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Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Tenderberg.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we need without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and welcome to Bookworm. Our guest today is

Diane Williams, one of the great storyw writers of our time. The last time we saw each other

was when her collected stories came out. This is a new slim book. It's very exciting to read,

and doubly so because my wonderful colleague, Sean Sullivan, is perhaps one of Diane Williams's favorite readers and commentators, and Sean is here with me.

Sean, let's both say hello to Diane.

Hi, Diane. Hello, Diane. Hi, both of you. Thank you so much.

So happy to be here. So I've been a fan of you for a long time. And in fact, something of a writer myself,

as it is, I had used a portion of Vicky Swanky's A Beauty as an epigraph. I tried to see how I could run off into my own words, which is from the story New Life from Dead Things, which wasn't

in your collected stories, by the way. So that just goes to show any listener who already has your

collected stories still should read each individual book, which has treasures that weren't shared.

But what's so beautiful about Vicky Swanky's The Beauty is the epigraph of that book is a quote

by Diane Williams, which is just so lovely, perfectly safe, go ahead. And I love it so much.

And I love how fully constructed your books are. And the title here, How High, That High.

It's people speaking to each other, it's someone saying how high, asking that how high,

and another person saying that high.

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