Parenting & Families

Sue Klebold says she wishes she'd asked her son Dylan "the kinds of questions that would've encouraged him to open up." Published 17 years after the massacre, her new memoir is A Mother's Reckoning.

Growing up in the 1980s, brothers Jay and Mark Duplass weren't into typical family movies. Their friends were enthralled by Star Wars, but Jay tells Fresh Air's Ann Marie Baldonado that he and his brother were more interested in "whatever showed up on HBO," including Kramer vs. Kramer, Sophie's Choice and Hannah and Her Sisters.

Journalist, novelist and playwright Thulani Davis traces her roots in My Confederate Kinfolk: a Twenty-First Century Freedwoman Discovers Her Roots. Among the revelations Davis uncovered was that her ancestors include a Scots-Irish clan of cotton planters as well as Africans from Sierra Leone.

A performance with singer Iris Dement. Her song 'Let the Mystery Be' was used as a theme for the HBO series of 'The Leftovers.' She was born in Arkansas and her music is inspired by the sound of the delta, and the Pentecostal church.

Mike Cummings and Jorja Leap are working with men in Los Angeles — many of whom are former gang members — to help them find something that was missing from their lives as they grew up: fatherhood.

Director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon's film Me and Earl and the Dying Girl won the audience award and the grand jury prize at Sundance. He talks about how losing his dad shaped his approach to the film.

In her memoir Whatever ... Love is Love, Bello describes the evolution of her "modern family," which includes her romantic partner (a woman), her adolescent son and her son's father.

The WTF host asks the Fresh Air host about her childhood, her start in radio and her record-strewn apartment. Gross says Maron's "no bulls***" style" made her feel comfortable opening up.

Mann has published pictures that show her young children naked, her husband's muscular dystrophy and dead bodies decomposing. She reflects on her life and work in a new memoir called Hold Still.

Ann Packer's new novel, The Children's Crusade, opens in California, on a scene that's so bedrock American, it's borderline corny.

John Lennon's first wife died Wednesday at 75. In 1985, Cynthia Lennon talked with Fresh Air about her marriage to John, going on tour to America, and meeting Yoko Ono.

Sante Fe's most famous ghost is Hannah Nordhaus' great-great-grandmother. Her new book, American Ghost, is mix of memoir, cultural history, genealogical detective story and paranormal investigation.

Kazuo Ishiguro's latest recalls the plays and novels of Samuel Beckett. It's a masterful blend of fantasy, Arthurian romance, myth, legend and postmodern absurdity — and it's unforgettable.

Gordon co-founded Sonic Youth with Thurston Moore. When their marriage broke up in 2011, so did the band. Gordon talks about rebuilding her life, writing her memoir and her new band Body/Head.

Offutt's late father went from running a small insurance agency to writing more than 400 books, mostly pornography. The writer tells Fresh Air his dad believed he would be "extremely famous" for it.

In his new memoir, Philip Connors writes about "living in the shadow of suicide." Wracked by guilt and haunted by what-ifs, Connors investigated his brother's death and learned a terrible secret.

DeMent describes herself as extremely shy, but says that "when the songs started coming to me, I felt I didn't have the option to hide and avoid" the stage. Originally broadcast Oct. 21, 2015.

In the Australian chiller, a bogeyman announces himself in a rhyming, pop-up book on a 7-year-old's shelf. But the real horror is that the boy's mom, a grieving widow, is battling psychic demons.