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Eleanor speaks with the Scottish novelist, short-story writer, poet and memoirist John Burnside. One critic has said of him If I had to be marooned on a desert island with a stranger, that stranger would be John Burnside. She even said he's her perfect companion: for his poetry, which she called the finest Britain today. He has a new memoir called I Put a Spell on You.

INTERVIEW and READING: American writer Andre Dubus discusses the themes of masculine identity and physical disability in his collection of personal essays, Broken Vessels. Dubus reads from his essay "Husbands.". INTERVIEW: American historian Simon Schama discusses his fact-based novel Dead Certainties (Unwarranted Speculations).

Paul Durcan is one of the most popular poets in Ireland. He's also a marvellous performer, with a truly unique reading style. This week on Writers & Company, Durcan discusses his incredible works, including his latest book of poetry, The Laughter of Mothers.

Eleanor Wachtel speaks with the Cuban-American writer, Carlos Eire, a professor of history and religious studies at Yale University. He's written a number of scholarly books but, about ten years ago, he began to write about his own history. His first, Waiting for Snow in Havana won a National Book Award. His new memoir, Learning to Die in Miami, focuses on his experience as a refugee in America. Carlos Eire's memoirs, Learning to Die in Miami and Waiting for Snow in Havana are published by…

This week on Writers & Company, a conversation with the award-winning Norwegian novelist, Per Petterson. The author of Out Stealing Horses has a new book called I Curse the River of Time. Petterson's parents were both working class, but managed to save enough to send him to college. However, after a couple of years there he threw it over to work in a factory, just as his parents had, because of his left-wing political beliefs.

In his memoir An Odyssey, American writer and critic Daniel Mendelsohn gives an account of what happened when his elderly father sat in on his university seminar on Homer's epic poem.

Author and journalist Aatish Taseer talks to Eleanor onstage in Toronto about his Indian Pakistani heritage, the impact of modernity on India today, and his new book, The Twice-Born, which explores the city of Benares, the spiritual capital of Hinduism.

Hisham Matar's Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, The Return, is about his return to his native Libya to search for the truth behind the disappearance of his father, a prominent political dissident of the Gaddafi regime. Now Matar has written a new book - A Month in Siena - about a more recent journey and a meditation on the relationship between history and art, grief and consolation. Matar joins Eleanor to talk about his new book and his life.

This week on Writers and Company, Part Two of Eleanor Wachtel's conversation with one of England's hottest and most controversial writers, Martin Amis. In this episode, Amis talks about the family: new daughters, a long-lost daughter, family tragedy, but especially his father, novelist and poet Kingsley Amis. Episode includes part of an interview that Eleanor did with Kingsley Amis in 1992, as well as a recording of Kingsley reading from his Collected Poems: 1944-1979.