

Bookworm
KCRW
Intellectual, accessible, and provocative literary conversations.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Nov 10, 2011 • 30min
Tony D'Souza: Mule
Tony D'Souza reveals the life events that led him to write a novel about a solid, middle-class kid who becomes a drug mule...

Nov 3, 2011 • 30min
Lawrence Weschler: Uncanny Valley
The veteran contributor to The New Yorker and McSweeney's distills his knowledge about how to structure the essay—from cultural comedies to political tragedies.

Oct 27, 2011 • 30min
Russell Banks: Lost Memory of Skin
The author of Affliction and The Sweet Hereafter takes breathtaking risks in exploring a morally complex story. The protagonist is a renegade and convicted sex offender...

Oct 20, 2011 • 30min
Harold Bloom: The Shadow of a Great Rock
We visited Harold Bloom to talk about his new book, but when you talk with Bloom, you talk about politics, poetry, teaching, aging, reading and ultimately, respect...

Oct 13, 2011 • 30min
Justin Torres: We the Animals
This sequence of short stories, or prose poems, or vignettes (author Justin Torres is open to all three descriptions) adds up to a little novel about an underclass family....

Oct 6, 2011 • 30min
Kevin Wilson: The Family Fang
Wilson's goofy, sweet-hearted first novel is about a family of performance artists. The Fang family's siblings are struggling to leave their parents behind in order to lead a normal life...

Sep 29, 2011 • 30min
Hector Tobar: The Barbarian Nurseries
Araceli Ramirez, the heroine of Héctor Tobar's new novel, is a nanny is accused of kidnapping her charges, when she is, in fact, taking them to their grandfather....

Sep 22, 2011 • 30min
Maggie Nelson: The Art of Cruelty-A Reckoning
Modern and post-modern art have gone up to a level of transgressive and theoretical border play that leave many viewers bewildered or repelled...

Sep 15, 2011 • 30min
Simon Reynolds: Retromania-Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past
The Bookworm learns about retro culture from a master of rock criticism. Simon Reynolds meditates on the aspects of global music that have led to endless recycling....

Sep 8, 2011 • 30min
Rikki Ducornet: Netsuke
An explorer of sensuality and violator of taboos, Rikki Ducornet allows a predatory psychoanalyst to narrate her new novel...


