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DJing is like being a conductor, and a composer of collage—you get to “mess around with people’s memories of songs.”

Paul Miller is more of a nuts and bolts kind of guy, while DJ Spooky can be wilder.

A conversation with the sound artist.

The author of the classic writing guide “Bird by Bird” shares some of her favorite ways to get the creative juices flowing.

Unlike Faulkner, the “Imperfect Birds” author doesn’t believe you should be willing to run over your grandmother for the sake of a great novel.

Anne Lamott embraces her reputation as a popular novelist, but admits that she sometimes gets caught up in the pretentious side of her profession.

A story of meditation, black coffee, and Safeway cakes.

Anne Lamott used to seek inspiration in “drugs, alcohol, and poetry.” But writing her novels has always been more like arduous manual labor than an ecstatic high.

Creating fictional people that seem real requires, among other things, writing a final draft in which you “take out all the lies.”

Some social problems are too complex to attack in a 1,500-word editorial.

“The difference between a writer who toughs it out and one who doesn’t is that you push through the parts where you know that you’ve just written seven pages when […]

A conversation with the novelist.

The 21st century economy will evolve from a U.S.-dominated landscape to a “multiple power” system whose success will hinge on cooperation, not competition.

With competitive local search companies waiting in the wings, will Chinese users really mourn Google’s absence?

The financial meltdown caught China off guard—and may make the country hesitate to follow Japan and other East Asian neighbors into full-fledged capitalism.

Will China’s future economic success hinge on its willingness to democratize? Or will U.S. debt make the country a superpower sooner than we think?

“There’s no point in going into a field like English literature unless you’re going to have fun with it.”

The Harvard critic recalls feeling genuinely anxious about how things would turn out for the hero of “The Magic Mountain.”

China is becoming progressively more open and entrepreneurial, but Western corporations shouldn’t assume they can export their traditional business models there.

Creative writing programs have left a dominant stamp on American literature in recent decades. The Harvard professor is glad they’re around.

Louis Menand recalls the most vehement reactions his essays have ever gotten—including one from a reader who didn’t realize Menand agreed with him.

A conversation with Booz & Company’s Chairman for Greater China.

Louis Menand isn’t sure the cognitive science approach to literature has yielded much of interest so far, but thinks there may be “some surprises around the corner.”

Not on purpose, says the “Marketplace of Ideas” author. But the system is starting to hurt them nonetheless.

The “Marketplace of Ideas” author suggests steps American colleges can take to become more ideologically diverse.

The “problem of general education” haunts any college trying to design a core curriculum, but standardizing across schools is a poor solution.

Whether we’re in postmodernism, post-postmodernism, or some other phase, one thing we’re not in is cultural decline.

The kind of literary criticism that Lionel Trilling practiced, which assumed that national literatures reflected deep national values, is dead now.

The audience that the New Yorker critic has in mind is “somebody who’s like yourself, but in a completely different discipline.”

A conversation with the Harvard University English professor.