NPR's Book of the Day Folgen

Parks and Rec actor Nick Offerman is famous for playing an outdoorsman on TV, but it turns out he actually is one in real life, too — albeit considerably less gruff than his character Ron Swanson. NPR's Scott Simon met up with him in the wilds of Central Park to discuss Offerman's new book Where the Deer and the Antelope Play. A testament to the pastoral takes a philosophical look at the vast wilderness of America and how open lands affect our approach to recreation, conservation, farming, and more.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Poet Laureate Joy Harjo says she loved poetry as a kid, but didn't feel like it belonged to her. "It wasn't until I heard Native poets," she tells NPR's Michel Martin, "that I realized that, wow, this is a powerful tool of understanding and affirmation. And I don't know, I just started writing." Harjo had been studying medicine, she says, and she knew her people needed doctors — but what about poets? Her new memoir Poet Warrior is a chronicle of pain and injustice, of growing up poor with an abusive stepfather — but also of poetry and discovery, of taking that pain and using it to make art.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The Queen of Tejano music is having a moment in pop culture once again, even 26 years after her murder. Selena Quintanilla's face not only adorns T-shirts and hoodies, but she's also the subject of a Netflix series, a podcast and a new novel by poet Melissa Lozada-Oliva. It's called Dreaming of You, and imagines what would have happened if Selena hadn't been killed when she was 23. Lozada-Oliva tells us about the story, which is written in verse, and the pop star's impact on her life since she was a child.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy