Watch 3:05
How to retrain your shrinking attention span
What’s the secret to writing novels? Or baking a perfect cake? Or even being a good friend? Author Ann Patchett says it’s all about the ability to stay focused and stop multitasking. Patchett gives her humble opinion on stretching your…
Watch 3:39
What Calvin Trillin learned from his college writing course
As a longtime writer for The New Yorker, Calvin Trillin was less interested in directly explaining why what he was writing was important than in just telling a good story. Trillin offers his Brief but Spectacular take on some of…
Watch 5:56
Giving advice to young writers, Colum McCann wants to see the fire in their eyes
It's the sort of thing that Colum McCann says he would have liked to have had when he was younger. In his new book "Letters To A Young Writer," McCann says he writes advice about plot and characterization, as well…
Watch 3:09
When Danai Gurira couldn’t find complex stories about African women, she wrote her own
Danai Gurira is a playwright and performer who wants to make sure women of color don’t search in vain for stories they can relate to. Her latest play, "Eclipsed," is premiering on Broadway, and she also has a starring role…
What were the must-read books of 2015? Jeffrey Brown gets favorite picks from Daniel Pink, business writer and author of "Drive," and novelist Jennifer Close, author of "The Smart One."…
In novelist John Irving’s new book, “Avenue of Mysteries,” a poor child in Mexico picks up books from out of the trash and grows up to be a prominent American writer. Irving joins Jeffrey Brown to discuss what distinguishes his…
Poet and performer Patti Smith crashed onto the rock scene 40 years ago, and made a splash in the literary world five years ago with an award-winning memoir, "Just Kids." Her newest book, "M Train," takes a trip through time…
In the burgeoning days of the Internet, everything was free, says author Joshua Cohen. Or at least it felt free. And then he started writing for himself, learning the pride of making something and receiving the spark of recognition. In…
"As a psychiatrist and neuroscientist who studies creativity, I’ve had the pleasure of working with many gifted and high-profile subjects over the years, but Kurt Vonnegut—dear, funny, eccentric, lovable, tormented Kurt Vonnegut—will always be one of my favorites."…
