Barrie Hardymon
Barrie Hardymon is the Senior Editor at NPR's Weekend Edition, and the lead editor for books. You can hear her on the radio talking everything from Middlemarch to middle grade novels, and she's also a frequent panelist on NPR's podcasts It's Been A Minute andPop Culture Happy Hour. She went to Juilliard to study viola, ended up a cashier at the Strand, and finally got a degree from Johns Hopkins' Writing Seminars which qualified her solely for work in public radio. She lives and reads in Washington, DC.
-
It's hard to remember a world before Harry Potter. But it's been 20 years since readers in the U.S. were first introduced to the boy wizard, whose story has captivated audiences since. -
Weekend Edition editor Barrie Hardymon remembers saving up for her first Kate Spade bag as a young New York music student. Yes, it held her Russian novels — but it also represented something more. -
The election in southwest Pennsylvania on March 13 is being closely watched by Democrats and Republicans looking for early clues about how Americans will vote in the midterm elections. -
Leila Slimani's breakout novel, inspired by true stories of killer caregivers, chronicles the complex relationship between a mother and her babysitter. -
On the eve of Outlander's third season, Pop Culture Happy Hour has thoughts on the Starz drama and its depictions of sex, intimacy and time travel. -
Greek, Roman and Viking myths have always been perfect for teenagers — they're all id! — so NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro gets recommendations for new books using them as source material.
-
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood was a best-seller list after the 2016 election. We reread the dystopian classic to prep for a new TV miniseries that begins next week.
-
Nevermind that she didn't like kids all that much — Brown wrote books they adored. One of her previously unpublished picture books has just come out, as has a new biography of this brave, bold author. -
Rowling studied real criminal case studies to write the latest in the Cormoran Strike mystery series — "It was horrible," she says. But writing under a pseudonym remains "a very private pleasure."
-
NPR's Barrie Hardymon has been scanning the catalogs all year, searching for the summer's best books. Her five favorites range from young-adult fiction to a memoir about cheese.
