Emily Bernard spent the past several years in the Beinecke Library of Yale University turning page after page of correspondence between Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten. Here on her Knopf Author's Desktop, she presents nine of those original letters as they appear not in the book but on the original paper they were written or typed onto. To listen to Emily's audio commentary on the letters, you will need to have downloaded Real Player.
Take the audio-visual tour of the nine letters selected to appear here -- to do so, click here or on one of the bits of the letters below.
Listen to a rich conversation between Emily and Judith Jones, who was Langston Hughes's last editor and who continues to work at Knopf -- Judith served as Emily's editor on this project as well. While you listen to the conversation (about 15 minutes in length), you can still move around the site, look at images and read excerpts and letters. This is a large file to download.
Hear Emily read several of the letters from the book on Random House's Bold Type.
