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With four of her six novels in adaptation for the screen, Jane Austen was considered the "hottest screenwriter" of the 1995 (200 years after her death!). In this episode, Eleanor Wachtel talks with three "Jane-ites", Fay Weldon (Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen, 1984), Claire Tomalin (Jane Austen : a life, 1997), and Marilyn Butler (Jane Austen and the War of Ideas, 1988) on the popularity of Austen's work, and why it still resonates with the modern reader.

This week on Writers and Company, host Eleanor Wachtel talks with the man in the white suit - Tom Wolfe. The provocative author of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, The Bonfire of the Vanities and the current the best-seller, I Am Charlotte Simmons, talks about journalism, fiction and America.

A tale of two novelists: one of Canada's most beloved writers, Carol Shields, takes on the life of one of the most popular female novelists of all time in her new biography, Jane Austen (2001, Viking)

Nigerian writer Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ made a stunning debut in 2017 with her acclaimed first novel, Stay With Me. Focusing on a young couple's struggles with infertility and cultural tradition, the novel won the Prix Les Afriques, was shortlisted for the Baileys Prize for Women's Fiction and named a best book of the year by the Guardian and Wall Street Journal. Her new novel, A Spell of Good Things, examines themes of power, politics and poverty in modern-day Nigeria, interweaving the stories of…

Irish writer Sally Rooney talks to Eleanor Wachtel about her two novels, Conversations with Friends (2017), and Normal People (2018). They talk about how she engages with the social conventions of her time and how her characters navigate coming-of-age in an Ireland reeling from the decline of the Irish economy during the 1990s-2000s - the "Celtic Tiger" years.

Australian author Michelle de Kretser talks to Eleanor Wachtel about hope and betrayal in her fiction, and about growing up in Sri Lanka in the 1960s.

Pakistani author Fatima Bhutto spoke with Eleanor Wachtel about growing up as part of the Bhutto dynasty, her family's painful legacy, and her new novel, The Runaways.

A look at the life of Charles Dickens, the first celebrity novelist, through the eyes of the Pulitzer Prize-winning American writer Jane Smiley.