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Al Young took to writing poetry, as he describes it in one poem, "to make out the sound of my own background music." Now California's poet laureate, he writes about the blues, jazz and life in the geographically and culturally diverse state.

As a girl, Peggy Orenstein may have spent her summers in Wisconsin, but her heart was often farther east. She recounts her love for Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and its hard, touching lessons about the difference between what is right and what is true.

We never really learn what Willy sells — mostly, he tries to sell himself. He loves his sons, who find him foolish; he loves his wife, though he can be cruel. And his tragedy is the tragedy of every man who strives, who doubts, who fails.

A bomb explodes in the campus office next door, and Lee, a math professor, becomes the primary suspect. Is he being targeted for revenge by someone in his past? Fresh Air book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews A Person of Interest, a new novel by Susan Choi.

Eric G. Wilson, author of Against Happiness, has embraced his inner gloom and wishes more people would do the same. He talks to Melissa Block about why the world needs melancholy and the link between sadness and artistic creation.

With $50 and a plane ticket to Haiti, one can buy a slave. This was just one of the difficult lessons writer Benjamin Skinner learned while researching his book, A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery. He discusses the challenges of writing about this disturbing institution.

Machiavellian. Decades before The Prince was translated into English, the author's name entered the lexicon as a synonym for political scheming. But was Machiavelli a schemer — or a satirist?

Niloufer Ichaporia King lives in a house with three kitchens. She is known for her ritual celebrations of Parsi New Year on the first day of spring, when she creates an elaborate ceremonial meal based on the auspicious foods and traditions of her vanishing culture.

Fresh Air book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth, a new collection of short stories that chronicles the cultural alienation that exists between Indian-born parents and their American-born children.

In his debut novel, author Stefan Merrill Block tells the story of an aging hunchback and a pimply teenager who live hundreds of miles apart in Texas. The two characters are united by early onset Alzheimer's and by a shared fantasy world.