KRCB-FM: A Novel Idea: Recent Episodes
Suzanne M. Lang
Marine mammal researcher and co-founder of the Ocean Conservation Society, Maddalena Bearzi, like many of us, had her work curtailed during the initial shutdown period of the pandemic. But her habit is to observe, and her world did not get smaller, as she found a universe of life right in her own backyard.
Her book is Stranded, Finding Nature in Uncertain Times and she joins Suzanne Lang in conversation.
Also featured is Greg Sarris, author and Tribal Chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria with his work Becoming Story, A Journey among Seasons, Places, Trees, and Ancestors.
It’s A Novel Idea, Sunday, September 3rd at 10am PT on KRCB FM, 104.9 in Sonoma County, streaming and podcasting at krcb.org.
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True crime and bestselling author Daniel Stashower’s American Demon: Eliot Ness and the Hunt for America’s Jack the Ripper probes the depression era search for the “torso murderer” who left a wake of dismembered bodies in Cleveland Ohio, while also revealing the post-Untouchables life and career of Eliot Ness in his role as Cleveland’s Public Safety Director. Stashower joins Suzanne Lang in conversation! A Novel Idea airs the first, third, and fifth Sundays of each month at 10:00 am PT. Streaming at krcb.org. Click the icon below to listen.
A tale of two cities. Suzanne Lang talks with sports executive and author Andy Dolich, who along with journalist Dave Newhouse, authored the book Goodbye Oakland: Winning, Wanderlust, and a Sports Town’s Fight for Survival about the history of professional teams in Oakland California and their sometimes heartbreaking departures from the city and the fans. Also featured is sportswriter Dale Tafoya with his book of triumph and civic pride & perseverance, One Season in Rocket City: How the 1985 Huntsville Stars Brought Minor League Baseball Fever to Alabama. A Novel Idea airs first, third, and fifth Sundays at 10am PT, on KRCB 104.9 FM in Sonoma County. Streaming at krcb.org. Click the icon below to listen.
Long time activist for economic and environmental justice, Chuck Collins, brings us his provocative novel of the near future, Empire to the Erupting Sun, which opens with a woman strapping a bomb to herself to blow up an oil executive. Also featured is Hannelore Krollpfeiffer’s book, We Lived in Berlin, a Story about the End of the War, finally translated into English from the original German by our guest Katrin Ciaffa. It is an undistorted look at the realities of two young women during the final days of WWII. It’s a Novel Idea with Suzanne Lang, every first, third, and fifth Sundays at 10:00 am on 104.9 FM in Sonoma County and streaming at krcb.org. Click the icon below to listen.
Suzanne Lang talks with novelists Ginny Kubitz Moyer on her historical novel, The Seeing Garden, set in 1910 on the San Francisco Peninsula. Also on the program, Robert McKean, whose novel Mending What is Broken is mad-capped, funny, and heartfelt. It’s A Novel Idea, Sunday, July 16th at 10 am PT. Click the icon below to listen.
Fire Captain Christy Warren was born to deal with crisis situations and rescuing others. She was tough and decisive under pressure, but when she started experiencing uncontrollable emotional distress, she turned on herself in self-destructive ways and struggled for her own survival. Christy tells her story in Flash Point, a Firefighters Journey through PTSD.
We also feature Susan Farren, founder and Executive Director of First Responders Resiliency, Inc., an organization that takes a proactive and science-based approach to address the effects of trauma and stress faced by first responders and their families.
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Tina Davidson is a composer whose music is autobiographical, so her memoir is of course, musical. Suzanne Lang talks with composer Tina Davidson, on her life, work, and memoir: Let Your Heart Be Broken, Life and Music from a Classical Composer. Also featured is Francesco Lecce-Chong, Conductor and Music Director of the Santa Rosa Symphony and the Eugene Symphony orchestras and impetus behind the First Symphony Project. A Novel Idea airs on the first, third, and fifth Sundays on KRCB 104.9. Click the icon below to listen.
Suzanne Lang talks with prize-winning journalist Mary Jo McConahay on her book Playing God, American Catholic Bishops and the Far Right, which reveals the big money, unholy alliances, and far right agendas held by a faction of American Catholic Bishops. Suzanne also talks with Kate McAlwee, Executive Director of the Women’s Ordination Conference, a grassroots-driven movement that promotes activism and dialogue to call for women's ordination and gender equity in the Roman Catholic Church. It’s A Novel Idea, every first, third, and fifth Sunday on KRCB 104.9. Click the icon below to listen.
Suzanne Lang talks with equestrian Lissa Bachner. When Lissa became blind, it was the healing partnership with her horse Milo that physically guided her to become a show jumping champion and emotionally provided Lissa the love and confidence she needed to define herself outside of blindness. The book is Milo’s Eyes, How a Blind Equestrian and Her Seeing Eye Horse Rescued Each Other. Suzanne also talks with Amy Turner about her memoir On the Ledge. Nearly being killed when a truck ran over her while crossing a street, triggered the deeper trauma of her childhood self, living in the shadow of her suicidal Dad. When she was just 4 years old the media captured him standing high on the ledge of a hotel window, about to jump. He lived a long life, but it took her own near-death trauma to finally understand and shake her lifelong insecurity brought on by his suicide attempt. Click the icon below to listen.
Way out West. Biographer of scrappy women, Theresa Kaminski talks about her book Queen of the West, The Life and Times of Dale Evans. Then, author and long-time archivist for the Levi Strauss Company, Lynn Downey, brings her book American Dude Ranch: A Touch of the Cowboy and the Thrill of the West. A Novel Idea with Suzanne Lang, Sunday, October 30th at 10 a.m. KRCB 104.9, streaming at krcb.org. Click the icon below to listen.
Jori Lewis visits with her book Slaves for Peanuts, A Story of Conquest, Liberation, and a Crop that Changed History, a lyrical revelation that weaves together the natural and human history which altered West Africa and ensured that slavery would persist well into the 20th century.
Also featured is Judith Berlowitz with her historical fiction, Home So Far Away. It's an epic story set during the Spanish Civil War.
Suzanne Lang hosts A Novel Idea, first and fifth Sundays at 10am. Streaming and podcasting at krcb.org.
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Keri Blankenship did not let her worst moments define her. Her book is Corrections in Ink, a Memoir, a candid self-portrait of her journey to elite figure skater and decline to heroin addiction and incarceration, then her transformation to award winning journalist, who works as an investigative reporter for the non-profit Marshall Project —focused on the criminal justice system. Keri joins Suzanne Lang in conversation. Also featured is KRCB’s Dr. Dianna Grayer and her artistic collaborator Anianela Montefalcon with their book Keenah’s First Speech, Our Blackness Will Never Fade. It’s A Novel Idea on KRCB 104.9 and streaming at krcb.org. Click the icon below to listen.
Marston Hefner is a young writer who plays with language and sentiment, with some of his pieces having a sort of absurdity that upon closer reading push through on an emotional level. Hefner joins Suzanne M. Lang in conversation. Suzanne also talks with Schuyler M. Wood on his first installment of The Tranquility Trilogy, A Crisis at Tranquility! It's A Novel Idea, Sunday, August 7th, 10:00 am PST on KRCB 104.9. Streaming at krcb.org. Click the icon below to listen.
Jillian Haslam grew up destitute and malnourished in the slums of Calcutta. She survived to climb out of poverty, achieve a successful career in banking, and become an honored humanitarian, motivational speaker, author, and educator. Her book is A Voice Out of Poverty, the Power to Achieve through Adversity, and Jillian joins Suzanne M. Lang in conversation A Novel Idea airs first and fifth Sundays at 10 am PDT on KRCB 104.9. Streaming at krcb.org. Click the icon below to listen.
Inner strength and agency over our lives is what we explore with Amy Edelstein, whose book is Adventure in Zanskar, a young woman’s solitary journey to reach physical and metaphysical heights, her story of solo trekking in one of the highest and remotest parts of northern India, the Zanskar Valley. We also talk with Kathleen C. Stone with her book They Called us Girls, Stories of Female Ambition from Suffrage to Mad Men. Sunday, July 3rd, 10am PT on KRCB Radio, 104.9 FM and streaming at krcb.org. Click the icon below to listen.
Best-selling nonfiction author Barbara Graham and award winner Caitlin Hamilton Summie join Suzanne M. Lang in conversation on their novels. Both women are longtime writers, steeped in the literary life, yet each has just published a first novel. Graham’s What Jonah Knew is a psychological thriller touching on inherited family trauma, Buddhism, and past lives. Summie’s carefully crafted Geographies of the Heart tells the bitter and sweet story of a family’s love and loss, and their evolution across the years. A Novel Idea every first and fifth Sundays at 10 am PDT on KRCB 104.9. streaming at krcb.org.Click the icon below to listen.
The Late 19th Century tells us as much about ourselves as looking in the mirror. Two writers explore the late 19th century, though one writes fiction and the other nonfiction, their methods of steeping themselves and their work in period detail is striking. Neal Thompson joins Suzanne Lang with his “narrative americana”, a nonfiction account of the Irish immigration of the 19th century in The First Kennedys, The Humble Roots of an American Dynasty. Also featured is Connie Hertzberg Mayo, whose novel, The Sharp Edge of Mercy is set in America’s first cancer hospital with themes of medical ethics, racial injustice, gay relationships, and workplace harassment. Click the icon below to listen.
Long-time NPR commentator, editor of Exquisite Corpse, novelist, and poet Andrei Codrescu joins Suzanne Lang in conversation on his life, writing, and language. His upcoming works include a collection of pandemic poetry, Too Late for Nightmares, and one of his earliest novels —revisited by his current self, Meat from the Goldrush. Suzanne also visits with novelist and poet Barbara Quick to talk about her latest novel What Disappears along with her volume of award-winning poetry The Light on Sifnos. Click the icon below to listen.
Story, memory, place, and water converges with our two guests. Suzanne Lang is joined by Greg Sarris, author, educator and Tribal Chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria. Greg talks about his book Becoming Story, A Journey among Seasons, Places, Trees, and Ancestors. Julene Bair talks about The Ogallala Road, A Story of Love, Family, and the Fight to Keep the Great Plains from Running Dry. Both authors explore their roots, their environment, their choices, and how to integrate various elements of their experience with what they’ve come to know. Sunday, April 3rd at 10am PT on KRCB 104.9, streaming and podcasting at krcb.org. Click the icon below to listen.
Characters seem to tell their authors where the story is going, and that is part of the alchemy of writing novels. Suzanne Lang talks with Ruthie Marlenee about her novel Agave Blues. It's inflected with a bit of magic realism and the voices of ancestors. Suzanne also talks with best-selling author Meredith Hall on her work, Beneficence, a powerful and moving story of love, loss, and the healing power of family. Listen to KRCB’s A Novel Idea, Sunday, March 6th at 10am PST on KRCB 104.9 FM in Sonoma County. Streaming and podcasting at krcb.org. Click the icon below to listen.
Environmental historian Ann Vileisis goes deep and pulls together a fascinating story in Abalone, the Remarkable History and Uncertain Future of California’s Iconic Shellfish. Abalone has long been a source of wonder and value with its iridescent shell, hearty meat, and spiritual significance, but the once iconic shell fish is now nearly absent in the California waters. Join Ann in conversation with Suzanne Lang on KRCB’s A Novel Idea, Sunday, February 6th at 10 am PST, broadcasting at 104.9 FM, streaming and podcasting at norcalpublicmedia.org. Click the icon below to listen.
Good fiction invites us to be less alone, to question our own thoughts and perceptions, to laugh at ourselves and cry about what hurts. Join Suzanne M. Lang in conversation with Daniel Coshnear on his work of short stories, Separation Anxiety. Also on the show is Beth Kirschner. Her novel Copper Divide is set in the tumultuous winter of 1913 in Calumet Michigan in the copper country. It’s A Novel Idea, Sunday January 30th at 10am PT, 104.9 FM, streaming at krcb.org. Click the icon below to listen.
A young couple with four little children experienced a calling to the missionary life and found themselves living in the crisis time of independence in the African Congo. Turn Left at the Big Anthill is no fiction, it’s Rosemary Manchester’s memoir: a layered and fascinating story of a transitional time in Africa and in one woman’s life. Rosemary Manchester, former host of KRCB’s A Novel Idea, comes back to talk with Suzanne Lang. It’s A Novel Idea, Sunday, January 2nd at 10:00 am. On KRCB 104.9 FM, streaming at krcb.org. Click the icon below to listen.
It’s a sneak peek ahead to a conversation with Rosemary Manchester about her book Turn Left at the Big Anthill, a Memoir, her story of living in the Congo— with her four young children, during the tumultuous time of its independence from the Belgians. We also feature a dip into the archives and share conversations with Daniel Pyne, author and showrunner of the streaming series Bosch, and with Peter Richardson on his book No Simple Highway, A Cultural History of the Grateful Dead. Tune in Sunday, December 5th at 10am PST. It’s a Novel Idea with Suzanne Lang. Click the icon below to listen.
It’s two young new literary voices on this edition on KRCB’s A Novel Idea with Suzanne Lang.
Kendra Atleework’s book is Miracle Country, a Memoir of a Family and a Landscape; set in the Eastern Sierra, it is up there with the best of writing on California.
Also featured is Shruti Swamy with her novel The Archer, set in 1960s Bombay India which focuses on a dancer of Kathak, an ancient traditional form of Indian dance.
It’s A Novel Idea with Suzanne Lang. Sunday, November 7th at 10:00 am on KRCB 104.9 FM, streaming and podcasting at krcb.org.
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Over the years it seems that many of the authors we’ve featured have been published by Berkeley based She Writes Press, including our featured authors on this episode. Peri Chickering joins me this week with her book based on the Indigenous concept of the Seven Directions, Leadership Flow: the Unstoppable Power of Connection.
Plus, I chat with Carolyn Lee Arnold with her sex positive book, Fifty First Dates After Fifty, A Memoir. To set the stage, we’ll talk with Brooke Warner, Publisher of She Writes Press. It’s KRCB’s A Novel Idea with Suzanne M. Lang. Click the icon below to listen.
Nonfiction that reads like a novel, and a novel steeped in modern California history are approached by Suzanne M Lang in conversation with Joanna FitzPatrick and Jeanne Baker Guy.
FitzPatrick’s novel, The Artist Colony is a murder mystery set at a women’s art colony in the dynamic environment of 1924 Carmel-by-the Sea. Though a work of fiction, it vividly paints the weather and landscape of the area, that has so inspired artists, and is set in the early Twentieth Century, when women, who just got the vote, were struggling to be taken seriously as artists.
Jeanne Baker Guy has produced a memoir of a time in her life when her ex-husband kidnapped their two children; the story of her struggle to locate them and bring them home is the story of You’ll Never Find Us. Both books are published by She Writes Press.
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Author Kent Wong's memoir, Swimming to Freedom -My Escape from China and the Cultural Revolution, an Untold Story is a riveting tale of his life in China as a boy during the Cultural Revolution. Wong joined the dissident underground and became one of the half million other Chinese who braved the waters of the South China Sea, escaping to Hong Kong, then under British rule. Join Suzanne Lang in conversation with Kent Wong.
A Novel Idea airs on the first and fifth Sundays of every month at 10:00 am on KRCB 104.9 / streaming @ krcb.org /Download the FREE KRCB mobile app @ iTunes & Google Play!
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Fiction can be fantasy, fiction can reflect back to us who we are, and at its best it does both while being an entertaining read. Such is the case with two books we feature and the conversations with their award-winning authors Jessica Barksdale Inclán brings us the time-traveling literary fantasy, The Play’s the Thing. Nancy Econome brings us her debut novel of Greek immigrants in the 1940’s, The Classic Grill, a Tale of Greek Gods and Immigrant Heroes. Join Suzanne M. Lang in conversation with these two novelists. A Novel Idea airs on the first and fifth Sundays of every month at 10:00 am on KRCB 104.9 – Sonoma County’s NPR station / streaming @ krcb.org/radio /Download the FREE KRCB mobile app @ iTunes & Google Play! Click the icon below to listen.
Scampering across balconies, rooftops, and even Mick Jaggers house, to string antenna wire across London, Arnold M.D. Levine details the antics and achievements of the pirate radio movement in the UK in his fun and informative memoir Banned by the BBC, How I Became a Radio Pirate, a memoir of 1970's London. Levine is a Sonoma County radio broadcaster and host of Tommy's Holiday Camp on KOWS-Occidental and joins Suzanne M. Lang in conversation.
A Novel Idea airs on the first and fifth Sundays of every month at 10:00 am on KRCB 104.9 – Sonoma County’s NPR station / streaming @ krcb.org/radio /Download the FREE KRCB mobile app @ iTunes & Google Play!
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“I believe in Rock-and-Roll, books, and movies to upset the world” says Jonathan Taplin author of The Magic Years, Scenes from a Rock-and-Roll Life. Taplin has been riding the waves of American art and culture for 50 years, from road manager for Dylan and the Band, to producing movies for Martin Scorsese and Wim Wenders, working in high finance, creating the first video-on-demand service in the 90’s, and heading up the Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism at USC. He’s got some great stories that he tells with wit, candor, and humility. Jonathan Taplin joins Suzanne Lang in conversation.
A Novel Idea airs on the first and fifth Sundays of every month at 10:00 am on KRCB 104.9 – Sonoma County’s NPR station / streaming @ krcb.org/radio /Download the FREE KRCB mobile app @ iTunes & Google Play!
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Sometimes we move through life and are blindsided by catastrophe, and each individual’s response is unique and their own. No roadmaps, but there are touchstones along the way.
Suzanne Lang talks with two authors who recount their journeys of shock and loss with candor, humor, and compassion.
Cheryl Krauter’s husband died one night within the span of 5 minutes, leaving her stunned. Odyssey of Ashes, A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Letting Go is her story of moving with and through significant loss.
Rachel Michelberg’s candid and gripping memoir, Crash, How I became a Reluctant Caregiver is her story of her husband suffering a traumatic brain injury in a plane crash, and the difficult decisions she made with regard to his care and her family life.
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The year is 1597. The setting is the Upper Arctic. In search of a northeast passage to the Orient, Dutch cartographer William Barents and his crew become locked in ice and must wait out the months of polar night if they want to return to civilization. Suzanne Lang is in conversation with journalist and adventurer Andrea Pitzer on her account of this outrageous and harrowing journey in her book ICEBOUND, Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World. Pitzer’s previous work includes One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps, and The Secret History of Vladimir Nabokov. Join us Sunday, May 30th at 10am PT.
A Novel Idea airs on the first and fifth Sundays of every month at 10:00 am on KRCB-FM Radio 91 / streaming @ norcalpublicmedia.org /Download the FREE KRCB mobile app @ iTunes & Google Play!
(Photos courtesy of the author)
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Suzanne Lang is on the road and her guest, journalist Brad Herzog, brings us his own travelogue in Detour 2020, a Cross-country Drive through America’s Wrong Turns —his deep dive into the year of COVID, social unrest and racial division, and the presidential election that seemed to represent a turning point for the American ethos.
A Novel Idea airs on the first and fifth Sundays of every month at 10:00 am on KRCB-FM Radio 91 / streaming @ norcalpublicmedia.org /Download the FREE KRCB mobile app @ iTunes & Google Play!
(Photos: Courtesy of the author)
Award-winning author L. Annette Binder has created a moving and intimate portrait of an ordinary German family affected by war in the waning days of WWII, with characters that will break your heart and stay with you long beyond finishing the book. This is a universal story of the human cost of war. Binder joins Suzanne M. Lang in conversation on A Novel Idea.
A Novel Idea airs on the first and fifth Sundays of every month at 10:00 am on KRCB-FM Radio 91 / streaming @ norcalpublicmedia.org /Download the FREE KRCB mobile app @ iTunes & Google Play!
(Photos: Courtesy of the author)
There is the promise of life, even at its end. Richard Alther’s novel Bedside Matters explores the ultimate question: what matters most? Alther, whose previous works include Roxie & Fred, The Scar Letters, Siegfried Follies, and the Decade of Blind Dates, joins Suzanne M. Lang in conversation this month on KRCB’s A Novel Idea.
A Novel Idea airs on the first and fifth Sundays of every month at 10:00 am on KRCB-FM Radio 91 / streaming @ norcalpublicmedia.org /Download the FREE KRCB mobile app @ iTunes & Google Play!
(Photos: Courtesy of the author)
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Bohemians West — Free Love, Family, and Radicals in Twentieth-Century America is the story of free love and the radical movement of the early twentieth century through the lens of two lovers, Sara Bard Field and Charles Erskine Scott Wood, both married to others when they met with families of their own. Their tumultuous love story spanned thirty years, the same amount of time that separated them by age, in the midst of the progressivism of the pre-WWI years, the women’s suffrage movement, and beyond. Historian Sherry L. Smith brings us this story of two poets, activists, and lovers. Sherry joins Suzanne M. Lang in conversation. It’s A Novel Idea.
A Novel Idea airs on the first and fifth Sundays of every month at 10:00 am on KRCB-FM Radio 91 / streaming @ norcalpublicmedia.org /Download the FREE KRCB mobile app @ iTunes & Google Play!
(Photos courtesy of the author)
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Lynn Downey is a historian of the American West, longtime archivist with Levi Strauss & Co, and has two new books worth talking about, whether you’re a history buff or not! Arequipa Sanatorium: Life in California’s Lung Resort for Women is a lively chronicle of the early Twentieth Century in the San Francisco area where tuberculosis was raging, and dedicated doctors and community members supported a unique facility in Fairfax California to give women a new chance at life.
Lynn’s also written a novel set in Arizona on a dude ranch, and she joins Suzanne M. Lang in conversation on A Novel Idea.
A Novel Idea airs on the first and fifth Sundays of every month at 10:00 am on KRCB-FM Radio 91 / streaming @ norcalpublicmedia.org /Download the FREE KRCB mobile app @ iTunes & Google Play!
(Photos: Courtesy of the author)
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“Radio saved me.” Brandon J McDermott grew up pretending to be a baseball announcer and ranking all the songs he knew said just this about himself: “radio saved me.” McDermott, a successful NPR broadcaster in Lincoln, Nebraska, is local host of NPR’s “Morning Edition” and news reporter at NET, Nebraska’s PBS & NPR Stations. He’s just received a national award from the Radio Television Digital News Association and National Endowment for Financial Education, the 2020 Personal Finance Reporting Award for his story “Nebraska Schools Tackle Financial Literacy."
Brandon’s life, however, hasn’t always been so focused and productive. His boyhood years were troubled and troubling. His parents were not equipped with parenting skills and subjected Brandon to emotional and physical abuse that no child should experience, but unfortunately many have. Brandon J McDermott tells his story in Abandon Brandon, A memoir. Along with being a broadcaster, Brandon is an advocate for stepping out of the silence of shame. It has been a key element in his own transformation. Join Suzanne M Lang in conversation with Brandon J McDermott, Sunday, December 6th at 10am PT. Broadcasting at 90.9 and 91.1 and streaming at Radio (norcalpublicmedia.org).
A Novel Idea airs on the first and fifth Sundays of every month at 10:00 am on KRCB-FM Radio 91 / streaming @ norcalpublicmedia.org /Download the FREE KRCB mobile app @ iTunes & Google Play!
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Northern California writer Joan Frank is a woman who quotes Dorothy Parker with ease and whose conversations are as good as her books. Joan’s published her third book of 2020; The Outlook for Earthlings is a stunning work of prose and an insightful look into lives over time and experience. Joan Frank joins Suzanne M. Lang in conversation.
A Novel Idea airs on the first and fifth Sundays of every month at 10:00 am on KRCB-FM Radio 91 / streaming @ norcalpublicmedia.org /Download the FREE KRCB mobile app @ iTunes & Google Play!
(Photos: Courtesy of the author)
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David Stebenne unwraps how the middle class was created but then could not hold in his book Promised Land, How the Rise of the Middle Class Transformed America, 1929-1968. Stebenne details the social, economic, and political realities that picked us up from the Great Depression, especially if you were white and male, and by the 1950’s had hoisted the country into prosperity with a burgeoning middle class; by 1968 the cracks were too wide to ignore, and the country has been yearning and grumbling ever since. David is a specialist in modern American political and legal history, is widely published, teaches at Ohio State University, and joins Suzanne M. Lang in conversation, Sunday, November 1st at 10am on KRCB’s A Novel Idea.
A Novel Idea airs on the first and fifth Sundays of every month at 10:00 am on KRCB-FM Radio 91 / streaming @ norcalpublicmedia.org /Download the FREE KRCB mobile app @ iTunes & Google Play!
(Photo: Courtesy of the author)
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Charmian Kittredge London was a great American writer, Jack London’s second wife, and is the subject of Iris Jamahl Dunkle’s biography Charmian Kittredge London -Trailblazer, Author, Adventurer. Iris joins Suzanne M. Lang in conversation, telling the story of the bold and somewhat misunderstood life of Charmian.
A Novel Idea airs on the first and fifth Sundays of every month at 10:00 am on KRCB-FM Radio 91 / streaming @ norcalpublicmedia.org /Download the FREE KRCB mobile app @ iTunes & Google Play!
(Photos: Courtesy of the author)
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Aerobatic flying, as described and practiced by Cecilia Aragon, a world champion aerobatic pilot, is a dance in the sky, with spins and turns and gravity-defying grace. Her memoir is Flying Free, My Victory over Fear to Become the First Latina Pilot on the US Aerobatic Team —a true adventure story. Her descriptions of flying are as riveting as her personal story is inspiring. Cecilia is not only an air-show pilot and author but the first Latina full professor in the College of Engineering at the University of Washington. She joins Suzanne M. Lang in conversation on KRCB’s A Novel Idea.
A Novel Idea airs on the first and fifth Sundays of every month at 10:00 am on KRCB-FM Radio 91 / streaming @ norcalpublicmedia.org /Download the FREE KRCB mobile app @ iTunes & Google Play!
(Photos: Courtesy of the author)
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A Novel Idea comes from 9000 ft above sea level in the Eastern Sierra Nevada mountains of California, where Suzanne M. Lang brings you her conversation with Obi Kaufmann on his latest work, The Forests of California, a follow-up to the best-selling The California Field Atlas, and The State of Water. Kaufmann’s work is filled with art, science, poetry, and maps, all infused with his love of California.
A Novel Idea airs on the first and fifth Sundays of every month at 10:00 am on KRCB-FM Radio 91 / streaming @ norcalpublicmedia.org /Download the FREE KRCB mobile app @ iTunes & Google Play!
(Photos: Courtesy of the author)
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Risky authors play with form and defy easy description, and this is the case with two authors who through their radical storytelling
take us on a good ride, but with something sound and poignant underlying. The Seep is an alien life form that comes to inhabit humanity in Chana Porter’s quasi-utopian, surreal fantasy, The Seep. Thomas E. Cochrane, a noted geologist has taken a turn into fiction with his twisted detective novel, Entwined. Join Suzanne M Lang in conversation with playwright and novelist Chana Porter, as well as Thomas E. Cochrane, Sunday, August 2nd at 10 am PT. It’s A Novel Idea on KRCB Northern California Public Media, streaming at undefined.
A Novel Idea airs on the first and fifth Sundays of every month at 10:00 am on KRCB-FM Radio 91 / streaming @ norcalpublicmedia.org /Download the FREE KRCB mobile app @ iTunes & Google Play!
(Photos: Courtesy of the author)
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Food and family sustain us, especially during trying times. We celebrate this with two award-winning authors in
conversation with Suzanne M. Lang. Meera Ekkanath Klein has just released “Seeing Ceremony -A Novel in Recipes”, a follow-up to “My Mother’s Kitchen -A Novel in Recipes”, both coming of age novels set in Southern India featuring its climate, color, traditions, and recipes!
Carole Bumpus takes us to another continent in “Searching for Family and Traditions at the French Table, Book Two”, a companion to Book One, and a memoir (with recipes) of her travels that were the basis of her awarding winning novel “A Cup of Redemption”. Exotic places and good food, it’s A Novel Idea.
A Novel Idea airs on the first and fifth Sundays of every month at 10:00 am on KRCB-FM Radio 91 / streaming @ norcalpublicmedia.org /Download the FREE KRCB mobile app @ iTunes & Google Play!
(Photos: Courtesy of the authors)
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Our stories are important. It is our stories that connect us. So says Caitlin Hamilton Summie, author of
To Lay to Rest our Ghosts, a remarkable and moving collection of 10 stories that reveal the complexity of our families and relationships, and the influence of place -all with finely rendered prose that stirs and lingers. Caitlin has a full literary life as an author and as co-owner of Caitlin Hamilton Marketing & Publicity. She has represented many authors over her long career and her book is a revelation. Caitlin joins Suzanne M. Lang in conversation, Sunday, June 7th, 10 am PT.
A Novel Idea airs on the first and fifth Sundays of every month at 10:00 am on KRCB-FM Radio 91 / streaming @ norcalpublicmedia.org /Download the FREE KRCB mobile app @ iTunes & Google Play!
(Photo: Courtesy of the author)
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