Falling, is out in paperback this week. It follows her previous novels, The Rest of Her Life and The Center of Everything. Though the characters in all three books are very different, all explore complex issues of mothers and daughters, the importance of family, and the consequences of inattentiveness. Moriarty, who grew up in a military family and has lived in numerous places around the world, talks about her love of the open terrain and people of Kansas, the place she's adopted as home for her and her characters.

The winner of the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, Gary Snyder discusses the changing worlds of poetics and the environment. Although his Zen-inspired poetry conveys themes existing in the natural world, Snyder talks about why he would not describe himself as a "nature writer." He also recalls his early career as a young poet in San Francisco in the mid-1950s, and a particularly momentous reading at the Six Gallery with Allen Ginsberg. He reads from his most recent new collection of poetry, Danger on Peaks, published in 2005.

What's more American than baseball around the 4th of July? We pay tribute to the game and those who love it with this anthology show featuring poetry and stories about baseball, including works by former U.S. poet laureates, Donald Hall and Maxine Kumin, as well as fellow poets Martin Espada, Jonathan Holden, and fiction writer Billy Lombardo, along with an interview featuring the late Negro Leagues great, Buck O'Neil after the release of his autobiography, I Was Right on Time.

"Acedia" was a once-common notion--one of the "eight bad thoughts"--but it was folded into sloth as one of the seven deadly sins and vanished from common use.  Poet Kathleen Norris, author of Dakota: A Spiritual Memoir and The Cloister Walk, spent time researching acedia, the state of not caring about anything. She describes her own struggle with this negative emotion that differs from depression and explores the word in her newest non-fiction book, Acedia and Me. 

Since winning the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, an epic novel that brings together the creation of Superman, Jewish myths, and forbidden love, Michael Chabon has written novels that bring science fictional elements to literary fiction. He talks about his newer book of essays on his creative process called Maps and Legends, and his 2009 memoir, Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son.

C. Dale Young is a poet who admits that 90% of his time is taken up by his day-job, working as an oncologist in San Francisco.  In this interview with New Letters magazine editor Robert Stewart, Young discusses the tradition of the physician-poet, and "how the act of writing a poem is a political act." Also the poetry editor at the New England Review, Young discusses what moves him as a poet. He reads from his collection, Second Person, and his forthcoming book, Torn.

Growing up in bayou country, the poet Martha Serpas became attached to the landscape and to the culture of southern Louisiana.  Not surprisingly, poems about the environment and the endangered Gulf shores permeate her work, including her 2006 collection, The Dirty Side of the Storm, and her earlier book, Côte Blanche. Raised Roman Catholic, Serpas also discusses the role religion plays in her work and in her life as a lesbian and a hospital chaplain.  Her poetry is included in the environmental documentary film, Veins in the Gulf, debuting in fall 2010.  Serpas recommends the LA Gulf Response Coalition to anyone interested in helping with the oil spill in Louisiana.

Old School, the 2003 novel by Tobias Wolff that was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, is a selection for the National Endowment for the Arts program "The Big Read." In 2009, Wolff visited Kansas City to conclude the city-wide read of his novel, and discussed it with Angela Elam in front of an audience at the Kansas City Public Library. Wolff is also known for writing memoir, including This Boy's Life, and revealed why he chose to make this particular book a work of fiction. His newest book is Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories.

Fresh from a painful divorce, travel writer Maria Finn sought solace in something that made her happy: tango lessons. In her 2010 memoir, Hold Me Tight and Tango Me Home, Finn recounts how tango slowly took over her life, until a trip to the birthplace of the dance, Buenos Aires, gave her the confidence to open her heart again. Finn discusses how she mingles memoir with history to create her non-fiction.

Chosen by Publisher's Weekly as one of the Best Books of 2009, How to Sell is a funny exposé novel about the jeweler's trade, in which author Clancy Martin worked for many years before becoming an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Martin talks about writing this coming-of-age story about a 16-year-old Canadian high school drop-out with New Letters on the Air's Max Mosley; they discuss how he weaves philosophy and autobiography into this novel now out in paperback. 

A literary editor since she graduated from college, Hilda Raz became a public poet after she was sent by Prairie Schooner to the Breadloaf writing conference to represent the magazine, and there, found her own poetic voice as well. Raz talks about balancing the roles of editing, teaching and writing, and her books that record her experiences with motherhood, surviving breast cancer and coming to terms with her child's transsexuality. She reads from her books All Odd and Splendid, What Happens, and Trans.

Known for her journalistic investigations in the 1980s into stories about El Salvadoran refugees, Demetria Martinez is a fearless writer. Winner of the 2006 International Latino Book Award for her collection of essays and poems called Confessions of a Berlitz-Tape Chicana, Demetria Martinez shares some of her stories about her life. She reads from this book and her books of poetry, Breathing Between the Lines and The Devil's Workshop.

Beth Ann Fennelly has written four books in the last decade, working in creative partnership with her husband, novelist Tom Franklin. Born in New Jersey and raised in Illinois, she talks about her relocation to Mississippi and how the south now reverberates in her work. She also discusses her life as a poet, teacher, and now, mother. She reads from her poetry books, Tender Hooks, Open House, and Unmentionables, and talks about her book of non-fiction, Great With Child: Letters to a Young Mother.

New Letters on the Air remembers Robert Dana, former poet laureate of Iowa, who passed away in February, 2010.  Recorded on his 80th birthday in 2009, he reminisces about attending the Iowa Writers Workshop after World War II, and being in class with poets Donald Justice and Henri Coulette. He reads poems in memoriam to those writers from his 2008 collection The Other, and talks about the influences of growing up in immigrant and working-class areas of Boston and small New England towns.

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. 

"April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain." The famous words of poet T.S. Elliot prompted us to mix this anthology of American poets, who examine the mysteries of love in various forms. Listen to former Poets Laureate Billy Collins, Charles Simic, Rita Dove, Donald Hall and the current position holder, Kay Ryan, whose poetry initiative this year is with community colleges.  We also hear from poets Randall Mann, Debra Marquart, Elizabeth Alexander, Alberto Rios, and Claudia Emerson who offer their poetic insights into the ambiguous and enticing world of love, on The Cruelest Month. Find out how to celebrate Poem in Your Pocket Day on April 29th.

The founder of the Macondo Foundation to foster creativity among socially-engaged writers, Latina author Sandra Cisneros talks about her own growth as a writer of fiction, essays and poetry, and discusses her groundbreaking classic novel, The House on Mango Street, which was released in a special 25th anniversary edition in 2009 with a new forward essay by Cisneros. She also reads from this early work as well as from her more recent novel, Caramello, and her poetry collection, Loose Woman.

The author of the bestselling memoir, The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls discusses this book and her 2009 follow-up, Half Broke Horses. Billed as a "true life novel," the second book relays stories about Jeannette Walls' tough-as-nails grandmother, Lily, whose exploits in the early 20th century demonstrate the tenacity of women in the American west. Walls also discusses the fine line between memoir and fiction, and why she opted to call this family memoir a novel.

English writer Sarah Dunant, a former BBC radio reporter and TV talk show host, is best known in this country as a writer of historical fiction about women. Her bestselling novels include The Birth of Venus, and In the Company of the Courtesan, and the third in this triptych of fiction about Renaissance Italy, Sacred Hearts, gives insight into life at the convent. Dunant talks about the meticulous research she does for her novels, and how her early experience as a crime fiction writer taught her how to tell stories.

An anthology of contemporary poetry by American women, When She Named Fire, edited by poet Andrea Hollander Budy, features 460 poems by 96 contemporary female poets. Three of those poets join Budy for a reading, recorded at the Writers Place in Kansas City— Robin Behn, Michelle Boisseau and Jo McDougall—to celebrate this much-praised anthology.  We also go to our archives to include two more of the anthologized poems by Alice Friman and Dorianne Laux.

A great promoter of poetry in Kansas City, Phyllis Becker serves on the board of The Writers Place and is coordinator of the Riverfront Reading Series. Her own publications include the 2008 book, How I Came to Love Jazz and other Poems, an earlier chapbook, Walking Naked Into Sunday, and her poetry set to music by jazz vocalist Angela Hagenbach on the CD, Poetry of Love.

Black History Month continues with an encore interview with poet Natasha Trethewey, winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Native Guard, a book that traces her personal history of growing up as a bi-racial child in the South along with poems about the Union's first black regiment on the Gulf Coast during the Civil War.  She also discusses her earlier book, Domestic Work, that won the first Cave Canem Poetry Prize.

For Black History Month, New Letters on the Air celebrates the poetry of Cave Canem. Founded in 1996 as a retreat and safe haven for black poets, the organization has expanded from a one-week summer workshop in Pennsylvania to sponsoring events and readings across the country, and they now have two book awards. We'll listen to three poets, whose first books were published as a result of winning the Cave Canem Poetry Prize--Natasha Tretheway, Major Jackson, and Kyle Dargen. We'll also revisit the 2008 Cave Canem Symposium, Black Poets Lean South, recorded at the University of Georgia, featuring co-founders Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady.