Octavia E. Butler: Visionary black sci-fi wri...

During the Vietnam War, North Vietnamese VietCong guerrillas built a vast network of tunnels in the south of the country as part of the insurgency against the South Vietnamese government and their American allies. The tunnel network was a key base and shelter for the North Vietna ...  Show more

The disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, in Ukraine, on 26 April 1986, was the world’s worst nuclear accident. The explosion in reactor four caused radioactive parts to be spread over the nearby area. Hundreds of thousands of people were involved in the decontamination ...  Show more

Today we are wrapping up Science Fiction Week with a very special episode from our friends at NPR's history podcast Throughline. As a part of their Imagining New Worlds series, they dive into the life of visionary science fiction writer Octavia Butler. Octavia crafted cautionary ...  Show more

The Pulitzer Prize is one of the most prestigious awards in the country for writers... and last year's winners were just announced this week. So today, we're looking back at two nonfiction authors whose books won the accolade. First, journalist Andrea Elliot speaks to Jane Clyson ...  Show more

The American writer Toni Morrison once said, “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” It was an urge which in her case yielded a rich array of novels, children’s books, plays and essays. Toni Morrison stands tall, as the f ...  Show more

Margaret Atwood talks to John Wilson about the formative influences and experiences that shaped her writing. One of the world’s bestselling and critically acclaimed authors, Atwood has published over 60 books including novels, short stories, children’s fiction, non-fiction and po ...  Show more