Hi, I'm Michael Silverblatt. Thanks for tuning into Bookworm. Some of our most exciting storytellers

share their work orally, and that's the kind of work you can hear on KCRW's Unfictional.

Intimate stories, cleverly made documentaries produced all around the world by some of the most talented radio producers we have.

Check out on Fictional. You can find it on KCRW's iTunes page.

Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannon Foundation.

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 be without boos? From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and welcome to Bookworm.

Today, my guest is Luis Alberto Urrea.

He is not just a guest, but kind of a friend.

I'm crazy about his work.

He writes everything.

He writes poetry, essays, stories, nonfiction books, long novels, short novels, comic novels.

Whatever there is to be written, he wants to get his hand in.

And it's kind of marvelous because he's been proclaimed. Whatever there is to be written, he wants to get his hand in.

And it's kind of marvelous because he's been proclaimed by the National Endowment of the Arts to be one of the 30, I believe, living and dead, big reads of America.

So he's been traveling to schools and libraries all over to read his work. His work

is being discovered. How many years are you going to be spending doing this? Well, you know,

as I always tell people, most of the readers for the big read are dead. So as long as I'm still breathing, I guess,

...