Cancer

Head of Solid Tumor Oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, Dr. Larry Norton. He'll discuss the newest treatments for cancer.

Cancer researcher John Mendelsohn, M.D. is the president of the MD Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas. We will talk about new developments in cancer treatment. Mendelsohn created a new cancer drug, known as C225. The drug shows great promise in treating a number of cancers by halting the growth of cancer cells. There has been an explosion in the number of cancer drugs in recent years.

Novelist Carol Shields won a Pulitzer Prize for her best-selling novel, The Stone Diaries. Her books are often about middle-class people leading quiet lives. Her other novels include Larrys Party, which won Britains Orange Prize, The Republic of Love and Swann: A Mystery. She also wrote a biography of Jane Austen as well as plays, poetry and story collections. In 1998 Shields was diagnosed with breast cancer. She is now in a late stage of the disease. Her new novel, Unless (Fourth Estate), was written after her diagnosis.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Marriage: A Duet. It's a book of two novellas by Anne Taylor Fleming.

Writer Samuel G. Freedman's new book is Who She Was: My Search for My Mother's Life. Freedman's mother died many years ago, when he was just 18, and as he approached his mother's age when she died, he decided to find out all about her life. The result is a narrative fueled by facts.

Dr. Sandra Horning and Dr. David Johnson are both oncologists. Horning is the current president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the largest group of cancer-treatment specialists. Johnson was president before her. Both of them are cancer survivors — the first to lead the 41-year-old society. Horning practices and does research on lymphomas at Stanford. She is also co-chairman of the oncology society's task force on cancer survivorship. Johnson is deputy director of the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville, Tenn.

Graphic novelist Harvey Pekar emerged from obscurity in the surprise film hit American Splendor. His new graphic novel, The Quitter, offers details of Pekar's upbringing in 1950s Cleveland.

Julia Sweeney is currently performing a one-woman show called "Letting Go of God" at the off-off-Broadway theater in Manhattan. A Saturday Night Live cast alum, Sweeney also wrote and performed the 1996 Broadway show "God Said, Ha!" Her films include Pulp Fiction, Clockstoppers and It's Pat, based on her gender-confused character on SNL.

Diagnosed with cancer for the third time, Susan Sontag signed on for a harsh treatment regimen in hopes it would keep her alive. But it only added to her suffering. Her son, journalist David Rieff, has published a memoir about his mother's "revolt against death."

Comedian Robert Schimmel has suffered tragedies, including the death of his child and his own battle with cancer. But throughout it all, Schimmel managed to find strength in humor. His recent memoir is Cancer on $5 a Day.

Unitarian minister Forrest Church was diagnosed with terminal esophageal cancer last February. He has written and edited over 20 books since 1985. His latest, Love and Death, is a memoir that confronts the fact of death and, in the process, offers readers a meditation on the end of life.

Rafael Yglesias' novel is inspired by his wife, Margaret, who died in 2004. A Happy Marriage spans their three-decade relationship, from their courtship to her battle with cancer.

When coping with cancer, sometimes laughter is the best medicine. Kairol Rosenthal and Iva Skoch explain the phenomenon of "cancertainment."

Unitarian minister Forrest Church believed that the knowledge that we must die makes us question what life means. Church, who died Sept. 24, 2009 after a long battle with cancer of the esophagus, was the author of Love and Death: My Journey through the Valley of the Shadow.

Fresh Air remembers the comic book writer with highlights from 2003 and 2005 interviews. Pekar, who died Monday, was the author of the series American Splendor, which captured the angst of a man struggling with the daily ups and downs of life.

The new Showtime series stars Laura Linney as a wife and mother battling cancer. Critic David Bianculli says the leads (Oliver Platt among them) are just fine, but the subsidiary characters could use a second look. Also back for another season on Showtime: Weeds, which makes The Big C look limp by comparison.

Oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee chronicles how our understanding of cancer has evolved in his new book The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer.

After a routine mammogram, brest cancer specialist Dr. Marisa Weiss was diagnosed with a breast tumor. The founder of breastcancer.org discusses her diagnosis and treatment -- and how she feels about new mammography guidelines.

Reynolds Price, the acclaimed writer known for his evocative novels and stories about rural North Carolina, died in Durham on Thursday. He was 77. Fresh Air remembers the writer with excerpts taken from several interviews he gave over the past 20 years.

Oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee chronicles how our understanding of cancer has evolved in his new book The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer.

This interview was originally broadcast on Nov. 17, 2010. Siddhartha Mukherjee recently received the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for 'The Emperor of all Maladies.'