Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without books?

Where would we be without good?

No to the bird.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today, I'm pleased to have as my guest, Lawn Samantha Chang, whose novel, All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost, was recently published by Norton.

It's a book that interests me because it's about young people who study poetry in a graduate

writing program and risk everything to live their lives as poets once they've left that program behind.

Since Lan Samantha Chang is the director of probably one of the two or three best writing programs in the nation,

the Iowa Writers Workshop, This book comes from deep inside the process of becoming a writer.

And also, because she herself attended that program,

went off to study, I believe at Stanford,

and has taught she's watched young writers find their lives or lose their lives.

And these characters, three major young characters, one major teacher.

She's chosen the characters who become literary people, who succeed in the very difficult world of poetry.

These are not the people who stop writing.

And we will follow them in one case until death. Now, this is

really unusual because one would expect a four or 500-page book at least. It's just barely

200 pages. Tell me how you compressed so much wisdom.

...