NPR News

Renee Montagne reports on some authors and books that initially faced rejected before eventually becoming hugely successful. Authors such as global blockbuster Patricia Cornwell, who worked in a morgue before becoming a famous crime novelist.

Campaigning in the Democratic Republic of Congo has taken a stormy turn. Veteran opposition politician and presidential candidate Etienne Tshisekedi proclaimed himself president, and ordered his supporters to stage jailbreaks to free their detained colleagues.

Stephen Greenblatt's "The Swerve," a dramatic account of the Renaissance-era rediscovery of the Latin poet Lucretius, won for nonfiction. "Salvage the Bones," set in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, by Jesmyn Ward, won for fiction.

Renee Montagne talks to Rwandan refugee Clemantine Wamariya about her recent appointment to the board of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Wamariya survived the Rwandan genocide and is now a student at Yale.

Late at night on Wednesday, protesters at Zuccotti Park in New York were outnumbered by police. But every now and then a new protester would come into the park and just stare at the space like they were looking at it for the first time.

Jo Robbin, 29, was one of them. One of the first things she did as soon as she made it past the security check point was pull up her sleeves to show the red markings the plastic ties had left her.