Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

For you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read?

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

Today, my guest is Sigrid Nunes.

She's the author most recently of a new novel, For Ruena, which has been published by Faris

and Giroux.

Her previous novels are Mitz,

Naked Sleeper, and a feather on the Breath of God. Now, now that this work is assembled before me,

it becomes unavoidable to see that the work is a mixture of essay, biography, poem, fiction.

And I had been told that you'd been a student

and perhaps even a protege of Elizabeth Hardwick's.

And I wondered if those multiple genres were ever discussed by you with her.

Yes, they were.

But I think the influence probably came more from her own writing than from anything that was said.

It isn't something that she was using in her fiction workshop at Barnard College, for example.

People weren't really writing well enough. They hadn't felt. workshop at Barnard College, for example.

People weren't really writing well enough.

They hadn't found their footing well enough as writers to be talking about blurring genres or mixing genres.

But her work was really a huge influence on me, and that is something that she has done and does so

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