Writers at Work

As we approach the end of 2025, a special edition of Writers at Work. I speak with four writers I've known for almost 25 years: Peter Blauner, Reed Farrel Coleman, S.J. Rozan, and Peter Spiegelman. They are much-admired authors of mystery and crime fiction, with whom I've consulted and commiserated, and who have consulted and commiserated with each other as our careers as novelists careen like cars on a roller coaster.

If Writers a...

My guest on this episode of Writers at Work is Grammy winning music scholar, Rob Bowman, whose new book is LAND OF A THOUSAND SESSIONS: THE COMPLETE MUSCLE SHOALS STORY 1951-1985. If the role of Muscle Shoals, a town in Northwest Alabama, in modern music history doesn't immediately pop to mind, allow me to mention a few of the landmark tracks recorded there.

When A Man Loves a Woman by Percy Sledge, Land of a Thousand Dances by Wil...

With me today on Writers at Work is Marilyn Fu, screenwriter, whose ROSEMEAD starring Lucy Liu will open in New York on December 5. Directed by Eric Lynn, ROSEMEAD had its premiere at this year's Tribeca Film Festival and has been nominated for a slew of awards at such festivals worldwide. I've seen ROSEMEAD and found it deeply affecting and disturbing. I want to tread lightly because it is a finely woven tale I don't want to spoil...

With me on this episode of Writers at Work is Zorana Pringle, author of THE CREATIVE CHOICE: THE SCIENCE OF MAKING DECISIONS TO TURN IDEAS INTO ACTION. Zorana is a senior research scientist at the Yale University Center for Emotional Intelligence, where she currently serves as the director of the Creativity and Emotions Lab.

She recently joined me at a live Writers at Work event in New Haven, and I wanted you to have an opportunity...

With me on this episode of Writers at Work is Todd Goddard, author of Devouring Time: Jim Harrison, A Writer's Life, the first biography of the protean American novelist, poet and screenwriter, Jim Harrison. Harrison's output indicates the magnitude of the task that confronted Todd, 21 novels and novellas, 20 volumes of poetry, essays, memoirs and other non-fiction works, and contributions to screenplays including the adaptation of...

With me on this episode of Writers at Work is Robbie Arnott, whose latest novel is DUSK, the hypnotic tale of adult twins, Iris and Floyd, who are in pursuit of a deadly puma across the Tasmanian wilderness. That desperate pursuit is also an attempt to escape from the reputation of their outlaw parents and perhaps find a place where they can belong.

DUSK is Robbie's fourth novel. His previous works have been acknowledged by nominat...

With me today on Writers at Work is Addie E. Citchens, author of the new novel DOMINION, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. A family drama set in Dominion, Mississippi, it unfolds through the eyes of two women, Priscilla, wife of an abusive and well-to-do preacher and mother to five talented sons, and Diamond, girlfriend to Wonder Boy, the youngest of those five young men. Though warm and witty, the story is infused with a sen...

My guest on this episode of Writers at Work is Steven C. Smith, author of HITCHCOCK AND HERRMANN: THE FRIENDSHIP & FILM SCORES THAT CHANGED CINEMA. Before we proceed, a little story. Back in 2011, I proposed to the Wall Street Journal a story on the centennial of the birth of Bernard Herrmann.

Securing the assignment, I traveled to the University of Southern California in Santa Barbara to examine their Herrmann archives that in...

With me today on Writers at Work is Catherine Conybeare, author and academic, who is widely acknowledged as an authority on Augustine of Hippo, known to many as St. Augustine. Katharine's new book is AUGUSTINE THE AFRICAN, which considers him in the context of his African heritage. He was born in Thagaste, a city in present-day Algeria in North Africa.

After about five years in Milan and Rome, agitated years according to the author...

With me on this episode of Writers at Work is writer, director, producer and actor Anu Valia, whose debut feature film, WE STRANGERS, is now streaming, very likely on your favorite service. Anu has already accumulated a resume bursting with achievement. Her first mainstream success was LUCIA, BEFORE AND AFTER, the short film she wrote and directed that won the 2017 Sundance Film Festival Short Film Jury Award.

She directed episodes...

Joining me on this episode of Writers at Work is Charlie English, author of THE CIA BOOK CLUB. Its subtitle tells why I found, and I think you will find, Charlie's latest to be so fascinating: The Secret Mission to Win the Cold War with Forbidden Literature.

From its headquarters in Manhattan, the CIA Book Club secretly sent millions of banned titles, pamphlets and other reading material into the East. By the 1980s, illicit literat...

You may have heard that Thomas Perry, the best-selling mystery writer, died this week at age 78. I was immediately saddened by the news, not just for the passing of a skilled, dependable, and imaginative author, but for the loss of someone who had become a friend. Though Tom and I were members of the mystery community, I hadn't had the pleasure of getting to know him and his wife, Jo, also an acclaimed writer, until fairly recently...

Before we begin, I want to tell you about an experience I had this week leading up to this Writers at Work interview. For the first time, I watched a movie as I was reading the short stories upon which it was based, not simultaneously, of course. I read the short stories in the evening, watched the film in the afternoon, read the short stories again, then watched the film one more time.

The short stories, two in a collection of 12,...

Joining me on this episode of Writers at Work is Susana M. Morris, author of the new POSITIVE OBSESSION: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF OCTAVIA E. BUTLER.

For the uninitiated, Butler, who died suddenly in 2006 at age 58, was an American science fiction and speculative fiction writer who won the Hugo, Locus, and NEC Nebula awards for her work. In 1995, Butler became the first science fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship.

An Assoc...

With me today on Writers at Work is Chris Lang, writer, creator and executive producer of UNFORGOTTEN, the beloved British crime drama broadcast in the States on PBS Masterpiece. It's now in its sixth season. Chris began his career in TV as an actor, but fairly early on he wrote episodes of THE BILL, the long-running UK police procedural.

In short order he wrote episodes of a number of TV series, including THE TUNNEL, the British-F...

I'm joined today on Writers at Work by Paul Muldoon, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the T.S. Eliot Prize, and the Irish Literature Prize for Poetry, among other acknowledgments. Some 30 collections of his poems have been published. Paul taught at Princeton and Oxford and served as poetry editor of the New Yorker.

Of his poetry, Clair Wills, author of Reading Paul Muldoon, wrote, “Muldoon stands by the entrance or rabbi...

My guest on this episode of Writers at Work is Denise Mina, the much admired and much honored writer from Scotland. Denise is best known for her crime novels. THE GOOD LIAR, available now, is her latest, but that is but a part of her impressive resume.

Her first novel, GARNETHILL, was published in 1998 to spectacular reviews here in the States and. And leading to the Garnethill trilogy. Then came FIELD OF BLOOD, the first of Denise...

With me on this episode of Writers at Work is writer and literary critic Heather Clark, whose latest is THE SCRAPBOOK, her fourth book and debut novel.

Heather may be best known for RED COMET: THE SHORT LIFE AND BLAZING ART OF SYLVIA PLATH, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Prior to that, she published THE ULSTER RENAISSANCE: POETRY IN BELFAST 1962-1972 and THE GRIEF OF INFLUENCE: SYLVIA PLATH AND TED HUGHES. A recipient of...

With me today on Writers at Work is Adriana Trigiani, who has amid a remarkable career in the arts, primarily as a writer. Her current novel is THE VIEW FROM LAKE COMO, which she describes as a story of a woman who decides to build a life she can live in, and the house that goes along with it.

The woman is an Italian-American from New Jersey. The house is in Carrera, Italy. And if you know anything about me and my work, you can pre...