Spark WLRN

In this edition of Spark, recorded at the Miami Book Fair, Eric Bogosian recounts how he recently asked if wife if they could play with crayons. He remembers how he felt the first time he read lines in a play (Shakespeare; he says it was "painful" but in a good way). He tells us how an idea for a screenplay he thought would take three months, eight or nine years later became his new non-fiction book, "Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide." He takes us back to how he solved a nagging problem in his breakout hit, "Talk Radio," how that garden gnome became a theme in his play and movie, "Suburbia," and how ten years ago, he thought his acting career was over, but thanks in part to a role as Satan, it's not.

"Two Miami girls reminisce about their chonga days, and other sources of inspiration."

Warren Zanes first heard Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers as an 11-year-old in New Hampshire. By the time Zanes was 18, he was touring and recording with his own band, The Del Fuegos. Zanes' band opened for Petty and the Heartbreakers before they broke up. Zanes went on to get a Ph.D., work with The Rock and Roll Museum and Hall of Fame and become executive director of Steven Van Zandt's Rock and Roll Forever Foundation.

In this edition of Spark, the poet Richard Blanco talks about how crazy he was about Legos. He talks about getting called a "sissy" by his grandmother and why he thinks he got the same score on the math and verbal sections of the SAT. He talks about discovering poetry because of a girlfriend (before he came out), the first poem he fell in love with and how being an engineer makes him a better poet. He also talks about cat litter. And he tries to imagine what it might be like not to be Cuban American. Tries.

Author Salman Rushdie lived for a decade with a price on his head. His book “The Satanic Verses” prompted the Iranian Ayatollah to issue a fatwa -- a call for all Muslims to kill Rushdie.