WritersCast: Recent Episodes
WritersCast
WritersCast is the voice of writers. Host David Wilk interviews authors of new and forthcoming fiction, poetry and non-fiction books, talking with them about their work as writers, the stories they tell, the subjects they write about and the books they write. Writers reveal the thoughts and ideas behind their writing, and talk about a wide variety of topics of interest to their readers.
I originally began Publishing Talks as a series of conversations with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology, mostly talking about the future of publishing, books, and culture. I continue to enjoy my conversations with people in the book industry about the evolution of publishing in the context of technology, culture, and economics. This latest episode features a conversation I recently had with the wonderful Brooke Warner, publisher of She Writes Press (which is only one among the many other roles she somehow manages).
It was ten years ago that I first talked to Brooke for Publishing Talks about her work with She Writes (which she co-founded with Kamy Wicoff in 2012) when the publishing world was a very different place. She Writes was and is a hybrid publisher, requiring support from its author for the publishing process. Ten years ago that was far less common than it is today.
Since Brooke not only keeps a close watch on everything that is happening in independent and commercial publishing, she also writes, talks and podcasts herself about book matters, and now she is also publishing a weekly newsletter about writers, books, and writing. So she is an ideal person for me to talk to about what is happening in the book world today, and I think you will find our conversation to be interesting and educational, no matter your role – reader, writer, publisher, book marketer – or your degree of knowledge about books and publishing. I always enjoy speaking with knowledgeable publishing folk and I think you will enjoy hearing what Brooke has to say. Please have a listen.
Brooke is also is a memoir coach and author of Write On, Sisters!, Green-light Your Book, What’s Your Book?, and three books on memoir. She’s also a TEDx speaker (“Green-light Revolution”), weekly podcaster (of “Memoir Nation” with co-host Grant Faulkner), and publishes a weekly newsletter, Writerly Things, on Substack at brookewarner.substack.com.
In March 2025, SWP joined The Stable Book Group as one of the inaugural imprints in this new publishing collective. Brooke became Stable Book Group’s COO while maintaining her role as Publisher of She Writes Press.
During the course of its existence SWP has worked with over 1300 authors.
Brooke’s own website is here.
She Writes Press website.
The Stable Book Group website.
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Fells Point: A Novel – William Loving – Rare Bird Books – Hardcover – 9781644285558 – 240 pages – $28.00 – June 9, 2026 – ebook available at lower prices
Fells Point is a bit of a noirish, bit of a postmodernish novel set in modern day Baltimore. In all honesty, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. For some reason I just did not expect to get into it so easily. Maybe because the writing is clear and the author clearly loves his characters and the city of Baltimore where the book takes place.
The novel’s protagonist is Daniel Doyle Jr., who comes off as bored with his life and aware that there must be something more. We kind of like him but we don’t quite know why. Maybe it is because now that he has reached the time he might have had his mid-life crisis, he finds out that he has a congenital heart defect that could kill him at any moment. Imminent death does seem to be a wake up call for Doyle so he starts exploring his home city for the first time. He makes a “bucket list” of places he has missed or taken for granted for his entire life that he can actually see for the first time.
Just as he’s beginning to get comfortable with his new understanding of Baltimore’s hidden treasures, Doyle starts to realize that he is being followed by a mysterious stranger who seems to appear wherever he goes. He wonders whether this is actually real, or some sort of fantasy he has created for himself, but it turns out to be real in a surprising and complicated way that makes the novel completely engrossing for the reader (and for the characters in it as well). Difficult life questions are asked and possibly answered.
Bill and I had an excellent conversation about this novel and Loving’s approach to fiction. And given the surprising twists and turns in this story, we were careful to avoid any spoilers. You will have to read the book to find out why it is so compelling. I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did.
Before turning to fiction, Loving was an accomplished journalist at the Los Angeles Times and the Minneapolis Star Tribune. In addition to Fells Point, he is also the the author of two other novels, City of Angles (set in Los Angeles) and Blue Earth River (set in Minneapolis). In his fiction, he has tended to explore the cities he has lived in, using his journalist’s skills to create stories that reflect those places in vivid ways. He currently lives in Pasadena, California with his wife.
William Loving has crafted a maze of identity and irony that leads to a climax that will stay with the reader long after the last page.”—David Bolton, author of Whispering Pines and Love Thief
“As thought-provoking as it is hilarious, Fells Point is a page-turning masterpiece of existential wit and suspense.”—J. Paul Rieger, author of A Most Unlikely Man and Sunscreen Shower
Buy the book at Bookshop.org
Author website
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When Caesar Was King: How Sid Caesar Reinvented American Comedy – David Margolick – Shocken Books – Hardcover – 9780805242553 – 400 pages – $35.00 – November 11, 2025 – ebook edition available at lower cost, audio book also available.
I am almost the same age as author David Margolick, so was born too late to see any of Sid’s early classic shows that aired when he was establishing the way comedy would work on the then new medium, television. Growing up with a comedy writer father, Sid Caesar was legendary in our house as a revered progenitor of the current crop of television comedy, but by the time I was old enough to know who he was, Sid Caesar was no longer at the pinnacle of his success. Despite being active on TV through the sixties, seventies and beyond, he was no longer culturally relevant as he had been earlier in his career. Yet his impact on television and its audiences was massive, and I remember hearing my parents and their friends talk about Sid Caesar, Imogen Coca, Carl Reiner, and Mel Brooks and their less well-known writers, always with admiration and joy.
Whether you are lucky enough to have seen Sid Caesar in action in his early days, or know nothing about him at all, David Margolick’s biography brings Sid to life. He provides us with a vivid rendering of an extremely complicated actor/comedian. In the early 1950s, Caesar was television’s first real star, his show drawing am audience of twenty million people at a time before televisions were not even present in most homes in America. His sketches helped define the nature of television comedy for generations to come even to this day. (All you have to do is watch a Caesar sketch followed by a modern SNL sketch and you will get it.)
Most of Caesar’s writers and actors went on to their own successful and influential careers and helped define television culture for decades. His writers included Neil Simon (The Odd Couple), Larry Gelbart (MASH), Mel Tolkin (All in the Family), Woody Allen (too many to list), Mel Brooks (Blazing Saddles, The Producer) and Carl Reiner (Dick Van Dyke Show*).
Sid Caesar success was relatively short-lived. As television moved to take over the heartland of America, other stars supplanted him. As Margolick makes clear, Caesar was a complicated, introverted, socially awkward person, completely unlike the public personae he portrayed in performance. He could not or would not adapt to the changing tastes of television audiences—perhaps because Caesar’s humor was based on and drawn from 20th century urban American Jewish experience, and was more sophisticated than what mass market television would support. And Caesar’s personality was not suited for the massive success he achieved.
Margolick’s research and attention to detail, interviews with key people involved in Caesar’s life and his obvious love for Caesar’s humor and culture all contribute to make this a highly readable and enjoyable book for anyone who is interested in American culture and especially television comedy.
David Margolick was a reporter on legal affairs for the New York Times, where he wrote the weekly “At the Bar” column and covered, among other stories, the trial of O. J. Simpson. He was subsequently a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. His books include Beyond Glory: Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling, At the Bar, Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song, Dreadful: The Short Life and Gay Times of John Horne Burns; and Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock, and The Promise and the Dream. He lives in New York City.
I very much enjoyed reading this biography, which is appropriately entertaining as well as informative. It broadened and deepened my appreciation for early television comedy, a milieu I enjoy. With the ubiquity of old television clips now available on YouTube, I was able to sample some of the sketches that are described in the book, including some I had never seen. Watching Caesar in action with his great supporting casts, while reading about those people in the book will change the way you see them now. David and I had a terrific conversation which I hope you will enjoy as much as I did.
Buy the book here.
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Publishing Talks started as a series of conversations with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology, mostly talking about the future of publishing, books, and culture. It has been an ongoing education talking with people in the book industry about the evolution of publishing in the context of technology, culture, and economics. This latest episode features a recent conversation with Ramsey Kanaan about the anarchist publisher PM Press he founded in 2007, and his work in publishing, music and activism for the past many years. Ramsey has been a leader among the innovative, creative editors, publishers, and others in independent publishing and bookselling whose work is so important, especially now.
I met Ramsey years ago when he was working with activist AK Press he helped start in the UK. He later left AK, establishing PM Press in 2007 to focus on a wider range of literary publishing, and to reach a larger audience than AK nonfiction oriented publishing could do.
PM Press was originally based in the Bay Area and still maintains space there, but moved its main operations to Ithaca, New York in 2023, when it purchased the former Autumn Leaves bookstore space to establish its warehouse there. And there’s also a branch in the UK, so it’s pretty wide-reaching for an independent publisher. Publishing authors as varied as Ursula K. Le Guin, Peter Linebaugh, Silvia Federici, C.L.R. James, James Kelman, and Jonathan Lethem, as well as a plethora of newer and less well-known voices, PM has become one of the most successful radical publishers of modern times. Their list is impressive, including a range of books in fiction, art, music, politics, history, and culture in print, ebook, and audio formats.
PM’s publishes widely, including coloring books and cookbooks, polemics, memoirs, novels, pamphlets, treatises, manifestos, and comics in almost every topic imaginable – bicycles, vegetables, squatting, sex, sports, punks, Wobblies, self-defense, parenting, striking, and much more. PM brings tremendous energy to its publishing, reaching readers “by any means necessary” with unmatched creativity and gusto.
Aside from his work in books and publishing, Ramsey was also the vocalist of the Scottish punk band Political Asylum.
We had a great conversation about books, publishing, distribution and the current state of politics in America. Talking to Ramsey, it’s clear that the energy and strength of outsider publishing is stronger than ever, and that energy is needed now more than ever.
Check out the press and its books here.
You can join Friends of PM Press to support their work and get access to an array of essential books.
PM is an altogether terrific outfit keeping the flags flying – red, black, and rainbow. What energy! What facts-on-the-ground! What excitement! What dreams!—Peter Linebaugh, author of The Magna Carta Manifesto: Liberties and Commons for All and coauthor of The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic
If a revolutionary’s first weapon is a book, PM Press has the arsenal. Their texts are battle plans for a new world.—Peter Werbe, The Fifth Estate
The post Publishing Talks: Ramsey Kanaan of PM Press first appeared on WritersCast.
Death in the Strike Zone: The Mystery of America’s First Baseball Hero — Thomas W. Gilbert — David Godine — Hardcover — 978-1-56792-759-7 — 192 pages — $27.95 — March 24th, 2026 – ebook edition available at lower cost
As most of my listeners probably know by now, I love baseball and I really love books about baseball. At one time I thought I knew alot about baseball history, but I have come to realize that I am a rank amateur in a world where there are true baseball historians at work on almost any baseball related subject one could imagine.
I loved reading Tom Gilbert’s wonderful book about James Creighton, arguably the first true baseball star, whose brief career took place in the heated era of early baseball in New York City. Pre-Civil War baseball is really not the same game as the one we play today. It was a precursor even to the game played in the late 19th century and early twentieth century, an era that at least some rabid fans today know something about. But baseball as it was played in the 1850s and 1860s was far different, and perhaps no more so than how pitching was done.
Reading this vividly written book, we learn about an era that is both strangely foreign and similar to our own in many ways. Baseball this early was still being defined by its players, and the game was emerging from pure amateur club sport played only in the big eastern cities, showing signs of popularity that would enable baseball to become the dominant sport in the entire country in less than 50 years.
Creighton was his era’s Babe Ruth and Shohei Ohtani, someone whose skills and manner of playing changed the game completely. What I learned from Tom Gilbert is that in this early time, pitching was much more like today’s slow pitch softball than what we recognize as hardball pitching today. The mount was much closer to home plate, and there were no balls and strikes – hitters just waited for a pitch “served” to them that they could hit, and it was fielding and running that made the game interesting, not today’s “inside game” where the pitcher and hitter define so much of what will happen.
Even if you don’t care as much about baseball as I do, Gilbert’s narrative weaves together the history of nineteenth century America into his narrative in a way that will interest many in the story of American culture.
Thomas W. Gilbert is also the author of How Baseball Happened: Outrageous Lies Exposed, The Truth Revealed, Baseball and the Color Line, Roberto Clemente, and Playing First. He grew up in Connecticut and lives in Brooklyn, not far from where James Creighton played and is buried.
We had a great conversation I hope you will enjoy as much as I did.
Author website
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Authors Voices gives writers and poets a platform for reading their work. It’s been too infrequent a series in the past. Starting in 2026, inaugurated by this wonderful reading by Los Angeles poet Kim Dower, we will be presenting a monthly reading series with a representation of poets I feel have not received enough attention for their work.
Kim’s reading took place on April 1, 2026, the first day of National Poetry Month. Unfortunately we were delayed in publishing this episode, so apologies are due to the poet.
In this reading, Kim presents a range of her poems from her previously published books.
Kim Dower was born and raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and has lived in Los Angeles for many years, where she is well known both for her poetry as well as her work in book publicity under the name “Kim from LA.”
Kim is the former City Poet Laureate for West Hollywood, California and is the author of five acclaimed books of poetry. Among her books has been a Los Angeles Times bestseller, a finalist for the 2023 Eric Hoffer Book Award, I Wore This Dress Today for You, Mom.
Dower’s poems have been featured on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac and Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry, as well as in many anthologies and journals, including Ploughshares, James Dickey Review, Plume, and Barrow Street. She teaches poetry workshops for Antioch University, UCLA Extension, and the West Hollywood Library. Kim lives with her family in West Hollywood, California.
Her books are all wonderful and frequently funny.
I Wore This Dress Today for You, Mom
What She Wants
Sunbathing on Tyrone Power’s Grave
Last Train to the Missing Planet
Her website is here.
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Attention: Writing on Life, Art, and the World — Anne Enright — W.W. Norton — Hardcover — 978-1-324-12413-9 — 288 pages — $29.99 — April 7, 2026 — ebook and audio book versions available, prices vary
Anne Enright has quickly become one of my favorite writers over the past several years. Her fiction is superb, her characters fully alive, and the complex stories of their lives are gripping. She has rightfully won just about every major award, including the Man Booker, a Whiting Campbell award, the Andrew Carnegie Medal, and in 2022 a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Irish Book Awards. We talked in person in 2020 just prior to the pandemic about her beautiful novel, Actress, a great honor for me.
Her newest book, Attention: Writing on Life, Art, and the World, collects nearly thirty years of her essays that cover a wide range of topics, always focusing with laser attention on what matters most about her subjects, mostly writers. Some you will know well, others, unless you are Irish or particularly well read in contemporary Irish lit will be new to you, as they were to me. You’ve probably read James Joyce, Alice Munro, Angela Carter, and Toni Morrison, for example, but you may be less familiar with John McGahern or Maeve Brennan. I think Enright’s personal approach to these writers and the stories of how they have affected her life bring her unique perspective to all of them.
But there is more, much more in this collection than writing about writers. The book is divided into three sections: “Voices,” “Bodies,” and “Time.” The first section collects her writing about writers and the second presents her essays about women, their bodies and who will control them, while the third section is broader (as time is, isn’t it?) and less specific, including essays about Canada (beautiful), where Enright spent time in her youth, Honduras for a visit, children and religion (challenging), and traveling with her husband, among others.
Enright’s writing is always spot on, simultaneously warm and tough. It’s a great read. And the essays always leave the reader thoughtful and engaged, which I like very much.
We had a great talk about a great many things, some not included in the book at all. Talking to Anne Enright is like being in a room where a brilliant salon is taking place. The conversation is always great, and like her essays, spur one to thought and reflection. What more could you ask for?
“…she is one of the best essayists alive.”—Megan Nolan, Observer
Anne Enright’s blog
Buy: Attention: Writing on Life, Art, and the World
Novels The Wig My Father Wore (1995) * What Are You Like? (2000) * The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch (2002) * The Gathering (2007) * The Forgotten Waltz (2011) * The Green Road (2015) * Actress (2020) * The Wren, the Wren (2023) Short Story Collections The Portable Virgin (1991) * Taking Pictures (2008) * Yesterday’s Weather (2009) – A collection of new and selected stories Non-Fiction Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood (2004) – Essays on motherhood * Attention: Writing on Life, Art and the World* (2026) The post Anne Enright: Attention: Writing on Life, Art, and the World first appeared on WritersCast.
I discovered the very interesting Luke Palder by accident one day when I saw an ad he ran for his memoir writing and publishing business, MemoirGhostWriting.com. It sounded really interesting, and similar enough to some of my own work that I wanted to find out more about his work.
Luke is a serial entrepreneur in book publishing and production – he is the founder and CEO of ProofreadingServices.com, MemoirGhostwriting.com, TranslationServices.com, and TranscriptionServices.com. As he says about himself – “I’m committed to enhancing communication—whether it’s through the written word, across different languages, or from audio to text. My passion lies in empowering writers to share their stories, assisting businesses to overcome language barriers, and enabling individuals to immortalize their spoken words in written form. Leading these companies, my goal is to maintain the highest standards of service, treating every project with meticulous attention to detail.”
Publishing Talks has given me the opportunity to meet and talk to so many smart people in the book business. I really enjoy sharing the boundless creativity that motivates so many of us in the book business. Luke exemplifies those qualities and what this series of conversations is about. It was a pleasure to get to speak with him about his work and I am sure you will find this conversation of interest. We had a great conversation about his work, the book business and the importance of storytelling, among other subjects. His passionate commitment to people and their stories is visible in everything he does.
Luke is a Yale College graduate who also studied at Yale Law School, the Yale School of Management (SOM), Cambridge University, and Peking University. He is the founder of ProofreadingServices.com, serving more than 25,000 clients globally over 13 years. And he rode a bicycle across the United States, covering more than 4,000 miles in 63 days. He lives and works in North Carolina.
MemoirGhostWriting.com
ProofreadingServices.com
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The Nazi and the Psychiatrist: Hermann Göring, Dr. Douglas M. Kelley, and a Fatal Meeting of Minds at the End of WWII — Jack El-Hai — PublicAffairs — 9781610394635 — 304 pages — Published September 2, 2014 — Paperback — $21.99 (ebook available at lower prices; audiobook download also available)
The Nazi and the Psychiatrist was originally published more than ten years ago. It had some terrific reviews, and then became, like most books published today, a “backlist” title mostly available from online retailers. But now that it has become the basis of the well received film, Nuremburg, directed by James Vanderbilt, with a star studded cast, including Rami Malek, Russell Crowe, and Michael Shannon, the book has been re-issued in paperback and has deservedly found many new readers.
In my conversation with its author, Jack El-Hai, we talked mostly about the book itself, and not so much about what it is like for an author to find his book rediscovered because of a movie, though Jack did explain that the film only focuses on a small part of the story El-Hai explored in the book. The Nazi and the Psychiatrist takes on what was a complex relationship between the American psychiatrist Douglas M. Kelley and the 22 Nazis who became his patients as they were imprisoned before their trial as war criminals in the 1945-46 International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. Of course the key figure among the Nazis was Herman Göring, who was not only an important early supporter of Hitler, as well as one of the central figures in the rise of Nazism, the conduct of WWII as head of the Luftwaffe, and of course one of the architects of the Holocaust. At the time he was captured by the Americans, he expected to become the next leader of Germany.
Kelley was brought in to examine the Nazi leaders who were to be the first tried for war crimes by the Allies – the idea being to determine whether they were each rational enough to stand trial for their horrific actions. As a psychiatrist, this gave him an exceptional opportunity – to gather information about the psychology of Nazis and to understand whether they were indeed within the range of normal human behavior or pathological.
Kelley became especially close with Göring, a formidable figure, who ultimately committed suicide rather than experience the humiliating death by hanging to which he was sentenced by the Tribunal. Kelley’s life was deeply influenced by his experiences with the Nazis, and El-Hai, who had access to Kelley’s files and talked extensively with his surviving children, paints a compelling portrait of a man whose suffering was extreme and led ultimately to his own unfortunate suicide some years later.
Given our present circumstances, a book about the psychological components of authoritarianism and the individuals who led Germany’s fascist enterprise cannot help to resonate. Reading this book will make you think about the nature of evil (and Arendt’s calling it “banal”) as well as the way that fascism masks the personal greed and pursuit of power that drove it.
I do recommend this book at anyone who is trying to grapple with what is happening to us now. And this conversation will be illuminating as well.
Jack El-Hai is an award-winning writer who has published innumerable articles and more than a dozen books. Jack’s other books include Face in the Mirror, The Lost Brothers, and The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness.
He has contributed articles to Scientific American, Wired, Discover, GQ, The Atlantic, Smithsonian, Aeon, The Washington Post Magazine, and many other publications. He lives in Minneapolis.
“This intimate and insightful portrait of two intersecting, outsized personalities‑‑one an exemplar of public service and the other an avatar of evil‑‑is as suspenseful as a classic Hitchcock film that hinges on an eerie psychological secret. Readers of The Nazi and the Psychiatrist will be riveted by Jack El‑Hai’s moving study of how good and evil can converge in a heightened instant and across a lifetime.”—Andrew Solomon, National Book Award winning author of Far from the Tree
Author website
Buy the book
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I started Publishing Talks as a series of conversations with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology, mostly talking about the future of publishing, books, and culture. It has been great fun talking with people in the book industry about the evolution of publishing in the context of technology, culture, and economics.
These conversations have been inspirational to me. I have had the pleasure of speaking with visionaries and entrepreneurs, editors, publishers and others who have influenced and changed contemporary literature and culture. I’ve also had the opportunity to speak with a number of friends and colleagues in the book business.
I really enjoy the opportunities to find out about the boundless creativity that motivates so many of us in the book business, and I also really enjoy talking to others in the business, who like me, have tried to make sense of it all in some way or another.
Today’s conversation is with Kathleen Schmidt, a long time book publicist whose Substack newsletter Publishing Confidential, is widely read within the book business. Her newsletter is always a great source of thoughtful ideas and commentary about the current state of publishing and book marketing and promotion. I was inspired to speak with her after reading one of her truly great posts this past December, “Marketing + Publicity in 2026: Change Needs to Happen: The good, the bad, and the ugly.”
Here’s a key quote from that piece that caught my attention right away:
“The industry must accept that some books absolutely will not get attention from legacy media and move towards what works for each book, whether that’s a marketing-heavy campaign or just pitching podcasts. Why are we still creating arbitrary publicity plans for every title when we know most of it is b.s.?”
She went on from there to provide a meaningful list of ideas and practices that any publisher, publicist or author can learn from, be inspired by, and adapt for their own best practices. I appreciate her honesty, willingness to try new things, and her understanding that failure is not a bad thing, but a way to learn and get better at what we do. Everyone in the book business is frustrated by the current media landscape and by the massive number of new (and old) book titles that makes getting attention for any new book so difficult, not to mention the competition from other media forms, social media included, that take attention away from books and reading. But that frustration needs to be converted into positive energy. Otherwise you may as well quit doing what you love to do.
Having a chance to speak with Kathleen was rewarding for me, and I am sure will be for you as well. She’s smart, creative and realistic. I am sure she is a good marketer too. We need more radical honesty, more innovation and more enjoyment in book marketing!
Her bio: Kathleen is the founder and CEO of Kathleen Schmidt Public Relations with three decades of experience spanning publicity, literary representation, acquisitions editing, and ghostwriting. She has worked on more than 50 New York Times bestsellers and led global media and branding campaigns for politicians, A-list celebrities, athletes, and other high-profile figures.
I found another recent interview with Kathleen by Christelle Lujan at She Writes Magazine. In that interviewsays: “First and foremost, I want Publishing Confidential to be a resource for authors to learn about the publishing industry.”
And here are a couple more of her posts:
30 Years in Book Publishing: What I’ve Learned
Why Advertising Doesn’t Work for Books
And here is her business website, Kathleen Schmidt Public Relations.
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Devouring Time: Jim Harrison, a Writer’s Life — Todd Goddard — 9781799902362 – Blackstone Publishing — Hardcover — 558 pages — $29.99 — November 4, 2025
Jim Harrison was for so many readers – and other writers – one of the central voices of American literature for the last half century. When Harrison began writing, it was as a poet, and most readers came to his fiction and nonfiction much later. It was the novels and many novellas that drew large numbers of readers to him, while his first hand style nonfiction writing about food and his many adventures introduced him to a completely different audience who in many case, I am sure, also read his fiction. And then there was the film writing and the stories of fishing, carousing and gourmand like intake of food, alchohol, and drugs with friends like Thomas McGuane, Peter Matthiessen, Jimmy Buffett, and Jack Nicholson in Key West, Montana and Hollywood. Harrison became more than a writer, but also a publicly imagined character much like Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose persona became entwined with his writing and made him that much more attractive to some of his readers.
His output as a writer was amazing: poetry, novels, novellas, short stories, magazine nonfiction, film scripts. His appetite for life was immense. His friendships were legendary and he was loved by many whose lives he touched. Fittingly, he died alone while in the midst of writing a poem.
In Devouring Time, Todd Goddard presents a meaningful account of this writer’s life, from beginning to end, including much about his persona that many readers could not have otherwise known. I’ve read much of Jim Harrison’s writing, and knew more than a little about his life. But I learned much more from this book, feeling after reading it that I understood Harrison more clearly both as a writer and a person. This is not a celebratory paean to someone’s hero, or the work of a starry eyed fan. Nor is it a reductionist scholarly account. This book is a carefully constructed narrative worthy of the subject’s complicated, sometimes very painful, but always meaningful life. Goddard refuses to turn away from Harrison as a human being whose life included physical and emotional challenges, who suffered, who lived a full life also of joy and beauty, and despite his foibles, his accomplishments were immense and lasting.
Jim Harrison was born in Michigan in 1937 and died Patagonia, Arizona in 2016. He wrote twenty-one books of fiction and fourteen books of poetry that influenced many other writers of all kinds and won him legions of readers. Harrison helped shape the course of contemporary American literature, revitalizing in particular the novella, a form he mastered and reinvigorated.
Though it was his fiction, nonfiction, and film writing that made him famous (and by which he made his living), it was always poetry that he loved most, and while he was a thoroughly social writer who enjoyed the company of many friends (and lovers), he was simultaneously a private person who cherished remoteness, the singularity of the wilderness, and solitude, and also the company of his wife and children at home.
Todd Goddard conducted over a hundred interviews and had full access to Harrison’s collected papers, as well as the cooperation of Harrison’s family to create this fully formed literary biography of one of our most important writers of the last half century.
I very much enjoyed the opportunity to speak with Todd. We talked about Harrison, of course, but also about the art of biography and the process of writing a book with so much depth of attention and detail. Whether you are a reader of Jim Harrison’s poetry or prose, this biography will capture your attention and in all likelihood, lead you to want to read further in Harrison’s extensive body of work.
“Todd Goddard tells the story of this bon vivant, outdoorsman, hellion, and great poet from his ancestors to his end with grace, momentum, generosity, and insight…and what a great American life it was, wreckage, glory, gifts, and ALL.”—Rebecca Solnit, author of Orwell’s Roses
Calendars
Back in the blue chair in front of the green studio
another year has passed, or so they say, but calendars lie.
They’re a kind of cosmic business machine like
their cousin clocks but break down at inoppormne times.
Fifty years ago I learned to jump off the calendar
but I kept getting drawn back on for reasons
of greed and my imperishable stupidity.
Of late I’ve escaped those fatal squares
with their razor-sharp numbers for longer and longer.
I had to become the moving water I already am,
falling back into the human shape in order
not to frighten my children, grandchildren, dogs and friends.
Our old cat doesn’t care. He laps the water where my face used to be.
from IN SEARCH OF SMALL GODS, Copper Canyon Press, 2010
Author website
Buy the book
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Echoes of Our Origins: Baboons, Humans, and Nature — Shirley C. Strum, with Cassandra Phillips — Johns Hopkins University Press — Hardcover — 978-1-4214-5203-6 — 376 pages — $32.95 — September 9, 2025 — ebook edition available.
This book was a fantastic discovery for me. I consider myself fairly well read; I’ve studied anthropology extensively and I even briefly went to graduate school to study biology, but my knowledge of primates is woefully poor. Shirley’s book was a great introduction for me to one part of a much wider field, and got me excited and engaged with baboons, who turn out to be incredibly interesting animals, and of course connect us not only to issues of human evolution, but also historical and modern ecology, issues of human/animal interactions, and human responsibilities in relation to other animals, especially primates.
I feel like I learned more from this book than almost anything I have read in the past year. Shirley Strum’s story of her fifty years studying baboons is completely compelling.
Her baboon story started in 1972, when as a graduate student, Strum traveled to Kenya to study the origins of human aggression by observing baboons. Her earliest discoveries completely changed the scientific study of baboons, and many long-held assumptions about primate behavior.
Living closely with a number of different populations of baboons over the past half century, and closely observing their lives, Strum has learned more than any other human about baboons’ complex strategies of negotiation, collaboration, and resilience. And through her work, Strum has had to deal with an array of challenges – not just within her field itself, but in the changing ecology and landscape of Africa, as more people have taken over former baboon (and many other animals’) territories, creating new forms of human/animal conflicts, and changing the evolution of baboon society itself.
In addition to illustrating the incredibly interesting lives of baboons, Strum’s experiences tell us a great deal about how human science works, and the challenges that we face in trying to deal with the massive effects of the anthropocene on our fellow beings in the world. I know it’s simplistic to say that baboons and other primates have a lot to teach homo sapiens about how to live cooperatively together, but I do think that understanding more about primate life can in fact teach us a great deal about ourselves, if only we can begin to see that we humans are not at the top of a hierarchy that makes us “better than” or “smarter than” our evolutionary cohort.
Echoes of Our Origins combines natural history, adventure, memoir, feminism and like some of the its best antecedents in nature writing, asks us to think about and empathize with the natural world in previously unfamiliar ways.
I hope you enjoy our wide-ranging conversation as much as I did. While it is doubtful that I will ever get to Africa to see baboons in the wild for myself, Echoes has given me an unmatched opportunity to imagine these incredible animals.
I’ve been recommending this book to anyone interested in humanity, ecology, our history and our future.
Dr. Shirley C. Strum is a Professor of Anthropology and a Professor of the Graduate Division, School of Social Sciences, at the University of California, San Diego, and Director of the Uaso Ngiro Baboon Project in Kenya. Her first book was Almost Human: A Journey into the World of Baboons.
More about Dr. Shirley C. Strum here.
Buy the book here.
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Publishing Talks started as a series of conversations with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology, mostly talking about the future of publishing, books, and culture. It has been great fun talking with people in the book industry about the evolution of publishing in the context of technology, culture, and economics. Today’s episode is an interview with Jordan Fleming of Owlcrate Press, who joins the many editors, publishers and others I have spoken with, who have been innovators and leaders in independent publishing and bookselling in the past and into the present.
These conversations have been inspirational to me. I have had the pleasure of speaking with visionaries and entrepreneurs, editors, publishers and others who have influenced and changed contemporary literature and culture. I’ve also had the opportunity to speak with a number of friends and colleagues in the book business.
I really enjoy the opportunities to find out about the boundless creativity that motivates so many of us in the book business, and I also really enjoy talking to others in the business, who like me, have tried to make sense of it all in some way or another.
I was spurred to seek out Jordan by a story I read in Jane Friedman’s illustrious industry newsletter. Here’s the headline – “Subscription box service OwlCrate launches publishing arm: is this a glimpse of the future of publishing?”
That’s a pretty great entry point for a conversation.
In case you are not yet aware of the subscription box industry (for that is what it has become), “book box” subscription services offer readers in various genres selections of interesting and compelling books the companies think their fanbases will be interested in reading. Fans get rewarded with unique, special, and of course hopefully, surprising products related to their interests.
There are a good number of such services, including The Book Drop (literary fiction, curated by indie booksellers), Owlcrate and Fairyloot (YA, fantasy and romantasy), Bookish Box, Once Upon a Book Club, Literati Kids, and The Wordy Traveler.
Owlcrate stands out for its exclusive designs, signed hardcovers, and other bookish items that appeal to its dedicated audiences, and having been founded in 2015, appears to be the first of its kind in this area (not counting its historical forebears like the old Book of the Month Club and other similar continuation services).
And now, they are jumping from their massive success in serving readers to what might be considered a natural evolution, becoming publishers of original titles. It makes sense – with a direct to consumer business, they know their readers bettwe than anyone (other than perhaps the giant retailer who shall not be named here).
As Jordan Fleming wrote recently on the Owlcrate site: “We’ve always centered readers. We’ve always spotlighted artists. We’ve always made space.”
I really enjoyed learning about this business from Jordan, and was especially struck by not only her boundless energy and enthusiasm, but by what she said about placing Owlcrate and the other subscription services not as competitors, but as collaborators in growing communities. I think that is a truly powerful approach to what they do and will help them continue their success.
This is what Owlcrate says about their publishing endeavor: “Every title we select is read, debated, and championed by a member of our curation team who loved it. We don’t rely on algorithms. We don’t chase trends. We rely on readers and curate our own art. OwlCrate Press simply lets us keep doing what we’ve always done; only now, we are inviting our community to help us create the stories they want to see.”
Owlcrate Press’s debut fantasy/horror anthology was Monsters in Masquerade, in which they reserved space for unpublished authors, furthering their values of supporting emerging writers.
“OwlCrate Press opens the door for new and emerging authors at a time when publishing risks becoming monopolized by a select few. As established book subscription services like OwlCrate move into publishing, they decentralize a gatekept industry and offer more equitable options for authors, from bestselling names to debut voices. With one of the highest-paying anthology models I’ve seen, alongside open submissions and an emphasis on diverse backgrounds, OwlCrate Press represents a new kind of publishing: reader-powered, author-prioritized, and built for the future.”—Sarah Mughal Rana, MPhil, University of Oxford, contributor to the anthology
Jordan Fleming is head of community for Owlcrate, and is now the head of publishing for Owlcrate Press. Their journey began with the highly-regarded Words & Whimsy Book Club, where they built strong connections with hundreds of authors and fostered a vibrant literary community. Jordan brings their deep expertise and unwavering passion for ethical publishing to OwlCrate Press.
Korinna Ede is the founder of Owlcrate, which is headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Its book subscription boxes are packed and shipped from a fulfillment center in Portland, Oregon, USA.
Link to Owlcrate and Owlcrate Press
Article in The Bookseller about the launch
Monsters in Masquerade (Exclusive Edition)
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Publishing Talks started as a series of conversations with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology, mostly talking about the future of publishing, books, and culture. It was great fun talking with people in the book industry about the evolution of publishing in the context of technology, culture, and economics.
In the past few years, I’ve talked with a variety of editors, publishers and others who have been innovators and leaders in independent publishing and bookselling in the past and into the present.
These conversations have been inspirational to me. I have had the pleasure of speaking with visionaries and entrepreneurs, editors, publishers and others who have influenced and changed contemporary literature and culture. I’ve also had the opportunity to speak with a number of friends and colleagues in the book business.
I really enjoy the opportunities to find out about the boundless creativity that motivates so many of us in the book business, and I also really enjoy talking to others in the business, who like me, have tried to make sense of it all in some way or another. That’s one of the reasons I have frequently sought out other publishing consultants, gurus, and observers over the years, to talk about various topics in publishing. Sometimes it is about the history of books, but more often during the past almost twenty years of this series, conversations have centered on change and the future of publishing.
And that brings me to Thad McIlroy, a publishing consultant and author whose aptly named website is The Future of Publishing. As you can imagine, Thad and I had a great time together, and I hope you will enjoy hearing what he has to say, especially about emerging technology. Thad is a really smart guy who understands publishing from multiple perspectives.
AI discussions cannot be avoided at this point. My current thinking is that the version of AI we have now (LLMs) is not going to be the AI technology that will eventually take over our world. In the meantime, human creativity is still valued and it would surprise no one if there is a massive backlash against this technology before too long, especially as it is applied to the creative arts. Would love to hear what listeners think, so feel free to comment.
Here’s what Thad sent me as a working bio: “Writing and publishing are in my blood—my father was an author and broadcaster, and Kenneth Grahame (The Wind in the Willows) was my third cousin. I began as a bookseller in Toronto, then founded Virgo Press (1977) and co-founded book distributor Beatty & Church (1979). In 1985, I created what I believe was the first trade book using desktop publishing technology.
Now based in San Francisco, I’m an electronic publishing consultant, and author. I co-founded Publishing Technology Partners and serve as contributing editor at Publishers Weekly, focusing on AI and innovation. My latest book is (2024, re 2025). I’ve authored dozens of books and articles exploring publishing technology, metadata, and industry transformation.”
Thad’s current interests are focused on AI. Here is a recent post of his on Onix 3 (if you’re not in the book business, this piece may be a bit in the weeds for you, but if you are in the business and care about data, search and findability, this matters – alot.)
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Playback (A Novel) — Carla Malden — 9781644284872 — Hardcover — 216 pages — Rare Bird Books — Published August 12, 2025 — $28 — ebook versions available at lower prices
Time travel fiction is among my favorite literary genres. I’ve been reading time travel novels avidly since I was a kid. I am sure the first one I read was HG Wells’s Time Machine, probably before I was even 10 years old. And I’ve since read many more. Time and Again by Jack Finney and If I Never Get Back by Daryl Brock are two of the best books I have ever read, so good that I have read each of them more than once. Now I can add Carla Malden’s Playback to my running list of time travel favorites.
When I was offered this book to read, I had no idea of the subject. I wanted to read it simply because Carla and I have known each other since we were children, and long ago, our parents were friends. I’ve read Carla’s work in the past and knew that she is a terrific writer, but I did not know what this book would be like. As it turns Playback was a welcome treat. It’s a wonderful book.
I also did not realize that Playback is the sequel to Carla’s previous novel, Shine Until Tomorrow in which her main character, Mari Caldwell, finds herself time traveling from her modern life as an unhappy 17 year-old to San Francisco in 1967 and the extraordinary period of the Summer of Love. In that book, she becomes an influential figure in a nascent rock and roll band’s story of success.
Fortunately for me, one does not need to have read Shine before reading Playback in which Mari, now 34, travels back in time once more—this time to the fall of 1967, when in a whirlwind of activity, her life is changed again.
Previously, she experienced and believed in the idealism of the sixties but now she feels only disillusionment. She’s been divorced from what she thought would be a fulfilling marriage and she’s stuck doing photography work she does not care about. She’s disappointed in life and particularly does not feel she is doing right by her daughter. Playback takes Mari back to the Haight-Ashbury of 1967 at just the moment in her life when she needs it to be restarted. It’s an adventure story that unfolds her inner being in surprising and meaningful ways.
Playback captivated me, and brought me back to my own past in many ways. Carla’s characters are fully drawn, she deals well with the anomalies and intricacies of the concept of time and how changes in the past alter the future without making too big of a deal about it and distracting us from the emotional core of the book. I did not want it to end, and of course now I want her to write another book to finish Mari’s story and complete a trilogy.
It was great fun for me to talk to Carla about her book, her characters and the two novels that tell Mari’s story, and also to revisit the touchstone place and time that has meant so much to our cultural history. Whether you lived through the sixties or just have heard about it in stories and books, Playback will take you there and like Mari, you will find yourself torn between staying or returning to your own life, maybe changed for the better as she was.
Carla Malden was born and raised in Los Angeles. She worked in film production and development and then as a screenwriter. Working with her father, Academy Award winning actor Karl Malden, she co-authored his critically acclaimed memoir When Do I Start? Carla has written features for the Los Angeles Times, and her previous novels include Search Heartache, Shine Until Tomorrow, and My Two and Only. She is a member of the Board of the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles.
Author website.
Rare Bird (publisher) website.
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Publishing Talks started as a series of conversations I had with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology, talking about the future of publishing, books, and culture. It was great fun discussing the evolution of publishing in the context of technology, culture, and economics.
More recently, I’ve also had conversations with a variety of editors, publishers and others who have been innovators and leaders in independent publishing and bookselling in the past and into the present.
These conversations have been inspirational to me. I have had the pleasure of speaking with visionaries and entrepreneurs, editors, publishers, and others who have influenced and changed contemporary literature and culture. I’ve also had the opportunity to speak with a number of friends and colleagues in the book business about their work.
I really enjoy these opportunities to learn about the boundless creativity that motivates so many in the book business. I was approached recently by a PR firm who wanted me to talk to edtech writer Derek Newton about a new project he has undertaken. While my first reaction was to ignore what seemed to be yet another “pitch,” when I read further about the project, my interest was piqued and I decided I should talk to Derek to find out more about his ideas.
Derek Newton has written extensively about education and technology, including contributions to the Atlantic, Washington Post, USA Today, Money Magazine and many others. He’s also a contributing writer at Forbes and founder of the new and very interesting project that we talked about in this episode, Verify My Writing.
Verify My Writing allows writers to get a verified certification that their work is real, authentic, and human. In short, this enables them to certify that their work was not created by AI. The certification can help with submissions and pitches. Verify My Writing also certifies books and articles that have already been published with a “Human-Written” hallmark. And as Derek and I discussed, there other applications for this sort of certification as well. While writers certainly have self-interest in proving to magazines and publishers that their work is original, it seems to me that publishers will also want to verify for themselves when they receive submissions that the work they are reading is wholly or at least substantially original.
Book publishers and magazines with limited editorial resources are now dealing with a tsunami of submissions, with no practical way to determine the originality of the work they are considering for publication.
Given how good some AI-assisted writing can be, and how often AI is inaccurate (or completely wrong), there’s no question that all of us as readers will also appreciate knowing whether what we are reading online is human or machine written. This sort of validation may become a requirement in the not too distant future.
I found this conversation to be stimulating and thought provoking. Derek’s Verify My Writing seems interesting, and compelling in that it comes from a writer whose work experience inspired it. I hope you find this conversation as stimulating as I did.
Here’s the Verify My Writing website.
If you want to learn more, contact Derek directly: DNewton@VerifyMyWriting.com
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Just Willa (a novel)—Helen Sheehy—Cave Hollow Press—978-2-7342678-3-9—paperback—428 pages—$21.95—April 13, 2025—ebook versions available at varying lower prices
As many Writerscast listeners know, I only interview writers about books I like and enjoyed reading enough to want to share with my listeners. So every episode of this podcast does represent a certain “best of” approach to my reading, since you will never hear about the books I did not love, or could not bring myself to finish.
From among those many books I like, Helen Sheehy’s Just Willa is a special one – this is a flat out just a wonderful novel. It focuses entirely on the story of one woman and her family, Willa Hardesty, and her difficult farm life in dusty, dry Oklahoma. Her story follows seven decades of one woman’s life, a twentieth century family chronicle that focuses on the small struggles of daily life, a difficult husband, the challenges of raising children and the heartbreak that goes with a large family.
Willa is tough because her world requires her to be tough. She is the daughter of a homesteader who somehow manages to be a single mother in an era that provides almost no support, then marries a bootlegging cowboy who is never honest with her. Her seemingly “small” life is really a world that is far greater than it seems, and she lives it with indomitable strength despite all her hardships and struggles to understand who she really is.
Like most great fiction, we come to realize that this novel is entirely true.
I really enjoyed speaking with Helen about her book, her writing process, and her past work as a biographer. I think you will enjoy this conversation, and I hope it might spur you to read Just Willa yourself, and because she is a really fine writer, and this book is autobiographical fiction, perhaps you will be interested in reading her biographies as well.
Helen Sheehy grew up on farms in Oklahoma and Kansas, although she’s lived in Connecticut most of her life. She’s been a dramaturg at Hartford Stage Company and written biographies of theatre pioneers; Margo Jones, Eva Le Gallienne, and Eleonora Duse.
Sheehy taught theatre and English in high schools in Kansas and Connecticut, which was the basis of her first book, a textbook titled All About Theatre. She was Adjunct Professor of Theatre at Southern Connecticut State University for over twenty years. Sheehy has also taught acting and improvisation to inmates in a maximum security prison in Connecticut.
She lives in Hamden, Connecticut. Just Willa is her first novel.
“Helen Sheehy’s masterful prose immerses you in Willa Hardesty’s world with such rich detail and emotional depth that you feel the dust of the Oklahoma plains and the quiet strength it takes to hold a family together. It’s a powerful reminder that even the women who shape our lives can hold truths we only come to understand with time. This book is for anyone who has ever known their mother—or thought they did.”—Michael Sucsy, Emmy-winning writer/director of Grey Gardens
Author website.
Buy the book on Bookshop.org
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Publishing Talks started as a series of conversations with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology, mostly talking about the future of publishing, books, and culture. It was great fun talking with people in the book industry about the evolution of publishing in the context of technology, culture, and economics.
In the past few years, I’ve talked with a variety of editors, publishers and others who have been innovators and leaders in independent publishing and bookselling in the past and into the present.
These conversations have been inspirational to me. I have had the pleasure of speaking with visionaries and entrepreneurs, editors, publishers and others who have influenced and changed contemporary literature and culture. I’ve also had the opportunity to speak with a number of friends and colleagues in the book business.
The Publishing Talks series of interviews enables me to talk to some really interesting people who have made an impact of all kinds on books and book publishing. Carol Fitzgerald is a good example. She started out working for Conde Nast and then moved into the book business, founding
The Book Report Network (TBRN) at the very beginning of the online universe in 1996. Bookreporter.com and ReadingGroupGuides.com are now gathering places for a large and devoted community of booklovers and TBRN is recognized as an online leader of informed, contemporary book news, reviews and author interviews. With 30 years of constant innovation, Carol has remained deeply engaged with the constantly evolving interaction of book readers, authors and publishers. She is always great to talk to and if you’re not familiar with her sites, you should check them out.
We had a great conversation about a the past, present, and imminent future of the book publishing world. I think you will enjoy this episode of Publishing Talks. Carol is knowledgeable, engaged, and in touch with so much of what matters to the future of books and publishing.
Read Carol’s most recent book reviews here. She is a dedicated reader with incisive views about the books she consumes.
Check out the Book Reporter’s video interviews with authors on YouTube. Very cool.
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Shelter and Storm: At Home in the Driftless – Tamara Dean – University of Minnesota Press – 9781517918569 – Paperback – 224 pages – April 22, 2025 – $19.95 -ebook editions available at lower prices
Books like Shelter and Storm are all too often errantly categorized as “regional,” both by publishers and reviewers alike. That’s a problem, as if you think of this book as being “only” about the Driftless region, or Wisconsin, or even the Midwest as its “region,” too many readers might not be interested enough to read this book. It’s an irony for anyone writing from or about a specific place – it may be that through a deep understanding of a unique place that one can address and communicate the most universal issues of human life and the natural world.
Tamara Dean is a truly gifted writer, and I suspect that she can write well about almost anything. But this book is personal, and it gives her storytelling abilities the opportunity to shine. There are twelve “stories” in this book, really linked chapters that document on multiple levels, the time she spent during a “return to the land” experience not that many years ago in the truly unusual region called The Driftless because the glaciers that extended across this continent managed to miss this part of what is now mostly Wisconsin (and a bit in Iowa). It’s not flat there, but rather consists of steep hills and deep valleys, highly forested with a number of spring-fed streams.
While the stories are about Dean’s life there, she uses her own experiences to illuminate a variety of issues that matter to almost all of us, from climate change as it affects peoples lived lives (especially in farm communities), how people create community and mutuality, survive natural and household disasters, and citizen science (with a special interest in blue-glow fireflies). Dean’s personal experiences are transformative for her, and through her essays, for us as well
Tamara Dean’s Shelter and Storm is reminiscent of the best writing about nature and rural living, including works by Aldo Leopold, Edward Abbey, Wendell Berry and Gary Paul Nabhan. Tamara Dean’s writing will engage those many of us who care deeply about climate change and sustainability, and her stories will make you feel that it is possible and necessary to spend more time not only being in the natural world, but reflecting on what it means now for us in our alienated, disconnected, thoroughly modern world, and how we might forge a way of being that allows us to live better lives and preserve some level of nature still.
I do want to say that this book is one of the best of the many I have read this year. And I truly enjoyed having the opportunity to speak with Tamara about the book and her experiences in the Driftless, a place I now very much want to visit to experience for myself.
Tamara Dean’s essays and stories have been published in magazines including The American Scholar, The Georgia Review, the Guardian, One Story, Orion, and The Progressive. She is also the author of The Human-Powered Home: Choosing Muscles over Motors. She teaches writing independently in various locales.
“It may sound familiar, but Shelter and Storm is an engaging read largely because Dean is a very good writer.”—Big River Magazine
“Tamara Dean’s luminous essay collection paints a thoughtful portrait of the Driftless region of Wisconsin and the struggles it faces due to climate change.”—Shelf Awareness
“The essays collected in Shelter and Storm, grounded in Dean’s experience tending to and rewilding neglected farmland in the Driftless region, are a product of Dean’s lively, curious, meticulous mind, exploring topics as varied as the impacts of climate change, the challenges of sustainable living, brickmaking, prairie tending, and the history of abortion […] At their essence, these essays are informed by awe. They are about what happens when we make space in our lives for deep attention and wonder.”—Craft Magazine
Author website here.
Buy the book at Bookshop.org
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Publishing Talks started as a series of conversations with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology, mostly talking about the future of publishing, books, and culture. It was great fun talking with people in the book industry about the evolution of publishing in the context of technology, culture, and economics. In the past few years, I’ve talked with a variety of editors, publishers and others who have been innovators and leaders in independent publishing and bookselling in the past and into the present. These conversations have been inspirational to me. I have had the pleasure of speaking with visionaries and entrepreneurs, editors, publishers and others who have influenced and changed contemporary literature and culture. I’ve also had the opportunity to speak with a number of friends and colleagues in the book business.
I really enjoy the opportunities to find out about the boundless creativity that motivates so many of us in the book business. When I read about Lauren Wood and her cool new project, Litbox, a book vending machine in Washington, DC, I had to reach out to her to find out more about it. Lauren’s goal was to create an innovative way to promote local readership with local authors, something that writers always feel strongly about. Even the best independent bookstores do not focus as much attention on local authors as most of us wish they would. “I want to give writers and people in this town something to feel excited about,” she says. “I wanted to bring a little bit of optimism into an otherwise bleak moment….Great literature is really about empathy and kind of deeply getting outside of your own framework and inhabiting another person’s consciousness.”
LitBox launched in May, 2025. Lauren made it work with a Kickstarter campaign that raised seed capital of $5000.
Almost everyone in the book business recognizes how challenging it is to connect books with readers in our media’s overwhelmingly saturated information deluge. Any project that can connect writers and books to readers in a personalized, area-specific way is worthy of our support. I am hopeful that Litbox will not be a one-off, and could inspire others to try out the idea. It seems to have worked successfully in England, where there are book vending machines in subway stations and many other locales.
If you’re in the DC area, look for a Litbox and try it out. It’s in the Western Market.
And here’s a good local story about the Litbox launch on the “Inchy’s Bookworm Vending Machine” website. It looks like they are encouraging others to use their machine wherever books could be sold by machine. I hope this idea catches on!
Reggie Van Lee buying the first book from LitBox.
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Automatic Noodle – Annalee Newitz – Tordotcom – 9781250357465 – Hardcover – 176 pages – August 5, 2025 – $24.99 – ebook versions available at lower prices
Annalee Newitz is one of the best and most original science fiction writers I have read in a long time. I read their last novel, The Future of Another Timeline (it’s brilliant!) and couldn’t wait to read their next book. Automatic Noodle is simultaneously hilariously funny, sneakily political, and highly original. It’s pretty hard to resist and aside from the fact that it is a short book that leaves you wanting much more, it is one of my favorite books I have read in a long time. Newitz takes us into a future that is recognizable, and while it is as scary as any future looking book must be in our dystopian present, while positing that our future includes a bloody and destructive civil war, the book is somehow optmimistic and hopeful.
Automatic Noodle takes place in Annalee’s favorite city, San Francisco, in the near enough future that it is a recognizable place. California has fought a bloody, destructive, technologically advanced civil war to free itself from the United States. In its newfound freedom, robots have limited rights and must struggle to find their way in a new society. If that sounds eerily reminiscent of the 1870s, it’s not accidental. Annalee weaves together a set of wonderfully humane characters, all of whom are seeking to build new identities in a strange new world. It’s a wonderful story that makes you think and also feel. Great fun carrying along some really important ideas about humanity and freedom.
I really enjoyed talking to Annalee and hope you will not only enjoy our conversation, but go out and buy the book at once – then let me know if you like it as much as I do.
Annalee Newitz writes science fiction and nonfiction. They are the nationally bestselling author of the books Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age and Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind, as well as the novels The Terraformers, The Future of Another Timeline (winner of the Sidewise Award), and Autonomous (winner of a Lambda Literary Award). As a science journalist, they are a writer for the New York Times and have a monthly column in New Scientist. They have published in The Washington Post, Slate, Popular Science, Ars Technica, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic, among others. They are also the co-host of the three-time Hugo Award-winning podcast Our Opinions Are Correct.
“This is a story—about building community despite adversity, fighting for your rights and individuality, and creating art that you want to see in the world—that I didn’t know I needed right now. And it was so much fun to read!”—Martha Wells, author of The Murderbot Diaries and Witch King
Author website.
Buy the book.
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Publishing Talks began as a series of conversations with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology, mostly talking about the future of publishing, books, and culture. It was great fun talking with people in the book industry about the evolution of publishing in the context of technology, culture, and economics.
During the past several years, I’ve talked with a variety of innovators and leaders in independent publishing and bookselling from the past into the present.
These conversations have been inspirational to me. I have had the pleasure of speaking with visionaries and entrepreneurs, editors, publishers, and others who have influenced and changed contemporary literature and culture. And I’ve also had the opportunity to speak with longstanding friends and colleagues in the book business.
Whether you’re involved in book publishing or just interested in how the business works, it’s well worth understanding the ins and outs of audiobooks. Some of us can remember when audiobooks existed only on cassette tapes, which required a lot of effort and doubtless kept audiobook listening to a niche audience. With the advent of higher capacity CD’s, and more easily portable listening devices (and cars with factory CD players more frequently available), audiobook sales increased, but their higher cost kept audiobook sales from becoming a significant channel for most books (and the high cost of production prevented many titles from even being made into audiobooks).
In the past decade, the advent of digital audio players and near-universal broadband has changed the audiobook market completely. Audible was and remains the leader in digital audiobook sales, but there are many other outlets for audiobooks, and the market has expanded to become a significant revenue stream for publishers and authors.
John Cheary is the founder and CEO of John Marshall Media. He graduated from Berklee College of Music. Founding his business in 1995, he has grown it to become a leading independent audio production company – perhaps the largest of its kind. He knows more than almost anyone else I can think of about audiobook production and how the audio segment of the book business has evolved.
JMM produces audiobooks for a wide range of publishers, including Penguin Random House, Harper Audio, Google, Amazon, Scholastic, Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, McGraw-Hill, and many more. JMM has twenty one Studios in two countries, over 1,000 Narrators and Voice Actors, and has won five GRAMMY Awards.
It should come as no surprise that the biggest issue in audiobook publishing today is the advent of AI, seen by many as a way to replace more expensive humans with AI-generated narrators. Naturally, John has strong opinions about this subject—and many others. I think you will agree that what he has to say about AI narrators is likely applicable to other areas of creative business where AI use is being promoted as well.
John has been a friend and sometimes colleague for many years, and I am grateful to him for allowing me to record Writerscast interviews from time to time at JMM’s studio with its outstanding equipment and recording team—including this one.
I’d be surprised if you don’t learn something from this discussion — I certainly did. Please let me know what you think of our conversation.
Here’s a link to the JMM website.
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Rewriting Hisstory: A Fifty-Year Journey to Uncover the Truth About Alger Hiss – Jeff Kisseloff – 9780700638338 – Hardcover – 392 pages – University of Kansas Press – April 19th, 2025 – $34.99 -ebook versions available at lower prices
I’ve known about the Alger Hiss case since I was a kid, growing up in the early post-McCarthy era. And in my own family we had two close relatives, both writers, who were blacklisted, and many friends of my parents had been blacklisted at some point as well. So it was a milieu that made the Hiss story living history for me well into my adulthood. Hiss never gave up publicly claiming he was innocent of the spying he had been accused of by the infamous Whittaker Chambers, and well into the early seventies, his supporters included public intellectuals who both believed him and publicized the effort to clear his name.
Jeff Kisseloff’s Rewriting Hisstory is a firsthand account of his fifty years investigating the facts of Alger Hiss’s life and travails. He started out researching the story for a college paper, then worked for Hiss and finally was able to determine the truth about the entire Hiss saga. It is truly an amazing memoir, and is never boring. Jeff uncovered troves of original material, including 150,000 pages of mostly unredacted previously unreleased FBI files he sued the FBI to get. He collected many documents from government and library collections around the country. And amazingly, Jeff acquired the typewriter known as Woodstock 230099, that the government claimed was used to type copies of State Department documents that were used as the crucial documentary evidence against Hiss.
If you are not familiar with this part of American history – Alger Hiss was accused by Whittaker Chambers in 1948 of being a secret Communist spy in the 1930s and the subsequent perjury trial against Hiss was a major political event in the early fifties, a key part of the effort to “prove” that communists had infiltrated the federal government during the FDR administration – which was used by right wing figures to both discredit the “liberal” Democrats and to establish the groundwork for the Cold War and an ironically authoritarian approach to keeping democracy free. Hiss was convicted but always proclaimed his innocence until his death. Historians have taken sides and up to now, no one has proved Hiss to have told the truth. Kisseloff’s incredible tenacity brings real clarity to a complicated storyline. Almost in crime novel fashion, Jeff puts together the pieces that enable him name the only people who could have framed Alger Hiss.
As the publisher accurately says “Rewriting Hisstory is a thrilling political page-turner about an accused spy that is itself a work of scholarly espionage, built on decades of painstaking research. This is an iconoclastic work that should rewrite history books.”
Jeff and I had a terrific conversation about his work and I am certain that you will enjoy hearing what he has to say here.
Buy the book from Bookshop.org (and support local bookstores)
Kisseloff’s book website here
“Alger Hiss vs. Whittaker Chambers. It was the most politically explosive trial of the twentieth century. And while many historians believe the case is settled history, now comes Jeff Kisseloff with an indictment against the conventional wisdom. Kisseloff presents meticulous evidence to portray Chambers as a serial fabulist. Die-hard believers in Hiss’s guilt will be outraged. But clearly, they have not had the last word. This book is sure to stir a hornet’s nest of controversy.”–Kai Bird, coauthor of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
Jeff’s bio: Jeff Kisseloff is a former newspaper reporter and editor whose writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Nation, and elsewhere. He is also the author of five books, including Generation on Fire: Voices of Protest from the 1960s–An Oral History, The Box: An Oral History of Television, 1920 to 1961, and You Must Remember This: An Oral History of Manhattan from the 1890s to World War II.
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Between the Floods: A History of the Arikaras — Mark van de Logt — University of Oklahoma Press —Paperback — 9780806194905 — 384 pages — $29.95 – October 1, 2024 – ebook versions available at lower prices
During the past couple of years, I’ve read several really good books that recast the history of indigenous Americans both prior to, during, and after the invasion of North America by Europeans, first by explorers, fishermen and traders, and later by colonizers. Almost everything most of us learn about this part of the history of the Americas has been told and taught from the European perspective. Academic studies have similarly been mostly conducted by white Americans with indigenous people seen as subjects for interrogation and study by what is proposed to be a more “accurate” form of science, rather than treating indigenous people as equals, with practical knowledge, historical awareness, and actors with full credibility in the telling of their own histories and practices.
Mark van de Logt’s excellent book Between the Floods, purposely challenges the way the history of an indigenous people is studied and understood. Mark gives credence from the outset to the oral storytelling of the Arikara people, that sets forth their history in an oral tradition, which he then supplements with other forms of knowledge to expand them.
The Sahnis, or Arikara, as they are best known, were at one time a powerful independent nation, who likely migrated from the southwest hundreds of years ago, and settled in the Missouri River region in what is now mostly Nebraska (though today, the tribal lands are the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota.)
The Arikaras, like their Hidatsa and Mandan neighbors on the northern plains, were both farmers and hunter-gatherers who thrived as corn growers and successful buffalo hunters. The arrival of Europeans, even hundreds of miles away from them brought pressure on their villages from other indigenous nations, notably the Lakhotas, whose larger population and more successful military forces caused displacements and relocations, and contact with Euro-Americans brought devastating diseases and other problems for the Arikara as well. Their important location on the Missouri River brought them into contact early on with French fur traders, the Spanish, and especially Americans after Lewis and Clark, often with damaging effects on their tribe.
Between the Floods creates a historical narrative of a resilient semi-sedentary people in their migration and settlement as they confront the colonialist era, endure many tribal conflicts, experience terrible diseases, and incorporate horses and metal tools into their culture. Arikara oral traditions and histories provide an entry into their past and current culture that at its core has survived intact despite so much suffering at the hands of their enemies and the conquering American society.
Mark uses information from archaeology, linguistics, and anthropology to enhance native storytelling, and the book is illustrated with Native maps and ledger art, along with historical photographs and drawings. There is no better way to understand this important tribal nation that likely is known to very few Americans today.
This is a terrific book. It’s well written, well-researched, and demonstrates throughout a deep appreciation for the Sahni people, their lifeways, history and traditions. This kind of history-telling is really important not only for the tribe but to all of us who know so little about their past and present lives. And Mark deep knowledge and broad field of study makes him a terrific interview subject.
Mark van de Logt is Associate Professor of History at Texas A&M University of Qatar, teaches in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures at Radboud University, and is also the author of War Party in Blue: Pawnee Scouts in the U.S. Army (2010) and Monsters of Contact: Historical Trauma in Caddoan Oral Traditions (2018). Between the Floods was awarded the Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin Prize for best book in Ethnohistory from the American Society for Ethnohistory. His current research involves linking oral traditions to historical events. His articles appeared in the “Journal of Military History,” the “American Indian Quarterly,” the “American Indian Culture and Research Journal,” and “Wicazo Sa Review.” He is (co-)editor of the University of Nebraska Press’s “Studies in the Anthropology of North American Indian” series.
Buy the book here.
There is an interesting interview with Mark about the Arikara scouts for “The Friends of Little Bighorn” here.
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Authors Voices gives writers a platform for reading their work. It’s an honor for me to be able to present poet and literary critic Rachel Blau DuPlessis reading from her extraordinary long poem, Drafts, which she began in 1986 and completed in 2012.
Now the great Minneapolis-based independent literary publisher Coffee House Press is publishing The Complete Drafts for the first time in a beautiful two-volume boxed edition.
Up to now, only sections of this amazing long poem have been published, including The Collage Poems of Drafts (2011), Pitch: Drafts 77-95 (2010), Torques: Drafts 58-76 (2007), Drafts. Drafts 39-57, Pledge, with Draft, unnumbered: Précis (2004), and Drafts 1-38, Toll (2001). Making the complete version of this long poem available is an important achievement, and thanks are due to Coffee House for their commitment to publishing important books like this one.
In the words of poet and critic Ron Silliman, “DuPlessis’s Drafts begins more with questions than answers, literally in Draft 1 chasing a bird in the bush, sensing that the right answers need to be further questions.”
I love the exploratory, wide ranging nature of the writing in this poem. It’s illuminating, surprising, and inspiring. The language and ideas are as complex and challenging as the poet’s mind.
DePlessis was a professor at Temple University for many years. She is the deserving recipient of many honors and awards. Her most recent work of nonfiction is A Long Essay on the Long Poem: Modern and Contemporary Poetics and Practices.
Praise for The Complete Drafts
“With recourse to an astonishing range of techniques and material devices, formal concern as inclination and qualm, these poems register, lament, react to and wrestle with erosions on multiple fronts–psychic, social, historical, somatic….They affirm and negate the toll history takes on letter and spirit, affirming and negating and navigating a way between.” —Nathaniel Mackey, National Book Award-winning author of Splay Anthem
“Explicitly playful and serious, generative and interpretive, Rachel Blau DuPlessis’s Drafts are essential writing and reading.” —Catherine Daly, American Book Review
“Drafts claims a place for women in the American epic. It redefines the genre’s history component to include the social, family, sexuality and daily life–as the Annales School has done for historiography in general. A thrilling achievement.” —Rosmarie Waldrop, author of The Nick of Time
Blau is always engaging, whether reading her work, or talking about poetry, poetics, and ideas.
The Complete Drafts, Coffee House Press, 984 pages, 9781566897235, May 20, 2025, $70.
Buy the book from Bookshop.org to support local bookstores (and Writerscast)
Note 1: This reading was recorded in early February, 2025 when the book was scheduled to be published in April. As of this post (May 8, 2025), it is now scheduled for release May 20, 2025.
Note 2: Last week, the Trump regime cancelled or withdrew NEA’s already committed grants to arts organization, including literary presses and magazines, and more or less gutted the NEA’s staff, simultaneously deleting both NEA and NEH in its proposed Federal budget for the next fiscal year. While we do not know at this time what the eventual outcome of any legal challenges or Congressional actions will be, if you support the idea that a healthy literary community is good for democracy and culture, please support efforts to save the NEA and NEH, and make donations to the nonprofit arts and culture organizations and groups that support them.
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Mama: A Queer Black Woman’s Story of a Family Lost and Found — Nikkya Hargrove — Algonquin Books — 9781643751580 — Hardcover – 240 pages — October 15, 2024 — $29.00, ebook versions available at lower prices
“The book is deeply moving and shows how one woman managed to differentiate herself from her mom, find queer love, and discover her voice. I loved it.”–Katie Couric Media, “14 Best New Books Out This Fall, According to a Bookfluencer”
I’m fortunate to live in the same mid-sized Connecticut town as Nikkya, where she has founded a much-needed independent bookstore called Obodo Serendipity. Along with her wife and kids, she is working hard to build a literary community for readers of all kinds, especially kids. Her store has become a place where I like to hang out. Oddly, Connecticut has very few good bookstores, which seems strange for a state with a relatively well educated book reading population. But I suppose that is indicative of the state of books and also of retailing and our culture generally – people don’t seem to spend very much time in communal spaces anymore. That is one good reason to welcome and support a bookstore (and happily I note the success of a very busy tearoom and a locally owned coffee shop as well, suggesting that people really are in search of human connection in reaction to the overwhelming flattening engendered by the internet…but that is a subject for a different episode).
Nikkya is a thoroughly engaging and impressive person. Mama is a remarkably clear eyed and honest memoir about her life. It may be trite to call it uplifting, but it really is an inspiring story. Anytime I feel that things are difficult in my daily life, it is helpful to remind myself of the challenges Nikkya faced and overcame — it’s always a good restorative, and very humbling too.
Nikkya was born very prematurely to a mother whose life had been taken over by drugs, and the fact she even survived her infancy is remarkable. She was raised mostly by other family members, as her mother struggled with drug addiction and the resulting bad life choices. But Nikkya and her mom always maintained their bond. Her mother unexpectedly had another child much later in her life, and then passed away, leaving her infant son without a parent. Nikkya, by then a young adult, made the life-changing decision to take responsibility for raising her half-brother.
Mama is the story of Nikkya’s mother, but it is also the story of Nikkya becoming a mother, finding her soulmate partner, together creating a new and very personal family, with her son, and now her twin daughters. Besides being an incredibly strong, warm-hearted and loving person, Nikkya is also a strong writer who tells her story brilliantly in this book. It is impossible to read this memoir and not be deeply affected and indeed, changed by Nikkya’s life story.
As Sonya Huber says in her blurb about the book: “Hargrove offers a deep and stirring view of the impacts of addiction and the criminal justice system on Black women, offering an account of hope, heartbreak, faith, courage, joy, and the comfort and care of extended and chosen families.”
It is an honor for me to have her as a guest on this podcast, and also to be able to be her friend (and dedicated supporter of her bookstore). And if you buy her book, which I hope you will do from the link below, Bookshop.org will give Odobo Serendipity a part of the proceeds.
Nikkya graduated from Bard College and currently serves as a member of the school’s Board of Governors and chair of the alumni/ae Diversity Committee. She was a LAMBDA Literary Nonfiction Fellow, and has written about adoption, marriage, motherhood, and the prison system for The Washington Post, The Guardian, The New York Times, Scary Mommy, and Shondaland. Nikkya now operates the independent bookstore, Obodo Serendipity Books and lives with her wife and three children in Stratford, Connecticut.
Nikkya’s website.
Buy Mama: A Queer Black Woman’s Story of a Family Lost and Found
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How to Submit: Getting Your Writing Published with Literary Magazines and Small Presses – Dennis James Sweeney – New World Library – Paperback – 9781608689361 – 216 pages – $18.95 – February 25, 2025 – ebook versions available at lower prices
This book is described by its publisher as “A comprehensive guide to getting published and building a literary reputation through small presses and magazines — and taking ownership of your own publishing life.” While I am very familiar with publishing marketing lingo, I think this description, while literally accurate, actually undervalues Sweeney’s book. He does offer us much more than just a “guide to getting published.” By talking to writers as a colleague and exploring his own journey as a writer, he turns what could have been a mechanical self help guide into something much more interesting and engaging.
I’ve been on both sides of the process this book is about – as a writer submitting work for publication and more often as a publisher and editor, combing through submissions of all kinds and qualities. This book provides much more than simply guidance, tools and support for writers. In it, Sweeney personalizes what is so often a depersonalized process, and helps writers see themselves as active agents in a complex ecosystem with many levels and activities. And in many ways, he reveals the process of “submitting” one’s work as an almost spiritual practice, not just a means to an end.
All of the podcast interviews I do are unstructured and informal – I like to start without notes or an agenda and see where the conversation goes. Talking to Dennis was truly a pleasure, and I think we ended up having a wonderfully organic and interesting conversation about the independent literary world, contemporary writing, and the role of the writer in that community. Whether you are already a published author, or a publisher or magazine that works with author submissions, this book has a great deal to offer you.
Dennis James Sweeney is a writer and teacher. His books have been published by small independent presses, including Autumn House Press, Essay Press, Ricochet Editions, and Stillhouse Press, and his writing has appeared in Ecotone, The Southern Review, Witness, and The New York Times. Sweeney lives, writes, and teaches in Amherst, Massachusetts. Author website here.
But the book here.
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Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb — Iris Jamahl Dunkle — University of California Press — Hardcover — 9780520395442 — 416 pages — $27.95 — October 15, 2024 — ebook versions available at lower prices.“This absorbing biography, written with both affection and admiration, shows Babb as one of the most indefatigable characters in American literary history.”—The New RepublicPerhaps sparked by years of exploring the shelves of used bookstores and the libraries of older writers, I’ve long been interested in learning about and reading works by “lost” writers, especially from the early to mid-twentieth century. At various times, I’ve sought out and published some relatively obscure novels and memoirs in hopes of bringing them to the attention of modern readers (if you’re interested in knowing about some of them, get in touch with me and I will send you a list).Over the years, I had heard of the writer Sanora Babb, and had read some of her poems, though in all honesty her poems did not interest me very much. Then few months ago, I learned more about her writing and her life in an essay called “Correcting for the Male Gaze: On the Unique Challenges of Writing Biographies of Women” by Iris Jamahl Dunkle that was published in LitHub (a daily online newsletter I recommend to all readers). Inspired by her story, I bought a copy of Sanora Babb’s novel, Whose Names Are Unknown, and was transported by her writing.That in turn led me to read Iris’s terrific biography of Babb, Riding Like the Wind, in which she tells the story of Babb’s remarkable life, the story of a singular woman.Babb left her incredibly rough and difficult childhood in Oklahoma and eastern Colorado in the early twentieth century to move to California when she reached adulthood, determined to become a writer. Arriving in Los Angeles just before the onset of the Depression, and becoming involved with radical politics during the 1930s, she had close contact with many writers who later became famous, including Tillie Olsen, Ray Bradbury, and Ralph Ellison.She was in her own unique style a feminist, whose long relationship with the cinematographer James Wong Howe included what was at the time an illegal marriage, because of California’s anti-miscegenation laws. Later, she was blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Throughout her life, she continued to write and participate in literary culture as an editor, struggling to find publishers willing to take on her stories and memoirs about hardscrabble working class people in the plains and in the west.One of the most impactful incidents in Babb’s life involves John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, a book that became an instant bestseller and helped to define the narrative of the Dust Bowl that almost all of us know. When Steinbeck was struggling to write his novel, his research included visiting FSA camps in central California where Babb was working as a volunteer helping impoverished migrants—people to whom she related well, as they were farmers from the same sorts of places where she grew up. Babb’s supervisor naively asked her to share her field notes with Steinbeck. Sanora had been planning to use those notes to write her own novel about the Dust Bowl experience based on her deep first-hand knowledge of the people and their challenges. Steinbeck literally copied her field research into his manuscript, using her direct experiences to enhance the authenticity of his novel. Babb had no idea that her work was being appropriated, and she continued to work on and finally complete a draft of her own book.Then, at the very moment Babb was about the sell her manuscript to Random House founder Bennett Cerf, Steinbeck’s book was published to almost instant and vast acclaim, thus killing off any hope it had of being published. It took many years more before her work eventually was published.While Babb did experience terrible frustration during her lifetime, this biography shows that her influence was widely felt. Ultimately, Babb’s work did make an impact on many. Her life and work feature heavily in Ken Burns’s award-winning documentary The Dust Bowl, and also inspired Kristin Hannah’s bestseller The Four Winds.Dunkle continues documenting other neglected and lost women writers through her indispensable newsletter, “Finding Lost Voices.“Iris Jamahl Dunkle earned an MFA in poetry from New York University and a PhD in American Literature from Case Western Reserve University. Her poetry collections include West : Fire : Archive, Interrupted Geographies, Gold Passage, and There’s a Ghost in this Machine of Air. Her biography Charmian Kittredge London: Trailblazer, Author, Adventurer was published by the University of Oklahoma Press.Buy Riding Like the Wind (from Bookshop.org)If you’re interested in knowing more about Sanora Babb, here is a great blog post at UC Press: Ten Intriguing Facts about Fearless Writer Sanora Babb“The new history is coming, if you dig through the archives with a new gaze.”—Iris Jamahl DunkleThe post Iris Jamahl Dunkle: Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb first appeared on WritersCast.
Season of Shattered Dreams: Postwar Baseball, the Spokane Indians, and a Tragic Bus Crash that Changed Everything – Eric Vickrey – Rowman & Littlefield – Hardcover – 9781538190722 – 176 pages – $34 – April 16, 2024
I am sure that most of my listeners already know that I have long been a dedicated baseball fan – at least since I was six years old and was captivated by seeing the New York Yankees play the Milwaukee Braves in the 1957 World Series on a tiny black and white television set along with my best friend at the time, Tony Grafton. As a kid, I absorbed baseball history like a sponge, reading everything I could lay my hands on and memorizing the names and statistics of all the great players who lived long before I was born. Even now, I am always attracted to reading books about baseball history, and especially stories I have not ever heard of before.
Eric Vickrey’s terrific book tells just such a story, and while it is about a terrible tragic event that almost no one today knows anything about, his storytelling brings an otherwise obscure story to life for modern readers.
On June 24, 1946, the minor league Spokane Indians baseball team’s bus crashed in Washington state’s Cascade mountains, going off the road and down into a steep ravine, killing nine players and injuring many others.
You do not need to be a baseball history nerd to be captivated by this story because Vickrey spends a considerable amount of the book outlining what happened before and after the accident and exploring the world of minor league baseball in the pre-war and early post-war era. His portraits of the people involved are compelling and based on personal interviews with family members and people who were alive at the time of the accident.
World War II completely disrupted and changed American society in many ways. It had a huge effecy on the major and minor leagues, first during the war, when so many players joined the military that baseball, while carrying on as an important form of entertainment for the folks at home, could not find enough able bodied players to keep the game alive at every level. And then after the war, with hundreds of players returning from military service, the game was suddenly crowded with players of all ages and experience. The Spokane Indians had several top prospects and former big leaguers arrive to play for them that season.
Vickrey explores the lives of three Spokane players in particular—Vic Picetti, Ben Geraghty, and Jack Lohrke—showing the impact of the war on players and their families as well as the challenges they faced in minor-league baseball, and of course, the terrible impact of the crash at the heart of the story.
Eric and I had an entertaining conversation about the players and people, and the tragedy that took place almost sixty years ago that hopefully now will no longer be a forgotten part of American baseball history.
Eric Vickrey is a lifelong baseball fan who enjoys researching and writing about the history of the game. He started as a contributor to the Society for American Baseball Research BioProject. His first book, Runnin’ Redbirds: The World Champion 1982 St. Louis Cardinals, was published by McFarland in 2023. In that book he records the story of the 1982 Cardinals from Whitey Herzog’s rebuild to the final out of the Fall Classic.
“Eric Vickrey has done tremendous research and gives us this well-written, gripping tale in remarkable detail.” — Marty Appel
Author website
Buy the book
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An Alternative History of Cleveland – Jon Wlasiuk – Illustrated by Libby Geboy – Belt Publishing – Paperback – 9781953368799 – 244 pages – paperback – $19.95 – October 15, 2024
This is a terrific book published by the very fine independent Belt Publishing (now part of Arcadia Publishing, a company that specializes in books about locales). Belt has long focused on books about the midwest, specifically the rust belt from which its name derives. One of its goals has been to dispel myths about the midwest and its places, not just for outsiders, but for the people who live there themselves who often do not realize the depth of the places they inhabit.
Jon Wlasiuk’s Alternative History of Cleveland is unusual and surprising. Based on the title of the book, I was expecting to be reading a Howard Zinn style political history of the city, but what Wlasiuk has done is to write a much more inventive, somewhat personal, and thoroughly engrossing narrative that takes us from the geological underpinnings of northast Ohio, through the comings and goings of indigenous peoples, and into the modern historic era, weaving together ecology, sociology, geography, arts and culture, to open our eyes to a place that so many have failed to fully comprehend. The theme throughout is that city and nature are thoroughly intertwined, and there are many people today working to make Cleveland a better place for people and nature to thrive together. Wlasiuk’s vision of the city and its environs is one that all of us can relate to, wherever we ourselves inhabit the earth. It’s a wonderful book I can highly recommend.
Talking with Jon about this book was rewarding and enjoyable for me – I hope you will feel the same after listening to this episode.
Jon Wlasiuk was born in northwest Ohio and earned a PhD in environmental history from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. He has taught at colleges throughout the Great Lakes region, and now lives in the Slavic Village neighborhood.
Illustrator Elizabeth (Libby) Geboy was born and raised in Wisconsin, and lives in Colorado. Her illustrations translate favorite subjects in the natural world, specifically food, flora, and fauna into art.
Buy the book.
Belt Publishing
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I began Publishing Talks a number of years ago as a series of conversations with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology. Most of these interviews originally involved the future of publishing, books, and culture, talking with people in the book industry about how publishing is evolving in the context of technology, culture, and economics.
Later this series broadened to include conversations to go beyond the future of publishing. In an effort to document the literary world, I’ve talked with a variety of editors, publishers and others who have been innovators and leaders in independent publishing in the past and into the present.
These conversations have been inspirational to me on many levels. I have gotten to speak with visionaries and entrepreneurs, as well as editors and publishers who have influenced and changed contemporary literature and culture. I’ve also had the opportunity to speak with a number of friends and colleagues I have met or worked with during the many years I have been in the book business.
More recently, I’ve been talking to book folks about what is going on in publishing today, quite often about the changes in marketing and promotion that have marked all media industries as social media has overwhelmed traditional media, creating an extremely complex and constantly changing environment.
One thing is certain about publishing – there are no final answers, but there are many really important questions that we should be asking all the time.
ECW is a terrific independently owned and operated Canadian publisher, now celebrating its 50th anniversary. I’ve known Jack David, one of its co-founders, for a long time. He is a really smart guy, and notably has managed (with the help of partners and a great staff) to create a thriving independent publishing business across the five decades the book business has changed the most in its history. It is decidedly difficult to be a book publisher in any time and place, but I think being commercially viable for a half century and being based in a relatively small market country with a geographical spread greater than the US makes ECW’s success even more remarkable. ECW does things its own way, to its advantage, in the long run. Unlike most publishers, they publish their own audio books. And their list is built the old fashioned way – through the enthusiasms of its editors. There is much here to be admired and learned from, not just for book publishers, but for anyone interested in media in the modern era.
Talking to Jack about books and culture is always fun. Getting to talk to him about book publishing for this podcast was and is a distinct pleasure I hope you will enjoy as much as I did.
Editor’s note: this interview runs longer than most (60 minutes)
Here is what ECW says about itself:
“ECW is Entertainment. ECW is Culture. ECW is Writing.”
Publishers Weekly recognizes ECW Press as one of the most diversified independent publishers in North America. ECW Press has published close to 1,000 books that are distributed throughout the English-speaking world and translated into dozens of languages. In the next year, we’ll release 50+ new titles and will continue to support and promote a vibrant backlist that includes poetry and fiction, pop-culture and political analysis, sports books, biography, and travel guides. Books by writers whose names you know and love — and by those who we’re very pleased to introduce for the first time. Who are we? After three decades, we still get asked about our name, those three little letters: ECW.
At first the acronym was self-descriptive: Essays on Canadian Writing (the name of the journal of literary criticism we started in 1974). But as the company grew and changed, our name, in our minds, also changed. We’ve heard the company called Essential Canadian Writing, Excellent Contemporary Writing, or, more recently, Extreme Cutting-Edge Writing. And these names have been, and still are, appropriate. But now we realize that each of those letters represents a particular strain of ECW Press’s diverse passions — Entertainment, Culture, Writing.
ECW Press
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On the National Language: The Poetry of America’s Endangered Tongues – B.A. Van Side – 978-0-7643-6814-1 – Hardcover – 176 pages – September 28, 2024 – $50.00 – Schiffer PublishingThis book was irresistible to me from the outset. I’ve long been interested in both the indigenous languages of the Americas, as well as how culture and language interact to define human beings as simultaneously unique and alike. B.A. Van Sise is a terrifically innovative and imaginative photographer, who has worked extensively with endangered-language speakers, students, and those who now seek to revitalize and rebirth formerly lost languages. He spent three years traveling the US to discover and highlight some of the many languages and cultures here, focusing on America’s vast diversity, with its many surviving Indigenous communities and language groups that have been either birthed or given refuge here.Combining photographs and poetry, as well as narrative makes for a spectacular book.I couldn’t miss the opportunity to speak with B.A. about this project and his work in general. He is an amazing person, and I think our conversation demonstrates his brilliance and unique presentation of so many individuals and cultures throughout this book (and the traveling show that accompanies it). The project’s principal aim is to raise awareness for these languages and their revitalization initiatives and it succeeds brilliantly in achieving that purpose. This is a truly important and powerful book.Awarded the 2024 Anthem Award for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion by the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences and it was a finalist for the 2022 Meitar Award for Excellence in Photography, recipient of a residency at Millay Arts, medaled in the Prix de la Photographie Paris 2023 and earned the Los Angeles Center for Photography’s 2022 ‘best new exhibition’ prize.We can’t do credit to the photographs in the book, nor even the poetry, in this limited space. Please visit the author’s website https://bavansise.format.com/ and if you can make it to one of the exhibits, you should definitely go. And of course you can buy the book too.The exhibit at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles runs through March 2, 2025.“The full-page photos — accompanied by brief descriptions — are mesmerizing. …Laced among these photographs are poems by writers from diverse cultural groups. Anyone picking up this stunning book will experience what speakers of Koasati call “ihoochastontihchotok” (“bringing time back from the past to now”)”—Ron Charles, Washington Post “…breathtaking testimony to the demographic richness of the U.S. and the beautiful diversity of its linguistic landscape.”–Booklist The post B.A. Van Sise: On the National Language: The Poetry of America’s Endangered Tongues first appeared on WritersCast.
Frighten the Horses – Oliver Radclyffe – Roxane Gay Books – 978-0-8021-6315-8 – Hardcover – 352 pages – $28.00 – September 17, 2024 – ebook versions available at lower prices
This is flat out a remarkable story told by a remarkable person. We live in a time when people are so often simply categorized into identities, as if the naming of a version of self somehow explains who a person is. Labels do not tell stories: gay, straight, queer, trans. All are too reductive to have any meaning whatsoever. Every person is a complicated being, and most of us contain multiple versions of ourselves. Sometimes those versions simply do not make sense.
Oliver Radclyffe started out life as a relatively protected and very privileged girl in England, who married a man and had four children, moved to a wealthy Connecticut suburb and had what seemed to be a perfect life. But his inner life was far from resolved and the tensions of an emerging self could not be reconciled until he eventually came out as a lesbian, risking a great deal in order to establish an identity that reflected his inner being.
But that turned out to be a way station on his ultimate journey. There was still more work he had to do before his ultimate transformation to being a man, one who is also an active parent, still learning from his children, still in the process of becoming. As we all should be.
Aside from this being an incredibly engaging story that takes place in the same town I grew up in, the courageously deep and honest sharing of his story was for me a journey toward understanding, both for the writer and for me, the reader. By exposing so much of his story and his struggles to become himself, Oliver has created what is truly an essential guide to understanding the trans experience. Even for the many of us who believe in the multitude of human identity and being need to understand as fully as possible what it actually means to be a trans person. If you are fortunate enough to have a trans person in your life, this book should be the next book you pick up.
While I am certain that every person’s story is unique and that Oliver is not a stand in for every gay or trans person, female or male, knowing so much about his ongoing journey to becoming his authentic self is incredibly valuable for others, whether we are ourselves gay, straight, trans or something else.
I can’t recommend this book enough. Go read it right now. Let me know what you think of it.
This review blurb says it all for me: “The finest literary telling of the experience of gender transition that I’ve ever read. It’s a terrific, expansive story because the focus of this warm-hearted man always returns to his children. He’s simply a wonderful parent, and that’s what keeps the reader turning the pages.”—Kate Bornstein, author of Gender Outlaw
Author website
Buy the book
Author photo by Lev Rose Water
The post Oliver Radclyffe: Frighten the Horse (A Memoir) first appeared on WritersCast.
I began Publishing Talks a number of years ago as a series of conversations with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology. Most of these interviews originally involved the future of publishing, books, and culture, talking with people in the book industry about how publishing is evolving in the context of technology, culture, and economics.
Later this series broadened to include conversations to go beyond the future of publishing. In an effort to document the literary world, I’ve talked with a variety of editors, publishers and others who have been innovators and leaders in independent publishing in the past and into the present.
These conversations have been inspirational to me on many levels. I have gotten to speak with visionaries and entrepreneurs, as well as editors and publishers who have influenced and changed contemporary literature and culture. I’ve also had the opportunity to speak with a number of friends and colleagues I have met or worked with during the many years I have been in the book business.
More recently, I’ve been talking to book folks about what is going on in publishing today, quite often about the changes in marketing and promotion that have marked all media industries as social media has overwhelmed traditional media, creating an extremely complex and constantly changing environment.
One thing is certain about publishing – there are no final answers, but there are many really important questions that we should be asking all the time.
I recently had the opportunity to (virtually) meet and talk to Kenneth (Ken) Whyte, founder and president of the Toronto based Sutherland House publishing company. I discovered Ken through his excellent and thoughtful newsletter called SHuSh, where he writes about a wide range of book industry matters as well as people and books he is connected to or has published. Ken started in journalism and magazine writing and publishing, wrote nonfiction books himself, and then started Sutherland House. One might reasonably question why any sane person would start a commercial publishing house in the current troubled media environment, but Sutherland House appears to be successful and is clearly well run and intelligently managed. I thought it would be interesting and valuable to talk to Ken about his thinking about books and publishing. He is an innovator and clearly a smart publisher who has figured out how to sell books.
We talked about a wide range of subjects and concerns that will be of interest to anyone who follows current publishing and media trends. We talked about the current state of Canadian publishing, which is simultaneously similar and very different from the US publishing scene. And we talked as well about many of the challenges and opportunities that exist for publishers and authors in Canada and the USA alike. We talked about AI and its actual uses in publishing, consolidation in retail and how publishers must navigate markets, author income issues, ebooks, book pricing, changes in the overall media landscape, and much more.
From the Sutherland House website:
At Sutherland House, we believe in the power of a distinct aesthetic, and each of our publications reflects the unique essence of our brand. From inception to launch, every title undergoes meticulous market testing to ensure its resonance with our discerning readership. All of our books are simultaneously published in both Canada and the United States, supported by robust sales and distribution channels in both countries.
Kenneth Whyte was editor-in-chief of Saturday Night Magazine, founding editor of The National Post, editor and publisher of Maclean’s, president of Rogers Publishing, and founding president of Next Issue Canada. He is the author of The Sack of Detroit: General Motors and the End of American Enterprise and The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of Willian Randolph Hearst.
The post Publishing Talks Interview with Ken Whyte of Sutherland House first appeared on WritersCast.
888 Love and the Divine Burden Numbers: A Novel — Abraham Chang — Flatiron Books — Hardcover — 978-1-250-91078-3 — 400 pages — $29.99 — ebook $14.99 — May 7, 2024I met Abe Chang several years ago when he was gainfully employed at Simon and Schuster as a sales rep. I was immediately impressed by his encyclopedic knowledge of pop culture and the pure joy he exuded as a person, always coming across as an authentic character who combined a sharp eye for detail and a unique sense of humor. I had literally no idea that he was also an accomplished poet, musician and evidently, a terrific novelist and storyteller at the same time.A few months ago, I heard that Abe had left his job at S&S, and then a short time after that, an email announcing the publication of a new novel called 888 Love and the Divine Burden Numbers appeared in my inbox, and I thereby discovered that Abe is also a novelist. Since I am always interested in the writings of friends and associates, there was no question I would want to read this book.And now that I have read this very engaging first novel, I am very happy that it reached me. I literally had no idea during all the various business meetings where we talked about how to sell other people’s books, that all along, Abe was writing his own complex and funny book.While I do not believe that fiction can or should be read literally – novels are not simply memoirs in hiding – we always learn something about an author from their fiction, however indirectly that may be. Reading novels by someone you know can be confusing, as it is always tempting to read between the lines – is this his real family in disguise, was this girlfriend really so utterly cool, and other questions that arise during the course of absorbing the story line. It is crucial to tamp down those kinds of questions and to not think so literally – just read the damn book as if you did not know the author at all.888 Love and the Divine Burden Numbers is fast paced, quirky and is carefully designed and constructed by the author to carry the reader along a personal journey of discovery as its main character learns who he is and how he can function in a complicated emotionally charged universe. Numbers and their secret meanings chart his path. The book is full of surprises and is impossible to put down.It’s also full of pop culture references, some of which are central to the experience of the book and which may be unfamiliar to some who are much older than its Gen X author, so be prepared to use your favorite search engine and YouTube to check in on some of the bands and songs Abe includes in the book.Here’s a quote from the book that might give you an idea of its pop culture infused approach:
“You are obsessed with Robert Smith and company, Morrissey and Marr, and Gahan, and Gore. You spend hours ruminating on their obtuse Anglo references and overanalyzing their overly clever lyrics –how these pasty British men sing of a life through jangly guitars with jutted-jaw irony, and someone manage to reflect your preferred, parallel worldview: repressed, depressed, well-dressed. The chimes in ‘Pictures of You’ give you chills.”
I am certainly now a fan of Abe Chang’s writing. We had a lively engaging discussion about the book and his writing journey which I hope you will enjoy as much as I did.Official bio: Abraham Yu-Young (Abe) Chang is an award-winning, published poet with an MFA in creative writing from New York University. He has worked in the publishing industry since 2000 and was most recently in charge of Special Sales for Simon & Schuster. He lives in Forest Hills, Queens, with his wife.Author websiteThe post Abraham Chang: 888 Love and the Divine Burden of Numbers first appeared on WritersCast.
Publishing Talks began years ago as a series of conversations with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology. Most of these interviews originally involved the future of publishing, books, and culture,
The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City — Kevin Baker — Knopf Publishing – 9780375421839 – Hardcover — 528 pages — $35.00 — March 5, 2024 — ebook versions available at lower prices
I am guessing that anyone who knows me well will be aware that baseball has been a lifelong passion. I’ve written baseball poetry and stories, interviewed former players, and talked to writers about baseball many times over the years. I’ve read hundreds of baseball books, and published a few as well. Among the legion of great baseball novels, Kevin Baker’s Sometimes You See it Coming is one of my all time favorites. And of all the nonfiction baseball books I’ve come across, his newest book, The New York Game is among the very best.
In this The New York Game, Kevin tells the history of America’s greatest city through the lens of America’s greatest game. He is a masterful story teller, weaving together multiple strands of cultural, political, economic, and geographic history to create a brilliant tapestry from the beginning era that baseball was invented in the New York City environs, through its glory years, ending with World War II (and leaving us waiting for the sequel that will cover the 80 years since).
One element that sets this book apart from so many other books about baseball history is that Baker seamlessly writes about the often overlooked stories of Black and Hispanic baseball players and particularly the crucial importance of the Negro Leagues in American sports history. Race and sports reflect back all the flaws and foibles of the American experiment in sometimes painful and jarring ways. Understanding (and facing) how baseball – its ownership, management, players, and fans – dealt with race and racialism over the course of American history is crucial to understanding who we are today.
Even readers who think they know all about New York City baseball will learn from this book, and will enjoy Baker’s stories about the game, always cast in his fast-moving, highly literate style. There are so many stories, vignettes, portraits and analyses, it is impossible to list them all, not just the already famous, but many figures even those of us who have studied baseball or grew up in New York will have heard of before.
I’ve interviewed Kevin twice before for Writerscast, including for his excellent socio-political economic book about modern New York City, The Fall of a Great American City. (co-published by City Point Press and Harper’s Magazine in 2019).
I cannot recommend this new book more highly, even for those who do not identify as baseball fans. Not only will you gain a deeper understanding of the history of our largest and most dynamic city, you’ll be entertained throughout by a master storyteller. It’s one of those rare books you will have trouble putting down once you start reading.
Author website
Buy the book.
Writerscast interview with Kevin about The Fall of a Great American City
The post Kevin Baker: The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City first appeared on WritersCast.
Cold Victory: A Novel — Karl Marlantes — Atlantic Monthly Press – 978-0-8021-6142-0 – Hardcover — 352 pages — $28.00 — January 9, 2024 — ebook versions available at lower prices
I have to confess at the outset that Karl Marlantes has become one of my favorite authors of recent times and his latest book Cold Victory, is yet another outstanding novel from this author, whose first novel, Matterhorn, was published in 2010 after a full thirty years of effort. I’ve had the pleasure and privilege of interviewing Karl for all three of his previous books, each of them very different in subject matter and approach. A characteristic that is common to all of this author’s books is his extraordinary ability to create believable, wonderful characters that truly come to life on the page.
Cold Victory is related Karl’s 2019 novel Deep River, through a single common character. Deep River is set in the Northwestern United States in the early twentieth century, while this new book takes place in Finland right after the close of World War II. It’s safe to guess that most readers, like me, will be unaware of Finland’s complex role in that war, allying first with Germany to fight the Soviet Union to keep the latter from taking over its much smaller neighbor, and then allied itself with the Allies to fight Germany. Basically, Finland fought anyone and everyone to maintain its independence. In the aftermath of WWII, Finland was forced to pay reparations to the Soviets and gave up 10% of its land to the USSR.
In Cold Victory, the main characters are American and Russian, but the countries and the people of Finland have equal importance to the story. The American and Russian protagonists are two couples of similar age, but with such different life experiences that they must relate to each other on what they do share — honor, and love of soldiering for the men, commitment to their children and friendship for the women.
In the early parts of the novel, Marlantes sets the scene – his knowledge and appreciation for Finland, its culture and history, is palpable, and he uses his extensive knowledge to build a solid background for what develops into a riveting story that is sometimes extremely uplifting and often painful, as the tragedy at the center of the book unfolds. Marlantes’ story telling is vivid and powerful, the energy of his words always pulling us forward.
And I have to note that Karl has mastered his material – the descriptions of cross country skiing through bitter cold Finland are brilliantly portrayed. Be prepared to feel the cold in your soul.
This is another terrific novel from an outstanding writer whose skills are constantly evolving. And Karl is always a pleasure to speak with. Please enjoy our conversation and I hope you will pick up this book.
“For the history lesson alone, Cold Victory is memorable.”—Mark Steve’s, NY Journal of Books
Karl Marlantes graduated from Yale University and then was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, before serving as a Marine in Vietnam, where he was awarded the Navy Cross, the Bronze Star, two Navy Commendation Medals for valor, two Purple Hearts, and ten air medals. He lives in Washington State.
Interview about Deep River
Interview about Matterhorn
Interview about What It Is Like to Go to War
Buy Cold Victory
The post Karl Marlantes: Cold Victory, a Novel first appeared on WritersCast.
Twenty Acres: A Seventies Childhood in the Woods – Sarah Neidhardt – University of Arkansas Press – Paperback – 320 pages – 9781682262276 – $29.95 – Published March 7, 2023. Audiobook and ebook versions available at varying prices.
The Farmall Century 1923-2023: The Evolution of Red Tractors and Crawlers in the Golden Age of International Harvester – Lee Klancher – Octane Press – Hardcover – 9781642341393 – 384 pages (11.8 x 10.5) – $59.95 – October 26,
The Fast: The History, Science, Philosophy, and Promise of Doing Without—John Oakes—Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster—Hardcover —9781668017418—320 pages—$30—February 13, 2024—ebook versions available at lower prices If you’re expecting to find a “ho...
The Warner Brothers by Chris Yogerst, Foreword by Michael Uslan – University Press of Kentucky – Hardcover – 9780813198019 – 360 pages – $34.95 -September 5, 2023. eBook and audio book versions are also available at lower prices. My grandfather,
Publishing Talks began first as a series of conversations with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology, mostly talking about the future of publishing, books, and culture. It was great fun talking with people in the book ...
The Swine Republic: Struggles with the Truth about Agriculture and Water Quality – Chris Jones – Foreword by Tom Philpott – Ice Cube Press – 9781948509404 – 400 pages – $29.99 – June 1, 2023 When I saw the title of this book,
The Road Washes Out in Spring: A Poet’s Memoir of Living Off the Grid – Baron Wormser – Brandeis University Press – 9781684581603 – 214 pages – paperback – $24.95 – March 7, 2023 – ebook versions available at lower prices Baron Wormser is a poet and pr...
His Majesty’s Airship: The Life and Tragic Death of the World’s Largest Flying Machine — Sam Gwynne — Scribner — 9781982168278 — 320 pages — hardcover — $32.00 – May 2, 2023 — ebook versions available at lower cost Sam Gwynne is the author of the outstanding Empire of the Summer Moon, a book I […]
The post S.C. Gwynne: His Majesty’s Airship interview by David Wilk first appeared on WritersCast.
Publishing Talks began as a series of conversations with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology, mostly talking about the future of publishing, books, and culture. I’ve spent time talking with people in the book industry about how publishing is evolving in the context of technology, culture, and economics.
Later this series grew to include conversations that go beyond the future of publishing. In an effort to document the literary world, I’ve talked with a variety of editors, publishers and others who have been innovators and leaders in independent publishing in the past and into the present.
These conversations have been inspirational to me on many levels. I have gotten to speak with visionaries and entrepreneurs, as well as editors and publishers who have influenced and changed contemporary literature and culture. I’ve also had the opportunity to speak with a number of friends and colleagues I have met over the many years I have been in the book business.
I met Shouvik Paul a number of years ago when he was working for SharedBook, a company for whom I did some consulting work. He is a really smart guy and has been involved in a variety of technology related start ups during his career. Shouvik is currently the Chief Operating Officer of Copyleaks Inc., an award-winning AI-based text analysis company whose primary work is to identify potential plagiarism and paraphrasing across nearly every language, detect AI-generated content, and provide generative AI governance and compliance solutions. For obvious reasons, this kind of technology will be of interest to all kinds of publishers and content owners.
CopyLeaks has been working in AI for years, and now that AI in many different applications will become crucial for the book industry to understand and apply, I thought this would be a great opportunity for me and for Publishing Talks listeners to learn more about where this is all headed from someone who knows alot more than most of the rest of us.
I think this conversation will spur your thinking in a variety of ways. It certainly has inspired me to learn more about AI and how it can be used, what the risks of using it are, and how we need to think about AI both within the book business and in our overall culture. Don’t be surprised if this changes your outlook on the way AI will affect our business and hopefully it will inspire you as to learn more about it as well. The book industry cannot afford not to recognize how this technology will change our lives in so many ways.
Shouvik lives in Manhattan with his two daughters; he wanted me to note here that they refer to him as “That guy who has to stop and pet every dog that passes by” — which is a pretty great recommendation, in my view.
CopyLeaks.com
The post Publishing Talks: An Interview with Shouvik Paul of CopyLeaks first appeared on WritersCast.
Poets on the Road – Maureen Owen and Barbara Henning – City Point Press – 9781947951709 – Paperback – 176 pages – $18 – June 6, 2023 – ebook editions available at lower prices
This is a special book by two very special poets. I know I am biased. They are both friends of mine, and Maureen I have known for almost fifty years. This terrific travelog documents an amazing poetic journey they took in 2019, crossing the country in a small car, with stops for poetry readings, visits with other poets, cheap motels and funky meals from Brooklyn (where Barbara lives), first south, then west all the way to California and back to Denver (where Maureen lives).
It was truly an incredible trip, originally documented in a blog they wrote while traveling. This book collects those stories and features photos of the poets and the people and places they visited along the way.
I loved this story so much, I decided to publish it, and consequently this book is a collaboration of the two poets plus the exceptional book designer, HR Hegnauer and publisher City Point Press.
Here’s an excerpt from Pat Nolan’s wonderful introduction:
Although a road trip across North American calls to mind Jack Kerouac’s youthful meanderings of self-discovery, this reading tour was more in the manner of Bashō’s late life journeys through the backcountry of Japan. . . . The road trip was in a sense a pilgrimage of reengagement with their calling as poets, and a chance to reacquaint with like-minded friends, old and new, in a far-flung landscape of American poetry.
Venues would include upscale bookstores, coffee houses, museums, legendary used bookstores, botanical gardens, university classrooms, art centers, and artist coops—in short, a unique sampling of poetry environments tracing an arc across the Southern States, the Southwest, and up the West Coast before hooking back to the Rockies.
Framed as a personal challenge, the poets hit the road much in the manner of itinerant preachers and musicians, lodging at discount motels, funky hostels, Airbnbs, and with friends along the way. Adding a social media touch, Maureen and Barbara created a blog of their tour so that friends, family, hosts, and fellow poets might also share in their adventure.
It’s always a pleasure to spend any amount of time with Maureen and Barbara, so this conversation was truly special for me, and I hope for all of you as well who will be listening in.
As further full disclosure, let me add that we were also in Tucson when she and Barb came to visit, so I am a participant and contributor to the blog and to the book as well, making it even more fun for me to talk to both Maureen and Barb about it here.
Maureen’s most recent book is let the heart hold down the breakage Or the caretaker’s log (Hanging Loose Press)
Barbara’s most recent book is Ferne, A Detroit Story (Spuyten Duyvil)
Maureen’s website
Barbara’s website
Buy Poets on the Road here. (this link is to Bookshop.org, sales will support indie bookstores)
Barbara Henning (photo by Miranda Maher)
The post Maureen Owen and Barbara Henning: Poets on the Road first appeared on WritersCast.
Publishing Talks began as a series of conversations with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology, mostly talking about the future of publishing, books, and culture. I’ve spent time talking with people in the book industry about how publishing is evolving in the context of technology, culture, and economics.
Later this series broadened to include conversations that go beyond the future of publishing. In an effort to document the literary world, I’ve talked with a variety of editors, publishers and others who have been innovators and leaders in independent publishing in the past and into the present.
These conversations have been inspirational to me on many levels. I have gotten to speak with visionaries and entrepreneurs, as well as editors and publishers who have influenced and changed contemporary literature and culture. I’ve also had the opportunity to speak with a number of friends and colleagues I have met over the many years I have been in the book business.
Josh Schwartz is someone I met at a Book Expo several years ago (remember trade shows? Book Expo, previously known as the American Booksellers Association was an important social gathering for the book industry for more than 50 years, fostering a sense of community that is now lost). As often was the case at old-fashioned industry gatherings, it was purely a chance connection, as we sat together to eat lunch at the Javits Center one busy afternoon. That meeting is emblematic of how a good trade show can work – a chance meeting with someone that turns into a long term business connection and friendship.
Josh was then just launching his company, Pubvendo to specialize in digital marketing for books, working with authors and publishers of every size and kind. Now that it’s been some years he and his team have been at it, the work puts him in the middle of a very interesting part of the book business. Most of us agree that while publishing is not without challenges, marketing is the hardest thing we do. Every new book that is published is an entirely new product (unless it is part of a series or written by an author with an established brand). Every new book must be thought about and in some way “represented” or “presented” to potential readers, booksellers, librarians, media outlets, all of whom are busy, often overwhelmed with information, and hard pressed to notice any one book over any other. How do we find readers and help them discover our books when they have so many other books and media forms to choose from? That is the challenge of book publishing in the digital era. Data driven online marketing as practiced by Pubvendo and only a few other businesses is one way for publishers and authors to make those crucial connections. And while it might be “inside baseball” for some, this is a subject that most of us in the book business have to think about all the time.
Josh is both the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Pubvendo, which makes him responsible for digital campaign methodology, strategy, and execution. He started in the book business in 2010, working for digital production companies, Aptara and Jouve. He holds a bachelor’s degree in American Literature from George Mason University and a master’s degree from Georgetown University.
Aside from his literary interests, which inform his day-to-day work with publishers and authors, he’s willing and able to engage with a variety of subjects and try to find ways to connect books of all kinds with the right readers – especially the ones who want to buy those books. It is no easy thing to navigate the continuously changeable online universe, but Josh seems better equipped than most to figure it out and at the same time, have some fun and enjoy the ride.
In this conversation, we covered a wide range of topics relating to marketing and publishing – primarily focusing on digital matters but really this is about marketing books in an extremely complex and constantly changing environment. We even talked about AI, the latest and greatest in a series of “new developments” that have faced book publishing over the last twenty years or more.
One thing is certain – there are no final answers, but there are always alot of really important questions.
Pubvendo website.
The post Publishing Talks: Interview with Josh Schwartz of Pubvendo first appeared on WritersCast.
Michael Wolfe
Publishing Talks began as a series of conversations with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology, mostly talking about the future of publishing, books, and culture. I’ve spent time talking with people in the book industry about how publishing is evolving in the context of technology, culture, and economics.
Later this series broadened to include conversations that go beyond the future of publishing. In an effort to document the literary world, I’ve talked with a variety of editors, publishers and others who have been innovators and leaders in independent publishing in the past and into the present.
These conversations have been inspirational to me on many levels. I have gotten to speak with visionaries and entrepreneurs, as well as editors and publishers who have influenced and changed contemporary literature and culture. I’ve also had the opportunity to speak with a number of friends and colleagues I have met over the many years I have been in the book business.
One such person is Michael Wolfe. We have known each peripherally for many years through independent literary publishing.
Michael is the author of ten books of poetry, fiction, and travel. In the 1970s and 1980s he owned and ran a bookstore and a book bindery in Bolinas, California, and was publisher of the renowned indie press, Tombouctou Books there. His authors included Lucia Berlin, Paul Bowles, Mohammed Mrabet, Jim Carroll, Joanne Kyger, Dale Herd, Steve Emerson, Bobbie Louise Hawkins, Bill Berkson, Duncan McNaughton, Clark Coolidge, Phoebe MacAdams and many other wonderful writers, poets and translators.
These days, Michael is the Executive Producer and President of Unity Productions Foundation, a nonprofit media company that produces documentary films. “Stories of Muslim Engagement, History and Culture – UPF Films and Educational Projects Promote Peace and Understanding.”
Speaking with Michael about writing, publishing and his life was a great experience for me, one which I am pleased to share here. As time goes on, I treasure these opportunities to talk with brilliant, accomplished literary activists like Michael Wolfe.
Author website here.
The post Publishing Talks: Interview with Michael Wolfe first appeared on WritersCast.
Missing: A Memoir – Cornelia Maude Spelman – Jackleg Press – 9781737513445 – Paperback – 176 pages – $17.00 – July 15, 2022 – ebook versions available at lower prices Cornelia Maude Spelman is best known as a children’s book author. This memoir of her family was spurred by her meeting with and friendship with […]
The post Cornelia Maude Spelman: Missing: A Memoir first appeared on WritersCast.
Publishing Talks began as a series of conversations with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology, mostly talking about the future of publishing, books, and culture. I’ve spent time talking with people in the book industry about how publishing is evolving in the context of technology, culture, and economics. Some time back, […]
The post Publishing Talks: Interview with Dan Harke of Mayo Clinic Press first appeared on WritersCast.
All of You Every Single One: A Novel – Beatrice Hitchman – Overlook Press – 978-1-4197-5693-1 – Hardcover – 320 pages – $26 – January 4, 2022 – ebook editions available at lower prices This novel is an absolutely riveting book I truly enjoyed. And happily, it introduced me to the work of Beatrice Hitchman, […]
The post Beatrice Hitchman: All of You Every Single One first appeared on WritersCast.
Publishing Talks began as a series of conversations with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology, mostly about the future of publishing, books, and culture. I’ve spent time talking with people in the book industry about how publishing is evolving in the context of fast-changing technology, culture, and economics. Along the way, […]
The post Publishing Talks: Interview with Mark Hurst of Creative Good first appeared on WritersCast.
Immortal Valor: The Black Medal of Honor Recipients of World War II – Robert Child – Osprey – 9781472852854 – 288 pages – hardcover – $30 – January 11, 2022 – ebook edition available at lower prices It is remarkable to realize how few medals of honor were awarded for service during World War II […]
The post Robert Child: Immortal Valor: The Black Medal of Honor Recipients of World War II first appeared on WritersCast.
Publishing Talks started as a series of conversations with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology, mostly talking about the future of publishing, books, and culture. It was great fun talking with people in the book industry about the evolution of publishing in the context of technology, culture, and economics. Later this […]
The post Publishing Talks: Interview with Jane Friedman first appeared on WritersCast.
The Farmer’s Lawyer: The North Dakota Nine and the Fight to Save the Family Farm – Sarah Vogel – Bloomsbury – 9781635575262 – 432 pages – hardcover – $28 – ebook edition available at lower prices – November 2, 2021 Many Americans think of North Dakota and the other prairie states as being conservative culturally […]
The post Sarah Vogel: The Farmer’s Lawyer: The North Dakota Nine and the Fight to Save the Family Farm first appeared on WritersCast.
If You Want to Know How I Got Brainwashed: Story and Paintings – Betsy Dovydenas – City Point Press – 978-1-947951-40-2 – 224 pages – paperback – $24 – ebook edition available at lower prices In many ways, this is a simple story. A woman becomes involved with a small local church and soon finds […]
The post Betsy Dovydenas: If You Want to Know How I Got Brainwashed first appeared on WritersCast.
Publishing Talks began as a series of conversations with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology, mostly talking about the future of publishing, books, and culture. I’ve spent time talking with people in the book industry about how publishing is evolving in the context of technology, culture, and economics. Some years ago, this […]
The post Publishing Talks: Interview with George Slowik, Jr. of Publishers Weekly first appeared on WritersCast.
The Family Chao – Lan Samantha Chang – W.W. Norton – 9780393868074 – 320 pages – Hardcover – $29.00 – February 1, 2022. eBook versions available at lower prices. This is a beautifully written and thoughtfully composed novel about three brothers in a Chinese American family living somewhat awkwardly in a small town in Wisconsin. […]
The post Lan Samantha Chang: The Family Chao (A Novel) first appeared on WritersCast.
At Heaven’s Door – What Shared Journeys to the Afterlife Teach about Dying Well and Living Better – William J. Peters – with Michael Kinsella – Simon and Schuster – 978-1-9821-5042-6 – Hardcover – 248 pages – $26.00 – January 18, 2022 – ebook editions available at lower prices William Peters is a therapist who […]
The post William J. Peters: At Heaven’s Door-What Shared Journeys to the AfterLife Teach about Dying Well and Living Better first appeared on WritersCast.
Iwígara: American Indian Ethnobotanical Traditions and Science, The Kinship of Plants and People — Enrique Salmón –Timber Press — 978-1-60469-880-0 — Hardcover – $34.95 – ebook and audio book versions available at lower prices This is a truly incredible and hugely inspiring book for me. Enrique Salmón, a member of the Raramuri tribe from Mexico, […]
The post Enrique Salmón: Iwígara: American Indian Ethnobotanical Traditions and Science first appeared on WritersCast.
Banished Children of Eve: A Novel of Civil War New York – Peter Quinn – Empire State Editions (Fordham University Press) – 978-08232-9408-4 – 612 pages – paperback – $17.95 (eBook version is not available for this title) Historical novels based in New York City have always appealed to me. I am not sure why. […]
The post Peter Quinn: Banished Children of Eve: A Novel of Civil War New York first appeared on WritersCast.
Lights Out in Lincolnwood – A Novel – Geoff Rodkey – HarperCollins – 9780063065925 – Paperback – 544 pages – $16.99 – ebook versions available at lower prices I have to admit that I did not expect to really like this book anywhere near as much as I did. I’ve certainly read my share of […]
The post Geoff Rodkey: Lights Out in Lincolnwood (A Novel) first appeared on WritersCast.
Publishing Talks began as a series of conversations with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology, mostly talking about the future of publishing, books, and culture. I’ve spent time talking with people in the book industry about how publishing is evolving in the context of technology, culture, and economics. Some time back, this […]
The post Publishing Talks: Interview with Jeff Deutsch of Seminary Co-op Bookstores first appeared on WritersCast.
Publishing Talks began as a series of conversations with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology, mostly talking about the future of publishing, books, and culture. I’ve spent quite a bit of time over the years talking with people in the book industry about how publishing has evolved in the context of […]
The post Publishing Talks: Interview with Ben Fox of Shepherd.com first appeared on WritersCast.
The Terrible Unlikelihood of Our Being Here – Susanne Paola Antonetta – 978-0-8142-5780-7 – 248 pages – paperback – February, 2021 – Mad Creek Books – $22.95 – ebook editions available at lower prices Sometimes one literally chances across a terrific book; it appears unbidden and takes over one’s complete attention. A surprise appearance in […]
The post Susanne Paola Antonetta: The Terrible Unlikelihood of Our Being Here first appeared on WritersCast.
Darrow’s Nightmare: The Forgotten Story of America’s Most Famous Trial Lawyer (Los Angeles 1911–1913) – Nelson Johnson – 9781948122733 – 360 pages – April 20, 2021 – Hardcover – Rosetta Books – ebook editions available at lower prices One of the great personal joys that working in the book business enables is that I get […]
The post Nelson Johnson: Darrow’s Nightmare-The Forgotten Story of America’s Most Famous Trial Lawyer first appeared on WritersCast.
Publishing Talks began as a series of conversations with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology, mostly talking about the future of publishing, books, and culture. I’ve spent time talking with people in the book industry about how publishing is evolving in the context of technology, culture, and economics. Some time ago, this […]
The post Publishing Talks: Interview with Roxanne Coady of R.J. Julia Booksellers first appeared on WritersCast.
Rural Rebellion: How Nebraska Became a Republican Stronghold – Ross Benes – 9780700630455 – hardcover – University Press of Kansas – 256 pages – $29.95 – January 26, 2021 – ebook versions available at lower prices Ross Benes is a journalist and author who now lives in New York City. But he was born and […]
The post Ross Benes – Rural Rebellion: How Nebraska Became a Republican Stronghold first appeared on WritersCast.
Rediscovering Earth: Ten Dialogues on the Future of Nature – conversations with Anders Dunker – OR Books – 9781682195086 – Paperback – 240 pages – $23 – ebook versions available at lower prices Thinking about how to think about climate, earth, humans on it, and the future, are major challenges for all of us who […]
The post Anders Dunker: Rediscovering Earth first appeared on WritersCast.
The FBI Way: Inside the Bureau’s Code of Excellence – Frank Figliuzzi – 9780062997050 – hardcover – HarperCollins – 272 pages – $27.99 – January 12, 2021 – ebook versions available at lower prices If you have been paying attention to the news for the five years since the US elevated Donald J. Trump to […]
The post Frank Figliuzzi: The FBI Way – Inside the Bureau’s Code of Excellence first appeared on WritersCast.
Publishing Talks began as a series of conversations with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology, mostly about the future of publishing, books, and culture. I’ve spent time in conversation with people in and around the book industry talking about its evolution in the contexts of technology, culture, and economics. Later, this […]
The post Publishing Talks: Interview with Angus Yuen-Killick of Red Comet Press first appeared on WritersCast.
Publishing Talks began as a series of conversations with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology, mostly talking about the future of publishing, books, and culture. I’ve spent time talking with people in the book industry about how publishing is evolving in the context of technology, culture, and economics. Later this series broadened […]
The post Publishing Talks: Interview with Kyle Schlesinger of Cuneiform Press first appeared on WritersCast.
Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory – Claudio Saunt – 97800393541564 – paperback – W.W. Norton – 416 pages – $26.95 – February 23, 2021 – ebook versions available at lower prices This is a book that should be required reading for all Americans. Even those of us […]
The post Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory by Claudio Saunt first appeared on WritersCast.
The Brothers Mankiewicz: Hope, Heartbreak, and Hollywood Classics – Sydney Ladensohn Stern- 9781617032677 – University Press of Mississippi – 480 pages – 88 b&w illustrations – October 2019 – Hardcover – $35 – ebook version available at lower prices There are any number of characters and influencers in the history of modern American film-making, but […]
The post The Brothers Mankiewicz: Hope, Heartbreak, and Hollywood Classics by Sydney Ladensohn Stern first appeared on WritersCast.
Publishing Talks began as a series of conversations with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology, mostly talking about the future of publishing, books, and culture. I’ve spent time talking with people in the book industry about how publishing is evolving in the context of technology, culture, and economics. Some time back, this […]
The post Publishing Talks: Interview with Arthur Attwell first appeared on WritersCast.
Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas – Jeffrey Ostler – 9780300255362 – Yale University Press – Paperback – 544 pages – September 22, 2020 – $25 – ebook versions available at lower prices “A landmark book essential to understanding American history, Surviving Genocide is an act […]
The post Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas: Jeffrey Ostler first appeared on WritersCast.
Even as We Breathe, A Novel – Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle – 9781950564064 – University Press of Kentucky – Hardcover – 240 pages – September 2020 – $24.95 – ebook versions available for sale at lower prices This has been a good year to read fiction, and I am really pleased to have discovered this author. […]
The post Even as We Breathe, A Novel: Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle first appeared on WritersCast.
Old friend and colleague John O’Brien, founder of Review of Contemporary Fiction and Dalkey Archive Press passed away on November 21st. John and I had many mutual friends in literature and similar tastes and interests, and his vision of writing and books led me to learn about many writers whose work I would otherwise never […]
The post Publisher and editor John O’Brien has died first appeared on WritersCast.
American Gospel, A Novel – Lin Enger – 978-1-5179-1054-9 – University of Minnesota Press – Hardcover – 248 pages – October 27, 2020 – $24.95 – ebook versions available for sale at lower prices I read Lin Enger’s last novel, High Divide, a few years ago and was really taken with his writing and the […]
The post American Gospel, A Novel: Lin Enger first appeared on WritersCast.
The Vanishing Sky (A Novel) – L. Annette Binder – 9781635574678 – Bloomsbury Publishing – Hardcover – 288 pages – July 21, 2020 – $27.00 – ebook versions for sale at lower prices I did not know what to expect when I started reading The Vanishing Sky. Initially, I was looking forward to reading a […]
The post The Vanishing Sky (A Novel) by L. Annette Binder first appeared on WritersCast.
Why We Revolt: A Patient Revolution for Careful and Kind Care – Victor Montori, MD – 9781893005624 – Mayo Clinic Press – paperback – 192 pages – $14.99 – September 29, 2020 – ebook versions available at lower prices Victor Montori is an incredibly empathetic and kind clinician, whose commitment to creating a better form […]
The post Why We Revolt: A Patient Revolution for Careful and Kind Care by Victor Montori MD first appeared on WritersCast.
A couple years ago, in the process of researching the mostly unknown and under-appreciated New Yorker writer Robert M. Coates, I reached out to Roger Angell, who knew Coates during his many years of writing for and working at The New Yorker (and whose mother, Katharine Sergeant Angell White, and stepfather, E.B. White, knew Coates […]
The post Writerscast: David Wilk interviews Roger Angell first appeared on WritersCast.
Mating in Captivity: A Memoir – Helen Zuman – 9781631523373 – She Writes Press – paperback – 248 pages – May 8, 2018 – $16.95 – ebook versions for sale at lower prices When I was in my younger hippie Whole Earth Catalog reading period of life, I became intensely interested in communes and alternative […]
The post Helen Zuman: Mating in Captivity [A Memoir] first appeared on WritersCast.
Blackwood: A Novel – Michael Farris Smith – 9780316529815 – Little Brown – Hardcover – 256 pages – March 3, 2020 – $27.00 – ebook versions for sale at lower prices This is pretty much a stunningly written book. I discovered the writing of Michael Farris Smith serendipitously through the southern culture magazine, Garden & […]
The post Blackwood: A Novel by Michael Farris Smith first appeared on WritersCast.
Crooked Hallelujah – Kelli Jo Ford – 978-0-8021-4912-1 – Grove Press – Hardcover – 304 pages – July 14, 2020 – $26.00 – ebook versions available at lower prices. Kelli Jo Ford’s novel is a deeply rewarding read. Comparisons to the work of Louise Erdrich are inevitable and unavoidable (and Kelli Jo mentioned Louise in […]
The post Crooked Hallelujah: Kelli Jo Ford first appeared on WritersCast.
Publishing Talks began as a series of conversations with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology, mostly talking about the future of publishing, books, and culture. I’ve spent time talking with people in the book industry about how publishing is evolving in the context of technology, culture, and economics. Some time back, […]
The post Publishing Talks: David Wilk Interviews Howard Junker about Zyzzyva first appeared on WritersCast.
At the Center of All Beauty: Solitude and the Creative Life – Fenton Johnson- 9780393608298 – W.W. Norton – Hardcover – 256 pages – March 10, 2020 – $26.95 – ebook versions available at lower prices So much of the pleasure of conducting this podcast for all these years has been (and continues to be) […]
The post Fenton Johnson – At the Center of All Beauty: Solitude and the Creative Life first appeared on WritersCast.
Publishing Talks began as a series of conversations with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology, mostly talking about the future of publishing, books, and culture. As every media business continues to experience disruption and change, I’ve spent time talking with some of the people involved in our industry about how publishing […]
The post Publishing Talks: David Wilk interviews Mary Gannon of CLMP first appeared on WritersCast.
Actress: A Novel – Anne Enright – 978-1-324-00562-9 – W.W. Norton – Hardcover – 272 pages – March 3, 2020 – $26.95 – eBook version available at lower prices I think it is pretty safe to say that Anne Enright is one of the best writers of our time. Her writing is so well done […]
The post Anne Enright: Actress – A Novel first appeared on WritersCast.
The King at the Edge of the World – Arthur Phillips – 9780812995480 – Random House – Hardcover- 288 pages – $27.00 – February 11, 2020. Ebooks available at lower prices. At Writerscast, there is a strict rule that I only talk to authors whose books I like. So every book that appears here is […]
The post Arthur Phillips: The King at the Edge of the World first appeared on WritersCast.
Be Kind: You Can Make the World a Happier Place! 125 Kind Things to Say & Do – Naomi Shulman – Illustrated by Hsinping Pan – Storey Publishing – 9781635861549 – Hardcover – $12.99 – June 25, 2019 – ebooks available at lower prices. I learned about Naomi Shulman because of something she wrote a […]
The post Naomi Shulman: Be Kind: You Can Make the World a Happier Place! first appeared on WritersCast.
Dick Marek was a legendary book editor and later an extremely successful writer and ghost writer. He lived in Westport, Connecticut with his second wife, the writer and therapist, Dalma Heyn. I had the honor to interview Dick for Writerscast in 2015, in which he talked at length about what many consider to be the […]
The post Writer and editor Richard Marek has died. first appeared on WritersCast.
This Land is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving – David J. Silverman – Bloomsbury – Hardcover – 9781632869241- 528 pages – $32.00 – November 5, 2019 – ebook versions available at lower prices There have been a number of books I have read recently (and another I […]
The post David J. Silverman: This Land is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving first appeared on WritersCast.
Due Diligence and the News: Searching for a Moral Compass in the Digital Age – Stanley Flink – Center for Media and Journalism Studies at Indian River State College – paperback – 978-0-578-60291-2 – 214 pages – $19.95 – 12/7/2019 – ebook editions available at lower prices. I was recently introduced to Stan Flink by […]
The post Stanley Flink: Due Diligence and the News first appeared on WritersCast.
The Food of Sichuan (A New and Updated edition of Land of Plenty)- Fuchsia Dunlop – Hardcover – 978-1-324-00483-7 – 480 pages – W.W. Norton – October 15, 2019 – $40.00 – ebook versions available at lower prices. I love cooking and I particularly love cooking Chinese cuisine, and among Chinese cuisines, my favorite has […]
The post Fuchsia Dunlop: The Food of Sichuan first appeared on WritersCast.
The Fall of a Great American City: New York and the Urban Crisis of Affluence – Kevin Baker (foreword by James Howard Kunstler) – 9781947951143 – City Point Press/Harper’s Magazine – Hardcover – 176 pages – October 8, 2019 – eBook editions available at lower prices. Kevin Baker has been one of my favorite writers […]
The post Kevin Baker: The Fall of a Great American City: New York and the Urban Crisis of Affluence first appeared on WritersCast.
Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia – Christina Thompson – 9780062060877 – Harper – Hardcover – 384 pages – $29.99 – March 12, 2019 – ebook editions also available at lower prices, varying by outlet. “I loved this book. I found Sea People the most intelligent, empathic, engaging, wide-ranging, informative, and authoritative treatment of Polynesian […]
The post Christina Thompson: Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia first appeared on WritersCast.
Publishing Talks began as a series of conversations with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology, mostly talking about the future of publishing, books, and culture. As every media business continues to experience disruption and change, I’ve spent time talking with some of the people involved in our industry about how publishing […]
The post Publishing Talks: David Wilk interviews Brian Birnbaum of Dead Rabbits first appeared on WritersCast.
Nothing to Write Home About – Brook Simons – 9781626468702 – Booklocker – paperback – 232 pages – $16.95 – April 15, 2014 – ebook available at lower prices In her late twenties, in 1977, Brook Simons picked up stakes and moved to Los Angeles from Connecticut, where she grew up on a farm in […]
The post Brook Simons: Nothing to Write Home About first appeared on WritersCast.
If You Lived Here You’d Be Home By Now: Why We Traded the Commuting Life for a Little House on the Prairie – Christopher Ingraham – 9780062861474 – Harper Collins – Hardcover – 288 pages – $24.99 – September 10, 2019 – ebook version available at lower prices. Despite both having good jobs, Chris Ingraham, […]
The post Christopher Ingraham: If You Lived Here You’d Be Home By Now first appeared on WritersCast.
Deep River – Karl Marlantes – 978-0-8021-2538-5 – Atlantic Monthly Press – Hardcover – 736 pages – $30 – July 2, 2019 – ebook version widely available at lower prices. “Deep River seems a work born from Willa Cather by way of Upton Sinclair. But this new book is its own animal, and it’s something […]
The post Karl Marlantes: Deep River, a Novel first appeared on WritersCast.
Publishing Talks began as a series of conversations with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology, mostly talking about the future of publishing, books, and culture. As every media business continues to experience disruption and change, I’ve been talking with some of the people involved in our industry about how publishing might […]
The post Publishing Talks: David Wilk interviews writer and entrepreneur Rachel Lehmann-Haupt first appeared on WritersCast.
The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America – Thom Hartmann – ISBN 9781523085941 – Berrett-Koehler Publishers – Paperback – 192 pages – $15.00 – October 1, 2019 – ebook versions available at lower prices “Hartmann delivers a full-throated indictment of the U.S. Supreme Court in this punchy polemic.” —Publishers Weekly […]
The post Thom Hartmann: The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America first appeared on WritersCast.
Publishing Talks began as a series of conversations with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology, mostly talking about the future of publishing, books, and culture. As every media business continues to experience disruption and change, I’ve been talking with some of the people involved in our industry about how publishing might evolve as it is affected by technology and the larger context of culture and economics.
I’ve expanded this interview series to include conversations that go beyond the future of publishing. I’ve talked with editors and publishers who have been innovators and leaders in independent publishing in the past and the present, and will continue to explore the ebb and flow of writing, books, and publishing in all sorts of forms and formats, as change continues to be the one constant we can count on.
Tom Montag is a poet, critic, editor and publisher whom I have known for many years. I love his biography, which emphasizes his pure identity as a midwesterner. Unlike so many Americans, he has lived in the midwest for his entire life, and his work identifies deeply with where he lives. He does not need to declaim his role as a true poet of place.
Tom was somewhat famously the editor of Margins: A Review of Little Magazines and Small Press Books during the 1970s, was active in the Milwaukee literary scene, and was an editor and feature writer for Wisconsin’s Fox River Patriot during its heyday from 1977 to 1979. With his wife Mary, he edited and published the Wisconsin Poet’s Calendar from 1982 to 1984, which was subsequently handed to the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets to continue.
Tom spent the better part of his work life at the family owned Ripon Community Printers in Ripon, Wisconsin. During those years, he wrote pithy sayings from a character he called Ben Zen. Four collections of the BZ poems were published between 1992 and 2000.
His memoir, Curlew: Home is about his first fourteen years spent on a farm outside Curlew, Iowa, and about his sense of loss in revisiting the community forty years later. Kissing Poetry’s Sister gathered eleven of Montag’s essays about writing and being a writer, including his long piece on creative nonfiction.
After he retired from his Ripon job, he spent five years creating “Vagabond in the Middle,” an attempt to determine what makes us middle western. He has been collecting stories from residents of twelve communities across the middle west, true stories of their families, their lives, and their connections to the places they inhabit.
Tom and I have worked together on publishing projects at Woodland Pattern in Milwaukee, and we’ve presented together there and at the Lorine Niedecker festival in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin. Tom’s writing and editing has meant a great deal to me over the years, we are linked in so many ways, yet have such different backgrounds, and it was a great pleasure to speak to him here about his lifetime of work in writing and publishing, though to be sure, we barely scratched the surface of what we could have talked about.
SOMETIMES
Sometimes
in the weeds
a loveliness.
This moment
among all
the moments.
Rain when it’s
needed. Tom,
stop wanting
anything more.
MY FATHER,
holding the Y
of willow
lightly
in his hands,
walks the land.
The willow
leaps
for something
we do not
see: Here,
my father says
to the man,
drill here.
Tom is the author of many books and has edited anthologies as well. His most recent large scale collection is In This Place: Selected Poems 1982-2013.
There are two really good written interviews with Tom in the Wombwell Rainbow and the Mocking Heart Review. You can learn more about Tom and his work here and you can keep up with his prodigious output of poetry at his outstanding blog The Middle Westerner where you will regularly find him posting poems that will endure.
“Exploring the heart of the country; or, as Nancy Besonen has said, “Tom Montag is defining the character of the Midwest – one character at a time.”
Thanks Tom, for being who you are.
The post Publishing Talks: David Wilk interviews poet and editor Tom Montag first appeared on WritersCast.
The Suburban Micro-Farm: Modern Solutions for Busy People – Amy Stross – 9780997520835 – Twisted Creek Press – Paperback – 356 pages – $34.95 – March 23, 2018 – ebook versions available at reduced prices.
“…this book takes a permaculture approach to starting a micro-farm in the suburbs that speaks not just to a stay-at-home mom or dad, but to all busy people. Indeed, it is one of the few gardening books that is aware that you may not have a lot of time to start a garden, and shows you that it’s still possible anyway.” – Jesse Frost, Hobby Farms
I love gardening, gardens, and would be thrilled if every suburban lawn was turned into a vegetable garden, berry patch or orchard (or all of those things). I’m an enthusiastic gardener, but not a great planner, and I need the kind of help that Amy Stross provides in this truly excellent book. Even if you never pick up a hoe or dig in the dirt, you will learn a huge amount about food growing in relatively small spaces from this book and you will be able to explain to your neighbors, friends and family why they all should be outside right now working on their gardens.
There is so much good information, and reading this book is so inspiring, it is impossible to know where to begin in describing it. Suffice to say, while there are many great books about gardening, but this one deserves to be on every gardener’s bookshelf, and especially for any beginner who wonders how to get started, this book is essential. There is alot of work involved when you seriously grow vegetables and fruit in a small space, and planning is essential. This book provides the gardener, beginner or otherwise, with terrific tools for planning and organizing, and for avoiding the many mistakes that are easy to make along the way to growing your own fruit and vegetables.
Now that it’s fall, this is the perfect time to start planning your garden for next year. Read this book, lay out and build your garden beds, and order seeds for spring! If you’ve never gardened before, start with a small space you can handle and build from there.
Here are just a few things covered in The Suburban Micro-Farm:
How to make your landscape as productive as it is beautiful
Why the suburbs are primed with food-growing potential
How to choose the best crops for success
Why you don’t need the perfect yard to have a micro-farm
How to use easy permaculture techniques for abundant harvests
The idea of an edible yard is more than just romantic, it is a practicality for many of us. There are lots of benefits besides being able to grow your own food – getting rid of lawns and lawn maintenance is good for the natural environment and makes a dent in climate change mitigation, raising vegetables and fruit is healthy for your body in two ways – the work of gardening is good for your health and the food you eat from the work you put in is always better than what you can buy in a store, even an organic one.
Amy is a terrific teacher, well organized, thoughtful and clear eyed.
I really enjoyed speaking with her and recommend this book to any and all who will listen. Visit her website here to learn more about Amy, her approach to gardening, and where to buy the book (though I recommend purchasing from my friends at Chelsea Green Press, who have been publishing books in this category for many years).
And have fun in the dirt! I was inspired by reading this book to build a bigger garden this year, which was very productive, and next year, we are planting blueberries and fruit trees in our very small front yard. Thank you Amy Stross!
Nonfiction Book Awards 2018 Gold Winner
Foreword INDIE Awards 2018 Gold Winner (Hobbies & Home category)
Nautilus Book Awards 2018 Silver Winner (Green Living & Sustainability category)
The post Amy Stross: The Suburban Micro-Farm first appeared on WritersCast.
Deep Water Blues: A Novel – Fred Waitzkin – 9781504057745 – 160 pages – Open Road Media – paperback – May 28, 2019 – $17.00 – ebook versions available at lower prices.
Fred Waitzkin’s Deep Water Blues is a surprisingly affecting short novel based to a great extent on his personal experiences in a small boat on the open water and islands of the Caribbean. Because it is based in so much lived experience, it has an authenticity that shines through in every page. In Deep Water Blues three older men (including the boat’s owner) and one younger man, a painter who has never been to sea, leave Ft. Lauderdale on an old boat heading for a Bahamian island that has an almost mythical story and appeal. Each is there for a different reason and each will gain something different from their adventure. But the story is really about the island and the mysteries of what happened there.
When I first started reading this book, I did not expect to find it as compelling as I did in the end. There’s alot more here than initially meets the eye, and this is a book I can recommend to readers.
Waitzkin calls his book a “curated blend of real-life experience and fiction.” Deep Water Blues tells a compelling story about an unusual man in an exotic place, an almost mythical story whose hero suffers a classic fate and redemption in a mysterious and beautiful location, bringing to mind Shakespearean and Biblical storytelling. Waitzkin writes in spare prose that carries his story through to its exciting end, and makes a short book impactful beyond its length.
Fred Waitzkin was born in Cambridge Massachusetts. He was an English major at Kenyon College in Ohio, then taught English at The College of the Virgin Islands, where he also got to pursue his love of fishing for big game fish. Fred and his wife moved to New York City, where Waitzkin wrote feature journalism, personal essays and reviews for numerous magazines including Esquire, Forbes, the New York Times Sunday Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, New York Magazine, Outside Magazine, and Sports Illustrated.
Waitzkin’s first book was Searching for Bobby Fischer. Published in 1984, it’s the story of three years in the lives of Fred and his chess prodigy son, Josh Waitzkin. The book became an internationally acclaimed best seller, and the film based on it was nominated for an academy award.
Mortal Games, his biography of world chess champion, Garry Kasparov was published in 1993, and was followed in 2000 by The Last Marlin, a memoir. The Dream Merchant, Waitzkin’s first novel, was published in 2013 – Deep Water Blues is his second published work of fiction. Fred still lives in Manhattan with his wife Bonnie, and still spends as much time as possible on his old boat, Ebb Tide.
It was my pleasure to speak with Fred, and while we talked about the book at hand, our conversation went into a variety of related coves and channels.
Visit Fred Waitzkin’s website to learn more about him and his writing.
“Deep Water Blues does what all fine literature aspires for – it transports readers to another time and place, in this case, to a sleepy, lush island deep in the Bahamas. Fred Waitzkin writes about life, sex and violence with aplomb, and Bobby Little is a tragic hero fit for the Greek myths. Hope to see everyone on Rum Cay soon.” – Matt Gallagher, author of Youngblood
“Fred Waitzkin effortlessly recreates a singular world with uncanny insight and humor. His language is remarkable for its clarity and simplicity. Yet his themes are profound. This is like sitting by a fire with a master storyteller whose true power is in the realm of imagination and magic.” – Gabriel Byrne, actor and director
The post Fred Waitzkin: Deep Water Blues, a Novel first appeared on WritersCast.
The Buddha in Jail: Restoring Lives, Finding Hope and Freedom – Cuong Lu – OR Books – paperback – 112 pages – 978-1-682191-84-2 – $18.95 – April 2, 2019 – ebook versions available at lower prices.
Foreword by Roshi Joan Halifax.
I’ve studied and read and been around Buddhist teachings for a number of years. I’ve always been attracted to Buddhism’s psychological approach and to its ideas about self, being and letting go of suffering, though I have never practiced Buddhist meditation enough to attain a meaningful experience of inner peace. Reading Cuong Lu’s short book was a powerful experience for me, because unlike many books about Buddhism, it is so practical, and so filled with lived experience. Socially engaged Buddhism is extremely powerful, as it brings concepts of inner peace and understanding into play with the actual lived experience of people and works with their actual suffering. It is not theory, but practice. Cuong Lu lives that experience and brings it to us in a really meaningful way.
Cuong Lu was a Vietnamese refugee who arrived in Holland as a young boy, and struggled to learn who he was in a country that was very foreign to him, after many traumatic experiences. He discovered Buddhism and spent a number of years studying with the renowned Vietnamese Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, and in 1993 was ordained a monk at Hanh’s community, Plum Village in France. In 2000, he was recognized as a teacher in the Lieu Quan line of the Linji School of Zen Buddhism and then spent six years ministering to inmates in Dutch prisons as a prison chaplain.
This book is a collection of 52 vignettes – the stories and teachings in which Cuong Lu shares insights into the prisoner’s mindset, and by extension all of us, those who are physically imprisoned, and of course, those many others of us who are psychologically imprisoned.
As a prison chaplain, Cuong discovered that when the men inside allowed themselves to feel their pain – connecting to their buried and unacknowledged feelings, that knowing and feeling the truth enabled them to find inner sources of strength they had never experienced previously. When these prisoners felt themselves to be touched, and accepted without judgment, understood in a pure way, it transformed their sense of self, with the result that they were able to change their own attitudes, self images, and ultimately their behavior and relationships to others.
Ultimately, this book is not about the prisoners. It’s about each of us who read the book. We limit our ideas of ourselves, of self and confused projection for reality. We don’t understand or recognize what freedom and happiness are, that they are states we can experience deeply and thoroughly through a fuller understanding of the nature of our beings and relationship to self and universe. It will always require a process to attain this kind of understanding, but when we do the work of meditation and inner viewing, we discover the freedom and happiness already within. This book can be viewed as an introduction to a way of living and being that might change our world for the better.
Speaking with Cuong Lu, it is easy to understand why he is such a great teacher. He is centered, calm and clear, and able to explain easily the sometimes complex and confusing system of understanding that Buddhism represents. It was a great pleasure for me to have the opportunity to speak with him about this book and his experiences.
“In The Buddha in Jail, Cuong Lu demonstrates how to be in a helping relationship without getting caught in roles. As a prison chaplain, he did not attach to the idea of being a helper, or even of ‘helping.’ He sat quietly, deeply present with each inmate, and saw each of them as a soul, not just their personality or their troubled past. By dwelling in love with each person, accepting them without judgment, one by one they transformed, and their recidivism was close to zero. I congratulate Cuong Lu for the depth of his prison ministry and this beautiful book.” —Ram Dass, author of Be Here Now and Walking Each Other Home: Conversations on Loving and Dying
“To free ourselves, we have to unlock the doors from within. Chaplains like Cuong Lu play an essential role in freeing those in prison from their inner demons, offering guidance, support, and loving kindness, teaching stillness and self-reflection, learning to connect with their fierce and loving hearts. I highly recommend The Buddha in Jail, a good read and a great resource for understanding prisoners and for finding the keys to the prisons in our own minds.”
—Spring Was-ham, author of A Fierce Heart: Finding Strength, Courage, and Wisdom in Any Moment
Cuong Lu, Buddhist teacher, scholar, and writer, was born in Nha Trang, Vietnam, in 1968. He majored in East Asian studies at the University of Leiden, and in 1993 was ordained a monk at Plum Village in France under the guidance of Thich Nhat Hanh. In 2000, he was recognized as a teacher in the Lieu Quan line of the Linji School of Zen Buddhism. In 2015, he received a master’s degree in Buddhist Spiritual Care at Vrije University in Amsterdam. Lu is the founder of Mind Only School, in Gouda, the Netherlands, where he teaches Buddhist philosophy and psychology, specializing in Yogachara Buddhism combined with the Madhyamaka (Middle Way) School of Nagarjuna.
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