Bookworm

The Bonesetter's Daughter (Putnam) During the writing of The Bonesetter's Daughter, Amy Tan endured both the death of her mother and the death of her editor...

Sweet Hearts (Houghton Mifflin)Melanie Rae Thon's new novel is very strange: it's narrated by a woman who cannot hear and has not witnessed the events she describes. Her condition inspires our conversation about suffering, grace and the presence of God.

The Death of Vishnu (Norton) In his first novel, Manil Suri reenacts the Bhagavad-Gita in modern Bombay....

Guess Again (Simon & Schuster) Bernard Cooper explores the temptations he faces in his writing: a yearning for permanence and security rivaled by a sneaking affection for odd, transient and unique experiences...

Expressing outright admiration for this new collection of stories, Bookworm attempts to pin down Ann Beattie's elusive techniques...

Matthew Klam discusses the sexcapades of the stud muffins and alleycats of his post-moral stories, truly the most audacious chronicle of sexual discomfort since the stories of John O'Hara...

Jerome Rothenberg, editor A Book of the Book: Some Works and Projections About the Book and Writing (Granary) Who knows what books will look like ten years from now! While e-books and new technologies loom, poet, anthologist and ethnopoeticist Jerome Rothenberg offers alternative ways to think about books: as sacred objects, storage machines, objects d'art.

Richard Powers' intensity and sincerity blaze through as he discusses science, personal sacrifice and the common mis-assumption that cerebral writers are without passion.

Ursula LeGuin The Telling (Harcourt Brace) Ursula Le Guin believes that science fiction writers create new worlds in order to understand this one. We discuss the death of literacy and the use of religious fanaticism to limit civil rights in her world of the future. Read about this Book

Off Keck Road (Knopf) Mona Simpson's delicately textured and beautifully detailed novella about small-town life in Wisconsin provides the occasion for this conversation about women, romance and the decision not to marry.