NPR/PRI authors?

I know of only 2. I'm sure there must be more!

Letter in a Woodpile : Essays by Ed Cullen

and

All I Did Was Ask : Conversations with Writers, Actors, Musicians and Artists by Terry Gross

Noah Adams. Noah Adams on "All Things Considered": a radio journal

Bob Edwards. Fridays with Red

Martha Raddatz (formerly NPR's Pentagon correspondent; now WH correspondent for ABC). The long road home

Don't forget all of the books by Sarah Vowell and David Sedaris.

And Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon novels.

Diane Rehm has written Finding My Voice and Toward commitment : a dialogue about marriage.

Krista Tippett's Speaking of Faith.

Not surprisingly, many of the books listed here are based on radio interviews and segments.

By the way, if you haven't heard David Sedaris's piece on music lessons, here is the link from This American Life: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=104. It features a dead-on impersonation of Billie Holiday singing commercial jingles. Priceless.

I have a small poetry press in Maine - have published 32 books of poetry. 12 poems have been chosen for NPR's The Writer's Almanac. Our website is at www.moonpiepress.com - we have two poetry anthologies that are also on Amazon. I know this is a shameless plug for our books, but exposure on NPR has done a lot for us, and Garrison Keillor promotes poetry in a significant way. I hope that some of you will check out our website.

Pretty birds by Scott Simon, the prize-winning correspondent and NPR Weekend Edition host.

Laila Lalami asked well-known authors which book they would recommend. Pretty Birds was one of two recommended by Scott Turow: "Scott Simon's Pretty Birds, which is a magnificent novel about the Bosnian war from the point of view of a 16 year old female sniper. It's a significant book which didn't get its full due." (http://www.lailalalami.com/blog/archives/003498.html )

From Publishers Weekly: Young women served as snipers for both Bosnian and Serbian forces during the siege of Sarajevo; Simon interviewed one of them and has masterfully imagined her life.

The book begins with half-Muslim Irena, 17, perched on a rooftop, wearing a black ski mask, sighting down a rifle and listening to a sneering Serbian propagandist on the radio ("The Yanks send you food Americans wouldn't give to their dogs") before she pulls the trigger. Simon then flashes back to the spring of 1992, when Irena, her parents and her parrot, Pretty Bird, must flee their home on the mostly Serb side of the city. When they make it (barely) to her grandmother's apartment, they find her slain on the staircase.

Simon's account of the family's refugee life—sans water, electricity and supplies, they eat snail-and-grass soup—is full of brilliant details ranging from the comic to the heartbreaking. When a former assistant principal spots Irena, once a high school basketball star, he offers her a job that quickly has her recruited, indoctrinated and trained in deception and weaponry. That's when the action really begins to move along.
Pretty Bird is released for mercy's sake, flies to his old home and is caught by Amela—a Christian and Irena's former classmate and teammate—who concocts a devious and difficult plan to return him to her friend.

A deeply felt, boldly told story and clean, forceful prose distinguish this striking first novel.

I had no idea that Scott Simon wrote a novel. The story sounds amazing. Is he a good writer?

Personally, I found it to be an amazing book. Irena fits the character of the tragic hero very well as Scott Simon tells the story of her survival in Sarajevo during the war.

While the book is primarily billed as a story about a teenage girl sniper, only some of it is about her military training or sniping. There's more of a focus on the guerilla unit Irena works for as well as her interactions with her family and other members of Sarajevo's Muslim community. The tactics and procedures of Irena's work in urban guerrilla warfare are tightly woven into the sometimes humorous, sometimes heartbreaking plot. The reader feels Irena's struggle to hold onto her humanity and identity amidst all the shame, sorrows, and anxiety of a besieged people.

What comes through to the reader is 'some' of the experience of the tragedy and horror of surviving in Sarajevo, with all its diversity (political, religious, and ethnic) when powerful groups succumb to nationalism, generalized hate, and brutality. With honesty and grim humor, Simon's story provides an intimate portrayal of modern people suddenly caught up in a world of war, death, terror, oppression, and starvation.

That said, one minor weakness is Scott Simon's ability to write from the perspective of a teenage girl. He's neither a Janet Fitch nor a Wally Lamb (nor would we want him to be). But it's a minor point, and in his first novel, Simon clearly succeeds in telling the story with a poignant mix of gallows humor and terror that stays with the reader. The startling climax at the end only elevates it to a must read.

Thank you for the recommendation and review. I will have to throw it on The Pile!

Robert

Noah Adams also had a memoir called Far Appalachia: Following the New River North.

Daniel Pinkwater has published several kids books (with his wife as illustrator). His first successfull one, and still probably the best known is Lizard Music.

Os

Why Daniel Pinkwater doesn't load as a touchstone, I don't know.

Ellen Kushner of Sound and Spirit has written a number of fantasy books. I haven't read any, though.

Kushner's books are listed at her website. I see that her Golden Dreydl is in book form, but I like it better in audio format, available through the Sound and Spirit website.

Bailey White and Baxter Black, two commentators heard on NPR have books available, as does Nancy Pearl, who does the marvelous book recommendations on Morning Edition.

Not quite a fit for this category, but St.John Flynn has his featured books on GPB's Cover to Cover on LT as member name CoverToCover.

Not up to date though.

Lots of the regular panelists on Wait wait, don't tell me! have written books. Roy Blount, Jr. has written several. Adam Felber has written Schrodinger's Ball, which I have been wanting to read for a while. Paula Poundstone has written stuff too, P. J. O'Rourke. And I heard recently that the host, Peter Sagal, is writing something himself.

I know Tavis Smiley has also written several books. Oh, and David Rakoff, another contributor to This American Life, has written I think two books of essays. I haven't read them but he's hysterical on TAL. John Hodgman has The Areas of my Expertise, Julia Sweeney has four books listed on LT. Clearly when you start looking at This American Life contributors there are a lot.

Are we counting the commentators? If so, then there's Cokie Roberts' Founding Mothers (my review thereof).

John Hockenberry's memoir Moving Violations is a good read. He dishes some dirt on working at NPR. Also, parts of the book are absolutely hilarious.

Naked in Baghdad by Anne Garrels. She is their Iraq correspondent

Andrei Codrescu is the editor of The Equisite Corpse and has published A Craving for Swan among others.

China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power by Rob Gifford (Asia correspondent.


Horseshoes, Cowsocks & Duckfeet: More Commentary by NPR's Cowboy Poet & Former Large Animal Veterinarian by Baxter Black

Public Radio: Behind the Voices by Lisa A. Phillips -- gives profiles of various public radio folks

That's very cool. As a constant writer of poetry, I will have to check that out.

Post 22 had the book I was suggesting already....

Naked in Baghdad by Anne Garrels.

Scott Simon has a new novel coming out in March, called Windy City: a Novel in Politics.

Of course there is This I Believe, which has essays from the series.

And Listening is an Act of Love, which is StoryCorp essays. I heard David Isay speak about the project - very insipiring!

Touchstones are being goofy - sorry.

And how could I forget Daniel Schorr's new collection of commentaries, Come to Think of It. It includes pieces beginninng in 1991 through early 2007.

I just think he is so smart and right on - I love listening to him Saturday mornings with Scott Simon. This collection is really a history book. I picked it up over the holidays and have just begun reading it. Highly recommend if you are an NPR news fan.

Thought I'd reactivate this topic since there are a couple more recent books that haven't been listed. Cokie Roberts has another book called Ladies of Liberty, and Lynne Rossetto Kasper's new cookbook (& more) is The Splendid Table's How to Eat Supper.

When I saw this topic, I thought that surely Click & Clack had some sort of book out. Lo and behold, here it is:

A Haircut in Horse Town... And other Great Car Talk puzzlers, Volume One by Tappet Brothers Click & Clack a/k/a Tom Magliozzi and Ray Magliozzi.

It don't think that it's been on the best seller list. There is only one -- count 'em -- one (1) LT member with the book. A check of Amazon and they do, indeed, list the paperback book. They have a used book for sale at $9.99. YOU could be LT member #2 if you hurry!

Cheers, Munn