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Yan Zhang is now in very accomplished literary company. The 17-year-old writer was recognized by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers for her writings on how she coped with her grandfather's death. Past winners of the contest include Andy Warhol, Sylvia Plath, Truman Capote and Joyce Carol Oates.

Novelist Christopher Bram chronicles the rise of gay consciousness in American writing in the years following World War II to the present day. Eminent Outlaws: The Gay Writers Who Changed America begins with a first wave of major gay literary figures-Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, Allen Ginsberg, and James Baldwin, pioneers who set the stage for new generations of gay writers.

Pico Iyer examines the closeness he has always felt to the English writer Graham Greene.  In The Man Within My Head, he follows Greene’s trail from his first novel, The Man Within, to his later classics like The Quiet American looking at all he has in common with Greene: an English public school education, a lifelong restlessness and refusal to make a home anywhere, a fascination with the complications of faith.

Writer John D’Agata and fact-checker Jim Fingal discuss truth and the definition of nonfiction. Their book, The Lifespan of a Fact, is a record of the seven years of arguments, negotiations, and revisions D’Agata and Fingal went through over a 2003 essay by D’Agata, and it explores the boundaries of literary nonfiction.

William H. Gass discusses his newest collection of essays, Life Sentences: From Literary Judgments and Accounts , which explore reading, writing, form, and thought. He examines the work of some of his favorite writers, including Kafka, Nietzsche, Henry James, Gertrude Stein, and Proust.

Novelist Christopher Bram chronicles the rise of gay consciousness in American writing in the years following World War II to the present day. Eminent Outlaws: The Gay Writers Who Changed America begins with a first wave of major gay literary figures-Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, Allen Ginsberg, and James Baldwin, pioneers who set the stage for new generations of gay writers.

Pico Iyer examines the closeness he has always felt to the English writer Graham Greene.  In The Man Within My Head, he follows Greene’s trail from his first novel, The Man Within, to his later classics like The Quiet American looking at all he has in common with Greene: an English public school education, a lifelong restlessness and refusal to make a home anywhere, a fascination with the complications of faith.

Harold Garner, Executive Director and Professor at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech, and Melissa Anderson, Professor of Higher Education at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, talk about scholarly and medical journal articles being retracted with increasing frequency because of software that can detect plagiarism and bad data. They’ll discuss the problems of plagiarism and peer reviewing and what happens when people are accused of it.

Swedish crime thriller writers Arne Dahl, Anders Roslund, and Borge Hellstrom discuss their work and the specific culture of Scandinavian mystery writing. Dahl talks about Misterioso, the first novel in his Intercrime series, which follows Detective Paul Hjelm in the suburbs of Stockholm. Roslund and Hellstrom, are the authors of Three Seconds and Cell 8, both about Detective Superintendent Ewert Grens.

Joan Didion discusses her latest book, Blue Nights, about losing her daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne. She reflects on her fears and doubts about having children, her daughters fears and challenges, illness and death, and her own thoughts on growing old.

Stephen Merchant, writer and co-creator of the original, BBC show “The Office” and HBO's “Extras,” with Ricky Gervais, talks about his career and his first-ever stand up tour called “Hello Ladies,” where he discusses his successes and failures in his personal life as well as his ride to professional success. He’s performing at Town Hall December 20-21. Merchant will also discuss his newest project with Ricky Gervais and HBO, the new show “Life's Too Short” featuring Warwick Davis.

Born in St. Kitts and brought up in the UK, Caryl Phillips has written about and explored the experience of migration for more than 30 years through his novels, plays, and essays. In Color Me English: Thought About Migrations and Belonging Before and After 9/11 he reflects on the shifting notions of race, culture, and belonging before and after the September 11 attacks.

Jonathan Lethem talks about the relationship between the novel and contemporary culture. In The Ecstasy of Influence, a collection of new and previously published essays, he looks at the role of the writer as public intellectual, tackling topics from sex in cinema to drugs, graffiti, Bob Dylan, cyberculture, 9/11, book touring, and Marlon Brando, as well as his literary models.

Joan Didion discusses her latest book, Blue Nights, about losing her daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne. Reflecting on her daughter and also on her own role as a parent, Didion asks candid questions about how she feels she failed either because she didn’t notice cues or perhaps displaced them. She also reflects on her fears and doubts about having children, her daughters fears and challenges, illness and death, and her own thoughts on growing old.

Mindy Kaling, best known for her role as Kelly Kapoor on The Office, for which she’s also a writer and producer, shares her observations on romance, friendship, and Hollywood, and her career—from a Ben Affleck–impersonating Off-Broadway performer and playwright to a comedy writer and actress. In Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? she writes about what she thinks makes a great best friend, what makes a great guy, and what is the perfect amount of fame.

James Wolcott describes moving to New York, with the dream of being a writer, in fall 1972—when the city was sinking into squalor at the same time the cultural and creative energy was building. His memoir Lucking Out: My Life Getting Down and Semi-Dirty in Seventies New York is a portrait of a critic as a young man, and is also a portrait of a legendary time in New York history.

Writer and comedian Andy Borowitz talks about choosing the 50 Funniest American Writers and looks at the craft of humor writing. In The 50 Funniest American Writers: An Anthology of Humor from Mark Twain to The Onion, he brought together contemporary masters such as David Sedaris, Roy Blount Jr., Ian Frazier, Bernie Mac, Wanda Sykes, and George Saunders, and reached back to Mark Twain, Thurber, and Lenny Bruce.

A new novel by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jeffrey Eugenides follows three college students graduating in the midst of an economic downturn. With unemployment around 10 percent, the characters try to find ways to cope — moving home, busing tables, applying to graduate school. One flees the country entirely, running from the recession at home to volunteer in India. It sounds like a novel set in 2011, until Eugenides' characters start calling each other from land line phones and writing letters home from abroad. 

Jeanne Darst discusses her memoir Fiction Ruined My Family, about growing up with a father who believed that he’d write the Great American Novel and reclaim the family's former glory. But his efforts never pan out, and that failure, along with her mother's burgeoning alcoholism, lead to financial disaster and divorce. As Jeanne grows up she is horrified to discover that she is not only a drinker like her mother, but a writer like her father.

Born in St. Kitts and brought up in the UK, Caryl Phillips has written about and explored the experience of migration for more than 30 years through his novels, plays, and essays. In Color Me English: Thought About Migrations and Belonging Before and After 9/11 he reflects on the shifting notions of race, culture, and belonging before and after the September 11 attacks.