Fresh Air Weekend highlights some of the best interviews and reviews from past weeks, and new program elements specially paced for weekends. Our weekend show emphasizes interviews with writers, filmmakers, actors and musicians, and often includes excerpts from live in-studio concerts. This week:

Andie MacDowell draws from the chaos and darkness of her childhood for 'Maid': MacDowell grew up with a mother who was mentally ill and addicted to alcohol. "Understanding the complexity of mental illness was something that I'm versed in," she says.

Louise Erdrich's disquieting new novel will keep you on your toes: Set in a haunted Minneapolis bookshop over the course of one very momentous year, The Sentence is an ambitious novel, featuring a sinister ghost, a country in tumult and Erdrich's own shifting style.

How Gary Shteyngart's pandemic pod inspired a novel about friendship: Our Country Friends is about the trysts and betrayals that occur within a group of friends during the pandemic. It's an exaggerated version of Shteyngart's own COVID experience.

You can listen to the original interviews and review here:

Andie MacDowell draws from the chaos and darkness of her childhood for 'Maid'

Louise Erdrich's disquieting new novel will keep you on your toes

How Gary Shteyngart's pandemic pod inspired a novel about friendship

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