THE ULTIMATE BOOKWORM –
Feb. 12, 2026 – Salman Rushdie, George Saunders, and others pay tribute to the longtime host of the Bookworm talk show, who died this week. Joyce Carol Oates called him “the very Mozart of literary interviewers.”
”Norman Mailer, “the best reader in America.” Susan Sontag, “a national treasure.” As the host of the literary talk show Bookworm for 33 years, from 1989 to 2022, Michael Silverblatt interviewed more than 1,200 writers, among them Joan Didion, Tom Wolfe, Gore Vidal, Martin Amis, Ocean Vuong, Margaret Atwood, Ian McEwan, Marilynne Robinson, David Foster Wallace, Fran Lebowitz, and Bret Easton Ellis. Look up your favorite author in the show’s archives, and it is almost certain that Silverblatt interviewed them.
He once described his preparation for interviews as “infinite,” familiarizing himself not only with the book the author was promoting but their entire oeuvre. He didn’t see himself as an interviewer—“Interviewers are supposed to be neutral and faceless, and I don’t believe in that”—but “first and foremost as a reader and a conversationalist.” Nevertheless, his interviews were astounding, with his tailored and erudite questions often leaving his interviewees flabbergasted and delighted in equal measure. Here, authors pay tribute to Silverblatt, who died this week at the age of 73.
