Siddhartha Mukherjee, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Division of Medical Oncology at Columbia University, and a staff cancer physician at Columbia University Medical Center, has devoted his life to caring for cancer patients. As a researcher, he runs a laboratory on the forefront of discovering new cancer drugs for leukemia and mylodysplasia.  He spoke about his work at the Kentucky Author Forum on Oct. 13, 2011, with Harvard University’s David Scadden, M.D., conducting the interview.

Dr. Mukherjee’s book, The Emperor of All Maladies, details the evolution of diagnosis and treatment of human cancers from ancient Egypt to the latest developments in chemotherapy and targeted therapy. Approaching the subject with the passion of a biographer and the story-telling skill of a novelist, he includes personal observations about his own coming of age as a physician. Oprah Magazine listed it as one of the “Top 10 Books of 2010″. It was also listed in “The 10 Best Books of 2010″ by The New York Times and “The Top 10 Nonfiction Books” by Time.

In 2011 The Emperor of All Maladies won the Pulitzer Prize in the general non-fiction category. His debut book was also nominated as a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, one of the most prestigious prizes for writing in the U.S. Time named Dr. Mukherjee in its “100 Most Influential People” list for 2011, along with artists, politicians and scientists.

The full conversation from the Kentucky Author Forum is presented below.

Grammy-winner Rosanne Cash has recorded fourteen albums, charting 21 Top-40 country singles and two gold records. For more than three decades she has been one of the most compelling figures in popular music, having moved gracefully from Nashville stardom to critical recognition as a singer-songwriter and author of essays and short stories.

A self-portrait written with intelligence, honesty, wit and warmth, Composed is Rosanne Cash’s testament to the power of art, tradition and love to transform a life.

On Sept. 26, 2011 at the University of Louisville Kentucky Author Forum, Rosanne Cash was interviewed by Nick Spitzer, producer and host of public radio’s American Routes. Spitzer is a folklorist and a professor of anthropology and American studies at Tulane University, specializing in American music and the cultures of the Gulf South.

WFPL is proud to sponsor the University of Louisville’s Kentucky Author Forum presentation of Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee and Dr. David Scadden on October 13th at the Kentucky Center. Dr. Mukherjee is a Professor of Medicine at Columbia University, staff physician at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City and the author of The Emperor of All Maladies: a Biography of Cancer.

Update:  Congratulations to Charlene Sexton.  She has won two tickets to the KAF interview and dinner with Dr. Mukherjee.  If you’d like to attend, you can still purchase tickets at the Kentucky Center.

If you would like to win tickets to the interview and dinner with Dr. Mukherjee and an autographed copy of his book, just email us your name, phone number, and address. We’ll draw a name and post the winner here on Monday, October 10th at Noon.

Read our contest policy

Poet Billy Collins was the featuerd guest at the Kentucky Author Forum on April 21, 2011.  He was interviewed by Prairie Home Companion host Garrison Keillor.  You can listen to the conversation below.

Collins was appointed United States Poet Laureate 2001-2003. He is the author of nine volumes of poetry, including the forthcoming Horoscopes for the Dead.  Garrison Keillor is the author of more than a dozen books, and was the featured author at Kentucky Author Forum in November, 2002.

The Kentucky Author Forum on Feb. 15, 2011 featured Dr. Eric Kandel, author of In Search of Memory: the Emergence of a New Science of Mind.  Dr. Kandel is a Nobel Prize-winning medical researcher, Professor at Columbia University, and Director of the Kavli Institute for brain science.  He has recently been seen on the Charlie Rose Brain Series. Dr. Kandel was interviewed by Jonah Lehrer, a Contributing Editor at Wired and author of How We Decide and Proust Was a Neuroscientist.

Listen here:

The Kentucky Author Forum on Nov. 9, 2010 featured Andrew  Ross  Sorkin, financial columnist for The New York Times and author of Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System — and Themselves, a real-life thriller about the most tumultuous period in American financial history since the Great Depression.

Sorkin was interviewed by Bethany McLean, contributing editor to Vanity Fair, co-author of The Smartest Guys in the Room, about the collapse of Enron, and All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis. (courtesy KAF).

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A Kentucky Author Forum on October 11 featured Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post, a nationally syndicated columnist, co-host of public radio’s popular “Left, Right & Center”, and author of Third World America. She was interviewed at the Kentucky Author Forum by Howard Fineman. In Third World America she examines how America’s past political, economic and educational decisions are impacting the American dream, and what we can do to restart the engines of American prosperity and revitalize the middle class. Third World America is sure to spark debate over the best responses to the problems America is facing, and provide grist for the mill for people of all political persuasions. (courtesy KAF).

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At the first Kentucky Author Forum of the 2010-11 season, David Plouffe, political strategist and author of The Audacity to Win, was interviewed by Richard Wolffe, award-winning journalist, political analyst for MSNBC, and author of Renegade: The Making of a President.  Plouffe served as campaign manager for President Obama’s primary and general election victories in 2008, and was the architect of the strategy for both elections. After managing Obama’s Presidential campaign, Plouffe set up Organizing for America, a thirteen-million-strong group to continue the initiatives of the campaign in everyday civic life (courtesy KAF).

Listen here

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Daniel Okrent, the first public editor of The New York Times, former editor at Time, Inc., and author of Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition,  was the featured author guest of the Kentucky Author Forum on May 10, 2010.  Okrent was interviewed by John Huey, Editor-in-Chief of Time Inc.

Daniel Okrent is considered one of the most interesting and eclectic writers of nonfiction today. His Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in history. He has written extensively on baseball, and is the inventor of Rotisserie League Baseball, the best-known form of fantasy baseball.

His newest book, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, is a narrative history of that most peculiar episode in American history, sweeping across several decades and most of the country, including Kentucky. Last Call is overflowing with portraits of the period’s notable personalities, including Sam Bronfman, H. L. Mencken, Pierre du Pont and Billy Sunday, among many others (courtesy KAF).

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The Kentucky Author Forum on April 13, 2010, featured Richard Ellis, one of America’s leading marine conservationists, generally recognized as the foremost painter of marine natural history subjects in the world and author of On Thin Ice: The Changing World of the Polar Bear. Ellis was interviewed by Jeff Corwin, host of Animal Planet’s “Jeff Corwin Experience” and “Corwin’s Quest”, conservationist, biologist and author of 100 Heartbeats: The Race to Save Earth’s Most Endangered Species.

Polar bears—fierce and majestic—have captivated us for centuries. Feared by explorers, revered by the Inuit, and beloved by zoo-goers everywhere, polar bears are a symbol for the harsh beauty and muscular grace of the Arctic. Today, as global warming threatens the ice caps’ integrity, the polar bear has also come to symbolize the peril that faces all life on Earth as a result of harmful human practices. In On Thin Ice the acclaimed science writer Richard Ellis offers an impassioned and moving statement on behalf of polar bears—and all they stand for.

Downloadable MP3