Episodes

How's literature doing these days? Does the twenty-first century look as good for literature as the nineteenth did? How about the seventeenth? And the twentieth was no slouch... In this episode, Mike Palindrome, the President...

A man has lived his life convinced that something rare and strange lies in wait for him - a monumental catastrophe that has never happened to anyone before. He shares his secret apprehension with one person, until his fear be...

Squirrel-voiced waiter-host Jacke Wilson invites his listeners to a literary feast! In this episode, Jacke takes a look at Henry James's long-short-story masterpiece, "The Beast in the Jungle." (Don't worry if you've never re...

In the aftermath of World War II, author Graham Greene was in personal and professional agony. His marriage was on the rocks, his soul was struggling to find its home, and his restless spirit had taken him into the bedrooms …

In the immediate aftermath of her death at the age of 53, Constance Fenimore Woolson (1840-1894) was considered one of the greatest writers of her day, but her reputation soon faded. A hundred years later, she was little more...

When she died tragically at the age of 53, Constance Fenimore Woolson was ranked with the greatest female writers of all time, including Jane Austen, George Eliot, and the Brontes. What happened to her reputation after that? ...

Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) was one of the most famous American writers of the mid-twentieth century. As a key member of a group of writers known as the "Beat Generation," his works explored the role of the individual in post-wa...

Jacke talks to actress and novelist Meg Tilly about her unusual childhood, her life as a ballet dancer and Hollywood star, and her current life writing thrillers in the peaceful Pacific Northwest. THE RUNAWAY HEIRESS is the p...

Debut novelist A. Natasha Joukovsky ( The Portrait of a Mirror ) joins Jacke for a discussion of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray , Ovid's myth of Narcissus, the fascinating power of recursions, and a life lived in …

German artist Charlie Stein joins Jacke for a discussion of art in literature, including her series 100 Paintings Imagined by Authors , in which she and her partner Andy Best use textual clues and historical context to reimag...

Finally! At long last, Jacke responds to years of requests from his Brazilian listeners to take a closer look at Machado de Assis, the novelist whom critic Harold Bloom called simply "a miracle." In this episode, author and B...

Born into a well-to-do family in New Zealand, Katherine Mansfield began writing fiction at the age of 10. But it was in England and continental Europe that her writing took flight, as she drew upon Chekhov and the new spirit …

It's the OG of experimental literature! (In English, anyway...) In this episode, Jacke takes a look at the wild and woolly Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne. And in spite of Dr. Johnson's famous claim that "nothing odd will ...

Novelist Laurie Frankel joins Jacke to talk about her writing, her theater background, and her new novel One Two Three . Then Jacke and Laurie geek out on Shakespeare and choose the Top 10 Things To Love About Hamlet . …

As the world struggles to emerge from a global pandemic, Jacke takes a look at our relationship with nature, turning to William Wordsworth's classic sonnet "The World Is Too Much With Us" to see if its concerns are applicable...

Yang Huang, author of the new novel My Good Son , joins Jacke for a discussion of her childhood in China, how censorship restricted her ability to imagine stories, and how George Eliot's Middlemarch helped her break free from...

Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) was a soldier, a civil servant, a playwright, and a poet. He was kidnapped by pirates and held prisoner for almost five years. Later in life, he turned to writing novels, and through his master...

Often called the Father of Comedy, the satirical playwright Aristophanes (c. 450 BCE - 388 BCE) used his critical eye and sharp tongue to skewer politicians and philosophers alike. In this episode, poet and classicist Aaron P...

Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg (1916-1991) lived a fascinating life full of politics, war, exile, tragedy, love, loss, and literature. In her novels, short stories, poetry, plays, and essays, she drew upon her experience and...

In this special guest episode, scholar Anne Boyd Rioux joins Eve and Julie, the hosts of the Book Dreams podcast, to talk about why the Little Women we grew up with is not, in fact, Alcott’s original text--and why Little …

Jacke takes a look at the astonishing life and writings of the ultimate enfant terrible of poetry, Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud (1854-91), Symbolist poet, literary bad boy, and eventual mercenary arms dealer, who gave up liter...

During his life, Philip Larkin (1922-1985) was a beloved national figure, a bald and bespectacled librarian by day who spent his evenings writing smart, accomplished, and hilariously self-deprecating poems. After his death, h...

The Graduate ! Dustin Hoffman! Mike Nichols! Simon and Garfunkel! Mrs. Robinson! Plastics! Elaaaaaaaaine.... The movie version of The Graduate is one of the most beloved films of the twentieth century...but have you ever read...

Ralph Waldo Ellison (1913-1994) began life as an infant in Oklahoma City and ended it as one of the most successful and celebrated novelists in the world. And this reputation was largely due to one book, the masterpiece Invis...