Showing results for "Listen!" in Authors

Toni Morrison has touched an enormous swath of our national and global society through her writing. She has attained the highest heights in literature—including the Nobel Prize—and has earned her place in the literary canon, ranking among the most important American writers of all time. In Reading Toni Morrison, Professor A.J. Verdelle of Morgan State University will bring new insight and context to the work of an American literary master, one whose project was ultimately to write about Black people and their experiences through their own eyes.

Mary Jane Oliver (September 10, 1935-January 17, 2019), from Maple Heights, OH, was an American poet who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984 and the National Book Award in 1992. She found inspiration for her work in nature and had a lifelong habit of solitary walks in the wild. Her poetry is characterized by wonderment at the natural environment, vivid imagery, and unadorned language. In 2007, she was declared the best-selling poet in the United States.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Bad Feminist: a searingly honest memoir of food, weight, self-image, and learning how to feed your hunger while taking care of yourself. “I ate and ate and ate in the hopes that if I made myself big, my body would be safe. I buried the girl I was...

Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir (January 9, 1908 - April 14, 1986) was a French existentialist philosopher, writer and social theorist. Beauvoir wrote novels, essays, biographies, autobiographies, and monographs on philosophy, politics, and social issues. She was best known for her "trailblazing work in feminist philosophy," including The Second Sex, published in 1949, a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism. The following is from a 1976 interview (in English).

Joan Didion (December 5, 1934 - December 23, 2021), born in Sacramento, California, was an American author, screenwriter, and journalist. Her writing during the 1960s through the late 1970s engaged audiences in the realities of the counterculture of the 1960s, the Hollywood lifestyle, and the history and culture of California.

Joseph Heller (May 1, 1923 - December 12, 1999) was an American author of novels, short stories, plays, and screenplays. His best-known work is his debut novel Catch-22, published in 1961, a satire on war and bureaucracy, whose title has become a synonym for a dilemma with no easy way out.

Harold Robbins, born Harold Rubin (May 21, 1916-October 14, 1997), was an American author from New York City. One of the best-selling novelists of all time, he wrote over 25 best-sellers—including The Carpetbaggers in 1961—and sold over 750 million copies in 32 languages. The following recording is from a 1974 TV interview.

The following are the live recordings of William Butler Yeats reading and discussing the inspiration behind three of his most famous poems, "The Lake Island of Innisfree," "The Fiddler of Dooney," and "Song of the Old Mother." Yeats made these three recordings in 1932, 1934, and on October 28, 1937 when he was 72.

When best-selling mystery writer David Rosenfelt and his family moved from Southern California to Maine, he thought he had prepared for everything. They had mapped the route, brought three GPSs for backup, as well as refrigerators full of food, and stoves and microwaves on which to cook them. But traveling with 25 dogs turned out to be a bigger ordeal than he anticipated, despite RVs, the extra kibble, volunteers (including a few readers), and camping equipment.

John Anthony Ciardi (June 24, 1916-March 30, 1986) was an American poet, translator, and etymologist. While primarily known as a poet, Ciardi pursued etymology, contributed to the Saturday Review as a columnist and long-time poetry editor, directed the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in Vermont, and recorded commentaries for National Public Radio. In 1959, Ciardi published a book on how to read, write, and teach poetry, How Does a Poem Mean?, which has proven to be among the most-used books of its kind. The following recording is from a speech Ciardi gave in 1965.

James Augusta Joyce (February 2, 1882 to January 13, 1941), born in Dublin, was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the twentieth century. The following recording was made in 1929 by C.K. Odgen in the studio of the Orthological Society in Cambridge during which Joyce read from his novel, “Finnegans Wake.”

Edward Estlin Cummings (October 14, 1894 - September 3, 1962), commonly known as e e cummings, was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright. During World War I, he worked as an ambulance driver and was imprisoned in an internment camp, which provided the basis for his 1922 novel The Enormous Room. The following year he published his first collection of poetry.

Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 to July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris in 1903, and made France her home for the remainder of her life. She hosted a Paris salon, where the leading figures of modernism in literature and art, such as Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Ezra Pound, Sherwood Anderson and Henri Matisse, would meet.

Hunter Stockton Thompson (July 18, 1937 - February 20, 2005) was an American journalist and author who founded the gonzo journalism movement, a style in which the writer becomes a central figure and participant in the events of the narrative. He rose to prominence with the publication of Hell's Angels (1967) and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1972). The following is from a 1975 interview on gonzo journalism.

Sylvia Plath born on October 27, 1932, in Boston, MA, was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. She is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for two of her published collections, The Colossus and Other Poems (1960) and Ariel (1965), and also The Bell Jar, a semi-autobiographical novel published shortly before her suicide on February 11, 1963. In this recording, Plath discusses writing, her youth, and her life.

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 - December 21, 1940) was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is best known for his four novels—This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby, and Tender Is The Night—depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age. Fitzgerald is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. In this recording, Fitgerald reads from Shakespeare's Othello, John Keats' Ode to a Nightingale, and John Masefield's On Growing Old.

In 1961, poet Robert Frost was invited to read at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy. It would be the first by a poet for an inaugural ceremony. President-elect Kennedy asked Frost to recite the poem "The Gift Outright" unless the poet planned to write a poem especially for the occasion. Frost did, in fact, write a new poem for the day entitled "Dedication." However, when the time came to read, the wind and sun's glare made this impossible, though Frost made a valiant attempt. Instead, he reverted to "The Gift Outright," which he read by heart.

Hear old-time radio tales of the following "People of History": William Shakespeare, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language; Will Rogers, American vaudeville performer, actor, and humorous social commentator; Edgar Allen Poe, considered the premier American poet and short story writer; Benedict Arnold, American-born military officer who fought with distinction for the American Continental Army in the Revolutionary War; General Claire Channault, American military aviator best known for his leadership of the "Flying Tigers" in World War II.

Joan Didion (December 5, 1934-December 23, 2021), born in Sacramento, California, was an American author, screenwriter, and journalist. Her writing during the 1960s through the late 1970s engaged audiences in the realities of the counterculture of the 1960s, the Hollywood lifestyle, and the history and culture of California.

Kurt Vonnegut (November 11, 1922-April 11, 2007) was an American author known for his satirical and darkly humorous novels, including his most famous, Slaughterhouse-Five, published in 1969. His works include fourteen novels, three short-story collections, five plays, and five nonfiction pieces. In the following May 1994 recording, Vonnegut addresses the graduating class of Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York.