Michael Silverblatt, the host of KCRW's weekly Bookworm, has been devoting the program to a ten-part series he calls "Escaping the Cage: Identity, Multiculturalism and Writing." In a piece in yesterday's LAT, Scott Martelle explains:

The series is an ambitious effort to engage some of the nation's leading writers — and a few emerging writers like [Nina Marie] Martínez and David Mitchell, author of "Cloud Atlas" — in a far-ranging discussion of the nature of self in literature, both as a catalyst for the author and as a motivation for the reader. It encompasses interviews with 28 writers, including Toni Morrison, Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe and Susan Sontag, as well as Edward P. Jones, Maxine Hong Kingston, Camille Paglia and Maya Angelou, with whom the series concludes Aug. 4.

The programs are vintage Silverblatt, whose low-key but intensely informed approach to interviewing often leads writers to on-air revelations about their own work.

Silverblatt's guests today at 2:30 p.m. are Wolfe, Margaret Atwood and John Banville. (Pointer from The Elegant Variation)