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Pulitzer Prize winner August Wilson has spent more than 20 years writing a cycle of plays that chronicle black life in 20th-century America, decade by decade. For Intersections, a Morning Edition series on artists and their inspirations, the playwright discusses how he first found the language of the black experience in blues legend Bessie Smith.

Method acting is more than mining personal experiences to play a character — or physically transforming for a role. Author Isaac Butler traces the history of the technique in The Method.

In 1831, Nat Turner led a slave rebellion in Southampton County, Va., that killed more than 50 white people. An independent film debuting on PBS examines The Confessions of Nat Turner, William Styron's controversial 1967 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Turner's alleged jailhouse statements and other versions of Turner's story. Pat Dowell reports.

Movie makeup artist Ve Neill is up for her fourth Oscar for her work on Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. For Intersections, a Morning Edition series on artists and their inspirations, Neill discusses how an early love of horror flicks helped fuel her career transforming Hollywood's faces.

Stellastar is a four-piece band from Brooklyn, N.Y., that makes music reminiscent of early U2 or Joy Division. The young band has released a debut CD, the eponymous Stellastar. Jim Fusilli has a review.

Fiction and historical distance can sometimes allow us to examine our current worries in a different light. Ann-Marie MacDonald sets her second novel The Way the Crow Flies at the height of the Cold War. She uses the tensions generated by the U.S.-Soviet arms race to explore a contemporary issue: governmental secrecy. Martha Woodroof reports.

Bassist Viktor Krauss has appeared on the CDs of many Grammy nominees and Grammy-winning artists: Bill Frisell, Elvis Costello, Graham Nash, Dolly Parton. He plays on Lyle Lovett's My Baby Don't Tolerate, nominated this year for Best Country Album. But now Viktor Krauss gets to shine on his own with his debut solo CD Far From Enough. Krauss speaks with NPR's Brian Naylor.

Viktor Krauss, a bassist of choice in Nashville, has issued his first album as a group leader. The new recording, Far From Enough, doesn't showcase Krauss's bass. Instead, it places him in the more traditional role of bringing out the best in his colleagues. Critic Jim Fusilli has a review.

NPR's Michele Norris talks with David Evans, editor of Air Safety Week, about methods of investigating airline disasters, and NOVA's documentary Crash of Flight 111, which airs tonight on PBS. The program describes the events -- and investigation into -- the crash of an airliner off Nova Scotia that killed 229 people in 1998.

In contrast to Annie Liebowitz's posed celebrity portraits, Charles Peterson gets the sweat, anger, and noise of the Seattle scene on film in his new book, Touch Me, I'm Sick. Marcie Sillman reports on the challenges of capturing performance in the static medium of photography.