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Fresh Air Weekend: Novelists Liz Moore and Julian Barnes

caption: Booker Prize-winning novelist Julian Barnes turns 80 on Monday and has been very busy. "I can't remember a period of months when there's been so much going on," he says. He's pictured above in London in 2017.
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Booker Prize-winning novelist Julian Barnes turns 80 on Monday and has been very busy. "I can't remember a period of months when there's been so much going on," he says. He's pictured above in London in 2017.
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Fresh Air Weekend highlights some of the best interviews and reviews from past weeks, as well as new program elements specially paced for weekends. Our weekend show emphasizes interviews with writers, filmmakers, actors and musicians, and it often includes excerpts from live in-studio concerts. This week:

The God of the Woods novelist Liz Moore describes the rare "flow state" of writing: Moore says writing is mostly labor, but "2% of the time, usually at the very beginning of a book and the very end of a book, it feels like flying." She's the author of Long Bright River.

George Saunders' Vigil is a brief and bumpy return to the Bardo: The Bardo is a Tibetan Buddhist idea of a suspended state between life and death. Saunders explored the concept in his 2017 novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, and circles back to it again in his new novel Vigil.

Julian Barnes says he's enjoying himself, but that Departure(s) is his last book: Part memoir and part fiction, Barnes' hybrid novel publishes the day after his 80th birthday. He's been living with a rare form of blood cancer for six years.

You can listen to the original interviews here:

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