Writer's Voice with Francesca Rheannon: Recent Episodes
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Writer's Voice features author interviews and readings, as well as news, commentary and tips related to writing and publishing. We also talk with editors, agents, publicists and others about issues of interest to writers. Francesca Rheannon is producer and host of Writer's Voice. She is a writer, an independent radio producer and a broadcast journalist.
Today, two stories of what in the modern world we’ve come to call “apartheid”—the practice of segregating a subjugated population and imposing oppressive laws on it. First, we talk with UK historian Harry Freedman about his history of the first Jewish ...
In this episode of Writer’s Voice, we sit down with Dr. Seema Yasmin to discuss her prescient YA novel, Unbecoming. Dr. Yasmin, a physician, journalist, and director of the Stanford Health Communication Initiative,
In this episode, we sit down with Dr. William Bronston, a renowned advocate for disability rights and social justice. Dr. Bronston shares his incredible journey from a young medical student to a leading figure in the fight to protect the rights of peop...
In this episode of Writer’s Voice, we dive into the worlds of peace activism and literary translation through conversations with Brad Wolf and Noel Hernández-Gonzalez. Also, William Bronston, the doctor who brought instiionalization of the developmenta...
In this episode, we sit down with Audrea Lim, author of Free the Land: How We Can Fight Poverty and Climate Chaos. Audrea traces the connections between land commodification and many of America’s most pressing issues: ecological collapse,
In this conversation with Writer’s Voice host Francesca Rheannon, political theorist Danielle Allen talks about two core ideas at the heart of our nation’s Declaration of Independence: freedom and liberty. How are they aligned? How are they different?
In this episode of Writer’s Voice, Francesca Rheannon welcomes back acclaimed novelist, essayist, and now memoirist, Francine Prose. They dive into Prose’s latest work, 1974, a memoir that revisits her time in San Francisco during a pivotal year in Ame...
Episode Description In this episode of Writer’s Voice, host Francesca Rheannon sits down with acclaimed author Claire Wills to discuss her deeply personal and historically insightful book, Missing Persons or My Grandmother’s Secrets.
What did a group of ordinary citizens find out when they managed to stop a huge gas pipeline from being built? We spend the hour with Jonathan Mingle talking about his book, Gaslight: The Atlantic Coast Pipeline And The Fight For America’s Energy Futur...
We talk with Victor Lodato about his terrific new novel, Honey. It’s about an octogenarian who is trying to come to terms with her life — her childhood growing up in a Mafia family in New Jersey and her adulthood trying to escape it. Then,
Are child protection service (CPS) agencies doing more harm than good? Join us for an in-depth conversation with sociologist Kelly Fong about her book, Investigating Families: Motherhood in the Shadow of Child Protective Services.
We talk with Abrahm Lustgarten about his book, On The Move: The Overheating Earth and the Uprooting of America. It’s about how climate chaos means a humanity on the move. Then, we catch up with journalist and author Ross Barkan about his recent article...
Was 2020 the year Americans finally lost faith in their government? We talk with Eric Klinenberg about his acclaimed new book, 2020: One City, Seven People, And The Year Everything Changed. The book follows seven New Yorkers as they try to cope with th...
Larry Tye tells us about his new book, The Jazzmen: How Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie Transformed America. It’s a fresh look at three titans of the Jazz Age. Then, we re-air our 2020 interview with Larry Tye about his biography of Se...
A bestselling novelist took a job at a big box store, was shocked by what she found, and decided to write a novel about it. We talk with Adelle Waldman about her new novel, Help Wanted. It’s about what happens when a group of workers at a big box store...
We talk with Greg Wrenn about his book Mothership: A Memoir of Wonder and Crisis. It’s about healing the maladaptive imprinting of childhood trauma with Nature — and psychedelics. Then, a climate journalist tries a new tack to craft a narrative about t...
In this episode of Writer’s Voice, we feature two stories about war and secrets. First, we talk with Howard Mansfield about his book, I Will Tell No War Stories: What Our Fathers Left Unsaid About World War II.
A grandmother’s traumatic history reverberates through three generations… We talk with Tessa Hulls about her powerful graphic memoir, Feeding Ghosts. It tells the story of three generations of women — her Chinese grandmother, Sun Yi; her mother,
Michael Zweig talks about his book, Class, Race and Gender: Challenging the Injuries and Divisions of Capitalism, and Francesca reads her story, The Sheep's Blessing.
This week we talk about two novels that explore connections: between men and women, people and nature, the young and the old.
We talk with Amitav Ghosh about his masterful history of the opium trade, Smoke and Ashes: Opium’s Hidden Histories. Then, Manjula Martin tells us about her personal and “pyro-natural” history of California wildfires — the ones she lived through in 202...
Charles Berber talks about Dying For Capitalism, How Big Money Fuels Extinction And What We Can Do About It. Then Andy Lee Roth on Project Censored’s State of the Free Press 2024.
We talk with Les Leopold of the Labor Institute about his groundbreaking study of the political cost of mass layoffs. His book is Wall Street’s War on Workers: How Mass Layoffs and Greed Are Destroying the Working Class and What to Do About It.
We talk with historian Ahmed White about the Wobblies and the capitalist war on radical workers. His award-winning book is Under the Iron Heel.
Then Nikhil Goyal tells us about his book, Live to See the Day: Coming of Age in American Poverty. It follows three children as they struggle to survive in the poorest neighborhood of the poorest large city in America.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004.Find us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram and Threads @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on X/Twitter @WritersVoice.Read transcripts and subscribe at the Writer’s Voice Substack.Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show.
key words: IWW, poverty, Nikhil Goyal, Ahmed White, history, creative nonfiction, labor history, podcast, book recommendations, author interview, book podcast, book show
One Big UnionIn 1917, the Industrial Workers of the World was rapidly gaining strength and members in its campaign to build One Big Union uniting all workers.
Within a decade, this radical union was effectively destroyed, the victim of the most remarkable campaign of legal repression and vigilantism against a labor movement in American history.
Capitalist Repression, Rank-and-File CourageHistorian Ahmed White has been fascinated with the story of the IWW for more than 20 years. Not only because of the repression the union suffered, but also because of the incredible courage of its members who stood up against it.
Now he’s come out with an award-winning book, Under The Iron Heel, that tells that story of rank and file courage and the repression it defied.
About The AuthorAhmed White teaches labor and criminal law at the University of Colorado Boulder and is author of several books on American labor history.
Read an excerpt from Under The Iron Heel
Coming of Age in American PovertyOver 11 million children — 16% of all kids nationwide — were living in poverty in 2020. That’s the highest child poverty rate among advanced industrialized nations. And, of course, poverty’s burdens fall heaviest on the backs of children of color.
It’s a shameful record for the richest country in the history of the world. It’s also a direct result of the neoliberal policies that have shredded the social safety net of the New Deal and LBJ’s War on Poverty.
Three Kids From One of America’s Poorest NeighborhoodsNikhil Goyal brings the devastating impact of those policies vividly to life in his book, Live To See The Day. In it, he follows three Puerto Rican children from Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood.
It’s a coming-of-age story, one beset by the multifaceted violence of poverty. But it’s also a story of the incredible resilience of these children and their mothers, as they strive to survive with dignity.
About The AuthorNikhil Goyal is a sociologist and policymaker who served as senior policy advisor on education and children for Senator Bernie Sanders when Sanders chaired the U.S. Senate Budget Committee and Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.
Read an excerpt from Live To See The Day
We talk with David Goodman about his book, An American Cannabis Story. Illustrated with stunning photos, it’s about a pioneering cannabis farm in Washington State.
Then we replay our 2021 interview with neuroscientist Carl Hart about his book, Drug Use For Grownups: Chasing Liberty In The Land of Fear.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Find us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram and Threads @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on X/Twitter @WritersVoice. Read transcripts and subscribe at the Writer’s Voice Substack Key Words: cannabis, David Goodman, regenerative agriculture, drugs, Carl Hart, podcast, book recommendations, author interview, book podcast, book show, book excerpt, nonfiction, photography, Puffin Farm
A Weed Farm Based on Regenerative Agriculture Marijuana legalization in many states—with more being added all the time— has turned cannabis farming from a hidden activity into a legitimate and burgeoning business.
One of the early pioneers is Puffin Farm in Washington State. Started by Jade Stefano and Ben Short, the farm grows all its product outdoors according to the principles of organic and regenerative agriculture.
THC, CBD Not As Important As The Entourage Effect When photographer David Goodman went to Puffin Farm to visit Jade, who is his niece, he was blown away by the beauty of the cannabis plants they were growing.
As he learned more about Puffin Farm, he decided to put his photography skills to work to show us the new world of cannabis farming in words and pictures through the story of this family farm.
An American Cannabis Story takes the reader behind the scenes, showing how Jade and Ben grow and process top-quality cannabis, what the Entourage Effect is and why the amount of THC or CBD isn’t as important as the way the growing process brings out the unique qualities of every strain.
About The Author David Goodman is a photographer in New York City. His work has appeared in print and online publications like The New York Times, Vogue Magazine, and Huffington Post. His most recent NYC gallery show featured his photo series on Manhattan’s High Line park.
Read the interview transcript
Encore Segment: Carl Hart, Drug Use For Grownups Back in May of 2021, we spoke with Carl Hart about his book Drug Use For Grownups. We play an abridged version of that conversation. Listen to the full interview here.
We talk with historian Martha Hodes about her memoir My Hijacking: A Personal History of Forgetting and Remembering. In 1970, she survived six days as a hostage on a hijacked plane when she was twelve years old.
Then, teacher Adam Bessie tells us about his take on how the pandemic has driven us apart—and what it will take to bring us together. His graphic pandemic memoir is Going Remote: A Teacher’s Journey. It’s illustrated by Peter Glanting.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Find us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram and Threads @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on X/Twitter @WritersVoice. Read transcripts and subscribe at the Writer’s Voice Substack Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show. Key Words: hijacking, memoir, Covid 19, community college, Martha Hodes, Adam Bessie, writers voice, podcast, book recommendations, author interview, book podcast, book show, book excerpt
Martha Hodes on My Hijacking On September 6, 1970, twelve-year-old Martha Hodes and her thirteen-year-old sister were flying unaccompanied back to New York City from Israel when their plane was hijacked by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and forced to land in the Jordan desert.
Too young to understand the sheer gravity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Martha coped by suppressing her fear and anxiety.
Nearly a half-century later, her memories of those six days and nights as a hostage are hazy and scattered. Was it the passage of so much time, or had trauma made her repress such an intense life-and-death experience? A professional historian, Hodes wanted to find out.
So she used her training as an historian to interrogate the history of that hijacking. My Hijacking explores contemporaneous accounts, personal and collective memory and the political context surrounding these event to create a nuanced and riveting narrative about the lingering impact of trauma.
About the Author Martha Hodes is professor of History at New York University, and the author of several books. She won the Lincoln Prize in 2016 for her book, Mourning Lincoln.
Read an excerpt from MY HIJACKING
Adam Bessie, Going Remote Community college English professor Adam Bessie found his world transformed when the pandemic exiled education from the real classroom to the digital realm.
As the virtual walls closed in, Bessie witnessed the unraveling lives of his vulnerable students, a situation that hit close to home. Amid the frustrations of remote teaching, his own battle took an unexpected turn – the shadows of brain cancer resurfaced after years in remission.
But in the midst of this storm, Bessie found solace in literature and in solidarity with his colleagues. Together with them, he reached out to students in crisis, rekindling his dedication to community college as a catalyst for social change and compassionate community.
In Going Remote: A Teacher’s Journey, Bessie joins forces with illustrator Peter Glanting to bring us a graphic narrative about how he navigated this uncharted territory – and discovered the true worth of the classroom.
About The Author Bessie is a community college educator, and writes comics and cartoons about a variety of education, medical, political and personal subjects.
Going Remote was picked by Publisher’s Weekly as one of 2023’s Top 10 Graphic Novels.
Paul Kix tells us the thrilling story of the fight to end Jim Crow, led by the greatest figures of the Civil Rights Movement—and won by children. We spend the hour with Kix talking about his book, You Have To Be Prepared To Die Before You Can Begin To Live: Ten Weeks In Birmingham That Changed America.
Read Transcript of Interview with Paul Kix
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Find us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram and Threads @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on X/Twitter @WritersVoice. Read transcripts and subscribe at the Writer’s Voice Substack Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show.
key words: writers voice, podcast, book recommendations, author interview, book podcast, book show, creative nonfiction, history, Paul Kix, Civil Rights
Project Confrontation
It was the Spring of 1963. The civil rights movement was in disarray: the victory of the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott hadn’t translated into weakening Jim Crow anywhere in the South—not even in Montgomery, where the buses had gone back being segregated.
Something had to be done; something drastic and dramatic that would focus the nation’s attention on the fight for racial justice.
That something was Project Confrontation: a plan to challenge Jim Crow in the very apotheosis of white supremacist terror, Birmingham, Alabama — a place journalist Edward R. Murrow likened to Nazi Germany.
Ten Weeks in Birmingham, Alabama
Journalist Paul Kix tells the riveting story of those ten weeks in Birmingham that changed America in his book, You Have To Be Prepared To Die Before You Can Begin To Live.
During that time, Project Confrontation managed — just barely — to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. It’s a story of incredible courage facing vicious brutality, of brilliant strategy and true genius and, finally, a story of what people can do when they are prepared to die in order to live in freedom.
About the Author Paul Kix is a nonfiction author and journalist. He’s also the author of The Saboteur, a best-selling account of the world’s most daring World War II commando. You Have To Be Prepared To Die Before You Can Begin To Live is out from Celadon Press.
Read An Excerpt
Buzzy Jackson tells us the story of the Dutch anti-Nazi saboteur, Hannie Schaft and the lessons it holds for us as we confront fascism today. Her novel based on true events is To Die Beautiful.
Then Francesca reads a short excerpt from her own father’s story of resistance in the same war.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram and Threads @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on X @WritersVoice. Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show. Key Words: WWII, Hannie Schaft, Amsterdam, Writers Voice, Buzzy Jackson, podcast, book recommendations, author interview, book podcast, book show, fiction, history
Who Was Hannie Schaft? Hannie Schaft was a famous anti-fascist fighter in Amsterdam during WWII, a member of the Communist underground that carried out assassinations and sabotage against the Nazi Occupiers.
She dreamed of being a human rights lawyer, but when her two closest friends faced persecution as Jews, she felt she had to do something to save them and others like them.
We don’t yet face what Hannie Schaft did, but fascism is beginning to spread its odious threat over our country and the world once more.
Using Fiction to Tell Hannie Schadt’s Story Buzzy Jackson’s novel To Die Beautiful is a timely look at how fascism flourishes and what good people do to fight back.
Meticulously researched, the novel tells Hannie’s story with drama and compelling characters you won’t forget.
About The Author Buzzy Jackson is the award-winning author of three books of nonfiction, including . She is also a member of the National Book Critics’ Circle and writes for the Boston Globe and BookForum.
Read an excerpt from To Die Beautiful
An Amsterdam House of Resistance As mentioned in the conversation with Buzzy Jackson and as long time listeners to this show know, Francesca has written a book — not yet published — about her own father’s story of the Dutch resistance and how her discovery of it led her to understand who her father really was.
She reads an excerpt edited for radio from her book, Province of the Heart. It’s about her first encounter with her father’s story and the Amsterdam canal house where it all took place.
Guido Teunissen At The Herengracht Canal House 1943
Ava Chin tells us about her stunning family memoir/history of the Chinese Exclusion Act in America, Mott Street: A Chinese American Family’s Story of Exclusion and Homecoming.
Then we talk with Tanis Rideout about her new novel The Sea Between Two Shores. It’s about two families, one Canadian and one from an island in Vanuatu, who must deal with the legacy of colonialism in the South Pacific and the responsibilities they have to each other.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram and Threads @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice. Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show. Tags: fiction, nonfiction, memoir, Chinese Exclusion Act, Vanuatu, Ava Chin, Tanis Rideout, writer’s voice, podcast, book recommendations, author interview, book podcast, book show, book excerpt, history
Ava Chin, Mott Street Ava Chin’s writing studio is in the same building on Mott St in New York City’s Chinatown where her forebears lived for generations—on both sides of her family.
But she grew up estranged from her father and his family, raised by her mother and maternal grandparents.
Her drive to find out more about her father and his family led her on an odyssey of discovery that had relevance far beyond the circle of her family. It illustrates the whole history of Chinese immigration to the US., a history of exploitation and exclusion, as well as the Chinese community’s long struggle against injustice.
Chin relates this history in her spellbinding new book, Mott Street: A Chinese American Family’s Story of Exclusion and Homecoming.
About The Author Ava Chin is professor of creative nonfiction and journalism at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is the former Urban Forager columnist for the New York Times and her previous book was Eating Wildly.
Read an excerpt from Mott Street
Tanis Rideout, The Sea Between Two Shores In the early 1800s, a Nova Scotian couple arrives on the shores of an island in the Oceanic archipelago of what is now known as Vanuatu to convert the local Indigenous peoples. The arrival of these strangers leads to exchange and friction, cooperation and violence, culminating in a catastrophe the missionaries unwittingly unleash on the island.
Two hundred years later in Toronto, the Stewarts are a family locked in mourning after the accidental drowning of their youngest son. When Michelle Stewart receives an unexpected call from the island of Iparei inviting the Stewarts to participate in a reconciliation ceremony for their respective ancestors, she accepts in a desperate effort to save herself and her family.
This is the story that Tanis Rideout weaves in her novel The Sea Between Two Shores. Based loosely on actual events, the book explores how two cultures deal very differently with grief, the tragedies that bind them, and the responsibilities they may hold to each other.
About The Author In addition to The Sea Between Two Shores, Tanis Rideout is the author of the bestselling novel Above All Things and the poetry volume, Arguments with the Lake.
July 4, 2023 was the hottest day ever recorded on Earth. Are we exceeding the “Goldilocks zone” of a habitable planet?
We ask that question of climate journalist and author Jeff Goodell. His new book is THE HEAT WILL KILL YOU FIRST: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet.
We also revisit a conversation about suing the fossil fuel companies for scorching our planet. We play an excerpt from our 2017 interview with Lynn Zinser of Climate Liability News that is still relevant now, five years later.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice. Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show. Tags: climate change, global warming, extreme heat, Jeff Goodell, climate litigation, Lynn Zinser, podcast, book recommendations, author interview, book podcast, book show, creative nonfiction
Jeff Goodell: First Floods, Then Fire
The last time we spoke with climate journalist Jeff Goodell, it was about his 2017 book, The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World.
Now, he’s coming out with a sort of companion book, The Heat Will Kill You First, out July 11 from Little, Brown.
It’s about how the rise in global temperatures aren’t just playing havoc with sea levels, but affecting us more directly in the form of extreme heat.
Extreme Heat Happening Now Reading the The Heat Will Kill You First is like reading the latest headlines: from massive wildfires driven by scorched forests to outside workers dying from heat stroke to oceans hotter than ever recorded, all this is becoming terrifyingly familiar to us all.
Taking Action
But despite the title, The Heat Will Kill You First isn’t just about the threat that’s cooking the planet, but also about what can be done about it, from holding the perpetrators of this crime accountable—the fossil fuel companies—to how we can adapt in a way that makes for a safer, more equitable world.
About The Author
Jeff Goodell is the author of six previous books. He’s covered climate change for more than two decades at Rolling Stone and is a Senior Fellow at the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center.
Lynn Zinser: Suing the Fossil Fuel Companies
Back in 2017, we spoke with Lynn Zinser of Climate Liability News about the efforts to hold the fossil fuel companies legally responsible for the scorching of our planet. Some of the cases we spoke about then have seen important developments.
Climate Suits Go Forward
This year, the Supreme Court declined to interfere in states’ ability to sue under public nuisance laws — something that had been challenged by the polluters — allowing the suits to go forward.
And the landmark suit brought by a group of young people against the federal government under the public trust doctrine, Juliana v. U.S., just got the green light to head to trial. (You can tell the Department of Justice to stop trying to prevent the trial from happening.)
A similar case brought by the same law firm in Montana just concluded its trial June 20 and is waiting for the judge to rule.
But this five year old conversation with Zinser is still relevant today. She tells us how the public is seeking to hold the climate criminals to account. Listen to the full interview here.
The post Jeff Goodell talks climate change in THE HEAT WILL KILL YOU FIRST & Suing the Fossil Fuel Industry appeared first on Writer's Voice.
We talk with Jeff Sharlet about his new book, The Undertow: Scenes From A Slow Civil War.
Then we air part of an interview we did with Sharlet in 2009 about the increasing influence of rightwing extremism into the US military.
And finally, a review of Dennis Lehane’s new novel Small Mercies.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice. Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show. Tags: fascism, Trump, MAGA, Christian Right, Jeffrey Sharlet, Dennis Lehane, podcast, book recommendations, author interview, book podcast, book show, creative nonfiction, fiction
The Undertow: Rising Fascism in America Jeff Sharlet has long been an astute observer of the rise of the Christian Right in America. His book The Family revealed the long but implacable penetration of our central institutions — the state, the military, the courts — by fundamentalist billionaires of the Christian Right.
Now, in his new book The Undertow, Sharlet examines the spread of rightwing ideology among the masses and the new fascist movement it’s spurred.
The Trumpocene
He calls this era “the Trumpocene,” with its miasma of conspiracy-mongering, white supremacy and hatred of anything resembling true governance.
But Sharlet is not without compassion for the foot soldiers of the Trumpocene; he understands how its roots lie partially in the failure of the leaders of both political parties to serve the needs of the people they are supposed to represent.
The other part, of course, lies at the heart of America’s original sin — racism. This combustible mixture powers the fascism that threatens our imperfect democracy.
In the The Undertow, Sharlet offers us an unflinching look into the Trumpocene’s crucible — because, as he tells us in our conversation with him: “Fascism has a very terrible gravity that we must contend with if we are to stop it.”
About the Author
Jeff Sharlet is a journalist and bestselling author or editor of seven books. He teaches creative writing at Dartmouth College.
Read an excerpt from the Undertow
The Christian Right Infiltrates the Military
Back in 2009, we talked with Jeff Sharlet about how Christian extremists are embedding into the highest ranks of the military. We air an excerpt from that conversation.
Read Sharlet’s 2009 article “Jesus Killed Mohammed.”
Review of Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane If you want to trace the backstory of what Jeff Sharlet talks about in The Undertow—the current rise of mass movement fascism in America—you would do well to read Dennis Lehane’s new novel Small Mercies.
Set in Boston in the summer of 1974, during the fierce backlash against school bussing that was waged by white residents of the working class neighborhood of South Boston, Small Mercies is part crime fiction, part contemplation of the combustible mixture of class oppression with racial hatred.
Lehane writes what he knows: he grew up in Dorchester, a community much like its neighbor, Southie. He writes Small Mercies with an intimate eloquence that puts the reader right inside the story.
Whether it’s the crackling dialog, the exquisite detail of place, or the loving but unsparing character development, Small Mercies unfolds like sheer poetry among the gritty streets of South Boston. I found myself reading it slowly just for the sheer pleasure of it.
Mary Pat Fennessy’s teenage daughter has gone missing after a young Black high school student is found dead on the tracks of a T station in Southie. Her daughter had last been seen chasing the Black boy into the T station with three of her friends.
Mary Pat’s search to uncover her daughter’s fate is at the heart of a story that sets her against the Irish-American Mob that runs her community.
She wrestles with divided loyalties — to her community, to her fears about what change like bussing might bring to it, to her own sense of what constitutes justice in an unjust world. And above all, there is her loyalty to her missing daughter that propels the novel’s plot — and Mary Pat’s revenge.
The other protagonist is the Boston detective, Bobby. He’s from Southie, as well, but avoided falling prey to its pernicious racism by the luck of having parents who somehow saw through it for the absurdity it is. As he muses, “There were only two big sins in the house of his parents – feeling sorry for yourself and racism, which, when you think of it, are two sides of the same coin.”
That sentence sums up the toxic brew of grievance and racism fueling the slow civil war that Jeff Sharlet’s The Undertow explores–and the roots of which Small Mercies reveals.
The post Talking the Trumpocene with Jeff Sharlet & A Review of Dennis Lehane’s Small Mercies appeared first on Writer's Voice.
Family separation continues to devastate the lives of children, as explored in Sylvia Rodriguez-Vega‘s book, Drawing Deportation: Art and Resistance among Immigrant Children. This poignant work delves into the traumatic experiences faced by immigrant children and showcases the healing power of art in their recovery. We talk with Sylvia Rodriguez-Vega in this pod’s first segment.
Then we talk with Amy Beutens about You Are The Universe: Ram Dass Maps The Journey, which brings to life the profound teachings of renowned spiritual teacher Ram Dass. With captivating illustrations and co-editing by Julie Weinstein, this graphic book conveys a transformative message of love and unity, appealing to both teens and adults.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice. Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show. Tags: immigration, family separation, Ram Dass, spiritual journey, Amy Beutens, Sylvia Rodriguez-Vega, writers voice, podcast, book recommendations, author interview, book podcast, book show, nonfiction
Family Separation: Still Happening
Many Americans were profoundly shocked at the images of young children held in cages at the southern border when former president Trump imposed his family separation policy. But the US has been separating immigrant families for long before Trump—and continues to do so under Biden.
It’s not just happening at the border. Every day, families are being ripped apart as our cruel and dysfunctional immigration system deports parents, leaving traumatized children behind. Just the constant fear of deportation is enough to damage the health and wellbeing of children.
Immigrant Children: Healing Trauma Through Art
My guest Sylvia Rodriguez-Vega explores the trauma of immigrant children and innovative programs of using art to deal with the trauma. Her book Drawing Deportation draws on her ten years of work with those children, helping them express their fears and hopes through art and theater.
It shows the healing power of art, but also calls for systematic change to stop traumatizing kids in the first place.
About the Author
Sylvia Rodriguez-Vega teaches at US Santa Barbara about structural inequality, ethnic studies, immigration policy, and arts and activism through performance and digital media.
You Are the Universe: Ram Dass Maps the Journey
Ram Dass was one of America’s most loved spiritual teachers. His dedication to the service of others is what drew Writer’s Voice host Francesca Rheannon to him, notably with his book How Can I Help.
Ram Dass’ Message
But even before that book, he opened her and many others of her generation to a way of being that transcended social expectations with his book Be Here Now. His message wasn’t so much that of his Harvard colleague Tim Leary: turn on, tune in and drop out, as it was tune in and love everybody.
That’s the message at the heart of a lovely new graphic book for teens and adults, You Are the Universe: Ram Dass Maps the Journey.
Using Ram Dass’ own words from writings and recordings, Amy Beutens illustrated and co-edited the book with her twin sister and long-time collaborator, Julie Weinstein.
See illustrations from You Are the Universe
The post Justice for Immigrant Children with Sylvia Rodriguez-Vega & Ram Dass with Amy Beutens appeared first on Writer's Voice.
A profoundly humanist novel tackles the tragedies of life:
As a physician I’m perhaps more aware than most people of how perilous our everyday lives are and how quickly they could transition to something quite disastrous. And I think in America especially we exist in a sort of denial of our mortality…As a result we are very shocked when any hint of tragedy comes our way. — Abraham Verghese
We spend the hour speaking with Abraham Verghese, first about his latest novel, The Covenant of Water. Then, we look back to our 2009 conversation with him about his novel Cutting for Stone.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with FrancescaTags Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice. Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show. Tags: Abraham Verghese, Francesca Rheannon, Writers Voice, fiction, India, Kerala, podcast, book recommendations, author interview, book podcast, book show
A Peculiar Affliction The Covenant of Water is Abraham Verghese’s acclaimed new novel, fourteen years after his breakout book, Cutting for Stone.
Set in Kerala, India, and spanning the years 1900 to 1977, it revolves around a family plagued by a peculiar affliction—drowning deaths occurring in every generation, while living in a coastal community where water is a dominant feature of the landscape.
A Tale of Bygone India As part of a Christian community tracing back to the apostles, the matriarch, Big Ammachi, witnesses unimaginable changes during her extraordinary life.
Verghese showcases his remarkable storytelling with scenes of medical ingenuity, moments of humor, and deeply moving characters.
This beautifully written tale of a bygone India celebrates the resilience of human spirit in the face of adversity and the connections that make that resilience possible.
About The Author Abraham Verghese is a best-selling author and a physician. He received the Heinz Award in 2014 and was awarded the National Humanities Medal, presented by President Barack Obama, in 2015. The Covenant of Water is an Oprah’s Book Club selection.
Listen to an excerpt
Cutting For Stone The first time we talked with Abraham Verghese was in 2009 about his book Cutting for Stone. Like The Covenant of Water, it features the practice of medicine as a major theme of the novel.
In Memoriam for Daniel Ellsberg
Daniel Ellsberg died June 16. He was an exemplar of courage and integrity. A patriot of the highest order, he was a profound source of good for humankind. We spoke with Ellsberg in 2018. Listen here.
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Travel writer Jane Marshall takes us on her modern quest for Shangri La; her book is Searching for Happy Valley.
Then, Francesca shares a story from her own journey to a Happy Valley in the foothills of the Maritime Alps of Haute Provence, where a market vendor of medicinal herbs taught her something about true vocation.
“I feel like if we can spend time in a place like one of these Happy Valleys that still holds these wisdom cultures that had these technologies and these systems that survived thousands and thousands of years before industrialization, that maybe we can learn how to respect the land again.” Jane Marshall
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice. Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show. Tags: Writers Voice, podcast, book recommendations, author interview, book podcast, book show, creative nonfiction, travel, Jane Marshall, Shangri-La
Searching for Happy Valley
During her career as a travel writer, Jane Marshall has explored remote mountainous destinations worldwide.
Through her journeys, she discovered something remarkable: secluded valleys, referred to as “Happy Valleys” by the local inhabitants, that shared common attributes.
Common Traits of Happy Valleys
They are geographically isolated and shielded by towering mountains, hosting rare and endangered flora and fauna. They exist outside protected zones, which grants them autonomy but also exposes them to vulnerability.
The Indigenous populations in these valleys name the land after various body parts, both human and divine, and they hold women in high regard, recognizing their power.
Inside these Happy Valleys a harmonious relationship between humans and nature has been established.
What Happy Valleys Teach Us
Sleeping on ridges, in caves, and in the traditional dwellings of the locals, Marshall endured arduous journeys in her quest to comprehend the profound serenity she experienced within these places.
From residing in a goat herder’s hut in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains to participating in a Sundance ceremony with the Blackfoot/Soki-tapi people in Alberta, and ultimately embarking on a perilous pilgrimage in Nepal, where she reaches the heart of a sacred land adorned with treasures hidden by a renowned yogi, Jane Marshall takes readers on an extraordinary adventure.
In this episode, she tells us about this quest for Shangri-La and the wisdom that can potentially save the planet and nourish our own spirits.
About The Author
Jane Marshall is a writer who lives in Alberta, Canada. Her previous book was Back Over the Mountains: A Journey To The Buddha Within. She is the founder of The Compassion Project, which provides free health care and education to a mountain community in Nepal.
Read The Transcript
A Story From Province of the Heart: “The Cure Hunter” by Francesca Rheannon
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We talk with Peggy Orenstein about her book, Unraveling: What I Learned About Life While Shearing Sheep, Dyeing Wool, and Making the World’s Ugliest Sweater.
But first, Katy Simpson Smith tells us about her new novel, The Weeds. It weaves history, botany, feminism and the climate crisis together into a compelling and sharply funny tale.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004.Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice.Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show.Tags: Writer’s Voice, podcast, book recommendations, author interview, book podcast, book show, book excerpt, nonfiction, fiction, botany, knitting
Katy Simpson Smith, THE WEEDSIn The Weeds by Katy Simpson Smith, two women, one from today’s Mississippi and another from Italy in 1854, navigate the Roman Colosseum documenting the plants they find there for their respective employers.
Through a list of seemingly minor plants and their uses—medical, agricultural, culinary—these women calculate intangible threats: a changing climate, the cost of knowledge, and the ways repeated violence can upend women’s lives.
They must forge their own small acts of defiance and slip through whatever cracks they find to redefine the roles women are given and have taken from them, and the lives they make for themselves.
About the AuthorKaty Simpson Smith is the author of four novels and one book of historical nonfiction.Listen to or read an excerpt from The Weeds
Listen to Other Writer’s Voice Interviews with Katy Simpson Smith
Peggy Orenstein, UNRAVELINGWhen the Covid Pandemic lockdown upended Peggy Orenstein’s life, she decided she needed something compelling to do.
So of course, she decided to learn one of the most difficult skills there is: shearing sheep.
That’s because, a lifelong knitter, she thought it would be great fun to make a sweater from scratch: from shearing to carding the wool to dyeing it and, finally, knitting it.
Along the way, she learned a lot of other things, too, like the environmental impact of fleece—and even worse, its artificial alternative—how women’s handwork has changed the world, colonialism and color and much more. Orenstein shares her findings in her new book Unraveling.
About the AuthorPeggy Orenstein is the author of numerous books, including Girls and Sex, Boys and Sex, and Cinderella Ate My Daughter.
Read or listen to an excerpt from Unraveling
Next Week on Writer’s Voice
Amy Beutens, You Are The Universe and Jane Marshall, Searching for Happy Valley.
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Today on Writer’s Voice, an eclectic offering. Later in the show, we talk about eggs: actual, mythological and artistic. Author Lizzie Stark tells us about her book, Egg.
But first, we talk about media literacy, something that is vital if we are to preserve and strengthen democracy. We speak with Allison Butler about the book she co-wrote for Project Censored, THE MEDIA AND ME: A Guide To Critical Media Literacy For Young People.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004.Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice.Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show.Read Transcript
Tags: writers voice, podcast, book recommendations, media, media literacy, author interview, book podcast, book show, book excerpt, nonfiction, eggs
Media Literacy And Young People
Young people are voracious media consumers. 8 to 18 year olds pack in more than 11 hours of some form of media every day, often multi-tasking between a number of different media streams and screens.
Yet how much do they really understand about how to consume media–the biases and manipulations that are part and parcel of the media landscape? Not so much. In fact, media literacy among young people is quite low.
Teaching Critical Inquiry About Media
That’s a lack that Allison Butler and her nine co-authors seek to redress with their terrific book for young people, high-school age through college (and just as useful for grownups.)
The Media and Me is a guide to critical media literacy, developed by a collective of writers brought together by Project Censored, an organization devoted to educating students and the public about the importance of a truly free press.
The book gives readers critical inquiry skills, covering topics like storytelling, building arguments and recognizing fallacies, surveillance and digital gatekeeping, advertising and consumerism, among other issues.
About the Author
Allison Butler is director of the Media Literacy Certificate Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
The Amazing Egg
The egg is an object so common, so ubiquitous—and we’re talking eggs of all types—that most of us probably don’t think much about it, unless we are planning to cook it, usually in its chicken-derived form.
But the egg is a powerful symbol in mythology, an object of art—and not just for Easter, a concern of prospective parents, and even a target for crime.
Lizzie Stark’s book Egg: A Dozen Ovatures lays out an unconventional history of this cellular workhorse, from chickens to penguins, from art to crime, and more.
Listen to An Excerpt
About the AuthorIn addition to Egg, Lizzie Stark is the author of two other nonfiction books, Pandora’s DNA and Leaving Mundania. Her writing has been featured in the Washington Post, the Daily Beast, and the Philadelphia Inquirer, among other publications.
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Writer’s Voice spends the hour with Jonathan Eig talking about his acclaimed new biography, KING: A Life. It’s a captivating portrait of the renowned civil rights leader, unveiling new material and providing an intimate perspective.
“He suffered tremendously from doubt. And he suffered terribly from the effects of the FBI assault on him. He kept doing his work. He kept marching forward. He kept going more and more boldly into the breach. But it had an impact. He was hospitalized several times, maybe, fair to say, many times for exhaustion, for just succumbing to the stress of what he was doing. So that kind of courage in the face of doubt, to me, makes him even more heroic.” — Jonathan Eig
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004.Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice.Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show.Key words: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., MLK, Jonathan Eig, history, biography, podcast, book recommendations, author interview, book podcast, book show, creative nonfiction
An Intimate PortraitThere have been many books written about Dr. MLK, Jr. But the one just published by Jonathan Eig stands out, not only for the new material Eig reveals but for the intimacy of his portrait of the famed civil rights leader.
A Journey of PurposeThe book delves into Dr. King’s upbringing, his initial hesitations about following in his father’s preaching footsteps, and the pivotal moment when he realized that his path was chosen by a higher power, as he saw it, for the cause of racial justice.
Relentless PersecutionThe book uncovers the relentless persecution endured by King at the hands of J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, who called the Reverend “the most dangerous man in America.”
The Complex ManKing: A Life explores the multifaceted character of MLK, Jr., including his flaws as a man and husband, such as sexism and undervaluing women’s leadership in the civil rights movement, as well as his tendency to borrow words from others in his writings.
Undaunted CourageEig writes movingly about King’s profound courage in the face of unrelenting attacks and his undying faith in humanity. The book brings it all comes together in a spellbinding story written by a master storyteller.
Jonathan Eig is the author of six books, including a biography of Muhammed Ali.
Read or Listen to An Excerpt
Read The Transcript
Coming up Next Week on Writer’s Voice:We talk with Allison Butler, THE MEDIA AND ME: A Guide to Critical Media Literacy for Young People. Also, Lizzie Stark tells us about her book, EGG: A Dozen Ovatures.
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Did you know that American English (not British English) is one of the very few languages that has no dialects? No matter where you are from in this big country, you can easily understand the speech of anyone else. That’s true, even with having different regional accents or ethnic differences such as Black English.
That’s one of the many fascinating things one learns from reading Ilan Stavans’ anthology of writings in American English, spanning 450 years of our history as a nation. We talk with Stavans about The People’s Tongue: Americans and the English Language.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004.Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice.Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show.Key words: language, English language, Ilan Stavans, anthology, podcast, book recommendation
American English Spanning the Centuries
Ilan Stavans’ anthology The People’s Tongue features a wide array of letters, poems, memoir, stories, songs, documents, and essays, from Sojourner Truth and Abraham Lincoln to Henry Roth and Zora Neale Hurston, from George Carlin and James Baldwin to Louise Erdrich and hiphop artist Kendrick Lamar— all elucidating the breadth and depth of this free-wheeling, eclectic, ever-changing, immigrant-forged magnificent language of ours.
Stavans Brings Immigrant’s Sensibility to Our Language
Ilan Stavans is an immigrant himself, and, as such, he has a deep understanding of how the immigrant experience has shaped American English, giving it a richness and elasticity that few other languages can rival.
But he also notes the debt it owes to the indigenous peoples of this continent, whose stamp on the land is most obvious in the numerous place names that remind of their presence — and of the settler’s theft of their territory.
About the Author
Ilan Stavans is the author of many books and anthologies. He’s professor of Humanities, Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College.
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I’ve been thinking about climate change lately in really simple terms: that it’s really about the people and the places we love. It isn’t actually any more complex than that. So, yes, we talk a lot about parts per million and all these degrees of warming and all these complex things. And they are indeed metrics that scientists use to talk about climate change. But if you just strip it all the way back, it is really about protecting those places that we love and the beautiful planet that we live on as well. — Joëlle Gergis
We spend the hour with IPCC climate scientist Joëlle Gergis, talking about her powerful and moving book, Humanity’s Moment: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope.
It’s about how she grapples with the grief her scientific findings confront her with — but also the hope she feels as she witnesses how the tide is turning toward climate protection.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004.Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice.Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show.Key terms: climate change, IPCC, Joëlle Gergis, climate science, podcast
Climate Impacts Happening Much Faster Than Predicted
When climate scientist Joëlle Gergis set to work on the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report, the research she encountered kept her up at night. Through countless hours spent with the world’s top scientists to piece together the latest global assessment of climate change, she realized that the impacts were occurring faster than anyone had predicted.
In Humanity’s Moment, Gergis takes us through the science with unflinching honesty, explaining what it means for our future, while sharing her personal reflections on bearing witness to the heartbreak of the climate emergency unfolding in real time.
Political Will To Act Means Feeling Our Connection To The Planet
Gergis shows us that the solutions we need to live sustainably already exist—we just need the political will to create a better world. Humanity’s Moment is a climate scientist’s guide to rekindling hope, and a call to action to restore our relationship with ourselves, each other, and our planet.
About the Author
Joëlle Gergis is a climate scientist and writer at the Australian National University. She was a lead author on the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report and is also an advisor to the Climate Council, Australia’s leading independent body providing expert advice to the public on climate change and policy. In addition to Humanity’s Moment, she is the author of Sunburnt Country: The Future and History of Climate Change in Australia.
Read An Excerpt
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Our Miraculous Microbiome Is Under Threat
Our microbiome, the collection of microbes that live in and on our bodies, is under threat. Antibiotics, processed foods, and even stress can disrupt the delicate balance of our gut bacteria, leading to a range of health problems. Problems with our gut microbiome could be factors in the rise of diabetes, obesity, food allergies and even developmental disorders like autism.
We talk with filmmakers Sarah Schenck and Steven Lawrence about their film The Invisible Extinction. It’s about the threats to our life-supporting microbiome and the scientists racing to save our vanishing microbes before it’s too late.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004.Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice.Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show.Key words: microbiome, biodiversity, documentary, Sarah Schenck, Steven Lawrence, film, podcast, diabetes, obesity, health, autism
The Invisible Extinction
People living in modern societies are experiencing an “Invisible Extinction” of the biodiversity of organisms in our bodies, with serious consequences for our health. And it’s happening even faster than the climate crisis.
In their film The Invisible Extinction, Sarah Schenck and Steven Lawrence follow scientists Gloria Dominguez-Bello and Marty Blaser into places like the Amazonian jungle to find out what is killing our microbes and what we can do about it.
They also talk to researchers in China and Israel, who are on the hunt for cures to common diseases that may be caused by the loss of diversity in our gut microbiome.
About the Filmmakers
Sarah Schenck is a writer, director, and producer who makes films to advance public health. Previous films include Virgin, the comedy Slippery Slope and an episode for the PBS weekly news program “Need to Know,” that focused on childhood obesity.
Steven Lawrence is a producer-director who has been making documentaries for over 30 years, including The Cat Rescuers, winner of the 2018 Hamptons International Film Festival animal rights award. He worked Michael Apted on several films, including The Long Way Home and Married In America and created the Emmy-award winning series Born In The USSR.
Interview Transcript
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How can we make the change we need to save our future?
I spent a lot of time studying how we as collective agents of history have helped foment enormous change and also how we have failed at it. That was another important element, to look at the revolutions that did not work. Because unlike basically every one of those revolutions, this is something we can’t miss on. We’re not going to get a do-over on this. It’s now or never. — Stephen Markley
We talk with Stephen Markley about his acclaimed new novel about the climate crisis, The Deluge. It lays out the different paths that may be taken to changing the political will to tackle climate, the unintended consequences they lead to, and the twists and turns of political, ecological and individual fates that intertwine and react with each other.
Then we talk about what we can do in our own lives to protect our planet from climate disaster. We air excerpts from our interviews with Peter Kalmus (Being The Change) and Darr Reilly of Carbon C.R.E.W.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004.Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice.Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show.We Can Solve The Climate Crisis
We have the science, the technology and the money to deal with the climate crisis. Solar and wind are the cheapest forms of energy. Yes, we can improve on the tech and drive costs even lower. But basically, we know how to get to net zero carbon emissions by 2050, which scientists tell us can avert the most catastrophic impacts of climate change.
And good news! It turns out that once the world reaches net zero, global temperatures will stop going up in as soon as three to five years. And half of human-made CO2 emissions would drop out of the atmosphere within about 30 years. We can do this.
The Real Barrier to Climate Action
So what’s stopping us? In short, political will. And the lack of political will in tackling the climate crisis is driven by two other crises: the crisis of economic inequality, which drives the crisis of democracy.
That’s the key takeaway from Stephen Markely’s brilliant and engrossing new novel, The Deluge.
Different Paths to Action on Climate
The book lays out the different paths that may be taken to changing the political will to tackle climate, the unintended consequences they lead to, and the twists and turns of political, ecological and individual fates that intertwine and react with each other.
How could a pro-climate mass movement get created? What about eco-sabotage? Or electoral politics? And how do the fossil fuel interests and the politicians they control try to stop that change? Can they be resisted and overcome? And finally, how can democratic movements counter increasing authoritarianism to save our future?
These are all questions Markely explores In gripping prose and vivid characters — like Kate Morris, the charismatic leader of the mass climate movement, Fierce Blue Fire. He brings the near future into sharp focus, making the world we are moving toward vividly real.
About The Author
In addition to The Deluge, Stephen Markley is the author of the novel Ohio, and two memoirs, Iceland and Publish This Book.
Read an excerpt from The Deluge
What You Can Do To Protect The Climate & Live Better
Earth Day happens this week, a time for people to celebrate our beautiful planetary home and honor it by thinking of ways we can protect it. We’ve taken two excerpts from past episodes that help us do just that.
First, a clip from our 2017 interview with atmospheric scientist Peter Kalmus. Last year he was arrested for locking himself onto an entrance to the JP Morgan Chase building in downtown LA. That bank is the number one funder of fossil fuel projects around the world.
But before that, Kalmus wrote a book about how to make personal choices to help protect the climate, Being The Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution. It’s not just about decreasing your own carbon footprint, but motivating other people to do the same.
Connecting Neighbors with Carbon C.R.E.W.
One way to spread the word on climate is to connect with your neighbors. That’s what a new initiative aims to help anybody do. It’s called Carbon C.R.E.W. and it was co-founded by our guest from early January of this year, Darr Reilly.
Carbon C.R.E.W. was an outgrowth of her activism with the global climate movement called Project Drawdown, founded by Paul Hawken.
Drawdown talks about 100 solutions to the climate crisis that people and communities can take on their own. And Carbon C.R.E.W. is designed to make that easy for small groups of friends and neighbors to do. Members of a Carbon Crew meet for five sessions to develop their own personal carbon reduction plan.
Since that interview that we aired in January, Carbon C.R.E.W. has upgraded its program. It’s now a turn-key process to set up and host a carbon crew, with scripts, handouts, worksheets and resources. Learn more about it here.
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Spring is here and the birds are returning. But the roar of the leaf blowers is a big turn-off to our feathered friends:
Right now they’re starting to migrate back in from Central and South America and either coming through or stopping to stay and breed. And if they’re going to a spot where there’s this constant noise, well, why are they going to want to nest there?
We talk with Nancy Lawson about her book, Wildscape: Trilling Chipmunks, Beckoning Blooms, Salty Butterflies, And Other Sensory Wonders Of Nature. It’s about the vibrant web of nature outside our back door—where animals and plants perceive and communicate using marvelous sensory abilities we are only beginning to understand.
Then, a novel links the Pandora myth to a young namesake in Jane Austen’s London — and a mystery that must be solved. Susan Stokes Chapman tells us about Pandora.
What We Are Missing and Messing Up About The Nature Around Us
As Writer’s Voice celebrates Earth Month, we are watching the Earth come alive with the new Spring season. But how much of the wildscape around us do we really appreciate? How much of it can we truly see, hear or smell? And how much of it are we disturbing and suppressing with our heedless pursuit of perfect lawns and gardens filled with fancy exotics?
Naturalist Nancy Lawson’s first book, The Humane Gardener, explored the importance of creating habitats for wildlife in our own backyards by creating diverse ecosystems with pollinator-friendly native plants and other wildlife-friendly practices.
The Five Senses of the WIldscape
Lawson’s new book Wildscape takes us deeper into understanding the secret lives of the animals, insects and plants that surround us.
Lawson takes readers on a fascinating tour of the vibrant web of nature outside our back door—where animals and plants perceive and communicate using marvelous sensory abilities we are only beginning to understand.
Organized into chapters investigating each of their five senses, Lawson’s exploration reveals a remarkable world of interdependent creatures with amazing capabilities.
About the Author
In addition to WIldscape, Nancy Lawson is the author of The Humane Gardener: Nurturing a Backyard Habitat for Wildlife, a habitat consultant, and a national speaker on garden ecology. She founded Humane Gardener to pioneer creative planting strategies and other animal-friendly landscaping methods.
A Turtle In Nancy Lawson’s Garden
The Pandora Myth
The Ancient Greek myth of Pandora is a cautionary tale about the dangers of female curiosity—curiosity that unleashes all the ills that plague Man.
But what if that curiosity is actually a strength? One that expresses the power of female creativity? That’s a theme explored in Susan Stokes Chapman’s novel Pandora.
A historical novel with touches of Gothic horror, good old-fashioned mystery and a fascinating look at the illegal trade in antiquities in London in 1799, Pandora is a cinematic and compelling work of fiction, where the discovery of a mysterious ancient Greek vase sets in motion conspiracies, revelations, and romance.
Susan Stokes-Chapman is a writer based in North Wales. Pandora was first published in the UK in January 2022 and became an instant #1 bestseller. It came out in the US in January from Harper Perennial.
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Oh, those pesky beavers, Interfering with our property values! Right?
Wrong. We talk with Leila Philip about beavers, a keystone species that we need to protect as we face the challenges of climate chaos. Her book is Beaver Land: How One Weird Rodent Made America.
Then, we missed it last week: the Day of Transgender Visibility. But with all the vicious rightwing attacks on transgender people and the fascist laws being passed against them, we thought “better late than never.”
So, we bring you a piece from our archives that we first aired in 2019. It’s an excerpt from our interview with Mimi LeMay about her memoir What We Will Become. It’s about how her family learned to come to terms with the fact that their young child was transgender—and how they came to support him.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004.Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice.Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show.April Is Earth MonthToday, we begin our programming for Earth Month—because one day, Earth Day, is really not enough to celebrate this miraculous only world we’ve got. We’ll be featuring segments on the environment for the rest of April.
Beaver LandWe kick Earth Month off with Leila Philip’s wonderful book Beaver Land. An NPR Science Friday Book Club Selection and New York Times Editors’ Choice, Beaver Land is a fascinating exploration of one of the most important animals we hardly ever think of.
Philip tells us how beavers engineered the landscape of North America. When they were nearly extirpated, we lost their “ecosystem services” to our detriment. And now, as we face the devastating impacts of climate chaos, beavers can play a key role in making us more resilient.
But isn’t it the height of narcissism to always think about the worth of other animals from the point of view of what they can do for us? One of the key pleasures of reading Beaver Land is the wonderment and awe the reader feels in learning about this magnificent creature.
Beavers have shaped the land for good. We can learn a mighty lesson about being good stewards of our planet from them.
About The AuthorLeila Philip is an American writer, poet and educator. She is the author of award-winning books of nonfiction which have received glowing national reviews. In addition to Beaverland, her books include: A Family Place: A Hudson Valley Farm, Three Centuries, Five Wars, One Family, Hidden Dialogue: A Discussion Between Women in Japan and the United States, The Road Through Miyama) and one collection of poetry (Water Rising).
Watch the trailer for The Beaver Believers
Celebrating Transgender People150 bills against transgender people are being considered in state legislatures across the country. This is an unprecedented number—but even one bill is too much.
Back in 2019, when we interviewed Mimi LeMay about her book What We Will Become, it seemed like transgender people were finally beginning to get the respect and love they deserve.
Her son Jacob knew he was a boy from the age of three, but his parents didn’t accept that fact until he was five. It hurts the heart to think what he must be going through now as he witnesses the mean-spirited bigotry and hatred driving so many Republicans as they try to take away his freedom to be himself.
LeMay’s memoir unfolds in two strands—one about her getting free of her upbringing in a conservative Orthodox Jewish family and the other about her son Jacob, and his journey from being LeMay’s daughter, Em to becoming accepted as a transgender boy. This excerpt is about Jacob’s journey.
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We talk with Elsa Panciroli about her book, BEASTS BEFORE US: The Untold Story of Mammal Origins and Evolution. Delving into the fascinating and little-known history of mammal evolution, she provides a fascinating and uplifting look at the resilience of life on this planet, through the lens of how mammals came to be.
Then, motivated by the pandemic lockdown, many people renewed a gardening tradition that was all the rage during WWII, the Victory garden. We kick off the gardening season talking with gardening book author Maggie Stuckey about The Container Victory Garden: A Beginners Guide To Growing Your Own Groceries.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004.Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice. Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show.Keywords: mammal evolution, paleontology, Elsa Panciroli, Beasts Before Us, University of Oxford, research fellow, science writers, container gardening, victory gardens, Maggie Stuckey, vegetable gardening
When Did Mammals Get Their Start?Mammals like us got our start when the dinosaurs went extinct 66 million years ago, right?
No, actually. We began w-a-a-y before that, when the Earth had only one continent and centipedes the size of cars roamed the land. It was like an alien planet. Those creatures are long extinct, but mammals rebounded to spread throughout the globe.
A New Understanding of ExtinctionWhy is this important? Because, as we are now in the midst of the Sixth mass extinction event in the Earth’s history, we can learn a whole lot about life, extinction and regeneration from the 350 million-year-long mammal lineage we come from.
Elsa Panciroli’s book Beasts Before Us provides a fascinating and uplifting look at the resilience of life on this planet, through the lens of how mammals came to be. It reframes the narrative of our mammalian ancestors and provides a counterpoint to the stereotypes of mighty dinosaur overlords and cowering little mammals. It turns out the earliest mammals weren’t just precursors, they were pioneers.
About the AuthorElsa Panciroli is a Scottish palaeontologist who studies the evolution and ecology of extinct animals. She is a researcher based at the University of Oxford and associate researcher at the National Museums of Scotland.
Read an excerpt from Beasts Before Us
Container Gardening
Gardening season is heating up. Seedlings are sitting in home greenhouses and some are already in their beds — and containers. Some people rely on containers for home-grown veggies for convenient access and protection from pests. But many other folks rely on them for lack of space.
Container Gardening is Tricky
But gardening in containers can be tricky: they can get too little or too much water and it’s best to get varieties that thrive in small spaces.
Maggie Stuckey’s new book The Container Victory Garden is a great guide for beginners. It also recounts the history of Victory Gardens, from their start in WWI to their flourishing in WWII, with stories about some of those gardeners of old.
About The Author
Maggie Stuckey is the author of numerous books about gardening, including Gardening From the Ground Up and The Complete Herb Book.
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Why does the Democratic Party struggle so much to win elections by comfortable margins (when it isn’t losing them) despite the fact that the Republicans are so extreme?
Could there be a hint in the fact that so many ordinary Americans keep losing ground economically, no matter who holds the reins of power? Clearly, the myth of the American Dream isn’t working.
In this episode, we talk first with Ed Burmila about his book, Chaotic Neutral: How the Democrats Lost Their Soul in the Center. Then, Alissa Quart of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project tells us about her just released new book, Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004.Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice.And don’t forget to subscribe to Writer’s Voice and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform.Have The Democrats Lost Their Soul?In Chaotic Neutral, Burmila examines the Democratic Party’s shift towards the political center-right over the past three decades and argues that this has come at a great cost, both to the party and the country.
He makes the case that the party has lost its soul and its ability to effectively represent its constituents, suggesting that it’s time for a new approach.
The American Dream Doesn’t Work Anymore (it never did)The American Dream says, anyone can go from rags to riches by pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. It’s a cruel myth that Alissa Quart of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project explodes in her new book, Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream.
In Bootstrapped, Quart explores the ways in which the “American Dream” has been sold to us as a means of achieving success and happiness, but has instead created a culture of overwork, burnout, and inequality. She provides practical solutions for breaking free from this cycle and creating a new American Dream based not on “rugged individualism” but on social solidarity.
In this episode, we dive deep into these two important books and have a thought-provoking discussion about the state of American politics and culture.
About the AuthorsEd Burmila has written for the Nation magazine and the Washington Post and hosts the podcast Mass for Shut-ins.
In addition to Bootstrapped, Alissa Quart is the author of four other nonfiction books, including Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America. She is the Executive Director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and the author of two books of poetry, Thoughts and Prayers and Monetized.
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We talk with Fintan O’Toole about his scathing — and tender — personal history of modern Ireland, We Don’t Know Ourselves. Then we hear Seamus Heaney reading a poem and a rare recording of storyteller Susan Porter reading from the Irish legend of Cuchulain.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004.Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice.Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show.A Personal History of Modern IrelandAs a journalist and critic for the Irish Times since 1988, Fintan O’Toole has had a front row seat on Ireland’s cultural, political and economic transformation from European backwater to center of global business.
His bestselling book, We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History Of Modern Ireland, is unsparing in its critique of those who ruled the country. But it’s a critique founded on a profound love for his long-beleaguered compatriots. And O’Toole draws a cautionary lesson for us here in the US, as the lines separating Church and State become ever more eroded.
The Irish TheocracyWhen Fintan O’Toole was born in 1958, Ireland was perhaps the poorest country in Europe. Most of its people scrabbled out a meagre living on the land. The country’s main export, aside from cattle, was its own youth; facing bleak prospects at home, young people fled abroad to England, America and elsewhere in droves.
“Religion and politics are pretty important things in and of themselves, but when you fuse them into a single identity, it actually becomes pretty toxic.” — Fintan O’Toole
Ireland was also in the grip of what can only be described as a theocracy. The Catholic Church ruled over the most intimate aspects of people’s lives: the family, reproduction, sexuality, education and healthcare. Anything that violated the strict dictates of the Church was severely punished — except, of course, for the pedophilia rampant among the priesthood, which was ignored. Corruption reigned in both Church and State.
The Irish TigerNow Ireland is a global center for the technology and pharmaceutical industries. Abortion and gay marriage are legal. The gender apartheid that reigned of old has been overturned. Much has changed, although the Irish Tiger’s neoliberalism hasn’t put an end to corruption—it’s just altered the playing fields.
About The AuthorFintan O’Toole is a columnist for the Irish Times and teaches at Princeton University. He was drama critic for the New York Daily News, as well as the Irish Times, and is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books.
A New York Times Bestseller, We Don’t Know Ourselves was named among the 10 best books of 2022. It’s now out in paperback from W.W. Norton.
Seamus Heaney’s Poem “Whatever You Say, Say Nothing”
Susan Porter, the Story of Cuchulain
During the 1960s hippie heyday of Big Sur, California, the storyteller Susan Porter recorded an album of Stories from Irish Mythology. Francesca’s father, Guido Teunissen, lived on Porter’s property in a house on a promontory overlooking the Pacific Ocean. She has in her possession a cassette tape of Porter’s album, sent to her by her father. We hear a clip from the story of Cuchulain, read by Porter. The audio quality is faded — but that only adds to it air of mystery.
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We talk with historian Felicia Kornbluh about her book, A Woman’s Life Is a Human Life: My Mother, Our Neighbor, and the Journey from Reproductive Rights to Reproductive Justice.
Then we re-air a clip from our conversation with Dolen Perkins-Valdez about the famous reproductive justice case that inspired her novel Take My Hand.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004.Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice.Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show.Key words: International Women’s Day, reproductive rights, reproductive justice, abortion rights, reproductive choice, Roe V. Wade, women’s history month, podcast
Introduction
This week’s episode celebrates International Women’s Day. It’s the first March 8 since the US Supreme Court overturned Roe V. Wade, relegating women instantly to the status of second class citizens without control over their reproductive choices. Choice still exists in those states that protect it—but for how long? A decision could come soon banning access to abortion medication throughout the land.
The fight continues: on March 7, five women sued the state of Texas after being denied medically necessary abortions, asserting the state’s draconian abortion ban threatens the lives and health of pregnant people.
Reproductive Rights, Reproductive JusticeWe center our episode on the fight for reproductive choice. Our first guest is Felicia Kornbluh. Her book, A Woman’s Life Is A Human Life, chronicles the spell-binding story of how the first law legalizing abortion in the US was passed—in New York in 1970.
But it also tells a second parallel story, the fight for reproductive justice, protecting poor women against involuntary sterilization.
Both stories touched Kornbluh personally. Her mother, Beatrice Kornbluh-Braun, was prominent in the fight for abortion rights; her neighbor, Dr. Helen Rodriguez-Trias, who lived across the hall in her childhood home in a New York apartment building, was instrumental in the fight against involuntary sterilization of poor women of color.
About the AuthorFelicia Kornbluh is Professor of History and Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at the University of Vermont. She’s the author of two previous books, The Battle for Welfare Rights and Ensuring Poverty: Welfare Reform in Feminist Perspective. She has also served as a board member for Planned Parenthood.
Listen to an Excerpt from A Woman’s Life Is a Human Life
(Music Credit: Abortion Song by The New Haven Women’s Liberation Rock Band from the album Papa, Don’t Lay That Shit On Me, ℗ 2005 Rounder Records. Distributed by Concord.)
Reproductive Justice: the Relf Sisters Case
In her interview, Felicia Kornbluh spoke about the pivotal case for reproductive justice in the US, Relf v. Weinberger, which resulted in a prohibition against the use of federal funds for involuntary sterilization.
Last September, we spoke with Dolen Perkins Valdez, whose novel Take My Hand was based on that case. We play an excerpt from that interview. Listen to the whole interview here.
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We talk with John de Graaf about his new film, Stewart Udall, The Politics of Beauty. It takes an in-depth look at the life and work of Stewart Udall, a man who played a pivotal role in shaping America’s conservation and environmental policies.
Then we listen back to our 2007 interview with Les Leopold about his biography of labor leader and environmentalist Tony Mazzochi.
Key Words: environment, conservation, labor, OSHA, biography, documentary film
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004.Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice.Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show.Background:Stewart Udall served as the Secretary of the Interior under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson from 1961 to 1969. During his time in office, he helped create national parks, protected wilderness areas, and advocated for conservation efforts. Udall was instrumental in passing important environmental legislation, such as the Wilderness Act of 1964 and the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act of 1965.
Summary of the Film:John de Graaf’s film Stewart Udall, The Politics of Beauty explores Udall’s life and career, beginning with his childhood in Arizona and continuing through his time as Secretary of the Interior. The film features interviews with Udall’s family members, friends, and colleagues, as well as environmental activists and tribal members who worked with Udall on conservation efforts and the fight for justice for Navajo uranium miners. The film also delves into Udall’s personal life, including his marriage to Lee Udall, who was an environmental activist in her own right.
Discussion:Director John de Graaf talks about his inspiration for making the film and shares some of the insights he gained while researching Udall’s life and career. We also discuss Udall’s impact on America’s conservation and environmental policies, and how his legacy continues to influence the conversation around these issues today.
Udall Trailer 2:21 from Greg Davis on Vimeo.
Tony Mazzochi, Labor Leader and Environmentalist
During our first segment today, mention is made of the great labor leader and environmentalist Tony Mazzochi.
Back in 2007, Writer’s Voice spoke with Les Leopold about his wonderful biography of Mazzochi, The Man Who Hated Work And Loved Labor. We re-air an extended excerpt from that interview. You can listen to the entire conversation here.
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To celebrate Black History Month, we re-air our 2015 interview with acclaimed biographer James McGrath Morris about his biography, Eye on The Struggle: Ethel Payne, First Lady Of The Black Press.
Description
Black History Month honors the vital contributions made by African Americans throughout history, including the important role they played in the civil rights movement.
One of the unsung heroes of this movement was Ethel Payne. In this special podcast episode, acclaimed biographer James McGrath Morris discusses his biography of Payne, Eye on the Struggle, and sheds light on her remarkable life and legacy.
Through Morris’s captivating storytelling, listeners can gain a deeper understanding of the crucial role of the black press in the civil rights movement and the ongoing fight for equality.
Keywords: Black History Month, Ethel Payne, First Lady of the Black Press, civil rights movement, James McGrath Morris, biography, Eye on the Struggle, Washington Press Corps, White House Press Corps, Chicago Defender, Martin Luther King Jr., Emmet Till, McCarthyism, Pulitzer.
Introduction
The great civil rights struggles of the mid-twentieth century, with their emphasis on non-violent political action, depended crucially on press coverage to gain impact and, ultimately, success.
But their stories may have gone untold were it not for newspapers like the Chicago Defender and other organs of the black press. They broke the stories that the white mainstream media picked up and disseminated to a wider audience. Yet few in that wider audience even knew of the existence of the black press.
First Lady of the Black Press, Ethel Payne
Perhaps no reporter was more important Ethel Payne, star reporter and Washington Press Corps correspondent for the Chicago Defender, the black press’ paper of record from the years of the Great Migration through the civil rights movement.
Dubbed “the First Lady of the black press,” she told the world about a young leader emerging out of the civil rights movement in Atlanta named Martin Luther King, Jr. She told the story of Emmet Till’s mother, who had to view the badly mutilated body of her 14 year old son after the brutal beating that took his life. She hammered a nail into the coffin of McCarthyism when she reported on the persecution of a lowly African-American Pentagon employee absurdly accused on being a Communist spy.
The first African American woman to be part of the White House Press Corps, she courageously buttonholed presidents with searching questions about racial prejudice and civil rights. Unlike many of her colleagues then and now, she was no mere stenographer but held the powerful to account for their policies and views.
James McGrath Morris Brings Payne’s Biography To Life
Yet few Americans have ever heard of Ethel Payne, much less understood the giant role she played in reporting the story of civil rights in America. James McGrath’s spellbinding biography of Payne, Eye on the Struggle: Ethel Payne, the First Lady of the Black Press, corrects the oversight, bringing Payne’s story to light within the context of her history-making times.
In addition to Eye on the Struggle, James McGrath Morris is the author of the acclaimed biography Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power and two other books. He produced the following video clip about Payne.
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We speak with Chetna Maroo about her debut novel, Western Lane. It’s a beautifully written coming of age story about a young girl and her British Indian family who are trying to come to terms with the recent death of the family matriarch.
Then, for Black History Month, we hear my 2008 interview with Ta-Nahisi Coates about his first book, The Beautiful Struggle: Between the World and Me.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004.Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice.Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show.Chetna MarooChetna Maroo’s debut novel Western Lane is about sisterhood, family and recovery from loss.
After her mother’s death, 11-year old Gopi and her father bond on the squash court, where she discovers her love of the game and her own strength and capacity for renewal. Her older sisters support her as she moves beyond traditional expectations for a girl in her British Indian family.
The tale is told in Maroo’s deeply evocative prose, disciplined and precise to achieve for the reader an extraordinary intimacy with the characters.
Chetna Maroo’s stories have appeared in anthologies and literary magazines. She won the 2022 Plimpton Prize for Fiction.
Ta-Nahisi CoatesBlack History Month always affords a great opportunity to rummage around in the Writer’s Voice archives for good material to re-air.
Ta Nahisi Coates on “respect”:On the news, you know, whenever you hear about people talking about Black youth and their “respect killings” — you know, somebody got shot over respect — people look at these folks like they’re crazy. In fact, respect is what people lean on when they have nothing else. It’s just true of everyone. Now, I’m not defending that, obviously. But if you feel like you have nothing else to live with, that’s all you got when your back is to the wall.
This time, we go way back to 2008 to a terrific interview Ta-Nahisi Coates gave Writer’s Voice after he’d just published his first book, The Beautiful Struggle. In the intervening years, he’s gone on to become one of the most celebrated contemporary figures for his writings on race in America.
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We talk with V, formerly known as Eve Ensler about her collection of essays and poems, Reckoning.
Then in honor of Black History Month, we listen back to my 2019 interview with DaMaris Hill about her narrative in verse, A Bound Woman Is A Dangerous Thing: The Incarceration Of African-American Women From Harriet Tubman To Sandra Bland.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004.Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice.Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show.VWhen Eve Ensler first put on her play The Vagina Monologues, she set off a reckoning on the part of women all over the world with the violence and oppression that they had experienced at the hands of a patriarchal system.
She went on to meet with women victims of the violence of war—in Kosovo, Congo and elsewhere—and hear their stories of horrific abuse. But also to witness their courage and their creation of communities of resilience.
Then Ensler came to a reckoning of her own—with the horrific abuse she had suffered as a child as the hands of her father. We spoke with her about her book about that personal reckoning, The Apology, in 2019.
Now, she’s renamed herself “V”—her “freedom name”, as she calls it— and she’s come out with Reckoning, a powerful collection of writings that sum up the personal and political reckonings with patriarchy she has been making throughout her long career.
Listen to our 2019 interview with V about The Apology
DaMaris HillBack in 2019, we spoke with poet and author DaMaris Hill about her narrative in verse, A Bound Woman Is A Dangerous Thing: The Incarceration Of African-American Women From Harriet Tubman To Sandra Bland. In honor of Black History Month, we replay that interview.
The post How To Reckon With Patriarchy: V, RECKONING & Black History Month: DaMaris Hill, A BOUND WOMAN IS A DANGEROUS THING appeared first on Writer's Voice.
We talk with Korean American writer Heinz Insu Fenkl about his autobiographical novel Skull Water. It’s about his youth in Korea as the son of a Korean mother and German-American father, the trauma of war and the dizzying transformation of Korea from the old ways to modern life.
Then, jelly fish, bugs and garbage, oh my! We talk with marine scientist Dr. Stephanie Wear about the importance—and the joys — of “eating ugly.” She hosts the new documentary series Eating Ugly, on Discovery+.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004.Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice.Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show.Heinz Insu FenklGrowing up in a military family as the son of a Korean mother and German-American father, Heinz Insu Fenkl got both an insider’s and an outsider’s view of post-war South Korea.
The insider part came from his closeness to his Korean family, especially his Big Uncle, a geomancer and failed scholar. From his uncle and other relatives, he imbibed the stories and legends of old Korea. He also heard tell of the terrible traumas of the Korean war. These stories form one thread of the book that takes place in 1950.
The outsider part came from being a mixed race kid in high school, who found his only friends among a group of other mixed race kids like himself. Their adventures—and misadventures—form the coming-of-age story that forms the other thread of the book, that follows his character Insu in the year 1974.
Heinz Insu Fenkl teaches creative writing and Asian studies at the State University of New York, New Paltz. His previous novel Memories of My Ghost Brother was named a PEN/Hemingway Award finalist.
Read the New Yorker story Five Arrows based on an excerpt from Skull Water
Dr. Stephanie WearMore that 30% of food is wasted globally—and as much as 50% in the US. That comes to about 1.4 billion tons of food worldwide, enough to feed 2 billion people. Each year, the food the US wastes emits as much greenhouse gases as 42 coal-fired power plants.
So how to cut down on waste? One way, according to Dr. Stephanie Wear, is to “eat ugly.” That’s the title of a new Discovery + series she hosts.
The series highlights groundbreaking food pioneers who are already making important and fascinating progress in changing the way we eat, from jelly fish to bugs and more.
Dr. Stephanie Wear works for Conservation International. “Eat Ugly” is presented by The Nature Conservancy, and produced by Tandem Stills + Motion, Inc. in partnership with Passion Pictures. It streams on Discovery +.
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We talk with Ray Nayler about his novel of speculative fiction, The Mountain In The Sea. It was named by Slate Book Review as one of the Best Books of 2022.
Then, we remember Victor Navasky, the long time editor of the Nation magazine. He died January 24 at the age of 90. We listen back to my 2006 interview with him about his memoir, A Matter of Opinion.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004.Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice.Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show.Ray Nayler
We’ve all heard the classic question, is there other intelligent life in the Universe? But what about other intelligent life right here on Earth?
Of course, we are already learning about the many forms of intelligence among the other animals we share our world with, from ants to whales. And some say plants also have consciousness and intelligence.
But we’re really asking: is there any other species that matches us in complexity of thought and creativity? Could we be on the brink of inventing that species with the development of advanced Artificial Intelligence? And how would we respond to other intelligences, whether natural or human-made?
Ray Nayler explores these questions In his brilliant and beautifully written novel of speculative fiction, The Mountain In The Sea.
In a world where ocean life is under constant threat of extinction from human activity, a species of octopus with highly evolved intelligence— Octopus Sapiens, if you will — is discovered. One of the discoverers is the world’s only fully aware and self-conscious android, Evrim, a nonbinary being banished to an island marine refuge in the Con Dao peninsula of Vietnam after being rejected by the rest of humanity.
Nayler’s novel questions society’s assumptions about human superiority and the right to dominate other species. It urges us to understand that we are connected to all the life around us, neither above or below, but in equal relationship to it.
Ray Nayler’s critically acclaimed short fiction has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including The Very Best of the Best: 35 Years of The Year’s Best Science Fiction. He has worked in the Foreign Service and the Peace Corps, including a stint as Environment, Science, Technology, and Health Officer at the U.S. consulate in Ho Chi Minh City. He currently serves as the international advisor to the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The Mountain and the Sea is his first full-length novel.
Read more about Ray Nayler and his work
Victor Navasky
Long time Nation magazine editor Victor Navasky died January 24 at the age of 90. Navasky came to The Nation as editor in 1978, and was made publisher and general partner in 1995. He chaired the Columbia Journalism Review and was Director of the George Delacorte Center for Magazine Journalism.
He was an editor for the New York Times Magazine, and a columnist for the Times’ Book Review. His book Naming Names won the National Book Award in 1982.
We spoke with him in 2006 about his book, A Matter of Opinion. It’s a passionate, funny look at his life in journalism and at the field of magazine journalism in general.
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A landmark win under Pennsylvania’s Green Amendment to its constitution led Maya van Rossum to imagine much, much more. We talk with her about her book The Green Amendment: The Peoples Fight For A Clean, Safe, And Healthy Environment.
Then, in honor of Martin Luther King’s birthday this week, we re-air our 2018 interview with David Margolick about his book The Promise and the Dream. It’s about the connection between Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy in the fight for civil rights.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004.Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice. Find Francesca atLove Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show.Maya K. Van RossumOn November 2, 2021, New Yorkers voted to amend the State’s constitution to enshrine into law each person’s “right to clean air and water, and a healthful environment.”
With the adoption of this Green amendment, New York became the third state in the nation to include environmental rights in its Bill of Rights, following Pennsylvania (1971) and Montana (1972.)
The movement to get a Green Amendment into New York’s constitution was spearheaded by the grassroots organization, Green Amendments For the Generations, founded by Maya K. van Rossum. The group is working to secure constitutional recognition and protection of environmental rights in every state and ultimately at the federal level.
Van Rossum writes about the Green Amendment movement in her book, The Green Amendment: The Peoples Fight For A Clean, Safe, And Healthy Environment.
Learn more about Green Amendments For the Generations
David Margolick on Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby KennedyWe honor Dr. King’s birthday by re-playing a long segment from our 2018 interview with David Margolick about his book The Promise and the Dream.
It’s about a story that lay hidden until Margolick uncovered it: the relationship between Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy and the crucial role that relationship payed in the passage of civil rights legislation in the US.
Listen to the the entire interview here
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We remember Russell Banks, who passed away on January 7 at the age of 82. We last spoke with him in 2016, about his memoir Voyager, and re-air that interview today.
But first, we talk with Danielle Clode, award-winning natural history writer, about her new book Koala: A Natural History and an Uncertain Future.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004.Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice.Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show.Danielle KlodeThe years 2019 and 2020 saw perhaps the worse fire season in Australia yet. The mega fires were devastating not only for human communities but for Australia’s wildlife. The toll was unimaginable. Among its victims, were many members of that species of charismatic cuteness: the koala. The flames raged across their native eucalyptus forests, devastating their habitat.
Yet koalas are also incredibly resilient. During their long presence on Planet Earth, they’ve come through previous eras of climate chaos, rebounding from population crashes to thrive again. It’s a fascinating story that holds lessons not only for the koala, but also for all the other species it shares the planet with — including us.
Danielle Clode examines that story in her new book Koala: A Natural History and an Uncertain Future. She’s an award winning author of numerous non-fiction books. Her writing includes natural history, essays, science-writing, historical fiction and best-selling children’s books as well as documentaries.
Francesca Remembers Russell BanksI was saddened to hear that Russell Banks passed away on January 7. When I first came upon his novels—I think The Sweet Hereafter was the first — I was struck that he delved so sensitively into the lives of the working class — a demographic that is all too often overlooked in the catalogs of the major publishing houses.
Later, I had the privilege to interview him about his novels Reserve and Lost Memory of Skin, his collection of short stories, A Permanent Member of the Family, and finally his memoir Voyager.
In memory of his passing, we re-play my conversation with Russell Banks about that memoir.
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Why is it so hard to get the hair-on-fire action on climate we need to deal with the crisis? Could it have something to do with our brains? We talk with Dr. Ann-Christine Duhaime about her book, Minding The Climate: How Neuroscience Can Help Solve Our Environmental Crisis.
Then, we talk with one climate activist who’s putting Duhaime’s lessons on how to change minds about the crisis to work: Darr Reilly, co-founder of the Carbon Crew Project.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004.Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice. Find Francesca at mastodon.social[at]FRheannon.Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show.Ann-Christine DuhaimeAs we produce this show, a bomb cyclone is bearing down on the west coast—the second in two weeks. Buffalo New York is digging out of its most deadly blizzard, ever. Meanwhile carbon pollution in the atmosphere is spiking to record levels and Europe is basking in record January heat—climatologists say it’s an “extreme event” unlike anything in European history.
The steady drumbeat of climate catastrophe is clamoring in our ears.But how many people are really listening? Listening in a way to make the changes we need to make in time to survive?
Why aren’t they listening–and is there anything we can do to change that?
Neuroscientist Dr. Ann-Christine Duhaime tackles this question in her book, Minding The Climate. She explores how our long evolution as a species has shaped our brains to respond to immediate threats, but to miss or discount ones that play out over the long term.
But she also shows that the brain’s enormous capacity for change is reason for hope. By understanding both the barriers and the spurs to change, we can move the needle on climate action.
Read an excerpt from Minding The Climate
Darr Reilly, Carbon Crew ProjectWhen Francesca read Ann-Christine Duhaime’s book Minding the Climate, she immediately thought of her friend Darr Reilly. She’s an advocate and practitioner of Drawdown, the climate action movement developed by Paul Hawken. It promotes 100 solutions to the climate crisis that ordinary people can engage in.
Growing out of her work with Drawdown, Reilly co-founded the Carbon Crew Project. It’s a program geared for small groups of friends and neighbors to lessen their carbon footprint, step by step.
Resources mentioned by Darr Reilly:
Carbon Crew Project
Pachamama Alliance
The True Cost movie
2040 Regenerators
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It’s the last week of December 2022. The days are already starting to get longer. A great time to start thinking about next year’s garden. And, with next year around the corner, a good time to look back at some of our favorite interviews of 2022.
Today, we talk with garden columnist Jeff Lowenfells about his book, Teaming with Bacteria. It’s the fourth in his groundbreaking series about building the soil microbiome to create a flourishing soil food web.
Then we hear excerpts from our 2022 interviews with Bill McKibben, Mohsin Hamid and Keri Blakinger.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004.Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice.Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show.Jeff LowenfellsIf we don’t do anything about it, some say, we have about sixty years left of soil. And without soil, we don’t have food, at least not enough to feed the world. The remedy? Regenerative agriculture that builds the soil by using nature’s own methods.
Jeff Lowenfels has been writing about gardening for over 45 years. He writes the column Alaska Gardening and Growing for the Anchorage Daily News. But perhaps his greatest contribution to gardening is his series on the soil food web or soil microbiome.
He began in 2010 with Teaming with Microbes, followed by Teaming With Nutrients. Teaming With Fungi, and now Teaming with Bacteria.
Jeff Lowenfels is a former president of the Garden Writers Association; he was inducted into the organization’s Hall of Fame in 2005
He Wrote a Gardening Column. He Ended Up Documenting Climate Change
Best of 2022It’s that time of year to look back at 2022 before we leave to head to the New Year. This was one of our best years for interviews. We spoke with Nobel laureate for literature Abdulrazak Gurnah, NoViolet Bulawayo, whose novel Glory was shortlisted for the Booker prize, and presidential candidate Marianne Williamson, among many other terrific conversations.
So it was tough to choose among them. Today we’ll hear excerpts from three of our favorite interviews. The full list with links to the interviews is below.
Bill McKibbenWe spoke with world-renowned climate protector Bill McKibben about his wonderful memoir The Flag, The Cross And The Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at His Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What The Hell Happened.Listen to the full episode
Mohsin HamidWe talked with Hamid about his brilliant and thought-provoking novel, The Last White Man.Listen to the full episode
Keri BlakingerFinally, we hear an excerpt from my interview with Keri Blakinger about her memoir, Corrections In Ink.Listen to the full episode
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We talk with Elsa Sjunneson about life as a deaf-blind person and the rights every disabled person should have. Her book is Being Seen: One Deafblind Woman’s Fight to End Ableism.
Later in the show we talk with podcaster and author Kathryn Nicolai about her book of stories for better sleep, Nothing Much Happens: Cozy & Calmng Stories to Soothe Your Mind & Help You Sleep. It’s based on her wildly successful podcast of the same name.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004.
Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice. Find Francesca at mastodon.social/@FRheannonLove Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show.Elsa SjunnesonDisability rights are human rights. Yet how often does our society actually acknowledge, much less honor, that frame? The truth is, despite the Americans with Disabilities Act, our society isn’t set up to meet the needs of disabled people. Not by a long shot.
Elsa Sjunneson has been contending with that reality for a long time. As a Deafblind woman with partial vision in one eye and bilateral hearing aids, Elsa Sjunneson lives at the crossroads of blindness and sight, hearing and deafness.
Her book Being Seen explores what it means to be disabled in America, how disabled people are portrayed in the media and why ignoring their needs damages us all.
Sjunneson is a disability rights activist, a media studies professor and a writer. She has written extensively on issues relating to disability and representation in the media. She also writes speculative fiction and has been a Hugo Award finalist seven times.
Read or Listen to an Excerpt from Being Seen
Elsa Sjunneson Exorcises Helen Keller
Kathryn NicolaiDo you have trouble getting to sleep? Or do you nod off easily at bedtime, but then wake up in the early hours of the morning to toss and turn?
Americans have a sleep problem—and more of them are turning to sleep podcasts to help them slip off to dreamland and stay there. Many of them have found their way to Nothing Much Happens, the hugely popular podcast by Kathryn Nicolai.
On her podcast, she reads stories that promote a comforting kind of mindfulness: like the one called Holiday At Weathervane Farm. it’s “a story about hay rides through snowy fields, the ducks waddling back from a day at the pond, and a new calf born who will only ever know kindness.”
The podcast Nothing Much Happens was so successful, Nicolai new stories to create a book of the same title. Like the podcast, the book gently trains the brain to fall and stay asleep. It also includes tips for mindfulness when we are awake.
Before becoming a full time podcaster and writer, Kathryn Nicolai was a yoga and meditation teacher.
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We talk with James Vincent about his book Beyond Measure: The Hidden History Of Measurement From Cubits To Quantum Constants.
Then we replay an excerpt from our interview with Simon Winchester about his book, Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004.Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice. Find Francesca at Mastodon Social.Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show.James Vincent
Humans have been measuring things since time immemorial, from the earliest hashmarks on bone—possibly to count hunting kills—to the advanced algorithms of today. Measurement is a way of bringing order and control to our world. A good thing, right?
But it also has been used to impose domination on people and on the natural world. Or to exclude some considerations in favor of others: think of how GDP measures economic growth but not the devastation untrammeled growth is wreaking upon our planet.
James Vincent examines the history and the consequences of measurement in his fascinating book, Beyond Measure. He is a journalist and writer who has written for numerous publications, including the Independent, the Financial Times and Wired. He is currently a senior reporter for the Verge. Beyond Measure is his first book.
Simon WInchester
We interviewed Simon Winchester in 2021 about his book, Land. We play an excerpt on this episode, but you can hear the entire conversation here.
Next week on Writer’s Voice: We talk with disability rights activist Elsa Sjunneson about her book, Being Seen. Also, we start dreaming about gardening, as we talk with garden columnist and author Jeff Lowenfels about the fourth in his series on regenerative gardening, Teaming With Bacteria.
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We talk with digital philosopher Douglas Rushkoff about his book, Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires. It’s about the Mindset of the richest and most powerful moguls on the planet and the destruction it’s leaving in its wake.
Then, Survival of the Richest praises the work of Indigenous philosopher Tyson Yunkaporta. We air our 2020 interview with Yunkaporta about his book. Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on twitter @WritersVoice Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show.
Douglas Rushkoff
Six of the ten richest people in the world made their fortunes in the tech industry. And now the richest person in the world, Elon Musk, has joined the ranks of the Tech Overlords with his acquisition of Twitter.
What is the mindset of these rarified members of the human community who rule our lives in so many ways?
It’s something my guest Douglas Rushkoff began to uncover when five mysterious billionaires summoned him to a desert resort for a private talk. They wanted him to tell them how to they could survive the societal collapse they themselves are helping to bring about.
Rushkoff came to understand that these men were under the influence of The Mindset, a Silicon Valley–style certainty that they and their cohort can break the laws of physics, economics, and morality to escape a disaster of their own making—as long as they have enough money and the right technology.
Rushkoff has been in the tech space since the early 90s, when the Internet was supposed to unleash a decentralized democratic global open society. But in Survival of the Richest, Rushkoff describes an unholy marriage of the digital revolution and capitalism that transformed the dream of a democratic digital revolution into a nightmare of surveillance, disinformation, manipulation and erosion of democracy.
Douglas Rushkoff is professor of media theory and digital economics at Queens/CUNY. He hosts the Team Human podcast and has written many award-winning books.
Tyson Yunkaporta
Douglas Rushkoff’s book Survival of the Richest gives a shout out to Australian aboriginal philosopher Tyson Yunkaporta, who is a proponent of the kind of thinking that Rushkoff says is an antidote to the Mindset of the tech billionaires.
Writer’s Voice spoke with Yunkaporta in 2020 about his book, Sand Talk : How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World. We re-play that interview on this episode.
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We talk with Kirk Wallace Johnson about his book, The Fisherman And The Dragon: Fear, Greed, And A Fight For Justice On The Gulf Coast. It’s a gripping account of a small town set on fire by hatred, xenophobia, and ecological disaster—and the woman who fought to save it.
Then, our 2005 interview with that very woman. We re-air our interview with Diane Wilson about her book, An Unreasonable Woman: A True Story of Shrimpers, Politicos, Polluters, and the Fight for Seadrift, Texas.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on twitter @WritersVoice. Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show.
Kirk Wallace Johnson
They call it the Cancer Belt. The Texas Gulf Coast used to be home to some of the richest fishing grounds in America, but was laid waste by the toxic pollution pouring into its waters from chemical companies and oil refineries.
As long ago as the 1970’s, the fishing industry began its decline. But instead of fighting the polluters who were taking their livelihood away, the local fishermen blamed the Vietnamese refugees who had recently begun moving to the area.
They invited in the KKK to drive the Vietnamese out–except for one fisherman, or fisherwoman to be exact. Diane Wilson fought the chemical companies and made common cause with the Vietnamese. Eventually her heroism won over the white fisherman, too.
Kirk Wallace Johnson tells the story with cinematic flair in his book, The Fisherman And The Dragon. Johnson is a screenwriter and an author of three books, including The Feather Thief and To Be a Friend is Fatal: the Fight to Save the Iraqis America Left Behind.
In addition to being a writer, he is the founder of the List Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies, which resettled thousands Iraqi refugees who were imperiled as a result of working for the U.S. during the war.
Listen to an excerpt from The Fishermen and the Dragon
Diane Wilson
Diane Wilson started shrimping on Texas Gulf Coast with her family at the age of eight and became a shrimp boat captain when she was twenty four.
She’s been an environmental activist since 1989, when she took on Formosa Plastics, one of the biggest polluters in the US. Her 2005 book, An Unreasonable Woman: A True Story of Shrimpers, Politicos, Polluters, and the Fight for Seadrift, Texas (Chelsea Green Press), describes her struggle to preserve a way of life that is ever more endangered and may never recover.
Writers Voice spoke to her in October of 2005. Francesca was joined by the much-missed Daisy Mathias, who was WV co-host at that time.
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We talk with Laura Kaplan about her book, Jane: The women of the Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service. It’s about how a group of ordinary women worked together to create the women-centered, women-empowering organization called “Jane” that operated in Chicago from 1969 to 1973.
But first, another Chicago story about organizing for justice. We talk with former Chicago Alderwoman and community activist Helen Shiller about her memoir, Daring To Struggle, Daring to Win: Five Decades of Resistance in Chicago’s Uptown Community.
Writer’s Voice — in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Rate us on your favorite podcast app! It really helps others find our show. And like us on Facebook at Writers Voice Radio or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice.
Helen Shiller
Our first guest is someone Francesca first met in the Movement of the late 60’s and early 70s, when they were both student radicals at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, fighting against the Vietnam War and against racist policies on campus.
After they graduated, Francesca lost touch with Helen Shiller, but later learned she had become an alderman on Chicago’s City Council.
How Shiller continued her fights of social justice from Madison to the streets of Chicago’s working class Uptown community and then as an elected official forms the fascinating story she tells in her new book, Daring To Struggle, Daring To Win.
Through her memoir, Shiller shows the way to building multiracial, working class solidarity in the face of a brutal political machine and a racist system. Its lessons are powerfully relevant for social justice activists today.
Read a Review of Daring To Struggle, Daring To Win
Laura Kaplan
Nearly 50 years ago, women in America gained the constitutional right to abortion. In June of this year, they lost that right. What was it like before Roe v. Wade? It was a terrifying time to be a woman. As it is now, again.
The women’s liberation movement of that earlier time organized abortion services all across the nation. The most legendary—and unique—was the Abortion Counseling Service Of Women’s Liberation in Chicago, AKA Jane. The service’s advertisements said, ““Pregnant? Don’t want to be? Call Jane.”
One of Jane’s members was Laura Kaplan. Her 1995 book about the group, Jane, has just been reissued with a new introduction by the author. It comes at a time when you can view HBOs terrific new documentary, The Janes, but the book adds much more detail to that story.
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Vulnerability. Could it be a writer’s greatest strength?
We talk with poet Philip Schultz about his memoir/how-to book, Comforts Of The Abyss: The Art of Persona Writing.
Then, we talk about paraquat and Parkinson’s disease. Newly revealed documents show that the maker of a common herbicide knew decades ago about the link. We catch up with former Writer’s Voice guest Carey Gillam about her blockbuster scoop on the chemical company Syngenta.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on twitter @WritersVoice. Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show.
Philip Schultz
Throughout his long career as a poet, Philip Schultz has been battling a demon. It comes to him in the image of a black bird who perches on his shoulder telling him how unworthy he is.
Sound familiar? Most of us have experienced that dark voice, which Schultz calls his “Shitbird.” (It especially afflicts writers.)
But Schultz found a way around that dark voice. He calls it “persona writing,” a method he developed and teaches at the school he founded, The Writers Studio.
Persona writing borrows the voice and temperament of other writers—maybe Ernest Hemingway or Elizabeth Bishop—someone who can offer a writer a way of creating enough distance so that truth and intimacy can emerge.
Philip Schultz is the author of numerous poetry collections, among them Like Wings; the Pulitzer Prize–winning Failure; The God of Loneliness and Luxury.
He’s been a guest before on Writer’s Voice in 2010 and 2018. Read poetry by Philip Schultz
Carey Gillam Parkinson’s Disease is a global epidemic. Many researchers think the cause behind the epidemic lies in the more than 80,000 chemicals industry exposes us to every year.
One of those chemicals is the herbicide paraquat—one of the most widely used. It’s been around for decades—since the 1970s. And it’s linked to Parkinsons.
The company that makes it, Syngenta, denies the link. But journalist and author Carey Gillam recently got hold of secret company documents that proves Syngenta knew about the link from the beginning.
She’s written about it in a series for The New Lede, a new journalism initiative begun by the Environmental Working Group. Gillam is managing editor.
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We talk with Emi Nietfield about her powerful memoir, Acceptance. It chronicles her struggles as a teenager and young adult to rise above the poverty and abuse she suffered as a child, despite a child protection system that was anything but protective of children.
Then, PBS’s show Mystery has just begun a new series, Magpie Murders. We re-air our 2017 conversation with Magpie Murders author Anthony Horowitz. He adapted the book for the TV series.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on twitter @WritersVoice. Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show. Emi Nietfield
As a homeless teenager writing college essays in her rusty Toyota Corolla, Emi Nietfeld was convinced that the Ivy League was the only escape from her dysfunctional childhood. But upward mobility required crafting the perfect resilience narrative. She had to prove that she was an “overcomer,” made stronger by all that she had endured.
The truth was more complicated. Nietfield’s mother was a hoarder who had her put on antipsychotics but also believed in her daughter’s brilliance. Her other parent vanished shortly after coming out as trans— a situation few understood in the mid-2000s.
Her own past was filled with secrets: mental health struggles, Adderall addiction, and the unbecoming desperation of a teenager fending for herself. And though Nietfield would go on to graduate from Harvard and become a software engineer at Google, she found that success didn’t necessarily mean safety.
Nietfield’s memoir Acceptance is both a chronicle of the American Dream and an indictment of it. It challenges our ideas of what it means to overcome—and find contentment on your own terms.
In addition to Acceptance, Nietfield has written for the New York Times, Vice, and other venues. She’s been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and noted in The Best American Essays 2021.
Read an excerpt from Acceptance
Anthony Horowitz Back in 2017, we spoke with celebrated British mystery writer Anthony Horowitz about his whodunit Magpie Murders. A kind of meta murder mystery with a tale within a tale, it was a hugely enjoyable read.
Now, it’s been made into a TV series for the PBS show Mystery and it’s even more enjoyable. Horowitz wrote the screenplay; the actors are superb; and the direction inspired.
To celebrate the series opening, we replay our 2017 conversation with Anthony Horowitz about Magpie Murders.
Listen to our interview with Anthony Horowitz about the sequel to Magpie Murders, Moonflower Murders
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We talk with Antonio Padilla about his book, FANTASTIC NUMBERS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM: A Cosmic Quest From Zero To Infinity.
Then, from science to poetry: we replay our 2009 interview with the late US Poet Laureate, Richard Wilbur.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on twitter @WritersVoice. Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show.
Antonio Padilla The abstract language of math seems to describe the real world and the universe. But what if math doesn’t just describe real phenomena, but actually underlies them? Is math not just a map but the actual territory?
As you’ll hear in our conversation with theoretical physicist Anthonio Padilla, the answer to that question remains unknown.
But Padilla’s book, Fantastic Numbers And Where To Find Them, is a dazzling exploration of the strange numbers that illuminate the ultimate nature of reality: numbers that are vanishingly small to unimaginably large, from zero to infinity. Padilla shows that the existence of the universe is highly improbable — but a teeny tiny number explains why it does, in fact, exist.
In addition to showing how numbers are the key to understanding things like black holes and relativity, Fantastic Numbers entertains with charming portraits of some of the greatest mathematicians in history. It’s a mind-bending journey into places most strange and wonderful.
Antonio Padilla teaches physics at the University of Nottingham in the UK and spreads popular awareness about math and physics on YouTube.
Richard Wilbur
When our second guest for this week canceled his appearance, we thought we would dip into our barrel of favorite episodes. We pulled up our 2009 conversation with former poet laureate, the late Richard Wilbur.
Wilbur passed away in 2017. But in 2009, Francesca visited him along with writer Christian McEwan for a lovely hour listening to him read and talk about his poetry.
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We talk with Steve Hendricks about his book The Oldest Cure in the World: Adventures in the Art and Science of Fasting.
Then, we talk with wildlife conservation journalist and photographer Millie Kerr about her new book, Wilder: How Rewilding is Transforming Conservation and Changing the World.
Writer’s Voice — in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Rate us on your favorite podcast app! It really helps others find our show. And like us on Facebook at Writers Voice Radio or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice.
Steve Hendricks Fasting is a practice that goes back to ancient times. For centuries, it was followed as a religious practice—and continues as such today, for example during the Islamic observance of Eid.
Then, in the 19th century, fasting gained greater currency as a cure for numerous ailments, although the medical profession scoffed at it as quackery.
But in recent decades, scientific evidence has been growing that fasting indeed can be beneficial for many ailments, including diabetes, multiple sclerosis, auto-immune diseases and other illnesses.
Author and journalist Steve Hendricks began his own investigations into and practice of fasting several decades ago, as a result of a bizarre neurological condition that left him exhausted all the time.
His book The Oldest Cure in the World examines the history, the art and the science of fasting. He shows that there is a way of fasting for almost anyone, from eating within a time-restricted window every day to conducting weeks-long fasts at a fasting clinic.
In addition to The Oldest Cure In The World, Steve Hendricks is the author of two other books, including the The Unquiet Grave: The FBI and the Struggle for the Soul of Indian Country, which we spoke with him about in 2007, and A Kidnapping in Milan: The CIA on Trial. He’s also the author of numerous articles for magazines and news sites.
Steve Hendricks’ FAQs on fasting
Millie Kerr The term “re-wilding” became famous when it was announced that a team of scientists had formed a company to bring back the wooly mammoth. That effort has been criticized by many as impractical.
But re-wilding encompasses many different kinds of conservation efforts. They can range from converting your lawn to a meadow full of native wildflowers to taking animals out of zoos and re-introducing them to the wild where they had previously been extinct—and much more.
In her book Wilder, wildlife journalist Millie Kerr considers the practicalities and possibilities of ecological restoration around the world, while exploring first-hand some of the most ambitious undertakings occurring today. She describes how growing re-wilding efforts around the world are transforming the field of conservation and with them, rekindling hope for a world on the brink of the Sixth Extinction.
Millie Kerr’s wildlife photos
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Is a politics of love essential to our survival?
We talk with activist, spiritual leader and former presidential candidate, Marianne Williamson about her book, A Politics of Love: A Handbook for a New American Revolution.
Then, we replay an extended excerpt from our 2020 interview with Rabbi Michael Lerner, about his book, Revolutionary Love.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on twitter @WritersVoice. Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show.
Marianne Williamson
We could solve all our problems if we all just followed the Golden Rule: treat others as you would be treated. In other words, love thy neighbor as thyself. And we are all neighbors on this finite planet.
When Marianne Williamson ran in the 2020 presidential election, she was mocked by mainstream pundits for her supposedly naive message of a politics of love.
But as she brilliantly argues in her book of that title, what’s naive is to think that we can survive the crises we face without love at the core of our politics.
When we hurt others, we hurt ourselves. When we treat others with love and compassion, we uplift us all. That’s as true in politics as it is in our individual lives. And, as A Politics of Love shows with its powerful narrative, we have no choice but love if we are to survive.
Marianne Williamson is an internationally acclaimed author, speaker, and activist, as well as former presidential candidate. Six of her published books have been New York Times bestsellers. A Politics of Love was published in 2019.
Read an excerpt from A Politics of Love
Rabbi Michael Lerner Back in 2020, we spoke with rabbi and social justice activist Rabbi Michael Lerner about his take on love and politics: his book Revolutionary Love.
It focuses on different points than Marianne Williamson’s book but is very much coming from the same place. We listen back to an extended segment from that conversation.
Hear the full interview
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This week, we talk about two novels about colonialism, both from the point of view of the colonized.
First, we are honored to talk with the 2021 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Abdulrazak Gurnah about his novel Afterlives, just published in the United States by Penguin Random House.
Then R.F. Kuang tells us about her fantasy/slash/alternate history novel, Babel, Or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translator’s Revolution.
Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on twitter @WritersVoice. Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show.
Abdulrazak Gurnah In 2021, Abdulrazak Gurnah received the Nobel Prize in Literature for, in the words of the Nobel Committee, “his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents.”
That is certainly evident in his novel Afterlives, first published in the UK in 2020 and now out in a new American edition. It tells the brutal story of colonialism in East Africa; first, German colonialism then, after Germany’s defeat in WWI, the British variety.
It’s a brutal story, but not a brutal novel. Instead, Afterlives spins a profoundly moving and human tale centered on three young people who find love, caring and community despite the psychological and physical traumas the colonial system subjects them to. The novel shows the terrible toll of injustice—and the power of love and compassion to heal it.
Abdulrazak Gurnah was born in Zanzibar in 1948 and teaches at the University of Kent. He’s the author of numerous novels, including Paradise, which was short-listed for the Booker Prize, and By the Sea, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist.
Read an excerpt from Afterlives
R.F. Kuang It isn’t often that fantasy fiction provides a deep dive into real history, let alone the history of British colonialism. But that’s what Rebecca Kuang’s novel Babel does.
It spreads its wings across a few different genres: fantasy, “dark academia” and historical fiction in a page-turning read that leaves the reader knowing a whole lot more about how that empire operated than many straight histories do.
In Babel’s version of history, magical inscriptions on silver bars provide the energy that coal did in the real British Empire. And the magic is driven by matched words in translation. It’s an intriguing concept—one that illuminates the power of language both to exert domination and spark liberation.
Rebecca F. Kuang is the award-winning author of the bestselling Poppy War trilogy.
Read an excerpt from Babel
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In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, we air our 2019 interview with playwright and author Octavio Solis. We spoke with him about growing up the son of Mexican migrants in El Paso Texas. His book of stories based on that history is Retablos: Stories from a Life Lived Along the Border. Octavio Solis.
Then, a new novel from British novelist Freya Sampson, The Lost Ticket. It’s one of those heart-warming but page-turning reads that makes you feel really good.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on twitter @WritersVoice. Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show.
Octavio Solis Octavio Solis is one of America’s most prominent Latino playwrights. Author of over 20 plays, including Mother Road, currently running at the Oregon Shakespeare festival, Solis recently published his first collection of stories, Retablos (City Lights Press 2019). They are based on his own life growing up the son of Mexican migrants in El Paso, Texas.
Living in a home just a mile from the Rio Grande, Solis was a skinny brown kid on the border, growing up among those who live there, and those passing through on their way North.
The stories use memory as a muse to talk about his complicated relationship with his father, the Chicano movement that informed his view of politics at an early age, his estrangement from his brother, so like a border wall, and how the border is as much myth as reality, replete, as he writes, “with gods and monsters, heroes and fallen angels, troubadours and exiles.”
Freya Sampson
Freya Sampson’s two novels involve people helping others and discovering themselves in the process. Her first novel, The Last Library, was about a community coming together to save their local library.
Her new novel, The Lost Ticket, brings a group of strangers together to help an old man in his quest to find and thank a young woman he met on a bus who changed his life.
When Libby Nicholls arrives in London, brokenhearted and with her life in tatters, the first person she meets on the bus is elderly Frank. He tells her about the time in 1962 that he met a girl on the number 88 bus . They made plans for a date at the National Gallery art museum, but Frank lost the bus ticket with her number on it. For the past sixty years, he’s ridden the same bus trying to find her.
Libby decides to help Frank in his quest, enlisting the help of others who have their own burdens to bear. Throughout the twists and turns of The Lost Ticket, readers follow the characters as they meet challenges, forge connections, and discover hidden strengths, both in themselves and together.
Read an excerpt from The Lost Ticket
Next week on Writer’s Voice, the theme is colonialism. We talk with Abdulrazak Gurnah, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2021. His new novel is After Lives. We also speak with fantasy writer R.H. Kuang about her novel Babel. Don’t miss it!
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We talk with Bill McKibben about his terrific new book, The Flag, The Cross And The Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at His Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What The Hell Happened.
Then, a brilliant coming-of-age novel that treats the personal as political and vice versa. We talk with Sarah Thankam Mathews about All This Could Be Different.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on twitter @WritersVoice. Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show.
Bill McKibben Bill McKibben is best known for his work as a global leader in the fight for a livable climate. But he’s also a long time environmental journalist and the author of eighteen books. His latest is a look at what’s happened to America since McKibben was a boy growing up in a suburb of Boston in the 1970s.
The Flag, The Cross And The Station Wagon looks through the lens of personal memoir, history and astute observation at the predicaments we find ourselves in and how they happened: extreme inequality, erosion of democracy and climate breakdown.
Bill McKibben is the co-founder of the climate protection group 350.org and Third Act, which centers its work on mobilizing seniors to protect the climate and democracy.
Read an excerpt from The Flag, The Cross And The Station Wagon
Sarah Thankam Mathews Sarah Thankam Mathews’ debut novel All This Could Be Different is one of those reads that delights with the discovery of an important new voice in fiction.
Released to effusive praise, the novel follows a young woman, a recent college graduate originally from India, as she lands her first job in the wake of the 2008 Great Recession.
Flung into a very white, middle American community in Wisconsin, Sneha has to navigate not only a new environment but her own personal ghosts as they imprint her relationships and her struggles to become an adult in a precarious world. It’s a compelling story, beautifully told.
Sara Thankam Matthews grew up between Oman and India, immigrating to the United States at seventeen. She’s published short stories, including in Best American Short Stories 2020 and is the co-founder of the mutual aid group, Bed-Stuy Strong.
Read an excerpt from All This Could Be Different
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We talk with Dolen Perkins-Valdez about her novel, Take My Hand. It’s based on a famous case accusing the federal government of forced sterilization of poor and minority women inspires a novel about reproductive justice.
Then we air an excerpt from our 2021 interview with Honorée Fanonne Jeffers about her novel The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois.
Writer’s Voice — in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Rate us on your favorite podcast app! It really helps others find our show. And like us on Facebook at Writers Voice Radio or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice. Dolen Perkins-Valdez The “Mississippi Appendectomy.” That’s what the great civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer called the practice of involuntary sterilization forced on poor, mostly Black and Brown, women for decades in the 20th century — a practice Hamer herself was a victim of.
Dolen Perkins Valdez’ novel Take My Hand takes up this history in the story of a young nurse who fights for justice for two young girls who have been sterilized in Mississippi in 1971.
Out from Penguin Random House in April of this year, the book has garnered widespread praise. Ms Magazine called it “A searing and ultimately hopeful novel about (in)justice and the importance of learning from history.”
In addition to Take My Hand, Dolen Perkins-Valdez is the New York Times bestselling author of previous novels, Wench and Balm.
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers In 2021 Writer’s Voice spoke with Honorée Fanonne Jeffers about her award-winning novel, The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois. Listen to the full interview here.
We play an extended excerpt from that interview.
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We talk with journalist Keri Blakinger about her powerful prison memoir, Corrections In Ink.
Then, Eve Karlin tells us about her historical novel Track 61. It’s about the invasion by a group of German saboteurs during World War II, who came ashore in Amagansett, Long Island.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on twitter @WritersVoice. Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show.
Keri Blakinger Keri Blakinger was on the dean’s list at Cornell University when she got arrested with a Tupperware container full of illegal drugs, including 6 ounces of heroin. The stash was partly for her own use and partly to sell to feed her heroin habit.
The former skating champion and upper-middle class striver then began a two year incarceration for felony drug possession, first in the county jail, then in a series of prisons in New York State.
Along the way, she got clean—not because of incarceration, but in spite of it.
When she got free, Blakinger became a journalist. She went on to write crusading stories about prison conditions in America, first for the Houston Chronicle and now for the Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the US criminal justice system.
Read an excerpt from Corrections In Ink
Eve Karlin Just after midnight on June 13, 1942 four German saboteurs invaded the territory of the United States, coming ashore in Amagansett Long Island, bent on a Nazi mission to disrupt rail transport and sow chaos.
As a child, Eve Karlin spent summers at a cottage near the landing site. Her grandmother was a refugee from Nazi Germany.
Karlin weaves a tale inspired by these two strands of history—the Amangansett invasion and her grandmother’s story in her new novel Track 61.
It’s a coming of age story compellingly told, with a young teenager named Grete faced with moral choices that pit her feelings against her loyalties.
In addition to Track 61, Eve Karlin is the author of another historical novel, City of Liars and Thieves. She lives in East Hampton New York.
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Mohsin Hamid tells us about his fable of race and humanity, where white people suddenly turn brown. It’s called The Last White Man.
Then Omar El Akkad talks about his novel What Strange Paradise. It’s about what happens when a Syrian refugee, a young boy, washes up on a Greek island.
Writer’s Voice — in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Rate us on your favorite podcast app! It really helps others find our show. And like us on Facebook at Writers Voice Radio or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice.
Mohsin Hamid What would it be like if white people lost their whiteness—not just the privilege that comes with whiteness, but the skin color itself? How would they deal with a world where, all of a sudden, they woke up brown?
That’s the device at the heart of Mohsin Hamid’s novel The Last White Man. It’s a kind of fable that examines what happens when the social construction of race falls away to reveal our fundamental humanity.
Mohsin Hamid is the author of five novels, including Exit West and The Reluctant Fundamentalist.
Read an Excerpt from The Last White Man
Omar El Akkad The world was shocked when two year old Alan Kurdi’s body washed up on a Turkish beach in 2015 after he and his family fled from Syria. Then, the world seemed to forget. But the drownings continue—more than 3,200 died or went missing crossing the Mediterranean for Europe just in 2021.
Omar El Akkad’s new novel What Strange Paradise tells the story of a Syrian child migrant who is washed up on a Greek Island. The novel follows him as he revives and is then befriended by a local girl who hides him and tries to get him to a transit point where he can travel to safe harbor.
What Strange Paradise asks hard questions about how those who are privileged discount others and hide from our common humanity.
Omar El Akkad is a journalist and author of the bestselling novel, American War. He is an award-winning journalist and worked as a war correspondent reporting from Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and many other locations around the world.
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Bruce Holsinger tells us about his novel, The Displacements. It’s about what happens to a family when the first Category Six hurricane hits the wealthy enclave of Coral Gables, Florida.
Then, we talk with moral philosopher Elizabeth Cripps about her book, What Climate Justice Means and Why We Should Care.
Bruce Holsinger There’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide in a world beset by the Climate Catastrophe—not even if you’re rich. The leveling impact of climate change is at the heart of Bruce Holsinger’s novel The Displacements.
It’s a page-turning dive into what happens to people when climate driven disasters take everything from them. And how they cope in an America where disaster response is ever more stretched to the breaking point.
Bruce Holsinger is the author of the bestselling novel The Gifted School, as well as two historical novels set in the Middle Ages, among other books. He teaches English at the University of Virginia.
Read an excerpt from The Displacements
Elizabeth Cripps At the very heart of the climate crisis is the question: what is our responsibility to our fellow humans, future generations and all the other living beings we share the planet with?
Elizabeth Cripps examines the moral dimensions of the climate crisis in her book What Climate Justice Means and Why We Should Care.
Cripps is a moral and political philosopher and writer, specializing in climate justice and parental duties. She teaches at the University of Edinburgh and is Associate Director of CRITIQUE: Centre for Ethics and Critical Thought.
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We talk to Mary Pipher about her new memoir, A Life In Light: Meditations On Impermanence.
And poet, therapist and translator Anita Barros talks with us about her stunning debut novel, The Language of Birds.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on twitter @WritersVoice. Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show.
Anita Barrows Anita Barrows is a poet, translator and therapist working with children with disabilities, including autism. She draws on all these vocations in her debut novel The Language of Birds.
The novel is beautifully written—there’s the poet. It’s about two sisters, one autistic, the other socially isolated, and their struggle to connect with others and their own strengths—there’s the therapist. And, in exploring the world of an autistic character, Barrows translates that world for the reader with sensitivity and compassion.
Both sisters carry the burden of loss. But coming to terms with that loss unlocks the resilience within each of them to open to the love and care of others, and return it.
Anita Barrows has published three poetry volumes. Her translations with Joanna Macy of Rilke’s poetry and prose have been set to music, and nominated for national awards. She teaches at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, California, and maintains an active therapy practice specializing in trauma and developmental disabilities in children, adolescents and adults.
Mary Pipher Mary Pipher has been exploring what sustains us as individuals, members of families and of society for well over twenty years. From her classic, Reviving Ophelia, to the last book we spoke with her about, Women Rowing North, Pipher put us in touch with ourselves, our challenges and our resilience.
Her latest book, A Life In Light, is a memoir, where she draws on these challenges and strengths as they applied in her own life.
Drawing from her own experiences and expertise as a psychologist specializing in women, trauma, and the effect of our culture on our mental health, she looks inward to what shaped her as a woman, one who has experienced darkness throughout her life but was always drawn to the light.
Listen to our interview with Mary Pipher about Women Rowing North
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Artist, technologist, and philosopher James Bridle tells us about his book, Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for A Planetary Intelligence.
Then we talk with Sy Montgomery (Soul of the Octopus) about her new book, a memoir of falconry, The Hawk’s Way.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on twitter @WritersVoice.
James Bridle What does it mean to be intelligent? Is it something unique to humans or shared with other beings— beings of flesh, wood, stone, and silicon?
Artist, technologist, and philosopher James Bridle seeks the answer in his book, Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for A Planetary Intelligence. He explores the different kinds of intelligences that we have lived among since time immemorial — as well as the new intelligences we are creating through technology.
What can we learn from them, and how can we change ourselves, our technologies, our societies, and our politics to live better and more equitably with one another and the nonhuman world?
James Bridle draws on biology and physics, computation, literature, art, and philosophy to explore these questions.
Listen to an excerpt from Ways of Being
Sy Montgomery Sy Montgomery is noted for her friendships with animals. There are the octopuses she wrote about in her bestseller The Soul of An Octopus. The pig, Christopher Hogwood. And the myriad animals she lived with during both childhood and adulthood, whom she wrote about in How To Be A Good Creature.
But her latest relationship can’t really be called a friendship—more like a vassalship to a noble being: a hawk.
Montgomery writes about learning to be a hawk’s junior hunting partner in her new book The Hawk’s Way — and what that taught her about the heart of wildness.
Listen to an audio excerpt from The Hawks Way and see photos of the magnificent birds Montgomery writes about.
Next Week on Writer’s Voice
We talk with Mary Pipher about her new book, A LIFE IN LIGHT. Then Anita Barrows tells us about her novel, THE LANGUAGE OF BIRDS.
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We talk with Ari Rabin-Havt about his campaign memoir, The Fighting Soul: On The Road With Bernie Sanders.
Then we play an excerpt from our 2020 interview with Chuck Rocha, Bernie’s campaign lead on Latino voters, about his book, Tío Bernie.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on twitter @WritersVoice. Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show.
Ari Rabin-Havt In 2017, a poll found that Bernie Sanders was the most popular politician in America. Yet he inspired some of the most vicious vitriol from the established press and the Twitterverse ever seen.
Few people know who Bernie really is, as he deliberately keeps the focus on his policies, not himself.
In his book, The Fighting Soul, Ari Rabin-Havt reveals the real Bernie Sanders. He was a close advisor and deputy campaign manager on Sanders’s 2020 campaign, spending more hours with the Vermont senator than anyone else.
The book is a fascinating dive into a presidential campaign like no other—how it succeeded in building a massive following and how it ultimately failed to gain the nomination.
In addition to serving as deputy campaign manager on Senator Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign, Ari Rabin-Havt was a Sanders aide from 2017 to 2021. His writing has appeared in the New Republic and the Washington Post, among other publications.
Read An Excerpt
Chuck Rocha Chuck Rocha was a chief strategist for Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign. While he worked broadly in the campaign, his special mission was to mobilize the Latino vote for the Senator.
We spoke with him in 2020 about his memoir of the campaign Tío Bernie. We play an excerpt from that conversation.
Listen to the entire interview
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We talk with novelist Jim Shepard about his latest work of fiction, Phase Six. It’s about what happens when a mining operation in the thawing permafrost of Greenland releases a deadly virus into the world.
Then, we talk with Cob Carlson about his new documentary, The Greatest Radio Station In The World. It’s about listener-supported WPKN 89.5 fm Bridgeport CT, which just happens to be the home station of Writer’s Voice.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on twitter @WritersVoice
Jim Shepard
One of the least known but most terrifying consequences of global warming is the release of ancient pathogens from the melting permafrost. Lethal viruses and bacteria that have been locked up for many millennia—and against which humans have zero immunity—pose the threat of lethal pandemics that could take out millions, if not billions of humans and other animals.
In his new novel Phase Six, Jim Shepard brings together two interrelated trends that increase the risk: the thawing Arctic is leading to more mining—and that mining threatens to release pathogens that are new to human immune systems.
A mining operation in Greenland releases a virus that wipes out an Inuit community, save for the sole survivor, a young boy.
As the deadly virus spreads, two young investigators from the CDC race to identify the pathogen and sequence its genome. The connections between the scientists and the young boy the CDC has taken charge of pose questions about the moral responsibilities we owe each other and how we carry them out.
Jim Shepherd is the author of eight novels. Read an excerpt from Phase Six.
Cob Carlson
WPKN 89.5 FM in Bridgeport CT has been the radio home of Writer’s Voice for over a decade. We are proud to be part of this terrific station, home to some of the best music and public affairs programming you can find on the radio dial—and streaming on the Web.
So when the New Yorker magazine published a piece calling WPKN “The Greatest Radio Station In The World,” we were thrilled that it was finally getting the national recognition it so richly deserved.
Then, filmmaker and WPKN listener Cob Carlson came out with a documentary film about the station, taking its title from the Nw Yorker article. It premiered last month and will headline the Bridgeport Film Festival on July 23 in Bridgeport, CT.
Cob Carlson has been a film editor and producer on numerous films, such as Farmageddon and on TV shows Frontline and Nova. In addition to The Greatest Radio Station in The World, he made the documentary, Donald Ross: Discovering The Legend.
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We speak with Jonathan Lee about his historical novel The Great Mistake. It’s about the man who’s called “The Father of Greater New York,” Andrew Haswell Green.
Then, Michael Mechanic takes us on a tour into the lives of the super-rich and what their astronomic wealth says about America. His book is Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live- and How their Wealth Harms Us All.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon or find us on twitter @WritersVoice. Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show.
Jonathan Lee Central Park, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History and the New York Public Library: all of these great public institutions were the inspiration of one man: Andrew Haswell Green.
He was also responsible for the borough system that makes up greater New York: Manhattan, Queens, Staten Island, Brooklyn and the Bronx.
So how come so few people have ever heard of him? Did it have something to do with the horror and absurdity of his end? He was murdered in 1903 by someone who thought he was actually someone else. That mistake is one inspiration for Jonathan Lee’s novel about Andrew Green, The Great Mistake.
Lee immerses the reader in the character of Green—a fictional imagining that fascinates both with the strangeness and the humanity of this remarkable historical person.
Jonathan Lee is the author of three previous novels.
Read an excerpt from The Great Mistake
Michael Mechanic
The rich are getting much, much richer while more Americans are falling into poverty. In 2018, the three richest men in America held combined fortunes worth more than the total wealth of the poorest half of Americans. The bottom 40% of Americans have no assets at all.
Michael Mechanic wanted to know how the super-rich deal with all that astronomical wealth. Does it make them happy? How does it skew their perception of reality? His book Jackpot explores these questions and more. It’s an inquiry that begs the question: should billionaires exist?
Michael Mechanic is an author and journalist for Mother Jones Magazine.
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We talk with David Bollier about his latest book, The Commoners Catalog For Change Making: Tools For The Transitions Ahead.
Then, in light of the Supreme Court ruling taking away the constitutional right of women to reproductive freedom, we listen back to our 2015 interview with Katha Pollitt about her book, PRO: Reclaiming Abortion Rights.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon or find us on twitter @WritersVoice. Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show.
David Bollier It’s becoming pretty clear that our current economic system is leading us straight over the cliff. Whether you call it predatory capitalism or neoliberalism, the whole notion of subordinating all socio-economic and environmental needs to endlessly increasing short-term profit for a tiny elite is, well, nuts.
But what’s a workable alternative? One that can promote wellbeing and democracy?David Bollier says the answer is both new and age-old: he calls it “commoning.”
Commoners seek to prioritize people’s needs over market extraction, steward the Earth, relocalize the economy, and build new institutions of empowerment.
And The Commoner’s Catalog for Changemaking Bollier has complied is a kind of Whole Earth Catalog for the 21st century. It explains the transformational power of social collaboration by showcasing dozens of pathbreaking projects, books, websites, and activist initiatives. It’s an indispensable tool for transition to a livable future.
David Bollier is a global leader in the commoning movement. He’s the author of numerous books, including Fair, Free and Alive, Think Like a Commoner, and Brand Name Bullies. And we’ve talked with him about all those books and more.
He is also the founder of the website OnThe Commons.org and the host of the podcast, Frontiers of Commoning.
Read an Online Version of The Commoners Catalog
Katha Pollitt The Supreme Court has now stripped away the constitutional right of women to make their own reproductive choices.
Overturning Roe vs. Wade is just the beginning of an all-out assault on women’s rights, the rights of LGBTQ people, and other crucial rights, like the right to free and fair elections and the right to protect the environment.
It’s a horrific shock but not unexpected. It’s been coming for years, as the right to reproductive freedom has been steadily chipped away.
Back in 2015, we spoke with Katha Pollitt about her book, Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights. It’s as relevant today as ever.
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How safe are our national parks, especially for women hikers?
Not safe enough, says Kathryn Miles. We talk with her about her book Trailed: One Woman’s Quest to Solve the Shenandoah Murders. It’s about the murders of two remarkable women in 1996, a botched investigation and the failure by the National Park Service to take the safety of women hikers seriously.
Then, as 2022 is slated to experience a severe hurricane season, we revisit our 2015 conversation with Kathryn Miles about her book about Hurricane Sandy, Superstorm.
Writer’s Voice — in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Rate us on your favorite podcast app! It really helps others find our show. And like us on Facebook at Writers Voice Radio or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice.
Trailed In May 1996, two skilled backcountry leaders, Lollie Winans and Julie Williams, entered Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park for a week-long backcountry camping trip. After the pair didn’t return home as planned, park rangers found their tent slashed open, their beloved dog missing, and both women dead in their sleeping bags.
When journalist and author Kathryn Miles began looking into the case, she found conflicting evidence, mismatched timelines, and details that didn’t add up.
An innocent man, Miles is convinced, has been under suspicion for decades, while the true culprit is a known serial killer Miles says authorities should investigate.
But Trailed is more than a gripping true crime story. It’s a plea to make wilderness a safer space for women and to change the cultural narratives that put them at risk.
Kathryn Miles is the author of, among other books, Quakeland and Superstorm.
Superstorm
Scientists say that climate change is driving the giant storms that are ever more frequently battering the East and Gulf Coasts of the US.
It’s been ten years since one of them hit: Superstorm Sandy. It was the deadliest, most destructive, and strongest hurricane of the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season.
Kathryn Miles wrote the first complete account of what happened during the nine days of Sandy’s life, Superstorm. I spoke with her about the book in 2015.
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We talk with Jackie Higgins about her book, Sentient: How Animals Illuminate the Wonder of Our Human Senses.
Then we air our 2020 interview with Carl Safina about his book, Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace.
Writer’s Voice — in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Rate us on your favorite podcast app! It really helps others find our show. And like us on Facebook at Writers Voice Radio or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice.
Jackie Higgins
On June 14, New York’s Supreme Court declared that an elephant is not a person.
Happy the elephant, the Guardian reported, will not be released from the Bronx zoo to a more spacious sanctuary through a habeas corpus proceeding, which is a way for people to challenge illegal confinement. The court said “granting legal personhood in a case like this would affect how humans interact with animals, according to the majority decision.”
Indeed. What they really mean, is that it would call into question our use of animals as objects to exploit.
Anyone who has seen how elephants mourn understands that elephants are persons. Moreover, we humans are animals, a fact so obvious that only willful ignorance can deny it.
So changing how we interact with animals might be a good thing, not only to save and protect other animals, but also to preserve the biosphere on which we depend.
This is very much the perspective that informs Jackie Higgins book, Sentient.
Higgins shows the evolutionary links between our own senses and those of animals—senses that encompass not only the five we are so familiar with, but up to seventeen more senses.
Sentient explores the scientific revolution stirring in the field of perception, showing that the extraordinary sensory powers of our animal friends can help us better understand the same powers that lie dormant within us.
Carl Safina
Go here for information about our 2020 interview with Safina about Becoming Wild.
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We talk with Rebecca Wragg Sykes about her bestselling book, Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art. Her book sheds new light on the complex culture of our Neanderthal ancestors.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on twitter @WritersVoice. Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show.
Rebecca Wragg Sykes
Many have long been fascinated by Neanderthals, even before we discovered that many people contain Neanderthal DNA. Who was this hominem who seems so far from us, yet somehow near—as if the DNA many of us carry of this vanished species is signaling to our unconscious that we are kin?
In her bestselling book Kindred—now out in paperback—Neanderthal expert Rebecca Wragg Sykes shoves aside the cliché of the shivering ragged figure in an icy wasteland, and reveals the Neanderthal you don’t know, our ancestor who lived across vast and diverse tracts of Eurasia and survived through hundreds of thousands of years of massive climate change.
Her book sheds new light on where they lived, what they ate, and the increasingly complex Neanderthal culture that researchers have discovered.
Rebecca Wragg Sykes is an archaeologist and Honorary Fellow in the School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology at the University of Liverpool. Kindred won the 2021 PEN Hessell-Tiltman prize for history and was awarded Book of the Year by Current Archaeology, among other honors. She is the creator of the blog The Rocks Remain.
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We talk with Antonio Scurati about his international bestseller about Mussolini, M: Son of the Century. It won the prestigious Strega Prize.
Then Tsering Yangzom Lama tells us about her powerful novel of Tibetan exile and resilience, We Measure The Earth With Our Bodies.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on twitter @WritersVoice. Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show. Antonio Scurati Benito Mussolini came to power in circumstances that are resonant with the crises we face today: economic turmoil for the masses, disenchantment with elites that fail to govern, and the erosion of democracy.
In his international bestseller, M, Antonio Scurati takes a deep dive into the mind of the dictator and the social conditions he was able to exploit in his rise.
By combining fiction with documentary evidence and meticulous historical research, Scurati has invented a new genre, which he calls the “documentary novel.”
M is a cautionary tale that we would all do well to heed.
Read An Excerpt From M
Tsering Yangzom Lama
In today’s world, thirty people become refugees every minute and 68 million people have been displaced (almost certainly an undercount.)
One of the earliest post WWII refugee crises happened in 1959, when Mao’s People’s Liberation Army invaded Tibet. About 80,000 Tibetans, including the Dalai Lama, were forced to escape to India and Nepal, uprooted from their ancestral villages and way of life. Many people died during that exodus.
Tsering Yangzom Lama’s parents were among those who fled. She was born in Nepal. Yet there was much about her family’s history that she was unaware of growing up.
Her acclaimed debut novel We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies tells the story of the Tibetan diaspora. But it also brings alive the rich history, traditions and culture of Tibet.
Named a most anticipated book of the year by The Millions and Ms. and among the Washington Post’s 10 Noteworthy Books for May, 2022, We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies is a story of courage, survival resilience by an extraordinary young writer.
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This week on Writer’s Voice, we talk with historian Philip Dray about his book, A Lynching at Port Jervis: Race and Reckoning in the Gilded Age. It’s about how the nation was shocked when a local Black man was lynched in 1892 in the supposedly enlightened North. Despite the shock, no one was held to account.
Then, classics scholar Natalie Haynes tells us about her feminist interpretation of the ancient Greek myths and plays. Her book is Pandora’s Jar: Women In The Greek Myths.
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on twitter @WritersVoice. Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show.
Philip Dray
Today, it’s a terrible truth that the assault on the lives of Black Americans is neither a regional nor a temporary feature, but a national crisis. Just last week, a self-described fascist and white supremacist murdered 10 Black shoppers in Buffalo, New York.
130 years ago, a mob in Port Jervis, New York lynched a local Black man when he was accused, like so many lynching victims, of sexually assaulting a white woman. A charge that was never proved.
That lynching shocked New Yorkers—they thought their state was too enlightened to lynch a Black man. But no one was held to account for the murder.
In A Lynching At Port Jervis, Philip Dray revisits that time and place, and draws lessons that are as relevant to us today as they were more than a century ago.
READ AN EXCERPT
Philip Dray is the author of several books of American cultural and political history, including At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America, which won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award and was a Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, There is Power in a Union: The Epic Story of Labor in America, and Capitol Men: The Story of Reconstruction Through the Lives of the First Black Congressmen.
Natalie Haynes
We all learned that Pandora was the woman who unleashed all the evils into the world. (Evil woman, that tired old trope.) But what if the original story was different? What if it was much more benign? And why did the story change so much over the centuries?
Natalie Haynes has written an entertaining and meticulously researched book that argues women in the Greek myths were much more complex, interesting and powerful human beings than later men gave them credit for. Her book is Pandora’s Jar: Women In The Greek Myths.
Natalie Haynes is the author of six books, including the bestselling A Thousand Ships, which was shortlisted for the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction. She is the host of the BBC program, Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics. Haynes has written for the Times, the Independent, the Guardian and the Observer.
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We talk with Mark Vonnegut about his memoir, THE HEART OF CARING: A Life In Pediatrics.
Then, environmental reporter Oliver Milman tells us about the shocking carbon bomb that President Biden is detonating with his record-breaking sales of oil and gas leases. Milman co-wrote a recent piece in the Guardian, “Us Fracking Boom Could Tip World To Edge Of Climate Disaster.”
And we hear a poem by Mary Oliver, “At The River Clarion.”
Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on twitter @WritersVoice. Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show.
Mark Vonnegut Can you believe there was a time when doctor’s visits were $10 to $20, people paid in cash and, if there was insurance, there were no co-payments and deductibles, or medical debt, because insurance companies didn’t go after patients for not paying their bills?
Sounds improbable these days, but that’s the way it was when my guest Mark Vonnegut—and yes, he is the son of the famous writer—started his practice as a pediatrician.
His new memoir, The Heart of Caring: A Life In Pediatrics, recounts what happened when the medical system started serving insurance company profits instead of patient health. It’s a story we all know well, at least our own versions of it.
But Vonnegut tells it through the lens of a practicing doctor who has seen the toll it has taken not only on patients but on doctors as well.
Physicians are leaving their profession in droves, beset by burnout, the moral hazard of compromising care to conform to insurance company demands, and the loss of control over their own practice of medicine.
The Heart of Caring is filled with stories that reveal Vonnegut’s commitment to his patients–like Anna Maria, a little girl with an incurable case of bone cancer; and Marlowe, whose life-threatening anemia is cured by his just-born baby brother. Vonnegut reminds us what it means to be a good doctor and why we should care about what happens to good docs like him.
Mark Vonnegut is the author of several previous memoirs, including Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness, Only More So, which recounts his battle with bipolar disorder. Mark Vonnegut practices pediatrics in Quincy, MA.
Oliver Milman When Joe Biden ran for president, he promised to tackle the climate emergency—he called it existential—that threatens our survival. It gave me hope that finally something might be done to avert the climate apocalypse.
There must be a special place in Hell for politicians who talk the talk on climate but turn around and do the direct opposite. Joe Biden is headed for that Hell.
Unfortunately, he’s bringing the rest of us with him. He just sold a record number of leases to oil and gas companies to drill baby drill on our public lands. As Oliver Milman reports in his recent piece in the Guardian, co-written with Nina Lakhani, Biden’s fracking boom “could tip world to the edge of climate disaster.”
That “could” is being polite. If those drilling leases are exploited, Biden’s carbon bombs will cook the planet. He will be responsible for the deaths of billions of people and the other beings with whom we share this beautiful and endangered home. Our only home.
We last spoke with Oliver Milman about his book The Insect Crisis. He’s the environmental reporter for the Guardian.His piece in the Guardian was
Oliver Milman: US Fracking Boom Could Tip World To Edge Of Climate Disaster
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