Literature

Our guest is Kyle Harper, a professor of classics and letters at the University of Oklahoma, whose books include "The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire" and "From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity." He joins us to discuss his hefty and fascinating new book, "Plagues upon the Earth: Disease and the Course of Human History." It offers a meticulously detailed "germ's-eye view" of human life on this planet -- from the origins of disease among our earliest hunter-gatherers to the current COVID-19 pandemic.

Our guest is the poet and fiction writer Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, who teaches creative writing and literature at OU. She joins us to talk about her new book, "The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois," which is a very well-regarded debut novel. As was noted of this work in a starred review in Publishers Weekly: "A staggering and ambitious saga exploring African American history.

(Note: This interview first aired back in March.) Our guest is Kevin Brockmeier, an imaginative and acclaimed writer based in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Our old friend and colleague Nancy Pearl joins us on StudioTulsa to offer some can't-miss summer reading suggestions: fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, and so forth. A bestselling author, retired librarian, and longtime resident of the Seattle area, Nancy (who's also a former Tulsan) has been making occasional recommendations to book-loving KWGS listeners for decades. It's good to hear from her again.

Death is something very few of like to talk about, or even think about, but it's a fact of life, after all -- the final fact of life, you might say. What if we could live our lives while looking at death in a more complete, more honest, less fearful way? Would our lives be richer? And would we actually be healthier individuals? Our guest, Barbara Becker, clearly and intelligently answers these questions in the affirmative.

Our guest is Kevin Brockmeier, an imaginative and acclaimed writer based in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Our guest is Katherine May, a writer of fiction as well as nonfiction based in the seaside community of Whitstable, England. She joins us to discuss her enjoyable new book, "Wintering," which draws many engaging and far-flung lessons from literature, history, nature, and mythology about the transformative -- and even inspiring -- power of rest, retreat, and recuperation. As was noted of this book by a critic writing for BookPage: "Beautiful.... [May] is a poetic observer of the natural world, and quotable lines abound....

As readers anxiously await the final volume of Hilary Mantel's trilogy on novels on the life of 16th Century royal advisor Thomas Cromwell, we bring you a conversation from December 2018, when Mantel received the Peggy V Helmerich Distinguished Author Award.

On this edition of ST, we speak with the acclaimed poet and writing instructor Quraysh Ali Lansana (born 1964 in Enid, Oklahoma). Now based in Tulsa and recently named a Tulsa Artist Fellow, Lansana has published several books over the years: poetry collections, children's books, edited or co-edited anthologies, textbooks, etc. Long based in Chicago, and greatly influenced by the African-American cultural, social, and political life of that city -- and more generally, by the Black Arts Movement in American life and letters -- Lansana has a new book out.

Nancy Pearl is our guest on ST. An editor, novelist, literary critic, retired librarian, and internationally acclaimed reading and literacy advocate, Pearl used to live and work in Tulsa -- way back in the day -- and that's when she started appearing occasionally on our radio show. Pearl returns today (by phone) to share several bookish gift-giving ideas.