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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.

“Not her politics, but the relentlessness and archness of her characters,” says the prizewinning playwright behind “Stereophonic,” which is now up in London.

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.”

“One must read between the lies,” he suggests, putting his own “Everywhere an Oink Oink” at the top of the list.

Richard Goodwin, an adviser to presidents, “was more interested in shaping history,” she says, “and I in figuring out how history was shaped.” Their bond is at the heart of her new book, “An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s.”

“I regret that I never met Hilary Mantel,” says the Booker-winning Scottish novelist, whose most recent book, “Young Mungo,” is now out in paperback. “I would be delighted with three of her.”

With one hand, while standing. It’s the kind of accomplishment that would never make it into his new book, “Snafu: The Definitive Guide to History’s Greatest Screwups.”