Michael Silverblatt, longtime KCRW ‘Bookworm’ host dies in LA home at 73

Michael Silverblatt, who hosted KCRW’s “Bookworm” program for 33 years, has died after struggling with various health challenges in recent years, the station announced. He was 73.

Silverblatt died Saturday at his Los Angeles home.

“Bookworm,” which aired from 1989 to 2022, featured weekly 30 minute interviews with authors, poets and other literary figures including the likes of Gore Vidal, Joan Didion, David Foster Wallace and Toni Morrison for what were described as “intellectual, accessible, and provocative literary conversations.”

He came to each session with knowledge of the guest’s entire body of work, not just the latest book they were promoting, a habit that prompted writer Joyce Carol Oates to dub him “the reader writers dream about.”

Others called him the “readers’ reader.”

“His impact on authors and readers was profound,” KCRW noted on its website.

Fans on social media were remembering Silverblatt as someone who got them interested in reading and wanting to know more about the people who wrote their favorite books.

“What I remember most about his show was how often he would make a careful point about an author’s work, resulting in silence from the writer for a moment, inevitably followed by something like, ‘you know that never occurred to me before, but you’re absolutely right,’ Susan Hegarty wrote on Facebook. “I heard this played out over and over. Bless him. What a mind.”

The literary groups on Reddit also shared their memories.

“He was an incredible reader and intellect,” one longtime listener wrote. ” Nobody does it like him in this day and age, and likely no one will again.”

The Brooklyn native, born Aug. 6, 1952, often credited author Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” with sparking his love of literature.

He aspired to a writing career of his own, but a chance meeting with the late Ruth Seymour, KCRW’s founder and longtime general manager, led to the creation of “Bookworm.”

“There are all sorts of other things that you get on radio and television, but I wanted listeners of ‘Bookworm’ to hear words, ideas, but particularly emotions that don’t get discussed in public, if at all, elsewhere,” Silverblatt told Oprah.com. “That is to say, for one reason or another, the show is a crusade that’s much larger than the subject of books.”

Silverblatt’s survivors include his sister, Joan Silverblatt Bykofsky.