In 1961, Ezra Jack Keats wrote and illustrated his first children’s book. It was called "The Snowy Day" and it told the story of Peter, a young, African-American boy in Brooklyn, enjoying the season's first snowfall. The book was immediately popular. Prior to its publication, no other mainstream children’s book had featured a black hero in a non-caricatured way.

The titans are clashing in the world of poetry. Over Thanksgiving, literary critic Helen Vendler published a savage review of a new anthology, "The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry." The book was edited by Rita Dove, a former Poet Laureate. Dove responded to Vendler's scathing review with an equally vitriolic reply. Vendler is white, and Dove is black, which is either tangential to, or central to, the issue — depending on whom you talk to. The incident has many in the poetry world talking about issues of race, aesthetics, and who belongs in the poetry books, and who does not. 

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…" The words are timeless, they could apply to the world today. But of course, they were written over 150 years ago by Charles Dickens, in his masterpiece "A Tale of Two Cities." If he were still alive, Charles Dickens would be turning 200 in just a few months.

The Swedish Academy has awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature to 80 year old Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer. "Through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality," the Academy said in a statement. Patrik Henry Bass, Takeaway contributor and senior editor at Essence magazine, talks about Tranströmer's work and influence.

Last week, the Library of Congress named Philip Levine as the next poet laureate, succeeding W.S. Merwin. Previous writers who were awarded that title include Robert Frost, Billy Collins, and Maxine Kumin. Levine was once an auto plant worker in Detroit, and that city became the basis for many of his poems. We spoke with Levine yesterday, about his reputation as a working class poet.

Tonight at midnight, Harry Potter fans across America will be saying goodbye to their favorite bespeckled wizard, as "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2," the final Harry Potter film, opens in theatres. What will the end of Harry Potter mean to the franchise’s loyal fans? Why has Harry Potter been so monumentally popular? And — from an academic point of view — why has Harry Potter been culturally important?

Earlier this month, T.S. Eliot’s 424-line modernist poem "The Waste Land" became the most popular literary app in America. The app includes recordings of Eliot reading the poem. And last Friday, the Harry Potter franchise proved that it’s still thriving when author J.K. Rowling officially announced details about a new interactive website called "Pottermore." Are the "Waste Land" app and "Pottermore" site gimmicks that will quickly lose popularity? Or will they represent the new way to consume literature?

The Great Depression produced some of the greatest novelists in United States history: John Steinbeck, John Dos Passos, Zora Neale Hurston, Nathanael West. In 2011, as the U.S. recovers from the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression, our next guest wonders why the Great Recession hasn't yet generated a book like "The Grapes of Wrath." Michael Goldfarb is a freelance reporter. His article, "Where Are Today's Steinbecks?" appeared on the BBC.

When David Foster Wallace took his own life in September of 2008, he left behind reams of unfinished work and a veritable young generation of readers still hungry for his work. This week, posthumous novel "The Pale King" is released from Wallace's long time publisher Little Brown. The book is unfinished, but was assembled from DFW's raggedy genius by longtime editor Michael Pietsch. Peitsch talks about how emotional it is for an editor to bring a book into the world when it's author is gone.

Imagine a search for identity on an epic scale, and you’ll have some idea what the novel "Pym" is about. It tells the story of Chris Jaynes — a professor who becomes obsessed with finding a mythical black homeland referenced by Edgar Allen Poe in his only full-length novel, "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket." But "Pym" is more than a novel; it’s a biting satire of how Americans see race, and see themselves, in the 21st century.

For decades, teenagers have enjoyed stories of darkness and dystopia — from social critiques like “The Lord of the Flies” to dystopian nightmares like “A Clockwork Orange.” But in the last year or two, the market for dystopian and apocalyptic young adult fiction has exploded with more books and darker stories than ever, and the year ahead promises the most books in this genre to date.What's behind this teen dystopian trend, and why is there so much demand for it?

On Wednesday we looked at a new edition of Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn" that will be released in February without the "n-word." We covered the social, cultural and literary implications of the decision and got many, many responses. What was the racial and linguistic context into which Mark Twain wrote "Huckleberry Finn?" To look at the novel in historical perspective, we speak with Bob Hirst, editor of the Mark Twain Project at the University of California, Berkeley. 

A new edition of Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn" is being published in February, replacing the "n-word," which shows up 219 times in the original edition. Instead the publisher, New South Books, uses the word "slave." New South's editor-in-chief, Randall Williams, told The Takeaway that removing the racial slur isn’t censorship.

Thirty years ago, Anne Rice exploded onto the literary scene with her gothic novel “Interview with the Vampire.” Since then, she’s sold over 100 million copies of her books and explored not just vampires, but also witches and the life of Christ.

Her newest book, out today, is called “Of Love and Evil.” It’s the second book in her “Songs of Seraphim” trilogy, and it follows the saga of a former government assassin and an angel as they travel back to 15^th century Rome to unravel the mystery of a poisoning.

If you’ve read Vanity Fair anytime in the past decade or watched David Letterman with any regularity over the past two decades, you probably know who Fran Lebowitz is…or, in the very least, you know her biting social commentary. She’s the subject of a new documentary directed by Martin Scorsese, which premiers tonight on HBO. It’s called “Public Speaking.” (trailer after the jump.) 

This month, Mark Twain fans will finally be able to read something by him that’s never been published before: Twain's secret autobiography, which he decreed should not be published until one hundred years after his death.

Why the delay? Was his request unusual? And how common is it for books to be published after an author’s death?

Salman Rushdie has been many things over the years: an award-winning millionaire novelist, a British knight, and of course, the object of an Iranian Ayatollah’s fatwa in the late '80s. But his new novel, “Luka and the Fire of Life,” will likely lead to new titles: videogame master, or perhaps “the next J.K. Rowling.” The novel, inspired in part by his 13-year-old son and the videogames he plays, centers on young Luka and his much older father Rashid. When Rashid mysteriously falls into a deep sleep and can’t be awakened, Luka must travel into the Heart of Magic, battle giants, monsters — and even time itself — to bring back the fire that will save his father’s life.

“Zora and Me” fictionalizes the childhood of the Harlem Renaissance writer, folklorist and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston. (Hurston was born in 1891, lived through the Jim Crow south, and died in 1960.) The young adult novel is the first in a planned trilogy which imagines Hurston as a girl detective in her all-black hometown of Eatonville, Florida, at the start of the 20^th century.

After she became pregnant with her daughter, Tanya Simon went looking for books to share with the new member of her family. That's when she realized: there weren't very many fictional young black heroines in children's literature. So Simon sat down with friend Victoria Bond and wrote a story she thought her daughter would enjoy: "Zora and Me."

The book, which tells a fictional account of a young Zora Neale Hurston as a girl detective in her Florida hometown, was the kind of young adult literature Simon wished existed for her daughter. We're asking listeners: What book would you write for your own children? Is there a group or a person who you feel is underrepresented, or a story you think is missing from the bookstore shelves?

In 2007, Dinaw Mengestu became something of a literary star when his first novel – “The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears” – garnered him awards from the National Book Foundation, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, and other prestigious organizations.

His new book is called “How to Read the Air.” It centers on a young Ethiopian-American named Jonas. In a failed marriage, and seeking to better understand his family history, Jonas attempts to retrace the migration of his parents from eastern Africa to the American Midwest. Along the way, we see Jonas retelling and sometimes fabricating the histories of strangers, his parents, and himself.