Dyslexia

Decades before NFL player Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem to protest police treatment of African-Americans, boxer Muhammad Ali roiled white America with his 1967 resistance to the Vietnam War draft.

In the event of a zombie attack, author Max Brooks will be ready. His books The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z are fictional manifestations of his own fears and anxieties — and his impulse to overcome them by preparing for the worst.

Richard Ford, author of The Sportswriter and Independence Day, has written a new novel entitled The Lay of the Land. Independence Day was the first book to win both the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award.

Samuel Delany's new memoir is called The Motion of Light in Water. Delany sees himself as part of newer, left-of-center generation of science fiction writers. He joins Fresh Air to talk about his position in the margins as a genre writer and a black gay man, his dyslexia, and his perspective on the AIDS epidemic.