New Letters on the Air

Poet Tracy K. Smith, winner of the 2002 Cave Canem Prize for her collection, The Body's Question, reads from her Pulitzer Prize winning work, Life on Mars, at the Fall 2012 Midwest Poets Series.

It was 38 years ago when author Thomas Fox Averill heard the song "Tennessee Stud." He enjoyed the lyrical story of courtship, love, and fugitive life so much, that he used the song's plot and mood to write the novel  rode.

In memory of acclaimed author Evan S. Connell, who passed away on January 10, 2013, New Letters on the Air brings you this 1991 interview by former New Letters on the Air host, Rebekah Presson.

This edition of New Letters on the Air features very different approaches to intertwining poetry and music, resulting in equally different performances.

Tony Barnstone, son of poet, translator, and scholar Willis Barnstone and visual artist Elli Barnstone, was surrounded by great works of art, literature, and philosophy as a child, and like his sister, Aliki, followed in his father's footsteps.

  Kansas City native Evan S. Connell died Thursday at the age of 88. His fiction and non-fiction works were wide-ranging, but he was probably best known locally for his two novels, "Mrs. Bridge" and "Mr. Bridge," about a fictional well-to-do Kansas City family.

Winner of the first ever Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction in 2012, Irish author Anne Enright talks about her often darkly humorous approach to writing about love, desire, death, and family.

Acclaimed fiction writer Jim Shepard is the author of six novels and several short story collections, including Like You'd Understand Anyway, winner of the 2008 Story Prize and a National Book Award finalist.

In honor of the start of her second year as the 16th U.S. Poet Laureate, we present this encore interview with Kay Ryan. Sometimes seen as a poetry outsider, the California poet has spent her life teaching remedial English in Marin County, rather than making her living in the academic world of creative writing.

By New Letters on the Air

A Sunday in God-Years, a new collection of poetry by Michelle Boisseau, takes its title from the notion that within geologic time, human history happens in the blink of God's eye.

By New Letters on the Air: Angela Elam and Danie Alexander

Kansas playwright James Still hasn't lived in this area in years, but his plays make regular appearances here and throughout the U.S. He has a new one about Abraham Lincoln, opening at the Ford Theatre in D.C. in February for the 200th birthday anniversary; but tonight (Friday, January 30), another play, The Velvet Rut, receives its world premiere right here in Kansas City at the Unicorn Theatre.

By Danette Alexander and Angela Elam

Poet Marilyn Kallet reads from her book, One for Each Night: Chanukah Tales and Recipes, that she wrote for families to share in lean times.

By New Letters on the Air

You may know John Mark Eberhart from The Kansas City Star, where he's the Book Editor, or as one of the Book Doctors on The Walt Bodine Show. What you may not know is that Eberhart is also a poet.

By Jeni McCarty and Dennis Conrow, New Letters on the Air

New Letters, the quarterly literary magazine based at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, has garnered another prestigious literary award.

By Laura Spencer

Kansas City, MO – The story "Progressive Dinner" by fiction writer John Barth, published in New Letters (winter 2007), has been selected for a Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses. The Pushcart honors the best poetry, short fiction, and essays published in small presses over the previous year.