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While stories typically associated with African literature may not top summer reading lists, a generation of African writers is trying to change that perception. To learn more, host Michel Martin speaks with Taiye Selasi, whose short story "The Sex Lives of African Girls" is featured in the spring issue of Granta: The Magazine of New Writing.

Two of America's oldest black fraternities will celebrate 100 years of brotherhood and civic action this month. Host Michel Martin discusses the relevance and history of these groups with Dwayne Murray, polemarch of Kappa Alpha Psi, and Lawrence Ross, author of The Divine Nine: The History of African-American Fraternities and Sororities.

Colorado Springs may not have an actual spring, but it does have a statue to its founder Gen. William Jackson Palmer. Sunday marks the 140th anniversary of the city's founding. Colorado Public Radio's Mike Lamp tells us about Palmer, whose statue is in the middle of a busy intersection.

Amy Dickinson describes the incident that makes her think of the sound of shovels penetrating hard dirt as part of our series Summer Sounds. Her dad once forced Amy, her sisters and a cousin to dig in the hot summer sun in the fruitless pursuit of saving a crop.

The Great American Hall of Wonders exhibit at the Smithsonian's Museum of American Art examines "the 19th-century American belief that the people of the United States shared a special genius for innovation." Host Linda Wertheimer takes a tour with Claire Perry, chief curator of the exhibit.

In the wake of the News of the World phone-hacking scandal, Tina Brown recommends articles that show the breadth of opinion on Rupert Murdoch's media empire and its practices as well as the events that took place behind the scenes that led up to the story breaking.

Los Angeles screenwriter Clifford Green contributes to our series "Summer Sounds" with the story of the quiet night on a lonely country lake where he heard nothing but his heartbeat.

Cultural diplomacy usually comes in the form of a traveling art show or celebrity visit, but this summer the Kennedy Center is engaging in a deeper kind of diplomacy; a fellowship program that provides training for arts managers from around the world.

As tourists are swarming to Washington D.C. this summer, The Washington Post Columnist John Kelly followed eighth graders from Centreville, Mich. to see the city through their eyes. Host Michel Martin speaks with John Kelly and Terry Miller, the teacher of the Centreville students, about the students' gains from their class trip, Washingtonians' love/hate relationship with tourists, and whether locals appreciate their cities in the same way tourists do.

There's a free concert taking place at a forest in Germany, and the headline acts have come from far, far away. Guest host Jacki Lyden talks to New York-based artist Jeff Talman about his German sound installation, Nature of the Night Sky. Working with astrophysicist Daniel Huber, he used radiation and seismic data from stars and shaped it into music, played back after sundown each night in a Bavarian forest.