Listen to the Book Nook with Vick Mickunas for intimate conversations about books with the writers who create them.
Vick Mickunas introduced the Book Nook author interview program for WYSO in 1994. Over the years, he has produced more than 1,700 interviews with writers, musicians, poets, politicians, and celebrities.
He has interviewed historians such as Studs Terkel, David McCullough, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Simon Sebag Montefiore, and Gary Wills; politicians including Mario Cuomo, Sherrod Brown, George McGovern, John Kasich, Gary Hart, and Donald Trump; pundits such as Karl Rove, Ann Coulter, Ralph Nader, and Christopher Hitchens; broadcast journalists like Jim Lehrer, Robin MacNeil, Chris Wallace, Ken Bode, and Richard Threlkeld; movie stars including Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, Peter Ustinov, Kevin Bacon, and Bruce Campbell; romance writers Nora Roberts and Janet Dailey; astronauts such as John Glenn, Buzz Aldrin, Tom Stafford, and Gene Cernan; diplomats including Richard Holbrooke and Jose Ramos Horta; humorists like Bill Bryson, Gary Shteyngart, Art Buchwald, Gail Collins, Dave Barry, Roz Chast, and Sarah Vowell; food writers including Amanda Hesser, Molly O'Neill, Michael Ruhlman, and Judith Jones; poets such as Galway Kinnell, Donald Hall, Nikki Giovanni, Billy Collins, Coleman Barks, Hanif Abdurraqib, and Shuly Cawood; crime writers like P.D. James, Sue Grafton, James Lee Burke, Louise Penny, Robert Crais, John Sandford, Don Winslow, Lawrence Block, Ian Rankin, Adrian McKinty, Lee Child, Walter Mosley, Ed McBain, and Philip Kerr; espionage novelists like Alan Furst, Mick Herron, and Olen Steinhauer; horror novelists including Clive Barker, Joe Hill, Stephen Graham Jones, Danielle Trussoni, and Paul Tremblay; and music legends from bands like The Animals, Duran Duran, Joy Division, The Doors, the Byrds, and The Rolling Stones.
Vick Mickunas reviews books for the Dayton Daily News and the Springfield News Sun.
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The Domingo the Bounty Hunter series kicks off with the simultaneous release of the first two books in this series by Filipino-American author Cindy Fazzi. -
John E. Fleming was an influential member of our Yellow Springs community. His Peace Corps memoir and Ruth Paine's JFK assassin connection are revisited in this episode. -
Thomas Perry was one fantastic crime fiction writer. This tribute revisits three interviews about his final novels before his death on Sept. 15, 2025 at age 78. -
This story collection transforms itself into one heckuva novel about a baseball-obsessed family in Maine, plus a 1998 interview about African Americans in golf history. -
A runner's memoir by a man who has run marathons on every continent. Bob Welbaum shares his adventures from Antarctica to the Great Wall of China at age 77. -
The fourth book in a series about a teacher who can see ghosts tackles the crisis of missing and murdered indigenous women in a Michigan resort town setting. -
A fantastic year for crime novels gets even better with this latest one from Lou Berney. The Mercurio family flees Vegas for Oklahoma City in this entertaining tale. -
These secret diaries from the first half of the 19th century were never meant to be discovered. When a descendant found them, it was quite a surprise to everyone. -
In her latest horror novel, Tantrum, Rachel Eve Moulton offers readers a tale narrated from the standpoint of a woman who gave birth to a monstrous baby daughter. -
Narcissistic leaders have always been among us, perhaps even more so today. A look back and forward at those narcissistic leaders we know all too well from 2001.
