1. Tongue-tied and illiterate?

    A Moroccan encounter with the ancient Berber alphabet leaves novelist Nicholas Delbanco feeling tongue-tied.

  2. What goes up

    What goes up must come down, states the law of gravity. Nicholas Delbanco asks: Does that apply to literature too?

  3. A moment's thought?

    Most writing that appears seamless likely has been stitched, unstitched, and stitched again.

  4. A different drum

    Visionary, iconoclast, eccentric. What does ‘original’ really mean — and from where does originiality originate?

  5. Shop around the corner

    Novelist Nicholas Delbanco pens an ode to readers’ pulp-and-paper Shangri-La: the bookstore.

  6. What we keep, what we give away

    Nicholas Delbanco packs up his personal library and opens the chapter to a new era in life.

  7. Time after time

    Nicholas Delbanco reflects on a plague confounding artists across the ages: the risk of repetition.

  8. An uncommon education: Ep 4

    In “A Writer Worth Reading,” Detroit Public Television partners with U-M historians to explore the University’s commitment to “the new, the unusual, and the radical.”

  9. It's only words

    Nicholas Delbanco illustrates how language that once seemed transgressive is now quite routine.