The New York Public Library Podcast

This week on The New York Public Library Podcast, acclaimed author George Prochnik discusses The Impossible Exile, his new book about the life and work of Stefan Zweig, an icon of the Viennese cultural renaissance.

In April 2014, Amazon and Hachette locked horns in what has become a very public, and still ongoing, battle over contract negotiations. After the online retailer removed the pre-order option, imposed shipping delays, and slashed discounts on the book publisher's titles, the reaction against Amazon was swift and fierce. But the story of the Amazon-Hachette dispute is anything but simple, and raises critical questions about the future of the book publishing industry. What is really at stake for the companies, authors and readers? What larger issues of free-market capitalism and free speech are at play? And what does the Amazon-Hachette dispute reveal about the future of the publishing industry in the age of e-books?

When you've written biographies on Sophia Loren, Ernest Hemingway and Doris Day you're bound to have some pretty incredible stories. This week on the podcast we join editor, novelist, playwright, and biographer A. E. Hotchner as he reflects on some memorable moments from impressive career. 

On this episode of The New York Public Library Podcast, Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard dissects the latest volume of his critically acclaimed autobiography, My Struggle—and the controversy that surrounds it—with Jeffrey Eugenides, author of The Virgin Suicides.

This week on The New York Public Library Podcast, filmmaker John Waters comes to us with tales from his latest book, Carsick, which chronicles his adventures hitchhiking across the United States.

This week, The New York Public Library Podcast welcomes the Irish novelist, playwright, and critic Colm Tóibín to Books at Noon, the Library’s new series of free lunchtime author talks.

This week on The New York Public Library Podcast, renowned visual artist Kara Walker joins Radiolab host Jad Abumrad to discuss her new show at Domino Sugar Factory, and explore the complicated history of sugar, sex, sweetness, and power.

Chuck Palahniuk is best known as the author of the novels Fight Club and Choke. Douglas Coupland is the author of the international bestsellers Generation A and JPod. This week on The New York Public Library Podcast, the two take to the stage at LIVE from the NYPL for a literary conversation that doubles as a social experiment.

This week, The New York Public Library Podcast welcomes Tony Award-winning playwright, performer, and activist Eve Ensler to Books at Noon, the Library’s new series of free lunchtime author talks.

This week on The New York Public Library podcast, LIVE from the NYPL welcomes three leaders of the craft beer movement. Brooklyn Brewery cofounder Steve Hindy—joined by Kim Jordan, New Belgium Brewing Company CEO, and Charlie Papazian founder of the American Homebrewers Association—recounts how craft brewers have forever changed the way the world experiences beer.

This week, The New York Public Library podcast welcomes acclaimed novelist Joyce Carol Oates to Books at Noon, the Library’s new series of free lunchtime author talks.

This week on the podcast, hear the two award-winning authors discuss poverty around the world.

This week on the New York Public Library Podcast, best-selling author and challenger of conventional wisdom Malcolm Gladwell brings his critical approach to LIVE from the NYPL as he expounds on his newest interests.

This week on the podcast, we welcome Michael Cunningham to Books at Noon, the Library's new series of free lunchtime author talks. Cunningham is the author of six novels, including A Home at the End of the World and The Hours, which was awarded both the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award. His latest novel is The Snow Queen.

This week on the podcast, award winning author Paul Auster stops by "Books at Noon" – NYPL's weekly lunchtime author talk series – to discuss some of his latest work, pushing the boundaries of autobiography, and much more.

Today's New York Public Library podcast welcomes Sam Lipsyte to Books at Noon, the Library's new series of free lunchtime author talks. Lipsyte was a Guggenheim Fellow, is the recipient of the Believer Book Award, and is the author of five books, including most recently a collection of short stories, The Fun Parts.

Today’s New York Public Library podcast features the new Books at Noon series; a free weekly program featuring popular and acclaimed authors in the Schwarzman Building on 42nd Street and 5th Avenue. Our first guest is the political satirist and author PJ O’Rourke who has written 16 books, most recently "Baby Boom: How it Got that Way (And it Wasn’t My Fault) (And I’ll Never Do it Again)."

Wes Anderson's vivid cinematic aesthetic and idiosyncratic characters make his films both immediately recognizable and endearing. Anderson returns to LIVE to explore his passions, influences, and his newest film The Grand Budapest Hotel, in conversation with Paul Holdengräber.

LIVE closes the Fall 2013 season with a conversation between 2013 Library Lion Junot Diaz and the writer who most influenced him, Nobel Prize-winner Toni Morrison. "I think the most sustained love of mine," Diaz has said, "the one that's carried me through all these years, is my relationship with Toni Morrison. Im telling you, I'm one of those people who's still cracking my head on many of the ideas Toni Morrison both suggested and elaborated on in her work." Witness a powerful event as Diaz comes face to face with his literary hero to celebrate her remarkable career.

A passionate attachment to a great work of literature can shape our lives and help us to read our own histories.  For Rebecca Mead, that book was George Eliot's Middlemarch, which she first read as a young woman in an English coastal town, and reread regularly throughout her life. In My Life In Middlemarch, the New Yorker writer revisits her own past and Eliot's work in a new way, by leading us into the life that the book made for her, as well as the many lives the novel has led since it was written. Employing a structure that mirrors that of the novel, My Life in Middlemarch blends biography, reporting, and memoir, taking the themes of Eliot's masterpiece--the complexity of love, the meaning of marriage, the foundations of morality, and the drama of aspiration and failure--and bringing them into our world. Mead comes to LIVE from the NYPL to explore the enduring power of Middlemarch, and how the books we read help us read our own lives.