Writers on a New England Stage

NHPR and The Music Hall present Writers on a New England Stage with presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, recorded live at The Music Hall in Portsmouth.

Goodwin is the author of seven books, including her most recent Leadership in Turbulent Times, which examines the origins and qualities of leadership through the lens of four presidents. 

Goodwin spoke about her book with NHPR political reporter Lauren Chooljian.

NHPR and The Music Hall present Writers on a New England Stage with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jennifer Egan, recorded live at The Music Hall in Portsmouth.

Egan has written several novels and a collection of short stories. Jennifer Egan's novel A Visit From the Goon Squad won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Times book prize. 

Not only a writer of fiction, Egan is an accomplished journalist and has written frequently for the New York Times Magazine.

NHPR and The Music Hall present Writers on a New England Stage with romance author and screenwriter Jojo Moyes, recorded live at The Music Hall in Portsmouth. 

NHPR and The Music Hall present Writers on a New England Stage with Dan Brown, recorded live at The Music Hall in Portsmouth. Dan Brown is the author of bestselling thrillers like The Da Vinci Code, The Lost Symbol, and Inferno. 

NHPR and The Music Hall present Writers on a New England Stage with Atul Gawande recorded live at The Music Hall in Portsmouth. He is a surgeon, public health researcher, and has written four New York Times bestsellers including most recently, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End. 

NHPR and The Music Hall present Writers on a New England Stage with Diane Rehm recorded live at The Music Hall in Portsmouth. The Peabody Award-winning public radio host of The Diane Rehm Show has written four books, including one with her husband, John Rehm, about the rewards and challenges of a long marriage.

NHPR and The Music Hall present Writers on a New England Stage with Anthony Doerr, recorded live at The Music Hall in Portsmouth. Doerr's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel All the Light We Cannot See tells the stories of two teenagers swept up in the brutality of World War II. Much has been made of the fact that the book was a ten-year journey for Doerr, but during our conversation, it became clear that that novel was just one facet--and one result--of his free-range inquisitiveness and sense of wonder. Anthony Doerr stood to one corner of the stage with an excitable restlessness, beside a giant screen and a variety of slides, which he used to help tell the story of how his ten-year novel came to be.

NHPR and The Music Hall present Writers on a New England Stage with Krista Tippett recorded live at The Music Hall in Portsmouth. She’s the New York Times best-selling author of Einstein's God and more recently Becoming Wise, and host of the public radio show and podcast On Being. Since the program launched in 2003, she's spoken to hundreds of activists, scientists, scholars, religious leaders and spiritual seekers. Becoming Wise draws from that store of accumulated knowledge to reveal creative, original thinking and approaches to living a whole-hearted, hopeful life. 

Today, NHPR and the music hall present Writers on a New England Stage with Mario Batali recorded live at the Music Hall in Portsmouth. Batali is a celebrity chef, entrepreneur, restaurateur, television star and passionate advocate for simple, regional food. He is author, or co-author, of 7 cookbooks on Italian food, wine and culture, one on Spanish specialties, and three of American recipes, including his most recent Big American Cookbook.

NHPR and The Music Hall present Writers on a New England Stage with Jodi Picoult recorded live at The Music Hall in Portsmouth. 

Picoult is a phenomenally successful novelist, with more than 14 million books in print worldwide. Small Great Things is her most recent. Like previous books, it debuted at number one on best-sellers lists.

Picoult devotees will recognize the relatable, everyday characters thrashing through controversial ethical issues seemingly ripped from the headlines. But for her, Small Great Things was different. It’s about racism, white privilege and the inherited inequities of America’s past and present. She says it was one of the hardest books to write. The Washington Post called it her most important. 

Today, NHPR and the Music Hall present Writers on a New England Stage with Stephen Breyer, recorded live at the Music Hall in Portsmouth. Breyer was appointed Associate Justice of the Supreme Court by President Clinton in 1994. He is now 78 and author of several books throughout his distinguished career. Some are academic, others displaying his unbridled enthusiasm for the democratic system and belief that it is the court’s job is to make government work for real people living today.

Daniel Silva was a journalist based in the Middle East before he published his first novel in 1996. That story, The Unlikely Spy hit the New York Times best-sellers list and introduced the world to Gabriel Allons -- a Mossad assassin turned art restorer. Now 16 novels into the series, Allons is known as "The Jewish James Bond" and has joined the pantheon of legendary fictional spies that includes George Smiley, Jack Ryan, and Jason Bourne.

Today on Word of Mouth, a conversation with Judy Blume, recorded live at The Music Hall in Portsmouth for Writers on a New England Stage, a partnership between NHPR, and The Music Hall. 

Judy Blume was one of the first authors to write frankly about the confusing, and often humiliating transition from childhood to adolescence. Her best known books were published in the 1970s. Are You There God? It's Me Margaret, Deenie, Blubber, and Forever offered young readers plain language and shame-free stories about periods, bullying, sexual urges and, even “doing it”. 

On today's show, it's Writers on a New England Stage with Grace Helbig, recorded live at the Music Hall in Portsmouth. Helbig is everything you’d expect in an internet superstar: funny, extremely photogenic, self-deprecating, and little known to people over 30. 

Today on Word of Mouth it's Writers on a New England Stage with Alexander McCall Smith, recorded live at The Music Hall in Portsmouth.  Best known as the author of The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, McCall Smith made his living for many years as an esteemed lawyer, medical law professor, and international authority on medical ethics and bioethics. 

On today's show, it's Writers on a New England Stage with Patti Smith, recorded live at the Music Hall in Portsmouth. A poet, musician, and photographer, Smith is often called “the godmother of punk”. She co-wrote the radio hit "Because the Night" with Bruce Springsteen, but soon afterward she stepped off stage to move to Detroit and raise her family. It was with the publication of Just Kids in 2010 that she transformed from downtown cult figure to National Book Award-winning writer. 

Joe Hill is the author of several short story collections, the Locke & Key comic book series, and best-selling novels The Heart-Shaped Box, NOS4A2, and Horns. He joined Virginia Prescott for a conversation for Writers on a New England Stage in Portsmouth on May 16, 2016.

As a reporter and White House correspondent for CBS News, Lesley Stahl covered Watergate, the Iran hostage crisis and the Gulf War. Her investigative work for 60 minutes brought her from America's nuclear mission control centers to Guantanamo Bay. She's interviewed heads of state, traumatized soldiers, Iraqi rebels, teenage gospel stars, and deftly refereed pitched debates on Face the Nation.  With a shelf full of Emmys, Murrow Awards and a few memorable scoops behind her, Lesley Stahl says becoming a grandmother is her best assignment yet.  

Recently, the multi-talented poet/artist/rock legend Patti Smith joined us to discuss her latest memoir, M Train, for our program Writers on a New England Stage. Before the show, we sat down with Patti in the greenroom of the Music Hall to talk about her writing process. The conversation is part of a series we call the 10-Minute Writer's Workshop.

What's harder to write - the first sentence or the last?

On today's show it's Writers on a New England Stage with Stacy Schiff, recorded live at the Music Hall in Portsmouth. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of biographies of Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov, Benjamin Franklin, and Cleopatra, is known for discovering the real overlaid by popular mythologies. Her most recent book takes on the enduring fictions of one of the most confounding and hysterical events in American history: the Salem Witch Trials of 1692.

On today’s show, it’s Writers on a New England Stage with scientist turned novelist Diana Gabaldon, recorded live at The Music Hall in Portsmouth. Gabaldon is author of the phenomenally popular Outlander series – an addictive blend of historical fiction and fantasy based on the premise of time travel. Outlander plays with the past, overthrows traditional gender roles, and has inspired a cable television series that Buzzfeed called, “The Feminist Answer to ‘Game of Thrones.’ ” Her latest novel is the eighth in the Outlander series, Written in My Own Hearts Blood.

Today on Word of Mouth, it’s Writers on a New England Stage with Tom Brokaw, recorded live at The Music Hall in Portsmouth. As a pillar of network news and the author of “The Greatest Generation” books, Brokaw is beloved as an eye-witness to world-shaping events and much more quiet heroics.  When diagnosed with incurable cancer in 2013, Brokaw did not want the spotlight turned on him.

On today’s show, it’s Writers on a New England Stage with Sue Monk Kidd, recorded live at The Music Hall in Portsmouth. The author of The Secret Life of Bees explores the roots of American racism with The Invention of Wings, a novel about the unlikely alliance between a southern woman and a slave.

On today’s show, a special presentation of Writers on a New England Stage with David Brooks, recorded live at The Music Hall in Portsmouth. The New York Times columnist, author, and commentator known as the “liberal’s favorite conservative”, Brooks climbed the ladder of America’s media elite by sparring with civility against left-leaning pundits on TV and NPR.

NHPR and The Music Hall present Writers on a New England Stage with author Anne Rice who reinvented a genre when she published Interview with the Vampire nearly 40 years ago.

NHPR and The Music Hall present Writers on a New England Stage with biologist, ecologist and two-time Pulitzer prize-winning author E.O. Wilson. Wilson has spent decades researching some of the biggest scientific riddles of our time - from the origins of human social behavior to saving disappearing species of plants and animals. He’s out with a bold new book that takes on nothing less than The Meaning Of Human Existence. He’ll discuss his ideas on where we came from, what we are and where we’re going.

Word of Mouth presents a special rebroadcast of Writers on a New England Stage with Carl Hiassen, presented by NHPR and The Music Hall and recorded live at The Music Hall in Portsmouth. Hiassen joined Virginia on stage last June to talk about “Bad Monkey,” a volume of comic crime fiction. It is now available in paperback.