Sam Brigger

From WHYY in Philadelphia, this is Fresh Air Weekend.

I'm Sam Brigger.

Today, novelist Maggie O'Farrell.

She wrote the book Hamnet and co-wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation.

She has a new book called Land, about a father and son mapping 19th century Ireland after the devastation of the Great Famine.

Also, we'll hear from historian Elizabeth Stordor Pryor.

She spent her career tracing the racial slur, the N-word, through slavery, Jim Crow, the civil rights movement, and hip-hop.

But what she didn't tell her students, even some of her colleagues, was that her father was the comedian who put that word at the center of American comedy, Richard Pryor.

Her new book is Something We Said, Richard Pryor, A Notorious Word, and Me.

And book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews the latest by classic scholar Mary Beard.

That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend.

This is Fresh Air Weekend.

I'm Sam Brigger.

My guest, author Maggie O'Farrell, is best known for her 2020 novel Hamnet.

It was adapted into a movie last year, and Jesse Buckley's performance as Agnes Shakespeare, William Shakespeare's wife, won Buckley an Oscar.

O'Farrell co-wrote the film's screenplay with its director, Chloe Zhao.

Hamlet is a fictionalized version of the story of William Shakespeare and his wife, Agnes Hathaway.

It's about how they meet and fall in love, marry, and have children.

Their young son Hamlet dies from the plague.

The grief shakes the family and leads Shakespeare to write his play, Hamlet.