Michael Silverblatt

A lifelong voracious reader, Silverblatt was born in Queens, New York, into a Jewish family, attended SUNY Buffalo, majored in English, then entered postgraduate studies at Johns Hopkins University but dropped out.[2]

Later, he moved to Los Angeles with the intention of becoming a screenwriter. But after impressing KCRW's general manager during a discussion of Russian poetry at a dinner party, he was offered his own radio show.[3]

On Bookworm, Silverblatt has interviewed a variety of writers, including such contemporary authors as W. G. Sebald, T. C. Boyle, David Foster Wallace, William Gass, Zadie Smith, Steve Erickson, Lorrie Moore, Joy Williams, Tao Lin, Joshua Cohen, Maggie Nelson, Dave Eggers, Ann Beattie, Karl Ove Knausgaard, and Richard Powers. He calls his interviews "conversations" and does not use prompts or question sheets. Critics and interviewees have noted Silverblatt's well-preparedness; he always reads his interviewee's work in advance.

Underwritten by the Lannan Foundation, Bookworm is distributed free of charge to around 50 U.S. radio stations.[4] Silverblatt worked on the show unpaid for its first five years.[5]

Silverblatt coined the term transgressive fiction.[6]

Silverblatt's Los Angeles Times review of William Gass's The Tunnel was blurbed on the cover of its paperback release: "The most beautiful, most complex, most disturbing novel to be published in my lifetime."[7]

Silverblatt wrote an introduction to a reissue of Kenward Elmslie's The Orchid Stories.[8]

The Song Cave published Bookworm: Conversations with Michael Silverblatt.[9]

• KCRW Bookworm webpage and audio archive