“The first condition is silence,” says the 2022 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, whose most recent book is “The Young Man.” “The when and where do not matter.”
Some familiar San Franciscans turn up in the British countryside in “Mona of the Manor,” which the author vows is the 10th, and last, in the series: “That has a nice symmetry.”
“I love it when I don’t have any plans the next day and end up reading until daybreak because I can’t sleep,” says the author, whose new novel is “The Premonition.” “It’s the best feeling.”
Among her favorites: books by Pat Barker and Marguerite Yourcenar. Her own latest work of historical nonfiction is “Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation.”
“I’ve been prank-calling Justin Torres for like two decades,” says the poet and performer, whose new book is called “Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt: A Memoir in Verse.”
“I mean that as an organizing principle,” says the U.S. poet laureate, who has edited a new anthology of nature poetry called “You Are Here,” “and also as a slight against prose.”
“I don’t want other people to miss out on the wisdom and joy this genre has to offer, the way I did for so long,” says the best-selling novelist. “Funny Story,” about a heartsore librarian and the new man in her life, is out next week.
The august scholar has two Pulitzer Prizes and a National Humanities Medal. In “The Stained Glass Window,” he seeks to explain “macro-history as family history.”