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Lynn Neary

Lynn Neary is an NPR arts correspondent covering books and publishing.

Not only does she report on the business of books and explore literary trends and ideas, Neary has also met and profiled many of her favorite authors. She has wandered the streets of Baltimore with Anne Tyler and the forests of the Great Smoky Mountains with Richard Powers. She has helped readers discover great new writers like Tommy Orange, author of There, There, and has introduced them to future bestsellers like A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles.

Arriving at NPR in 1982, Neary spent two years working as a newscaster on Morning Edition. For the next eight years, Neary was the host of Weekend All Things Considered. Throughout her career at NPR, she has been a frequent guest host on all of NPR's news programs including Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Weekend Edition, and Talk of the Nation.

In 1992, Neary joined the cultural desk to develop NPR's first religion beat. As religion correspondent, Neary covered the country's diverse religious landscape and the politics of the religious right.

Neary has won numerous prestigious awards including the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Gold Award, an Ohio State Award, an Association of Women in Radio and Television Award, and the Gabriel award. For her reporting on the role of religion in the debate over welfare reform, Neary shared in NPR's 1996 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton Award.

A graduate of Fordham University, Neary thinks she may be the envy of English majors everywhere.

  • Blogger and now cookbook author Deb Perelman insists you don't need a big or gourmet kitchen to make good food. Since 2006, she's been tracking down, testing and blogging about recipes she thinks pretty much anyone can make — all from her tiny New York kitchen.
  • Mo Yan was one of three writers favored to win. He is perhaps best known in the West as the author of Red Sorghum, which was made into a film. He is only the second Chinese writer to win the Nobel — the other is poet Gao Xingjian, who won in 2000.
  • It's the era of the e-reader, and book lovers are trying to get used to reading on the screen. But every now and then, a book comes along that just seems to insist on being physical. The publishers of a richly illustrated retelling of Homer's Odyssey say not all books are meant to be e-books
  • In The Malice of Fortune, two of the biggest names of the Renaissance team up to track a killer. Michael Ennis pairs the ruthless political philosopher and the genius artist in a pulse-quickening, historical whodunit.
  • Zadie Smith returns to old haunts in her latest novel, but it is a sobering homecoming. Where her first novel, White Teeth, was a wild ride into the diverse, vibrant rhythms of a city in transition, NW is a complex exploration of where the inhabitants of that world have landed.
  • When author Vaddey Ratner was just a child, the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia and destroyed her aristocratic family. Her new novel, In the Shadow of the Banyan, draws on her terrible experiences — and the poetry and stories from her father that helped her survive.
  • Jennie Fields' new novel, The Age of Desire, reimagines Edith Wharton's fling with a young journalist and the obsession that accompanied its fallout. Without that experience, Fields says, Wharton's The Age of Innocence would not have been the same.
  • Lynn Neary talks to three critics about books you shouldn't miss. One critic says it's a particularly rich literary summer because in election years, publishers release the juiciest books before fall.
  • Two billionaires took the stand this week — both named Larry. Google's Larry Page and Oracle's Larry Ellison have very different styles and personalities. And that came across in court.
  • The St. Cuthbert Gospel was buried alongside its titular saint in the late seventh century, making it Europe's oldest intact book. After a massive fundraising campaign, the British Library acquired the handwritten, leather-bound tome, which is in surprisingly good condition.