literature

Acclaimed Pulitzer Prize-winning author Yiyun Li discusses Music Against the Night, a sweeping historical novel set in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Through the lives of two musicians, Li explores artistic ambition, sacrifice and the elusive promise of being remembered.

Carson's writing, including The Beauty of the Husband, Autobiography of Red, and Eros the Bittersweet, is eclectic in genre and theme.

A reflection on Mavis Gallant’s “My Heart Is Broken,” a powerful story about violence, silence and the limits of our ability to understand another person’s suffering.

A review of Madeleine Thien’s story collection, "Simple Recipes." It's a quietly powerful collection about family, displacement and the ways love, memory and history shape the lives we inherit.

Mirror Books is a new podcast series from Book Public at Texas Public Radio about seeing ourselves — and discovering and knowing others — through books. Our inaugural guest is acclaimed author Sandra Cisneros, whose writing has become a mirror for countless readers. Listen as she discusses not just one mirror book, but many — and the ways these books she discovered from childhood through adulthood have remained important to her.

Dorothy West was just 17 years old when she wrote “The Typewriter,” a quietly devastating story about dreams, family and the painful cost of disillusionment. Peter Orner and Yvette Benavides discuss the story and the remarkable psychological insight of Dorothy West — and the worlds she went on to create for decades.

Stephanie Vaughn’s “Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog,” is a sharp, tender story about family, memory and the limits of understanding we experience in childhood — and that open up for us when we look back as adults. A daughter looks back on life with her father and tries to piece together the man he was, the man he wanted to be and the father she remembers.

What happens when admiration turns into envy — and envy takes hold of an entire life? Yvette Benavides and Peter Orner discuss José Emilio Pacheco’s haunting short story, “The Claw.”

Michael Cunningham, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Hours, discusses his new book, Unsayable: A Life in Writing, and the mysteries of memory, imagination and storytelling.

What does it mean to love a place — and still long to leave it? In Alistair MacLeod’s haunting short story “The Boat,” a son struggles between family, tradition and the pull of a different life. On this episode of The Lonely Voice, we explore a powerful story about the sea, sacrifice and the choices that shape who we become.