Jenny Lawton

Last month, we announced our Significant Objects story contest. We picked out three objects from a thrift store — a doll ($5), a thermos with the Marlboro logo ($5), and a wooden trinket ($1) — and asked you to perform creative alchemy, turning junk into treasure by giving it ...

Lena Dunham is the creator, director, and star of the new HBO series Girls, and, at 25, happy to be called a girl herself. The show follows four young women trying to carve out adul...

Sergio Muñoz was only seven years old when he became a devotee of the band Kiss. He discovered the Alive! album in Tower Records and was mesmerized by the cover. Isolated and lonely, ...

In Scandal, Washington plays Olivia Pope, a DC lawyer-fixer who disappears the problems of her VIP clients. Bonus Track: Striking a Scandalous Pose

Last month, we announced our Significant Object story contest. We picked out three objects from a thrift store — a doll ($5), a thermos with the Marlboro logo ($5), and a wooden tri...

Last week we announced our Significant Object story contest. We picked out three objects from a thrift store: a doll ($5), a thermos with the Marlboro logo ($5), and a wooden trinke...

It all started with a broken coffee cup. “It was a totally meaningless thing,” remembers Rob Walker, “but it happened to be a coffee cup that I had bought on a trip with my now-wife...

In the 1980s, Marion Roach was a party girl and aspiring writer, clerking for The New York Times by day and hitting the clubs by night. She was in love with New York and felt she was...

Jacqueline Woodson is one of the most successful writers of young adult lit working today. But her books aren’t about vampires or rich girls. The winner of three Newbery Awards, Woo...

Daniel Eagan knew from a young age that he wanted to pursue a career in film. The movie he credits with setting him on that path, Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels  (1941), also ga...

Porgy and Bess was groundbreaking: an opera about poor African-Americans in South Carolina, starring a cripple, a tramp, and a drug dealer.  This weekend a new production opens on...

You don't get much more famous than Angelina Jolie. The acting roles that made her famous (the troubled teen in Girl Interrupted, the ass-kicking archeologist in Tomb Raider) have lon...

Last month, the illustrator-turned-author Lou Beach released a book of extremely short stories — each just 420 characters long. Kurt Andersen challenged our listeners to write their ...

Harvard physicist Lisa Randall is at the forefront of the search for new theories about how the universe works.  She’s especially interested in dark matter and is involved in work a...

Computers have taken over an incredible array of human tasks. They fly our planes, give us directions, recommend books, set us up on dates.  But can they tell us a good story?

There’s a new collection of short stories — extremely short stories, just 420 characters long (including spaces). They feature western gunslingers, couples in crisis, dogs and talki...

Larry Rosenblum is a professor of psychology with a focus on perception — he’s written a book about the senses called See What I’m Saying. Rosenblum credits a musical revelation with ...

Last week on the show, we heard from people who are so passionate about their careers as scientists and mathematicians that they've tattooed equations and fragments of DNA on their ...

A novelist returns home to her prominent California Republican parents with the manuscript of a new book — a memoir filled with very dirty laundry. Needless to say, the reunion is v...

A couple weeks ago, Kurt Andersen came clean on Twitter and Facebook. He admitted that (with two small exceptions), he’s never read a book or watched a movie more than twice. “I wo...