Amateur enthusiast Jacke Wilson journeys through the history of literature, from ancient epics to contemporary classics. (Episodes are not in chronological order - feel free to jump in wherever you'd like!)
It's a two-for-one special! First, Jacke talks to novelist Radha Vatsal about her new book, No. 10 Doyers Street , which tells the gripping story of an Indian woman journalist investigating a bloody shooting in New York's Chi...
Since her death, poet and novelist Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) has been an endless source of fascination for fans of her and her work. But while much attention has been paid to her tumultuous relationship with fellow poet Ted Hu...
[This episode originally ran on July 18, 2016. It is presented here without commercial interruption.] In 1797, the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge took two grains of opium and fell into a stupor. When he awoke, he had in his hea...
For centuries, the playwright Thomas Kyd has been best known as the author of The Spanish Tragedy , a terrific story of revenge believed to have strongly influenced Shakespeare's Hamlet . And yet, a contemporary referred to K...
The Belgian-born French writer Georges Simenon (1903-1989) was astonishing for his literary ambition and output. The author of something like 400 novels, which he wrote in 7-10 day bursts (after checking with his physician be...
"I want to write something new," American author F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in a letter to his editor, "something extraordinary and beautiful and simple and intricately patterned." Months later, he presented the results: the n...