As part of their “One Tank Trips” series, Philadelphia’s ABC Action News 6 featured The John Updike Childhood Home, with director Maria Lester on camera, leading the way. The station posted Bill Hartung’s video story on June 23, 2026. Here’s … Continue reading →

Since the Selected Letters of John Updike was published in October 2025, there have been dozens of interviews with the volume’s editor, James Schiff, and with Michael Updike, the family’s representative on the John Updike Literary Trust, who also has … Continue reading →

Bob Batchelor’s podcast John Updike: American Writer, American Life is active again. The new episode is titled “Why You Should Be Reading John Updike: The; Writer Who Predicted Everything.” From the site: “Hosted by cultural historian and Updike biographer Bob … Continue reading →

On “Ninety-Nine Novels: The Coup by John Updike,” Graham Foster explained, “In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess’s interest … Continue reading →

The Nov. 11 episode of BBC’s Front Row spotlighted art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon on Vermeer and radical Christianity, James Schiff on Selected Letters of John Updike, and director Edgar Wright on the new dystopian film The Running Man. The Updike … Continue reading →

James Schiff, vice president of The John Updike Society and editor of The John Updike Review, gave a great interview to Charles McElwee on The Real Clear Pennsylvania Podcast. Schiff, a professor of English at the University of Cincinnati, talked … Continue reading →

Bob Waite, whose father was Updike’s dentist back when the author lived and worked in Ipswich, has been a columnist for North Shore media for decades. Recently he wrote an opinion piece that was published by The Local News, “Lite … Continue reading →

In his introduction to an interview he conducted with James Schiff, Joe Donahue wrote, “John Updike remains one of the most admired and prolific voices in American Literature. Over five decades he produced novels, short stories, poems, criticism, and essays … Continue reading →

Boston radio’s Christopher Lydon has interviewed Updike on numerous occasions, and now he’s turned his admiration for Updike into “Open Source” conversations. In “John Updike and his Terrorist,” Lydon shares an interview he did with Updike about the post-9/11 novel … Continue reading →

RTS, the Serbian public broadcast service, took note of two Serbian scholars of John Updike appearing on a panel at the recent American Literature Association conference in Chicago. RTS interviewed Biljana Dojčinović and Nemanja Glintić for a segment that comes … Continue reading →

Dr. Carla Alexandra Ferreira, a Brazilian scholar whose YouTube channel is “Carla Ferreira: Literary Dialogues,” has featured brief discussions of two John Updike novels: Brazil and Terrorist. Check them out!

On May 3, 2024, the “Novelist Spotlight: Interviews and insights with published fiction writers” blog looked in the rear-view mirror to discuss a writer who, according to host and novelist Mike Consol, wrote more beautifully in English than anyone else. … Continue reading →

From the BBC Radio 4 link: “Serialised reading of John Updike’s 1971 novel about quintessential American white middle class male Harry ‘Rabbit’ Angstrom. Read by Toby Jones. Abridged by Eileen Horn.” Ten episodes are available. Pictured is the cover of … Continue reading →

In a March 2023 interview with V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell, Ann Beattie talked about her new collection of essays, More to Say: Essays and Appreciations, which contains an essat on “John Updike’s Sense of Wonder.” Beattie was the keynote … Continue reading →

Shortly after John Updike died, Radio National of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation asked Updike scholars Avis Hewitt, James Plath, and James Schiff to talk about Updike’s “unparalleled legacy of writing that combined an abiding interest in sex with a profound … Continue reading →

The Christian Humanist Podcast recently turned to John Updike’s poem “Americana” for Episode 332, with MIchial Farmer and David Grubbs talking about the poem, airports, and hotel rooms. The Christian Humanist Podcast is the work of “Three Christians, teachers, and … Continue reading →

John Updike was born 90 years ago on this date. To celebrate, John Updike Childhood Home Director of Education Maria Lester organized and hosted a reading featuring prominent Berks County residents. Watch the Facebook Live recording of the 90th Birthday … Continue reading →

Bob Batchelor, a longtime member of The John Updike Society and the author of John Updike: A Critical Biography, started an Updike podcast that’s slowly building. Batchelor has produced four episodes thus far for his podcast, John Updike: American Writer, … Continue reading →

Yesterday The New Yorker podcasts began the month with playwright David Rabe reading John Updike’s short story, “The Other Side of the Street,” which was published in a 1991 issue of the magazine. He was joined by Deborah Treisman for … Continue reading →

The bulk of a recent interview Colin Drury conducted with famed British producer-director Andrew Davies was devoted to talk about his recent “nobody sings” adaptation of Les Misérables. But for Updike lovers, tantalizing news comes in the very last paragraph … Continue reading →