To the Lighthouse is a 1927 novel by Virginia Woolf. The novel centres on the Ramsay family and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland between 1910 and 1920. Following and extending the tradition of modernist novelists like Marcel Proust and James Joyce, the plot of To the Lighthouse is secondary to its philosophical introspection. Cited as a key example of the literary technique of multiple focalization, the novel includes little dialogue...

Catherine Lacey (Nobody Is Ever Missing), Akhil Sharma (Family Life), Francoise Mouly (art editor at The New Yorker), and Kate Zambreno (Heroines, Green Girl) discuss the acclaimed novel in celebration of its 30th anniversary. Marguerite Duras' (Hiroshima Mon Amour) haunting, luminous book tells of the tumultuous affair between an adolescent French girl and her Chinese lover in pre-war Indochina. With a reading by Kathleen Chalfant (The Affair, Angels...

Marilynne Robinson discusses and reads from her book Gilead with James Wood.

Kaye Gibbons joins Elissa Schappell to discuss The Life All Around Me, the sequel to her novel Ellen Foster. Andrea Marcovicci reads an excerpt.

Michael Cunningham (The Hours) sits down with Stacey D'Erasmo to discuss his novel Specimen Days. Isaiah Sheffer reads an excerpt.

Karen Joy Fowler leads a celebration of Jane Austen. Hope Davis reads selections from Austen's classic works.

Claire Messud joins Valerie Martin to discuss her book, The Emperor's Children. Hope Davis reads an excerpt from the book.

Edwidge Danticat sits down with director Jonathan Demme (Silence of the Lambs) to discuss and read from her book, Brother, I'm Dying.

Isaiah Sheffer sits down with two memoirists, Alexandra Fuller and Wendy Kann, to discuss their memoirs from Africa: Fuller's Scribbling the Cat and Kann's Casting with a Fragile Thread.

Susan Cooper talks with Symphony Space's education director about The Dark Is Rising sequence, her series of five thrilling fantasy novels for young readers, among them The Dark Is Rising and 1976 Newbery Medal winner The Grey King. The heroic series, originally published in the 1960s and 70s, is inspired by Arthurian myths and depicts an epic struggle between good ("The Light") and evil ("The Dark") in which children like 11-year-old Sign-Seeker...